evolution

I wrote my first novel during 10th grade. I’d started and abandoned others, but the first one I completed, I started a week before tenth grade and finished around the end of the school year. Every night, before I went to sleep, I pulled out five subject spiral notebook, 6″x8″ or so, with the bright blue cover, and I wrote some. All one long narrative, worked on almost nightly.

As you can guess, I had neither a rolicking social life nor much homework at the time.

The novel is unnamed. I think of it as my preseason of writing, my practice round. It’s full of unrequited love between 16 year-olds, a sci-fi twist halfway through that’s a little jarring, cliches, and awkwardness. But I wrote it. I put in some great percentage of my 10,000 hours (malcolm gladwell) toward greatness.

The second novel took twice as long. I started in October of 2006 and finished in November 2008. During these two years, I studied in Hungary; spent a frantic semester taking a lot of classes, writing a lot of papers, trying not to be madly in love with a guy who wasn’t interested, and trying to save the environment; spent a very solitary summer in an apartment with no air conditioning in north carolina; survived my senior year of college with a 4.0 and a rolicking social life; met and dated and broke up with my first real boyfriend; met a young man who would become my fiance (who i would break up with a few months after i finished the novel); and worked a few jobs. It’s amazing the novel got finished at all, given the fits and starts. In fact, I’ll bet an absurdly large percentage was written in Nov/Dec of 06 and Sep-Nov of 08. The novel was written very tightly, chronologically, with a strong narrator – otherwise I would have lost the thread, I’m sure.

It’s a pretty good novel. Needs some editing to be great, and I go back and forth as to whether I’m past it and should move on or I ought to go back and put in the work…

Now, I’m on the third, 40,000 words into it. It’s been 23 months since I first started planning it. Those 23 months included: breaking up with that previously mentioned fiancé, moving out, moving again and getting a new job, meeting a new man, moving across state lines, getting completely distracted by knitting & quilting to the point where I hardly wrote for months on end, volunteering at bonnaroo, hiking in the woods, moving to massachusetts, getting married, getting a dog, and getting a job. That being said, the muses didn’t give to me a tight, single narrator. I’ve got multiple main characters with their own focuses and backgrounds. The story has come in pieces, a vignette at a time. I still don’t know how it’ll all be organized in the end.

Because of the chaos, both in and out of the novel, trying to work on it has been a challenge.

But thanks to nanowrimo (and I’ve only done 7,000 words of it. Not nearly what I should have at this point), I’m getting into the story. Links are appearing. Plot lines are falling into place. Hell, the plot is taking to place – I’ve finally forced myself to plunge in to straight chronology (while still switching from voice to voice). I’m realizing how I managed to write a novel in a year the first time – I never got out of it, never lost the rhythm. It was always there. There weren’t parties or papers to write or boyfriends. When I got into bed, there was just the novel. Which will never happen again. Even so, I can find a way to work on it every day.

And it’s fun. It’s a real world. The characters are evolving without feeling disjointed.

Yesterday I was offered a new job. 2-3 shifts a week at a coffeeshop. On top of the 2 days a week at the tea shop, a potential baking business, a sunday afternoon/ evening always spent at my mother-in-law’s, and the crafting/cleaning/cooking of day to day. The money will be good, as will getting out of the house.

But endangering my finally settled schedule of writing in earnest every other day and jotting a few things the rest of the time makes me anxious. It’s something I’ll need to work on, I know.

 

Hmmm…

let the words fly

More nanowrimo ramblings…

If I were seriously attempting the 50,000 words, I’d be behind. By half. Thank God I’m not. But I do have 6,000 words more than I did a week again, which is not nearly such a depressing way of expressing the same things. And, I think, because I haven’t pounded through twice that many in the same time, I’m quite pleased with what I have. It will be edited. It has rendered unnecessary a section I wrote months ago, part of it may be stricken itself, and it’s led me to a potential plot turn that’s puzzling me. And all of that is actually rather exciting.

Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I made the attempt to write in public, in the coffeeshop down the street. Partially because I wanted a place without the distractions of Internet to peruse (I intentionally did not take note of the posted wireless password) or novels to read, partially because I wanted to get out of the house on such a dark, rainy, cold day. And it worked surprisingly well. I settled into a nook near the window with my americano and a mealy lemon bar (not to be ordered again) and surged through 2100 words in two hours.

This morning, because daylight savings woke me up an hour earlier than usual, I used the time to poke around google’s results for ‘nanowrimo’ – news, blogs, etc. Apparently the editorial flying around is one on slate (which really doesn’t need any more press from me. you can find it easily if you like.)  in which one writer claims that the challenge is ridiculous and harmful – tons of bad books being written, people wasting time, people not reading, etc, and also that today’s writers don’t read. In the week since it’s been written, over 200 comments have appeared on the article and google only knows how many blogs and tweets have referenced it. People get snarky when you challenge their nanowrimo.

I agree that there are probably a lot of bad books being written this month that will never ever be properly edited. I agree that some readers may be pushing aside their reading to write. And I know that a lot of people use this month as an excuse to say they’re writing a novel and think they’re writing a novel, but end up drinking a lot of coffee and typing a good number of words and having a grand time.

But that last bit is the point. Of all the people I know taking on this adventure, no one has mentioned plans to send it out to every publisher and her mother at the end. It’s a lark. A challenge. A way to blow off steam from a bad job or a method of utilizing time while unemployed. Yes, many of them may send them out eventually, but that doesn’t seem to be the point. Those who do send out bad manuscripts and bad cover letters will find their work in the reject pile before any junior editor hits sentence three. And all of that creative, inventive, driven energy flowing around the world is good for the people who are planning on editing and sending out and making something of their few small words.

It basically boils down to this (for me): Am I interested in reading 99% of what’s being written this month? Probably not. But that other 1% could include dozens of amazing short stories, novels, novellas that will top bestseller lists in 2-5 years, that will live on afterward. And maybe the energy of that 99% typing/scribbling away is just what I need to put mine in that 1% of work that Makes It. It’s going well so far…

reading, and spending, like a writer

Part of nanowrimo is the inevitable procrastination. Mine tends to come more at the beginning than in the middle, really, as though I’m not sure I’m ready for it. I tend to read far more when I’m ‘writing’ than I do at any other time. I read books on writing. I read novels. I read new articles. Anything, really, to avoid putting words on the page.

This time, the distraction of choice seems to be the Little House books. I’m just starting “Little Town on the Prairie,” having read the first six books over the course of the past few days. It’s a tempting place to be, out on the prairie, when my present to-do list includes: get a new passport (both for the change from maiden to married name and because my dog ate a corner of it), change from maiden to married names on my social security card, credit card and bank card, deposit my paycheck,  pay monthly bills, go to work twice a week (and I’m lucky it’s only that), etc, etc. I finally, after nearly three months, switched from an NC to a Mass drivers license yesterday.

Caroline Ingalls didn’t deal with all of this paperwork, all of these silly tasks. She raised her girls. She cared for her husband. Her days were spent on making bread, quilting, knitting, cleaning. Yes, there were grasshopper plagues and blizzards and sickness. Yes, times could be hard. But every small good thing was an overwhelming joy: new calico, Christmas candy, white flour. No one was expected to have massive amounts of objects for entertainment or showing off: they had a few dresses, a few books, some fiddling and singing in the evenings.

And for the most part, my life is a modernized version of that. I cook, I bake. I read for myself and to my husband. I have a few choice objects. I take great pleasure in a new skein of yarn, a bar of chocolate. And sometimes, life is hard. No, we don’t face quite the hardships the Ingalls family did, but we are sitting right on the edge of financial comfort. We don’t have money to spend on eating out, save for our Friday night pizza (eggplant and roasted garlic, $12 for a large that we probably ought not finish in one evening but always do) and one other treat (breakfast at a diner, indian take-out, nothing extravagant). We can’t afford to go away on the weekends, unless it’s to camp. We don’t want for anything, but we cannot add anything else. It’s life in a balance.

Which is the way, too, that writing ought to be. Not wanting for anything, but nothing superfluous. It should walk the narrow line of just enough.

I picked up from the library “Reading like a Writer,” by Francine Prose, a book that’s been recommended countless times but always sounded like something for school children to me. I’m only a chapter in, but already it’s struck me with the obvious fact I’ve forgotten of late: every word matters. When reading, when writing, every single word. Not just unto itself or its sentence, but unto the whole story. She talks about learning to do a close reading by looking for any mention of seeing, light, dark, perception, blindness in “Oedipus Rex” and “King Lear,” about the treasure hunt it seemed to be, about the way the inevitable physical blinding of characters was hinted at time and again.

I do pay attention to every word as I’m writing, but usually only in the context of its sentence. It would be like only paying attention to my spending of money in the context of a single day. Sometimes, that works. Sometimes, it’s all you need. But you can’t rely on that. You need to think of the overarching spending of money, or words. You need to know how it all comes together at the end of the month/year/chapter/novel. You need to come out in the black, but you don’t want to have sacrificed too much to get there.

I’m thinking about going back to the first novel I wrote. Well, the second. The first is a bit of a mess, having been written in almost exactly a year by a lonely fifteen-going-on-sixteen year-old. But the second, “To Beat the Ground,” is the one that I’m proud of, the one I want to be the first the world sees. I have it all printed and bound, a gift I gave to my husband last Christmas. I’m thinking I’ll start opening to random pages for close edits. I’m thinking I’ll start digging into every word in the context of the entire work. I’m thinking I’ll make it even better.

And I’m thinking that it’s a method of procrastination I’ll try to keep from myself until December.

Time for some scribbling.

thankful for:
nov 2: days off
nov 3: consistently rediscovering the power of words

on writing (again)

i’m reading a book on meditative retreating. it’s called ‘silence, simplicity, and solitude,’ and i picked it up because it looks at extended meditational retreats from a few different religious perspectives (judaism, christianity, buddhism, islam, hinduism) and tries to find common aspects to them.

i ought to be ‘into’ meditation. i’m the target audience. spiritual without being tied to a religion. ‘earthy.’ ‘natural.’ ‘diy.’ ‘introspective.’ all that stuff that people who meditate are ‘supposed’ to be. but i just can’t seem to get myself into it. maybe it’s the fact that i like to be good at things immediately. i tend to stick only to thinks i have a knack for. this doesn’t always apply, but whatever ‘having a knack’ means, it happens often enough that i’m not terribly limited.

(yes, i was the annoying kid in school who could whiz through most things. sorry. believe me, it wasn’t the greatest place to be at the time.)

anyway. that’s why i thought for a long time that i wasn’t getting into meditation. but now, reading this book, i’m starting to wonder if it’s not so much that i can’t get into meditation as a whole as it is that a lot of my meditative energy goes into something else.

David Cooper writes in the book:
“Sitting still, alone, for long periods is very hard work. We encounter demons, anger, frustration, pain, anxiety, and yes, there can be hours when nothing seems to happen. People understand this side of the retreat better. When I say, ‘Oh, it was frustrating and boring,’ I see twinkles in their eyes. When I saw, ‘It was pure ecstasy,’ I see clouds of doubt arising.”

He talks about how people from all walks of life are attracted to meditation. He talks about how part of it is to benefit our lives as they are, but much of it is to calm some voice inside of us that says the everyday is not enough. He talks about how difficult it is to do it all alone, but that most of it must be alone. Yes, mentors can be helpful, but the work itself is done in solitude.

He talks about needing a guardian, someone who will keep the outside world out, make sure you have food and water and that the heat stays at a comfortable temperature. Someone who understands your need to be alone, who appreciates it.

I could keep going, but I’m going to stop and ask: what else, besides spiritual meditation, requires much of these things?

Creation. Creation as an act of meditation. I think primarily of writing, partially because it’s my creation of choice, and partially because it does function differently from many other acts. You can’t talk with someone else as you write the way you can when you’re painting or weaving or sculpting.

Here’s another reason I think of writers as different. (I apologize in advance – I found this conversation on someone’s blog years ago and didn’t record the site. If it’s yours, let me know! I’ll credit you. Because I think about it. )

“One night on the Lido Deck, where the faculty hang out, I was chatting with this nice young woman named Kathryn, and it turned out that she’s the assistant to the shrink who’s performing this study. I asked her how it was all going.
And a tale she wove.
The guy who’s running the study — whose name I can’t remember — wanted to understand creativity. Literally. He searched around and discovered CSSSA, then a very new program. CSSSA, Kathryn explained to me, is the densest, largest, most insular, most process-based intensive artistic training program in the world. Due to the age range, the lack of “final show,” the fact that the faculty is made up of professional artists, and how hard we work to create a buffer zone between the students and the outside world, it presents an opportunity to research artists unlike any other on the planet.
I didn’t understand any of that at the time. I asked if they discovered anything.
She smiled sheepishly and said, “We know that artists are different than most people.”
Beat. We both crack up.
She explained that there are “categories of difference” in perception of others, self, time, that sort of thing, as well as behavioral differences, sleeping patterns, basically every measurable facet of being human. And individuals who self-identify as artists are different than those who do not.
She got serious for a moment and said, “It really is kind of a discovery. There’s a strain of argument that says artists are just like everyone else. But we’re close to being satisfied that artists are as different from other people psychically as athletes are to other people physically.”
So I asked, “Was there anything surprising?”
“Well, we’re not done yet, there’ll be a book, but there was one thing.”
She looked at me. Narrowed her eyes.
“What discipline are you?”
“I’m a writer.”
She smiled. And I realized that I was being studied.
“I thought so. See, the one thing that surprised us is that in those categories of difference writers are more different than any other group of artists. That is to say, of all the measurable categories of difference, writers are more different than those who do not self-identify as artists than any other group. At least according to our methodology, they almost represent a separate category.”
Beat.
“We’re not sure why.”
I looked at her. I looked around. I felt a simultaneous sense of overwhelming alienation and overwhelming pride.
And she didn’t stop talking.
She explained that all the other disciplines require tools. A camera, paint, a musical instrument, and even dancers and actors use their body. All writers need is language.
And they’re starting to think that’s the reason why writers are so different. One can understand pigment and paint, one can take apart a camera and put it back together again, and on a purely physical level, the human body is comprehensible.
But language is a strange, strange thing, and to understand it is to understand consciousness itself, and no one understands consciousness. The very tool that writers use is as mysterious as experience itself. Of course, all artists work with the mysteries of experience, the tome of the flesh, the chance and change of this long life, but for writers their tool is as mysterious as their subject matter.
And so writers are very, very strange.
“And in a very internalized way. Most artists need to externalize whatever it is that goes on inside. But writers can keep it all inside — there’s nothing physical or exterior about what they do — and that makes them even stranger. Even a social introvert like you.”
She kept her gaze on me, waiting for my response. I’d never thought about any of that before. Five years later, I think about it a lot.”

Nanowrimo begins today. Well, began today. 13 hours ago in my time zone. Thousands of people are excitedly typing, scribbling, talking about, outlining novels. Good ones. Bad ones. Very bad ones. And I think I’m going to take part. Not exactly by their rules – I’ll be working on a piece I’m already 30,000 words into. But I’ve lately been rediscovering my writing, my method of mediation. I’ve been learning after a hiatus of nearly a year how important it is to my level of satisfaction with my life, how important it is to my emotions and to my sense of self. And so I’m determined to write every day. Will I hold myself to 1,667 a day, 50,000 before December 1? No. Not at all. But I will hold myself to something every day. Something to meditate upon.

It’s November, month of gratitude.

Today, I’m thankful for this opportunity to retreat from life as it has been and rediscover what it can be.

not quite

i’m still not quite comfortable in this space.

not sure why.

part of it is that i haven’t been a ‘regular’ blogger lately. entries have been sparse and far between.

part of it is not knowing exactly to whom i’m speaking.

i haven’t sought out any of the crafty strangers whose blogs i read (yet).

and beyond puck, i’ve not really explicitly shared this site with anyone.

i don’t know what to write without knowing my audience, but i don’t want to seek out community until i feel i’ve something to contribute.

part of is me contemplating linking this space to my old one – that way, they can read this, if inclined, and anyone here can look back on my history, get a better idea of ‘me.’

i’ve been in california two and a half weeks. today is my last full day. i came without knitting, without sewing projects, determined to reacquaint myself with words and to gain a feeling of the west coast.

the result? reading science literature & h.d. & ayn rand, scribbling a streak of poems, walks in the canyon, wine & cheese on the beach, coffee & fried potatoes & talk with stephe, and the growing awe in the strength of my relationship with puck. i’ve consistently been aware of the greater aspects of us – mutual interests, compatibility, all of the things that initially draw two people together – but the little things, the small rituals we’ve instilled in our everyday lives, those have been the ones i’ve missed. one can still talk about books and life and watch one another cook and stare into each others’ eyes with a webcam and a microphone, but one can’t live a life together. i miss that.

anyway, here’s san diego, condensed:

and three poems, one with photo, two without.

landing in detroit at dusk

A smear of white beyond the
condensation-streaked glass
A tabula rasa of a world

Then row upon row of suburban house-
holds, snow-
bound, un-
lit.

Wheels hit pavement,
and the plane quivers into smoothness,
the engine quiets.

We see, peering humbly from beneath the weight
of the blue-grey snow clouds.
Like a pajamad child interrupting
the adults’ dinner party,
a rim of light
the peach pink of a two-toned rose
the glow of a young girl’s blushes.

As we taxi back to civilization
a flash of mauve fire sparks
against the airport windows

The great unwieldy flying contraption
turns slowly,
slowly,

to reveal a thing of unspeakable beauty:
the sleepy sun paused upon the horizon,
peeking in to say
good night

only to disappear
so that the grown-ups can continue
their very important conversation.

a day in the life of the universe I

In order to represent to the average reader
the brief scale
of human existence,
Carl Sagan
condensed a history of the universe
into the confines of a
calendar year

Penciled in:
January first: Big Bang
(No wonder we don’t know what happened, if anything, beforehand-
the hangover must have been monumental)
September fourteenth: formation of the Earth
(Just in time for baseball playoffs. Can you imagine the game
before that? When a home run would fly through space forever?)
And at four minutes to midnight on December thirty-first,
a man in China discovered fire
(just in time to light the sparklers before the ball drop. )

On my birthday,
December the twenty-third,
Sagan writes,
“Carboniferous Period.
First trees.
First reptiles.”

Trees, I understand
First rough-barked leafy beings.
First shady, root-stitches patches of earth.
First strong limbs stretching, branching, thinning to tips.
The first years forming rings in pulpy cores.
The first of future textbook pages, pencils, future dining room sets.

And reptiles, too, I recognize.
The sleek armored bodies.
Flickering tongues.
Claws like excessively lacquered manicures.
Dark, empty eyes.
Cold blood.
Bearers of skins that would one day be valued as
handbags and high heels;
woman’s triumph over her deceiver.

But I am unfamiliar with the Carboniferous Period
Until I pull heavy books from dusty shelves
and scour yellowed pages.

A time when beds of coal were forming
in preparation for our Industrial Revolution,
for our Appalachian mining towns,
for our mountaintop removals.

A time when temperatures dropped over the South Pole
And glaciers explored unknown waters.
Sea levels dropping, waters more potent
as a result
and crinoids (‘sea lilies,’ ‘water feathers’) and
ammonites (horned creatures, shaped like nautili, but closer in unseen genes to squid and octupi)
found themselves dying in droves.
Lakes drained low in liue of swamps.
Stagnation.

Oxygen levels in the air were nearly double back then
what they are now.
So what would it have been like
to breathe
such moist, enriching air.
If insects grew to lengths
of two feet or more,
insects that these days would fit in one’s palm,
to what heights might we have been capable
of rising?

a day in the life of the universe II

Sagan’s teachings continue,
and I, the student, attend
as he writes of the brain,

Of the correlation between
brain size and body mass,
the higher the ratio,
the more intelligent.

Homo sapiens rests atop the lists
followed by dolphins
and whales.
Our brains’ processing power so much greater
than that of a computer
(Sagan’s 1977 computer, that is,
and I wonder if technology has overtaken us -
I’ll bet it has -
and how long ago it did so.)

At the close of this chapter on brains,
a brief mention
of the Carboniferous Period,
my birth-day soul-mate
and period during which the first creature -
a reptile in fact -
was born with more information
in its brain
than in its genes.
The start of nurture conquering nature,
The moment when free will grew stronger than fate.

And Eve smiles her sad smile
because she already knew
a reptile was to blame.

soup kick

i have trouble taking pictures for this place because, quite frankly, i live in that teeny apartment it seems everyone needs spend at least a few months of their youth. we have one bedroom, just large enough for the bed and a dresser; a walk-in closet that holds all of puck’s clothing and half of mine; a bathroom – which is really larger than we need; and a living area/kitchen/dining nook. it’s large enough for us, but not at present, as we don’t want to buy a lot of storage-oriented furniture when we’re going to be moving in less than six months – easier to get it there, we say.

as of friday morning, we had stacks, nay, towers of books everywhere, and half-filled boxes of my disorganized craft supplies and his disorganized movies, and etc etc in the living room, my workspace, my office, my world.

so i cleaned out the bathroom closet (we don’t need nine bath towels for the two of us, and my stash of curtains doesn’t need to be easily accessible ’til we move… you get the idea), and made it the craft closet:

then, with a little creative packing and a little simple organizing, i ended up with this:
(space is most likely smaller than it appears)

when puck signed a lease on this place, less than a month before we met, it was intended to be the Fortress of Solitude, as he’d sworn off relationships for bit. have i mentioned that neither of us really cared to meet when we did, that both of us were not interested? you can’t choose when it happens…

anyway, he didn’t have that futon when i moved in. just the weight bench – his ‘recliner,’ as he called it.

you can’t really see it, but there’s a kayak behind the futon – what, you don’t have one in your living room?

don’t let the tv fool you. save for the occasional netflix movie, it’s mostly just a very large heavy stand for the wireless router.

check out, too, our little homemade wreath – hanging from the untouched thermostat. it’s just not beginning to turn brown.

my bookshelves! and our countertop. the kitchen is not completely clean at the moment, so we’ll save its photo shoot for another day.

the dining nook. we do eat dinner there pretty much every night, and other meals on the weekends. the two chairs closest the camera are extras, so they serve more often as a coat rack than a place for people.

after all the cleaning, puck ordered pizza, and i had a beverage:

(cranberry raki [albanian moonshine. long story.] with ginger ale, between eve and an angel. i took one look after setting the glass down and knew i needed a photo)

we watched a video of the president at the republican caucus, and i knit. a good night.

the cold front left us with ice glazing everything, but the roads were clean enough by saturday afternoon to go out,  and there was nothing by monday.

but it put me in the winter mood. i made my first pair of wristwarmers with some cotton yarn i got from michael’s ($1 worth was just enough), and i started another, more intricate pair.

other than that, it’s been soup here. sunday night, a lentil-y curry messy that was thick and full of good flavors: turmeric, cumin, curry powder, garlic, carrots, onions, who knows what else (puck and i took turns on it – well, mostly he followed the recipe i showed him, and i made pita bread again. so good…) which lasted through monday night.

so last night, after puck played truant (in all fairness, it was job shadow day, meaning that he would have had maybe half a dozen students between his two morning classes, and his journalism class is a self-propelled machine) – carmelized onions and garlic, mustard greens and peas, cayenne pepper, paprika, pepper, lemon juice, a splash of vinegar, rice & more lentils (i keep forgetting to soak beans, and we haven’t bought eggs in months, so lentils it is) – perfectly basic after an indulgent lunch (coffee underground in downtown greenville – a peanuty veggie wrap for him and an indulgent slice of mediterranean quiche for me), perfectly warming after a cold day (walking around town, then an apartment whose heat we rarely turn on – as long as our neighbors use heat, as they usually do, our apartment stays above 50 degrees, it seems).

however, i remembered to soak black beans last night, and half of them are now in the crockpot with a little cumin and paprika. tonight’s menu? a sort of mexican lasagna – tortillas, salsa, beans, cheese, onions, spinach, and maybe rice all layered in the cast iron skillet (since that’s what the onions will be cooked in, and who really wants an extra dirty pan?) and baked.

i know most every woman seems to one day get tired of planning a nightly menu, but i’m still enamoured of it.

in other news, reading, reading. finished ‘war and peace.’ onto joyce’s ‘ulysses,’ but first ‘hamlet’ (i’ve never read it. i know, i know, what a heretic of an english major i am. but i’m reading it now).

it’s february. things are clean. the president is taking action, little by little.  life is looking up.

it moves on

wednesday was cooking day. having not cooked since last week, and knowing puck would be doing school things til late late yesterday, i took advantage of my window.

i had hummus i’d made last week for the first time. good. not as good as the baba ganoush i made a month or two ago (but that was miraculously fantastically good.), but very good.

so i thought i’d try to continue on in the vein: pita bread, tabouleh, falafel. keep in mind that i’d never made any of them before. and i didn’t want to use the garbanzo beans on the falafel, so i was trying it with mung beans. and i didn’t have any bulgar so i was using amaranth on the tabouleh, nor did i have mint.

the result? the best meal i’ve had in ages. if i’m going to talk about such things here, though, i really ought to pay closer attention to what i put in. i’m a dash/pinch/handful kind of cook.

the hummus, for example:
1 can garbanzo beans (drained)
1 heaping Tbsp tahini
a few splashes of lemon juice
~3 Tbsp olive oil
lots of cumin & garlic paste
generous pinches of salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper

all blended up in a food processor. re-season to taste.

tabouleh:
3/4 cup dry amaranth boiled in 1 1/2 cups of water until soft and porridge-y
1 c chopped parsley
3 small tomatoes, diced
1/2 an onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
generous splashed of lemon juice and olive oil
salt & pepper

mix it all together, then let it chill for at least a few hours.

pita:

1. dissolve yeast packet in 1/4 c warm water, and let it come to life as it will.
2. combine 3 c flour (i used half white, half wheat. the more wheat you use, the more water you’ll need), a little salt, 1 Tbsp honey, 1 1/4 c water (only 1 c if using all white flour, more for more wheat), and the yeast w/ water. mix it up til it forms a ball, then knead it 8-10 minutes, adding flour as needed. oil it, and let it rise in a warm place for an hour and a half or so.
(if my directions leave something to be desired, it’s because i make bread too often to think about all the steps. feel free to ask questions)
3. slice the dough into twelve pieces, and then flatten them into disks, ~ 1/4 inch thick. layer them between damp paper towels and let them sit for ~ 20 minutes. In the mean time…
(i found two different methods: stove top and oven. the latter makes puffier pitas more quickly, but i wasn’t very good at the technique, so i preferred the stove-top method).
4a. oven: preheat oven to 400 with a baking stone or upside-down baking sheet inside. after the discs have rested 20 minutes, throw one on your stone and close the oven. If three minutes later, you have a beautiful, puffy pita, then it’s ready! throw on as many discs as will fit at once, rotate them out every three minutes, and enjoy.
4b. stove top: heat a cast iron skillet on medium-high with just a few drops of oil. throw on a pita round. it should start to puff up in under a minute. after a minutes, flip it. it should take about 3 minutes between both sides, give or take.

they were all delicious, regardless of method. i ate two of them dipped in olive oil before i restrained myself and started on -

the falafel
a friend and i recently gave falafel the title of “chicken nugget of the vegetarian world.” it’s protein-y, fried, and the perfect comfort food. also, we’re back to pinch/handful directions…
1. cook up a mess of lentils or mung beans. nothing fancy – just let them simmer in hot water until the water is nearly all gone and you can puree them with a potato masher.
2. puree the lentils with a potato masher. add cumin, garlic, salt, pepper, cardamom, coriander, powdered ginger, a little finely diced onion, a little diced parsley, and mix it all until it tastes the way you want it.
3. heat 1/4 inch of oil (peanut or canola, something that can get pretty hot) in your frying pan.
4. add three Tbsp flour to your lentil mixture. mix. throw a little piece of the mixture in the oil. if it sizzles (but not in any out of control way), it’s ready. shape your lentil mixture into golf-ball size rounds, then flatten them and lay them in the oil. by the time you’ve filled your pan (i recommend going clockwise so you know the order you put them in), the first will be ready to flip, so slowly go through and flip them. by the time you flip the last, the first will be ready to come out .
5. set them on a paper towel to let a little grease drain.

sorry about the lack of pictures. the pita bread wasn’t very photogenic in the lighting i had, and the falafel was devoured. what’s left of the rest isn’t worth showing. but it was tasty indeed.

we watched the state of the union streaming off the cnn site, laughed at the republicans who looked to me like punk high school students stuck in detention, wondered how much of what obama said would actually happen, and hoped that he is as angry (and therefore will be as forceful) as he seemed.

yesterday was quilt-fest. it’s just a baby-sized thing, not even four feet by four feet, but i’m doing well with it. another two or three days and i’ll have it done. my fingers are callous-ing.

and today? typing up the story i started earlier in the week

(an excerpt:

A gale of wind rattle the windows, shaking him from his dreams, and Pete opened his eyes. Diffused light clung to every surface of the room, and he swore without words against his body’s indulgence of oversleeping. The January sun didn’t show its light until seven, and he had intended to be awake by six at the last.

He closed his eyes and stretched out onto his back, clenching one by one the muscles the lining his body from neck to toes to fingertips, then one by one released them, mindful of the increased speed and strength in the flow of his blood, the warmth spurring his limbs to action. He pushed off the blankets, slid his legs over the side of the bed, and opened his eyes once more, this time looking to the window to determine how much of the morning he had in fact lost.

The ground lay covered in crusty snow, what had fallen the day before bringing the level almost up to the height of the windowsill. Beyond the garden walls, past the cliff’s edge, the sea glowed silver under a grey-black sky. The stars looked blanched and dull, sanded to smooth harmlessness, like driftwood washed up on shore. It wasn’t coming sunlight that lit the room, then, but the full moon, closer now to earth than it would be all the rest of the year, and cause of the past week’s noticeably high tides.)

i’m almost to the end, but i’m just not sure how to get there.

we were going to go up to asheville this weekend, but they’re supposed to get a foot of snow. so much for that idea. but…
looks like it’ll be coffee and pajamas, reading and old movies. gee, what a terrible way to spend a couple of days.

pushing ahead

i finished feeling sorry for myself monday (puck’s grandmother’s taco bake + an hour and a half of total car time to talk made things better) and reminded myself that the only way to get things finished and into the world are to keep creating.

so quilt #2 is assembled and basted and the quilting has just begun:

my batting (as it’s an old blanket and not actually official batting) is thicker than i would like, making quilting a slow challenge. but there are four seasons of ‘lost’ on netflix watch-it-now waiting for me, as well as any other television i feel the need to make up on (i haven’t had cable television since i was sixteen).

in other news, i may start posting bits of writing on here. just bits. mostly-finished-but-needs-editing novel? novel-in-progress? miscellaneous short stories? not sure yet. but seeing as this page has gotten only one glance thus far and i haven’t done anything to advertise, i don’t imagine there’s much of a rush…

upside down

a low few days. dark skies, strange weather, an inability to get out of my own head, or even to see straight while i’m in there. seems to happen once a month or so.

it may have something to do with this.

another rejection, following on the heels of one from last week, in addition to another email from a friend who’s read my work and insists on its value.

rejections get tiresome.

i went to a very competitive high school, a public boarding school in central north carolina. when our college letters came senior year, the tradition was to post them outside our doors in the dorm halls: rejections upside-down, wait-lists sideways, acceptances right side up. so i’ve taken to combining that tradition with the classic writerly posting of rejections above the work desk.

i haven’t gotten the putty to post them on the rental apartment wall yet, but when i do, i have six paper rejections (in addition to a few in my email inbox that i may print) to stick up. i also have my first dollar earned for writing, literally. i got a dollar bill with my first publication, and a few more in my paypal account for the second.

i know i ought to be proud of those. if you google ‘teegan dykeman,’ a good bit of the hits direct you to the story that got me the paypal money. but though it’s one of only two published, it’s far from my best.

so… yes. just a little low.

that, and a part-time job i was offered went to a girl from the woman’s church.

huzzah!

(…)

little by little

yesterday:

barely cloudy when i woke up, but steadily darker into the afternoon, sprinkles during the evening

a little research, a little typing of longhand novel bits into a computer document, and a little quilt piecing.

today:

no photo.

outright rain this morning, and colder than the past few days. wanted to be lazy and simply work on the quilt, but there were words crouched in my mind, waiting to be coaxed out. so with the aid of a french press of coffee and a pot of green tea, i started the first of a four story series i thought about six months ago and promptly threw onto one of the farthest back burners of my writing stovetop.

there’s a fresh, clean sort of feeling when starting something new after months and months of focusing on the novel. a new character and a new place, one that doesn’t need to be gently, firmly led to meet the other characters in another place but can stand alone if he chooses.

in related news, keep an eye out around january 29th and 30th – the moon will be at its closest and fullest all year.