Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week using these tag words: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.
Now I’m simplifying, to see if I like a slimmed-down version.
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Reading
From Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing, by my friend and colleague L.L. Barkat, Chapter 2: “Let the unrestrained rain of my own life infuse my writing. Let the me-I-am-right-now simply be” (18). L.L. has done it; on each page of Rumors, she offers life-infused writing that I take in with as much delight as L.L. drank down mint-and-lemon-infused ice water one afternoon at a nearby farm. Be refreshed, she seems to say. In fact, L.L. goes so far as to invite us all, as writers, to be free…free to be the me-I-am-right-now in our own work.
In Chapter 3, she recognizes lack of symmetry in her life and in her book, but decides, at least with her book, to embrace it. After an interaction with her daughter, L.L. decides that there will be a purple moth in every chapter of the book—or, of course, the metaphorical equivalent. She points out that Natalie Goldberg’s writing books break the rules of symmetry generally accepted in the publishing world; if there any symmetry in them at all, L.L. observes, it is the symmetry of Natalie. Like the purple moth that L.L. resolves to include in her chapters, L.L. also throws onto each page of Rumors that unmistakable me-I-am-right-now. Indeed, L.L. Barkat shows up everywhere, bright and brilliant as a purple moth sipping mint-and-lemon ice water.
True to her word, L.L. invites moths into Chapter 4—actual moths, not metaphorical. While doing laundry in the basement, she encounters food moths hovering near the bags in which she stores some of her grains and legumes. She surveys the laundry and the food moths and says, “There is nothing here for me…There is nothing here for me.” She blows across a capful of laundry soap to form a bubble, hoping for iridescent inspiration, but it is short-lived. The bubble pops, and she thinks there is nothing for her. But there is something: There is, quite clearly, the laundry and the moths, which she has invited onto the page. But, maintaining an idealistic mindset throughout, she nevertheless waits for more. She anticipates the arrival of ideas, poetry, and music. It will come. She knows it, and she wants the reader to know it, too. It won’t take long.
On an outing described in Chapter 5, it comes to her: Inspiration. Her girls beg her to come with them to a nearby farm, where L.L. discovers color, smells, and foods with names that become a wealth of words to work with—the very writing inspiration she was waiting for in her basement. Writing starts with living, she says, which sometimes snatches a writer out of her chair and off to a farm, dragged along by others who have such an intense passion for something that they change up our days to include the unexpected.
Food words continue to inspire in Chapter 6, where a particular bean takes center stage as L.L. models a make-do attitude…because sometimes writers have to use what they have on hand, especially if a purple moth has gobbled up every other ingredient typically needed to get the job done. Just as we should feel free to cook creatively, substituting one bean or spice or vegetable for another, so can writers write creatively, using what we have, not constrained by conventional wisdom and methods. We should always, however, have a few ideas in the hopper. “This is the secret of the prolific writer,” she advises. “To agree to use small beans and the ingredients at hand” (34).
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My responses to the first chapter of Rumors of Water can be found here. More reaction yet to come.
Playing
Many years ago I read the book The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence
I’ve been recalling those concepts and will be prowling through the house hunting for the book. I think it’s on a shelf in the basement, not far from where I’d stuck the sketchbooks and pencils.
I want to keep playing around.
Learning
I may be playing with art, but I want to be working on my writing, and learning. I noted this tweet from L.L. Barkat:
Yes, I highly recommend reading a poem a day to become a much more powerful writer. http://fb.me/1oUkxdiyV
A poem a day. I figure I have enough poetry books lying around to read a poem a day for the rest of my life.
Just after our family visited the art museum, I pulled a collection of Wordsworth poems from the shelf and read this:
The Solitary Reaper
by William Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?–
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o’er the sickle bending;–
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
Reacting
One of my daughters had her wisdom teeth removed. I am relying on the kitchen timer to send me back and forth to the freezer for ice packs, which she holds to her cheeks for 20 minutes at a time to reduce swelling.
Writing
It is not easy to write in the midst of ice pack deliveries, but some days life has symmetry…and some days it doesn’t. Some days you just work with what you’re given and turn out what you can.
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Credits:
Note: This post contains affiliate links.
Work Cited: Barkat, L.L. Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing. Ossining, NY: T.S. Poetry Press, 2011. Print.
Photos: Images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.
We show up at the art museum without any real plan. Two of us brought cameras; one of the kids packed a sketch pad and pencils; our eldest stuffed gadgets into her pockets to listen to music, text friends and check Facebook; and the Belgian Wonder and our son carried nothing, free to consider the artwork unencumbered and undistracted.
We wander through the European gallery, pausing here and there to admire a piece that catches someone’s eye.
My son favors three-dimensional art like vases, bowls and sculptures.
My camera-toting daughter is capturing her favorite works in megapixels, often murmuring, “I really like that one.” Curious, I slip over and take a look. She seems to prefer muted colors, landscapes in soft grays and browns.
The sketch-pad girl creates her own quick pencil-on-paper version of a blue boat against an other-worldly yellow background and later, a sculpture of two gamboling deer.
I prefer paintings, leaning in to admire thick brush stroke’s texture, wondering how the artists saw not once but twice—first the actual scene or subject matter, and then the version in their minds that they committed to canvas using lines, curves, splotches and color.
Along the way, I find I’m unexpectedly moved by some of the works, though I don’t have much time to ponder why. The effect is as subtle and brief as the tapping of a pond’s still surface, which stirs a series of ripples that nod and flatten. I feel it, and then it fades.
I know that art can do this: it can tap the water’s surface and even cause a splash.
Art, I’m told, can awaken, unlock and touch deep and secret places inside us. I feel that these artists invite me to stop and stare. I can stand where they stood and see what they saw…or what they want to reveal.
But I don’t have time to explore this deeply or wonder about its power, because on this family outing, not everyone is drawn to the same thing, so we keep moving along.
As we work our way through the American gallery, the kids’ interest fades dramatically each time we turn a corner and encounter another collection. I am lingering near a Tiffany stained glass window, pondering the words—a passage from Ephesians 5, to be precise—and soon hear someone in our party sighing heavily. I leave the window to find the youngest actually curled up on an empty bench as if to nap.
Art can awaken, and art can put some to sleep. I notice that even the sketchbook has been slid into a bag and the camera tucked away.
It’s time to leave.
As we pull away, the kids are visibly tired; yet, though I can’t explain it, I find myself more awake than ever.
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Linking to the following:
(smaller button below)
For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!
Food on Fridays with Ann
I love eating fresh seafood on vacation in the Southeast along the Atlantic or Gulf coasts. Fresh shrimp, especially, is a treat.
Buying it here in our landlocked state is always bit of a letdown. It’s usually been frozen, causing it to lose flavor and texture; also, it’s overpriced.
But a few weeks ago I peered into one of the display cases in the seafood department at Kroger and spotted a package of shrimp that looked great. They looked like fresh shrimp I would buy on vacation from a little shack on the panhandle of Florida or near Beaufort, South Carolina, where shrimp boats motor through marshy waters dragging their nets for pink gold.
And they were on sale.
I placed the package in the cart and when I got home, tucked it in the freezer. These shrimp would be set aside for a special occasion.
Christmas Eve turned out to be the occasion. I decided to make a cream sauce with minced garlic and a diced shallot. Salt and pepper. Oil. Butter. Cream. White wine. Parmesan cheese.
That was all coming together nicely, but it needed something more, so I dug around in the pantry for a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil. After I added a few of those and spooned in some of the flavorful oil, I knew we were close.
I peeled the shrimp so we wouldn’t have to smell like shells before heading to the Christmas Eve service, and served the shrimp and sauce over pasta.
We were almost done eating before I realized I hadn’t snapped any photos, so this rather unappealing snapshot doesn’t show much of the sauce, but I was pleased with the dish.
I started with this recipe from the Food Network as my base and adapted it slightly.
Shrimp and Scallops in Garlic Cream Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons
- 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 4 cloves shallots, chopped
- 2 cups white wine
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves, plus sprigs for garnish
- 1 teaspoon chopped thyme leaves
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 1/2 pounds (20/30 count) sea scallops
- 1 1/2 pounds (16/20 count) shrimp peeled and deveined with tails left on
- 1 1/2 to 2 pounds cooked pasta or rice, for an accompaniment
- 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano
Directions
In a large saute pan, heat 1/4 cup oil and cook garlic and shallot until translucent, about 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine, and add parsley, basil and thyme and let the liquid reduce by half. Using a fine strainer, strain the reduction into a clean saucepan and add the cream. Over low heat, let the sauce reduce to medium thickness. To the now empty saute pan, add 2 tablespoons olive oil, saute scallops, cook until opaque and remove to a utility platter in a warm place. Then use the same pan to saute shrimp just until pink, and remove to the utility platter. Add cream sauce to saute pan to toss the drained pasta or rice with the cream sauce and seafood, reserving a few scallops and shrimp for the top. Transfer to a serving dish, and sprinkle with cheese, as garnish. Arrange shrimp and scallops on top and garnish with basil sprigs.
Don’t forget I added those sundried tomatoes, which provided a flavor boost that made all the difference.
For a few minutes on Christmas Eve, twirling the pasta around my fork and savoring those shrimp, I could almost smell the saltwater of the Gulf of Mexico and hear the gulls, laughing.
Photo of shrimp boat taken while on vacation last year.
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Photo credit: Images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.
Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week using these tag words: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.
Now I’m simplifying the journal, to see if I like a slimmed-down version.
Continue reading »
Heavy, wet flakes of snow are dropping steadily from the sky today, weighing down branches, muffling sound. The girls are playing a CD of a singer whose mellow voice is new to me. I have brewed loose tea in my blue-and-white Spode teapot, poured it into a Christmas cup, stirred in a teaspoon of honey, and begun to sip it down smooth. I figure I can use these cups with their holly design until January 6, Epiphany, Three King’s Day—the end of the 12 days of Christmas.
I’m sitting at my computer, enjoying my tea, remembering with a sigh that in a few days, school starts up again and I will return to grading papers and planning lessons. But right now, I’m sitting at my computer, sipping tea.
Continue reading »
One of our daughters has a December birthday. A week ago we celebrated with signage and candles and cake and presents. When her party was over, I started to tear down the streamers, but for the first time in 14 years I paused before pulling down the “Happy Birthday” banner and thought, you know, we could just leave it up.
It’s a little cheesy, I suppose, but a good reminder.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:6).
Happy birthday, Jesus.
And thank you.
(smaller button below)
For the Food on Fridays carnival, any post remotely related to food is welcome—though we love to try new dishes, your post doesn’t have to be a recipe. We’re pretty relaxed over here, and stories and photos are as welcome as menus and recipes. When your Food on Fridays contribution is ready, just grab the broccoli button to paste at the top of your post. It ties us together visually. Then fill in the boxes of this linky tool to join the fun!
Continue reading »
Each Wednesday I’ve been recording a Curiosity Journal to recap the previous week. Tag words were: reading, playing, learning, reacting and writing.
This week I’m abbreviating, simplifying, and amending the journal. Like so much of life, it’s an experiment.
:::
Reading
As part of the experiment of trimming down the Curiosity Journal, I finished the book Staying Put and published my final response on Monday. Not sure what I’ll launch next.
Playing
I made three chocolate cakes in the last week, searching for one that earned the right to be described as “decadent.”
I think I found it, and it’s neither of the cakes pictured above (though they were lovely).
I’ll post about my CakePlay for Food on Fridays, but I’d like you to know that it was a lot of fun. What family doesn’t love hearing their mom announce, “I’m making another chocolate cake for us to taste test tonight!”
Learning
On Facebook a friend posted a link to an opinion article from The New York Times called “The Art of Listening.” This stood out to me:
Two old African men were sitting on that bench, but there was room for me, too. In Africa people share more than just water in a brotherly or sisterly fashion. Even when it comes to shade, people are generous.
I heard the two men talking about a third old man who had recently died. One of them said, “I was visiting him at his home. He started to tell me an amazing story about something that had happened to him when he was young. But it was a long story. Night came, and we decided that I should come back the next day to hear the rest. But when I arrived, he was dead.”
The man fell silent. I decided not to leave that bench until I heard how the other man would respond to what he’d heard. I had an instinctive feeling that it would prove to be important.
Finally he, too, spoke.
“That’s not a good way to die — before you’ve told the end of your story.”
May we tell our stories…all the way to the end.
Reacting
For her 14th birthday, we bought my third daughter, the most voracious reader in the family, a Kindle Touch.
Today, her first day to explore its potential, she began downloading free books, mostly classics, calling out the titles one after another: “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes! … 20,000 Leagues under the Sea! … Treasure Island!” At one point she paused from the downloading frenzy and looked up at me with eyes wild from raking in the riches of literary treasure. Hands and voice shaking from excitement as if she’d discovered bucketfuls of gold medallions free for the taking, she exclaimed, “I…love….this!”
Writing
Yesterday I wrote about the family Bible my dad received. I had to finish in a rush before heading out the door to pick up my sister-in-law from the bus stop. I wondered later about the ending. I think if I had taken more time, I’d have tweaked that.
That experience reminded me of conversations Charity and I have had about the nature of blogs versus other writing outlets. If I were working on a chapter of a book, I might revise it several times and spend days tweaking a section; whereas, a personal blog post may be thought up, drafted, edited and published all within a couple of hours. Are blog posts being publishing too fast? Should I slow down and take longer to revise and tweak? Or does the strength of blogging lie in quickly capturing and sharing the spontaneity of life without worrying too much what could have been improved?
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Credits:
Photos: Images by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.
I pulled out my camera to snap some pictures of the four-inch-thick family Bible my dad recently acquired from a distant cousin—second cousin once or twice removed, or something like that. This particular family Bible belonged to Dad’s grandparents, but had been passed down another branch of the family tree. Until now. It recently leaped to our branch due to the generosity of the cousin who inherited this massive heirloom only to decide that Dad would appreciate it much more than she ever would.
So she presented it to him a few weeks ago, and now it sits regally on a buffet in my parents’ dining room, with space to the left for it to be opened wide and perused.
After monkeying with my camera settings to accommodate the natural light from the window, I snapped some photos, flipping pages to discover some vintage artwork and family records of marriages and births.
Then Dad came in to turn to the pages he found most significant, such as the one that notes the date of his grandparents’ marriage, the Bible being my great-grandfather’s gift to his wife on the occasion of their wedding.
(By the way, Dad is not offering a vulgar gesture; he often points with his middle finger.)
Even my dad’s birth in the late 1920s is the last on the “Memoranda” page, his name duly recorded in blue ink and old-fashioned script.
(names obscured for privacy)
I admired the pages Dad pointed out, nodding as he explained the relationships. When he paused, I mentioned the “Temperance Pledge,” which intrigued me.
(name obscured for privacy)
“Oh, yes,” he said. “My grandmother was active in the temperance movement and the women’s movements, too.”
I read the pledge carefully:
Temperance Pledge
We hereby solemnly promise, God helping us, to abstain from all distilled, fermented and malt liquors including wine and beer and to employ all proper means to discourage the use of and the traffic in the same.
Though I have obscured my great-grandmother’s name, you may notice that she signed and dated it on April 15, 1889. You may also observe that the spot for a signature on the left remains empty. She recorded her commitment on the right, leaving that left area open and available, just in case anyone decided to join her in the pledge. I guess in her household, the plural pledge of “we” ended up being a singular “I.”
I wonder what held back my great-grandfather? The possibility of sipping bubbly cider that accidentally fermented on a late fall afternoon? The hope of sharing a beer with his buddies?
There is more to the story, I’m sure. The names and dates are nothing more than facts, statistics. Behind them lie the stories.
The Bible with its lush illustrations and family notations is lovely, but stories? Those are what I crave. Both the family stories…and the Bible’s.
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Credits: All photos by Ann Kroeker. All rights reserved.
Saturday night I tore off pieces of a Post-It to mark passages in Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
But first, the wrap-up.
Sanders makes a case for story trumping data when he quotes Flannery O’Connor, who admitted feeling, she said, “a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as statistics…in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells” (157, 166).
“By what stories shall we be known?” Sanders muses (166).
What are we passing on? What content are we preserving on Facebook and blogs, in journals and memoirs? By what stories will this generation be known?
Sanders answers the question in part by telling his own stories. For example, he tells of returning to one of the places he lived when he was young. After revisiting old haunts, he ended up in a church, entering through an open back door. He observed the “squeaky pine boards of the floor,” child-sized tables used in Sunday school, and hooks where the choir would hang their robes. He continued:
Every few paces I halted, listening. The joints of the church cricked as the sun let it go. Birds fussed beyond the windows. But no one else was about; this relieved me, for here least of all was I prepared to explain myself. I had moved too long in circles where to confess an interest in religious things marked one as a charlatan, a sentimentalist, or a fool. No doubt I have all three qualities in my character. But I also have another quality, and that is an unshakable hunger to know who I am, where I am, and into what sort of cosmos I have been so briefly and astonishingly sprung. Whatever combination of shady motives might have led me here, the impulse that shook me right then was a craving to glimpse the very source of things. (190)
I always thought everyone shared that “unshakable hunger” to know who they are and where they are and from where they have been sprung.
But I have discovered that many people don’t relate to this. Perhaps they simply live in the moment without any desire to dig deeper into the soul or memory. Curious, they are not…at least, not about the past that makes the self. I, on the other hand, continually feel questions arise and want to find answers, seeking to know better who I am…and who I am becoming.
Aren’t we all becoming in the sense that we are always living yet another page in our story?
As we are busy living our stories, we aren’t necessarily telling our stories. When we venture to take on the role of a storyteller—an essential role, I believe—we add complicating layers. By revisiting our stories and reflecting on them, we can potentially affect the memories.
Sanders considers these layers and revisions and the tricks they can play on us. That visit of his to the tiny dot on the map known as Wayland represented the challenge of those layers:
There is more to be seen at any crossroads than one can see in a lifetime of looking. My return visit to Wayland was less than two hours long. Once again several hundred miles distant from that place, back here in my home ground making this model from slippery words, I cannot be sure where the pressure of mind has warped the surface of things. If you were to go there, you would not find every detail exactly as I have described it. How could you, bearing as you do a past quite different from mine? No doubt my memory, welling up through these lines, has played tricks with time and space…certain moments in one’s life cast their influence forward over all the moments that follow. My encounters in Wayland shaped me first as I lived through them, then again as I recalled them during my visit, and now as I write them down. That is of course why I write them down. The self is a fiction. I make up the story of myself with scraps of memory, sensation, reading, and hearsay. It is a tale I whisper against the dark. Only in rare moments of luck or courage do I hush, forget myself entirely, and listen to the silence that precedes and surrounds and follows all speech. (192-193)
It’s a bold statement to say that “the self is a fiction.” Is he right? Do we add to our story? Do we forget? Are we gently fabricating the self that we are, by telling ourselves a version of our past that makes the most sense, or sounds the best?
Do we fictionalize ourselves to the point of believing ourselves to have been far better, stronger, gentler, wiser, and funnier than witnesses would attest?
Or do we beat up on ourselves by fictionalizing and believing ourselves to have been far worse, weaker, harsher and more naive and blundering than witnesses would attest?
How can we revisit memories and tell our stories and understand ourselves in a way that is true, even if not 100 percent accurate?
Because who I am becoming flows out of who I have been.
As a self, I would like to know the truth; as a storyteller, I would like to tell the truth.
All in order to continue becoming.
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Previous posts that discuss the book Staying Put:
Curiosity Journal: Geography of the Mind, Birdfeeders, Sarah Kay on Story and Mini Flash Mob
Curiosity Journal: Staying Put, Christmas Decor and Advent
Curiosity Journal: Extinct Green Parakeet, Puny Petunia, and First Snow
Curiosity Journal: November 16, 2011
Curiosity Journal: November 9, 2011
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Note: This book is a title that I bought with my own money and selected from my personal library to read, enjoy and share briefly with you here. I was not compensated in any way by anyone nor did the publisher or author provide me with a complimentary review copy. My “reading” posts are not intended to be reviews; instead, I generally compose personal responses to passages from books I’m reading, focusing on the portions that I enjoy and pretty much ignoring sections with which I neither agree nor connect.
Credits: all images by Ann Kroeker, all rights reserved.
Sanders, Scott Russell. Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World
About
Blogger: Pursuing a Christ-centered, creative, curious, slightly quirky, slow-down life and sharing it with you, post after post. (Home of Food on Fridays).
Author: Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families
Content Editor: The High Calling (Family/Parenting)
ann kroeker. curator. (read it, liked it)- Godspotting with Sheila: Really Slow Bread February 4, 2012
- Almost Paradisical: Timely January 25, 2012
- winncollier: Traveling with Ben January 15, 2012
- Godspotting with Sheila: The Incredible Sweetness of Being, Part One January 14, 2012
- imperfect prose: imperfect prose on thursdays: the day i cut my dreadlocks January 14, 2012
- Extravagant Grace | oikos living January 13, 2012
- letter from my 90yr old self… | the beautiful due January 13, 2012
- The Wellspring: Extra Ordinary: A Poetry Rant January 13, 2012
- Just this one thing; it’s all you need. | Redemption's Beauty January 12, 2012
- Living Our Litanies | The High Calling January 11, 2012
