Reading/cooking. Andoh.
Elizabeth Andoh has written about Japan and its cuisine for Gourmet magazine for more than thirty years, where I first discovered her. It was not until recently that I came across Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, in the bookstore of the Seattle Art Museum. (Another one of my favorite - but unused - cookbooks, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, was also discovered in a museum bookstore). I flipped through the crisp white pages while sitting on a low stool, blocking the reach of anyone reaching for books on Asian art or Northwest glass sculpture. Photographs of bright ingredients and multi-colored dishes caught my attention; tasty-sounding recipes awakened a hunger for curry rice and "foxy soup noodles" (so called for the fox-colored slices of fried tofu that float in the broth).
Japanese food is part of my childhood, not because I am Japanese - I'm not - but because the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and China several decades ago left behind a culinary imprint besides the emotional one that would continue through the ensuing generations. (I remember being served breakfast by my uncle's mother-in-law, a near-replica of the cover photo of Andoh's cookbook - a piece of grilled salmon, a bowl of rice, another of miso soup, and some picked vegetables). It goes beyond that, perhaps thousands of years, due, I suppose, to physical proximity and frequent exchanges of culture (and war).
When we moved to Seattle in the mid-eighties the biggest Asian supermarket in the International District (and still is) was Uwajimaya, a Japanese supermarket that sold everything imaginable, including books and gifts upstairs, imported housewares, with a small cafeteria beyond the refrigerated cases that displayed cartons of soy milk at one end of the store. Later they moved to a new place, even bigger and stuffed to bursting with every sort of Asian food imaginable, anchored by a food court, a bookstore, and a hair salon. It was not until I flicked through the pages of Washoku that I began to understand that my own home cooking is influenced by the ingredients I buy, the foods that I have eaten for so long - the Japanese soy sauces and cooking wines, the flat white noodles I cook (following the pictures because I can't read the instructions) instead of the yellow Chinese egg noodles. The tight-skinned Japanese eggplants are darker and slimmer than the Chinese ones (also slimmer and longer than the fat western kind), black-purple instead of amethyst.
I thought of how so many different things have shaped my tastes and my cooking as I tried Andoh's recipe for karé raisu, or rice curry. (I've written about how much I love curry before). I've used chicken stock - Chinese cooking tends to use chicken stock - instead of the Japanese dashi, because I tend not to have kombu (kelp) and bonito (dried fish flakes) lying around. I wonder if the substitution will affect my dish as I debone chicken thighs and slice vegetables, peeling the potatoes and wondering why someone would specify "red-skinned potatoes" and then have you peel them. I think about how Chinese rice tends to be long-grained, light and fluffy (Y., who is half-Japanese and doesnt' like Chinese rice, refers to it as "popcorn rice," I think), yet it is the Japanese rice that I grew up eating, shorter-grained and just sticky enough to hold itself together as I eat it. This curry is different from the beef curries my mother made when I was young; the former has a mild sauce thickened slightly with cornstarch, and the latter was hotter and soupier (besides, well, being made from beef). But it is very good all the same, and I foresee other dinners ahead, Chinese and Japanese battling it out for culinary supremacy (if not territory) on my plate.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Reading. Chekhov.
I grew up going to the theater. There were four theaters in Seattle for which we had season tickets at various times: A Contemporary Theater (ACT), then a few blocks from the Seattle Center, Intiman and Seattle Repertory Theater, both on the outer edges of the Seattle Center, and the Theater Off Jackson, a tiny space wedged in next to the Wing Luke Museum in Chinatown. (There were also season tickets to the opera, modern dance at the University of Washington's Meany Theater, and the symphony. My parents loved them all, and as an only child I was swept along into their world). In later years I drifted away from these cultural pursuits, and only now have I slowly come back them. Although this time around it feels strange to be there without my parents, my handbag in one hand, a shawl in the other, running across the street in time to slip into my seat and flip through the program before the lights come down.
A few months I leapt at the chance to see Uncle Vanya at the Intiman Theater. It has been many years since I read Chekhov , and it seems a lifetime has passed since then. Actually, I have never seen Chekhov performed, with the exception of Tennessee Williams' Notebook of Trigorin, which is his Southern-inflected adaptation of The Seagull. (A surreal experience). But I have read his plays and short stories, and here was his Uncle Vanya with the language stripped of its dust to bring this story of love and loss and regret. I was only moderately distracted by a) the presence of Samantha Mathis as Elena and b) the wig worn by the actor who played Astrov and who had a small role in the film The School of Rock. Also, I kept thinking, hey! It's that uptight father from The School of Rock! With a really bad wig! But then they began to speak and all my thoughts fell away, leaving only the glances between characters that I felt like a touch on my own skin, and words that made me laugh one minute and sent a shiver up my spine the next.
I have never loved anyone, and I never will, says Astrov to Sonya on a dark, stormy night. Hard words to hear from someone you have been silently, hopelessly in love with. My heart broke for her, and for her uncle Vanya, the former realizing that she has wasted her youth and has nothing left of promise except for a life of unending work, and the latter who can only look back with desire and regret that he has lost his chance of happiness and is growing old and disillusioned. The professor, Sonya's father, and Elena, his young wife, seem to be sleepwalking through the days on the old estate, Sonya and Vanya and Astrov and the old nanny and Vanya's elderly mother revolving around the spoiled old professor and his enchanting, beautiful wife like planets around two seductive suns. I feel their heartbreak and regret, their hope for a peace that might only come with death, as sharply now when I read from the page as I did when I heard them aloud on the stage, and it is like a caress.
I grew up going to the theater. There were four theaters in Seattle for which we had season tickets at various times: A Contemporary Theater (ACT), then a few blocks from the Seattle Center, Intiman and Seattle Repertory Theater, both on the outer edges of the Seattle Center, and the Theater Off Jackson, a tiny space wedged in next to the Wing Luke Museum in Chinatown. (There were also season tickets to the opera, modern dance at the University of Washington's Meany Theater, and the symphony. My parents loved them all, and as an only child I was swept along into their world). In later years I drifted away from these cultural pursuits, and only now have I slowly come back them. Although this time around it feels strange to be there without my parents, my handbag in one hand, a shawl in the other, running across the street in time to slip into my seat and flip through the program before the lights come down.
A few months I leapt at the chance to see Uncle Vanya at the Intiman Theater. It has been many years since I read Chekhov , and it seems a lifetime has passed since then. Actually, I have never seen Chekhov performed, with the exception of Tennessee Williams' Notebook of Trigorin, which is his Southern-inflected adaptation of The Seagull. (A surreal experience). But I have read his plays and short stories, and here was his Uncle Vanya with the language stripped of its dust to bring this story of love and loss and regret. I was only moderately distracted by a) the presence of Samantha Mathis as Elena and b) the wig worn by the actor who played Astrov and who had a small role in the film The School of Rock. Also, I kept thinking, hey! It's that uptight father from The School of Rock! With a really bad wig! But then they began to speak and all my thoughts fell away, leaving only the glances between characters that I felt like a touch on my own skin, and words that made me laugh one minute and sent a shiver up my spine the next.
I have never loved anyone, and I never will, says Astrov to Sonya on a dark, stormy night. Hard words to hear from someone you have been silently, hopelessly in love with. My heart broke for her, and for her uncle Vanya, the former realizing that she has wasted her youth and has nothing left of promise except for a life of unending work, and the latter who can only look back with desire and regret that he has lost his chance of happiness and is growing old and disillusioned. The professor, Sonya's father, and Elena, his young wife, seem to be sleepwalking through the days on the old estate, Sonya and Vanya and Astrov and the old nanny and Vanya's elderly mother revolving around the spoiled old professor and his enchanting, beautiful wife like planets around two seductive suns. I feel their heartbreak and regret, their hope for a peace that might only come with death, as sharply now when I read from the page as I did when I heard them aloud on the stage, and it is like a caress.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Cooking for my mother.
After nearly every meal I cook for my mother, she thanks me as she gets up from her chair. I don't know why; I certainly have never thanked her for any meal in the nearly three decades she has been cooking for me. It is a strange feeling to be thanked for something so simple, for something that is so often taken for granted. I took for granted that my mother would cook for me when I was a child; I take for granted now that I should cook for her and my father, when they are here. Now it's my turn, my turn to rummage around the refrigerator and pull together a meal, my turn to look around the piles of neatly arranged produce, the gleaming array of meats and seafoods at the supermarket and think of what to cook for the nights ahead. It is my turn to make them feel as cared for as they have made me feel for all of my life. I make all the things I remember from years past, and there is a curious sensation of inverted time as I stand at the counter slicing vegetables and mincing garlic, or hover over the stove waiting for the oil to heat to a shimmer.
I think about how my mother taught me to cook, beginning with washing the vegetables, progressing (with age) to slicing and chopping, leaving a trail of colanders and bowls and plates heaped with bok choy and finely sliced scallions (never sliced quite thinly enough) and strips of tofu in my wake. And then I started making one dish for the evening's meal, the stir-fried vegetables or scrambled eggs with tomatoes, or a dish of soy-seasoned ground pork crowned with one egg and steamed in the microwave. Slowly - by now I was in college - the entire meal became my domain. And I continued on with all the things I remembered, all the things I learned from my mother balanced by those I learned from books and television cooking shows. How to slice eggplant in irregular chunks and peel garlic by smashing a whole clove with the flat side of my chef's knife (mother). How to chop onions into an even dice without scattering bits of onion all over the place (Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Cake!) and to put minced garlic into cold oil in a cold pan (so says Jeffrey Steingarten, who learned this from Marcella Hazan, who did for Italian cooking what Julia Child did for French cooking in this country).
I think about Jeffrey Steingarten and Marcella Hazan's words as I pour a swirl of oil into the pan, scraping some minced garlic in before turning the heat on. It slowly caramelizes as I turn my attention to the braised beef on the next burner, browning the sliced short ribs with sliced onions in between cleaning up the chaos that had erupted on the counter behind me. Clean up as you go, your parents and all the cookbooks have been telling me for twenty years, and mostly I don't. The smell of browning beef and onions mingles with the scent of garlic; time to add the somewhat messily trimmed green beans to one pot and the tomatoes to the other. The tomatoes melt into the short ribs, so the meat simmers in their juices; the beans steam under the glass lid. I slosh in some soy sauce, and continue stirring until all the moisture has evaporated and the beans have browned around the edges. At last it's time to toss in the strips of dried tofu and stir them together with the beans until they are hot and slightly glazed with the sauce. It is perfect, a study in tastes and textures, sweet and salty and garlicky, soft green beans and chewy tofu. We eat it all, and I marvel at the faint caramelized sweetness, an unexpected new flavor in an old dish as familiar as a childhood teddy bear. It is not until later that I realize that the sweetness came from the organic heirloom garlic I bought at Whole Foods because I couldn't find any regular garlic.
You can make something again and again and again, and know it so well that each step comes without thinking, like my garlic-soy green beans. And yet the addition of something new or slightly different can change it entirely, make it extraordinary. A surprise, the best kind.
After nearly every meal I cook for my mother, she thanks me as she gets up from her chair. I don't know why; I certainly have never thanked her for any meal in the nearly three decades she has been cooking for me. It is a strange feeling to be thanked for something so simple, for something that is so often taken for granted. I took for granted that my mother would cook for me when I was a child; I take for granted now that I should cook for her and my father, when they are here. Now it's my turn, my turn to rummage around the refrigerator and pull together a meal, my turn to look around the piles of neatly arranged produce, the gleaming array of meats and seafoods at the supermarket and think of what to cook for the nights ahead. It is my turn to make them feel as cared for as they have made me feel for all of my life. I make all the things I remember from years past, and there is a curious sensation of inverted time as I stand at the counter slicing vegetables and mincing garlic, or hover over the stove waiting for the oil to heat to a shimmer.
I think about how my mother taught me to cook, beginning with washing the vegetables, progressing (with age) to slicing and chopping, leaving a trail of colanders and bowls and plates heaped with bok choy and finely sliced scallions (never sliced quite thinly enough) and strips of tofu in my wake. And then I started making one dish for the evening's meal, the stir-fried vegetables or scrambled eggs with tomatoes, or a dish of soy-seasoned ground pork crowned with one egg and steamed in the microwave. Slowly - by now I was in college - the entire meal became my domain. And I continued on with all the things I remembered, all the things I learned from my mother balanced by those I learned from books and television cooking shows. How to slice eggplant in irregular chunks and peel garlic by smashing a whole clove with the flat side of my chef's knife (mother). How to chop onions into an even dice without scattering bits of onion all over the place (Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Cake!) and to put minced garlic into cold oil in a cold pan (so says Jeffrey Steingarten, who learned this from Marcella Hazan, who did for Italian cooking what Julia Child did for French cooking in this country).
I think about Jeffrey Steingarten and Marcella Hazan's words as I pour a swirl of oil into the pan, scraping some minced garlic in before turning the heat on. It slowly caramelizes as I turn my attention to the braised beef on the next burner, browning the sliced short ribs with sliced onions in between cleaning up the chaos that had erupted on the counter behind me. Clean up as you go, your parents and all the cookbooks have been telling me for twenty years, and mostly I don't. The smell of browning beef and onions mingles with the scent of garlic; time to add the somewhat messily trimmed green beans to one pot and the tomatoes to the other. The tomatoes melt into the short ribs, so the meat simmers in their juices; the beans steam under the glass lid. I slosh in some soy sauce, and continue stirring until all the moisture has evaporated and the beans have browned around the edges. At last it's time to toss in the strips of dried tofu and stir them together with the beans until they are hot and slightly glazed with the sauce. It is perfect, a study in tastes and textures, sweet and salty and garlicky, soft green beans and chewy tofu. We eat it all, and I marvel at the faint caramelized sweetness, an unexpected new flavor in an old dish as familiar as a childhood teddy bear. It is not until later that I realize that the sweetness came from the organic heirloom garlic I bought at Whole Foods because I couldn't find any regular garlic.
You can make something again and again and again, and know it so well that each step comes without thinking, like my garlic-soy green beans. And yet the addition of something new or slightly different can change it entirely, make it extraordinary. A surprise, the best kind.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Eating out. Café Presse.
About a month ago Café Presse opened about four blocks away from my apartment, almost directly on the way to and from work. This is extremely dangerous, because it has been all too easy to stop by on my way to work in the morning for breakfast or on my way home for a snack or dinner. I have now eaten there many times; there have been many steaming cafe-au-laits sipped and brioches buttered and eaten, more croques monsieur consumed in those weeks since the café opened than in my whole life. There have been innumerable sandwiches that are mostly baguette-and-butter with a whisper of jambon cru (like prosciutto, only...French) and a smear of mustard. The sandwiches always come with exactly three cornichons. (I suppose two would be too few and four too many).
Tucked away next to a self-storage place Café Presse is a long, narrow room (apparently a corridor leads you past the kitchen and to another dining room in the back) with banquettes along one wall and a bar on the other. The tables are too close together and I (neither particularly slim nor graceful at the best of times) nearly always bump into something on my way to sliding onto the hard wooden bench. But once in I can relax, look down at the menu printed on thick yellow paper, with its short list of selections that I have come to know almost by heart. I can look at the bottles lined up along glass shelves behind the bar, against the slightly old-fashioned-looking pale blue patterned wallpaper that clashes gently with the tables, whose smooth tops are the sludgy color of pea soup. There are bottles of Ricard and Lillet, all kinds of vodkas and whiskies and scotches and bourbons and gins. Glasses of all shapes and sizes glint next to pottery pichets that come in small (demi) and regular (the owners of Café Presse have another bar-restaurant-café near the Pike Place Market named for those little pitchers - Le Pichet - the older sister to the new baby).
I have eaten at the bar, perched uncomfortably on a high stool of dark wood with my book and a dish of falafel. From my seat I could watch the bartender pour bourbon over ice, hear the quiet ssssssst as the golden liquid hit the ice, see the faint cloud of mist that rose above the glass. But usually I sit at a table against the wall; in the morning I can see the sunlight sparkle across the burnished gleam of the brioches, and at night I can watch people drink martinis or glasses of rosé as they think about the night's meal. Tonight is no exception. I order a plate of salami, which comes with a square of butter, a heap of grey sea salt, and a handful of pink-and-white radishes. There is a plate of bread and more butter, and another of tomatoes, sliced and dressed with a sort of onion mush and a scoop of tapenade. All sorts of tastes and textures come together as I eat my dinner; the radishes have a crisp bitterness mellowed by the sweetness of butter and sharpened by the crunch of salt. The tomatoes are ripe and sweet against the soft bite of onion, the salty savoriness of the tapenade. The bread is good, a tender and slightly elastic crumb beneath the crackling crust, and I fold the translucent slices of salami between pieces of bread.
I need something sweet, and they have chocolate mousse tonight, which comes in a bowl heaped high with whipped cream. It is rich and dense and creamy and the taste of chocolate fills my senses. The walk home seems to be over in a flash.
About a month ago Café Presse opened about four blocks away from my apartment, almost directly on the way to and from work. This is extremely dangerous, because it has been all too easy to stop by on my way to work in the morning for breakfast or on my way home for a snack or dinner. I have now eaten there many times; there have been many steaming cafe-au-laits sipped and brioches buttered and eaten, more croques monsieur consumed in those weeks since the café opened than in my whole life. There have been innumerable sandwiches that are mostly baguette-and-butter with a whisper of jambon cru (like prosciutto, only...French) and a smear of mustard. The sandwiches always come with exactly three cornichons. (I suppose two would be too few and four too many).
Tucked away next to a self-storage place Café Presse is a long, narrow room (apparently a corridor leads you past the kitchen and to another dining room in the back) with banquettes along one wall and a bar on the other. The tables are too close together and I (neither particularly slim nor graceful at the best of times) nearly always bump into something on my way to sliding onto the hard wooden bench. But once in I can relax, look down at the menu printed on thick yellow paper, with its short list of selections that I have come to know almost by heart. I can look at the bottles lined up along glass shelves behind the bar, against the slightly old-fashioned-looking pale blue patterned wallpaper that clashes gently with the tables, whose smooth tops are the sludgy color of pea soup. There are bottles of Ricard and Lillet, all kinds of vodkas and whiskies and scotches and bourbons and gins. Glasses of all shapes and sizes glint next to pottery pichets that come in small (demi) and regular (the owners of Café Presse have another bar-restaurant-café near the Pike Place Market named for those little pitchers - Le Pichet - the older sister to the new baby).
I have eaten at the bar, perched uncomfortably on a high stool of dark wood with my book and a dish of falafel. From my seat I could watch the bartender pour bourbon over ice, hear the quiet ssssssst as the golden liquid hit the ice, see the faint cloud of mist that rose above the glass. But usually I sit at a table against the wall; in the morning I can see the sunlight sparkle across the burnished gleam of the brioches, and at night I can watch people drink martinis or glasses of rosé as they think about the night's meal. Tonight is no exception. I order a plate of salami, which comes with a square of butter, a heap of grey sea salt, and a handful of pink-and-white radishes. There is a plate of bread and more butter, and another of tomatoes, sliced and dressed with a sort of onion mush and a scoop of tapenade. All sorts of tastes and textures come together as I eat my dinner; the radishes have a crisp bitterness mellowed by the sweetness of butter and sharpened by the crunch of salt. The tomatoes are ripe and sweet against the soft bite of onion, the salty savoriness of the tapenade. The bread is good, a tender and slightly elastic crumb beneath the crackling crust, and I fold the translucent slices of salami between pieces of bread.
I need something sweet, and they have chocolate mousse tonight, which comes in a bowl heaped high with whipped cream. It is rich and dense and creamy and the taste of chocolate fills my senses. The walk home seems to be over in a flash.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Take me out to the ball game.
My father is in town, and friends have invited us along to a baseball game. (Actually, they invited my father, and I tagged along). They have Diamond Club seats, behind home base. These seats entitle you to a) choice parking in the parking garage, b) buffet dinner in the club, and c) free snacks delivered to your seat during the game. Oh, and d) a really close-up view of the action. Invitations are rare, and enthusiastically accepted without hesitation. We get there around dinnertime, and head into the club to meet our friends for a somewhat indifferent dinner; stainless-steel chafing dishes filled with tired Chinese noodles and fried rice and cashew chicken and stir-fried prawns. (Sometimes there is prime rib or sushi, but not tonight). There are platters of canapés and salads and slices of fruit and cakes and pies and cookies. There are pretzels and popcorn and peanuts in their shells and sticks of cotton candy wrapped in plastic; a soft-serve ice cream machine dispenses vanilla ice cream into little plastic baseball caps emblazoned with the Mariners logo.
Silence falls over the bustling dining room: it's time for the national anthem, which causes everyone to stand up and listen to the music filling the room. Time for the game to begin. People begin to gather their belongings and head towards their seats in the rows behind home base. It is a beautiful day, the roof of the stadium is open to the blue sky. I think back to the old Kingdome and the memories there, of walking up the wide ramp that spiraled around the outside of that old concrete stadium with its blue-painted dome. (When we were very young our school choir once sang before a game; I remember walking up that ramp as M. told me how her fish-sandwich dinner had given her the strength to climb "the great Mt. Dome!"). In those days we used to go to Chinatown for a dinner of beef noodles before a game. Now there is a new stadium with a retractable roof, private suites, and a basement club for people who are willing to spend hundreds of dollars per game to sit behind home plate and drink free beer and eat free food.
But the game has begun, so I leave the past and the memories behind to sit back with my (free) popcorn and (free) bottled water, and I am happy. Happy that it is a beautiful day, that my father is in town for a short visit, that the Mariners are winning. Someone hits a grand slam and a roar of joy fills the stadium, and this is the beautiful thing about baseball. The crowd becomes as one giant, living, breathing organism; the sea of people that surrounds every side of the field becomes one great, collective mass of joy. This is what I love about baseball, this sensation of being swept along with everyone around me, across the field, up above, to every side, the feeling of being one of thousands. And there are hot dogs. It isn't a baseball game without a hot dog, and some time around the seventh inning I feel the pangs of longing for one, which appears quickly in a cardboard dish. And the happiness is complete: a beautiful day, a winning game, blue sky and popcorn, and a hot dog.
My father is in town, and friends have invited us along to a baseball game. (Actually, they invited my father, and I tagged along). They have Diamond Club seats, behind home base. These seats entitle you to a) choice parking in the parking garage, b) buffet dinner in the club, and c) free snacks delivered to your seat during the game. Oh, and d) a really close-up view of the action. Invitations are rare, and enthusiastically accepted without hesitation. We get there around dinnertime, and head into the club to meet our friends for a somewhat indifferent dinner; stainless-steel chafing dishes filled with tired Chinese noodles and fried rice and cashew chicken and stir-fried prawns. (Sometimes there is prime rib or sushi, but not tonight). There are platters of canapés and salads and slices of fruit and cakes and pies and cookies. There are pretzels and popcorn and peanuts in their shells and sticks of cotton candy wrapped in plastic; a soft-serve ice cream machine dispenses vanilla ice cream into little plastic baseball caps emblazoned with the Mariners logo.
Silence falls over the bustling dining room: it's time for the national anthem, which causes everyone to stand up and listen to the music filling the room. Time for the game to begin. People begin to gather their belongings and head towards their seats in the rows behind home base. It is a beautiful day, the roof of the stadium is open to the blue sky. I think back to the old Kingdome and the memories there, of walking up the wide ramp that spiraled around the outside of that old concrete stadium with its blue-painted dome. (When we were very young our school choir once sang before a game; I remember walking up that ramp as M. told me how her fish-sandwich dinner had given her the strength to climb "the great Mt. Dome!"). In those days we used to go to Chinatown for a dinner of beef noodles before a game. Now there is a new stadium with a retractable roof, private suites, and a basement club for people who are willing to spend hundreds of dollars per game to sit behind home plate and drink free beer and eat free food.
But the game has begun, so I leave the past and the memories behind to sit back with my (free) popcorn and (free) bottled water, and I am happy. Happy that it is a beautiful day, that my father is in town for a short visit, that the Mariners are winning. Someone hits a grand slam and a roar of joy fills the stadium, and this is the beautiful thing about baseball. The crowd becomes as one giant, living, breathing organism; the sea of people that surrounds every side of the field becomes one great, collective mass of joy. This is what I love about baseball, this sensation of being swept along with everyone around me, across the field, up above, to every side, the feeling of being one of thousands. And there are hot dogs. It isn't a baseball game without a hot dog, and some time around the seventh inning I feel the pangs of longing for one, which appears quickly in a cardboard dish. And the happiness is complete: a beautiful day, a winning game, blue sky and popcorn, and a hot dog.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Eating out. Atlas.
It was again one of those endless days, the kind that sees me dropping my bags on the floor once I am home again, books scattered across the floor as I try not to curl up and fall asleep. But I need to be fed, and I want to go for a drive, so I climb into the electric-blue van my uncle bought several years ago (I believe it was my grandfather who chose the color) and lurch off unsteadily towards the freeway. I head towards the mall where I use to spend most of my free time; it has shops and bakeries and huge supermarket and drugstore and several restaurants, and it is filled with young families and students from the nearby university. When I first got my driver's license nearly ten years ago I was afraid of the freeway, and this was the only place I knew how to get to; I would follow the winding road along the lake, through the vast greenness of the Arboretum, cross the bridge over the cut that joins Lake Union to Lake Washington, past the university campus, until at last I reached my destination.
Ten years ago my friends and I would occasionally come here for dinner. We were teenagers on parental allowances, and back then it was a splurge to spend twenty or so dollars on dinner. (And we always had trouble figuring out tax and tip). One side of the menu had comfort food - burgers and fried chicken and fish-and-chips and that sort of thing - and the other side had a rotating selection of themed menus (mostly seafood). I probably tried everything on that menu. We would always share the hot berry cobbler that had to be pre-ordered because it took half an hour to bake; it came to the table bubbling hot, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting in the middle. The friends have changed, the shops that like the walkways have changed, I've changed, but most of the dishes on the left side of the menu - and that cobbler - have remained the same after all this time.
Now I am here alone. (No cobbler tonight; it needs one or two people to share with). I have a new book, Notes From a Small Island, by Bill Bryson, about the writer's years in England. Thinking of gray English days I order the fish and chips and sink into Bryson's stories of the cities and towns that I have never seen. (And probably never will). The fish and chips arrive, crisp and golden, with a wedge of lemon and a dish of tartar sauce alongside. (I must confess I think of fish'n'chips as merely an excuse to eat tartar sauce). I eat my dinner and think about how what we (Americans) call chips is different from what they (the British) call chips, as with biscuits and pants. It is the perfect end to the day, this book and this plate of fish and chips.
It was again one of those endless days, the kind that sees me dropping my bags on the floor once I am home again, books scattered across the floor as I try not to curl up and fall asleep. But I need to be fed, and I want to go for a drive, so I climb into the electric-blue van my uncle bought several years ago (I believe it was my grandfather who chose the color) and lurch off unsteadily towards the freeway. I head towards the mall where I use to spend most of my free time; it has shops and bakeries and huge supermarket and drugstore and several restaurants, and it is filled with young families and students from the nearby university. When I first got my driver's license nearly ten years ago I was afraid of the freeway, and this was the only place I knew how to get to; I would follow the winding road along the lake, through the vast greenness of the Arboretum, cross the bridge over the cut that joins Lake Union to Lake Washington, past the university campus, until at last I reached my destination.
Ten years ago my friends and I would occasionally come here for dinner. We were teenagers on parental allowances, and back then it was a splurge to spend twenty or so dollars on dinner. (And we always had trouble figuring out tax and tip). One side of the menu had comfort food - burgers and fried chicken and fish-and-chips and that sort of thing - and the other side had a rotating selection of themed menus (mostly seafood). I probably tried everything on that menu. We would always share the hot berry cobbler that had to be pre-ordered because it took half an hour to bake; it came to the table bubbling hot, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting in the middle. The friends have changed, the shops that like the walkways have changed, I've changed, but most of the dishes on the left side of the menu - and that cobbler - have remained the same after all this time.
Now I am here alone. (No cobbler tonight; it needs one or two people to share with). I have a new book, Notes From a Small Island, by Bill Bryson, about the writer's years in England. Thinking of gray English days I order the fish and chips and sink into Bryson's stories of the cities and towns that I have never seen. (And probably never will). The fish and chips arrive, crisp and golden, with a wedge of lemon and a dish of tartar sauce alongside. (I must confess I think of fish'n'chips as merely an excuse to eat tartar sauce). I eat my dinner and think about how what we (Americans) call chips is different from what they (the British) call chips, as with biscuits and pants. It is the perfect end to the day, this book and this plate of fish and chips.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Eating. ice cream sandwiches.
I grew up on a tree-shaded street, along which children ran down the sidewalks or rode their bikes, and people took their dogs on daily walks. The seasons ran together, blurred, and years slid by, and I wonder, where did they all go? Fall came, and leaves carpeted the streets; winter came and rain pounded the dead leaves until they disintegrated and disappeared; spring raised a cloud of white blossoms and soft green leaves, and summer turned the lawns spotty brown from the heat (particularly if you forgot to water the grass). In the summer ice-cream trucks drove through the streets, tootling their irresistible song that drove my dog crazy (she would start barking when she heard that tinkling music; like doorbells and the Blue Angels during SeaFair it seemed to flick a switch in her brain permanently to ON). You would hear the music of the ice-cream truck coming ever closer, block by block, signaling the beginning of summer, the promise of sunny days and multicolored popsicles that left your tongue striped in reds and blues.
Actually, I preferred ice-cream sandwiches to any kind of popsicle. (Although a friend's mother would give us the kind that came as a solid tube of ice encased in plastic; it was pinched in the middle, like two linked sausages, and you broke it in half like an old-fashioned ampoule of medicine and sucked the melting ice from the hole. And sometimes you just need a popsicle, although I can't remember the last time I had one). No, I preferred the ice-cream sandwich, an oblong block of vanilla ice cream between two chocolate cookies, wrapped in paper-lined foil. I loved that minimalism of it, white ice cream, dark brown - almost black - cookies. As in an ice-box cake of wafers and cream, the ice-cream softened the cookies, and the sandwich became one smooth whole as you ate it, bite by bite, melting slowly. (Or quickly, if the day was hot).
Like barbecues and s'mores and watermelon and the first handful of Rainier cherries of the season, ice cream sandwiches are for summer. Not like regular ice cream, which can be eaten even in the dead of winter, and I do. Somehow ice cream sandwiches belong to summer, to the little white trucks with their tinkling melodies, even if you buy them in boxes of six or eight from the supermarket freezer and not from the ice cream truck, one by one. And summer has come, or is almost here, the sun shining; it is time for barbecues and s'mores and watermelon. And ice cream sandwiches. On an impulse I buy some at the supermarket, I curl up on my sofa and watch the sunset change the colors of the sky outside the windows. Peel away the paper, take the first bite, soft chocolate biscuits, cool, creamy vanilla ice cream. As it happens whenever I eat something I associate with my childhood, I feel the years fall away, then flash forward to this moment again. Summer is here.
I grew up on a tree-shaded street, along which children ran down the sidewalks or rode their bikes, and people took their dogs on daily walks. The seasons ran together, blurred, and years slid by, and I wonder, where did they all go? Fall came, and leaves carpeted the streets; winter came and rain pounded the dead leaves until they disintegrated and disappeared; spring raised a cloud of white blossoms and soft green leaves, and summer turned the lawns spotty brown from the heat (particularly if you forgot to water the grass). In the summer ice-cream trucks drove through the streets, tootling their irresistible song that drove my dog crazy (she would start barking when she heard that tinkling music; like doorbells and the Blue Angels during SeaFair it seemed to flick a switch in her brain permanently to ON). You would hear the music of the ice-cream truck coming ever closer, block by block, signaling the beginning of summer, the promise of sunny days and multicolored popsicles that left your tongue striped in reds and blues.
Actually, I preferred ice-cream sandwiches to any kind of popsicle. (Although a friend's mother would give us the kind that came as a solid tube of ice encased in plastic; it was pinched in the middle, like two linked sausages, and you broke it in half like an old-fashioned ampoule of medicine and sucked the melting ice from the hole. And sometimes you just need a popsicle, although I can't remember the last time I had one). No, I preferred the ice-cream sandwich, an oblong block of vanilla ice cream between two chocolate cookies, wrapped in paper-lined foil. I loved that minimalism of it, white ice cream, dark brown - almost black - cookies. As in an ice-box cake of wafers and cream, the ice-cream softened the cookies, and the sandwich became one smooth whole as you ate it, bite by bite, melting slowly. (Or quickly, if the day was hot).
Like barbecues and s'mores and watermelon and the first handful of Rainier cherries of the season, ice cream sandwiches are for summer. Not like regular ice cream, which can be eaten even in the dead of winter, and I do. Somehow ice cream sandwiches belong to summer, to the little white trucks with their tinkling melodies, even if you buy them in boxes of six or eight from the supermarket freezer and not from the ice cream truck, one by one. And summer has come, or is almost here, the sun shining; it is time for barbecues and s'mores and watermelon. And ice cream sandwiches. On an impulse I buy some at the supermarket, I curl up on my sofa and watch the sunset change the colors of the sky outside the windows. Peel away the paper, take the first bite, soft chocolate biscuits, cool, creamy vanilla ice cream. As it happens whenever I eat something I associate with my childhood, I feel the years fall away, then flash forward to this moment again. Summer is here.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Reading. Gaiman.
It took me longer to finish Stardust than it usually does to finish a new book, days instead of hours. It was a slow journey through a magical woods, not a quick free-fall into another world and back out into my own. Each night I would read one chapter before curling up and falling asleep each night, following the young Dunstan Thorn through the stalls at the fair, leaving his son Tristran Thorne as he crossed the meadow "beyond the fields we know," leaving a mysterious female voice after some unseen being has fallen from the sky into a glade of elm trees and hazel bushes, leaving me wondering whether Tristran will find that fallen star again once she has run away from him. (Perhaps the sound of rustling trees and the silver glow of moonlight filled my dreams after I wandered through Gaiman's fictional woods). Reading a book slowly gave me more time to think about the story, to care more deeply about the characters.
Dunstan Thorne has been granted his heart's desire by a mysterious man he meets before the fair, and his first-born child (and that first-born child's first-born child) in turn. Dunstan's desire is Daisy Hempstock (or so he thinks); Tristran's desire is to find the fallen star in order to win the hand of (or a kiss from) Victoria Forester. But strange things happen, and the path to what they desire - or even what they ultimately desire - is not what they expect to find. Which is as it is in real life. Somehow the journey towards what you want most changes as you get closer; detours and roadblocks sometimes appear. Or when you find your heart's desire it turns out to be in a different form, as Tristran reaches his fallen star and finds her a young girl, with hair so pale it seems almost light, her leg broken in her fall to earth. (Or is it earth when she has landed in Faerie?).
In the end Tristran and the star - Yvaine is her name - find their way back to Wall, remaining on the side of Faerie (for if Yvaine crosses the wall into Wall she will become a lump of cold stone, for that is the form a fallen star would take on Earth). But Tristran has walked through fire and through distant lands and floated across the sky in a flying ship and taken the form of a dormouse in order to pass on in safety. When he returns to Wall he is no longer the same, just as we are never the same after a journey. And his heart's desire is not Victoria Forester, but Yvaine, with whom he spends the rest of his life, most of it happy. "Not foreverafter, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse." But then that is how life flows past us all, leaving us happy for a time, if not forever. It is enough to have it for a little while.
Gaiman, Neil. Stardust. HarperPerennial, 2006. p 247.
It took me longer to finish Stardust than it usually does to finish a new book, days instead of hours. It was a slow journey through a magical woods, not a quick free-fall into another world and back out into my own. Each night I would read one chapter before curling up and falling asleep each night, following the young Dunstan Thorn through the stalls at the fair, leaving his son Tristran Thorne as he crossed the meadow "beyond the fields we know," leaving a mysterious female voice after some unseen being has fallen from the sky into a glade of elm trees and hazel bushes, leaving me wondering whether Tristran will find that fallen star again once she has run away from him. (Perhaps the sound of rustling trees and the silver glow of moonlight filled my dreams after I wandered through Gaiman's fictional woods). Reading a book slowly gave me more time to think about the story, to care more deeply about the characters.
Dunstan Thorne has been granted his heart's desire by a mysterious man he meets before the fair, and his first-born child (and that first-born child's first-born child) in turn. Dunstan's desire is Daisy Hempstock (or so he thinks); Tristran's desire is to find the fallen star in order to win the hand of (or a kiss from) Victoria Forester. But strange things happen, and the path to what they desire - or even what they ultimately desire - is not what they expect to find. Which is as it is in real life. Somehow the journey towards what you want most changes as you get closer; detours and roadblocks sometimes appear. Or when you find your heart's desire it turns out to be in a different form, as Tristran reaches his fallen star and finds her a young girl, with hair so pale it seems almost light, her leg broken in her fall to earth. (Or is it earth when she has landed in Faerie?).
In the end Tristran and the star - Yvaine is her name - find their way back to Wall, remaining on the side of Faerie (for if Yvaine crosses the wall into Wall she will become a lump of cold stone, for that is the form a fallen star would take on Earth). But Tristran has walked through fire and through distant lands and floated across the sky in a flying ship and taken the form of a dormouse in order to pass on in safety. When he returns to Wall he is no longer the same, just as we are never the same after a journey. And his heart's desire is not Victoria Forester, but Yvaine, with whom he spends the rest of his life, most of it happy. "Not foreverafter, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse." But then that is how life flows past us all, leaving us happy for a time, if not forever. It is enough to have it for a little while.
Gaiman, Neil. Stardust. HarperPerennial, 2006. p 247.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Reading. Maguire.
For many years I would, from time to time, come across a book among other books neatly boxed up in the basement. It was called Lights on the Lake, and I could imagine the cover as clearly in my mind as though I were holding it in my hands, although I never read it. (The title and author - Gregory Maguire - in neat calligraphy across the cover and along the spine, with a colored drawing of a black crow and a young boy flying through the night sky, over a town with a lake in the distance). The dust-jacket is only very slightly worn; once white, a faintly yellowed stripe borders one edge of the back. But otherwise it seems that it has never been read; the published date is 1981, and it is hardbound, so I could not have been more than two when it was purchased. There are no price stickers, no inscriptions inside (unlike the copies of My First Book About Computers and My First Book About Basic, which have, in neat blue writing, 塏如, Merry X'mas 1986 written on the fly-leaf. Why anyone would give a six-year-old books about computers and their language remains a mystery to me).
I doubt my parents would remember why they chose Lights on the Lake for me, or how indeed they chose any of the every-growing pile of books they bought me (many of them with my name written on the cover, or inside, in my mother's narrow, loopy handwriting). I owe much of my love for literature to my parents and all the books they bought me until I was old enough to choose my own. Years passed, and much later Gregory Maguire became rather well-known for Wicked (which then became a hit musical), and subsequent similarly-themed novels. I never read them, either, but his name remained at the back of my mind. And then quite suddenly I found myself in a new home, with space to spread out my belongings, organize my books in new ways, unlike the reckless hodge-podge of before. But it was not until we returned to our old home for its final purge that Lights on the Lake emerged from the darkness of the basement to land on my bedroom bookshelf, like sunken treasure lifted by some mysterious current that pulls it to shore, floating above all the flotsam and jetsam of previous lives.
The twelve-year-old Daniel has just said good-bye to his friend Father August, and he is still hanging around the Myer House rectory when a young man is left by his sister, pale and thin and listless, on the front porch. The man is Nikos Griskas, a young poet who is haunted by the death of his friend during a camping trip a month before; locked in his grief he seems to be slipping from life with each passing day. He seems to live - if you could call it living - with his eyes open but not seeing, like a sleepwalker, seeing his dead friend everywhere, unable to live because he believes that everything comes to death, that the world is only...a reminder...that time rolls on like a monster, eating everything up, swallowing everything up with its bleeding mouth, and we get swallowed up too...Even a feather, even a bird's feather comes shimmering with beauty deserving of salvation, and of salvation there is none. It all comes down to dying. Locked in his despair Nikos is slowly dying, and Daniel is the only one who can save him, who can bring him to the kind of peace and forgiveness he needs, to banish the ghosts, the reminder that he wanted that camping trip that ended with his friend's death. His agony is almost unbearable to read, because we have all experienced that feeling, that belief that if we had not done one thing, not made a suggestion, or a choice, or if we had done something differently, that we could have changed something terrible. As in life, Nikos cannot go back in time, cannot bring his friend back, but he can forgive himself, as we all can, and live.
Maguire, Gregory. Lights on the Lake. Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1981. p. 108.
For many years I would, from time to time, come across a book among other books neatly boxed up in the basement. It was called Lights on the Lake, and I could imagine the cover as clearly in my mind as though I were holding it in my hands, although I never read it. (The title and author - Gregory Maguire - in neat calligraphy across the cover and along the spine, with a colored drawing of a black crow and a young boy flying through the night sky, over a town with a lake in the distance). The dust-jacket is only very slightly worn; once white, a faintly yellowed stripe borders one edge of the back. But otherwise it seems that it has never been read; the published date is 1981, and it is hardbound, so I could not have been more than two when it was purchased. There are no price stickers, no inscriptions inside (unlike the copies of My First Book About Computers and My First Book About Basic, which have, in neat blue writing, 塏如, Merry X'mas 1986 written on the fly-leaf. Why anyone would give a six-year-old books about computers and their language remains a mystery to me).
I doubt my parents would remember why they chose Lights on the Lake for me, or how indeed they chose any of the every-growing pile of books they bought me (many of them with my name written on the cover, or inside, in my mother's narrow, loopy handwriting). I owe much of my love for literature to my parents and all the books they bought me until I was old enough to choose my own. Years passed, and much later Gregory Maguire became rather well-known for Wicked (which then became a hit musical), and subsequent similarly-themed novels. I never read them, either, but his name remained at the back of my mind. And then quite suddenly I found myself in a new home, with space to spread out my belongings, organize my books in new ways, unlike the reckless hodge-podge of before. But it was not until we returned to our old home for its final purge that Lights on the Lake emerged from the darkness of the basement to land on my bedroom bookshelf, like sunken treasure lifted by some mysterious current that pulls it to shore, floating above all the flotsam and jetsam of previous lives.
The twelve-year-old Daniel has just said good-bye to his friend Father August, and he is still hanging around the Myer House rectory when a young man is left by his sister, pale and thin and listless, on the front porch. The man is Nikos Griskas, a young poet who is haunted by the death of his friend during a camping trip a month before; locked in his grief he seems to be slipping from life with each passing day. He seems to live - if you could call it living - with his eyes open but not seeing, like a sleepwalker, seeing his dead friend everywhere, unable to live because he believes that everything comes to death, that the world is only...a reminder...that time rolls on like a monster, eating everything up, swallowing everything up with its bleeding mouth, and we get swallowed up too...Even a feather, even a bird's feather comes shimmering with beauty deserving of salvation, and of salvation there is none. It all comes down to dying. Locked in his despair Nikos is slowly dying, and Daniel is the only one who can save him, who can bring him to the kind of peace and forgiveness he needs, to banish the ghosts, the reminder that he wanted that camping trip that ended with his friend's death. His agony is almost unbearable to read, because we have all experienced that feeling, that belief that if we had not done one thing, not made a suggestion, or a choice, or if we had done something differently, that we could have changed something terrible. As in life, Nikos cannot go back in time, cannot bring his friend back, but he can forgive himself, as we all can, and live.
Maguire, Gregory. Lights on the Lake. Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1981. p. 108.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
eating. sack lunch.
Some time ago B. mentioned a nearby café which made egg-salad sandwiches, the best she had ever tasted. I am very fond of an egg-salad sandwich, either plain, or with a little curry. Y. taught me to put finely chopped dill into the egg-salad when she brought an enormous pile of sandwiches sliced into perfect triangles and neatly arranged on a platter to one of our infamous lunch parties. I don't slice my sandwiches into perfect triangles, but then Y. is the sort of person who frosts her cupcakes with pink frosting and then pipes white flowers on top (or perhaps it is the other way around). Still, I had been thinking of those egg-salad sandwiches that B. mentioned for weeks now, but somehow had never made time to stop by and buy one, until I found myself with a little extra time in the morning and took the rather more circuitous route to work. This took me past the aforementioned café, a tiny place with a few tables and a very small counter from behind which two women made espresso drinks and handed out packets of cereal and scones.
The café is the sort of place where the same neighborhood people come in every day and order the same thing; the barista seems to know everyone who walks in and has their drink going even before they reach the counter. While eyeing the small cooler filled with cans of Pellegrino and bottles of BibiCaffé (my favorite thing in the world) I notice a small blackboard propped up against a stool proclaiming "SACK LUNCH." (Includes sandwich - tuna or egg salad, a cookie, and a piece of fruit). With my brown bag in one hand (BibiCaffé - an espresso soda - in the other) I continue on my way to work; waiting for the light on the corner I stop to open my bag and peek at its contents, and I am swamped by a wave of nostalgia.
I can't remember the last time I had a lunch packed in a brown paper bag. Sure, I usually bring lunch to work, a plastic box of leftovers, a sandwich (or the ingredients for one), or packets of instant noodles, carried in paper tote bags emblazoned with the logos of various shops (the more expensive the shop, the fancier the bag). I feel curiously young as I look at my plastic-wrapped sandwich and cookie, a ripe banana lounging insouciantly on top. It brings to mind school trips, lunches of ham or turkey sandwiches, with a bag of chips and an apple, perhaps a cookie or two. How many of those lunches have I eaten in this lifetime? Hundreds? Thousands? Would those bags stretch around the world? (Later, the sandwich eaten, every last cookie crumb devoured, the empty banana skin disposed of, I would smooth the brown paper bag flat, remember how I would sometimes reuse them until the sharp creases of each corner would relax into a rumpled softeness).
The egg salad is made with almonds, a sweet crunch with every bite; the multi-grain bread is spread with more mayonnaise before the sandwich is assembled, which I try not to think about too much. It is everything B. mentioned, and better. I eat my sandwich and drink my BibiCaffé and think about past brown-bag lunches eaten on a grassy lawn instead of at my desk in front of the computer. But instead of memories there is egg salad with almonds, and it is enough to make me happy, and I am.
Some time ago B. mentioned a nearby café which made egg-salad sandwiches, the best she had ever tasted. I am very fond of an egg-salad sandwich, either plain, or with a little curry. Y. taught me to put finely chopped dill into the egg-salad when she brought an enormous pile of sandwiches sliced into perfect triangles and neatly arranged on a platter to one of our infamous lunch parties. I don't slice my sandwiches into perfect triangles, but then Y. is the sort of person who frosts her cupcakes with pink frosting and then pipes white flowers on top (or perhaps it is the other way around). Still, I had been thinking of those egg-salad sandwiches that B. mentioned for weeks now, but somehow had never made time to stop by and buy one, until I found myself with a little extra time in the morning and took the rather more circuitous route to work. This took me past the aforementioned café, a tiny place with a few tables and a very small counter from behind which two women made espresso drinks and handed out packets of cereal and scones.
The café is the sort of place where the same neighborhood people come in every day and order the same thing; the barista seems to know everyone who walks in and has their drink going even before they reach the counter. While eyeing the small cooler filled with cans of Pellegrino and bottles of BibiCaffé (my favorite thing in the world) I notice a small blackboard propped up against a stool proclaiming "SACK LUNCH." (Includes sandwich - tuna or egg salad, a cookie, and a piece of fruit). With my brown bag in one hand (BibiCaffé - an espresso soda - in the other) I continue on my way to work; waiting for the light on the corner I stop to open my bag and peek at its contents, and I am swamped by a wave of nostalgia.
I can't remember the last time I had a lunch packed in a brown paper bag. Sure, I usually bring lunch to work, a plastic box of leftovers, a sandwich (or the ingredients for one), or packets of instant noodles, carried in paper tote bags emblazoned with the logos of various shops (the more expensive the shop, the fancier the bag). I feel curiously young as I look at my plastic-wrapped sandwich and cookie, a ripe banana lounging insouciantly on top. It brings to mind school trips, lunches of ham or turkey sandwiches, with a bag of chips and an apple, perhaps a cookie or two. How many of those lunches have I eaten in this lifetime? Hundreds? Thousands? Would those bags stretch around the world? (Later, the sandwich eaten, every last cookie crumb devoured, the empty banana skin disposed of, I would smooth the brown paper bag flat, remember how I would sometimes reuse them until the sharp creases of each corner would relax into a rumpled softeness).
The egg salad is made with almonds, a sweet crunch with every bite; the multi-grain bread is spread with more mayonnaise before the sandwich is assembled, which I try not to think about too much. It is everything B. mentioned, and better. I eat my sandwich and drink my BibiCaffé and think about past brown-bag lunches eaten on a grassy lawn instead of at my desk in front of the computer. But instead of memories there is egg salad with almonds, and it is enough to make me happy, and I am.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Reading. Dunsany.
I came to the Irish writer Lord Dunsany several months ago because of a friend, who often tells me about what he is reading, which, in turn, sends me back towards a writer I have long loved or a new one whom I had not heard of before. In this way I get to remember what I love most about writers I have read for years or perhaps experience something new that I never expected, and fall in love with someone new, which is the exciting thing about literature. In short order I found myself with an interesting collection of stories and plays written by Lord Dunsany (who would have a profound effect on Tolkien and other writers of fantasy some decades later), published in the late 1910's or early 1920's, their leather bindings worn in places, some clad in clear plastic covers cracked with time. Some of the books have the names of previous owners written inside or emblazoned on nameplates; sometimes I run my fingers over the faded ink or engraved nameplates and wonder about those people who once held these books in their hands, flipped through the pages, lined their bookshelves with volumes of plays and fantastical stories in their gold-stamped covers.
However, my copy of The King of Elfland's Daughter is from the late 1960's or early 1970's, and therefore has a slightly psychedelic cover, bright colors illustrating various scenes from the novel, which I believe was the style of the times. (Lord Dunsany, otherwise known as Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, was then enjoying rather a bit of a renaissance due to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his stories). I read it in a haze some time during the winter and come back to it now because of Neil Gaiman, who owes much to Lord Dunsany (which he acknowledges) in his writing, particularly Stardust, when the young Tristran Thorne heads off "beyond the fields we know," a direct homage to The King of Elfland's Daughter and its repeated refrain.
The young Alveric, eldest son of the Lord of Erl, is summoned by his father and commanded to cross into the lands of faery in order to wed the King of Elfland's daughter, Lirazel. In Elfland Alveric finds the beautiful Lirazel, and they flee through her lands back into earth, where one day in Elfland finds some ten or twelve years have passed in Erl, the old Lord long dead. And so they are married (all this in Dunsany's clear prose which makes the most fantastical lands and happenings seem possible), and the years pass. They have a child, but the pull of Elfland and the rune sent by her father the King finally loosen the strings that bind Lirazel to her life on earth and sweep her back to the lands of her childhood, far from the fields we know. For happiness between men and those who belong to faery is fleeting, as they are drawn apart by their worlds and their own people.
I came to the Irish writer Lord Dunsany several months ago because of a friend, who often tells me about what he is reading, which, in turn, sends me back towards a writer I have long loved or a new one whom I had not heard of before. In this way I get to remember what I love most about writers I have read for years or perhaps experience something new that I never expected, and fall in love with someone new, which is the exciting thing about literature. In short order I found myself with an interesting collection of stories and plays written by Lord Dunsany (who would have a profound effect on Tolkien and other writers of fantasy some decades later), published in the late 1910's or early 1920's, their leather bindings worn in places, some clad in clear plastic covers cracked with time. Some of the books have the names of previous owners written inside or emblazoned on nameplates; sometimes I run my fingers over the faded ink or engraved nameplates and wonder about those people who once held these books in their hands, flipped through the pages, lined their bookshelves with volumes of plays and fantastical stories in their gold-stamped covers.
However, my copy of The King of Elfland's Daughter is from the late 1960's or early 1970's, and therefore has a slightly psychedelic cover, bright colors illustrating various scenes from the novel, which I believe was the style of the times. (Lord Dunsany, otherwise known as Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, was then enjoying rather a bit of a renaissance due to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his stories). I read it in a haze some time during the winter and come back to it now because of Neil Gaiman, who owes much to Lord Dunsany (which he acknowledges) in his writing, particularly Stardust, when the young Tristran Thorne heads off "beyond the fields we know," a direct homage to The King of Elfland's Daughter and its repeated refrain.
The young Alveric, eldest son of the Lord of Erl, is summoned by his father and commanded to cross into the lands of faery in order to wed the King of Elfland's daughter, Lirazel. In Elfland Alveric finds the beautiful Lirazel, and they flee through her lands back into earth, where one day in Elfland finds some ten or twelve years have passed in Erl, the old Lord long dead. And so they are married (all this in Dunsany's clear prose which makes the most fantastical lands and happenings seem possible), and the years pass. They have a child, but the pull of Elfland and the rune sent by her father the King finally loosen the strings that bind Lirazel to her life on earth and sweep her back to the lands of her childhood, far from the fields we know. For happiness between men and those who belong to faery is fleeting, as they are drawn apart by their worlds and their own people.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Reading. Gaiman.
Usually I read books in one long breathless gulp, straight through dinnertime or late into the night, unable to stop until I come to the end of the story. Stardust is different, something I have been reading little by little, one or two chapters a night, nibbling away at Gaiman's words the way Charlie Bucket nibbles away at his precious chocolate bars to make them last longer. For me it is a new way to experience literature, a slow falling in love instead of a headlong free-fall, like inching my way step by step into the sea instead of diving in straight off, an extraordinary sensation, one I ordinarily don't have the patience to make time for. I want to know how the story ends, whether the hero wins his heart's desire, whether the heroine finds true love, whether the villain meets his or her rightful end, and often I can't sleep until I find the answers, such as who poured the hemlock into the unfaithful painter's beer.
I am not sure how I discovered Neil Gaiman, or what first drew me to Stardust, but I came to the end of the second chapter, and gave a little jump of surprise. But I will come back to that later. It begins with the town of Wall, in the earlier years of Queen Victoria, and with the young Dunstan Thorn. The town of Wall takes its name from a high wall of grey rock, which has a single opening that looks onto a meadow and beyond that a stream and trees among which shapes and figures can sometimes be seen; guards prevent people from passing through tha opening in the wall, except for "every nine years, on May Day, when a fair comes to the meadow." It is during this fair that the eighteen-year-old Dunstan Thorn meets a mysterious stranger who promises him his heart's desire, and at the fair he meets a young faerie, bound to slavery by a stall-owner, who steals his heart and leaves him, several months later (during which he has married Daisy Hempstock) with a baby son, Tristran.
Time passes, and the young Tristran is seventeen years old and madly in love with Victoria Forester, the most beautiful girl in town. He asks for a kiss, and for her hand in marriage, but is refused on both counts, even after promising to go to far-off places in order to bring back anything he can think of, gold and rubies and diamonds and opals and elephant tusks. But it is in exchange for a fallen star that she promises him anything he desires, and so he sets off with a bag of apples and bread and cheese and heads off through that gap in the wall, where he is given admission for being his father's son, and the son of that young faerie Dunstan Thorn met at the fair all those years ago. And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know...and into Faerie.
Gaiman, Neil. Stardust. HarperPerennial, 2006. pp 5
Usually I read books in one long breathless gulp, straight through dinnertime or late into the night, unable to stop until I come to the end of the story. Stardust is different, something I have been reading little by little, one or two chapters a night, nibbling away at Gaiman's words the way Charlie Bucket nibbles away at his precious chocolate bars to make them last longer. For me it is a new way to experience literature, a slow falling in love instead of a headlong free-fall, like inching my way step by step into the sea instead of diving in straight off, an extraordinary sensation, one I ordinarily don't have the patience to make time for. I want to know how the story ends, whether the hero wins his heart's desire, whether the heroine finds true love, whether the villain meets his or her rightful end, and often I can't sleep until I find the answers, such as who poured the hemlock into the unfaithful painter's beer.
I am not sure how I discovered Neil Gaiman, or what first drew me to Stardust, but I came to the end of the second chapter, and gave a little jump of surprise. But I will come back to that later. It begins with the town of Wall, in the earlier years of Queen Victoria, and with the young Dunstan Thorn. The town of Wall takes its name from a high wall of grey rock, which has a single opening that looks onto a meadow and beyond that a stream and trees among which shapes and figures can sometimes be seen; guards prevent people from passing through tha opening in the wall, except for "every nine years, on May Day, when a fair comes to the meadow." It is during this fair that the eighteen-year-old Dunstan Thorn meets a mysterious stranger who promises him his heart's desire, and at the fair he meets a young faerie, bound to slavery by a stall-owner, who steals his heart and leaves him, several months later (during which he has married Daisy Hempstock) with a baby son, Tristran.
Time passes, and the young Tristran is seventeen years old and madly in love with Victoria Forester, the most beautiful girl in town. He asks for a kiss, and for her hand in marriage, but is refused on both counts, even after promising to go to far-off places in order to bring back anything he can think of, gold and rubies and diamonds and opals and elephant tusks. But it is in exchange for a fallen star that she promises him anything he desires, and so he sets off with a bag of apples and bread and cheese and heads off through that gap in the wall, where he is given admission for being his father's son, and the son of that young faerie Dunstan Thorn met at the fair all those years ago. And, too ignorant to be scared, too young to be awed, Tristran Thorn passed beyond the fields we know...and into Faerie.
Gaiman, Neil. Stardust. HarperPerennial, 2006. pp 5
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Eating. sweet potatoes. (fries).
Usually I only have sweet potatoes (or yams) at Thanksgiving, or at Christmas, baked until the skins droop and the flesh softens, eaten as is or mashed into a creamy mass with a little butter, drizzled with honey or topped with marshmallows and baked until its white surface caramelizes in the heat. Or perhaps made into a pie, a golden crust filled with a dense cloud of burnt-orange sweetness. (I can't remember the last time I had a sweet-potato pie; it makes me thing of Southern novels about people sitting on their back porch drinking sweet iced tea while talking about their past, of fried-chicken dinners with all the fixings, and like English afternoon teas with scones and clotted cream it is like a dream of a life I don't have). But my favorite diner has sweet potato fries on the menu, and at dinner I order some along with my burger.
It feels a little strange to come here, to this neighborhood not far from where I used to live. Actually I rarely ate here when I lived nearby, at this bright and cheerful diner with its large windows and minimalist plywood chairs and its local regulars who are greeted like old friends when they come in. (It opened not too long before I moved; it belongs to the new generation of people who live here). Now I come here after scooping up an armload of books at the used bookstore a few doors away, sometimes after a day of work, sometimes after a day of lazing around. Sometimes I come early in the morning for bread and croissants and pastries at the bakery across the street, or go to the pizzeria a block away for lunch. Other times we go to the Caribbean-Creole place around the corner for jerk chicken and macaroni pie. But I want a cheeseburger, so I find myself on one of those minimalist plywood chairs with the slender metal legs that look like butterflies hovering above the tiled floor, at a table by the window. (When I walked past a little while earlier, a little baby was standing on a table by the window, smiling as though she was so happy to see me, I had to smile back).
I curl up with my bag of books, flipping through today's haul, thinking about what I should read as I wait for my dinner. I ask for a lemon soda, a cheeseburger with cheddar, sweet potato fries instead of the usual French fries. A vanilla cream soda arrives instead of the lemon, leading me to wonder whether my hamburger will be medium-rare instead of medium, with blue cheese instead of cheddar, no onions, and regular fries. To my relief, what arrives is what I ordered, perfect. I look at the cheeseburger slathered with caramelized onions, the bun spread with mayonnaise, layered with fresh lettuce and tomato, and think of an old Gourmet article where the author, who had grown up in some posh New York City hotel (where his father was manager), had written that hamburgers with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, and onion used to be called California-style hamburgers. I wonder when that changed. And then I start eating my sweet potato fries, salty-sweet, crisp and tender all at once, and forget about everything else.
Usually I only have sweet potatoes (or yams) at Thanksgiving, or at Christmas, baked until the skins droop and the flesh softens, eaten as is or mashed into a creamy mass with a little butter, drizzled with honey or topped with marshmallows and baked until its white surface caramelizes in the heat. Or perhaps made into a pie, a golden crust filled with a dense cloud of burnt-orange sweetness. (I can't remember the last time I had a sweet-potato pie; it makes me thing of Southern novels about people sitting on their back porch drinking sweet iced tea while talking about their past, of fried-chicken dinners with all the fixings, and like English afternoon teas with scones and clotted cream it is like a dream of a life I don't have). But my favorite diner has sweet potato fries on the menu, and at dinner I order some along with my burger.
It feels a little strange to come here, to this neighborhood not far from where I used to live. Actually I rarely ate here when I lived nearby, at this bright and cheerful diner with its large windows and minimalist plywood chairs and its local regulars who are greeted like old friends when they come in. (It opened not too long before I moved; it belongs to the new generation of people who live here). Now I come here after scooping up an armload of books at the used bookstore a few doors away, sometimes after a day of work, sometimes after a day of lazing around. Sometimes I come early in the morning for bread and croissants and pastries at the bakery across the street, or go to the pizzeria a block away for lunch. Other times we go to the Caribbean-Creole place around the corner for jerk chicken and macaroni pie. But I want a cheeseburger, so I find myself on one of those minimalist plywood chairs with the slender metal legs that look like butterflies hovering above the tiled floor, at a table by the window. (When I walked past a little while earlier, a little baby was standing on a table by the window, smiling as though she was so happy to see me, I had to smile back).
I curl up with my bag of books, flipping through today's haul, thinking about what I should read as I wait for my dinner. I ask for a lemon soda, a cheeseburger with cheddar, sweet potato fries instead of the usual French fries. A vanilla cream soda arrives instead of the lemon, leading me to wonder whether my hamburger will be medium-rare instead of medium, with blue cheese instead of cheddar, no onions, and regular fries. To my relief, what arrives is what I ordered, perfect. I look at the cheeseburger slathered with caramelized onions, the bun spread with mayonnaise, layered with fresh lettuce and tomato, and think of an old Gourmet article where the author, who had grown up in some posh New York City hotel (where his father was manager), had written that hamburgers with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, and onion used to be called California-style hamburgers. I wonder when that changed. And then I start eating my sweet potato fries, salty-sweet, crisp and tender all at once, and forget about everything else.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Reading. Perrotta.
I passed by Little Children the first time I saw it in the bookstore. It had recently been made into a film,which I had not seen, but I already knew that it was about parents of small children, dissatisfied with their lives, drifting into an affair. I found the subject matter uninspiring; I set the book back on its shelf and walked away. I don't know what brought me back, weeks or months later, but I found myself reading it one night, falling deeper and deeper in the story. Once I began reading I had to keep going until I had reached the end, the way I used to draw one deep breath and then swim from one end of the pool to the other in one long, smooth, glide. Through Perrotta's words I fell into that hot summer, that summer when Sarah and Brad's lives intersect at the playground where they take their children, beginning with that first kiss in front of the other mothers, the beginning of their affair during an afternoon thundershower. (Affairs always seem to begin during or after a storm, when everyone gets wet and has to change out of their damp clothes, somehow never quite making it into dry ones).
I realized quite suddenly that I understood Sarah better than I thought I would, as soon as I read the first page, and how she thought, I'm a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself. I am a long way from being any kind of mother, let alone a suburban one, but I recognize Sarah's fear that she would become one of those woman, the ones who schedule time each week to have sex with their husbands, who spend their days at the playground with their children and the other mothers, who can't remember the titles of movies they'd seen or praise everything as being "cute." It sent a shiver of awareness to see that she was the kind of mother I can imagine becoming, the one who forgets her daughter's snacks, the one who felt that at twenty-six that she was a failure, a "painfully ordinary person...destined to live a painfully ordinary life." I have that fear, too, and I am twenty-six (for just one more month).
Now I can feel a sort of sadness for Sarah, "plain and frazzled-looking," in sharp contrast to her lover's wife, tall and thin and glamorous in her jean shorts and bikini top, "one of those girls, the ones from high school who made you stick your finger down your throat after lunch, the ones who made you look in the mirror and cry." I can't understand feeling that way, but I can understand that feeling that Sarah has stumbled into the monotony of her life, almost as though she had been sleepwalking into marriage with Richard, sleepwalking into motherhood, that her life has just happened to her without her actually living it. And when she woke up she realizes that this is not the life she wanted, but she doesn't know how to make it any other way, until the end, when she realizes that a life with just her and her daughter can be something real, more real than her fantasy of having a new life with her lover, which will never happen.
Perrotta, Tom. Little Children. St. Martin's Griffin, 2004. pp 3, 12, 257, 187.
I passed by Little Children the first time I saw it in the bookstore. It had recently been made into a film,which I had not seen, but I already knew that it was about parents of small children, dissatisfied with their lives, drifting into an affair. I found the subject matter uninspiring; I set the book back on its shelf and walked away. I don't know what brought me back, weeks or months later, but I found myself reading it one night, falling deeper and deeper in the story. Once I began reading I had to keep going until I had reached the end, the way I used to draw one deep breath and then swim from one end of the pool to the other in one long, smooth, glide. Through Perrotta's words I fell into that hot summer, that summer when Sarah and Brad's lives intersect at the playground where they take their children, beginning with that first kiss in front of the other mothers, the beginning of their affair during an afternoon thundershower. (Affairs always seem to begin during or after a storm, when everyone gets wet and has to change out of their damp clothes, somehow never quite making it into dry ones).
I realized quite suddenly that I understood Sarah better than I thought I would, as soon as I read the first page, and how she thought, I'm a researcher studying the behavior of boring suburban women. I am not a boring suburban woman myself. I am a long way from being any kind of mother, let alone a suburban one, but I recognize Sarah's fear that she would become one of those woman, the ones who schedule time each week to have sex with their husbands, who spend their days at the playground with their children and the other mothers, who can't remember the titles of movies they'd seen or praise everything as being "cute." It sent a shiver of awareness to see that she was the kind of mother I can imagine becoming, the one who forgets her daughter's snacks, the one who felt that at twenty-six that she was a failure, a "painfully ordinary person...destined to live a painfully ordinary life." I have that fear, too, and I am twenty-six (for just one more month).
Now I can feel a sort of sadness for Sarah, "plain and frazzled-looking," in sharp contrast to her lover's wife, tall and thin and glamorous in her jean shorts and bikini top, "one of those girls, the ones from high school who made you stick your finger down your throat after lunch, the ones who made you look in the mirror and cry." I can't understand feeling that way, but I can understand that feeling that Sarah has stumbled into the monotony of her life, almost as though she had been sleepwalking into marriage with Richard, sleepwalking into motherhood, that her life has just happened to her without her actually living it. And when she woke up she realizes that this is not the life she wanted, but she doesn't know how to make it any other way, until the end, when she realizes that a life with just her and her daughter can be something real, more real than her fantasy of having a new life with her lover, which will never happen.
Perrotta, Tom. Little Children. St. Martin's Griffin, 2004. pp 3, 12, 257, 187.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Eating. pudding.
When I was small pudding came in plastic tubs, butterscotch or vanilla or chocolate, or multilayered chocolate and vanilla. They came in packs of six, held together by a cardboard holder. At lunch I would peel back the foil cover, lick the bit of pudding off the lid, eat the rest bit by bit, enjoying the smooth coolness of each spoonful. I am not sure which I loved most, the caramel sweetness of butterscotch, the soft blandness of vanilla, the darkness of chocolate, or the latter two swirled together, light and dark. Sometimes in the school cafeteria there would be pudding for dessert, dolloped in shallow beige plastic dishes, still tasting the same as the kind that came in plastic tubs. Instant pudding, always the same, which is part of its charm.
Much later, I found a recipe for chocolate cream pie in Gourmet magazine, with a crust of crushed chocolate wafers and a drift of softly whipped cream on top. Ignoring the crust and the whipped cream topping, I had all the ingredients for the pudding - there was bittersweet chocolate in the pantry and eggs and milk in the fridge and cornstarch in the spice drawer. Egg yolks were beaten with sugar and cornstarch and milk, the mixture all brought to a simmer and cooked over a low flame; once it thickened the melted chocolate would be mixed in, and everything gently pushed through a sieve to make sure that there were no lumps. Easy as falling off a chair.
I would make the pudding whenever I had a craving for something chocolate but didn't feel like baking - it was merely a few ingredients stirred together and cooked on the stove and left to cool and thicken in the fridge. I experimented with different brands of chocolate and varying percentages of cocoa content, from 100% Scharffen Berger to 61% Valhrona and just about everything in between. The recipe was easy to halve, so if I happened to have one small bar lying around it was enough to knock up a bit of pudding to eat with my elbows on the kitchen table while watching tv after dinner.
It is the Thursday of a long week, my throat is sore and I am in need of comfort. Time for chocolate pudding. There are bittersweet chocolate chips in the cupboard; no need to chop up a bar of chocolate with a serrated knife. I have, as usual, eggs and milk; it is the work of a few minutes to stir everything together in a small pan on the stove, to measure out chocolate chips in a bowl, to splash a bit of Grand Marnier into the pudding and whisk it in, a hint of orange perfuming the dark chocolate. The recipe is for a pudding filling, as for pie, so it is stiffer than pudding for eating, so I cut back on the cornstarch, trying something different. (Which is what cooking is all about).
Unlike the pudding that comes from a plastic tub at the supermarket or from a box mix, my chocolate pudding is never the same. It changes depending on the kind of chocolate I use, whether I have cut back on sugar or not, whether I have cut back on cornstarch or not, whether I have splashed in a bit of rum or Grand Marnier or perhaps Amaretto. Once I put too little cornstarch in and it became like a thick chocolate soup; another time I turned my attention away for a bit too long and it became a trifle lumpy. Never mind. I'll get it right, someday.
When I was small pudding came in plastic tubs, butterscotch or vanilla or chocolate, or multilayered chocolate and vanilla. They came in packs of six, held together by a cardboard holder. At lunch I would peel back the foil cover, lick the bit of pudding off the lid, eat the rest bit by bit, enjoying the smooth coolness of each spoonful. I am not sure which I loved most, the caramel sweetness of butterscotch, the soft blandness of vanilla, the darkness of chocolate, or the latter two swirled together, light and dark. Sometimes in the school cafeteria there would be pudding for dessert, dolloped in shallow beige plastic dishes, still tasting the same as the kind that came in plastic tubs. Instant pudding, always the same, which is part of its charm.
Much later, I found a recipe for chocolate cream pie in Gourmet magazine, with a crust of crushed chocolate wafers and a drift of softly whipped cream on top. Ignoring the crust and the whipped cream topping, I had all the ingredients for the pudding - there was bittersweet chocolate in the pantry and eggs and milk in the fridge and cornstarch in the spice drawer. Egg yolks were beaten with sugar and cornstarch and milk, the mixture all brought to a simmer and cooked over a low flame; once it thickened the melted chocolate would be mixed in, and everything gently pushed through a sieve to make sure that there were no lumps. Easy as falling off a chair.
I would make the pudding whenever I had a craving for something chocolate but didn't feel like baking - it was merely a few ingredients stirred together and cooked on the stove and left to cool and thicken in the fridge. I experimented with different brands of chocolate and varying percentages of cocoa content, from 100% Scharffen Berger to 61% Valhrona and just about everything in between. The recipe was easy to halve, so if I happened to have one small bar lying around it was enough to knock up a bit of pudding to eat with my elbows on the kitchen table while watching tv after dinner.
It is the Thursday of a long week, my throat is sore and I am in need of comfort. Time for chocolate pudding. There are bittersweet chocolate chips in the cupboard; no need to chop up a bar of chocolate with a serrated knife. I have, as usual, eggs and milk; it is the work of a few minutes to stir everything together in a small pan on the stove, to measure out chocolate chips in a bowl, to splash a bit of Grand Marnier into the pudding and whisk it in, a hint of orange perfuming the dark chocolate. The recipe is for a pudding filling, as for pie, so it is stiffer than pudding for eating, so I cut back on the cornstarch, trying something different. (Which is what cooking is all about).
Unlike the pudding that comes from a plastic tub at the supermarket or from a box mix, my chocolate pudding is never the same. It changes depending on the kind of chocolate I use, whether I have cut back on sugar or not, whether I have cut back on cornstarch or not, whether I have splashed in a bit of rum or Grand Marnier or perhaps Amaretto. Once I put too little cornstarch in and it became like a thick chocolate soup; another time I turned my attention away for a bit too long and it became a trifle lumpy. Never mind. I'll get it right, someday.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Memory exercise. (part three).
Another one of my earliest memories is from when I was perhaps three years old and my parents took me to Xi'an. I remember walking up a long, dusty hill that sloped gently up towards a tomb of some empress or emperor; I remember dragging my feet in the dirt and looking up at the ancient stone statues of horses and camels and soldiers that guarded the wide path. Sometimes in my dreams I would remember those statues, that dusty path. Nearly twenty years later I found myself there again, only that wide path had been neatly paved with stone and borders of greenery and flowers ran alongside those same ancient guardians. Tourists gathered from all over the world; more tombs had been unearthed, and new museums were built over the newer excavations. The main tomb is the one I remember, my three-year-old self hanging over the iron railing, looking down at the rows and rows of terra-cotta soldiers that had been uncovered after centuries of darkness. Centuries had changed them, worn the paint from their immortal faces, but twenty years had not dimmed my memory of them, although now I lean my elbows on the top of the railings and not the bottom rung.
A few years later we were back, in some seaside university town (the name of which I can't remember), of which I remember only that I was allowed to drink Coca-cola for the first time in the university dining hall, that the beds were shrouded in misty white veils of mosquito netting, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, and that I collected rocks on the beach, and slender, conical shells shaped like icicles, or unicorn horns. I wonder if we still have those rocks, or if they were discarded during the recent purge and subsequent sale of our family home. But then the rocks themselves are not important, only the memory of collecting them is.
On that same trip - or perhaps it was a year or so later - we made a trip to Shanghai to visit my mother's grandmother; I wouldn't know that it would be the last time I saw my great-grandmother, or that I would not return to Shanghai for another sixteen years. By then she already spent all her time in bed, or so it seemed to me, and all the family were crowded in the room to visit. She must have been close to ninety, but when I was a baby I had been in her care, with the help of my great-aunts, my mother's aunts. There are photographs of that visit, of me in my white t-shirt with its bright appliqué of an ice-cream cone, playing with my cousins (the children of my mother's cousins, I suppose) and with the pigeon that was soon to be killed and made into soup for our meal. Which gives new meaning to the term "playing with your food." I don't think I have eaten pigeon since that time, although I have eaten many a pan-roasted squab (baby pigeon) in Chinese restaurants here and there (halved and lacquered with some salty-sweet glaze). The meat was sweet and tender, falling off the bone into the hot broth.
When my father asks me what I remember of my childhood, this is what I tell him.
Another one of my earliest memories is from when I was perhaps three years old and my parents took me to Xi'an. I remember walking up a long, dusty hill that sloped gently up towards a tomb of some empress or emperor; I remember dragging my feet in the dirt and looking up at the ancient stone statues of horses and camels and soldiers that guarded the wide path. Sometimes in my dreams I would remember those statues, that dusty path. Nearly twenty years later I found myself there again, only that wide path had been neatly paved with stone and borders of greenery and flowers ran alongside those same ancient guardians. Tourists gathered from all over the world; more tombs had been unearthed, and new museums were built over the newer excavations. The main tomb is the one I remember, my three-year-old self hanging over the iron railing, looking down at the rows and rows of terra-cotta soldiers that had been uncovered after centuries of darkness. Centuries had changed them, worn the paint from their immortal faces, but twenty years had not dimmed my memory of them, although now I lean my elbows on the top of the railings and not the bottom rung.
A few years later we were back, in some seaside university town (the name of which I can't remember), of which I remember only that I was allowed to drink Coca-cola for the first time in the university dining hall, that the beds were shrouded in misty white veils of mosquito netting, which I thought was the coolest thing ever, and that I collected rocks on the beach, and slender, conical shells shaped like icicles, or unicorn horns. I wonder if we still have those rocks, or if they were discarded during the recent purge and subsequent sale of our family home. But then the rocks themselves are not important, only the memory of collecting them is.
On that same trip - or perhaps it was a year or so later - we made a trip to Shanghai to visit my mother's grandmother; I wouldn't know that it would be the last time I saw my great-grandmother, or that I would not return to Shanghai for another sixteen years. By then she already spent all her time in bed, or so it seemed to me, and all the family were crowded in the room to visit. She must have been close to ninety, but when I was a baby I had been in her care, with the help of my great-aunts, my mother's aunts. There are photographs of that visit, of me in my white t-shirt with its bright appliqué of an ice-cream cone, playing with my cousins (the children of my mother's cousins, I suppose) and with the pigeon that was soon to be killed and made into soup for our meal. Which gives new meaning to the term "playing with your food." I don't think I have eaten pigeon since that time, although I have eaten many a pan-roasted squab (baby pigeon) in Chinese restaurants here and there (halved and lacquered with some salty-sweet glaze). The meat was sweet and tender, falling off the bone into the hot broth.
When my father asks me what I remember of my childhood, this is what I tell him.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Memory excercise. (after Calvino, again).
One of my earliest memories of St. Louis (and of my life, for that is where memory begins for me) is when my parents made a snowman for me. I was two or three years old, and I couldn't go outside to play in the snow because I had a cold, so my parents built a snowman for me, with eyes and a nose and perhaps a hat and buttons. I remember being wrapped up and carried outside to see this snowman, twice my height, round and jolly and white. I loved the snow, which covered our garden and turned the back lawn into an endless smooth whiteness that stretched as far as the eye could see, interrupted by paw prints and blotches of dog pee. After we moved to Seattle it would be years before I saw that kind of snow again, after I went to university in upstate New York, and learned how to live with snow once more.
Then came spring, cherry blossoms on the university campus and crab-apple blossoms over the driveway, the back yard a green carpet stretching far into the distance (or so it seemed to my eyes). Rabbits lived in our herb garden, and one day, Megan, the golden retriever next door brought a baby rabbit to my mother, holding the shivering little ball of fur in her mouth, but gently. It spent the day in a shoebox in my father's study, resting on a little bed of socks or rags or something, and when I came home from preschool my mother set it free again in the garden. It was so tiny, smaller than my three-year-old (or perhaps I was four) hand, so fragile and soft when I touched it.
Summer was hot, the sun blazing down and baking the lawn into golden straw. We would go canoeing on the river (there is a photograph of me, aged three or thereabouts, sitting on a watermelon left to keep cool in the stream), hiking in mountains (which ones, I cannot remember) with picnic lunches of baguettes and slices of salami and prosciutto wrapped in brown paper from the delicatessen. The basement was a cool refuge with its cement floors and walls (although perhaps I have imagined all that); it seemed huge and dark and only faintly lit by bare bulbs dangling from the ceilings. I am not sure how much of this is my own memory or my imagining of how things might have been. Such is the way of memories.
One thing I do remember with absolute certainty is the fourth of July fireworks at the Arch, of sitting on a blanket between my parents - they tell me that I always had to be in the middle, and that even if they were holding hands I had to slip in between and take their hands in my small grasp - and putting those earplugs that are a little like miniature marshmallows in my ears to deafen the boom of the fireworks. That is one of my earliest memories of my childhood, of the darkness lit up briefly by the bright sparks of the fireworks exploding over our heads, of the noise muffled by those squishy little earplugs, of sitting between my parents, my arms around my knees or my hands in theirs. I think of that time whenever I watch fireworks now.
One of my earliest memories of St. Louis (and of my life, for that is where memory begins for me) is when my parents made a snowman for me. I was two or three years old, and I couldn't go outside to play in the snow because I had a cold, so my parents built a snowman for me, with eyes and a nose and perhaps a hat and buttons. I remember being wrapped up and carried outside to see this snowman, twice my height, round and jolly and white. I loved the snow, which covered our garden and turned the back lawn into an endless smooth whiteness that stretched as far as the eye could see, interrupted by paw prints and blotches of dog pee. After we moved to Seattle it would be years before I saw that kind of snow again, after I went to university in upstate New York, and learned how to live with snow once more.
Then came spring, cherry blossoms on the university campus and crab-apple blossoms over the driveway, the back yard a green carpet stretching far into the distance (or so it seemed to my eyes). Rabbits lived in our herb garden, and one day, Megan, the golden retriever next door brought a baby rabbit to my mother, holding the shivering little ball of fur in her mouth, but gently. It spent the day in a shoebox in my father's study, resting on a little bed of socks or rags or something, and when I came home from preschool my mother set it free again in the garden. It was so tiny, smaller than my three-year-old (or perhaps I was four) hand, so fragile and soft when I touched it.
Summer was hot, the sun blazing down and baking the lawn into golden straw. We would go canoeing on the river (there is a photograph of me, aged three or thereabouts, sitting on a watermelon left to keep cool in the stream), hiking in mountains (which ones, I cannot remember) with picnic lunches of baguettes and slices of salami and prosciutto wrapped in brown paper from the delicatessen. The basement was a cool refuge with its cement floors and walls (although perhaps I have imagined all that); it seemed huge and dark and only faintly lit by bare bulbs dangling from the ceilings. I am not sure how much of this is my own memory or my imagining of how things might have been. Such is the way of memories.
One thing I do remember with absolute certainty is the fourth of July fireworks at the Arch, of sitting on a blanket between my parents - they tell me that I always had to be in the middle, and that even if they were holding hands I had to slip in between and take their hands in my small grasp - and putting those earplugs that are a little like miniature marshmallows in my ears to deafen the boom of the fireworks. That is one of my earliest memories of my childhood, of the darkness lit up briefly by the bright sparks of the fireworks exploding over our heads, of the noise muffled by those squishy little earplugs, of sitting between my parents, my arms around my knees or my hands in theirs. I think of that time whenever I watch fireworks now.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Reading. Konigsberg.
My childhood holidays were often spent in New York, where my grandfather spent most of his time, or in Taipei, where he spent the rest of the time. When I think of New York I always think of wintertime, of bare trees along the avenues wrapped in twinkling lights, of the Russian Tea Room and ice skaters on the rink in the shadow of that giant Christmas tree of Rockefeller Center. I remember the living room of my grandfather's apartment, with its leather couches and marble-topped table, the mirrored wall that reflected my five-year-old self and the lights outside the windows. And I remember visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I have spent so many hours wandering through the halls. (Even now, after all these years, I still get lost in those endless rooms, one opening into another, and then another, drifting from the Dutch masters, past the musical instruments, into the annex of modern art).
I can't remember when I first read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but I have loved it for a long, long, time, and I think of it when I find myself in rooms full of centuries-old furniture arranged behind velvet ropes with little plaques telling us which famous king or queen or statesman slept beneath those elaborately carved canopies and brocade draperies. I feel a sneaking sense of envy for Claudia and Jamie, who run away to New York City and spend a week living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sleeping in a sixteenth-century bed that had been the "scene of the alleged murder of Amy Robsart, first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, later Earl of..." (Leicester). I remember eating lunch in the palm-shaded restaurant by the fountain where Claudia and Jamie took their baths (and collected spare change for food and other necessities of life). I remember those galleries of Egyptian treasures unearthed from ancient tombs where the children joined another school trip to learn about mummies.
My New York is a decade older than the one the Kincaids ran away to; the automat where they ate cereal and cheese sandwiches had disappeared, and my allowance was somewhat more generous than fifty cents a week. (Now, of course, fifty cents wouldn't buy a bottle of water). And I was an only child; who could I take with me when I ran away from home, beside my stuffed animals? The story isn't so much about the running away as it is about Claudia's need for something that is entirely her own, that isn't about her role in the family as the eldest, the straight-A student, the good girl. She needs, as Mrs. Frankweiler sees, to have a secret. In order to return home to Greenwich she has to be able to return a different person. But she brings her brother Jamie with her; she shares her secret with him. They become a team, sharing money, sharing a bed, sharing the search for the truth about the angel statue that leads them to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and her secret that becomes theirs.
Konigsberg, E. L. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Dell, 1977. pp 38, 149.
My childhood holidays were often spent in New York, where my grandfather spent most of his time, or in Taipei, where he spent the rest of the time. When I think of New York I always think of wintertime, of bare trees along the avenues wrapped in twinkling lights, of the Russian Tea Room and ice skaters on the rink in the shadow of that giant Christmas tree of Rockefeller Center. I remember the living room of my grandfather's apartment, with its leather couches and marble-topped table, the mirrored wall that reflected my five-year-old self and the lights outside the windows. And I remember visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I have spent so many hours wandering through the halls. (Even now, after all these years, I still get lost in those endless rooms, one opening into another, and then another, drifting from the Dutch masters, past the musical instruments, into the annex of modern art).
I can't remember when I first read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, but I have loved it for a long, long, time, and I think of it when I find myself in rooms full of centuries-old furniture arranged behind velvet ropes with little plaques telling us which famous king or queen or statesman slept beneath those elaborately carved canopies and brocade draperies. I feel a sneaking sense of envy for Claudia and Jamie, who run away to New York City and spend a week living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sleeping in a sixteenth-century bed that had been the "scene of the alleged murder of Amy Robsart, first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, later Earl of..." (Leicester). I remember eating lunch in the palm-shaded restaurant by the fountain where Claudia and Jamie took their baths (and collected spare change for food and other necessities of life). I remember those galleries of Egyptian treasures unearthed from ancient tombs where the children joined another school trip to learn about mummies.
My New York is a decade older than the one the Kincaids ran away to; the automat where they ate cereal and cheese sandwiches had disappeared, and my allowance was somewhat more generous than fifty cents a week. (Now, of course, fifty cents wouldn't buy a bottle of water). And I was an only child; who could I take with me when I ran away from home, beside my stuffed animals? The story isn't so much about the running away as it is about Claudia's need for something that is entirely her own, that isn't about her role in the family as the eldest, the straight-A student, the good girl. She needs, as Mrs. Frankweiler sees, to have a secret. In order to return home to Greenwich she has to be able to return a different person. But she brings her brother Jamie with her; she shares her secret with him. They become a team, sharing money, sharing a bed, sharing the search for the truth about the angel statue that leads them to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and her secret that becomes theirs.
Konigsberg, E. L. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Dell, 1977. pp 38, 149.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Eating. olives.
I think it was Johnny Carson who said that "happiness is finding two olives in your martini when you're hungry." (Even if he didn't say it, it sounds like something he would have said). I have never quite gotten the hang of martinis (or pimento-stuffed green olives) but I am never happier than when I have a little bowl of olives in front of me to nibble on as I putter around the kitchen or wait for my meal to arrive while out for dinner. I have been known to eat an entire can of olives by myself and was once severely chastised for eating nearly all the olives on the table at lunch by my host, who was perhaps hoping to snag at least a few for herself. When I was quite small I would stick those jumbo black olives, with their neat little holes, on each of my fingers and eat them slowly, one by one, thinking of that scene in Beverly Cleary's The Luckiest Girl when Shelly, just arrived in California from Portland, is given a fresh olive just off the tree by Katie, and excitedly bites into it, only to find that uncured olives are bitter and inedible. (Who was the first person to think that something so bitterly unappealing could be turned into something so addictively delicious?).
As a child, lunch was often a tuna-salad sandwich made with sliced olives, cans of which were always on hand in the pantry. These were still those salty yet bland California olives from the supermarket. Later I would discover the saltier, more intense Italian olives that came scattered across rumpled sheets of foccacia at the Italian restaurant we often went to. Those same olives - Kalamata or Niçoise or Ligurian, dark and intense, with a faint bitterness that made them absolutely addictive - would turn up in pasta Puttanesca or swirled through those rough-hewn loaves of bread (Alan Richman wrote that he would complain to waiters at so-called Mediterranean restaurants whenever he found olives in the bread, which he found tiresome) which have become so ubiquitous throughout the past decade or so (even during the low-carb rage that swept the nation). Personally I rather liked the excitement of finding olives in my bread, but then, I love them; they add flavor and depth to whatever dish they grace, a pasta salad or a plate of Chicken Marbella, where the bright spark of olives contrasts with the soft sweetness of prunes.
In the end olives need nothing but themselves, a small handful in a bowl, next to the bread and butter, perhaps with some pickled onions and mushrooms or a plate of radishes. In Europe the guidebooks tell you to refuse this small offering (generally it comes as a small cover charge), but I could never refuse those crisp rolls or roughly-crusted bread, the sweet butter, the tiny dark olives marinated with herbs or the large, smooth green olives with their faintly briney perfume. It awakened the appetite, left you hungering for the meal to come.
I think it was Johnny Carson who said that "happiness is finding two olives in your martini when you're hungry." (Even if he didn't say it, it sounds like something he would have said). I have never quite gotten the hang of martinis (or pimento-stuffed green olives) but I am never happier than when I have a little bowl of olives in front of me to nibble on as I putter around the kitchen or wait for my meal to arrive while out for dinner. I have been known to eat an entire can of olives by myself and was once severely chastised for eating nearly all the olives on the table at lunch by my host, who was perhaps hoping to snag at least a few for herself. When I was quite small I would stick those jumbo black olives, with their neat little holes, on each of my fingers and eat them slowly, one by one, thinking of that scene in Beverly Cleary's The Luckiest Girl when Shelly, just arrived in California from Portland, is given a fresh olive just off the tree by Katie, and excitedly bites into it, only to find that uncured olives are bitter and inedible. (Who was the first person to think that something so bitterly unappealing could be turned into something so addictively delicious?).
As a child, lunch was often a tuna-salad sandwich made with sliced olives, cans of which were always on hand in the pantry. These were still those salty yet bland California olives from the supermarket. Later I would discover the saltier, more intense Italian olives that came scattered across rumpled sheets of foccacia at the Italian restaurant we often went to. Those same olives - Kalamata or Niçoise or Ligurian, dark and intense, with a faint bitterness that made them absolutely addictive - would turn up in pasta Puttanesca or swirled through those rough-hewn loaves of bread (Alan Richman wrote that he would complain to waiters at so-called Mediterranean restaurants whenever he found olives in the bread, which he found tiresome) which have become so ubiquitous throughout the past decade or so (even during the low-carb rage that swept the nation). Personally I rather liked the excitement of finding olives in my bread, but then, I love them; they add flavor and depth to whatever dish they grace, a pasta salad or a plate of Chicken Marbella, where the bright spark of olives contrasts with the soft sweetness of prunes.
In the end olives need nothing but themselves, a small handful in a bowl, next to the bread and butter, perhaps with some pickled onions and mushrooms or a plate of radishes. In Europe the guidebooks tell you to refuse this small offering (generally it comes as a small cover charge), but I could never refuse those crisp rolls or roughly-crusted bread, the sweet butter, the tiny dark olives marinated with herbs or the large, smooth green olives with their faintly briney perfume. It awakened the appetite, left you hungering for the meal to come.
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