game on: the locust salon

lalage performing at karnatic lab in amsterdam--with pre-show dutch yahoos & steven ricks

woke up this morning & cooked.

it felt good.

here's what i made:

lemon tart (from the chez panisse dessert cookbook given to me by me dear friend and kitchen mentor, the artist alice dubiel)

red lentil dal

cucumber raita

hummus & hand made pita

this is all in honor of tonight's locust salon.  i wanted to go all out because

c. has composed a set of the most beautiful bassas which he's playing tonight with drummer jesse quebbeman-turley & bassist zoe jorgenson,

our piano's tuned,

we have some new lalage sounds,

& it's spring time.

every change of season sends me to the kitchen to cook & the notebook for new poems.

that's my inspiration for today.

tonight's outfit is yet to be determined.

sabbath schooling

 

to continue the burlesque show of GITP (legs! legs! legs!), here are my legs walking themselves to church

 we were schooled on this radically beautiful text today in an excellent and strong sermon:

love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

this seems so hard to do.

i think, though, that it is one of those challenging postures that, once you achieve it, if only for a moment, you'll realize is the easiest thing in the world.

that continuously practicing and falling will take you to a point, finally, where, without effort, you are suddenly filled with love, hate falls away, and, i imagine, you are filled with the most expansively beautiful liberation a person could ever experience.


what is the practice that gets us to this place?

i want to hear your methods and inspirations, and would love some more sunday school in my life from diverse persons and readers.

the tulips, who lead such wildly brilliant and brief lives, are up

 i'm committing to a week full of vegetables.

what's on your menu this week?

le petit déjeuner, chez moi

legwear: bare, in honor of 83 degrees

inspiration: sermon on the mount

looking forward: to monday's guest blogger

mattheus passion for good friday

for more than twenty years, c & i have tried to listen to bach's st. matthew's passion on good friday.  once, on a good friday many years ago, we saw it live at st. thomas' cathedral in nyc.

c. found this beautiful excerpt for you to listen to.  it's an outrageously perfect piece, and a wonderful way to reflect on the cycle of life, death, and rebirth that is so much in evidence in the wild and abundant burgeoning taking place with and without our efforts to make it so.

let the table speak, dawg: poetry & hot dogs in provo

today was just.

totally rad.

& i don't say that lightly.

sandals--ready for spring break, still

totally rad day--eating dogs in the parking lot

1)  i did my first recording session in studio y with c.  it was one of the hardest and best experiences of my life.  i had to be a beginner again, and it was so good for me.  i probably don't have time, and you probably don't want to read 5000 words on this topic, but let me briefly summarize.  have you ever heard recordings of yourself?  it's painful.  and, while i love to sing and think i have some things to offer as a vocalist, i think of myself as a writer, and today i realized how much i have to learn.  the weird thing is, those four hours taught me more than years of singing, practicing, lessons, etc.  it was a baptism of fire.  for the first two hours i wanted to scream and run out of the building.  i had to squelch my pride, ego, perfectionism, etc., and that alone was worth the pain.  i coached myself through it by using all the stuff i tell my students about writing.  so i tried to practice what i preach.  i feel real good right now, in case you can't tell.

 2) went to dean's sweatshop yoga class and sweated.  we need to sweat more, don't we?  that made me feel real good, too.

3) rewarded ourselves with hot dogs from j-dawgs.  this place is a provo classic (for a list of more provo classics, check out this post.) j-dawgs is a local joint that started out as a hot dog stand near campus.  cheap, tasty, local, and simple.  they make their own sausages in salt lake, and their own special sauce, and commission homemade buns from shirley's (another provo classic).  you can order your dogs "g", "pg", "pg-13", or "r", in a nod to mormon culture.  i get my dog "pg-13"--onions, sauce (i go light on the sauce), a great pickle, and banana peppers.  i embellish with a lot of spicy mustard.  "r" is just like pg-13 only with jalapenos.

you know who really got me into hot dogs?  one of our fabulous guest bloggers, marni.  go check her out if you haven't yet.

4)  posted my guest prompt for poetry month at book balloon (i'm guest prompting there each wednesday).  you should really register for book ballon and participate in the daily poem prompts on their forum--poet janet mcadams is posting daily instructions, and she'll also give you some feedback, as will other writers on the forum, so it's like a free poetry workshop.

i'm also posting today's guest prompt here, in case you want to try it.  the poets who posted their poems on book balloon came up with some really lovely pieces.

i'm gonna do my poem about tonight's meal at j-dawgs:  it was warm but cooling off as night fell, a full moon was floating over the mountains, sitting on a cast-iron table in an asphalt parking lot (reminded me of another great night in a parking lot--shakespeare in the parking lot with julie).

here's the prompt.  try it, and post it in comments if you want.

Let the Table Speak

By Lara Candland

I’m taking the idea from today’s prompt from one of my favorite poems, Li-Young Lee’s “Eating Together.”  In this poem, Lee uses a very spare and precise description of a family meal after his father’s death.  His poem is completely void of any “telling”—he never says they are grieving, or that the family misses their father, or even that he has died.  And yet we know all this because of what and how the family eats:

Eating Together

By Li-Young Lee

In the steamer is the trout  
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.  
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,  
brothers, sister, my mother who will  
taste the sweetest meat of the head,  
holding it between her fingers  
deftly, the way my father did  
weeks ago. Then he lay down  
to sleep like a snow-covered road  
winding through pines older than him,  
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

Here are your instructions:

1)    Describe a meal being eaten (it can be real or imagined).
2)    Focus on WHAT is being eaten and HOW it is being eaten.
3)    Try to avoid using abstract words or telling readers what the emotional tone of the meal is.  Let the WHAT and the HOW and the concrete details of the poem, like description of the food being eaten, the smells, sights, and sounds of the meal, and the characters present at the table (or car, or picnic blanket, or hogan floor, etc.), speak for themselves. 
4)    For example, if a food makes you feel sick or sad or confused, don’t tell that in the poem, but try to convey the sadness or confusion through the drab color of the tablecloth, or the smell of  the blown out candle at the table.  If it makes you feel happy, try to convey that with the taste and look of a bright yellow lemon, etc.
5)    You might want to try your hand at Lee’s minimalist style.  Notice how much emotional content he wrings out of those twelve short lines.  Can you do more with less?  That’s the real challenge and joy of this poem.

j-dawg bliss

polish dawg, pg-13

legwear: yoga pants & new sandals

inspiration:  the beginner's mind

looking forward: family time in az.

girl in tight place needs sleeves made of tights

first of all:

it's spring so

yay!

like edna st. vincent millay says:

april
comes in like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

or

like gerard manley hopkins says:

what is all this juice 
and all this joy?

& tonight

i'm reading a poem about spring

with the byu chamber orchestra

& i say:

bury me 

in the stream

of your e, spring.

*

i needed a sleeve for my dress

tonight & i remembered

my friend andi's

sleeves made of tights.

(andi's a genius

& never wears anything

straight off the rack--it's always

tweaked or belted

or de-sleeved or re-sleeved

or lengthened or shortened.

girl has vision.)

so i found this

totally precious

youtube of a canadian

goth mom

making sleeves for

"under your corset, or dress

or whatever."

it's pure

genius, pure juice and joy,

and idiotic blooming

and bursting &

busting out of winter.

(i mean, she's

completely deadpan,

but i know  the bubbling

spring is in there somewhere.)


*i'm thinking of julie today as she says farewell to her father. what a hard day.  i hope it's also beautiful for her.  love to you and your family, julie.

looking forward: first week of spring

forsythia inside

 crazy how one day i looked outside and there a was a forsythia bush causing all kinds of bright yellow drama.  a flaming bush, the head of a troll doll--flourescence surrounded by brown. 

forsythia outside

here's what i'm looking foward to for my first week of spring:

1)  a renewed commitment to my daily poetic practice.  i'm gonna devise something cool, enjoyable, and new.  i always want to know what kinds of daily practices other people have in their lives--artistic, spiritual, or simply hedonistic.  so if anyone wants to share, you'll make my day.

2)  cooking dutch.  the sunday ny times was irritating the crap out of me today with its full page feature on evita and its devotion to mid-cult literature by annoying white dudes the book review (could anything be less aesthetically or culturally relevant than a revival of evita?), but there are two white dudes at the times who never fail to NOT disappoint.  bill cunningham and mark bittman.  i think it's because they are interested in the people, not merely the elite.  of course, being situated in ny means you have to take into account the elite, but those two dudes don't forget that ny is made up of mostly non-elite, and most trends are formed by people on the street.  bittman's article today on dutch comfort food, a people's food if ever there was such a cuisine, is an example of this.  i want to make the caramelized endive soup and the buttermilk pudding.  okay.  you might say that caramelized endive is a little elitist, but the preparation and ingredients remain basic and pretty inexpensive, and a buttermilk pudding with raisins is pure dutch milkmaid.

3) tights giveaway!  i can't be clever, you might say.  or i can't wear holey tights, you might say.  but let me ask:  are you sure?  or, let me ask this:  who in your life would think you were the raddest uncle, mother, friend, sister, piano teacher, etc, etc. if you gave them a pair of holey tights? who?  i'm sure there's someone.  so leave GITP a comment!  we heart you and your comments.

4) going to the shoulder doctor to figure out how to fix it.  i hope.

5)  catching up on all my work so i can take spring break with my kids by a pool in arizona, surrounded by cousins, tamales, spring desert flowers, cacti, and mostly just a lot of sun.

6) our first guest boy blogger tomorrow.  he's uber-rad.  can't wait.

7)  the premiere of c's piece, how to be spring for tenor and chamber orch.  i wrote the text and will read sections of the poem during each movement.  okay, i'm not a soprano soloist in front of an orchestra, but  this is probably the closest i'll ever get.  pretend diva for a day. & plus it's a piece about spring.

8)  reading my poetry students' first poems of the term.

9)  hanging out with my boise nephews and my parents.

10) watching rude boy with c.  it came in the mail from netflix and we haven't had a chance to watch it yet.  hoping to get some rad inspiration from the clash.

 i heart lucille clifton a lot.  don't you?

spring song

the green of Jesus

is breaking the ground

and the sweet

smell of delicious Jesus

is opening the house and

the dance of Jesus music

has hold of the air and

the world is turning

in the body of Jesus and

the future is possible

looking forward: sunday night simpson's watching with the fam

legwear:  not sure yet

inspiration: bright yellow blossoms

DOUBLE tights give away, girls and boys

holey tights for a warm day, or layered over another pair for a chilly day

sheer blue micro-netted tights with a wild rose pattern

1)  enter by 31 march at midnight by leaving a comment.

2)  we're changing up the rules a bit for march.  this is not a random drawing--this contest is MERIT BASED.  the cleverest comment wins,  and "cleverness" will be determined by an esteemed guest judge selected from our pool of rad guest bloggers.

3)  you can enter once for each pair of tights.  we will select two winners.

i went to the sock store looking for daffodil yellow tights (in honor of julie) for spring, but alas there were no yellow tights to be found.  i did find the beautiful pair of royal blue tights on the right (sheer with a micro-netting and a wild rose pattern) and, as i was exiting the store, saw those rad holey tights on the mannequin.  on a whim, i went back in and bought them.

i thought they looked like they could give you some room to breathe.

like you wouldn't have to sit down on the sidewalk (like julie did last week) in front of the guggenheim and peel them off when the day warmed up.

or, as we are prone to freak spring snowstorms in utah, you could layer them over some other rad patterned tight if you encountered a winter spring day.

plus, as we've discussed, march seems to be a difficult month for a lot of us generally.  like hairdresser on fire--check her out.  to get through march this year, she's accessorizing her hair every day.  to get through march i'm cooking like a crazy woman.    to get through march. . .  i'll let julie tell you herself how she's getting through her particularly hellish march.

march is an exciting and dreary, sunny and gray, helluva bi-polar month.  it has holes in it.  one day, a magritte blue sky.  one day a freezing windy rain.  one day optimism, one day dread that you'll never make it to summer.

but you will.  and you'll be extra rad in a pair of GITP tights.

and we'll feel extra rad reading your comments.

so write something for our comments section, babies!  write!

ego work assessment

a student's awesome outfit/every day dressing/i LUV red shoes

following julie's example, i went back to january's initial posts to get a handle on where i am in working on the stuff i set out to do at the year's start.  the first thing that struck me was this:  julie's street fashion photos rock!  if you haven't read the whole blog, scroll through the photos and you'll be really inspired to get your game on in your daily dressing.  (i happen to think every day dressing is important and can make your life a lot more beautiful, no matter what your circumstance.)

the second thing was this:  i've written a lot about ego, and that seems to be the emerging theme of this year.  how much do i do things in order to fufill certain egoistic expectations and how much do i do things because they're good and true?  i set out to make this year about the latter thing.  not so sure which is dominating in the battle between a life that is lived for the wrong reasons and an authentically lived life.  i'm on day two of my fast, and it feels great.  i started it for twin reasons, one of them egoistic and one of them in an attempt to be a better, kinder, more humble person, more in tune with the beauty and goodness in the world.  both reasons are still there, coexisting fairly well, i must say.

i wonder how often other people think about the situation in which we humans find ourselves, trying to sort through seeming contradictions between motivation and action--how one can be bad and one can be good, both at the same time.

but here's what i set down in january:

1) something meaningful to write about everyday:  this has actually come to pass.  writing something every day has made the day more meaningful.  julie and i have both managed to post something every single day of 2012 so far.

2) every day beauty: the blog has been a sort of gratitude journal, and it's helped me realize, like ayun halliday said in her guest post on monday, that i have nothing at all to complain about.  it's made me more observant of, say,
the awesome outfits my students wear every day,
the daffodils under my window surrounded by snow,
the AMAZING mountains my home snuggles up against,
the fleetingly beautiful holes in my seven-year old's smile,
& the more than bountiful circumstances i was born to.

those are the important items from my list.  i feel good about that, and inspired to keep consciously working, at least until the summer equinox!

legwear:  sweats.  but i'm about to change into argyle knee socks.

looking forward: to folded laundry, graded midterms

inspiration:  gratitude enhanced by hunger

p.s. i'm reading rebecca lindenberg's column this week on mormon-belt food.  loved her post on funeral potatoes and community.  that tension again between belonging and outsiderness that may or may not be adequately smoothed over by the balm of creamy condensed soups.  i happen to live in the heart of the heart of zion, and this tension exists every day, many times a day.

Equinox Assessment

First cone of the season at Ray's Candy Store on Avenue A 

It's the Spring Equinox! Yeah!--although I wonder if we've heard it given our wimpy little winter. Now it's been 2012 for almost three months, and I thought I'd take a minute to see what I've done that I wanted to do when I was thinking about this year--the night Lara and I started this blog--on Dec 31st. 

Have I checked anything off my list? 

 Where are my New Year's Resolutions anyway? I just checked two different places!--help! 

 Ok, here's what I remember: 

1. More yoga! Really? I've only been to one, maybe two formal yoga classes this year. I practice at home, but it's not the same. 

2. Write and submit fiction. I've written. I really have, but have I submitted anything anywhere? No. And I just heard some disappointing news in this regard about an hour ago. (March, you are a killing me! Really!!) 

3. Try and get out of my tight place and thinking less tightly. Well, more yoga would help with this. But I am trying to breathe more consciously and more deeply. And I am keeping up with a journal, and trying to be more conscious of how I move through the day. 

4. More love.  Just like the sign above says!  Need to work on this.

5. More light!  Needs work!

6. More tights! I actually did well with this one! On Sunday, I wore my yellow tights. I saw daffodils everywhere. Today, however, it was so warm that I peeled off my leggings on a public sidewalk. 

 On January 1, 2012 I went to hear this singer/songwriter Joseph Arthur play. He read his New Year's resolutions--numbering about 40--from the stage. One of his was: "Let dreams learn how to be true." This I'm definitely going to work on for the next three months. 

 What about you?

practically my number one fav thing in provo

is clifford family farms.  their eggs are utterly delicious.  one year they were giving away free duck eggs.  i've never had such perfect baked goods as the ones i made with my *free* duck eggs.

sometimes i get lazy/cheap and buy eggs at the store.  forgive me.

when spring comes, though, i go "oh, yeah, eggs!"  and i always want spring greens and asparagus and artichokes with poached eggs  or hollandaise or hand made mayonnaise.  and i want the egg and the vegetables to be of equal quality and freshness.

so i repent of my factory eggs and head to clifford family farms.

the color of the shells, the freshness of the yolk, the flavor of the egg take this beautiful little package to a whole 'nother level of egginess.

sexy close-up.  wish you could see the green color better.

 i'm thinking of making eggs benedict this weekend.  or shirred eggs.

what's your favorite egg dish?

how to get eggs:  walk in to ante-room any time of day or night.  select eggs, duck eggs, greens, raspberries or berkshire pork.  leave your money in the little bank next to the fridge.

(another rad thing about provo is the backyard chicken ordinance.  me, i'm good with buying eggs from the farmers.  but glad folks can have their own chickens here if they want.)

Boy and Egg

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened rye grass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

legwear:  grey leggings

inspiration: the color of eggshells: seafoam, ivory, cream & the deep goldenrod of a fresh yolk

looking forward:  to seeing my mommy and daddy on sunday!

list of spring: e.e. cummings--goblin valley--the anti-sonnet

we go to goblin valley every winter when it's just about spring

i'm in list mode.

lists seem very spring-like to me, when sustained thought becomes suddenly

uncontrollably

difficult,

and the schizophrenia of the season is reflected in the skipping from thought to thought, the move from thick grey tights covered in over the knee stockings and boots (what i wore last night to a friend's snowy cabin in provo canyon)

to bare legs and a skirt (what i wore yesterday afternoon)

to tights and sandals and a dress (what i wore to church this morning)

within one twenty four hour period--

here are ten things that mean spring's coming in utah:

1)  a day trip to goblin valley

2) teaching my two-week locavore cooking class at walden--here's a post from our blog from march 2010

3) e.e. cummings ((the very anti-sonnet of him))

(speaking of sonnets, read this hilarious onion article on the n.e.a.'s funding of the 1.3 million dollar sonnet)

4) eggs, asparagus, and strawberries

5) planning our annual spring break trip to visit my peeps in arizona

6) last year i planted a garden for the first time--so maybe gardening will become a permanent feature of spring? i'm not so good at this, but maybe i'll become?

7) writing more--i get feverish with ideas this time of year

8) sandals--i start looking at sandals obsessively--my favorite footwear--so glad we can wear them with tights these days--a perfect hybrid of seasons--and the girls in locavore always start busting them out during our two-week march inter-session--

9) snowy mountains/sunny valley--i love a sunny day over a white mountain

10) shedding punctuation--trying to avoid the closure of the period in favor of the freedom of the dickinsonian dash, the cummingsesque airy spaces -- the freedom of the bare leg at last--

                    --something like     

                                                  this    cummings   here:

[in Just-]

[in Just-]

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee

legwear:  charcoal tights, black wedge sandals

inspirations:  dashes and air

looking forward:  after church road trip to some small utah town