None for tea, but two for BBQ

It feels like summer is finally here. The birdhouses on the front porch are overflowing with tentants (sometimes literally - rip little unfledged baby) and yesterday we had our warmest day of the year thusfar. Despite my failed last minute BBQ scheme (the first few people I invited all had the temerity to have other engagements, so I lost interest and will plan better next time!), it turned out to be a lovely day. My little white dog woke me up early enough that I had my grocery list and shopping done by noon and was already making a mini-BBQ for my mom and me. On the menu: Black Bean and Mango Salad, Raspberry Shortcake, and Country Ribs.

This is probably something everyone but me already knew, but being relatively new to doing the barbequeing, I discovered my new favorite way to make ribs last summer. If you boil them ahead of time, they are so tender they fall off the bone AND they hardly require any grilling time at all. To sweeten the deal, boiling them renders the fat, which makes them slightly less artery clogging, which means you can put more whip cream on your dessert and without inflating your health risk. Silver lining with nary a cloud in sight!

I am still tweaking to find the perfect blend, but so far my recipe is to fill a large stock pot with water, a couple tablespoons of pickling spice, a quartered onion (yes, an onion - I still think they are the devil's condiment, but am willing to accept their utility for some recipes), a whole bunch of garlic (the more, the better - crush it a little before throwing it into the pot), a bay leaf or two (or whatever herbs you like), a bit of salt and boil the ribs in the for an hour and a half or so. Then all you need to do is baste them with your favorite sauce and throw them on the grill for a few minutes. After that, all that's left is to drink a mojito made with mint from the back yard and enjoy! Aaah summer!

Gentlewoman's Agreement

So I've been trying to think of something to talk about as part of the gentlewoman's agreement I struck with Jen back in April. Per the terms, we each agreed to post five times a week. We even renegotiated at the beginning of May declaring amnesty for all slackers (aka people like me), restarting the project and setting the blogging bar at four times a week. We are nothing if not flexible.

While I have thought about posting at least four times a week (sometimes even more, champion thinker that I am), the actual doing it has not happened. I'm telling you, when they finally invent the program that translates good intentions into organized writing, I am going to be SO freaking productive, you won't even believe it! There is probably a lesson here for optimistic, encouraging people like Jen: Never enter into any kind of accord with a known slacker. She can be happy that is was just blogging and not a suicide pact or something like that. It would really suck to be the one who follows through on that, while the other person is all "Oh, I don't know. I'm too tired to kill myself today. I think I'll go eat Cheetos and watch American Idol instead. Maybe tomorrow…"

The thing is that I am just not feeling like I have much to say lately. Sure, I think of things, but then when it comes to posting them, I think "Why the hell would anyone else be interested in this? Isn't it a little narcissistic to think that my navel gazing is so fascinating? Why don't I just keep a journal?" Then, yesterday I followed a link from Freewill Astrology to Jason Mraz's blog. And I read it and thought to myself "Except for being talented and famous, what is so special about him?" Don't get me wrong, I love Jason Mraz, but...

Why can people like him incite themselves to sit down and play, but I can't? One of my sometimes slightly pretentious writer friends (and sometimes judgmental shithead) is happy declare that some people are just serious about their art and some are not. Frankly, I think there is more to it than that. Creativity and self-expression shouldn't be vehicles for oneupsmanship. Sometimes we are just blocked. A vessel with a clogged spout is not necessarily an empty one.

I still don't know what I have to say or why or even if it will be of interest to anyone. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it is just about the self-discipline to power through it and form a habit. Maybe it is about stopping to really look at the crazy, beautiful world around me and writing about it, because that will inspire me to play and create things that fill it with just a little more beauty. Sometimes maybe you don't have to understand. Sometimes maybe you just have to do and see where it takes you.

P.s. In totally unrelated news this made me laugh.

Terrible Tilly and some less terrible things

Does this not look like the best spot for a ghost story? Tillamook Lighthouse (aka Terrible Tilly) sits isolated and abandoned, perched upon a rock a mile offshore. The lighthouse dates back to 1887 and wasn't exactly built under the best working conditions (dangerous, crashing waves, flying debris, etc.). While it operated for 70 years, it was never open to the public. There are legends about a child's grave left by an early keeper, a grey lady, a former keeper who loved the lighthouse so much that his ghost roams the structure, and Native American stories about the haunting of nearby underwater tunnels. Even without ghosts, it wasn't always the safest workplace. Being closed and essentially inaccessible just makes the place all the more intriguing, which is always good for the imagination.

Seeing it last weekend made me want to dig out the beachy ghost story I started a few years ago as part of a failed NaNoWriMo attempt. These days I don't seem to make a lot of time for writing anymore. The truth is that it's only through a hastily made gentlewoman's agreement under the thrall of the road and sea air that I have recently even resurrected the idea of updating this blog more often. At this point, doing so still feels a little creaky and awkward, but having the deadline of five posts a week helps me in the same way that my past January blogstravaganza project did. It even has a bonus in that the agreed upon "five posts a week" sounds far less daunting than blogstravaganza's "every day" did. Even God took a day to rest and we all know that I am WAY lazier than God ever was!

Bug-eyed Azaleas

I found this poem by Dorothea Grossman today as I was tripping about the Internets, looking for spring poems to inspire me. I like it, don't you?

Spring

by Dorothea Grossman

The murderer, on his way to work, stops to admire the wisteria framing his doorway, and waves to the bug-eyed azaleas.

I've no plans to murder anyone, but I there is a particularly attractive purple azalea in my yard (and a half-dead wisteria, but we won't talk about that). The weather here in the NW has been gloriously springy these past couple weekends, prompting beach trips and garden center purchases. It's the perfect weather for sitting outside, listening to Pandora while my godson builds a tent city of boxes and old sheets on the lawn. One tent is apparently not enough for the child. He is intent on erecting a whole housing development. If you're going to dream, dream big, I guess.

P.s. The Pandora playlist you get when you put in "Thao & the Get Down Stay Down" has a lot of good stuff on it. I'm particularly fond of Miniature Tigers' Tell it to the Volcano.

This is a test from my new droid

I'll take "Breakup Songs that make me happy" for $1000

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down - When We Swam

W.S. Merwin

Because April is National Poetry month, I've been reading and researching, W.S. Merwin. He won his second Pulitzer Prize for The Shadow of Sirius last year. Hearing him read from it at one of last years Wordstock events was one of the highlights of the festival, especially because Merwin himself comes across as such a lovely human being. It is always disappointing when someone one admires turns out to be arrogant or unpleasant, so it was doubly rewarding to have it confirmed that Merwin is neither.

I first came in contact with Merwin in grad school via his translations of Pablo Neruda. As a student of language and dabbler in translation, I admired his facility with language and ability to create translations that captured not only meaning but spirit and emotion. Literal translation is easy, but it is not such an easy thing to convey the feel of the original. Good translation is a fine art unto itself.

For a long time, I went along blithely unaware that Merwin was a gifted poet in its own right. It was only many years later that I ran into one of his poems, fell in love, then realized that it was my old friend. For a great piece on him (including some examples of his poetry) from Bill Moyers Journal, click here.

"The Nomad Flute."
W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again