the page

 

Dear Reader,

Sometimes I think about why we read; why I read; why one would read.  The other place, yes, of course- the destination that is not here.  The other voices, the new landscapes.  So, for variety, yes, and sometimes to be validated, and a lot of reading I think might be to increase one's status.  This is eggshell territory, I know- I am suggesting, very, very faintly, that we read to show off.  Why faintly?  Because I think on balance, it is a very minor infraction, showing off our intellects to other readers who are busy showing off their intellects.  I mention it only because I think back on my days, and I want to redact some of my show off statements.  I have regrets about throwing my intellectual weight around.  Don't you worry, though, I am still telling myself I am a paragon of well readness, an empress of big words and complex ideas; I am just hoping, at this point, not to sound like one.  

And what of the less public reasons we might read?  The personal, the private reasons; the reasons we don't tell everyone.  The things we maybe don't say on our media platforms.  We read for greater understanding, which might come under validation.  We read to be comforted, I reckon, and that seems okay to me.  I suggest another category, that we might call 'joyful surprise.'  This is that great feeling where a sentence just yells out at you, flashing its poetic lights and sirens all over the page.  This is a reason to read that can make you run and tell someone else about what you read, except you aren't showing off, you are excited and you actually want to share it; like a really great watermelon, or a cake:  "Hey, you have to try this!  It is so delicious!"

Yes, I am taking the usual scenic route: this is the sentence I want to slice into cold, juicy triangles and give to you today:  "She went looking for Brandon's Memorabilia (a place one of her artist friends told her about) to load up on antique paper angels and fold-out valentines and other useless tendernesses."  Eve Babitz, in Sex and Rage, page 196- in case you want to run out to your library and read immediately for yourself, the beautiful, exquisite phrase: useless tendernesses.

When I read it, useless tendernesses, I was stopped cold.  It all came to a swirling, gyrating center: of course!  It is all useless tendernesses!  My whole purpose in life, my time here, the reason for doing anything!  Useless tendernesses; all my paintings will be titled this from now on!  I will get a tattoo:  Useless Tendernesses!  I will get two: on both arms, reading right and left, and mirror-wise, so I can see it too.  The whole book could have been just blah blah blah printed endlessly, if there was a prize like this in the box!*

You might think, here, mistakenly, that I am being sardonic, or glib, or some damned thing, but what I am meaning is, yes, useless tendernesses, but not, not, not that tenderness is useless.  The whole point is tenderness is maybe all we can try for, useless and all, useless especially.

*  Of course it is a wonderful book, and not at all endless blah blah blah.

PS  I had another photo I was choosing between to lede/lead here.  It was a photo of book spines on my shelf- some read, some to be read, including Sex and Rage, but it felt a little show-offy, in a way that the sloppy stitch work on my denim shirt did not.

first blooms

 

recently

 

party food politics

 

Dear Diner,

The Big Thing we all just had; you know, the Pandemic?  I know it threw light on things for you, too, and one thing that got all kinds of spotlit for me was grocery shopping, and eating 'out,' and how enslaving & class structuring those two activities are, how much class politics there are in food.  I know!  So much to talk about!  Check out this thoughtful essay from Vittles, and we will return to these topics again soon.

PS  A history, for dipping into.

prickly unlearning

 

Dear Hillside,

I keep seeing you, at this time of year, separating into patches of color; the flaxen hair, yes, and the gray green of star thistle, the brighter yellow and green of mustard.  It interferes, this patchiness with my enjoyment of your form;  my stupid, sluggish artist eyes want less surface 'the better to see you with, my dear; the better to eat you with, my dear.'  But, that is all such simplistic simplifying; the kind I want to turn down in the great soundboard of my mind.  Trying to see essentials has trained me to annoyance with small details and difference, and what a pity!  

Please let me try again, to see and love the prickly, invasive patches, the discrete surfaces, and the larger form they dwell upon.  I want you, like you are, with all the prickles and snagging bitter sharpnesses.  Why would I learn to love only smooth undifferentiated expanses?

impression

 

Dear Recent History,

You know how a lot of artists and makers really buried the needle during the pandemic?  Churning out all kinds of daily delights?  People made dozens of pairs of socks, they repainted, they made beautiful and poignant music and youTube videos, they planted flowers, they expressed their anxiety in all kinds of wonderful ways.  I did not.  I had none of that kind of energy.  To me, it felt like I was waiting in line at the scary roller coaster, moving very slowly towards my turn in the terrifying little cart; not a time to focus on creative pursuits at all.  My mind was frantic in its existential crisis.

I know somewhere out there, there must be one other person, maybe even five or ten, who felt like I did; too sad to make much of anything.  I didn't really know before that huge global event (the event, I expect, of my lifetime, even though no one even talks about it anymore) that my impulse to make art comes from something like joy.  I wasn't feeling any joy, or even any neutral sort of okayness.  I know some of you are out there; I hope you know that our way of getting through was fine too; it's possible we may have felt some guilt about 'wasting all that free time.'  We might still feel that we ought to feel that, but, with the power vested in me as a human who did not feel like being productive during that planet-wide tragedy, I officially absolve you (& myself) from all that crap.  We did the right thing, which was no-thing at all.  Doing nothing is fine, even best in many cases.

Still, I know you were marking time in some way; I made one of these little marks at the end of each day, in this cherry wood plank that a printmaker gave me.  I didn't start right away, I had to back fill about 38 marks or so; and sometime after the second year, after the vaccines didn't evaporate the virus, I thought, oooh, this is maybe not going to end in any kind of definitive way....

I kept making marks until May of last year; when I caught the dratted crud Covid finally.  After days of illness and finally testing negative, I was so debilitatingly tired that I got disgusted with the project; I was never going to be done making marks.  My Father caught Covid for the third time, this May.  It is printed now, and 'finished' in a sense.  There could be other endings for this board, too: cutting it up, burning it, using the back- saving it until time demands to be counted in that way again.

Baking, July.

 

Dear July,

I am trying to pace myself in your heat wave- this is day 4; there are 6 to 10 more!  There is no ice cream; we ate it in the pre-heat heat wave of a week ago.  We had cake instead.  Cake is brought to me today through the great and glorious technology of Modern Conveniences.  A little after the last big record shattering (and mentally scarring) heat wave of  the First Covid Year of 2020, we got a spiffing heat exchange air conditioner.  And last year, I was given a hand me down very Fancy Toaster Oven.  

This toaster oven is not at all like Old Bess, our beloved stove which runs on great gobs of propane; the emissions of which fill our well sealed straw bale house, especially when you don't want to open the door or window to let in the triple digit heat.  This Little Bess, a Bessie, really, is electric and using it does not make the red light flash on the Units of Death* meter we have in the kitchen.  It heats up in an absurdly short time, and can cook some fairly large things, like this cake!

It's adapted from a recipe from the wonderful people at Hayden Flour Mills.  Here is the original, and this is what I made today, with just a bowl and a spoon; no mixer required.

1/2 cup light olive oil (one that doesn't taste of olives)

1 cup sour cream 

3/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla paste

1 egg

      Mix all the above in a bowl, until it isn't lumpy.  Add:

1/2 cup tortilla flour (masa harina, for instance, or use more A. P. flour, or go crazy, and add cornmeal or buckwheat flour)

1 cup all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt.

     Mix all this until it isn't lumpy and pour it into a 8 inch, greased, round pan.  Bake it in Little Bessie, or Old Bess, or whatever you have for an oven, for about 30 minutes at 325 degrees.

Now, you can eat it as it is, or you can make a simple glaze:  In this instance, 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 3/4 cup of powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla, and heavy cream until it is the right viscosity (trust yourself!).  But, this cake would be great with ice cream or whipped cream, or even whipped up ricotta!  It's what Marion Cunningham would call a "plain cake" and plain here means it is like a tee shirt, it goes with everything!

* AKA carbon dioxide monitor.

PS I almost forgot your song, July!  I know, I know; the drinking, the driving, the objectification of women, but, oh!  The euphemisms, the longing, the story; and anyway, I have not been known as the saint of San Joaquin!