but a place without loss

Back to boredom.

Boredom reveals.

Terrible fear in me—I hide behind other portions of my identity because stories (which are truth, and the way people impact one another—read a very interesting article yesterday on that idea)—because the stories of my life are so severe that I cannot go there.

They are stories of loss.

But they have the power to hurt others.

And to let people in. I don't want people in, regardless of whether or not, being human, I must let them in.

People are not kind, and I cannot trust my need to be treated kindly to them. Far better to keep them all "out there"—sometimes, a life allows the boundaries to be ringed by the score of individuals, hands clasped and singing—the long row of them, singing.

But not so often.

Can't see their faces, save one, maybe two. I do not know them. They aren't really there, anyway. I have found my solace and identity in ideas and in Truth and in images like flowers—the exotic kind, heavy in scent and as yet not known, vivid if not garish, hiding in jungles yet unexplored, then coming to the light of someone's microscope, notebook, pen.

My day begins. Yesterday, at the elevator, glad to be there again. The place clean, ordered, filled with that distant row of people, not clapping, not singing, just present.

-adapted from the morning pages, 25 June 2013

o sweet and lazy nigh unto summer

The lazy blogger had a lovely, lazy holiday. Saturday, doing Big Stuff by participating in the March against Monsanto, which headed out of Piedmont Park in Atlanta to march along a section of the BeltLine.

The Atlanta Jazz Festival was in gear, with lots of stalls selling delectables, from eats to drinks to tie-died and lushly curved and curling dresses waiting like doughtnuts slathered with chocolate icing to adorn favourite darlings to jewelry that would let arms and ears and fingers play exquisite mischief...

A single bag, imitation hippie, at best, seemed to be at all the stalls. I'd had to carry the items I needed to cover the March in my backpack—my wee camera, a notebook (in case I wanted to interview anyone), sunscreen...

My keys and a pen and pepper spray.

Plus, of course, my plastic card that, although I use as a matter of course now, does not mean I support a cashless society! It's just harder to get cash these days...

I keep five dollars on hand now for Marta emergency money. When the bar-b-que stall wanted cash, I wavered. Left to eat tacos at Willie's—but would return before I left the park to indulge.

Southern girl to the very heart of me, where bar-b-que is concerned, and I see it so seldom.

Knowing I had a post to prepare on the March for another blog, however, I'd started the morning out trying to figure some way to manage a carry-all that did not involve the backpack. So the bag quite caught my eye: it was exactly what I wanted.

And I could forgive that it only looked like authentic hippie...

Looked like hand-painted fabric squares...

Looked like distressed edges...

I needed one that would be rugged, however, and stand up to a lot of carrying.

The first one I stopped to eye and finger admiringly did seem sturdier than the others. Too, it had extras the others did not have. I guessed the stall owners had added the smart tassels and beads to differentiate their product from that wave of others, likely made by machine to identical items swatched together into infinity...

But I didn't buy until later, after I ate my taco and chips and had time to think that it really was quite okay to buy something I wanted and had a genuine need for.

What surprised (and the reason I write about my new hippie bag) is that it so very much became one of those items that gives a girl new life. Red sports car style.

Haven't quite adored something and felt it let the secret me out in a really long while...

I carried it with me Monday when I walked down to Papi's for lunch. Had a Cuban sandwich and an order of sweet plantains and an iced glass of tea, half sugar and half not. The sandwich ended up so large that I ate only a third and carried the other two-thirds to eat in two separate seatings...

I worked up a draft for a new business card, late that lazy afternoon, and then I was back in my bedroom, having missed most of the news and all of M.A.S.H. and The Voice was on and all of a sudden, these two guys (I absolutely had no warning!) are playing the opening notes to Seven Bridges Road...

I live in an apartment. Terrace (pretty word for basement) with two floors (maybe three) overhead. A really old, early 1900's former boarding house, to the best of my thinking—it was never a private home.

EVERYTHING can be heard. Conversations.

Everything.

Eerie, sometimes, to be sitting here minding my own business and all of a sudden out of the middle of nowhere over to the right of my head a girl is...

Well. That thing girls do when they are with a guy that go under the head of things you'd never do otherwise.

And do have something to do with voice but not with singing.

Although, one can suppose that one might regard the sound as singing...

I never sing anymore (and I mean the more literal kind, there). Haven't for years, because of the closeness of the city.

But not sing Seven Bridges Road?

Not possible.

Oh me. It was an abbreviated version, because it was The Voice. They only do abbreviated.

But oh, I miss that song.

My voice is huskier than it used to be. And it's been alto something or 'nother for a long while. Always wished I could have become a singer...

You have to belt it out, at my age, because it's like riding a bicycle. More inclined to wobble unless you really move over and let it roar out.

Don't know what my neighbors thought. Be willing to bet they all heard, top and beside and across the street..

And thought it amusing, but nice to hear.

But it all made for a very pleasant holiday.

an accidental delight

Not just cornbread in a cast iron pan—but a heart! And perfectly centered.

Back in the day, starting out, a new bride needed the set of three iron skillets. You had to learn seasoning, which was pretty troublesome. Long years later, a cousin would tell me he threw his skillets in the dishwasher.

I was stunned. But the seasoning...

He just laughed. He'd season them all over again.

My idea of seasoning at that time still resonated with ancient flavours, melding into the whole. Of skillets that had been handed down from mother to daughter several generations over and still having the seasoning carried down redolent with presence...

What I do not know about seasoning—then, now—remains. I created my home with the stuff of legends. With my mother's mental illness (as much as her own creative spirit), the ways of home-making did not rule the day.

For me, it was like an ideal at which to aim—or a hope, made larger by the absence of essential. Myth, perhaps—life set into story.

Some sense, too, yet remaining, of playing house. As long as I am playing house (rather than properly and completely owning house-keeping as a necessity), I can be happy. Otherwise, you will not find me in the kitchen...

Somewhere along the way, I found a set of pans and dutch ovens (my kids were all but grown then, and chaos was firmly entrenched in all that we were) that were also cast iron.

I also bought the piece to make cornsticks—and the one for muffins.

Sweet peas heated from the can in the small pan were delectable.

It may be that my love of cast iron goes back to a story Mama told. A huge dutch oven had belonged to her grandmother's grandmother, who had brought it over from Scotland.

But my great-grandfather had done something with it I won't repeat.

All of it, to be sure, likely the stuff of fancy. So many things had belonged to that same woman...

Likely none of them had. The great old dutch oven did exist. But its provenance was less certain, and it disappeared anyway, long before my childhood did, became a longed-for that new-bought cast iron could not ever be, save long generations after.

I don't think my daughter does cast iron.

But the dutch oven became like a beacon for me—in my broken home, perhaps cast iron would give that invisible something we all seek in family...

I see I stray now from that accidental delight into tales told.

Along the way of divorcing and moving to an apartment, I let go of all but the three skillets. I remember giving them away to a woman who stopped by to look at something I had most regretfully put out for the trash, and in conversation, I listed the things I was needing to let go.

Having so little now, I can just imagine how magical it must have been to meet someone getting rid of so many treasures—.

Don't have room for them in the apartment where I live now but I begin to think that, perhaps a piece at a time, some of the smaller cast iron pieces might be nice to have again. They are troublesome to keep up with, and sometimes have to be seasoned again.

But I miss them.

(It may be, perhaps, that I saved the muffin piece and that it hides in the back recesses of my cabinets or storage place.

Sounds like a good time to go digging....)

A single woman now, I tend to make cornbread (those rare instances now when I do) in the smallest of the three, but this one was made in the middle size. I don't know where the heart came from, as I made the recipe like I always do, halfing the recipe and adding just a touch of extra corn meal (without the flour that the mixes include).

To be sure, I forgot to half the milk, then had to add more mixed meal and flour. But I just poured it from the bag without measuring and, even though it was too soupy, shoved it in the hot oven figuring I'd just turn the heat up a bit and cook it until it was done.

And it kissed me back with this sweet heart!

I ate it with a quinoa and rice dish that had kidney beans (I prefer the dark red), corn (hand-sheared from the husk), lime and the Rotel tomato-pepper mix...

And sides of freshly sliced cucumber (with apple cider vinegar and dill) and spinach (cooked down just enough in water then buttered and a chopped green onion added)...

I have also returned to drinking tea. I keep the tea bags in the fridge because of the rats and mice that like to visit, here and there. I rub the leaves between my palms for a minute or two while the water heats.

Then make sure to let it steep anywhere from ten to twenty minutes, to get a good flavour.

A delightful meal, for all that the special heart did have to be turned upside down to get it out of the pan, then eaten...

But I gave thanks to God for its delights, accidental and otherwise, as I took the first bite of spinach...