Whimsy Speaks Again

I'm celebrating our nation's 750th birthday a little late, as it occurred apparently on July 25th.  Derek, my son-in-Chicago, took this shot standing lakeside.  It seems that July has just blown by.  Junie and I took the grand tour of the Western Slope, the part of Colorado where all the rivers flow toward California.  We planned it so that we would end up with John and Ally in Walsenberg, which entailed a route including:  Longmont to Idaho Springs to Keystone over Independence Pass to Leadville to Aspen (stop for the night) to Basalt to Glenwood Springs to Rifle to Parachute to Grand Junction to Montrose to the Black Canyon to Telluride to Ouray (stop for the night) to Silverton to Durango to Ignacio (lunch in the South Ute casino) to Pagosa Springs to Del Norte to Alamosa to Walsenburg (stop for the night) back up I-25 to home.  The towns we missed included Mayday, Keyhole, Paradox, Eureka, Powderhorn, Bachelor, and Logtown.  A lot of what we saw looked like this:



There were spots in the mountain valleys that were idyllic, green and cool, but a lot of the territory on the Slope is high desert.  Everywhere we went, I checked out the listings in the windows of the local real estate agents.  Aspen topped the price list with homes going for $1,000 to $2,000 per square foot (yes, a nice little 1,400 square-foot house might run $2.5 million).  Not that you have to live full-time in Aspen — the Ritz-Carlton was selling condominium timeshares, $450K for 10 days of occupancy per year.  Homes in Ouray and Telluride were not quite so astronomical, only running $500 to $1,000 per square foot.  Of course, that's still 4 or 5 times what real estate goes for in most of Boulder County.  Ouray was a little gem, and like most of the mountain towns, grew up around local mining activity.  Telluride was also enjoyable, smaller and more casual than Aspen, but still sophisticated (Lyle Lovett was playing that weekend). 

The rest of the world seems to be getting on about as usual.   The whole country appears to be simmering in miserable weather (even in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the heat index is over 100).  Meanwhile, Israel is doing its best to recapture the Pariah State of the Year honors.   I got a pleasant letter from Hilda Raz telling me that I did not win the PS Book Prize Competition.  The good news is that Paul Guest did for his Notes for My Body Double, and that Charles Jensen was among the finalists.  Other glad tidings include NPR's poll that shows the Republicans might actually lose the House in the fall.

I received a copy of Mississippi Review that included Ann Guzzardi, Beverly Burch, David Tucker, Duffie Taylor, Jen Currin, Lisa Bower, Susan Roberts and my friend J. P. Dancing Bear as poetry contributors.  I rather liked the strangeness and precision of Jen Currin's With the Blue of Your Breath: "A deity on orange pillows / picks the exact chocolate, / knows how much healing coffee. // Astounding patience as we bark and lick at the stars. // ... // The rain talking back — // You make the lamp musical. // You make us ignorant in our grammar vests."  I have no idea why I'm receiving Missouri Review, by the by.



As opposed to the Colorado Review.  I know why I'm receiving that.  Because I once sat kitty-corner across from Stephanie G'Schwind, the current Editor, on a plane down to the New Orleans AWP.  I chatted with her then and later at the show, and even later when she was a speaker at the Many Mountains Moving salon.  On every occasion she has proved to be knowledgeable, competent and gorgeous.  It's little wonder that when she drops me a note telling me that my subscription is running out that I re-enlist for another two years.  The fortunate thing is that CR is quite a good literary journal, with the distinction of having both Jorie Graham and Donald Revell as Poetry Editors.  Oh, I know, you're thinking that everything published ends up either Southwestern pastoral/spiritual or brainy/eclectic narrative, but , actually, it doesn't.  This issue (Summer 2006, XXXIII/2) is a perfect example and I was quite taken with many of the pieces.  Most have an element of oddity and the virtue of unpredictability.  Here's a bit of each of the poets:

Rachel Abramowitz, Interior:  "Because I hate leaving / I sew myself inside the couch / And wait for the kitchen knife / To find me" (I love sight alliteration).

Samuel Amadon, Leather or Hazmat, Soon & Skillful:  "... None of the children have bicycles.  Even // our apples are mined with pits.  Chance / may yet provide us boxes.  I'd close mine".

Audrey Bohanan, Ever-Missing:  "... One of many / such Chicken Towns with its child of factory / process, blue damage-dye effluent, ...".

René Char, translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, Evadne:  "Summer and our life, we were fused / Fields devoured the hues of your perfumed clothes/ ...".

Darin Ciccotelli, [Nonlovers, We Were Caught]: "...// Tissues, like disheveled carnations, / on the floor, / long after the strums / to dry our hair."

Maureen Clark, Variable Moon: "If I could say anything to you / I'd say pomegranate // sapphire      lily / tornado // the few exotic words I know."

Stephanie Cleveland, A Painter of Sweet, Blank Beauty:  "... My hands mapped out a portly ex-marine.  I wanted his hairbrush, and frozen eggs."

Cynthia Cruz, Toby: ".. / Someone's mother's pick-up parked / With a glue-sniffing family / Of kids inside.  And everyone is dead / In my America."

James Doyle, Cage for Sound: "The mockingbird is built up / from bones so thin / rain cracks on its way through."

Haines Eason, Seven Eyes the Stone: "Dissolving, I woke to you against the morning, I / watched some thing of you with the window, with / ..."

Chris Forhan, Once:  "Once, a black panic of birds scattering from a tree.  / Some finger flicked them."

Juan Carlos Galeano, translated by James Kimbrell and Rebecca Morgan, An Apparition Arrives at our House with an Infant Apparition:  "..// My wife and I do what we can.  We add our bones to / the kettle; we sweeten the side dishes; we ask the soup to / allow lucky numbers into the mix".

Hillary Gravendyk, Sun Plough:  "middle country wavers in white air / over lengths of rust, suppled in the white of it / . hot flag of grass"

Jeff Gundy, Damselfly:  "..// I wait a whole minute and a black damselfly crosses the creek /       and the world begins again and again."

Kate Hall, Watching a Leaf Fall I Cannot See:  "At the market, the man with his hand / in the boy's mouth is missing."

Derek Henderson, From "Towards a Biography of Sudek's Notebook.": "Speak, please, / with seven beats of the vein in your wrist,"

Laura Kasischke, The Punishment:  "O moral / and spiritual emptiness, remember / me. I // will never be / such a girl again. ..."

Jesse Lee Kercheval, Black Night:  "A night ago night / was smothered with / ash & husk / piled on the roof like / negative snow."

Kyle Little, Pink Scooter:  ".. Pink / in the way new things are often / Pink, blood — not magic, just rising / to the top.  I rode it always."

Lisa Markowitz, Word Court:  "Most hear the Real in / The Quiet.  Touching life / Takes the backseat in existing, it seems."

Tod Marshall, For the Virgin Pines to Make Much Sky:  "Gather ye may / Gather body and shadow and castings of shadows / Gather ye bodies while ye may"

J. Michael Martinez, Portrait of an Iris:  "You are       porcelain pretty one     little word cupshaped / tracing seasons    still holding no branches"

James McCorkle, In Time:  "Watching, the verdant / Return, /          to see, seeing, it stems"

Daniel Morris, Jo Dimo and Ma Mo Go Pomo:  "Joe DiMo dumps Ma Mo after // the director orders / the subway underneath // ..."

Brendan O'Connor, Not To Mention:  "Our grandparents got channels / peculiar to the Hoek Farm / region, private broadcasts / emanating from between rows/ ..."

Carol Phifer, Mind Travel:  "A hundred umbrellas unfold / beneath a million points / of water, slim trajectories."

John Poch, Valle Vidal:  "Like a cutthroat / in a meadow stream, / I look up through a disturbance. / And I see you, / looking through a disturbance, / a cutthroat."

D. A. Powell, Gospel on the Dial, with Intermittent Static:  "that bough, emissary of shade, /       held off the rain we quivered under"

Jonathan Rice, Constellarium:  What I Remember: "About them, nobody was sure.  They were / quiet from Sunday school to the morning // ..."

Chas Speck, Light Carried by Water, Light Carried by Flies:  "All the light of this winter in this boot mark of snow.  / All the dirt of this city in these two soles."

Sarah Vap, Cold Red Tiles, Red-Hot Bath. : "Hallucination / when I come: Imposters // moving through the desert, and up the mouth of the world."

Jasmine Dreame Wagner, 1985 The Book of Sand:  "— Yes, Principal, I have ventured out of bounds. / I twisted the swing until the steel chain broke / and the globe has come unscrewed / on account of my wandering hands"  (I also like the quote by Georg Cantor, the 19th century mathematician who invented set theory)

G. C. Waldrep, Apostrophe to the Memory of Benjamin Britten:  "I shall now speak about kittens".  (This cracked me up.  You go, GC).

Mike White, And:  "    bringing the sky // to bear /         on our conversations // you pointed, and // the pigeons / ..."

Nancy White, The Porch:  "You have a cereal bowl, large, / cream-colored, with a green rim, / one of the following painted on the bottom: / eggplant, head of lettuce, parsnip, pumpkin // ..."

Joshua Marie Wilkinson, From "The Book of Falling Asleep in the Bathtub & Snow":  "Three days /     since I found / the clawhammer in the mailbox / .."

Devon Wootten, Coma:  "O sharpening edge, innermost / dark ring of the other star // ..."

Linda Young, Forty-One Weeks:  "All right, I'll be straight.  When you live in / a wilderness of water, your body / becomes a wilderness of water ..."

One of the most interesting pieces was a cover letter by Amy Newman to Donald Revell, which was published in its entirety as a poem.  I don't know if this speaks to the ingenuity of Ms. Newman or the sense of humor of M. Revell.  It begins "Please consider the enclosed poems for publication in Colorado Review.  They are from my manuscript, X = Pawn Capture, a lyrical study of chess as my grandfather invented it:  a game not of skill but of worry."  It was a brilliant selection.

One of the unusual revelations of the Western Slope trip was the degree to which dogs have replaced whining children as the Preferred Small Mammal of Accompaniment.  There were dogs on leashes, dogs on sidewalks, even a pair of Pekinese in a baby-carriage in Aspen.  All the mountain towns seem to cotton to them, installing leash posts and leaving bowls of water out for the pups while Mom and Dad are shopping.  I find it completely weird.

If you're wondering what the next picture is, it's a red door set in the middle of a mountain.  It's at the end of a short road just outside of Ouray, which by the way, is pronounced "You-Ray", with the accent on the second syllable if the local are any judge of things.  Of course, residents of the Illinois town of Cairo, back as far as Mark Twain, pronounce it "Kyro", so go figure.  Anyway, the door probably opens up into a mine that is tapped out at this point.

Derek is home from college for four weeks, and during that time, my House Elf, though I don't make him wear the required pillow case.  Der's making spending money for next year doing all the things that I never get around to, like water-blasting the backyard fence and painting it.  This week called for the Painting of the Downstairs Bathroom.  Junie, Der and I agonized over countless paint chips from the local Lowe's (did you know that Christopher Lowell, Martha Stewart, and Nickelodeon all have paint brands?), and ended up with Tropical Punch.  However, just before I was about to buy a can, I changed my mind.  I chose Happenstance, which somehow seems like something I can live with.

Speaking of cuisine (OK, not the smoothest segue), I'm making Curry for the Fam-Fam tomorrow.  Kyle's GF is a vegetarian so it's will be with vegetable stock and shrimp.  The basic recipe comes from Joy of Cooking, my copy of which is showing the strains and stains of 30 years of use (and my birthday is January 9th, hint, hint).  The basic recipe is:  sauté one big onion and one big Granny Smith apple, both of which have been Cuisinarted up into something less than mush but more than chunks.  Add two big T of flour, one little T of lemon zest, and the Secret Curry Powder, which is NOT that stuff called curry powder on the spice aisle at Safeway.  It is, in fact:

2 ounces of  coriander, turmeric, fenugreek, ginger powder
1/4 ounce of cayenne pepper, black pepper and white pepper
3 ounces of cumin (ground or whole)
Two cinnamon sticks
1 ounce of mustard powder or mustard seed
1.5 ounces of cardamom seeds and poppy seeds
3-4 whole cloves

Actually, it's all a crapshoot.  I like more cumin and often substitute dry chiles of various kinds for the cayenne.  The ginger, cumin, cardamom, turmeric (for the classic yellow tint), and coriander are a must.  You could actually leave out all chile, but you need just a little bit of heat for all that stock.  I have a special coffee grinder that is all stained and nasty that I use for grinding up the curry powder ingredients, but you could use the powdered stuff in the first place.  If you do grind everything up, don't reduce it to dust, leave a bit of chunk.  Once the apple and onion mixture is simmering nicely, add the curry powder.  Let it sauté for 3-5 minutes on low, then add the stock.  Swanson's low-cal chicken stock is just fine and will assuage your guilt about cholesterol and any other worries of the day.  Now, add 3-4 tablespoons of flour that have been stirred into a cup of the hot mixture.  Let it steep and bubble (toil and trouble) for 20 minutes.  Then, you need to "correct the seasoning", which is chef-speak for putting more of what you like into the brew, which in my case, is always more cumin.   At this point, you can add uncooked shrimp (they'll only take a couple of minutes to get pink), or cooked chicken pieces.  I like to use everything left over from a Thanksgiving turkey this way.  You can also try cooked lamb, but it's not my favorite.  Vegetarians might try using par-boiled cauliflower or baby potatoes in lieu of meat.

You can now put it in the fridge for up to a day or two.  Just before serving, heat it up, and add enough half-and-half or cream to give it a smooth sheen and cut the edge on the chile components.  I like to add a teaspoon or two of fresh lemon zest at this point.  Some people swear by dry sherry at the last moment.

When the big Curry Event is on, cook up a whole lot of sticky Japanese rice (actually, nowadays it's all US-grown, like California Rose) and get going on the condiments.  I usually serve the following in little cups:  3-4 kinds of chutney (OK, in a rush, I just let the diners scoop teaspoonfuls out of the jar), sliced almonds, mandarin orange slices, chopped celery, sliced bananas, raisins, shredded coconut, chopped red peppers, sliced hot-house cucumbers (regular cukes are OK), and whatever else sounds good to you. 

OK, I haven't done sufficient penance for my sins of desertion, but I'm a peg up.  See you soon.