Merry Christmas

Hey everyone. Merry Christmas.

Hoe Lee Cow

Man, Tony Tost hipped me to this. You can listen to Adam read his poem, or click above to hear me stumble over an early draft of a poem--I blame the stumble on gin, the early draft on poor book keeping. Man. Get ready for more, people.

The Mall

I went there. To the mall. I am not sure I'll be able to go again. Today, as I walked past the Santa with gin blossoms (is there a more pleasant sounding dangerous warning sign of alchoholism?) and watched a little kid sitting there before the flash, I saw the future of the picture. I've been thinking this way for awhile now, and I need to stop. Essentially what happens is that the photo flashes forward through time in my mind: displayed under blinking lights, cracked on the corner, in a drawer, under a newspaper, yellowed, cracked through the middle. And then it ends in some corner of a backyard with a chainlink fence. Lately, this is happening with people, but in both directions. I imagine the old folks spiraling back to cribs and the eight year olds growing stooped and cragged. Anyway, that's not why I am not sure if I can go back to the mall, and I love malls basically. It's that all the retail guys just freak me out now. They didn't use to. They all have to be so hungry and uncious. Anyway, all this rushing around of folks with scowls on their faces maybe because they hate shopping, or I don't know, it could be anything, but it all felt so sick and dangerous. I just wanted to hug them or go outside and lie down or watch 400 Blows , but I didn't.

My solution to the existential crisis was to buy a wireless card for the PC and a quilt. But I did get them both at places where no one asked me if I needed to buy anything.

The Mighty Squash

I'm done with grading! I'm done with grading! So, here's what I'm eating right now on December 17th at 1:17 in the afternoon: spaghetti squash which I baked the night before (40 mins or so at 350) and scraped out. Then I added pesto from the store and chopped pecans that I student got me for Christmas. How great does that sound? I'm all about the spaghetti squash right now--Kirsten had it with red sauce, I know it would be great in a casserole as well. All right -- first bite: great texture stuff going on, crunchy pecans, nice almost crispness in the squash as well. Now, some Natural Light . . . delicious. I exhaled like on tv saying, "ahhhh." So, the nuts are just a little extra fat if you're looking for that sort of thing. I think thinking about texture is good though. Perhaps all cooking is science and texture: acid/base (I watched a whole show on balance of acid/base once), how cheeses break and how to fix them. All that's science. So, I have made a great base, but I'm missing the acid, so I'd go with a spinach salad with vinagrette or something. I made a dressing in Greece that I've been meaning to try again with vinegar, oil, orange juice, lemon and sugar over spinach that was great. Acid and Base is why dressings are good I guess. Or you could balance this with some nice white wine.

Anyway, all is well. Ben, Julie, Elena and Emily will be here tomorrow, then up to Fayetteville. I'm cooking spinach lasagna tomorrow, and I might try that dressing again for them. I hope all is well.

Soup

I made some vegetable soup tonight: cabbage, carrots, potatoes, turnips, celery, tomatoes, rosemary, basil and pepper flakes. I am reminded, almost every time I make vegetable soup, of kindergarten. We made a big pot of soup in class once, and looking back, that seems like a strange thing to do. I was in charge of peeling potatoes. Other things I remember from Bates: We had a contest where we jumped over a "creek" which was represented by two ropes, and the teacher kept making the creek wider, so that eventually, you'd get your shoes "wet." This was all a ploy to get us up to speed on the shoe tying process. Also, I remember learning how to bow to the little girls in the class, and they learned how to curtsy, and I kind of remember learning how to curtsy as well. That's weird isn't it? The curtsy is a dying art for sure. I'm trying to create an atmosphere of Christmas here, so even if it's 60 degrees outside, I'm in here making steamy soup listening to Eartha Kitt sing "Santa Baby" which I heard while driving to a post party party last night on the radio. I downloaded it today to put in the Christmas CD I'm making. I did a tiny bit of recording last night on the PC.

Nothing

Building Nothing Out of Something is just so perfect for me right now, the candles just blown out, a bit of red wine in a pretty glass. I just arranged my photos, or I did as much as I could. Nostalgia is too short of a word for it--it makes me so proud and sad and lonely. Wondering how to organize a life in pictures, I started by grouping them into piles of people: girlfriends, boy friends, family, then groups at certain times. Then I switched to just clumping them together in years. And I then thought I'd just collect all the pictures that made me look nice. You all look nice. There's an amazing picture of Missi in there I found. I think she's resting on the brink of the Grand Canyon. And several nice ones of Kirsten's hand, blocking the camera.

I played at Coffeehouse at the school yesterday evening. I played "Wonderful" and Marty and I sang "Your Cheatin' Heart" and "I wanna be sedated." We didn't do our songs as well as we could, but they liked them, and they were so nice and quiet when I was singing "Wonderful."

I haven't even been thinking about writing lately. I can't imagine writing a poem, but I have been thinking of essays. I'm not ready to write one, but at least I've starting thinking about them. Before the break is over, I want to get something done. Perhaps I'll revise the thing that James liked so much from Greece. I think I'm exhausted from work, but when I look back at the week, I can't think what I've done that's so tiring. Teaching is strange work in that you're always on--it's sort of like taking a problem-solving test for eight hours every day. So, yeah, that's why I'm tired.



I'll try to update this site, and when I finally get a camera and buy some room, I'll be posting some pictures from Hot Springs because it's really lovely here: old dead buildings and steam rising off the hillside.

"Dear Santa Claus, how have you been? Did you have a nice Summer? . . . All is want is wha-- what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share." Man, how I love this show.