Soupy Things

Okay. So I need a halibut carcass. What else is new? Every recipe in The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups has a couple of ingredients I can't lay my hands on at the present time. The recipes themselves are not too difficult, but I have no fish monger or any halibut carcasses hanging around. I'm going to keep searching. The Alaskan Salmon Chowder sounds excellent. The Finlander even bought me a real, honest to goodness, blue enameled cast iron soup pot to aid me in my culinary schemes. The manufacturer's advertisement for the pot promises that great things will come from cooking with their wares. The soup pot looks a little depressed, however, sitting empty on the stove . I'm going to cook some hot apple cider in it today just to show it it's not my fault. I really can make a few simple things.

Refraction Two

How important is it for the reader of a poem to understand the writer’s intent? Darned if I know. Poetry is driving me crazy. I think I should stick to prose. Prosaically speaking, this is what I want to say:

My son Tom pulled me up out of Indiana for an evening of dinner and jazz in Kalamazoo. He still comes home most weekends. He makes breakfast, wrestles the dogs, does his laundry. His presence bends the light in every room.

We wanted to hear the jazz pianist/composer Lyle Mays play at the Union, but before Mays took the stage, if he ever did, I had to make my way back home. From across the room Mays, with his hair pulled back in a ponytail, looked a little like the late-bassist Jaco Pastorius. Both artists played with The Pat Metheny Group. Maybe the connection has clouded my view. I've looked for a decent Mays video on YouTube, but haven't come up with anything. While looking for Mays I came across some beautiful Jaco footage, at least to my eyes. Here’s a link to Jaco playing Portrait of Tracy, which is musical poetry, I think. Keep in mind that everything you are hearing is coming from a bass guitar. Portrait of Tracy.

Listening to Jaco play Portrait of Tracy you get a glimpse of the feelings behind the notes, but you don't get to see the exact picture. So, is this the idea behind some poetry? Maybe. I just don't know.

Leaves

Yes, I know. One day soon I must rake leaves.

Halloween

For the first time in forever I won't be at home on my doorstep passing out candy on Halloween. I'll be at class, wearing my student face, wishing I was home. Halloween is a tradition, a chance to see every little face in my neighborhood, and the big faces, too. Oh, well. My husband and daughter are going to to do the honors of passing out candy to the parade of faces that float by. As for me, there is always next year.

I will not be denied the Halloween movies, however. Sunday night we watched Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride. I love the statements that man makes with color. I want to watch Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry, but my family has taken my NetFlix privileges away. Something about keeping movies for three weeks and never watching them. I'm hoping they'll get it for me, but you never know. They say I should try something new for a change. I'm not sure I trust them. After all, they're the ones who showed me YouTube.

Scientific Relationships

I'm no whiz at science, but I love Daniel Goleman's books that explore different kinds of intelligence and the inner workings of the brain. A few years ago I was impressed by his book Emotional Intelligence. He has a new book out, Social Intelligence The New Science of Human Relationships. You can get some decent info on the book from last week's Newsweek and today's NPR's Talk of the Nation. It sounds like he has some interesting things to say about empathy, touch, the gaze, developing rapport, what happens in our brains when we connect with someone... He talks about the ability to cope with continuing stress and even DNA changes. It's on my list of things to read.

Creeping Things

There is a creeping suspicion that I have turned to the dark side. Relax. It’s not quite that bad. I’ve just been peeling some old skin away. Snake skin? Maybe. We’ll have to wait and see. I’m reevaluating old stories, seeing what I should keep, what I should toss away.

The guy on NPR today talked about “the creeping force of realism.” Finally. Thank God. Is that the sun I see? Should I wear sun block? Even the poets are flinging realism around, clean, hard, beautiful punches. It feels like life is at last overpowering the creeping death that has been infecting everything.

Collected Thoughts

Thanks for this, Dan. I'll be praying for your eternal soul.

UTube

Will I go to hell for thinking of Bugs Bunny while listening to Tchaikovsky? What should I think about while listening to Tchaikovsky?

The cookbook came: The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups, something about fast food and the devolution of the human soul.

Sea of Clouds

We drove under, through and over this sea of clouds in the Smokies. Living in northern Indiana I sometimes forget that life exists above the clouds. Every once in a while it's a good idea to reacquaint myself with the idea that there are higher and lower elevations than my front door.

Refraction

Weekends
wrestling
breakfast
the dog
his laundry
bending
the light
in every room

Mingus Mill

At the end of the day, exhausted, we came to the Mingus Mill. Sorry, T, not Charles Mingus. It was much more peaceful, much more serene. I considered taking a nap under the trees, but the people...

They still grind flour at the mill, but the stuff they sell is from elsewhere. Health Department rules...