Snails

Growing up in Syracuse, NY we didn't have any land snails. My mother lamented this lack - apparently in the swamps of Michigan where she used to tramp about there were snails aplenty.

Upon moving to Irvine about a year ago, I went through a phase of complete obsession with the snails here. Job-less and directionless, I wandered the empty lots (overgrown with sagebrush and grasses) and stalked through Irvine's many green (brown) spaces looking at the big snails and skittery little lizards.

It's funny how I never notice these phases ending. As a child they were much more compelling - there was a year when I was completely riveted by belly buttons. It ended in a similarly subtle way. I remember thinking, at 8 or so, why don't I ever think about belly buttons anymore?

Anyway, here is a picture of one of these fellows. Sig tells me they're edible. We were planning on catching a bunch and letting them detox on organic lettuce before eating them, but the plan never really went through. (Personally, I think escargot tastes of dirt, though Sig tells me I'm nuts.)

This entry is a bit wandering, no?

Kahlil in the Desert

I recently sent a copy of Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet' to one of the dedicated readers of 'So Large Against the Sky' - my dear cousin A. I first read the book on a holy mountain in India, right outside the city of Pushkar. The mountain is actually one of a pair that bookend the city, each with a temple at the top. One temple is dedicated to Brahma's wife, Savriti. The other to Brahma's brief mistress, Gayatri, of whom Savriti did *not* approve.



I'm not sure which mountain it was, actually, but I had gone past the temple to sit on some isolated rocks in Rajastan's lovely, desert-scape. I pulled out 'The Prophet' and slowly, worshipfully read each passage. Each word feels so right.

Here is one sample, from the section on eating and drinking:

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyards for the winepress,
say in your heart,
"I too am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.


I too am a vineyard.

A Peck of Pickled Peppers

Tonight I'm going to try and pickle peppers. Our serrano plant has gone nearly as mad as the zucchinis. For the last year or so I've been making good old dill pickles with this amazing recipe. Or something rather like it depending on my current supplies of the various ingredients.

There are certain things that everybody has an opinion about, and that they'll make you feel very wrong for doing differently. For example, raising kittens. I see lots of websites with things like - never, EVER, let the kitten have human food!!! If you let the kitten have ANY human food EVER, it will DIE!!!!!

I read this while watching Cat-erine the Great sneak licks of oil out of my cooling frying pan.

Ugh.

Pickling seems to be the same way. I do it by boiling old jars from grocery store products, stuffing in the veggies, pouring boiling brine over, and tightening the lid. So far, no problems whatsoever. To look at various pickling instructions you'd think you need an industrial kitchen for it. Or else you'd DIE!!!!!

Old Photos

I miss 35 mm so, so much. And yes, I could shoot in film if I wanted, but it's a real pain to get it developed and to print it. The cost is especially prohibitive. Grr.

I think what I love about film cameras are 1 - the click of the shutter 2 - the way pictures look like what I was looking at. No, they don't look *exactly* like what I was looking at, obviously there are constraints (in color reproduction especially), constructions when you print (how dark is it, how white, should I lighten that corner?), but for the most part the chemical process of molecules absorbing reflected protons gets you something very like the picture in your head.

And furthermore, it's easy to understand exactly what is happening at each step of the process (light bounces off object, light hits photo-absorbing film, chemicals slough off the parts of the film where photons were absorbed, light passes through variably dense film and hits photo absorbing paper, chemicals darken paper accordingly). My understanding of a digital camera is something like the following - I own a magic box with an evil demon inside, light goes in and the demon puts a picture out that looks kinda like the light that goes in.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I recently scanned a number of old photos, some in color some in black and white. The quality is terrible, but at least they are, in a way, safe from cats and flooding. Here are a few of my favorites -

Under a banyon tree.
Family in an Adirondack river.
Rain in Harvard Square.
A game of solitaire in a cabin.
Little birds!
Little green things.

Durga vs. Aoife: a battle for the ages

Monotheism is a bit of a shame. I must admit that I have trouble understanding why we were so keen to trade panoplies of badass gods/goddesses/demi-gods/heroes for just one guy (who doesn't have much of a sense of humor.)

Out of all polytheistic, mythological traditions, my two favorite are the Irish and the Indian mythologies. Why? Well, let me elaborate...

1) Tricksters - Both traditions have friendly tricksters. Krishna, for example, is always stealing milk maids' clothes while they're bathing.

2) Geis - In Irish mythology, if one has a 'geis' or taboo placed on them, they must obey it, no matter what. Breaking the geis could lead to grave misfortune. Cuchulainn, for example, wasn't allowed to eat the flesh of a hound...

3) Blue Skin - Hello? It's awesome. Though the blue skin of certain gods is thought to represent dark skin (ie. not aryan).

3) Gods who 'do it' - And Goddesses who enjoy themselves in the process.

4) Warrior Goddesses - Mary and Mary are nice, I guess, but they're both pretty powerless. In the Irish tradition we've got Aoife, warrior princess, and in Hindu tradition Kali, the human skull wearing, bloody mother Goddess. Irish has Morrigan, Goddess of War and Fertility and her aspects Macha and Babh who like to show up as hooded crows, and Hindu has Durga, who rides a tiger, drinks wine, and slays buffalo demons.

Zucchini a go-go

Sig and I have been completely obsessed with our community garden plot. We quite literally moved 6 tons of dirt to replace the clay with decent soil, built enormous sunk-in boxes, planted, tended, and now we're harvesting and processing. A photo record -

The garden a few months ago, all boxes in, not everything sprouted. Please note the tin-headed scarecrow.
Accidental zucchini the size of my thigh.
Fridge full of enormous zucchini.
Kitten with zucchini and pickles.

Zucchini bread. And, below, freezer with 12 quarts of frozen zucchini. As you can see, zucchini has been our main crop thus far, by volume at least.

Slice

Have you ever noticed how self-injuries (like most self-images I suppose) look completely wonky and out of proportion in your memories?

I just slipped while using one of my wedding-gift Wusthof knives, which we keep sinfully sharp, and managed to slice off a little chunk of my thumb and leave a big ugly flap hanging from my index finger. Now, I know by the amount of blood, and by sheer reason, that this is a fairly limited injury, but in my mind my finger is the size of a cucumber and that cut goes half way through it. Why is this?

I suspect this is a similar phenomenon to anorexic girls who draw themselves fat, or the reasons people imagine their pimples to be enormous and redder than they are. The play Copenhagen, which Sig hates but I love, has a brilliant line about how strange it is that the only person you can never see is yourself.