'Tis Later

I said pictures later, so here we go. I went out to capture bits and pieces of what I love on camera, failed miserably, but who can capture the essence of a moment in words or on camera?


The colors were magnificent as the sun melted into a soft neon pink: melting baker's chocolate in butter as the colors spread across the ocean, rippling and running up the sand. It moved with a swift calmness and grace, not lingering with the applause as it begged for an encore, no matter the waves of standing ovations, but bowing out in humble radiance.

Pictures Later

Today . . . today, today, today. This week. Hmm.

First ah-ha moment. Moreover, first, I-told-you-so moment. I went with a friend out for coffee and conversation. We headed out to Westside Coffee, which led us to West Cliff Drive, where we found a bench and sat and chatted and oohed and ahhed over the ocean and the sky. The sky was filled with varying clouds, cracking open occassionally to stream light down onto a silvery, choppy ocean that would glow golden with the peaking sun. The rain from which we received respite that day had lit the cliff tops and slopes electric shades of green and cleaned the air--we could see the towers at Moss Landing and the hills rising up behind Salinas and Castroville. We interrupted ourselves and eachother with oohs and moments of necessary basking and blathering as the sun broke through over our bench and commentaries on the beauty and oh look! a dolphin! and we ran further out onto the cliff to stand and point and become ever so much more excited each time the dolphin or its playmates resurfaced. Driving away from West Cliff, there ahead rose the Santa Cruz mountains, dripping, absolutely dripping with deep green trees. Not slopes, not inclines, but mountains. Not Shasta or the Sierra Nevada Range, but mountains. And then descending into the valley, down Graham Hill Road, with trees leaning, light streaming, a road cut in between descending hills . . . I was not wrong to feel helpless in attempting to convey a piece of this to my classmates in CAS 101, it is not comparable to anything anywhere I have ever seen, I was not idealizing it, painting it rosy in my mind to stab my heart. No. It is that beautiful, indescribable, irreplaceable.

Second ah-ha. The sky. Today was an all day in San Jose day. San Joe-zee. (I'm kidding if you, reader deary, don't speak Spanish or are not native to this area--'tis San Ho-say.) And a long while at the car dealership, where I plopped down on a strip of grass, layed on my back, and stared at the sky. Wow. Yup, wow.

It is not that the sky is a place of infrequent visual perusal, but rather that its importance just registered. It was so still. It was blue and puffed with clouds but still. Later, it acquired cloud streaks of a drying brush and feathered clouds and soon a river of watermarked clouds flowed through the center of my field of vision, behind the original sedentary clouds. The sky is like the ocean. It is always there, but it is always different. It is changeable, unreliable in form, but reliable in existance. It would be heart breaking, it is heart breaking, to see it polluted and unhealthy. And I rely on its existance. The sky does not replace the ocean for me; the ocean has branded a lodging for itself upon my heart where only it will ever fit. So I live with its absence in Grand Rapids. But in Grand Rapids, the sky took hold in a way it never had. Here the sky is big. Here it can blend with the ocean, expand into the ocean, be sawed by trees or mountains. Here it is dark at night, lit by its own stars. In Grand Rapids the stars are not so available, but the sky moves. The clouds are more and more variable. The sunrises and sunsets have a dynamism unlike those here--for while they set along flat horizons and softer, rounder, smaller trees, they set with an expansiveness that shrinks one down to the reality of one's smallness the way the ocean can. They set in a dancing, painted sky of immense proportions. The sky, the sky is necessary.

Third ah-ha. Driving back from San Jose, over 17 by myself in the van. KRTY playing, as I swung up and down the curves through the mountains, George Strait's "I Saw God Today." Maybe it is a cheesy song. Maybe I am "cute-sy" as a roommate stated this semester.
"Just walked down the street to the coffee shop, I had to take a break, I'd been by her side for 18 hours straight. Saw a flower growing in the middle of the side walk, pushing up through the concrete, like it was planted right there for me to see. The flashing lights, the honking horns all seemed to fade away, in the shadow of that hospital, at 5:08, I saw God today. I've been to Church, I've read the book, I know he's here but I don't look near as often as I should. His fingerprints are everywhere, I just slowed down to stop and stare, opened my eyes and man I swear, I saw God today."
I haven't read the book, I won't comment any further on my unorthodox status of haves and have not's and do's and do not's, but I will say this much: those moments of finding a flower in the sidewalk are the most overwhelming moments of ah-ha. How else would the sky be noted in San Jose and Grand Rapids and be found to be so compelling?

Sweet Potato Love and Home Grown Granola

Yes, yes, it is known: Annie loves sweet potatoes. And Granola. It might be a sin not to like the latter, being a rooted Californian from Santa Cruz to top it. Rooted: we have no clue when Grandma Joy's side of the family (Dake-Phares-Biggs) showed up in California (they popped out of the ground--like daisies!!)--and Grandma was the fishing, farming, composting, green-type. Grandpa Rex and the Williams-Kelly klan came over when he was in his teens from Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not remembered warmly. (Haha.) The Murray family is Texan. The Murray-Cheek-Ferrero-Rodgers side is Texan (isn't there some southern connection with Sweet Potatoes?). But Mom was born and raised in SoCal. And Mom and Dad (Mr. Arcata/Eureka) went to school at Humboldt (Big Trees and Hippies) and ate granola and yogurt. Then we were born. We being the siblings and I. Two down south, two up here in Santa Cruz. Granola and hippyish tendencies are in my blood. I can't help it. Potatoes. Hmm. I don't know where this obsession came from but they are tasty and cheap. So what happens when you take thrifty meal food (potatoes) and mix them with thoroughly ingrained tendencies (granola-making)?

Sweet Potato Granola!!
6 cups Oats of sorts
½ a large sweet potato, diced
2 cups almonds
½ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup wheat germ
2 T cinnamon
1 T ginger
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup applesauce
1 cup honey


325º For decreasing intervals of time (10, 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, until it is done) , stirring/flipping the granola in between. 
I'd advise mixing the dry ingredients first. Measure the oil a liquid measuring cup large enough to accommodate close to a cup of honey on top of the oil. The oil can be swished around so that honey doesn't stick--which makes cleaning less of a hastle. Just plop the the applesauce directly onto the dry mixture. I'd err on the side of less in the spice department and more in the sweet potato--these are all estimations (I didn't measure the spices or the potato or the applesauce, I just threw it in). But it is so tasty. The applesauce makes for a chewier granola, so if you want more crisp, I'd cut down on it, or maybe just cook it longer. Mmmmmm . . . 

Vague Philosophical Musings on Fall Semester 2010

Post finals, post packing and traveling, sitting at the kitchen table in a slower paced section of lifestyles it is easy to gloss the semester into “a learning experience” and move on without actually learning anything. What was demonstrable, if anything, in the last semester, that should be carried foward for furture reference? 

1.   One will mess up, and one will make the same mistakes multiple times: No, that is not my excuse for habitual burnout. But, I do think it is necessary that we give ourselves some grace in the penance department. That was a lot of religious rhetoric in one sentence and it is probably in misuse; someone can chew me out for that later. The mistakes are, in essence, the same, but there are leaves of difference that can be found, and those are often signs of growth, of change.

2.   Let’s break that down a bit more—one will mess up. Hi, me llamo Not Perfect. Cannot be, will never be anything but a human being. Call it Total Depravity or Human Stupidity Syndrome or What Makes Life Interesting, it is an inevitable reality.

3.   The Reaction is What Matters. It has been established: we mess up. Now what? Or is it messing up? Everything comes down to a choice of movement. Rewriting past choices is not an option but moving is.

I think this, moving, is the most important bit of knowledge that has become more and more a reality to me in the last several years. I will never know what is next. I have already made the mistake of staking x, y, and z on these carefully laid, intricate, unattainable goals and plans, and now I’m in a state of dizzy confusion, blurry minded, now what?! Move. Quit sitting, wallowing, frazzling, just move. Forward or backward, up or down are quasi-irrelevant terms at this point. “Quasi” because sometimes there are informative tidbits called past-experience and because sometimes our perceptions of direction are completely skewed, but usually both. And, yes, it stinks now: I’ve messed up and all I can see are consequences. And looking back one can say: that was a horrid decision. But was it? All strings attached are somehow attached to the present, and would change that one mistake for the sake of retrospect? Most likely not. The mistake has been made and the options are to move or not to move. Move. 

Exam Week Edibles

I am firmly against the readily spewed rhetoric asserting that one eats crud during exams. Sorry.
Okay, so last night I did. And I regretted it after one piece of pizza.

But tonight was not gross. Exam week is end of the semester, so it does mean some creative mixing to use the why-did-I-buy-this and make last as long as possible the favorites, seeing as the purchasing period has passed until next semester, or in my case, next fall. That means use everything that cannot sit in storage over the next semester and summer.

Yeah, the photo quality stinks, I'll need to fix that before I go to Spain. Peas! Except, I'm not that excited about them. I bought them to ice my foot, and now I'm eating them. Yum. But yum when mixed with carrots (which I always, always have), brown rice, red onion, garlic, curry powder, and ginger powder in a skillet with water and oil (or butter, whatever is available). Delicioso! Of course potatoes would have been a lovely addition, but I can keep that in mind for next year.

The Persuasion of Lyme

[Working on an essay for The British Novel and reached a point regarding possibly one of my favorite paragraphs in Persuasion. Thought I'd share just for kicks.]
“. . . with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of town . . . [the] scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation . . .” (89)
[My thoughts]: Lyme presents novelty to almost all involved, and it is a striking novelty, as evidenced by Austen’s attention to its description. The assertion that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see the charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better” (89) is enough to suggest that the scenery persuades one to forget and lose oneself in the greater surrounding picture. Anne is persuaded.
[If anyone actually reads this and has read the book, favorite descriptions?]

The Big Brownie

Okay, so Grand Rapids is not as palatable as chocolate, or at least no with such frequency. But brownies and today have something in common.


Today we are getting are first sticking snow, our first real snow of the season, and I love it! I love the first snow because of the smell, the crispness of the air, and the likeness to the shaking of powdered sugar over brownies: when it is done gently and evenly, the brownie gradually disappears under a blanket of sugar (well, one typically stops before that). The first snow is so similar, and I can't help but get so excited.


Walking to class this morning, it was all I could do not to drop my back pack and go skuttling around in circles with my mouth open, tongue out, grinning like there's no tomorrow. I do miss California winters, the wet season, the lulling crisp and cleansing rains but in exchange for standing out in the first rain, bare-foot and silly, I stand out in the first sticking snow, just as delighted, as the shimmering flakes swirl and dance.

A Moment of Calm

Professors are cool. That reads sooo eloquently, doesn't it? But I do mean it.

Sunday evening, our CAS professor had the class over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. And it was wonderful. She has a fireplace in her home, a real, wood-burning fireplace. The paint in the room, the furniture, the trim were warm and welcoming. Homes are beautiful, beautiful places. We sat around the living room in an oblong circle, talked some, had some measures of silence, met her younger son (who was quite adorable), laughed, shared a sliver of life for a moment . . . it took me by surprise, the calm, the peace, the welcome, the feeling of home.

Jealousy

I admit, I am a glutton for punishment. I love my CAS class.
CAS: Communication Arts and Sciences.
CAS 101: Oral Rhetoric

Yeah, uh, speeches. So the concept of my loving the class and its contents seem a little contradictory. And it is, to an extent. I love the challenge. I love that it is familiar but new. I love that the professor is passionate about her teaching.

This is what gets me jazzed on subjects. When the subject is somehow familiar and new at once, and the professor/teacher/lecturer cares very much about the subject, about the students/audience, and pushes for a cohesive understanding of that subject, with perhaps the hope for genuine appreciation.

Anyway. Where does that jealousy element come into play? Our professor is going to a conference, so we don't have class next Monday. The conference is in San Francisco. !! I want to go to California. I sent her a list of to-dos (which is a joke as I've been in-in San Fran, what, twice?), the primary obligation being to watch the sun set into the ocean.

My ignorance of the area makes me want to do something there, to get to know San Fran. Is that weird or what? Me, want to get to know a city . . .

November Thoughts

This morning the sunrise was astounding. Not at first. At first I went to the field behind DeVos and decided that although watching the sunrise is more about the peace than the painting, this uneventful color scheme could be passed over for presentation preperation. Once the library had opened and I trucked up to the fifth floor, I looked east to see the sun peaking up, dripping with color.
It was all I could do to not run. I moved as quickly as my non running feet would take me back under the Beltline (all I wanted to do was take off my shoes and run, I was so excited), slipped off my flats, and moved up the hill to field bare-foot. It was gorgeous. I must have been there a half an hour, freezing my feet off until I finally bid goodbye to the horizon to clean up and head back to homework--but, oh! What a sight.
Mornings are best quiet. I suppose it isn't truly quiet with the Beltline roaring behind or Burton humming ahead, but there aren't voices. The birds chatter, squirrels fidget, the wind blows the switches of the willows, geese honk, but inside is a silent well of joy, of peace, of I think I can make it through this day after all.
Sunset was phenomenal also. Although I was constricted to the apartment and theology readings, from the sliding door the sky was permeated with pink . . .
Michigan has something I'm not used to, something that scared me at first, but something I have learned to love: a big sky. I can't imagine it bigger, but know it must be in the prarie states and parts of the south. The immensity is amplified by the distinction between land and sky (it cannot not mingle with any ocean) and the events that parade across daily. I'll miss this sky someday. For now, I'll just enjoy it. Mornings. Mornings in Michigan are the best part of November 2010 thus far.

In Love with Simplicity

"Ohh Michigan" is one of the most over-used expressions of *sigh* of "I'm sick of college/Calvin/here/what you will," but I am using it as a phrase of endearment. The trees are on fire here. Flaming. Is it really October though? The trees are on fire AND the sun rays are wrapping around my skin as though it were a mild summer day. The trees are on fire and not all the flowers have withered or dropped--color, color, color. It is so simple, so ritual, and so irrevocably necessary to the cultivating of awe to pause and note.

If I were to wind up living here, and I would muchover prefer it to Los Angeles, my yard would be boardered with mixed wildflowers, tangled and tripping over one another with dandelions on the less trampled but always ragged lawn. The backyard would no doubt have a garden. And I would never miss ArtPrize. (I did not, unfortunately, make it down this year, and am very sorry for it.) This city is not a big, hopping, dynamic city, me han dicho, and suberbia is, suberbia, but it looses its monotony without overembellishment where the wild things grow near the soccer fields, in unminded lawns, in art.

The Farmer's Market again has done me well. Chard, swiss chard, was my splurge purchase, and it was delicious. 1 Tablespoon olive oil, 1 clove garlic, red pepper flakes, sautéed; 1 T water, a bunch of chopped chard, salt, added and mixed and covered about 4 minutes, served with fresh out of the oven, homemade pugliese bread (altered: half whole wheat flour, some corn meal, and white flour). MMMMMM!!!

Flowers and Food

Most exciting things in my life right now: not much. Today I cooked acorn squash, chick pea, potato, curry stew and also (managed to burn my oats--napping is always a bad idea) baked pugliese bread, banana chocolate chip bread, and moved sourdough onto its next stage of sitting and festering. Fester fester fester, rot rot rot. But there are still inexplicably delightful bits of lightness and cheer in my life, like this flower . . .

. . . from Dahlia Farms, Fulton Farmer's Market: a wild and dazzling joy.

Thanks Libby!

Annie-ranjado

Me soprendo que mi piel no ha llegado a ser anaranjado. Todo lo que como tiene lo mismo tinto: jugo de naranja, zanahorias, camote, polvo de chili, maíz (es amarillo, yo sé, ¿pero que es la diferencia?) . . .

The Beauty of Brine

Oh beautiful day in Californ-i-a!!! Yes it was hot! hot! hot! as in 107º in the valley and more or less the same in various locales throughout the county, but it is summer! And gimpy here, has a selfish post to share why it is more beautiful than the average roasting day . . .

I went swimming in the ocean! Yes, Twin Lakes Beach, right next to the harbor. I crutched out the wheel chair path from Crow’s Nest, and then crutched through the sand to the water where I plopped down on a rock and fought less than gracefully against my wetsuit (but I did win) and with the help of my dad, crutched into the ocean, dropped between waves, crawled, and swam like hell out of the surf zone and into the swells. Kicking is still a no-no, so I fought the urge to tread or throw in the occasional breast stroke while redirecting toward the buoy and swam to buoy one, then two, and almost three. 

I know, I know, “almost” sounds pathetic, and not far from there was my preferred goal, the cliff, but this is where things got exciting. Between buoy two and three something smooth and grey came into view between myself and my destination, which was still off a ways. Seal, right? That is my first instinct too but mamacita here is always up on the latest gossip (not really), such as a shark citing in Monterey Bay?! What? The goggles went up and floated, waiting for a second glimpse of grey sea critter. Finally, a seal came up, far enough away that I could sigh . . . and see a fin! One fin, two fins, three, four—oh my goodness, look at all these dolphins! No sharkies playing around here, no sir-e. Amazing. I was swimming with dolphins, in Monterey Bay. The only reason I turned around was Mr. Seal—seals are huge, and have teeth; three yards was a little too close for comfort. But it was perfect. Sea weed, dolphins, seals, salty water, my favorite view of the harbor lighthouse, even a smooth return to land via body surfing; I could not have wished for more. How is it that the ocean never ceases to give and yet, never looses itself?

Bottoms Up

Goodbye August, hello summer—but of course, goodbye California. These are the summers that I remember from years ago: fog, fog, fog, and then, halfway through August, sunshine and warmth into mid-September, ever so unfortunately overlapping the beginning of school. Maybe this summer was abnormally foggy, not sure, but there is a sadness to this final showing of the sun as the tardy bell sounds. It is a pity that school starts so early, it is not kind to teachers or students or families or businesses, especially not in this county. Of course, the child that skulked off to junior high this morning despises this heat, this true summer weather; he despises school also, but these temperatures drive him inside, where we have trapped the cool night air for midday relief.

On days like this, eighty degrees by nine and climbing, my best friend and I used to go to the creach. We would creek walk down Bean, picking blackberries and disguising ourselves with rock paint. At the merging of Bean with Zayante we would have polar bear contests, arguing over who stayed under longer. We would roll on the rocky and sandy shore, calling ourselves corndogs, then go dancing and shrieking and giggling under the weight of Ferndale Falls. Growing bored with our surroundings, or more likely annoyed at the prospect of sharing our creach with some recently arriving and long staying strangers, we would depart up the steep isle split by the creeks and race to the boat docks. If we were lucky, we would succeed in commandeering a canoe (or rather, convincing a hot and tired lifeguard to be rid of us quickly and painlessly) and paddle beyond the turn around bridge, until we lodged in shallow water near the old docks (or so we called them) where we would hunt crawdads (our kindness not fear was the only reason we never had anything to show for our efforts, of course) and sit in the water pouring over the concrete slabs. If we met a less than compliant lifeguard, we dragged our feet away, muttering about the irascibility of the situation, about twenty yards up Zayante to the bay on the brink of the water. We would stand on its sister’s stump and swing out, legs kicking wildly, letting go at the highest point, plunging into the middle of creek—who needs a dumb canoe anyway? I remember daring each other to go without board shorts; although it was momentous that we were wearing two-pieces (that showed an inch of belly), going without shorts was scandalous in our 11-year-old minds. She had, as usual, the longest, most badass sounding dare, and unable to top her, I made her agree to do it with me. We used to race to the big cement retaining wall too, swimming across the creek in front of rowboats and canoes—she always won. We loved the water without fear. There was respect, of course, one does not swim in the creek during winter, but we loved it from before memory and we both still love creeks and rivers. 

Love’s Merchant MacBeth

MacBeth is hard to be deemed lovable, and if he is a merchant of sorts, he is one of lives—kill kill kill. On that positive note:

MacBeth is quite riveting. I admit—I do love the tragedies. They are rough and saddening and I do not always love or pity the tragic hero right away or completely, but as always, Shakespeare questions an angle, an aspect of humanity. Frankly, I was waiting for MacBeth to impress me, and I was impatient with the fated fool. But he does it, somewhere in his plotting and his wife’s ranting, he runs out a discourse infused with morality and questioning.

Love’s Labour’s Lost . . . hmm, the women have the power in this comedy, and I do enjoy that. Perhaps it was the version I chose (edited by Jonathon Bate and Eric Rasmussen), somehow I think not, but this is quite the bawdy play. My guess is the Folger Shakespeare Library version would have much less explication of the sexual innuendoes in its side notes, but none the less, some of them are quite obvious. Dirty sex jokes aside, Shakespeare took a direct blow at convention and sappy sonneteers as the men are instructed that it takes more than weepy antics to capture the trust of a woman and prove love true.

The Merchant of Venice is again, a very different comedy. This is why I love Shakespeare—although there are repeated themes and events, and although he seemed to lack an imagination for names, each play is separate somehow, and owns a piece of the audience. The villain, Shylock, is difficult to despise. He is not an Iago or an Edmund, whispering plans to the audience intimately; he is not a Claudio, marked by fratricide or a Polonius, nosy and obnoxious. Although all these villains have frighteningly human characteristics, they are less than deserving of pity and fail to redeem themselves, with perhaps the exception of Edmund. Shylock, though, is not only aware of his dislike for Antonio but it is  a reasonable dislike. It is Antonio who seems to be without excuse for his behavior—Antonio’s hatred of Shylock is similar to Iago’s dislike of Othello: “I hate the Moor.” Shylock asks for respect, to not be treated as a dog, reasoning that there is no difference between a Jew and a Christian outside of belief—the two are human and equal. This is why I love Shakespeare!! His audience, late 16^th and early 17^th century England, would have been with the “heroes,” highly anti-Semitic, yet it is Shylock, the Jew, who is given the voice of reason, even if only for a moment.

Next . . . I am not sure—perhaps Romeo and Juliet, simply because I have not read it, but for sure at least a couple of live plays. Shakespeare Santa Cruz is putting on Othello and Love’s Labour’s Lost, for which I am thrilled!! 

Bored, Bummed, and Begging for “Biscuits”

Last night, I finally slept well. In fact, I slept in until 9 (yes, that is sleeping in). And I was quite thankful for it—home-oriented days can be unbearably long, and I had just cut out an entire two hours with sleep! As usual, I lounged my way through the morning: tea, slow-brewing Irish oats, and poetry. Although I was not particularly interested in changing out of my PJs or ready for the duel with my hair, I even forced myself to take a bath and wash my hair. Lunch came and went, and I really had not done much of anything. The Count of Monte Cristo? I tried. About fifteen pages. I kept crutching into the kitchen and toying with the idea of making something, then skulking out.  It is not as though I need the chocolate and butter or am doing anything to counter the buthighs they create (or the floatation devices betwixt aforesaid anatomical structure and the shoulders). But I wasn’t doing anything . . . so I did! I baked: Maple Biscotti and Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Chocolate Chip, Oatmeal Cookies.

The latter indulgence is oh so typical of me; the previous, the mixing of “American” (maple) and Italiano (biscotti), is not so typical. At least, not in baking. Why maple? Isn’t maple a seasonal flavor? Seasonal—uh, I do not know, food is food and I work with what I have. My mom had made Oatmeal Maple Scones and there was left over glaze; so I figured I could make “candied” biscotti, just drizzle the stuff over the top. Maple biscotti would not typically be my first choice, but I dislike wasting perfectly good food (i.e. watching the frosting turn into an amoeba in the fridge) and it did turn out quite well. 

The Tropes of Tea

Good Earth Tea is, well, quite tasty. It is very much like “Chai”: black tea and spices. And, like most quality, packaged teas, comes with a quote on the attached string and label. But the most recent quote, or more precisely, Chinese Proverb, made my day:

“Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases.”

Really? I would not know—although I have drunk immeasurable amounts of ocean water, I have yet to experience the tenor. How far can this be taken? Too much ocean water can make one sick, especially when the rivers are tainted (but hey—I’m still fine, and I drank gallons of Zayante and Bean water!!) that inject the salt water . . . kissing can cause mono and no doubt all sorts of other nasty infections . . . hmmm. But I have yet to get sick on account of the ocean, if anything, it is healing—so is kissing healing? Ha. This is too much fun. I might have to readdress this post when Mr. First Good Buddy stumbles into my life or I trip into his . . .

El Tercer Día

Hmm. What is there to report on the wonders of surgery?? How long some types of anesthesia last is quite impressive (perhaps disturbing); as of today I can feel my toes.  The lack of sanitation: I have no interest in a bath. (Surprise, surprise . . . especially for those of you who have lived within close proximity . . . Annie, shower?? Nah!)

Lessons Learned by the Gimpy:

Humility                      Yeah, so this one is hard. People have gushed about my humility in the past, but it is increasingly obvious how much I lack. I want to take care of myself, but that is very hard to do one footed without falling over. All of a sudden, I am very dependent, and there is nothing to do but allow myself to be helped. Despite our independence-obsessed American heritage, help is a very good thing.

Patience                       Monopods can only do so much at a time and only with x amount of speed (about .000001 mph), and that is okay.

Guts                            I get to inject myself with this fun stuff called Lovenox. It is supposed to prevent blood clots. Shots are not terribly frightening for someone who underwent years of allergy shots, but it is a wee different when I am sticking myself.

Manners                      Manners matter. Duh. When almost completely dependent, the opportunities to mind my manners multiply, or become more obvious. Whichever the case, please and thank you are necessary.

Rest                             Ahh! Rest?! Yup, I have dramatically downsized my lifestyle. I had toast and coffee this morning and read poetry for half an hour before moving on to brewing my steel-cut oats. I napped several times yesterday and watched two movies—yeah, those recorded dealios that I avoid like algebra. Reading Love’s Labour’s Lost is waiting until the Political Science class has finished. I am quite sure I will go entirely nuts sometime in the near future, but I am doing my best to embrace the rest and postpone losing my marbles.

Tasty Oats

Alright--I am a sucker for oats. New Leaf sells this mix of barley flakes, oats, and I don't quite remember what else, but about a 1/3 cup of that, plus some steel-cut oats, quinoa, rice, dried currants, and wheat germ dumped into hot-hot-hot milk and soaked overnight equals a fabulous breakfast:

I chopped up some frozen cranberries to throw in with some frozen blueberries and heated it up with another splash of milk and/or water and topped it with granola . . . so it looks weird, but, mmm, scrumptious! No matter what el señor Ben Jonson has to say about oats--grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people--I will continue to eat them.

Stoves, Suds, and Smiles

This morning was one of those mornings . . . one that, for whatever reason, everything seemed amusing or pleasurable. Let me rewind.

This last weekend was nutsy: to have surgery or not to have surgery? For those who do not know, the navicular bone and cartilage in my right foot is weird and quite painful, as I discovered in the midst of training for a 25K run in late March. For that and a variety of other trivial reasons, I have been ridiculously cynical of late. Perhaps I was looking for the positive to counteract my moodiness.

Home cooking and baking. Okay, so it helps living at home and mooching off the padres cooking supplies, not so discretely hinting at purchases, volunteering to forge the way through the grocery stores . . . Nonetheless, soaking beans to make hummus, concocting spice combinations for fish, watching steam rocket from the combination of toasted steel-cut oats and buttermilk, the smell of fresh pugliese bread, experimenting with granola . . . there is a simple joy in kitchen creations.

Made by hand . . . and cleaned. Cleaning can be the horror of baking and cooking. An elaborate pizza with homemade dough, various cheeses, tomatoes, spinach, skillet cooked mushrooms and onions, fresh basil, and another with pesto and chicken, and the random brie and pear pizza . . . all are delicious, but the precariously stacked dishes are daunting. But the truth of the matter? I do enjoy the dishes. Steaming hot water and suds, a fresh wash cloth, and the consistent scouring and scrubbing is incredibly calming. And the end product—a drain-tray full of sparkling clean dishes—is so satisfying. The dishes are not always as cute as I have made them out to be; they can be the source of much frustration, the last straw, or simply a general nuisance. But for whatever reason this morning, I looked at the dishes dripping dry and the dirty blender and smiled.

Granola. Yes, my dear Michiganders, Midwesterners, Southerners, and New Englanders, this is soo California. Yogurt and granola. But my little made-at-SLV ceramic bowl with Trader Joe’s non-fat vanilla yogurt, my homemade granola with its latest twist, and local strawberries (maybe not Gizdich, but still pretty darn good) was a lovely sight, a fabulous meal, and a reminder of the itty-bitty, perhaps silly things that make life wonderful.

The “Feminist” Movement and likely some Ignorant Ranting

You’ve read the title—you’ve been warned.

Maybe I do not know what constitutes feminism (this is entirely possibly), but the direction some women are headed in the name of feminism seems counterproductive.

Spring of 2009, in one of my English classes at the junior college, we had a substitute who had no interest in what we were doing in class, but rather sharing her infinite knowledge with us, the uninformed youth. She told us how who vs. whom is stupid to try to figure out, it doesn’t matter, because it has been taken out of textbooks and the worthlessness of semicolons . . . okay, so that preamble may have set my spikes against anything else she had to say, but nonetheless her vast storage of information on prostitution stuck with me.

Feminism, she preached, has shifted gears—we are in the third wave of the feminist movement. She continued to inform us of the great injustice women are fighting to regain control of their bodies, not just via abortion, but the right to self-employ as a prostitute.

As if her rant against the importance of grammar had not confused and frustrated me enough . . .

Correct me if I’m wrong—this is backward. Women fighting for rights once upon a Susan B. Anthony and in relation to the themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter were originally fighting for existence as people. Then rights and votes. Women were possessions, commodities. Every man has got to have one. Marriage=poof, gone existence. Muchísmo has taken place between then and now by the women of the feminist movement, and I am eternally grateful.

My problem with prostitution is not solely built on moral grounds—if someone wants to sleep around, no one is stopping him or her; our government does not (yet) regulate all personal choices—but on this woman’s equation of feminist liberty found in selling one’s body. Selling, I do understand, is a biased verb-choice. Opening was this professor’s verb, “giving women the option to open their body as a beautiful, legitimate choice of profession;” something like that. Alrighty. But the body then, again, becomes a commodity. Part of business. Which brings to mind You’ve Got Mail:

           

It’s not personal; it’s business.             [Later] It wasn’t . . . personal.

What is that supposed to mean? I am so sick of that. All that means is that it wasn’t personal to you. But it was personal to me. It’s personal to a lot of people. And what’s so wrong with being personal, anyway? . . . Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal.

American business, from what I have observed, is decreasingly personal. Which is terrible! But it is a rant for a different day. Prostitution is not personal . . . or is it? The body is very much personal, despite how many divested parts may be found on billboards, and Americans are generally ashamed of sexuality. (My hypothesis for the excess amount of sex everywhere one looks is the product of our immature reaction to this “shame source” and if not that, the unashamed percentage’s attempts to shock the public into realizing and accepting that sex happens; it is not a dirty little joke.)

If I compare renting out sex to renting out a car, keeping both as little people owned personal businesses (the Mom and Pop type businesses), I am still running into issues. Excuse the assumptions in the prostitution department. Both the car and the body lose value the more “mileage” they get. Or maybe the more experience a prostitute has, the more s/he can charge—I really do not know. Cars are insured. People can be, and if there came to be a National Union of Prostitutes (maybe one exists), I’m sure they would have their bodies insured also. But a car can be fixed and replaced. A body cannot, beyond a certain point. Insurance will not eradicate all STDs. If it were kept personal, wouldn’t that just tear the people involved to pieces? Or if it is not personal, is it really possible for a person to remove him or herself from his/her body? Why are there not neuter pronouns in English?

Really, the issue becomes making the body, a person, a commodity again. Something to be sold, rented, leased, something disposable. What, then, is the difference between a person and piece of fruit or a radio? There are sexist aspects of society that could and ought to be challenged in the name of feminism—frankly, I want nothing to do with war, but it is sexist to only recruit males in certain areas and even more sexist that if the draft were reinstated, it currently does not apply to women. If we want a level playing field, we had better buck up and play level; it is conceivable. If people want to promote prostitution as a freeing the self from the confines of conventionality, fine. 

But please, do not call it feminism. 

Treasures: Rodeo Gulch

I live in paradise (sorry to brag). People may not frolic naked (I count that as a blessing, actually) and we may lack fruit trees outside the window; perhaps the temperatures we have in the summer are not always paradisiacal and the fumes from fires encouraged by drought do not please aesthetic sensibility, but Northern California is quite the country and Santa Cruz county is bursting with many of the wonders of nature. If it is mountains one desires, and ours are too small, we are just several windy roads away from the Sierra Nevada range (and Tahoe!! and Yosemite!!). Redwoods? Check. Madrones? Ah yaz. Pines? Yup. Firs? Really . . . yes. Lighthouses? Harbors? Grassland? Farms? Sweeping views? Uh-huh.

Driving home from my summer school class in Aptos today, I decided to take a scenic route, or a severe detour, up Rodeo Gulch. I had not been up that road since last summer and knew it was a fairly peaceful road, and oh, absolutely gorgeous. Apparently I had forgotten how gorgeous. To ye Santa Cruz County dwellers, take a detour someday, sooner than later; it is not a sight to have missed. Take it slow. To ye other Northern Cali friends, stop by, I’ll give you a tour. Anyone and everyone else, come visit for some time, there is so much to see. Bring your bike and walking shoes, these things are better taken in gradually, not flown by. Do not drive the speed limit; 35 mph is too fast to see much of anything.

Rodeo Gulch meanders off of Soquel Drive (busy mania central) and rolls through small, open fields past trees and wildflowers. It is a sparsely populated area of old Soquel, rather undisturbed. The road climbs up switchbacks to the ridge from which one can see the waves of trees tumbling out to mingle with the distant blue of the ocean, bleeding moisture into the dallying departure of fog. From leaving the oak framed vista (and leaving out 99.9 percent of the description before and after the named point) and climbing several turns, the road drops a hairpin and many bouncing curves to a choice: Laurel Glen or Mountain View. Laurel Glen eventually dumps off onto Soquel San Jose Road, which, although a beautiful route, is out of the way. But Mountain View is fabulous also. The trees, the ferns, the stream, oh, everything, everything is awe striking. There is that rich, dark soil on the steep hillside dancing with redwoods and peaking through the yellow grass on the opposing gentle slope. All the descriptions I could muster for the remainder of Mountain View and Branciforte would sound strikingly similar: dark soil, redwoods, mountains painted with green, always green, trees in the near distance with a gently rolling meadow, yellow with grass that will become brown, then green, then watercolor, every year, in the foreground, spotted with oaks, firs, and redwood groves. But it is not all the same. Any film would fail to capture the angles and lighting, and it is not the incompetency of the artists (I did recognize the big tree forests and the clip from Tikal in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi), but nature in its moment portrayed on a screen or on special paper is not, will never be, the same as standing in the spot and realizing, my eyes, all my combined senses, are overwhelmed, in love, and selfishly insatiable.

Folks—it is beautiful. I know that word is overused. And what is crazy is this is, for the main part, new growth. The whole darn place was clear-cut. Gone. That was a bit of a reminder for me: I need to prune myself, or let myself be pruned, to make a millionth a step toward growth. Yes, clear-cutting is extreme, try selective cutting. Just as it is good to let the forest burn periodically, I need to get burned. Otherwise dead, useless bits crop up along the forest floor, little silly things I am unwilling to properly deal with—fears, grudges, dreams deferred—and then when the fire comes through, it is not simply a healthy cleaning, but a devastating burn. 

What does Annie do? Read :)

Well, I have read Cold Mountain. And it wasn’t half as bad as multiple people made it out to be. I liked Ruby, and Inman too. Ada was a bit annoying but not wretched. The language was not riveting . . . what made it worthwhile? The philosophical musings perhaps. The attentiveness to nature, to the individual aspects of the terrain of home. Those are probably the very things that have turned folks off to Charles Frazier’s novel, but it is where I was able to connect, even though initially the descriptions seemed wanting of eloquence, they did bring back the wee romantic’s desire to go play in the Appalachian Mountains and reminded me of the expansiveness of my own playground, but taken down to Cold Mountain level: The color, the feel, the emotion of one stream/river/creek in one place. Inman has vivid, almost developed beyond reality, memory of the land of Black Cove and Cold Mountain, of detail. It is easy enough to be enamored of a place as a vague whole, but it takes and is so much more to pay attention to the individual brush strokes and how they make up the whole. The aspects of the land become poetical fragments; all together the poem is complete, but each separate line, word group, is captivating in its own right. In a nutshell: it is about a woman, Ada, left to tend a large amount of land with no knowledge of the how and a soldier’s journey to this woman through the south and up into the mountains; it is about the people who transform Ada and the people transformed by Inman, with the Civil War and lack of trust permeating their lives.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. Read it. It is not a fast read, if read quickly, the book is lost. But it is hard to put down. Grushin has a way with word and description that paints portraits of the Russian landscape and life with incredible potency. The language is genius; it flows and swirls and stumbles with Sukhanov and the life that seems to be taking place around him, behind him, within him, and apart from him, as the surreal present collides with the neglected past. The words color and leap from the page, enrapturing the senses to feel and experience, yet releasing long enough to chastise Sukhanov, but before one can flounce off in disgust of his outbursts, his insensitivity, his seeming stupidity even, there is pull to pity, to relate, and again, one is lost weaving in and out of that potent dream life with Sukhanov, as Sukhanov. 

Initial Musings--what on Earth am I doing?

I’m thinking about starting a blog . . . it could have been started over Spring break, but I would have needed to have remembered my camera (food, yello). It would have served the same purpose as the e-mails (namely, entertainment and expression of sorts, the joy of writing), but it would give me something to do now. The dealio is that I am here, in the place with the people to whom the emails were sent. Who would read it? Does it matter? What would I write about? Books? Adventures beyond the literary scope . . . ha, uhh, really, lacking in that department. I did head out to downtown on Monday to discover . . . no more free parking?! Nope. Not in the immediate downtown vicinity, so I parked two streets over from Pacific, which is no big deal, I’m just sick of gimping around in a boot. Whine whine whine. Pues. Results perhaps on Thursday. But what happened downtown?

Well :) I went to . . . Logos! and Bookshop Santa Cruz! Shush, reading is a good thing. And bought: MacBeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Cringe. Yes, I do have The Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Necessary Works of Shakespeare. But the latter is what I have at home and it does not have Love’s Labour’s which is what Shakespeare Santa Cruz is performing, along with Othello, which I am super excited about and have full intentions of attending. The other two are in the Necessary volume (what a preposterous idea), but it is quite cumbersome. If I go off to gimp around the harbor or whatever, I would prefer to have a book-sized book, not a text size book to read.

Cooking adventures? Hmm. I made pugliese bread. It turned out fabulous.

Shucks, it looks as though I did do the blog thing. I exist online. What a scary thought. But why a blog? Hmm . . . because, selfishly, I like to write, but I can be very reclusive and as a result unintentionally exclusive. It is not an excuse not to chat with folks in person or on the phone; although I do ignore phone calls sometimes. It is just an experiment—writing semi-publically. Pues. Es todo. Yes, I’ll use Spanish de vez en cuando. Jejeje. Tis fun. Maybe I’ll even write alliterative blogs (oh, it is so much fun, alliteration . . . I carried on a hypothetical conversation in my mind for the endurance of a ten mile run—all of my hypothetical responses were expressed alliteratively).