Nothing Awful Lasted Long

[photo courtesy haojan]

Today, I am halfway to twenty-eight.

People ask you hard questions when you're halfway to twenty-eight. Unfair, mean-spirited questions like What do you do? and What are you working on? and Why haven't you paid us in three months? Questions that leave me with hands that don't know where to hide and feet that can't find flat on the floor.

I think often of the woman on the cover of Organic Style. I see her in the supermarket check out line: her Mona Lisa smile, her slim feet, her creaseless yoga pants. She's sitting in a manicured field and she's meditating on the wheat germ smoothie she's drinking for dinner. She is calm, she is Zen, she is infinite. There are no dirty dishes in this woman's sink.

This woman is my bodhisattva. She is my New Year's resolution, my shining light in the dark. She is my personal Jesus. I live my life in hot pursuit of skin that glows with a gleam only Photoshop can provide. I buy salmon at the market and eat cookies for dinner. I plan to go to yoga and spend the cash on coffee instead. I buy hempseed shampoo and eucalyptus face wash and they sit in a drawer for tens of years until I'm poor enough to dig them out.

And for what?

The truth is that I'm trying to disappear. White-washed and glowing, cross-legged in a field; I tip-toe, I side-step, I back-track. I move every which way but onward ho. Studies have shown that 93% of my life's problems stem from Giving a Fuck What People Think.

And today, walking home in my Target flats from a job I never meant to take, I think of this bodhisattva on a hill with her wheat germ smoothie and her sun-sleek ponytail and I think: Who the fuck is she? Who is this woman with a spotless sink and a spotless mind? Because she is not any twenty-seven and a half I have ever known.

Twenty-seven and a half has three dollars in her checking account.

Twenty-seven and a half is eating chocolate chips straight from the bag.

Twenty-seven and a half is blinking like a loris when someone asks her What do you do? and What are you working on? and Why haven't you paid?

Twenty-seven and a half is moving forward and upward and onward ho. She is teaching her feet to find flat on the floor.

[photo courtesy 油姬]

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I've Never Seen Anything Like This

This is, without a doubt, the most inventive, moving music video I have ever seen. I don't think I breathed for the last half of it.


[Ramona Falls: I Say Fever]
[via Evin]

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The Dotted Line

[photo courtesy margolove]

Today, the world is gray: sky, ground, the air between our mouths. The wind gusts and gasps and leaves crackle and snap from the trees; it's cold and it's drizzling and I've left my umbrella in some other life.

He's got the whole world in his hands... A bearded old man sings on the corner, his voice warm and rich and heavy, filling the space between buildings, spilling like syrup down alleys and gutters, and between each word is the clack, clack, clack of my boots on concrete, the gust and the gasp and the crack and the snap, the cold and the drizzle and the gray between our mouths, and suddenly-- it is winter.

==

Three years ago, I wrote:

My first few months in Madison I could have walked a thousand miles without recognizing the sound of someone's sneeze. I went to the movies by myself, I went to dinner by myself; the sun rose and set on my solitude. I wrote every day and I walked every day and the world was the most beautiful it's ever been, ever.

My courage and independence are two of my greatest strengths, but they are packaged side-by-side with isolation, a sort of self-inflicted quarantine. This conflicts with my ideals of community, ideals about which I feel passionately. It's as though I want that community to thrive just outside my bedroom door, like laughter down the hall and dirty soup bowls you find on the counter. I want to exist on its periphery and smile to myself that people are so good to each other. I fall in love with strangers because they don't expect to walk me home.

Sometimes I wonder if someday I will meet someone whose presence won't feel like an ill-fitting overcoat, like something heavy in my pocket that I should've left at home. Someone whose footsteps will fall next to mine like the sound of my own breath, whose body will sleep next to mine like an extension of my own, an eight-limbed Shiva tangled in the sheets.

Love has always felt to me like forging my own signature. Like signing my name backwards and left-handed, with a pen that never had any ink.

But with this one, I am right-side up. With this one, my well is brimming and bottomless, my hand steady and sure. With this one, I have already signed.

A thousand times over, I have already signed.

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Hand-Me-Down Peppers

[photo courtesy ChuKi]

SPICY SEAFOOD LASAGNA

what
1 small box oven-ready lasagna noodles
1.5 cups thawed shrimp & scallops
3 c. shredded mozzarella
1/4 c. fresh grated parmesan
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 container low-fat ricotta cheese
4 oz. reduced-fat feta
2 eggs, beaten
2 small eggplants, sliced
3 carrots, chopped
5 oz. fresh spinach, rinsed
1/3 sweet onion, diced
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 can pureed pumpkin
handful of small chili peppers, diced
salt & pepper
butter

how

1. slice eggplants into round, 1/4-inch pieces. cover in salt and lay on paper towels for 15 minutes. drizzle with oil and roast on a cookie sheet. 400 degrees, 10 minutes-ish.
2. heat butter in a pan. add garlic and onions. add carrots and mushrooms. cook until cooked.
3. dump diced tomatoes, spicy peppers, and eggplant in a food processor. blend. mix in a bowl with ricotta and feta and two eggs. add cooked vegetables.
4. cook shrimp and scallops in the veggie pan.
5. coat bottom of a casserole dish with tomato-ricotta mixture. add a layer of lasagna noodles, then a layer of pumpkin, then a layer of tomato sauce, then a layer of seafood, then a layer of mozzarella cheese. repeat until the dish is filled. top with parmesan.
6. bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. covered until the last 5-10.

why
leftover pumpkin & lasagna noodles, on-sale diced tomatoes, hand-me-down onions and peppers, cheap seafood at the asian market

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No Promises

cumin-crusted salmon & rosemary-garlic mashed potatoes
-or-
how to be poor & still eat good

to start:
like 8 cloves of garlic, seriously.

in an oven-safe bowl, in the toaster oven
with a dribble of oil over the top
and a tent of re-used foil
set it to 375 and forget all about it
(until your house starts smelling like garlic)
(in a borderline-worrisome manner)

cut up some potatoes you got for free
boil them in water for longer than you think
drain
pour a bit of milk on top
shake shake shake some fresh parmesan
a dash of salt
ok, a few more dashes
one more.
a bit of black pepper
a whole lot of rosemary
blend it up

thaw some frozen salmon from trader joe's
(DID YOU FORGET)
roll it around in a bowl with :
    3 tbsp cumin
    4 tsp paprika
    1/2 tsp salt
    1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
fry it in a pan
squeeze a little lime on top

pour some chipotle vodka in a glass
(vodka + dried chipotle peppers + one week)
that much water, too
and some juice from that lime
& agave nectar
(more than that.)
repeat x 3
OK.

==

i'm going to berkeley next week to see my man. wanna hang?
no promises.
xo

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