Chaos

I have been addled for three weeks with a lousy root canal topped by a persistent sinus mess. As a result, I thought it was a good idea to go through the do-it-yourself cash out at the grocery store with a full basket of  items that included 10 for $10 large cans of diced tomatoes that could knock out a pony if swung in a sock.  There was another slew of 10 for 10 New England clam chowders, bulk walnuts, bags of on sale popcorn kernels, and a jumble of stuff that I needed right now with a shrink-wrapped rack of toilet paper on top.

If you have ever tried this, you of rational mind, you understand that there is no room on the talking counter for all of this, even though the female voice repeatedly tells you to "Put the item in the bag. Put the item in the bag. Put...".  I was goofy with sinus pressure, end of week decompression, and the joy of finding that this market still carries Campbell's clam chowder, and didn't want to wait for the too long lines at the too few cashiers event occurring around me.  Independent, I can do this, wait, what?

It became a balancing act.  Because I am not as good a bagger as any newly hired teen,  the checkout machine kept getting mad at me and yelled for the Helpful Cashier who watched over us.  She was very nice, and calmed the register down as my piles of groceries began to run out of room.  What could I do but stack the potatoes atop the cans of tomatoes which slid down crashing to the floor, causing the customers waiting their turn to silently groan.  I felt it, I felt the stares and clenched jawlines of the smart people behind me as they watched the dodo overload the cold steel of the robotic-voiced apparatus.  Helpful Cashier came over and said to just put the groceries in the cart, she could override the machine's mentality.  It ended mostly successfully, but altogether was a mishmosh of chaos culminating with a broken plastic bag of canned goods in the parking lot.

Today I talked to my brother.  His cancer has come back and metastasized, mostly in his pelvis so he cannot walk.  Last year, when the cancer was discovered in his thyroid,  the oncologist recommended radiation while the surgeon said it was unnecessary.  My brother went with the surgeon's advice and landed here.  John is six years younger than me and was the Real Boy that my father wished I had been.  This fall of incidence is a larger version of chaos compared to tumbling cans of goods in a grocery, for it is finite, and will take my brother beyond reach.  I am angry, despondent, and scrabbling for some semblance of order, and for christ's sake, how many have fallen like scuttering leaves over a lost and forlorn landscape?  How can I fit everything into a flimsy plastic bag, categorized by weight and shape?

Three of my close friends have been pulled unwilling from this earth in the past two years while the man who was my rotten, rotten father lived to be 85.  None of the three saw sixty, not one deserved the end that came.  My brother and I are not close, but we tolerate each other some and love each other more.  He is lucky to have a solid marriage, two beautiful girls, and if anything, has been more than a good father to them, considering the tumult of his own early life.

This will be a fitful night, snow has come to areas east of our city, it is snowing in Washington, D.C. where my son lives, melting as it hits the ground.  Let me melt, let me become water, fluid, running, seeking the crick, the stream, the river to ocean.  Let me blend with every living thing in a Mobius strip of infinite being, let me grow into a galactic spiral that spreads across years measured by traveling light, let me be the end of time, the stoppage of every tick of past, present, and future. Let night fall, let sleep come in the window, sandman show your wares.

Vegetables: Orange and White

Well it was a soup of desire, I had made a gastronomic pedestal of orange squash, carrots and coconut milk blended with an onion.  Sunset orange.  The carrots recently available at the farmer's stall this late autumn are the sturdy sort with flavor, not the shaped, bleached desperation that haunts manufactured bags of alleged "baby' carrots.  Feh.  No wonder they are served with dressing to dip, they taste like yesterday's socks.  As a kid, we never imagined dipping carrots in anything, you pulled one out of the ground, wiped off the dirt, and got back to work weeding the row.  I think the only thing I didn't eat out in the field was bugs.  

Mom used carrots to feed us between meals rather than apples, which were more expensive and saved for bag lunches.  You hungry?  Bread and butter with cinnamon sugar was sometimes offered, but more likely it was a slice of raw potato, celery stalk, or a carrot all of which lasted longer than a gussied up slice of bread.  Raw carrots were usually large specimens back then, so when I see what are called "horse carrots" at the market these modern days, I bring home a bunch or two to keep me company.

Right now is the turn for orange vegetables: any of the hard squashes, rutabagas, the newer orange cauliflower, carrots, and varieties of pumpkins.  It's easy to round out a supper with one or two, and they keep handily well in the refrigerator.  Mom would drag home a large blue-green Hubbard squash, storing it in the cellar until a roast of some sort was to happen.   Newspapers would be spread onto the cellar floor, and she'd drop the squash, hoping for a good size crack.  What didn't come apart was broken into pieces with a hammer. The woman could beat a squash till one of them was winded, then haul the chunk upstairs to be baked in the oven.

The other color of vegetable that is showing up is the creamy white of cauliflower, pale cabbage, parsnips, and Chippewa potatoes.  Don't be put off by the lack of color, reports are out that those folks who consume the white vegetables show less of an inclination for stroke.  Back in the last mid-century, housewives were advised to mix colors at mealtime, to jolly up the husband from whatever indignation and worry he faced at the workplace.  Having a meal of Wonder bread and butter, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, and boiled chicken was showing poor form; you could at least sprinkle parsley flakes on something, for heaven's sake.  My mom went through more dried parsley than Betty Crocker herself.  

Coming winter is touted as being a hard one, a few starchy vegetables and a squash put by will be welcome in an oven, for baking on a snowy day of short daylight.   Orange reminds us of the sun, of fire, or of a warm squash lava flow on china plates; a happy color, it is most used in advertising because this is so, just walk down a grocery aisle to see how much orange is out there.  The cool night air falls over the remaining fields of last gardens, vines are tangled and brown, stalks are cut and bundled, the harvest is ending.  Get out your slippers, Papa; your lap blanket, Mama.  Children find your flannels, dogs and cats nest in beds.  Cider, chestnuts, pumpkin pie.  Good night.

Exoskelton

This morning, the weather provided entertainment in the shape of hailstones slicing sideways through cold rain, pelting this earthling with atmospheric buckshot as I trotted to the car.  The precipitation shuddered in the wind, erupting in sudden waves of heavy intensity that soaked me by the time I got inside.  It wasn't raining when I got on the elevator to descend; at the ground floor it was furious with temper that abated just as quickly by the time I arrived at destination north of the city.  What caught my eye on the way was the vision of a bundle walking; couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, but this person owned the largest umbrella in town.  They were wrestling against ribs flipping and cloth flapping willy-nilly in the gusts, and because of the immensity of the umbrella, the person appeared to be a small animal surrounded by a shell.  I thought of a snail pulling in, a mollusk trying to shut a door unsuccessfully, of a crab arranging wee business in a disorderly world.

The umbrella was an exoskeleton, a layer of protection and structure against the empyreal elements blasting; an oyster on the half-shell, a clam casino of human under limpet preservation.  We are so soft, our skin so effortlessly damaged that we need clothing, shelter--amendments to our fragile state.  A little brown rabbit lives outside all winter in frigid temperatures, with nothing but his bunny fur and good luck at finding plant life to nibble.  We wouldn't last three days out there, naked.  Sure, rabbits and squirrels go into a semi-hibernation, but imagining something that weighs ten pounds making it is astounding.  I don't understand how birds, whose body temperature is 105 degrees, keep going even with all the metabolic tricks they have.

We humans are able to construct exoskeletons to serve us: medieval armor, automobiles, helmets, sweaters, and buildings.  Thank goodness, because when you come down to it, all the stuff about the human body being beautiful is nonsense.  Rare the individual, brief the moment, when proportion and lumps are even, hair grows in proper places, and the entire article does not look like it needs starch and ironing.  Really, we are awkward.  No adaptations such as sleekness for speed, spots or stripes for camouflage; we build anything we need, paint on colors when we like.  Find me a beautiful human, and it is likely they are made of marble chiseled by Venetians, or flattened on canvas as an idealized odalisque.  Thank heavens for Toulouse, who began painting people as they really are.

The winds still explore every crevice outside, pushing and pulling at branches and loose papers.  I am glad to close windows, bringing closure to the day and silence to evening hours.  Sleep well, the hours are changing soon, pull into your shell and close the operculum.  Tuck under covers, let sleep come in.





 

Automotive Indulgences

Have you ever patted your car?  Like when you're driving and a can rolls in front of your wheels, but by a small maneuver the tires avoid flattening the thing, so then you pat the center of the steering wheel where the horn is?  Atta car.  There are Thanks for Getting Me Home pats; It's Okay, I'm Not as Young as I Used To Be Either So Don't Worry If Everyone is Passing Us pats; and Oh Good, We Didn't Hit It pats.  This might be part of the belief that if the car likes us, it will keep us safer.

What is really keeping us in one piece are the engineering folks at the car plant, but it's way more fun and immediate to demonstrate affection to the ton and a half of metal that just stopped hurtling through physics and successfully stopped.  Easier done than hugging a guy in a lab coat who isn't present for the grateful appreciation.  So lab guys, feel the love.

I named one car, and that was Tony, a 1998 red Cavalier whose demise came too early in a snowstorm.  A semi had crunched into the back end of a Lincoln, followed by a SUV, followed by another semi that buckled across the highway of ice.  I was the eleventh in a series of 22 cars, and learned how big a semi's tire is when your car slides sideways into it.  We bounced and arced in half a circumference, twisting the car frame and folding one tire underneath.  With all the emergency vehicles that were already arriving, the gathering crowd of people involved wondered why didn't anyone stop traffic from feeding into the Skyway?  I lost Tony, and haven't named another car since.

Where did this affinity come from? Why did I feel as if Tony and I were traveling partners?  I have had cars that evoked a warm connection, and others that were cold metal boxes of combustion and exhaust.  The car after Tony was such, maybe I resented the circumstance.  It was another Cavalier, a 1993 blue that after I was able to get another became a benevolent pizza delivery car, maybe still ghosting around the up side of town, dropping off pizzas and bread sticks to families.  A Fairy Godpizza Car.

My current car is again, a red Cavalier which is now 10 years old.  On the way to work, there are many, many people that cross against a light, some hurrying to get to their own jobs, some sauntering in defiance to traffic rules and the fact that you the driver are sitting on upholstery and listening to music in climate-controlled air.  They are hating on you.  If driving into blinding sunrise, this can get dicey really fast; my solution is to go five miles per hour in the two areas where this pedestrian nonsense happens: across from the MetroRail station, and the intersection at the city college.  However, car folderol happens during the same ride to work.

There is a left turn onto a one-way arterial that turns into a race around the corner for some drivers, only to end a short block at a traffic light that is Timed to be Red.  You are stopping soon anyways, you are winning nothing, and everything will be fine except for the honest walkers that tried to cross with the light and almost got hit by these bullies.  A suitable solution is to cross on the south side of the intersection, as no cars are turning right against the one-way, and those that do so reach the sidewalk safely.  However, this isn't the point, a driver shouldn't try to outgun people crossing the street by scaring them with a four-wheeled monster, including the cyclists, baby strollers, and people with boxes of donuts.  These people do not wish to pat your car in neither admiration nor affection, they more likely want to bazooka it and you all the way back to your grandfather.  I don't blame them.

Today I drove to a farmer's market, the usual Saturday foray; my friend and I brought home apples, squash, and cauliflower heads for our families, all trundled home in the back seat of my red car with the one black door.  Rain and wind blew sideways, but I got home with the goods without harm, warm and mostly dry except where the replacement door seal is not tight.  A few drips hurt nothing.  Carrot and squash soup, a beef stew, and a frittata were concocted for the week's menu, thanks to the convenience of being able to haul groceries in the car.

The winds have subsided; here is a short story: a silver bird ornament hangs from a kitchen cupboard and was tinkling like a bell for no apparent reason.  It rings against the wood when the door is opened, but there was no movement except for the shiver of the bird alone, tinging and tanging delicately, musically. Am I losing my mind?  Why is this thing moving?  Grandma? Is that you?

No, it wasn't a visiting ether of Ida Ruth.  The building was swaying because of the high winds, this twelve-story brick monument was giving and bending with the force of wind.  Remarkable, but there I go again, thinking magically when physical fact was at hand.  The realms overlap so much sometimes it's hard to tell, so I will continue to tell my car that it is a good car, and pat, pat, pat.

I know you appreciate the machinations of inanimate objects, the strength of rope, the durability of good winter mittens, the piped in hot water, the turn of a page of flattened wood fiber.  Every night we wrap our tired selves in sheets and blankets, set clocks, and extinguish currents running to lamps.  We have so much to be thankful for, and I think we are.  Children say goodnight to things, do you?  Goodnight wooden dresser that once held my mother's folded things, goodnight shoes that fit just right, goodnight apples in a paper bag that make the place smell like earth and sustenance.  Goodnight, you.  It will be alright, things always work out in spite of unwanted changes.  Hold on.  Life doesn't get easier, it just keeps going and makes places for you to be, in the lives of those that love you.  Night is here, angels fly. Always.

Treasures and Toxins in the Woods

One sunny Saturday, a group of naturalists and I loped through a forest preserve searching for wild fungi.  A parent had brought his young four year old daughter, which for a mushroom hunt can be questionable as the dangers out there are irreversible and slowly fatal.  Emphasize the word slow, for death will pry you from this plane languidly from a meager ingestion of 7 mg of one of the eight known amatoxins for an adult.  If you don't know for Certain, you are far better off going to the grocery where many species have become marketable and are delicious.  Believe and quake reflectively regarding the fact that even a scientifically trained mycologist can be fooled.

Stay away from anything all white, near white, greenish white, or that looks like it might have been white at some point in its short life.  Puffballs are often considered one of the safe, identifiable species, but the white roundness can be the stage in which the Amanitas grow egglike before bursting through the outer veil.  You are to cut the puffball in half to examine for the outlines of a mushroom head and stipe forming inside.  Hell's bells, I have eaten puffballs and frankly, I would rather eat a styrofoam coffee cup; the consistency is flaccid, poofy, tasteless and not worth wasting the butter in the pan.  Perhaps as a survival food, but that would happen only after I ate any chipmunks within rock-throwing range.  Even inside the puffball genus live poisonous Scleroderma, which is another reason for cutting the thing in half, for their centers mature into black, fetid masses of spores.  It won't kill you, but you will be beholden to the porcelain god for days after.

The mushroom foray was sanctioned and fairly formal, held in Reinstein Woods on a beautiful day in late September.  Of course, anything else interesting was celebrated as well, and being a preserve, everything stays left alone, nothing is to be picked or carried out.  A dead mouse, a dead bullfrog, and an almost dead salamander were considered talismans and celebrated with whoops by the young naturalists on this morning walk.  Invasive species from Europe and Asia were pointed out, and apparently the favor has been returned by American poison ivy and our grey squirrels that are currently raising Cain in England and pushing out the cuter, milder ones that Beatrix Potter adored, the red squirrels.

The father of the young girl asked if there was anything in the woods that could harm her if she handled it: absolutely.  Kids shouldn't be fed wild mushrooms at all, some species have toxins that don't bother adults as much as they could a child.  But there are poisonous ones, such as the above-mentioned Amanita that allegedly has a good flavor and often has evidence of animals nibbling at the cap.  Well, let me tell you, within four days whatever has eaten it is now kaput for it destroys the liver via a series of arcane steps.  After a bout with gastrointestinal pain, vomiting and diarrhea, there is resolve and you think you are getting better after this two or three day period; however, the slower-acting toxin has been busy destroying your liver resulting in jaundice, internal bleeding, delirium, seizures, coma and death in about six to sixteen days.  Survivors usually require a liver transplant.  Don't handle Death Caps, don't put them in a basket used for edibles.  Really, stay home and make eggs.

My fascination is that it was something we did as a family when I was younger, and as a result, I took courses at the Museum and then at college in mycology.  Neither plant nor animal, fungi has been named as a separate kingdom amid the animalia, plantae, monera and protists.  I have eaten wild mushrooms, but only the ones I have been sure to be edible.  Shaggy manes, Suillus, Agarics, Boletus edulis, Boletus bicolor, Collybia radicata, Pholiota squarrosa, Craterellus cornucopiodes, Hydnum repandum, Grifola frondosa, Lepiota procera, Leccinum scabrum, Lactarius deliciosus, and Dentinum repandum are not easily mixed up with anything deadly.  Mostly, I am happy with the store bought stuff, and will never serve anything fungal that I've gathered to anyone else.

It was a nice walk in the woods, something I miss doing on a regular basis.  The air in a forest is exceptionally fresh, oxygenated, and energizing, and anchors you to the earth after a life of cars and pavement, buildings and smartphones.  The smell of earth and fallen leaves reminds us of what we've removed from our lives, for the most part, but think of this: pizza.  Without fungus, there is none, for the crust rises with yeast, a fungi; next, add cheese made with fungus-based rennet, suitable for vegans; top this with Agaricus bisporus, the everyday supermarket mushroom, and you have dinner.  Eat mushrooms, for they are some of the strongest anti-cancer fighters science has studied; in fact, in some groceries this month you will find mushrooms packaged in pink cartons, in support of breast cancer awareness.

This post verges on rambling, my apologies.  Maybe it will lull you into that state of brain just before you decide to turn out the lights and hit the hay.  This is it, you think, the downward slide into that lovely, warm stupor of silence and deep unconsciousness, maybe a glass of milk before, brush teeth, one last look in the mirror before dreaming of dark crevices and fallen logs, hopping toads, and Alice, who was advised by caterpillar to try one side or the other of mushroom cap.  Sleep unfettered, walk through dreamtime's pathways, all pine needles and stalked fungi.  Good night, earthling.