Tag Archives: by Catherine Keefe

The Weekend Dish – Promenade Pasta

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What’s the best compliment you ever got in the kitchen?

One night J sat at the kitchen table watching me try to invent a pasta dish from the random pickings of a quick farmer’s market trip.  When I’m in creation mode he knows better than to ask how he can help, but he stays nearby in case I forget he’s home and starving.  I figured he must be wondering what he’d gotten himself into, marrying this oddball who doesn’t cook like normal people do by reading from a cookbook or recipe box.

My process is more, hmmm, shall we say, kinetic?  I open the pantry door, retrieve ingredients, stare, return a bag of dried cherries in exchange for a tin of pine nuts. Maybe my hand swirls in the air as I waft imaginary aromas toward my nose. I close my eyes and air chew, trying to imagine exactly what I want. I twirl to the refrigerator for a lemon maybe, or a vegetable. My hip bumps the fridge door closed as I pivot to the island countertop, hands full of spinach.

“You cook like you’re dancing,” he said and I melted. I pulled him up off the chair for a quick waltz around the table before returning to the skillet heating up on the stove.

I was pretty happy with how that night turned out, yes for the dancing, but also for the pasta.

The surprise of the dish is squash blossoms.

I’ve eaten squash blossoms in salads where I find them beautiful, but a little out of place. Squash blossoms overpower gentle lettuces like butter and get lost in hearty greens like kale.  But heat these babies up – and yes technically the stork doesn’t bring zucchini to your garden, it begins life as a seed and then a squash blossom – and something symphonic happens, sort of like how the drudgery of an ordinary weekday meal prep can turn into a kitchen waltz.

I call this dish Promenade Penne with a nod toward how the pasta pot and squash blossom skillet waltz together toward the grand finale of a meal culled from a stroll through the farmer’s market. Also, there’s a little sweet kiss of honey in it, and all good proms end with a kiss.

Promenade Penne
INGREDIENTS:
3 large sweet potatoes
One bunch fresh squash blossoms
olive oil
3 T pine nuts
3 T honey
1 lb. penne
4 C washed baby spinach leaves
Freshly ground parmesan and fresh ground pepper to taste

– Peel sweet potatoes and slice into 1/2 inch circles.
– Heat a large skillet over medium-high flame.  Add enough olive oil to coat skillet.  Let it warm up, then sauté pototoes until slightly browned and soft. Stir now and then to prevent burning.
– Meanwhile, in a separate pot, heat water for pasta. (This is a fine time to dance.)
– Right about the time the water begins to boil, the potatoes should be tender.  Toss pine nuts into skillet with potatoes and allow to brown just a bit.
– Add pasta to boiling water and cook according to package directions.
– Turn potatoes down to low. Add squash blossoms and stir.  If necessary, add a dash more olive oil.
– When the pasta is al dente, drizzle the honey over potatoes and squash blossoms.  Stir to coat and heat evenly.
– Drain pasta in a colander.  Place spinach in empty pasta pot and after pasta is finished draining add back to the pot so the pasta heat slightly wilts the spinach.  You may toss with a little more olive oil.
– Place pasta and spinach in a large bowl. Spoon sweet potato and squash blossoms on top. Garnish with fresh parmesan and pepper if you like.Light the candles.  Good night.

With heels kicked up,
~ Catherine

 

Is it short in here, or is it just me?

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I’m standing in the cereal aisle of my corner Albertsons when I notice a little woman stretching on her toes, clenched white teeth tensed between lips puckered in a scowl.  She asks me to grab a box of Grape Nuts just out of reach.

“Why do they put all the good cereal up so high? I’ll tell you why,” she says without waiting for my guess. “It’s a conspiracy against short people!”

She tells me this as if I plotted the whole thing to shame her into a grocery aisle conversation.  She shakes her head and those tight little lips melt down into a frown.

“Or,” I say, leaning in close, like a collaborator.  “It’s to get strangers to speak to one another.”

I hand her the box, raise my left eyebrow and give her a beaming smile.  Then I sashay away on my long, long legs and hurry home to tell you all about it.  And in the telling, I begin to laugh and laugh.  What a gift these things are that create conversation among strangers!  How, how, how very large!

I am large, or huge, monstrous or leggy. Elevated.  Tall. Whatever adjective you choose, the fact is I’m six feet tall; the average American woman stands around five feet four.  People count on a tall woman to be strong, fearless, accustomed to the staring and the Amazonian expectations based on nothing more than a 36 inch inseam.  Truth is, I’m afraid of rattlesnakes, big surf, and even though I’m not hungry, I’ll eat a giant stack of graham crackers smeared with homemade vanilla frosting before I face an empty page and wonder what the heck to tell you about on a Thursday because I fear sounding stupid, provincial, or, forgive me, small.

Is this just a lesson in how contrasts create tension to drive a narrative forward? Maybe.  Is it true?  Definitely.  Is it metaphor?

I’m in the middle of preparing my syllabi for the new semester and I read an interview in which author Nicole Walker wonders if by creating metaphor we might be mowing over small precious things. “Is the problem with comparing the large to the small that the world becomes reduced?” You can read the interview here if you like.

I think metaphor unites us in more of a knitted together sort of way rather than a shark gobbling a guppy process. Sometimes a writer, or any other human being, needs to cast a shadow when the real thing is either unavailable or inaccessible.

But we need to realize that one person’s reality or perception isn’t automatically universal, nor accurate, as I’ve learned from a lifetime of tall comments.

I’ve only met you sitting down, I had no idea you were so tall.
A colleague said this to me when our paths crossed at a restaurant.  Usually she’s sitting behind her desk when we converse.

You’re so big, you must be really, really old.
I laughed when the cutest little preschooler in a pink ruffle dress said this to me because it made so much sense and also because of the mortified look on her mother’s face.

You don’t look that tall.
I get this response a lot when strangers ask how tall I am and I tell them the truth. I wonder: What does “that tall” look like to you?  Must we constrain ourselves to an audience’s expectations?

It’s a great time to be tall.
Well I guess so.  But it’s been a pretty great time to be tall ever since the seventh grade when I wrote in my diary, “Dear God. Please let me shrink. Not too much, just a little every day. And please let my clothes and shoes shrink too.”

I don’t want to shrink anymore. One of my favorite ways to expand my mind is to read literature in translation.  If you’d like to grow too, check out “Words Without Borders”, the Online Magazine for International Literature.  It’s a conspiracy against small minds and way less fattening than graham crackers with frosting.

Here’s wishing you a million chances to grow today.
~Catherine

Road Trip!

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“Summer road trip” are three words that belong together like bacon, lettuce, and tomato.  While some roads are just a long haul between here and there, others are so drenched in history and literary ghosts that a ride along them is more pilgrimage than crossing.

Route 66, known as “The Mother Road,” or “America’s Highway,” is my voyage quest thanks to a family history that involves my father migrating along the route from New York in 1944 in a 1939 Chevrolet, and of course there’s John Steinbeck’s exhilarating description of the perils of the route in The Grapes of Wrath.

66 is the mother road, the road of flight…

And 66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains hang unbearable in the distance…

It’s the main cross-country highway that begins in Chicago and led migrants from Oklahoma to California, but it travels in two directions and I first met it heading east from  Los Angeles to Arizona in a lumbering brown Pontiac Bonneville station wagon loaded to sagging with four girls, two adults, Oreos, liverwurst, grapes, bubble gum, and a Sing Along handbook.

We arose before dawn as the prospect of overheating, laden as we were, was real.  Our tires devoured miles of hot highway below while fat bugs splattered onto the windshield.  As the stars dimmed and I witnessed my first sunrise creeping into the sky turning strawberry, I saw Mojave yucas and Joshua trees – silent, dark sentinels guarding the vast emptiness with what looked like arms upturned in salute.

We were not alone on the road.  Other children in other cars hung their heads out windows too and we waved to each other.  You didn’t dare run your air conditioner crossing the desert in 1968; you might overheat so it was four, fifty-five.  Four windows down, fifty five miles per hour.

Some cars had brown flax Desert Water Bags draped over the hood ornament. Air blowing across the fabric cooled the water. Just in case the radiator blew.

The sight of cars prepared for human or auto lifesaving measures heightened my sense of the danger of crossing the desert. Desert Water Bags are a thing of the past, sold on e-bay to vintage item collectors.  Now there are cell phones and call boxes, rest stops with drinking fountains and orange-vested Caltrans workers.  The swath through the desert is more quickly traveled along Highways 15 or 40 now.  The ghosts of Dust Bowl migrants lingers only in novels and photographs.

“Summer reading” are two words that belong together like “me and you” and in Chapter 12 of The Grapes of Wrath you’ll find the best description of the precariousness of traveling the old Route 66.

In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns…

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone.

These days you have to travel into Arizona which boasts the longest continuous stretch of Route 66 still paved and usable, reaching about 155 miles between Topock and Seligman, to see evidence of the road’s old treachery.

Outside the Roadkill Cafe, Seligman, AZ.

Reading Steinbeck as a passenger during my last Mojave Desert crossing made me wish for a new kind of Desert water Bag, one to capture the spirit and thoughts of those who had gone before. I felt like I was meeting the ghosts in the open land and I wanted to drink in their spirit, ripe with bravery.  If somehow The Grapes of Wrath skipped your own reading history, it’s one of the books selected by the National Endowment of the Arts “The Big Read” program which aims to inspire “people across the country to pick up a good book…listen to radio programs, watch video profiles, and read brief essays about classic authors.”

Summer Road Trip. Summer Reading. Me. You.
Where will our journeys take us this summer?

With high adventure,
~Catherine

Cherries and haiku

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Did you ever get a second chance?

I still regret not stopping at the empty picnic table that appeared one winter day, out of the blue, along the path where I walk.  Rather than stopping to appreciate its rustic beauty, I planned all through the winter and spring to celebrate the summer solstice upon its refuge in the shade of an ancient oak.  But when I arrived in June, it had been destroyed.

Past tense and future crumble the present I was given and never received, I wrote about my disappointment.

And then today, straight out of the blue, like a mirage, I discovered another picnic table under a different nearby tree!

Does someone build these in the night and place them in perfect spots for strangers to find?  You can tell it’s not brand new by the lovely mottling and sag of the wood.

 

Where do these tables come from?

When given a second chance, it’s best not to stop too long to ponder the mysteries of how or why, so I reached into my heart’s pantry for joyous gratitude with a generous helping of urgency.  I coaxed Chester the white dog into a trot home where I gathered a bag of cherries, a pen, a journal, a book and an idea.

We returned and settled into the shady spot.

Lately I’ve been reading  Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings by Matsuo Bashō. There are many translations, but my favorite is by Sam Hamill.  The book begins with the line, “The moon and sun are eternal travelers…every day is a journey and the journey itself is home.”  That last phrase took me several readings to comprehend.

The journey itself… without continuing to walk this path I wouldn’t have stumbled upon the new table and without the disappointment of ignoring the first gift, I wouldn’t have paused to celebrate the second.   I love the philosophical soundness and evocative imagery of Basho’s haiku and one of my favorite poems of his came to mind.

Even woodpeckers

leave it alone—hermitage

in a summer grove

This could just as easily read “picnic table” as “hermitage.” Why do travelers on my path leave the picnic tables alone?  I love that Basho frequently posted poems for others to find.  I couldn’t resist this desire to leave a poem as he did “quickly written, pinned to the table.”

summer afternoon

empty wooden bench
sycamore extends her branch
kick off my shoes. home.

Did you use your gifts to celebrate a new opportunity today?

With gratitude and deep delight for your own second chances.
~Catherine

p.s. Visit the Poetry Foundation’s website here to read or listen to how other poets embrace the form. If you’re in the mood to write and enter a haiku contest, check out The Haiku Society of America’s “Harold G. Henderson Awards for Best Unpublished Haiku” here.  Deadline is Aug. 31, 201

Never enough time to say no

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Are you used to the idea by now that your days aren’t long enough?

My father once asked me this during a week when I’d just moved and was still unpacking boxes.  I was also in the middle of putting out an issue of dirtcakes the literary journal I edit, finishing a poetry manuscript, writing an essay collection, and baking cookies to take for an overnight visit to that same man who’d just asked me if I was ready yet to bow to the superior strength of time’s speed pitted against my endless to-do list that stretched like one of Jack Kerouac’s legendary giant paper roll manuscripts.

From the back cover of On the Road: The Original Scroll

I almost said no, my days are never long enough.  And then I paused.

Every single day there’s time for meditation and prayer, for long dinners with my husband, conversation with our parents and children, my sisters and neighbors, friends and strangers.  I have all the time I need to hike with my dog at least for a bit and toast small discoveries like the way the afternoon sun slants golden in the living room window of the new house.

Every day is exactly as long as it needs to be when I take time to write and teach and breathe a prayer of gratitude for living with the kind of mind that dreams up all the things that fill my days.   That to-do list only feels like it stretches to eternity, but in fact it’s filled with tasks that will hardly outlive my body the way love will link my life to others in ways that will continue to give long after I’m gone.  There’s never enough time to say no to what matters.

So, yes, I said, rather surprised at myself.  Every day is exactly long enough, I told my father.  Yes, this day is the perfect length, as will be the one tomorrow when I come visit.

What, what did you do today?  My monkey mind can’t help but ask this persistently during the daily hour when I finally concede surrender to the uncrossed off items still standing under the to-do heading.  My answer today?  I wrote you and I feel great.  And now it’s time to go get busy in the kitchen.


With all the time in the world,
~ Catherine

p.s.  If reading lists brings you pleasure, one of my all time favorite books is Journeys of Simplicity: Traveling Light edited by Philip Harnden.  It’s a compilation of lists from writers, poets, even an arctic tern.

An excerpt:

RAYMOND CARVER’S ERRAND LIST:

Eggs
peanut butter
hot choc

Australia?

Antarctica??

What will you pack into your day? What are you willing to let go?
~C

The Weekend Dish – Creeping Crust Cobbler

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… A Creeping Crust Cobbler Recipe and story

Apricots, like most good things, require patience.  The tree stands barren through winter’s chill while you are left to remember and dream, to wait and hope the small fruit arrives by the buckets come summer.

There are many things like an apricot.

Crystal Cove, CA

 A California sunset, for example.  Or, as Deborah Slicer writes in her poem, “Apricot,” “The weight of a small child’s fist, / a girl…”

Apricot Girl with her Nana who made the family’s first Creeping Crust Cobbler.

In our family it was a girl who inspired Nana, the Backyard Sisters’ mom and grandmother to 10, to turn a bumper crop of apricots into Creeping Crust Cobbler, now a summer dessert staple in all the sisters’ homes.

It was the blazing hot summer of 1987 and Nana had come to stay with Catherine who had just given birth to a son.  Nana made a tradition of spending a week with her daughters whenever a new baby was born. One of the joys of this time was getting an extended visit with the older children in the house, and one of the Apricot Girl’s favorite things was picking up fallen fruit from the ground.

Apricots were one of Nana’s favorite fruits and she knew there was something better to be done with this backyard gift than throwing them for Max the Golden Retriever to catch.  “Let’s turn this into something delicious for dessert.”

When Nana asked what sort of cookbooks I had, I pulled out one that her own mother, Gammy to us sisters, had given me as a wedding shower gift.  A Collection of the VERY FINEST RECIPES ever assembled into one Cookbook was exactly the kind of book to find a homey recipe for apricots.

Gammy loved buying cookbooks from church groups or school PTAs and this book was a compilation of a fund-raising cookbook publishers best recipes.  It perfectly captured the sort of mid-western American fare she made most frequently.  Turns out, I put the right tool in the good cook’s hand. On page 189, Nana found a recipe for Creeping Crust Cobbler.  We’ve tweaked it a little over the years.  But there’s one thing that’s never changed; I always remember the summer Nana and the Apricot Girl discovered one of the favorite desserts in the entire Backyard Sister family.

CREEPING CRUST COBBLER
Heat oven to 350.

1/2 C butter
1 C flour
1 C sugar
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1/2 C milk

1 C, or less, sugar.
2 C fruit  We’ve successfully made this with apricots, peaches, plums, and blueberries, or any combination of them all.  You can use the fruit solo or mix together. I usually don’t peel the fruit, but you can if you like.

– Heat fruit with sugar in medium saucepan over medium heat until sugar melts and thickens a little.

– Melt butter in 10-inch baking dish by setting dish with butter in it in heating oven.

– Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl.
– Add milk and mix.
– Spoon batter in large glops over the melted butter. (Is there anything better than a recipe that uses the word “glops?”)
– Pour fruit and sugar mixture over dough.
– Bake in 350 oven about 30 minutes, until crust is golden brown. (Sometimes this bubbles over into your oven so you might want to place the pie pan on a cookie sheet.)
-Crust will rise to the top.  Serve warm or cold.

Superb with a dollop of ice cream. Excellent for breakfast.

With sweetness,
~ Catherine, Sue, Gammy, Nana, and the Apricot Girl

p.s. You can read Deborah Slicer‘s poem, “Apricot,” in its entirety on the Orion magazine website here. Orion is a treasure for anyone interested in nature meets literature meets culture.

Hurricane? Fabulous

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Hurricane Fabio, Fabio (Weather Channel/AP/File)
Photo collage compiled by Yahoo! News

When I packed to move this weekend, I found a 1995 newspaper clipping of a public letter I’d written to Fabio, the Italian model, after he stood me up for a workout date to discuss a fitness book he’d written. The headline reads, “Black leotard awaits its fabulous destiny with Fabio.”

Oddly, my weekend seemed filled with Fabio disruptions.

Hurricane Fabio surf. July 13, 2012. Crystal Cove, CA

“There’s a hurricane swell today,” the lifeguard told me on Friday. “You shouldn’t go in without fins.”

I don’t own fins.   Undertow yanked my ankles like a two-fisted giant; waves crashed overhead. Hurricane Fabio’s effects impressed me enough that for the first time ever I postponed an annual tradition begun when I was 15.  I always body surf on my birthday to celebrate life’s wild beauty, and in some weird way, to prove that I’m not yet old. I wondered what it’d mean to give myself a hurricane delay.

Swell and crash. July 13, Crystal Cove State Beach

When the universe nudges me twice in one weekend, I wonder if it’s trying to tell me something.  I reread snippets of the letter.

Dear Fabio,
You’ve broken my heart.

Oh sure. I’m the one who stood you up on our first date.  That afternoon we were supposed to work out together at Gold’s Gym was a nightmare. There I was, stuck in traffic, miles from you.  The clock crept fast; the Hollywood Freeway did not.  You had to leave before I got there. Remember what you said when we spoke by cell phone?

Don’t worry, Catherine. When I get back from New York we will work out.

When my friends and husband and editor found out I’d missed our date they wailed and gnashed their teeth.  Who’s late for a date with Fabio? I felt terrible, but I readied myself for your promise. We will work out.

I bought a new leotard. Black.

I reread your book, Fabio Fitness. 

I had so many questions.

Do you really use miniature utensils so you don’t eat too much?  Is it better to work out with a buddy as you suggest on page 188?

I was nervous thinking about standing bicep-to-bicep with the Great Maned One. My hands sweat just thinking about it.

I did a few sit-ups. Eight.
I bought new shoes. Black.

I mourned that we’d missed our first date, but was secretly relieved. I thought your workout might be too hard and I’d huff and pant and act the fitness level of someone who spends her time reading romance novels.  I was willing to sacrifice my body because I had more important things on my mind. Fabio, I wanted to give you the chance to prove that looks aren’t everything and that you really cared about the health and well-being of all the women who swoon at the sight of you.

I bought a new pair of tights. Black.

You returned from New York and invited me to your Hollywood Hills home instead of Gold’s Gym.  Your Los Angeles publicist said it was because you’d just installed a new sound and video system.  You wanted to show it off.

I told her I’d be glad to come to your house. To work out.
Your publicist invited me to your house for breakfast. I said I’d be glad to eat breakfast with you. After we worked out.

Your publicist invited me to your house for lunch. I said I’d be delighted to come, I’d even help cook recipes from your new book. After we worked out.

Your publicist said you’d changed your mind; you didn’t want to share your workout. Your workout is a religious experience for you.

I didn’t want to come to your house to talk. I wanted Fabio in action, helping women becoming more healthy and fit, like the press kit said you were devoted to doing.

I’m wearing black.

__________________________

I threw back my head and laughed.  I did used to buy new clothes when I was nervous and running late is something I’ve spent years trying to purge from my bad habit list. But seriously, I’d given up a date with Fabio to prove a point?

I know one thing for sure. I’ll be headed back to Crystal Cove in a few weeks to make good on that birthday body surfing tradition. If you happen to see Fabio, tell him he can join me. To work out.

Splash!

Wishing you all swell things,
~Catherine

p.s. This letter to Fabio first appeared in a slightly longer form in The Orange County Register, Oct. 3, 1995.

Noisy things. Then quiet.

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After the storm, near Arches National Park.

How do you mark the 67th anniversary of a day that changed the world forever?   Ready or not, the atomic age began on July 16, 1945 with the first successful atom bomb test.  There’s a report, available now from the Los Alamos National Library, so you can read all about it.

Trinity by K.T. Bainbridge sounds like it could be an exploration of the religious belief that God is creator, human, and spirit all at once. In fact, Trinity was the code name for the test explosion which occurred in the Jornada del Muerto desert, a name translated from Spanish as, “single day’s journey of the dead man.”

Even though you know exactly what’s coming in that report, the suspense could kill you.

Page iv is blinding white.  Stark.  Then you turn the page and wonder if there’s a government typesetter who has a sense for visual poetry.  The entire page is mostly bare, except centered amidst that very quiet middle, like a cloud, is this:

                                    FOREWORD

   The world’s first atomic explosion occurred July 16, 1945 at the
Trinity test site in southern New Mexico.
   This account of the organization at Trinity, the experiments, and
the results, under the direction of K.T. Bainbridge, was written
shortly after completion of the test.

Page 43 provides an itinerary for the weekend festivities.

Saturday, 14 July, 1700
Gadget complete

Sunday, 15 July, all day
Look for rabbit’s feet and four-leaved clovers. Should we have the Chaplain down there?  Period for inspection available from 0900-1000.

Monday, July 16 0400
Bang!

“Gadget” is the code word for what the world had never seen.  Bang! I think of noisy things whose names I speak.  Bombs.

What was the sound on July 16?

“…measurements were designed to give results for…an energy release from 10,000 to 50,000 tons of TNT…. In many cases the dirt was blown from the shelters by the outgoing wind.”

Wind, I’ve heard wind and other noisy things. Surf. Thunder. Once I had a friend. He’d lie stretched out on the runway at night when planes took off from LAX.  This was back in the day when a kid could hop a fence and sneak onto airport runways, before his death changed all that. Way before 9/11.  I can’t even ask him now, how loud exactly is a jet when it throttles down upon you?

That author of Trinity writes of inexplicable things.

“The following observations, among others, seem to deserve special notice…A skirt of hot lumpy matter, thus far unexplained, rose from the ground ahead of the Mach wave.”

I’ll admit I own a few lumpy skirts.  How funny would I look like rising from the ground just ahead of an approaching Mach wave?  Would it be anything like riding Hurricane Ava surf at the Wedge in Newport Beach that summer of 1973?

A laugh wafts through my open window.  There are good noises. Sure.  Unforeseen pleasures. Fireworks or timpanis.

There were unforeseen phenomenon that long ago July.

“The velocity of the shock wave unexpectedly remained nearly constant at twice sound velocity…”

I think of other unexpected, nearly constant things, like stars or love. How good it is when something works the way you hope.

RESULTS
July 16
Nuclear Explosion
Records fogged by gamma rays.
No records. Traces thrown off scale by radiation effects.

Inhale sweet summer air.
I remember saying this in Japan on a 2007 visit with my daughter, years before Fukushima.  We were thrown off scale by radiation effects.  From my journal three days after visiting Hiroshima:

still thinking of pieces of skin
the tongue with purpura spots
the broken spine
the tea dark brown
curled fingernails
preserved in pristine acrylic
at Peace Memorial Museum

Did the men in that 1945 desert pause to inhale sweet summer air once the dust had settled into silence?

There are quiet things I hate. Time passing quickly. Radiation seeping from the — Noisy things I hate: Bang! Gadgets!

Yet mostly, quiet things are sweet.  Like the sound of books. Your smile when you read my face. A silent prayer like humans folding paper cranes for peace.

Paper cranes at Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima

Mark this anniversary as you must.

With hush and racket,
~ C

p.s.  A poetry book that might touch your heart on the topic of nuclear war: The Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki by Tony Barnstone.  From the introduction:

“I branched out and spent a decade and a half researching war letters, diaries, histories, oral histories, and interviews with American and Japanese soldiers, scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer, President Harry Truman and citizen survivors of the Rape of Nanjing, or Hiroshima, and of Nagasaki.  Drawing from these sources, these poems speak from the points of view of participants in, observers of, and victims of war.”

You can view a podcast of Tony reading during his visit to Chapman University’s Tabula Poetica series by following this link.

What was she thinking?

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Dear One,
You of all people will understand this darting and dipping and how it happened that I really couldn’t write today.

Morning broke with new weather, a salty breeze, skipping and blue. It would have been rude, insolent really, to refuse Nature’s gift by staying indoors.  I packed a small bag of cherries and found a spot at my favorite cove. Into the sand I buried my feet where it was cool, still damp; I upturned my palms, lifted eyes to the sky.

At that exact instant, one, two, three, seven California brown pelicans arrived silently gliding on invisible currents of air, perfect in frame and formation. Ancient Egyptians believed pelicans brought protection against snakes. How could I not dip my own head briefly in gratitude?

Wingspans longer than I am tall, each outstretched bird was an aerial dancer in the Pacific ballet, utterly at ease with ungainly beauty. Prehistoric.  For more than 30 million years, back to the Oligocene epoch, since before humans walked upright, the pelican’s beak has remained unchanged.  This evolutionary marvel, this “first thought, best thought,” as poet Alan Ginsberg might call it, is a rather recent revelation, unearthed by a rare fossil find in France in 2009. “Few other flying animals appear to have survived unchanged for so long.” wrote the BBC’s Matt Walker in his account of that news.

While children squeal and grownups read updates on smart phones, or jog, or surf, there in the sky for all who will look is a symphony to original design perfection.  I scribbled in my notebook: There you are, ancient relic, resplendent and brown — color of earth, myth of heaven.

Pelicans, depicted on tombs in ancient Egypt, “have the power of prophesying a safe passage for a dead person in the Underworld…The open beak …is also associated with the deceased to leave the burial chamber and go out into the rays of the sun,” reports George Hart, former curator in the British Museum’s Education Department in The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.

Was a soul in transport this moment?

Death seemed dim as I watched the birds soar the surf line, then climb.  They scattered to hover then dove. Headlong, with no hesitation from great heights, the way I wish I went through life, they hurtled into water. No splash. A perfect 10, Olympic judges would say. Imagine the brown pelican, as extraordinary a thing as that and almost nevermore, just three years off the Endangered Species list.

The pelican’s survival is linked to the very history of our own country.

President Theodore Roosevelt created the first national wildlife refuge, Florida’s Pelican Island, in 1903 to protect the brown pelican from plume hunters.  Teddy and I share a love for these birds, a link I discover in his 1916 collection of essays, A Book-lovers Holidays in the Open.

“The Audubon societies, and all similar organizations, are doing a great work for the future of our country. Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents…

to lose the chance to see…a file of pelicans winging their way homeward across the crimson after-glow of the sunset…why, the loss is like the loss of a gallery of the masterpieces of the artists…”

Brown pelican as masterwork. Yes.

Suddenly, the birds I watched stopped diving. In response to an inaudible signal – A call drowned out by the waves? A wing tipped toward the sun? A movement of prey to the north? – seven pelicans fell into line once more. They lifted, barely skimming the water, “winging their way homeward.”

I watched and wondered: Am I this elegant in my food hunt?

Out to the depths the pelicans flew; rising like wishes until I could only remember where they’d been.

Gone.

The pelicans. The day.
I promise I’ll stay in tomorrow and try to write something worthwhile.

With awe,
~ C

…and dog will have his day

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The house was shrouded in fur yesterday so I pulled out the vacuum and shooed Chester onto the balcony where he could loll in the sun. Imagine my surprise when I found an envelope stuffed beneath the sofa cushions where he likes to nap. Scrawled on the outside it said, “Just in case I ever get bitten by a rattlesnake you should read this.”  Of course I couldn’t wait for a day like that, one I hope will never come, so I tore the envelope open immediately.

Who knew Chester could write a letter?  It took me a while to recognize the italicized lines were poached from Hamlet.  It remains a mystery how that dog learned Shakespeare.

Dearest Lady,

To prove my sense of decorum is as intact as my facile ears and handsome nose, and to assure you of my faith in full recovery, I insist you read this in that lovely Laurence Olivier playing Hamlet voice you always attribute to me.

To be a dog, or not to be.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the Ticks and Fangs of outrageous Wilderness
Or to take arms against a sea of boredom
And by opposing, maybe end me —

There, there, now, you mustn’t cry. Do stop.

Certainly I will recover from this dreadful rattlesnake bite with all due gratefulness for your exquisite emergency first aid procedures and your superior foresight in vaccinating me against the wicked venom even though I grumbled about that shot at the time.

You mustn’t blame yourself my dear.  It was I wasn’t it? It was my maddening insistence upon chasing those rabbits and quail and roadrunners through scrub and brush, over hill and dale and burying my nose in bush for the thrill of the flush. Oh! Even now I feel the wind in my fur and the pebbles digging into the soft spots of my paw pads and the thrill, the thrill, the thrill of the hunt! It’s utterly breathtaking sport, dear Lady. You know it was the thing I loved, not above you of course, but more than dinner.

We knew the risks.

Frailty, thy name is woman did not apply to you. Nay, you’d put on those lovely boots which heralded freedom, sunshine and adventure.  Every single day as you snapped me onto that miserable leash you stroked my head in the kindest way possible and reminded me that this, this chain was for my own good.  And then, dear lady we both knew your fine understanding of the nature of the canine spirit would triumph and though you vowed to rein me in you could not, nay you would not deprive this dog his pride and pure unbridled bliss.

Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely
The pangs of despised love, the laws delay

I don’t blame you much for that wretched Rattlesnake Aversion Training Class though it did me no good for who might see a snake coiled silent out of sight? Remember that poor family we met at class who told of Huck the Black Retriever bitten right upon the nose in his own front yard? You murmured, “if it could happen in the front yard it could happen anywhere” and I thumped my tail on the tile and said, Yes! Yes! I’ll take my chances. Yes!

…To die, to sleep–
No more–and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.

I remember like yesterday the day I heard you on the phone with your mother right after spring’s first rattler surprised us on the road, the road! where you said we’d be safer.  You said, “Geez, Mom, I may as well hike. Chester loves the trail and I hate to squelch the essence of his dogginess.” My heart leapt! Lady. The pith and marrow of my essence you do most certainly comprehend.

…nature cannot choose his origin and I, my Lady, was bred and born a dog with all the instincts and needs therein.

Did I ever thank you for our post hike custom?  Do you know how much I love to lie upon my back as you croon and murmur pulling ticks and cactus quills from my belly and disentangle foxtails from my fur?  Life would have been easier for you, wouldn’t it, if I were but a sidewalk pet, a lap dog, a dullard.  Do you ever wish you’d never brought me home?

I do so hope you’ll never need to read this and for that I would be most grateful, for myself, tis true, but also for you dear Lady. Do you know I worry about you too when I see you pay no mind to where you step as you photograph the deer across our path or stoop to loosen me from branches, low and dense.

Why is there no rattlesnake vaccine for humans?

Are you feeling any better yet, dear Lady?  I know that cheering you is one of my most special attributes.  Surely I’ll be better soon.  But one thing troubles me when that time comes.

Be all my sins remembered.

Will you let me still bound free, as that is all I wish for?

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
With undying love,

Chesterfield Henry Huggins Keefe

I stuffed the note back into its envelope and scratched my head.  I guess you never really know what a dog is thinking behind all that silence and wiggle.

~C