These Chair Legs

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have been thinking a lot lately about one of my favorite quotes, which actually is a reference to a Gertrude Stein (Gertrude Stein, Rose) poem. It is in an essay by Aldous Huxley, one of the literary greats of England, called The Doors of Perception (from which Jim Morrison derived his band's name). This paragraph speaks to the idea of human perception and the sentence about the rose gets me every time. How effectively poetry can push at those vague buttons in our heads, engaging our innermost questions with the language of emotion, the ecstatic, the language which the world of paint can speak as well. Anyway, eat, drink, laugh, cry, give thanks, and tell as many people as you can that you truly love them. Here, here to the only expectation-less holiday!

From The Doors of Perception, 1954:

From this long but indispensable excursion into the realm of theory, we may now return to the miraculous facts - four bamboo chair legs in the middle of a room. Like Wordsworth's daffodils, they brought all manner of wealth - the gift, beyond price, of a new direct insight into the very Nature of Things, together with a more modest treasure of understanding in the field, especially, of the arts. A rose is a rose is a rose. But these chair legs were chair legs were St. Michael and all angels. Four or five hours after the event, when the effects of a cerebral sugar shortage were wearing off, I was taken for a little tour of the city, which included a visit, towards sundown, to what is modestly claimed to be the World's Biggest Drug Store. At the back of the W.B.D.S., among the toys, the greeting cards and the comics, stood a row, surprisingly enough, of art books. I picked up the first volume that came to hand. It was on Van Gogh, and the picture at which the book opened was "The Chair" - that astounding portrait of a Ding an Sich, which the mad painter saw, with a kind of adoring terror, and tried to render on his canvas. But it was a task to which the power even of genius proved wholly inadequate. The chair Van Gogh had seen was obviously the same in essence as the chair I had seen. But, though incomparably more real than the chairs of ordinary perception, the chair in his picture remained no more than an unusually expressive symbol of the fact. The fact had been manifested Suchness; this was only an emblem. Such emblems are sources of true knowledge about the Nature of Things, and this true knowledge may serve to prepare the mind which accepts it for immediate insights on its own account. But that is all. However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for. 

Mycelium Running!

Ok, I read this book many months ago, but nevertheless realized that I should recommend it widely. Mushrooms and fungi are of a world so piteously under-researched and misunderstood that many actually have a phobia of them, especially in America. But fungus might just be the most important lifeform for the creation and sustenance of life in this world. Beyond its gastronomical use, mushrooms have applications across the board, as the connecting tissue of the forest, siphoning nutrients from root to root, as a filtration system for nasty man-made toxins, as a medicine, and as an eco-regeneration tool. This book by the foremost mycologist details these many applications, and how they have the ability to save the world from our own destructive tendencies. Great! So, before you pass them off as merely shamanistic voodoo plants or rich-person grub, read this book. I loved it.

MYCELIUM RUNNING

A Supermarket in California

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg

   What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down

the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at

the full moon.

   In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went to the neon fruit 

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

   What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! 

Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! 

---and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

   I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among 

the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

   I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What 

price bananas? Are you my Angel?

   I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and 

followed in my imagination by the store detective. 

   We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting

artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

   Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which

way does your beard point tonight?

   (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel

absurd.)

   Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to

shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.

   Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles

 in driveways, home to our silent cottage?

   Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did

you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking

bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Berkeley, 1955                                                                                                 1956

The last line refers to forgetfulness. In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the rivers of Hades. Charon was the boatman who ferried the dead to the underworld. 

 

 

HOWL

The following poem, Howl, was subject, in 1957, to obscenity trials on the basis of its contents, including illicit drug use and sexual references, both homo- and heterosexual. These claims were brought to an end on October 3rd, 1957 with Judge Clayton W. Horn's ruling that it was not, in fact, obscene but actually had "redeeming social importance," as verified by the testimonies of nine literary experts. The poem gained extreme popularity and helped spawn an era in which people became less afraid of their natural bodies and more worried about their own encroaching egos. It didn't take long, though, for people to once again couch themselves comfortably inside their egos again and rally against the blasphemy of their own tainted nakedness. Anyway, the poem is long, and as I said, it contains words and ideas that some have considered "obscene." Close your eyes and enjoy hearing it straight from the poet's mouth.

HOWL by Allen Ginsberg

Another Poem, by a lesser poet

Forth
I saw the sun beginning
Through the diminishing
Glass while the water washed
Over and made me new
The ache left me or rather
Moved from below and
Started up as if for
Cough or laugh or unholy
Mutterings in languages
Unknown to all and most of
All me but forth nothing came
But a quiet moan of the day before
Me and I saw in it the things
That I am not the things
Which define the paper
But not the grain by which
I live and love and for which
I eat not for survival or the want
To continue the gestures
The practiced motions
But for the bit of light that
Glints from the droplet
The cool aromatic breeze of
Spring’s orgasmic coming
The poking eye of pink or gold
Or crimson from bud to crocus
That awakens in me the vigor
Of life

by Sean Flannigan 

Poetry of a Different Flavor

OK, well, that is merely my fancy-pantsed way of saying, "A Recipe." I got a free casserole book from work because it was bound upside-down in its cover. Thus, I am able to supply these humble, very humble, masses with this recipe, pre-guinea-pigged by me.

So, pick your poetry.

Three Poems, Various

One of my favorite poems, by a Pittsburgher named Robinson Jeffers. 

Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling
high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit
narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-
feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time
here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how
beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the
sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak
and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life
after death. 

 This second piece is by the great William Carlos Williams, and although not the most well known of his works, a beautiful and humorous one all the same.

Portrait of a Lady

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze—or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
—as if that answered
anything. Ah, yes—below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore—Which shore?—
the sand clings to my lips—Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.


And third of all, and surely drunkest of all, is Charles Bukowski, the epitome of blue collar poet (move aside Kerouac), with a sad and pretty piece that is even better when heard through his own life-worn voice (Bukowski Reading "Bluebird").

Bluebird 

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Read, think, reread, stare at wall, repeat. These things will help.

Pizza Again?

Surely.

Here it is. I am making dough. I think they refer to it as a "ass-load" of dough on the streets. The dough is cornmeal and semolina riddled. I found that this makes for a delightfully crispy crust. It is not a wheaty sort of dough, but you can't be good and fiberful all the time. I am also making sauces. A red, some form of a white, and probably a garlicky nutritional yeast and oil number as well. Whoever is coming over will be bringing toppings for a pizza of their choice. We are thinking that maybe between eight and fifteen people will find their way here. a lot of pizza for a lot of people.

I will post the (possible) pictures and results later on.

Until then, in the tradition of Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac, here's a poem by Jorge Luis Borges:

Camden, 1892

The smell of coffee and the newspapers.

Sunday and its lassitudes. The morning,

and on the adjoining page, that vanity---

the publication of allegorical verses

by a fortunate fellow poet. The old man

lies on a white bed in his sober room, 

a poor man's habitation. Languidly

he gazes at his face in the worn mirror.

He thinks, beyond astonishment now: that man

is me, and absentmindedly his hand

touches the unkempt beard and the worn-out mouth.

The end is close. He mutters to himself:

I am almost dead, but still my poems retain

life and its wonders. I was once Walt Whitman.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.


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I didn't have a camera proper, so I just used the little built-in camera on the laptop. We made eleven pizzas, one of which was sent across the street to the wonderful proprietor of our favorite coffee shop, Wings. I made an alfredo sauce, a red sauce and a peanut sauce. All three were stars in their own right. Here is a couple:

And here are the pizza-eaters:

It was all very enjoyable. The aftermath though, not so fun. 

Sushi it to me?

Japanese food, being a clean, simple and solemn food, is a beautiful thing. There is something so loud about the only food category we here can claim as Americans: BBQ. It is something of bombs and pools and thirty packs of light beer. It is a thing put on pedestals by those scared of food, ethnic in particular. I will say that Barbeque has a certain allure, and the Koreans sure love it, in their own way, but it is without innovation, excelling only in marinades. I will also say that I am amazing at BBQ. I no longer consume the flesh of land animals, but it is enough to know that I can grill it better than many.

Back to the point. Japanese cuisine. That of vegetable and rice and hammered seaweed. And the occasional recently swimming fish.

We have no fish. We have marinated and fried tempeh, and marinated tofu. Plus carrot, avocado, cucumber and sprouts. Instead of white sticky rice, I am using brown basmati rice, which I overcooked into sticky-dom.

Pictures and taste report to come.
We are also going to accompany the sushi with either Hitchcock or Coen Brothers.
Notorious? Or, Raising Arizona?
Hmmmm...

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Raising Arizona. It accompanied the sushi well. As for the sushi, well, I forgot to take pictures. But, they were fairly attractive and extremely edible.
They did not look like this though:

Our sushi lacked a certain Jackie Chan-ness.

It was a bit more bite-sized. Almost exactly like this, but with a different hand:

It's Pizza!

I even made a pizza with apples, almonds, spinach, roasted garlic, onion, veggie sausage and swiss cheese (fig. 2)! It was delicious.

A Menu of Sorts and the Smell of Italy's Delightful Halitosis

Today, as with every Thursday, we received our CSA box. That's Community Supported Agriculture, for any of those not in the sustainable know. Anyway, it is great. Every week, we get several vegetables and fruits, anything from potatoes, cabbage, avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, apples, mangoes, pears, squash, etc. A list of this week's array is included with your order as well as a vegetable specific recipe list. I have included a scan of this week's recipes, which all seem particularly delicious. Many of the delectables we get are from the farm (Full Circle Farm, to be precise) but they supplement from other farms for what they may lack, hence the availability of avocados and mangoes.
But, I am creating none of these things tonight, but rather a series of pizzas made atop semolina and cornmeal laced dough (I also snuck [sneaked? really?] some wheat bran in there). The dough is rising, as we speak, towards pillowy mountainous proportions. It smells of yeast, ferment. Soon enough my home will be thick with the smell of roasted garlic, the kind which you can squeeze from the papery outsides like toothpaste.
Until that time, I will speak to the merits of one of my newly found internet joys. BookMooch is a site through which, when signed up, one can give and get books based upon a system that resembles the westernized idea of Karma. You create an inventory list. This is a list of books that you have which you are willing to send randomly across the country (or further). For simply putting these titles on your list, you receive one/tenth of a point per book. Further, when said books are sent, you get one point per volume (unless sending to another country, in which case you get two points). Your other list will be your wishlist. Mine is rather long. When a book on your wishlist becomes available, you will be notified and you can request it sent to you for the charge of one point (or two if out of country). See? Easy. I have sent and received several books. The only money involved is that which you spend to send the books, and media mail is cheap. All my books have come in good condition. Go here for this:
BOOK MOOCH!

OK, hope all enjoy the recipes.

Election

Today, we in Seattle are voting, or should have voted already. I am crossing my fingers for the approval of Referendum 71, which would let the gays of Washington keep their partner benefits, and with its approval, I will be able to sleep knowing that our world hasn't entirely fallen apart. People still care about other people, even if they happen to do people of their same anatomy. Also, I'd like to see a win for McGinn, Constantine, Lacata, O'Brien, etc. I will come back with the results of the state of our world.

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R-71 approved! Barely. I would like to know, who are these people who would vote against gay couples having rights? Forty-nine percent of Washington voters are that hateful and sick? I surely hope no-one thinks their God is telling them so, because that isn't the case no matter what religion or how much one thinks their hatred is justified and righteous. Even worse in Maine though, for they repealed gay marriage. A sad day. How long will it take for sense and caring to prevail?
On a different note, it looks as though the rest of our Seattle race is going my way, towards "the good guys." Seattle Mayor still has days of counting but McGinn is in the lead. Things may not be alright but at least I can see an election go my way.

Where hunger is concerned, I made bread the other day, one which required me to make a starter (biga) and leave it in the bread machine for a day. It is dense, as wheat will be, but it is good all the same. I am trying to find the best ways to make whole wheat amazing. I am working on it.

Good day.

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By the way, days and days later, our man, Mike McGinn officially pulled through in the race for mayor. Eat it Mallahan! So, that's good. My first fully satisfying election complete. Over and out.