Photographs: June 2009 Archives

It is very warm. I am making the spicy, spicy dal that I tend to crave when it is hot out. I don't know what it is about the one kind of hot that seems to call for the other, but I know I'm not the only one.

I also go through phases where I want the same thing, over and over and over again. An observer might call it a rut, but it feels more as if there's a spicy-dal-shaped gap in my body.

In case reading this is making you aware of your own need for spicy food, here is my rough formula for making the spicy spicy dal (oh I just love even writing that...mmmm). All amounts are approximate, since I just pour spices into my hand and toss them in.

Take a bunch of red lentils, about half a pound.
Rinse them in several changes of cold water until the water runs clear.
Put them in a pot and cover with a bunch of water - you want to have a couple of inches of water over the lentils, so somewhere in the neighborhood of 4-6 cups water.
Add about 1/2 to 1 tsp. sea salt. Set it to boil, then turn heat down to simmer.
Separately, peel and mince some fresh ginger (a piece about 1-2 inches long and an inch wide), do the same for 2-3 cloves garlic, and chop a bit of onion.
Put 2 Tbsp(ish) olive or canola oil in a saute pan, add the garlic, ginger, onion, and also a hefty dose of ground cumin (3-4 tsp.), 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of hot chile powder (I don't mean the chili powder blend that's designed for making chili; I mean the straight ground dried chiles), about 1 tsp. dry mustard or whole mustard seeds, and a few whole white or black peppercorns. If you have fresh chile peppers, so much the better - you could substitute a fresh serrano or 1-2 jalapenos (depending on how hot they are) for the dried chile powder. Or like 1/4 to 1/2 of a habanero or scotch bonnet. Anyway, saute the spices in the oil, adding a little more oil if necessary, for about 3-5 minutes over low heat. Then just dump them all into the lentil pot. Simmer the vat about 40 minutes, or as long as it takes to cook the rice you're going to eat it over. You will likely want to add more salt at the end, but let it cook first and taste it, since the salt is going to get concentrated as it cooks down. I often end up adding a little more chile, too. Bwahaha. Taste after about 25-30 min. and correct seasoning as necessary. Remember it can be extra-fiery because the rice will chill things out a bit. And because that's what makes it goooood.

Optional additions: juice of 1 lemon. A couple teaspoons of turmeric.
Rice alternatives: Noodles. Polenta.

Yummity yum yum. Yay, fiery.

Tonight I am thinking some bok choy and sugar snap peas in garlic and olive oil to go with it.

It's all very portentous round here of late.

I've been in my new apartment for a while now, but, uncharacteristically, I am still not fully unpacked. I have about 10 boxes full, mostly books and out-of-season or out-of-favor clothing. They are stacked around the edges of the furniture like kelp on a beach.

I know why this is.

Even before I moved in, I was uncertain about this move, and it's not because I don't like the apartment. It's a wonderful apartment. I like the hood, too. The people are friendly, and there's a liveliness here that I find invigorating. The location is magical for serendipitous socializing, and I'd like to stay here a while, I really would.

But I've been afraid the whole time that I won't be able to afford to stay. That I won't, in fact, be able to afford anything. That my whole life structure as I've known it will collapse under its own not-terribly-extravagant financial weight.

It's not by any means an unfounded fear; it's the sort of thing most freelancers experience from time to time, and to some extent we have to learn to live with that in the backs of our minds. But as the work dried up and then the money in savings began to wane, and then to get terribly, terribly thin, I just kept pushing that back into the recesses of my mind. I have no room for that kind of fear in the front, you see, for it would be paralyzing. And it does me no good to be paralyzed.

But all along my enjoyment of this place has felt like a tentative gift, something that might have to be returned in a few months. To someone more deserving? Well, I hope not. I do feel, finally (I think) that I deserve some happiness, and I'd like to be able to experience it here, in this fine hood, in my apartment with the good light and the great proximity to all my friends, and the bike rides and the boys who like to come visit.

It all has the feel of this bedeviling weather we've had. Every time the sun lures us out, it's only ever a few moments between clouds. The threat is ever there; have fun but I'm gonna drench you if I feel like it. Don't get too comfortable.

So I was watching this documentary on Edward Hopper, and he apparently once said that all he wanted to do was paint sunlight on the side of a building.

I came home in light rain today after waiting out a massive thunderstorm, and by the time I sat down at my desk it had turned suddenly strongly sunny out, complete with chirping birds.

Something about the way the light was slanting in made me want to pull out the camera, and it also made me think that Hopper had a point.

I am usually a big fan of color, and my life without strong colors in it would be so empty that I don't even like to contemplate it, but now and then I am struck by the important beauty of black and white.

And even more so, by how beautiful light itself can be - what it looks like playing on a surface, the ripples it makes in reflections, the contrast with a sharp shadow. Positive and negative space.

Positive and negative space has counterparts in life, too, I think. And not just in the obvious idea that life has good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, virtue and evil. I have been feeling my way around in the nebulous area where the values of things are suspended and one simply experiences them.

{I can hear Boywich in my head clamoring about relativism, but I am not talking about that - not really.}

I guess I am talking about opening oneself to experiencing something before deciding whether one likes it or not, before calling it a good or bad thing in one's life, before making any decisions about it whatsoever.

And no, I'm not quite (or not merely) talking about boys, or sex, or any of that, though those things can certainly be considered this way.

It's more about feeling the shape of something. Things have positive or negative space - they can feel bright or dark, or have aspects of both. Again, I am thinking of bright and dark as merely descriptive rather than assigning a value judgment to them. It's a bit like yin/yang, perhaps.

Sometimes I feel that I can detect positive and negative space, bright and dark, solid and airy, manifest and mysterious aspects in interactions with people, and in the people themselves. We all have things that we present easily to others, that we're comfortable showing, and things that we reserve for ourselves for various reasons, and things that move us in a way that's hidden even from us, things which may in fact be gigantic turbine forces arranging our lives and propelling us in ways we aren't aware of.

There is a certain amount of yin and yang in most people, I imagine.

"Great. More exciting adventures in sitting." - Simon Tam

Being sick is always a surreal experience for me. My daily life is composed so much of movement, and being sick is all about sitting still and waiting to heal.

"I hate waiting." - Inigo Montoya

Me too.

Even though I occasionally get something extraordinary out of the experience, like what happened to me last night when, watching PBS with a desultory eye, I had a revelation about what I'd like to do next with my professional self. Or rather, how my unasked-for talents for evil could be put to better use.

I shan't go into specifics, since I like to preserve a little proscenium here. But it was a grand idea, and I intend to see what can be done about it - though I have, of course, no real idea of how to proceed with the transition.

"You keep using that word." - Inigo, again.

Yeah, I do - even though it is perhaps my least favorite activity in the universe. Boywich pointed out to me the other day that, despite my reputation as a change-resisting stick-in-the-mud, I've actually been changing by leaps and bounds. I suspect a lot of it is going on at a level I'm not quite aware of. But I do find myself experimenting with things I never thought I'd be able to do.

{pause for coughing fit that scares cat off my lap}

{another pause to retrieve oatmeal I'd forgotten about. I always forget about oatmeal. However much I may like it, it's just not a memorable food. I wonder if anyone will speak of me in those terms, after I've left. Anyway...}

One of those things is -erm- "interacting" with more than one person at a time. No, I am not referring to the menage a rouge, or any other color. I just mean that until quite recently, it had never occurred to me that I could or would have any desire to juggle multiple lovers. I am not even sure now why I am doing it, apart from the fact that the opportunity exists, and that neither one of them is in any way a serious thing.

Actually, that last bit may be the most surprising of all. There's nothing doing, romantically, with either of them. Never thought I'd be down for (up for?) that. But the list of things I never thought I'd be, or do, or want to be or do, has been getting exponentially longer.

There's always a space on an online personals questionnaire that asks you to project yourself into the future, and I always heave a huge sigh about that. The longer I'm here, the more solidly I realize that planning isn't the point of life. Or at least of my life.

Quite the opposite, in fact. My goal has become to simply get out of my way as much as possible. To let myself breathe, and be here, in this moment, in this place, to see it and hear it and smell it and taste it. To experience the sweetness of that lady behind the pharmacy counter after I joked that I'd gotten sick helping out a friend, and mock-swore that that would be the last time I did something nice. She looked into my eyes, assessingly and with good humor, and said, "You're lying. You'd do the same thing all over again. Because that's how we are with friends and family." I told her she was absolutely right, and we laughed, and it had that delicious sweetness of the real.

Sometimes I feel like we're just here for that - to connect, to interact, to share that knowledge of what it is to be here, to be human.

You know, the funny thing is, with the two boys...despite not being in or planning to be in a "relationship" with either of them, neither of those connections feels false or stale or empty. It's not callous or meaningless, and it doesn't seem to need anything attached to it, or to lead anywhere else, in order to have value. It is its own thing, sitting there in time and space, me and him, in my room.

*with apologies to Talking Heads.

Do you ever find yourself learning the same lessons, over and over and over again? I mean, it isn't even exactly re-learning them, but trying repeatedly to learn them in the first place.

Today's lesson: coping with uncertainty. Okay, not just coping but learning to hover right above it, to be at peace with it, and maybe even to enjoy it.

I'm not saying all kinds of uncertainty should be enjoy-able (as in, something that can be enjoyed, rather than something that is automatically delightful). Fiscal uncertainty sucks.

But uncertainty about this boy or that boy liking you or not liking you, and uncertainty about your own feelings toward him, well, that seems like it ought to have some element of pleasure about it.

I've tried and tried to enjoy the grey area. Or rather, the brightly colored area, the haze of uncertainty in which the air can seem to be dancing with motes of electrical energy, with a look in his eyes or yours that might or might not mean something is going on between you. And you just don't know. And moreover, you don't even know if you want it to mean something.

I woke up this morning thinking, oh I'm glad I didn't tell him yesterday that I have a crush on him, because now I am not certain whether I do. I mean, I kind of do. But then, there are so many cute boys in the world - just look at them all. All those boys on all those bikes, and they are all flirting with me, and we are all going to ride down to the beach together. And there we will play in the sand and pretend, for a day, that there's no reason for anyone on earth to have a care other than, perhaps, frisbee, and wondering if the water's too cold yet for swimming.

So I had this great day, despite the uncertainty, and though the uncertainty was a tiny bit painful, it might have also been a bit delicious. Does he or doesn't he? Somebody hand me a daisy and I will find out.

Or I will just wear the daisy in my hair and think, He might. He might not.

PS. Nikon. Click for bigger.