<= 2011.09 | up (archive) | none =>
44! Magnum
Twelve years ago, when I had just started this blog and was writing a lopsided early draft of my set-theory novel, my desktop background was an allegorical Alphabeta Artis that I later lost, and never found the right Google terms for until tonight. It is pegged, finally, as the frontispiece to Athanasius Kircher’s Ars Magna Sciendi, Sive Combinatoria.
There is much to love here, but I especially like the eye and the ear. I am happy to take Kircher on as a lexically garbled ancestor. Among other achievements, he takes the time to write out the factorials all the way up to fifty.
my sister knew a fellow who would shout "shrinkage factorial!" whenever he had to wade through a river. it happened a lot?
I think a clever rewrite of macabre nursery rhymes is in order.
The desire to build a utopia is so strong. And our cushy day care rather resembles a utopia, if you shut one eye and squint the other... heaven is full of babies. It’s hard to write about. This little piggy experienced no privation, nor this, nor this.
heaven full of babies = macabre nursery
It took R. four months to discover the length of her body. Now she grabs for her feet with a hunter’s concentration, like a cat batting at fish, and rakes her fingers over her pate in total bafflement at this downy, warm surface that is always with her but never in sight.
She gapes to her jaws’ full span, like a basking shark, and says “Aaa. Aaa.” Is it a complaint? We live in mild terror of the screams retuning. Should we respond in kind?
Strangers tell her the oddest things. The last was a hale, white-haired woman in her sixties who observed in passing, “Those look like fun feet.”
Definitely time to start playing "this little piggy..." ;-)
See, that’s what I’m talking about! Horrible, horrible world where pigs eat roast beef....
Are you taking author signature requests? I've a budding writer on my list who'd be pretty tickled.
See, this is what happens when I can't get the mail module working and don't check comments for a month. The answer is of course! - and with Christmas now only 356 days away, it's never too soon to get them in.
Since publishing a small-press volume has obviously made me a Public Figure, I should maybe Integrate the Branding around here? This much is good for email.
The signed copies I gave as Christmas presents are highly prized :-)
2012
Whole Foods—such is life in this late age, Whole Foods is the subject of sentences—confronted me with the Gordon Lightfoot recording of “If You Could Read My Mind,” which I’d only known from the radio covers of my childhood and remembered for the pitch-perfect oddness of “ghost from a wishing well.” Anyhow that is cleared up and I have recognized it as a pulverizing song about the end of a marriage. My marriage, thank God, is not ending. These possessions, or relations, whatever they are, are such absolute values that they can very, very easily pull you into the community of suffering when invoked. Dead-kid jokes aren’t funny, tongue-clucking news stories are ice down the spine. All that.
R. goes to a beautiful daycare on the money-cushioned university campus, which I suppose will inflate its grounds and turn into an island on the day the flood comes. It is unlike Star Trek in that babies still get colds and bring them home to their parents, so I took some Tylenol and lay down in the dark, at which point hired laborers came into our yard with a leaf blower. I muttered grumpy half-thoughts into the pillow, what the hell is wrong with a rake, really, this is why we have oil wars and our elected officials swearing on the Bible that a carbon tax would implode the economy, so that leaves can get blown around to no end... then I got up and went out back and found the yard beautifully cleared of weeds. I’ve barely stepped out there in months. I’ve ignored a lot of things. I don’t listen to music without special effort. Once every two months I log into Facebook or Twitter and discover strata of messages meant for me.
Resolving has for me never amounted to much: you are what you are, and the range of variance is only to what extent you are aware of it. Perfect knowledge would presumably add up to perfect silence, and nothing documented ever again. That I don’t have.
2011.12.04 :: down the rabbit hole
Cars were bunched like mad on the 101 near San Francisco International Airport, and we started to wonder why everyone would be fleeing the country on a Saturday night. My thought was that the masks had finally come off the lizard people. So how does it shake out?
Obama: lizard person
Boehner: lizard person
Pelosi: not a lizard person
Lieberman: surprisingly, no, that's just the way he is
Geithner: catches flies with tongue, changes color during interviews
Dept. of Agriculture: 100% lizard people
Dept. of Labor: 80% lizard people
Supreme Court: all lizard people except, oddly, Kagan, whose jaw hits the floor during the first deliberation
Romney: lizard person
Perry: intended as lizard person, but the download cut off halfway
Bachmann: raised from birth to believe herself a lizard person, stares in mounting horror as the masks drop from everyone else, leaving her alone untransformed
Somewhere very far in back of new parenthood, a tiny curtain has gone up on a tiny stage and unveiled my book of stories on its tiny silver plate. All the peeled-away sentences and trashed drafts have been hastily swept into the wings. My reigning mood by far is surprised gratitude for everyone who’s taken an interest, from the publisher on down. Festival of thanks!
CASA METAMEAT FESTIVAL OF THANKS 2011
(implementing “Recipes Without Quantities,” a minimalist food spec)
Eudaimonia Tempeh
Marinated tempeh strips (store closings meant we went with the pre-marinated Turtle Island brand this year, but you can do it yerself with soy sauce, garlic etc); half a big orange kabocha squash, oven-baked twenty minutes, then diced; blue lake string beans. Into the skillet, medium-high with sesame oil, rice vinegar, as much grated fresh ginger as feasible. Toss till sizzly. Add soy sauce, sweet Thai chili, a bit more vinegar if you like. Sizzle again, serve.
Hill of Beans
Dice and olive-oil sautee five minutes in a stock pot: Anaheim pepper, poblano pepper, two jalapeños, a few celery stalks, garlic to pleasure, plenty of leeks. Toss in black beans, white beans, can o’ diced tomato, cup o’ veggie stock, big dollops of chipotle paste, cumin, oregano. Simmer twenty minutes or until pleasantly goopy. Separate and blend half; remix with unblent portion. Serve topped with sour cream, cilantro, avocado slices.
Root 92
Slice turnips, parnips, celery root wide and thin. Toss with salt, pepper, thyme; heap and spread in buttered baking dish; pour in enough milk to two-thirds drown them. Bake 45 minutes at 400, checking every 15 minutes to turn over browned bits and press the softening assemblage into the milk. Stir in a cup or more grated Gruyère; bake 45 minutes more till homogenous and browned on top; serve the deserving.
West-östlicher Divan
Sautee pine nuts in olive oil, set aside; sautee chopped onion in same oil, stir in brown basmati rice, add plausible amount of veggie broth, cook covered 40 minutes; stir in dried cherries and continue cooking till satisfactorily fluffy; stir in sauteed pine nuts, thyme, pomegranate seeds; serve the meritorious.
Friends of the San Francisco Botanical Garden
Mixed greens, persimmons, fennel, dill, walnuts. Toss with sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, bottomless jar of lavender pepper.
Mother’s Pecan Pie
Guarded by family. Don’t overeat!
Human Milk
You must be shorter than this sign.
Beautiful!
"feed"
Congratulations on another birth! Goes on my Christmas wishlist.