FIELD NOTES: I hear one bird…

Through the (weekday) window

...its song muffled through the closed up winter window sashes. The heat clicks through the hot water baseboards in my bathroom, the morning news speaks so thinly from its cave in the other room that I can barely hear what’s new in the world today…but this one bird is what alerts me that I have been in a stupor of sorts, buried in snow and government paperwork. But that is the character of February. It is a good month for Lent. It is the month in which I write the least…move the least…eat the most and sleep the most. The attic overhead feels pregnant and overdue. The household file box needs its yearly purging. I take stock in my inventory, both in what I have collected and in what has somehow slid in around me like a storage facility. In February, its closeness turns claustrophobic and fills my nostrils like so much dust. I mull over things, incubate ideas about what’s next, brood and hibernate and absorb and fidget. What relief the one bird is, nature’s town crier, chirping that what is not here now, is preparing to return. Bulbs are energizing underground; they simply cannot be flowers all year round. So, back to the drawing board...

FIELD NOTES: So what exactly happened under that blue moon on New Year’s Eve?

Catching up on a Sunday morning

...to answer a question with more questions…what looks like busywork, but isn’t? A spider spinning? A bee buzzing? A bird building? A woman cleaning?...I went to my studio in the basement. It had become coated with dust not from neglect but from a certain unfortunate condition of busyness. Relatives were preoccupied with other things, but apart from that, it just happened that I was feeling more reflective than social and, moreover, was willing to embrace it even though that eve is intended for partying. The word ‘evening’ may mean the closing part of the day and the early part of the night, but the word ‘eve’ is not merely its shortened form; it brings with it other connotations. A second definition - its commonly acknowledged sense - is “the period just before some important event” or “a period of decline”. Imaginings of last light, owl-light, twilight, dusk, nightfall, soiree, sunset and the poetic gloaming are conjured. Who has not experienced how differently things look when you are in the dark?...I grabbed a bottle of Bellini, piped in some dusky jazz and pulled out an onerous bin filled with fabric scraps…probably some thirty years worth because I used to sew everything: shirts, skirts, gowns, pants, jackets, purses, pajamas, curtains, cushions, even dolls. The bin turned into a magician’s hat with endless strips from the striated layers of my life that I could color-date. A heap lay before me like a new map or fitted sheet impossible to return to its container once sprung. Midnight was on the march. Should I: Discard it and not look back until I discover I have nothing to show my grandchildren and no memory of my handiwork? Give in to burden and hang onto it like someone hiding in their obesity?...Neither...Though the blue moon ended up being hidden by cloudiness, it illuminated my night. I gathered the expensive or exotic specimens into a sequestered group, then folded the useful pieces that were big enough to actually be made into something and placed them strategically back into the bin. I took a sample swatch from everything that remained, editing this economically industrious period of my life into a small box. Before the ball dropped, I turned out the light, went upstairs and opened a bottle of champagne. The box of swatches will be reincarnated into a collage…perhaps…under the next blue moon…

FIELD NOTES: A Happy Blue Pot

A Happy Blue Pot
(For Haitians & Others, January 2010)

I bought a pot;
(enameled cast iron,
cobalt blue on the outside, milk white on the in)
not because I needed it
at the time
but because it caught my eye
like love at first sight.
I first cooked in it
the bean casserole
for Wigilia*
and when I found myself smiling
unconsciously as a babe
I called it “my happy pot”.
I have since made soup
and rice,
and smile each time
for not much reason
other than delight in gathered senses
from a sometimes senseless world.
I do not wash the pot;
I bathe it
like a child of mine
when s/he was a baby
and wrap it gently in a towel.
Out from this Aladdin’s lamp
wafts wishes, memory and dreams,
and I would want it with me
if my earth should shake.
I clang my spoon,
call out,
how can I
give it
to you?

*(pronounced: /vi.ˈɡi.ʎa/ or vee-GHEE-lee-uh, the traditional Christmas Eve vigil supper in Poland)

FIELD NOTES: I am not fascinated by the moon for its science…

Last Sunday in December, 2009

...but for its mystery…and rhythm…for the comfort of its constancy and its reminder of a celestial presence far beyond my human comprehension. Under the moon I find illumination like no other…I indulge in imagination and folklore…I hope for the future and enjoin the idea that someone who is important to me (or perhaps will be important to me) is looking at it the same time I am…is thinking and feeling the same things I am…is as uncertain (or as optimistic) as I am. I try to think primitively, to empathize with ancients who explained the inexplicable with stories and assigned names in the absence of technology either to calm fears or wield power and how their images and words have stayed with us. On this New Year’s Eve the Full Long Nights Moon will occur, the second full moon in a month, and we still call it a Blue Moon. I like to use the moon as the pivot point of a drafting compass, scribing a perfect circle around the world where the reflection of the unseen sun is directed down in a cone of white light. On Christmas Eve, the moon with its top half covered in the first quarter peeked out like a flashlight from under the covers…covers where someone was reading secretly…silently…hungrily...forming their own hypotheses…making their own discoveries…in private, but for all the world to see.

FIELD NOTES: Sweet nothings...

...from a Sunday morning...

...hadn't filled the feeder on the deck for some time since the raccoons made off with the can filled with about 30 pounds of black oil sunflower seed...but a storm was brewing and I was missing my wild "pets"...so I loaded up on seed and suet...and they came! There they were...all of them: the tufted titmouse, black capped chickadee, nuthatch, wren, sparrow, downy woodpecker, flicker, a cardinal couple and, of course, the spoiler blue jay whom the male cardinal lost his patience with and flew up from the deck post to claim a turn. They hadn't forgotten me...

...and then on the TV (yes, the intrusive TV!) came a sweet nothing from the past, the early 1970's to be exact...R.O. Blechman's delightful animation...(please, treat yourself)

Never forget the things that make you smile from the inside out...they don't forget you...Joyeux Noel!

FIELD NOTES: A Story of Pie

First Sunday of December The kitchen is quiet except for the clearing of her throat and the squeak of the table as she works. The old sash windows draw the pale November sun through its panes, filmy with the environment, and strain it onto the blue, cracked-ice Formica tabletop with the chrome trim. The Spry shortening is measured out using a cup filled with water, then drained and plopped into a big bowl as the kettle on the gas stove is working up a boil. An eyeballed tablespoon of milk is splashed onto the shortening directly from the bottle. The stainless steel sifter is filled with the correct proportions of King Arthur Flour and Morton Salt. The kettle’s whistle is answered and a quarter cup of its contents is poured into the mixing bowl. She tilts the bowl, raises her fork and with the precision of a fan blade begins whipping the concoction until it rises up into peaks. It is doubtful if even a fire could call her away from the next step of quickly cranking the sifter and covering the mixture in a blizzard of powdery white. In a miracle of kitchen chemistry, within minutes a soft ball of pie dough is rounded up and delivered into her bare hands. Sprinkles of water are flicked from her fingertips onto the Formica. A crisp sheet of waxed paper is snapped, serrated and suctioned to the moistened tabletop. The warm, pliable dough ball is coaxed down onto the paper and another sheet is used to cover it. A heavy wooden rolling pin squeals pleasurably as she rocks it back and forth over the sandwiched dough. Every now and then the rolling pin is silenced; her fingers, creased now with age and the labors of the hand, feel around the waxy, unctuous layers testing for consistency in thickness, estimating if the current circumference will sufficiently drape a nine inch pie plate. Now the moment of truth: As if a button on a remote has been pushed to change the channel, the blue tabletop is gone and I am in my own kitchen. My hands are the hands making the pie dough in a November light. The heavy wooden rolling pin is here, as is a stainless steel sifter, King Arthur flour and the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl, but there is a CD playing and a microwave beeping. It is still the moment of truth: the wax paper is re-positioned and the top sheet is discarded. In a confusion of bravery, faith and dexterity, the circle reaches its target, the paper is peeled away and the dough settles gratefully into the plate to officially become Crust. Knuckles, fingertips and the round handle-end of a fork flute the edges unconsciously. This handcrafting is impossible to translate into any recipe. It must be observed, it must be practiced and it must be failed before it is perfected. I am the third pie maker and I get to choose the fillings now. My brother gets his homemade mince of light & dark raisins, candied lemon & orange peel, apples and spices, complete with a good dose of rum and a pie bird vent stuck in the middle to prevent the copious juices from spitting out into the oven. There is pumpkin simply for the reason that there must be pumpkin (whether one likes it or not) with a maple leaf shape cut from the dough trimmings. This year I got adventurous and made Bosc pear with ginger and lemon. Then there is the apple: French Apple from Cortlands with a single crust and a crumb topping (straight from Betty Crocker’s All-Time Favorites, copyright 1971). When I measured the sugar, my hand got a little heavier because I realized I didn’t have to hold back for the diabetes any more. My dad was the Pie man; even on his birthday, he wanted pie. I thought of leaving a slice at his resting place, but he would have thought it a waste of a good pie! My story of pie is sweet and warm and full of strong hands and colors and kitchen music. It is a wonderful story of pie. Spry Water Whip Pie Crust Recipe