a morning
The truck out the window reads “good for the earth” in white on blue. It’s small flashing yellow sidelights beaconing in the grey- it’s early morning, the time of school kids starting out on their long walk, the people who open offices, those who open coffee joints, and dawn-lovers like me.
In Manhattan, the bagel cart guys are all ready with huge chargers of coffee and pre-cream-cheesed bagels all in a row. I worry about the Polish guy who supplies my workaday bagel; he has no heater in his 9 foot by 4 foot metal trailer. He takes up most of it, standing close to the steaming coffee, parked outside the moviestar Penelope Cruz’s new clothing line, the flagship store. When I rummage around in my bag for change longer than usual, he tells me to pay him tomorrow or next week. In Brooklyn, the bagel guy hasn’t delivered to this cafe yet.
Someone’s smoking outside, leaning on the bench and the big window under the awning. I’ve quit. It’s freezing from the thin sheets of black ice water on all the concrete. It’s sort of raining; the Hasidic women carry black umbrellas. The January weather comes in through the open door into the golden inside. The tabletops are sunflower colored vinyl, two with green block prints of garlic bulbs tumbling in and out of wavering brown grasses. The coffee is organically grown, fair trade, bottomless cup. The woman’s voice through the speakers sings in Hindi then there’s soft chanting over lingering cords on mystical instruments.
The smoker is a woman, red-haired long-haired woman who strides past the door in a scarlet velvet coat wrapping her waist and swirling around her boot tops.
ode in recipes
WordPress, the service hosting this blog, records the search terms that some person somewhere entered that churned up this blog from all the zillions of sites on the web. I think the most interesting thing is it is all true somehow, and if it wasn’t here explicitly before it is now. From what has led them here, an ode to e-seekers:
nice mash potatoes, turnip vegan
squash radical
kitchen witchery
Purslane what does it look like
BEING HYPOCRITE IN THIS CIVILIZED WORLD
cauliflower root soup
chasteberry tattoos of mushrooms bluefoot chantrelles
“tofu scramble“
tofu scramble
clementine and lemon muffins
tofu scramble salsa
Tofu scrambles and omelet recipes
muffin films women naughty
sequins slung
mushroom blue foot 2
Indian muffin market
Betsey Johnson tagline
washington dc edible silver ball candies
peanut butter kiss cookies not flat
queer femme girls
simmering beets
cute mushrooms
Asian children: cute
old people who drink too much
chia pet herb and doctored tomato soup
SPUD DESERT RECIPES
mini greens
condensed milk, rosewater, cardamom
he said
broadcast on npr, rudy giuliani just said:
the best way to achieve peace is through overwhelming strength.
go ahead, laugh until you cry until you laugh.
(ummm, i don’t want to link to them, but check out: w w w . peace through strength pac.com/Home.aspx)
day by day poetry
i keep a Skybright Studio canvas pad propped up on the table against the world map. It has a hot pink cover with a distant lighthouse under a full moon seen through sparse trees rendered in white lines and smudges; it is 16 x 20 inches. I write impulsive poems on it in sharpie marker. They often come from bits of conversation. It started in the fall sometime, and it is now full. Below is part of the resulting poem, annotated with links. Visually, it is beautiful on the pad, haiku format one to each sheet, but a ribbon like that would make the blog space too long so the lines are longer here:
she would ask, did you have one big love? What does love mean to you now?
she was radicalized around ideas of nation states & nationalism in high school English Lit class where she learned
America is a constructed country
American, an invented identity
with myths & traditions made in patchwork & whole cloth
the latest experiment
i get paid what i got paid in dc but now i live in new york.
i’m choking on it.
he was angry, when she asked if he had slept with a prostitute
after he said he had lived next door to a brothel.
residual feelings, she called them; like semi-sticky dust leftovers of love
“writing is like marriage—one should not commit one’s self until one is amazed at one’s luck”
even our complex, artful, deranged & joyful sexuality seems hopeless in the maw of this poverty, war & isolation
a fundamental human challenge
you are here; you are an agent of change; you are the butterfly effect
a flock of greckles in your face; a hawk circling far away
a pink plastic flamingo, an origami piece crane, and a hummingbird—
all in the same sky
i’ve only slept with 9 people, she said.
But how do i count the 6 dyke orgy in high school, or
that play-party where 20 people fucked the prince
while me & another femme pet him—how do i count that? She took the prince home the next night.
i count that
well, dunk me in buttermilk & call me a biscuit—
you’ve got grits, kid.
i like being part of a grand history. like she said: i cross the police line &
join the past 2 decades of AIDS activists
“writing saved me from the sin & inconvenience of violence”
bran muffins
now, if you are bravely still reading, you will get a treat. oh, these muffins are yummy, pretty, and- as far as well-meaning home baking goes- good for you. It is a tweaked recipe from Nikki & David Goldbeck’s American Wholefoods Cuisine.
in a small bowl, measure out 2-3 tablespoons of wheat germ. Using a microplane or patience and a good knife, zest a lemon into it. Stir in 2 tablespoons of sugar.
pour 1 cup of buttermilk in a large liquid measure. Add 1/4 cup of honey, 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil. Whisk one egg in a bowl and add that to the measuring cup too.
sift together, 3 times, 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour (I used whole wheat pastry flour) with 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 1/2 of baking soda, and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. add the final sifting to 2 tablespoons of wheat germ and 1/2 a cup of bran measured into a big mixing bowl.
gently make a well in the flour mix, and add the liquid ingredients to the dry. stir until just combined with a wooden spoon.
oil a muffin try- medium, twelve muffins. pour the batter into the tin cups, and sprinkle the lemony sugary wheat germ over the tops. bake for 15 to 20 minutes.
brilliant
golden raisins, toasted sesame seeds, ginger…all good possible additions
part of that world
the mermaid girl sent me this clip below, something totally unexpected after a ***k of a day, and filled me with a cracked joy. i was also turned on and kinda weepy, though that could be amplified by current hormone levels.
regardless of your hormone levels, now you too can feel the love for nick pitera and sing along lustfully, as if you had seashells on your titties.
“Are you so super excited for the Broadway debut of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”? Lots of other people are, especially the kooky (but passionate!) folks at BroadwayWorld.com, who sponsored a contest to discover talented mer-hopefuls across the land. Send us your best “Part of Your World,” people! And the people did, in droves. This girl won the actual contest, but we really couldn’t tear our eyes away from boy crooner Nick Patera…”
From Gawker: http://gawker.com/tag/nick-patera/.
Let me know, sweat pea, if you want full credit, and I’ll put <YOUR NAME HERE.>
quick curried peanut sauce for many veggies
chop one medium yellow sweet onion, and smash, peel, and mince a few cloves of garlic. Peel and mince a half inch of fresh ginger.
sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions are translucent. Stir in the ginger along with a teaspoon of curry powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Stir in about three teaspoons of sesame oil and three tablespoons of Braggs or tamari sauce.
glop in a cup of peanut butter, and whisk in boiling hot water in a thin stream to bring the mixture to a saucey consistency.
prepare the veggies of your choice: fairy tale eggplant sliced in half and roasted; purple potatoes halved, par boiled and fried; steamed baby artichokes; bell pepper and broccoli sauté; string beans. What’s in season?
