love.life.eat
a relentless pursuit of the perfect home + dish
“grow a vagina,” and other sorted bits from a strange, wonderful week
Posted on May 10, 2013
I jumped in the river and what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me. A moon full of stars and astral cars. All the things I used to see. All my lovers were there with me. All my past and futures. And we all went to heaven in a little row boat. There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. – Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song”
Months ago, someone asked me if I was happy. Define happy, I said, tapping on my keyboard, deliberately immersed and evading. Not once did I glance up from the black keys, even when he pressed my computer shut, even when his voice crescendoed like a note held for too long left to stand and uncomfortably linger, when he repeated, Are you happy? I couldn’t look up, couldn’t, because I had to admit that I’d settled for a life of comfortable discomfort. I’d settled for less than extraordinary. I’d settled for a life anesthetized. I’d settled for something less than what I once had.
I’d have to admit that I mother-fucking settled.
So I looked sideways, fixated on a window across the way and the papers flying out of it. Apparently, the wind got hold of an empty desk and had its way with it. Papers fluttered out, scattered, and inevitably made their descent. You can’t catch me off guard like that,I said. He laughed, and wondered aloud why I couldn’t answer such a simple question.
Either you’re happy or you’re not.
After what feels like a lifetime of breathing underwater, barnacles attach themselves to hard surfaces: the sides of large ships, the backs of whales, or the shells of some turtles. And they remain, attached, grabbing at the living, the beautiful creatures that sally past. Sessile, complacent, they simply survive off of the remains of others. They take what they can get. They mother-fucking settle.
How is it that I had become the one thing I spent my whole life scraping off? How did I miss waking each morning to finally see half my face, my body, covered in the things? How did I become blind that I had become a sticky, spindly thing, affixing myself to a desk, to a series of websites, to a feeding routine? How is that I stopped moving? Breath sputtering out, a body giving way, a heart in the ether.
How is that I had become what I had become?
Vladimir: Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be? (Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He’ll know nothing. He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can’t go on! (Pause.) What have I said?
Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.
How is it that his words were a blinding sunrise I didn’t want to see? Over there is a cloak, it’s darkness. Cover me with it. Can you hear me? And the note fell, got caught up in a larger song played in perpetual repeat (needle lifted, placed back on the record, again, again) until the song was so loud it threatened to explode in on itself. Head to knees, this is what they tell you when planes crash, but they neglect to mention that you’ll complete from the impact. Why did his words need to be the sun that was the plane that was the remains of you scattered along the ocean?
A head lifts, a word holds and plays out the scene, looks for places to hide but there are none. And the cold, No.
No, I’m not happy.
There was so much to fear, so much to doubt. So the days past, a succession of sunrises and footfalls. My eyes have been getting accustomed to the light, but it’s been a long journey out. And this is the journey everyone wants tidied up and finished, all two hands clapping and, sigh, that’s over with. People don’t want to sit in the uncomfortable spaces; they don’t want to hear the I am afraids and I don’t knows. Instead, they press for 140 characters of light; they interrupt, they say, You’re just being dramatic.
Oh, am I. Being dramatic. Is that it?
This was a strange week of huddled shoulders shuddering. Of cards laid down, of new hands played, of a deck that keeps on with its shuffle. Easy, easy, you got her too high. But it was a, how about we shudder together? How about our shakes turn into a dance, a song, that we’re desperate to sing? Smiling, I said, I like that.
Yesterday, a man leans in, all the way, and says, Felicia, you’ve got to grow a vagina. I can’t think of anything else that takes a harder beating. I winced, withdrew, and he laughed, and said he was paraphrasing Bette Davis, about balls being nothing but soft tissue and all that. But a vagina! A vagina was a courageous thing, it took no prisoners, and so on.
I wasn’t used to such directness and coarse language, and I still recoil a bit as I type this. Did he have to say VAGINA? I guess he did because I’m still thinking about it. His words, our conversation, shook the windows and splintered some of the wood and glass. It reminded me of The Angel of the Odd exhibit I saw in Paris — all that fear trapped on canvas, desperate and wanting. Goya, Ernst, Milton, Blake, Goethe, Shakespeare — artists who slipped into darkness, saw savagery plainly for what it was, and transformed it to color, type, and voice. It reminded me of my meeting with my agent, who shook with excitement when I said that my writing is scaring me. I’ve been waiting for your writing to combust, he said. He knew my frustrations with Sky, knew I was confined by traditional narrative, knew I wanted to go somewhere strange and dark, a world far from linear. Yet, there was this word, courage, and I had yet to understand its meaning. It reminded me of a man who told me that if I keep dodging what eludes me, I will always be my own ruin.
It’s only when we say our fears out loud do we find a way to move past them. Otherwise, it’s an ocean that threatens to swallow, to curl us under.
My life is about to take some strange, miraculous turns, and instead of drawing all the blinds and shuddering alone, I sent notes, made calls, asked if my shoulders could have some company.
And it feels good, to open my eyes, have it all hurt. To finger the bruises. It feels good to shudder and shake alongside…
walk into the sun
Posted on April 4, 2013
I wonder what it’s like to fly so high/Or to breathe under the sea/I wonder if someday I’ll be good with goodbyes/But I’ll be okay if you come along with me/Such a long, long way to go/Where I’m going I don’t know/I’m just following the road/For a walk in the sun — Dirty Vegas’ “Walk Into the Sun”
With a few days left of me being in this country, a few moments before I hop on three planes and travel three countries, I think it’s time to ferret out the light. Yesterday, I left spin class with a sweet friend, and as we we made our way through Union Square, a market where the sun drapes its blanket, he said, Isn’t it amazing that we get to work out during the day? Laughing, I said, let’s hold on to this moment for as long as we possibly can. Before the hours we have to step out of the sun, walk into an office, sit behind a desk, and click the day away. Let’s be a time fakir and steal these hours away before we have to be adults again.
So for once in my life I’m not going to stress out about the hours that lie ahead, rather, I’m going to focus on being present. On falling in love with the days where I’ve privileged to walk right into the sun.
when the heart suddenly stops
Posted on April 2, 2013
Would your fear be any less and would you see that you had been chosen to help the sun rise? ― Nick Bantock, Alexandria: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Unfolds
It occurs to me that every time I feel as if I’ve lost my way, I return to children’s books. I like to finger the thick, glossy paper stock, pour over the illustrations, and tumble, head-first, into a world, a life, that is simple and complete. As someone who fancies herself a writer, I remind myself that children’s books are perhaps the most difficult genre one could write for its success is predicated on the quickening of a child’s heart. As the three acts swiftly unfold, the child becomes petulant, impatient, grabbing at pages two, three at a time, because they want to know what’s next.
How does the story end?
Possibly I return to children’s books again and again to remind myself that there’s still magic in the world. That in every end there is a beginning. Our lives are something of a metronome, a mimicked heartbeat, a series of stops and starts, and in between the acts, between the breaths, there blooms something magical and new. As the years press on, our once wide eyes press shut and it’s easy to ignore the magic. We accept blindness as a current state, we slouch our way through our days, and the world morphs into a bleached-white version of what it once was.
Hold on, hold on tightly
Hold on, hold on tightly
Rise up, rise up
With wings like eagles
You run, you run
You run and not grow weary
-U2′s “Drowning Man”
Every day I wake and tell myself that there is color. That the world is worth seeing. That life is worth fighting for, even when your heart suddenly stops and shatters from the inside. Cutting everything in its wake. Because don’t we deserve to leap, lurch, race, fly? Don’t we deserve to preserve something in those books we once read? Replace the heartbreak with that quickening we use to love?
What’s next? What’s next? For the past three months this question is a spectre at every shared meal, email, text message. Recently, I spent two hours at Delicatessen (home of my beloved cheeseburger spring rolls, truffle fries and kale salad) pontificating on this very question with an old friend, but finding no real answers. After a heartbreaking, tumultuous exit from a job I once believed I loved, I’m too busy surveying the wreckage and assessing the damage to figure out what’s next.
Instead, I plan to spend this month knee-deep in introspection. I’m off to Europe next week and I’m taking my books, camera and heart, and I hope to return stronger. I hope to return seeing the magic once again.
I hope to return to a fast-beating heart.
happiness is…
Posted on March 21, 2013
A life mindfully lived. A life lived with integrity. A morning curled up in bed. Chocolate cake for breakfast. Re-reading Play it as it Lays. Plotting my next move. Staring out into the Indian Ocean. Quiet. Love. Regretting none of it.
living the sweet life @ little cupcake bakeshop, new york
Posted on March 20, 2013
I may have needed a crowbar or two, but suddenly my eyes are starting to open. I can see the shape of things, faces are coming into focus — was that you with that great mess of hair and skin that smelled of lilacs and tobacco?, — but I want to take it easy, easy and allow myself to look at the world as if it were the first time I’ve seen it. Over the years I’ve been in alternating states of chrysalis, and part of the journey is understanding and accepting the alterations. Life tailoring, if you will. Those eyes that you’d always known to be brown suddenly blink blue. That Madame Bovary, once a woman for whom you felt sympathy, is now a wanton trollop. That smiling baker who handed you a thick slice of Brooklyn Blackout Cake will transform into Luigi, a Soul Cycle zealot with an affection for batter.
But you have to be ready for the altering, ready to shed what you thought you knew to discover what’s next.
Today I returned to Little Cupcake Bakeshop (that’s my photo in the rotating slide show!), a magical place replete with towering cakes in glass domes and cupcakes with tufts of blond icing. I’ve been to this shop more times than I care to admit, but today was different. Today I paused, got to know some of the lovely folks who run the shop, and savored my cake and coffee.
And wouldn’t you know that the cake I’ve always loved tastes a little different, richer, smokier, sweeter. You just have to open your eyes to it. Each day, I tell myself, the world becomes clearer.
welcome to your life, day one
Posted on March 19, 2013
I wanted to be a writer, that’s all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it’s all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. — Ed Harris, “The Hours”
A few hours ago, a dear friend sent me a text message which read, What’s the first day of freedom like? What’s left to say after three years of enduring a great love that turned into your greatest heartbreak? It was an autumn three years ago, the warmest we’d known, and I spent a day with scrappy misfits, kids on the verge. Kids hacked away on laptops in the dark. Blasted music and complained about Fresh Direct deliverables. Created memes and raged rap battles on Twitter. I remember leaving a small office in Soho, a place where the doll-sized elevator never worked and the receptionist was whoever was on their way out to lunch, and I remembered feeling something, and that something was possibility. And it was all because of a man who knew how to weave the kind of stories you’d stay up all night listening to. Stories that consumed you, came like swallows. Leaving the office that day I kept murmuring, take me with you.
I spent the next three and a half years telling stories until my voice was hoarse and I could speak no more. Out of respect for a great man and mentor, I’ll never talk about the innards of that time beyond my farewell song, but I’m heartbroken. It’s as if someone carved out my still-beating heart and left it on the carpet to gather lint and pulse out until the dust inevitably covered it whole. And even though I left on my own terms, armed with so much, part of me feels like no matter what you start with it ends up being so much less.
And I’ll leave it at that.
So permit me my mourning. Today I spent time with my champions, old friends, new ones, and myself. From almond croissants in Union Square to carb-loading all things citrus to my heart’s content at Rosemary’s, to pedaling through the dark at Soul Cycle, to thinking about what it means to pray, to listening to boys playing out their hearts, to clinking glasses at Antica Pesa, I needed to be with people I admired, adored and respected. I needed to get past this dark moment. I needed to feel like I felt that autumn, when there was so much possibility.
It’s there, I know. Just give me time and some quiet to see it.
potlikker in williamsburg, new york + lessons for spring…
Posted on March 2, 2013
I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library. Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified. He said, What? What life? No life of mine. ― Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories
This morning I awoke, terrified. My hands were numb and I felt my body chill down to bone. Overcast and dark, no light came through my window and I was confused, shivering, wondering if the forecast called for thundersnow. Tossing aside the covers I paced my apartment, barefoot, waiting for the morning light to break sky. And in that small stretch of time before the night was relieved by the awakening of day, I doubted myself. Fear was that old friend who soft-knuckled the door that was my heart and I let it in and embraced it with my breath. Make no mistake, fear never really disappears, it hibernates, festers, waits for the moment when you are weak and shivering and slides in, pulls up a chair, wants to get to talking. Maybe, it whispers, you made a mistake. You do realize there’s no going back.
This put my heart on pause.
Here I was, so bold in my declarations I was practically bombastic. Telling everyone who would listen that March was the month before the first day of the rest of my life, and, imagine if I jettisoned off to Europe and never came back? Maybe once to cart off my kitty, but I’d hurry back to France, tumbling my way back to the country and the thicket of trees and orange groves and air. I rationalized that I was six years off the sauce {as of last week}, the most clarified I’ve ever been and everything felt right — so this was the right decision, right? To leave my job and run toward something other, right? But what if I was wrong? What if I was the wreckage?
And then the sun. I crept out on my deck, wrapped in a blanket, and for some reason I said, Hello, my life, and went back inside. And that was the end of it. I’m not kidding you. It was the strangest thing. I hopped in the shower, cut French class and went about my day.
Tipped off by a friend, I made the trek to Williamsburg to check out Potlikker, a place with its own story. Owner + chef, Liza Queen once ran a very eclectic spot in Greenpoint, lost her lease and took off for Vietnam to cook in a street shack. Two years later she returned, much like our Odysseus, and opened a place that’s an extension of her heart, her passion for flavor, and a menu that’s seasonal and filled with joie de vivre. Once inside I felt enveloped by warmth — from the staff to the open kitchen where you could hear the sizzle and snap of potatoes and sausage frying, to the serene green paint and wooden interior — and knew this was a place worth patroning.
And then there was the food. A flaky, buttery biscuit oozing with lemon curd and fresh berry compote, local eggs mixed with cheddar and served with applewood sausage and spicy potatoes, and the terrific, bottomless cup of coffee, I was DELIRIOUS. And while I was there, chowing away with aplomb, I thumbed through the latest issue of Kinkolk and found a photo essays, “Lessons for Spring,” a series of b+w images from another time and these simple instructions:
I tell myself to look for the signs. They may be minor, they may be innocuous, but just look for them. They’re my Northern Lights. Perhaps they can be yours, too.
the revisionist’s journey: creating light from the dark
Posted on February 18, 2013
It seems to me that an artist must be a spectator of life; a reverential, enthusiastic, emotional spectator, and then the great dramas of human nature will surge through his mind — George Bellows
This is the end of comfort as we know it. This is the age of the unsettled, the era of the disquiet, and we will tremble, falter, fade, get lost, grow strong, and find ourselves all over again. In this way, we will become expert revisionists on this journey and the road will have variations. We will navigate without a compass or a map, feeling our way through the dark, which threatens to swallow us whole, and sometimes we think ourselves mad for even having gone down this path when there’s this other place that’s well-lit, familiar. Just down the road. The proprietor is an older version of us, with a monstrous gait and a face paled down to bone. This version of us is cruel when it takes us by the hair and whispers, Why risk it?
But we pull away, walk away and do. Risk it, that is.
Because the alternative is a slow, deliberate slouch to the grave, heart aching from the weight of all that we could have done had we had the strength to. Had we had the bravery. It’s funny to watch fear and uncertainty go at it, gloves off, punches below the belt as it were. Our own private opera played out in all its grandeur. It’s a fight we pay good money to see, although, for the most part, we know how the story ends. Fear almost always wins out and we go home, empty popcorn bag in hand, salt on our lips, and we settle into a life of safety. Because why risk it?
But! But! There comes a day when the story ends differently. Uncertainty has got a bit of fight left in her and although she takes her fair share of hits, she’s victorious and the crowd thunders. Our hearts pause and the clocks stop ticking. Outside, snow tumbles from the black sky, and the whole of our world is illuminated. In that rare moment we see light in the context of our darkness. We see a glimpse of our life.
Last week I sat in a chair and told a man that I wanted to feel unsettled, to which he responded, I haven’t heard anyone say that in a long, long time.
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I wandered through the galleries and found this quote when entering the Matisse exhibit: For Matisse, the process of creation was not simply a means to an end but a dimension of his art that was as important as the finished work. On a wall, in script, a quote from George Bellows reads: Try everything that can be done. Be deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking. Be abandoned. Be impulsive. Learn your own possibilities.
Over eggs, roasted tomatoes and Tuscan toast at Gemma, an old colleague turned friend and I talk about getting out of our comfort zone. We hatch plans involving our cameras, new friends and perspective.
I can’t but help but think that all signs point to the light. Even when I’m surrounded by a Greek chorus of dark. The chorus pantomimes that I’m crazy, what am I thinking, what are you walking away from, what if you can’t get another job after you’ve resigned from this one, what if, what if, what if, tick, tic, ti, t,…
Keep following the signs, I tell myself. They’re there. They’re small, innocuous, playing on a minor key, but they are a map of constellations that will lead me back to a better version of myself. To a life that is meant to be loved and lived and loved all over again.
prepare yourself for the giant…
Posted on February 16, 2013
Do you know who I am? I’m alive you understand, the life, the life, the life…Are you prepared for the atom bomb, are you prepared for my aching arms? Are you prepared, are you prepared? Are you prepared for serenity, are you prepared to disagree? Are you prepared, are you prepared for me — The Bird and the Bee’s “Preparedness”
We were a family of lottery players. We sharpened our pencils, selected numbers at random, and stood on a line that snaked the length of a city block, because we believed that all we needed was a dollar and a dream. Come nightfall we’d sit on the stoop, still wet from the johnny pump and the spray of Colt 45 that matted our hair to the backs of our necks, listening to the elders trade stories of what they’d do if they hit it big. Sadie said she was going to buy me a house where all the white people lived. Promising us that she’d stand on her lawn, defiant, knowing that they couldn’t get rid of me, even if they tried. Some mused about giant boats settling sail in a blue ocean. No one had ever seen waves swell, seen the beauty of them rise up and warble like a long note held. No one bore witness to the descent, to the waves crashing onto the shoreline. Back then the only water we’d seen poured out of spigots and sprayed out of pumps on the street.
Others hatched plans about taking a trip around the world although they secretly knew that the whole of their world would always be Brooklyn. Their prison was a ten-block radius, yet once a week they’d shuffle to the market with their dollar in tow, plotting escape.
Back then we were naive to believe that money bought you freedom. Back then we wanted the life we saw on our black and white television sets; we raged war with the wire rabbit ears to bring this life into focus. Back then we wanted the giant.
Recently, someone upbraided me for my decision to abandon a comfortable life. Think of all the money. Think about what you’re walking away from, she warned. Shaking my head I sighed and said that what I was running toward was infinitely richer. It was the ticking that was the bomb. Granted, I’m being smart about things. I’m squirreling away as much money as I can. I’m buying only what I need. I’m ridding myself of the unnecessary, the things that only bring me anxiety rather than sustenance. I’m making my preparations for the day when I’ll walk away from security to something other. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t worry about it, fret over my decision, a little. I’m pragmatic, cautious, but then I recall a conversation I had with my friend Kate a few years back. I considered renting a more expensive apartment than the one in which I’d lived, but worried that I wouldn’t have the money to pay for it in the long run. Kate told me that I should always bet on myself. I was my biggest investment and that I should nurture myself. The rent line would be stable and my potential could only grow — all things being equal, of course.
Ever since then I try to remind myself to bet on myself. To believe in myself. To know that I am the ticking that is the bomb. To know that money is actually the prison, not the thing that sets you free. To believe that I can break from third person and rush to first. That I can be the giant.
All this while having lunch at Campo de Fiori.
love.life.eat. of the week
Posted on February 10, 2013
love: Alexander Stille’s take on memoir writing: After all, in writing about my parents, wasn’t I something of a body snatcher? | The world through a child’s eyes: Bianca Giaever asked a six year old friend what her movie should be about, and this is the result | Alice Munro’s heartbreaking, soulful story collection, Dear Life | The glee I feel embarking on a book-buying blitzkrieg: Lawrence Wright’s exhaustively researched book on Scientology, Going Clear (read his New Yorker article, which was the impetus for the book), Matthew Sharpe’s You Were Wrong, because Matthew is our new Don DeLillo, and Ali Smith’s There but for the, because her writing is surprising and always puts me on pause.
life: my extraordinary life change | Discovering Frankie Thompson’s blog, an ex-Londoner who decided to leave it all and travel the world | Design Sponge’s really smart round-up on social media etiquette, do’s + don’ts.
eat: chocolate profiteroles with passion fruit | brown butter rosemary sage cornbread | white chocolate coconut banana s’mores
blood orange coconut loaf with blood orange syrupy glaze
Posted on February 6, 2013
Baking is home to me. Whenever there’s an air of disquiet I find myself covered in flour, mixing batter in bowls. I like the tactical nature of baking, sifting dough, shaping it with my hands. There’s something soothing and melodic about the alchemy of baking, how it allows you to create something from nothing. Cakes and cookies and pies have been my constant through the years, and I often feel there’s nothing that some time alone and a batter can’t cure. Well, almost. Hot ovens comfort me in a way that’s sometimes difficult to explain, and there’s nothing, at least for me, that replicates the feeling of putting on the mits, getting a blast of hot air on my skin as I unearth the next great object of devotion.
While I’ve taken a holiday this week, I’m experiencing a bit of personal frenzy. Amidst the wintering, I’m trying to find some space, some quiet, and although I feel the next few months will be challenging, I’m hopeful for the magic that lies on the other side. So today I spent the morning baking my heart out. Baking it out like song, like sermon.
And I couldn’t stop reading this passage from Alice Munro’s story collection, wondering if the reason why I cleave to it so has something to do with my current state of affairs. We’ll see, see, see:
It still seemed as if we could make our way out of the crowd, that in a moment we would be together. But just as certain that we would carry on in the way we were going. And so we did. No breathless cry, no hand on my shoulder when we reached the sidewalk. Just that flash, that I had seen in an instant, when one of his eyes opened wider. It was the left eye, always the left, as I remembered. And it always looked so strange, alert and wondering, as if some whole impossibility had occurred to him, one that almost made him laugh.
INGREDIENTS
For the loaf
1 1/2 cup (150g) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freshly-grated blood orange zest (you’ll need two large blood oranges for this recipe)
1/2 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup coconut palm sugar
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp kosher salt
4 tbsp (30ml) blood orange juice
1/3 cup coconut milk
For the glaze
2 tbsp brand orange juice
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
DIRECTIONS
Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Spray a 9×5 inch with coconut oil cooking spray (feel free to butter the pan if you don’t mind dairy).
In a large bowl, rub the blood orange zest into the sugars with your fingertips. Not only does this release the grapefruit essence and some of the juice, you’ll find your sugar wonderfully damp and fragrant. Add the sugar mixture to a large bowl. Whisk in the oil until smooth, and then add the eggs, one at a time, and whisk until combined. Scrape down the bowl.
Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a second bowl. In another bowl, combine 2 tbsp blood orange juice and coconut milk, and whisk together until combined. Add the flour and the coconut milk mixtures, alternating between them, to the oil-and-sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour.
Spread the batter in the pan, smooth the top, and rap the pan on the counter to ensure there are no trapped air bubbles. Bake for 45-55 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
For the glaze, whisk the sugar and juice until a thick glaze forms.
When the loaf is finished, let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan before inverting it onto a rack set over a tray or tin foil. Poke holes in loaf with a skewer or toothpick, then spoon or brush the 2 tbsp of reserve juice over the loaf. Let the loaf cool completely while it absorbs the syrup. Pour over the glaze once the bread has cooled. I couldn’t wait, as you can see, so I had a bit of a mess. But WHO CARES? It was still good.
the gathering kind {part 5}: the things we carry
Posted on January 26, 2013
They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried. And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It’s about sunlight. It’s about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It’s about love and memory. It’s about sorrow. It’s about sisters who never write back and people who never listen. ― Tim O’Brien
In the summer we’d race up the stairs, taking them two by two. Back then we were fearless; we never held on to the railing and our feet rarely touched the ground. They called us sisters, told me always that I was a photocopy of you — down to the bone-white skin and the thicket that was your hair. When we cried, which was never, our lips paled down to blue. When we shouted, which was often, our face was flush and hot. I wrote my first poem, a haiku, when I was seven, and in it I likened your voice to thunder. Women on the verge, we colored outside the lines, ripped up the book and made new ones. We were of the difficult variety, our stock and trade were words and how we could use them. Who needed a scalpel? Give us a book and we’d carve out your still-beating heart. Deliver us a pencil and we’d burn your house to the ground. You spoke, I wrote, we ruined.
They tell us we’re strong. Our words made us a fortress and we spent the great part of our lives in construction for we had a lot to protect. But in the end it was me who realized that while we conquered and vanquished, while we were women people always remembered because we shone perhaps too bright, we were always alone. And what we carried was the massacre that we’d left behind. Dragging the carcasses of our former lives behind us. Bearing the burden of those we tried to love on our backs.
Sometimes I want to go back. All the way. Back to when my knees knocked and I wrote about a sky that would never be blue.
Fast forward to another sun, another beach, another year in passing. A storm threatened, and the sun plunged into the waves which had begun to blacken. You asked me if I wanted to leave, to go back inside, into the hotel, back to New York and I said, not yet. In a small voice I wondered why we were always in the business of leaving. In my head I wondered if I drank too much. A week later you drove cross-country and years later you became a woman who impressively lunched, while I gave up the sauce, preferring the desert. We’re from the desert, you see. We like the heat. We carried the memories of all that had come before. The bricks of our fortress encased our ankles like shackles.
Sometimes I wonder if you think about going back. Or whether you regret any of it. Do you think about it at all? Or is the weight of what you’d done too much to bear?
Years later in Malibu we sped through all the flashing lights because the power had gone out. I took a photo of you standing on a pile of wet rocks and you asked that I delete it because you lead an edited life. You asked me what I wanted to do next — because you can do anything, that’s the strange thing about you — and I said I didn’t know. Both of us carried the weight of our options.
This time it’s winter. The bone-white skin becomes a body chilled down to bone. In front of a fire we speak in half sentences, knowing that the other could easily fill in the blanks. You tell me that we’re going to have a time. Quietly I laugh and consider the word time, how it’s something that we never gain, only lose, and I think to myself that we had our time. Both of us now have to carry the weight of the hours that follow.
Today, I sit in Frankie’s 457, quietly savoring a lunch alone. I wonder if you could see me now. If you could see how I’m using words to build a kingdom where everyone could gather. And all we’d care about is the here, the now, and the love behind the words we share. And the fact that the only weight is from one another as we buoy ourselves up, carry us to our new home, our new life.
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