neglect

My blog has suffered during the winter and spring months, while my office life grew increasingly stressful and my smalll business life occupied more of my waking and sleeping attention. My kitchen has also suffered, as you can see by this poor sweet potato that branched out in search of appreciation elsewhere. A sweet potato. I've never seen a sweet potato sit unloved for so long that it sprouted.

Summer has finally arrived, and my best intentions for posting here are still suffering neglect. It's my hope that summer vacation will eventually penetrate to my bones and I'll start making regular posts, but I'm too wary for promises. I'm going to settle for hope. And in hope, I post a poem (the term "weekly" will have to be abandoned, clearly), that seems appropriate. In pursuit of keeping up with my life, it seems my awareness of my life may be one of the most obvious victims.

The Vacation

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.

by Wendell Berry

Taken from Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor. "Wendell Berry is poet, essayist, novelist, farmer, environmentalist. 'Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens.'"

ode to unholy foodstuffs

A few months ago, I bought a fun cocktail ring from my lovely friend Shana. When it arrived, the package included a little candy extra, pictured here:

I'm a cautious tryer of new things, and in truth, a pudding marshmallow sounded nasty. So it sat on my counter untouched for a week or two until a sugar craving made me bold. I tried it. It was love at first marshmallow. It's a flat little disc of lovely, powdery marshmallow, filled with a sort of nougat version of vanilla pudding. Almost pudding-textured, but not quite. I got hooked fast, and when Shana and I made a pilgrimage out to a flea market in the suburbs, we stopped at the store where she'd bought them and I got more. And then a couple of weeks after that, her kind and funny husband bought a couple more bags and gave them to me and that's when the fun really started.

To truly appreciate pudding marshmallows, I had to go through several stages of tactile interaction. First and most obvious, unwrap it. Admire its dry, powdery surface, slight sponginess and perfect pillow shape.

Next, a natural curiosity led me to examine the anatomy of the marshmallow. Its marshmallow outside separates in a pleasingly simple fashion from its pudding inside. I enjoy taking them apart in little pieces, savoring the deconstruction. Or eating one whole and seeing how long it takes for the marshmallow part to dissolve. Or peeling the outside off of the inside and eating them separately. Oh, lovely!

One day I was melting silver wire to make ballpins and spied the bag of pudding marshmallows on the counter. I had a brilliant inspiration: toasted pudding marshmallows! I got some chopsticks out of that drawer where you put chopsticks when the chinese food is delivered, and skewered a marshmallow. I discovered quickly that they catch fire pretty fast even from several inches above the flame on my gas stove. Scorched marshmallow, what a waste. It took a little finessing to perfect my technique, but I forged on undaunted, and achieved the pudding marshmallow in its purest form: hot pudding on a stick.

The marshmallow puffs up like magic when toasted. The outside caramelizes to a beautiful crisp texture, and the pudding bit melts into actual pudding. Unadulterated, unholy addiction. The rest of the bag of marshmallows disappeared in three short days.

finally flickr

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally joined Flickr and started uploading pictures. At the moment there's not much in there, but I'm working on it day by day. I thought if I went ahead and posted about it here, then I'd be forced to keep going or suffer taunting and humiliation from my friends and family. It's mostly going to serve as a showcase for a vast, random collection of photographs I've taken in Chicago of things I've found funny, impressive or mind-boggling; but I'll also have a showcase of jewelry designs past and present, and (if I ever get to travel anywhere again) vacation pictures. Have at it, people:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leavesofglass/