random act of bravery

It's like a festival of honesty round these parts lately. Like SXSW, if instead of drinking a lot and dancing to awesome music, people sat around and had really uncomfortable, painful conversations with each other.

where is the Land of Tim Riggins?

here.

the word for spoon

Maybe it will surprise you to know that I used to hate crème brûlée. It should surprise you: a person might as well hate trench coats, or baby squirrels, or sex. But a bad crème brûlée borders on tragic, apologizing, pale and rubbery, the crust not shattering against your spoon but rather sagging wearily into itself with an exhausted squeak. My dad also used to set things on fire. He had an oversize blow torch, back when he still made things with his hands - real things, not seared tuna or saffron risotto - and my memories of crème brûlée are of charred dishtowels, my dad swearing, my mom opening windows, and the whole thing was so 1996, the crème brûlée, the fucking crème brûlée, the raspberry coulis, so chic, so impossible to recreate. 

But it was the only dessert in the dark bistro in Brussels, which I remember as having heavy wooden tables lit by candles, and a menu written on a chalk board on the back wall that was almost impossible to see. There was horse on the menu - cheval, which made us pause and mouth the word, confirm to each other that it meant what we all thought it did - and then, scrawled at the bottom, the crème brûlée. 

I don't remember what else I ate that night. I don't remember much of the trip at all, honestly. Tom had left only days before and my parents flew me to Europe because that's what parents do when they live thousands of miles away and get woken up by hysterical phone calls from their only daughter. They buy a plane ticket and then I was on the floor in the Heathrow airport and then in a hotel room in Brussels, sucking cough drops with Flemish labels, writing long, desperate emails to my boyfriend of eight years who had suddenly, maddeningly decided to destroy himself.

I trailed my parents for days around the city, and then around Luxembourg and into France, barely registering where I was, as my mom lifted my arms and pointed them at churches, graffiti, monuments, murmuring look, look. There was a museum with headphones that tuned into the radio waves of various musical instruments in glass cases when you walked closer to them. It was orbital: forward into a glockenspiel, turn left into Zimbabwean drums, in and out of these auditory worlds and the strange, still seconds of silence between them. Look, look, Meghan. Look. And what she was really saying: Wake up, Meghan.

It started with the waiter, who was cute in that rare European way - not vaguely wet or oil-slick, not overly feminine. And then none of us could remember the word for spoon, kept repeating couteau, fourchette, couteau, fourchette, until the waiter came over and I stopped fucking crying long enough to look up at him and say, "We can't remember the word for spoon." He came back with a whole handful of spoons, laying them out in front of us, "Cuillere, cuillere, cuillere, cuillere," smiling at me as he did so, and I laughed and realized I was flirting and had a flash, nothing more, that said - This will be your life now.

And the crème brûlée, when it came, had a crust that crackled when we broke it with our three spoons, and a delicate vanilla custard that was only barely sweet, spicy and silky, the shards of burnt sugar catching against the roof of my mouth like thin sheets of ice. And it was a bit like waking up. 




Last night, for the first time in weeks, I made myself dinner. I cancelled a date with the skinny guy from the elevator. I put on Dan Mangan's new album. And then I sliced a zucchini and a summer squash into thin rounds. I filled a pot with bulgar wheat. I sauteed the vegetables in olive oil and threw in the crisp of a fennel bulb and some snap peas. I stirred in pesto and chickpeas and squeezed over half a lemon, catching the seeds in my palm the way my dad taught me. I tore parsley leaves with sea salt. I ate slowly, on my couch. I tried to wake up. 

tabs

This is a photo of a turtle with other turtles on it.

The Week Social Media Broke My Heart

The Window, Franz Wright (I know, it's all terribly mystical. So what. So is work; and work means something. It means that what you do, you do for someone else. You do it for someone who loves you, that's all, someone who misses and needs you, if you are so blessed.)

Absurdly unaffordable sweaters.

Poets Forum (Sometimes at work I do actual work.) 

The National Library of Medicine's notes on Citalopram. 
  
November's average temperatures in southern Thailand. 

Facebook

"I Can Find an Indicted Warlord. So Why Isn't He In the Hague?" (Mac McClelland is the Christiane Amanpour to my Rory Gilmore. You with me? Except vulgar and a little more dangerous. The kind of dangerous that makes you look out your Wall Street window and wonder how much a plane ticket to the Congo would cost.) 

random act of bravery

Doesn't listening to Fiona Apple make you want to stop eating altogether and drop 20 loathsome pounds?

Just me?

Fiona actually starts to cry at the end of that video below. Did you notice? It's too much for her, somehow. Like she can barely choke out the words. Even though she knows what's coming.

It's the sentiment, right? That's why I'm not supposed to like her. Maybe it's indulgent. It's the "deep feminine" - Marie Howe spoke of it. I have only a handful of female artists on my iPod. I never got the Tori or the Ani. Fiona did something for me though, back when. She was more overtly sexual, which I dug when I was trying to figure out how that all worked.  She couched her anger in her sexuality, which I'm realizing is dangerous even as I type it. I'd like to say it was powerful, but it's not - just look at her. She can barely keep her head up. You know she goes home and sips milk and whiskey through a straw.

I've been having this ongoing argument with a friend over why I have such issues with humour. I don't have those same issues with sentiment. Obviously. Have you read this blog? Feeling, feeling, feeling. I deal in feelings. I read other blogs and think, damn, I should be funnier. I should be lighter. I should take myself less seriously (that's definitely true). It's not that I don't find things funny. I do! I probably think you're very funny. But it's that you have to work at it - really work at it. I am not okay watching people try and fail. This doesn't happen with sentiment. It's easy just to peel it back and lay it bare. It might not be pretty, and it is only rarely interesting, but it's what you're working with. Humour isn't innate - is it? Our conception of what is funny changes radically from culture to culture, decade to decade. What's innate is an ability to read people, to think on your feet, to adapt, to contort. But it's work - being funny.

Here is something you should know about me: I will go to the empty counter in the food court because I cannot bear to see someone giving something of themselves and no one else picking it up. This usually backfires - there's a reason no one is eating the $3.99 lo mein - but to see someone place the full weight of their hope behind an endeavour and to see it rejected is something I simply cannot handle. It's beyond being uncomfortable with failure - which I am - or frightened of vulnerability - yes, that too. It's that you're asking so much. You're asking me to feel something, and to show it. It's ingratiating, even when it is utterly sincere. And humour can never be entirely sincere, not really. It's a substitute for another emotion, or a place holder, or a stop gap so that we don't have to get so quickly to the meat of what matters.

Fiona is getting to it, in her own bird-like, overwrought way. There's so little honesty anymore. I spend so much time thinking about how to say it that by the time I finally do, it only vaguely resembles what I feel. The last time I was capriciously honest it came out like a hiccup, and only then because I'd wedged myself so far up against the wall that there was nowhere else to go. AND IT FELT SO GOOD. For two whole minutes I thought I would always be honest with everyone for the rest of my life. Two whole minutes.

We could all do it together, if you want. In increments. I could tell you that tonight I ate gummy worms for dinner. Last night it was four sunflower butter cookies. I'm listening to Fiona Apple. My hair is wet. And still there's so much I'm not telling you.

now it's serious

Fiona Apple. Shit's getting real.

change

Look for me another day.
I feel that I could change,
I feel that I could change.
There's a sudden joy that's like
a fish, a moving light;
I thought I saw it
rowing on the lakes of Canada.

(I've always loved how Moon bullies Sufjan at the beginning of this video. It's a reminder that sometimes, sometimes you just have to push past the cold. Sometimes you stay on the fucking roof. Because it is worth it.)

here are your waters and your watering place

You Think This Happened Only Once 
and Long Ago 


You think this happened only once and long ago?
Think of a summer night and someone
talking across the water,
                                              maybe someone
you loved in a boat, rowing. And you could
hear the oars dripping in the water, from
half a lake away, and they were far and
close at once. You didn't need to touch them
or call to them or talk about it later.
- the sky? It was what you breathed. The lake?
sky that fell as rain. I have been like you
filled with worry, worry - then relief.
You know the wind is sky moving. It happens all the time.

Marie Howe

recently

Last night I met a movie star. He was short. I couldn't have been more cool. New York has taught me the fine art of pretending not to give a shit. I pretend not to give a shit about a lot of things these days.

I recently asked a friend what to do when you can't stop thinking about the thing you aren't supposed to be thinking about. His advice:

busy yourself with hobbies

long runs

cold showers

kickboxing

Also: find a new fish.

I've been dealing with this free-wheeling anxiety by eating lots of crunchy foods: baby carrots, almonds. I take short jaunts around the block. I don't think it's just me - my whole office has been wound tight. When I walk by with a bag of carrots everyone reaches for a few. One of us thinks it is something in the stars. They blame the stars for a lot of things. They're poets. 

This morning my dad sent me an email with a thinly-veiled wish that I stay inside this weekend. The terror threats are credible. I know this because there's a cop standing on the corner near my office with a semi-automatic weapon held against his chest. One of the things we say, the collective we, we say it - We won't change our lives. We won't allow our lives to be changed. But that semi-automatic is new. And all of our shoulders are hunched a little higher.

Frankly, I was looking forward to having the most boring weekend I could possibly manage. I painted my walls "Mt. Rainier Gray" last weekend, which sounded appropriately moody and reminiscent of home. But the colour is closer to powder-prom blue, and I can't bear to go in there. So my furniture is still piled in the middle of the floor, and I continue to live out of my suitcases. That will change this weekend. I'll stay inside as long as I can stand it. I have a yen for a small, thin-winged trip: I'd like to take my bike and a backpack and head somewhere on the train, to the tip of an island, maybe, where there is an old boardwalk to bike along. I would be happiest alone, but you could tag along. We'd make sandwiches and I'd probably take off an inappropriate amount of clothing and make for the nearest, coldest body of water. This is just a thought. It is likely I'll spend the weekend doing laundry instead.

I wonder how this time will look when I am past it. Will I think back on these first few months in New York and wonder how I survived them? Or will they seem easier and easier, more restful than I knew? I saw a play last weekend. This girl, this beautiful naked girl, gave a rather beautiful speech about how we move on, or fail to. It's like walking a road, she said, and you're walking and walking and you think you're getting somewhere, and then you look down and realize: "He is the road." 

All photos from Cabin Porn, viciously addictive, pure torture. 

things just won't work out above