Peg Duthie's Blog, page 8
September 20, 2020
Since we are now Ruth-less we must be ruthless.
Subject line = quote from stellaandbow's Instagram.
At Manhattan's Central Synagogue, senior rabbi Angela Buchdahl (with backing clergy) performed Cohen's "Hallelujah" in tribute:
Cedille Records' statement includes a beautiful portrait by Constance Beaty. Earlier this month, I received a Soirée Cedille gift bag. It included recipe cards. (The bluefish spread is now on my To Make list.)
comments
At Manhattan's Central Synagogue, senior rabbi Angela Buchdahl (with backing clergy) performed Cohen's "Hallelujah" in tribute:
Cedille Records' statement includes a beautiful portrait by Constance Beaty. Earlier this month, I received a Soirée Cedille gift bag. It included recipe cards. (The bluefish spread is now on my To Make list.)
comments
August 30, 2020
skirtful of squash
One of these years, I will sew for myself some gardening smocks with pockets. In the meantime, here's what I harvested from the back yard this afternoon between dances:
The patch didn't show any ill effects from a deer prancing around in it before breakfast. Then again, those shells are tough.
The BYM: Why is there a mallet on the kitchen counter?
Me: The saw didn't cut it.
comments
The patch didn't show any ill effects from a deer prancing around in it before breakfast. Then again, those shells are tough.
The BYM: Why is there a mallet on the kitchen counter?
Me: The saw didn't cut it.
comments
August 23, 2020
black holes sing in B-flat and blow bubbles
My recent vacation was excellent. I stayed with two other introverts whose interests encompass music, science, and social justice, so we had plenty to talk about when we felt like talking, and they were fine with me disappearing for a day to paddleboard (on both whitewater and flatwater). I felt cared for and cared about, their welcome mix'd with thanks indeed a grace I have held close to me since my return.
Sunday's reading included "A Lesson in Acceptance," an essay by Bryan Washington, recommended by Tejal Rao, with this paragraph reminding me of green curry and ginger tea at Hinodae through much of my 20s, and seeing both Sweet 16th's Ellen and Miel's Seema this past Saturday:
Sometimes, being a regular means knowing there’s a certain interaction that’ll occur at your spot. Sometimes, it means knowing that there won’t be any interactions at all, and that you’ll be left to your own devices. It could mean chatting with a favorite host, catching up on some mundanity or another. Or maybe you just like sitting in the second booth from the back of the restaurant, by the bathrooms, because you’re a little infatuated by how the light bounces off the windows beside them. It is a gift, in this country that would always like you to be screaming at everything--from inequity to infrastructural maladies to impunity to corruption--to comfortably, consistently, have the opportunity to shut the fuck up and simply exist. Being a regular, at its best, gives you a space to do that.
About today's subject line: Yes, black holes sing. And Dennis Overbye's delight in describing their "casual cosmic malevolence" really comes through in phrases such as "hot doughnut of doom."
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August 10, 2020
It makes the truth even more incomprehensible
The BYM was away last week, so smelly projects were on my list, such as slapping a second coat of "Broke Turquorise" to my studio room. The paint was left over from an exhibition at the museum where I work, and fits with my plan to cover the unattractively beige walls in shades of blue, with rubber fish (originally used for gyotaku, and likewise inherited from a colleague clearing out storage) suspended here and there.
Un-carefully painting while sipping sparkling wine and listening to Milk Street would have been my idea of an excellent Friday night even before sheltering in place. It's a sign of how fried I was, though, that I got paint on the tofu I prepped afterward, and just didn't care.
Anyway: tofu curried. Bouquets and other gifts delivered. (Some of the zinnia stalks are now as tall as I am. Best crop ever.) Lots of oldies blared, including various takes on "Lay All Your Love on Me" (which the subject line is from, and which I was obsessed with for a good long while after hearing Information Society's version in a Haifa sushi bar).
This morning's mysteries include where I stashed my waterproof watch. I advise betting on some shoe or tote I will check two months from now, since that's how my in-house Bermuda absent-mindedness rolls. It's okay, I retort to my ghosts. Been frying arkloads of fish. You had your priorities, and I have mine.
Recent reading has included My Papi Has a Motorcycle, by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña, whose graphic-novelesque biography of Graciela Iturbide is on my shelves:
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August 1, 2020
bonus poppies
We have a huge pit in our back yard that used to contain the root ball of a tree, before the March tornado knocked the tree over:
It's serving as the site of assorted weeds and wildflowers this summer. I had some old seeds that I didn't want to dedicate proper garden or container space to, so I scattered them into the pit, including a packet of poppy seeds that I vaguely recall receiving at a museum event in 2017. It was the right call: I enjoyed the few flowers I happened to see, but they weren't vibrant or numerous enough to have warranted more effort.
All the seed sheets I finally planted this year (one from a magazine, one from a condolence card, and one the card on which a gift bracelet had been mounted) have been a bust. I might start marigolds in the planter where I'd stuck the bits of bracelet-card.
A butterfly was feeding at length on the zinnias today, and I spotted a grasshopper on them yesterday. Party time!
There's so much going on. I'm about to go fall asleep in the bathtub for the second time today, so here are just two of the highlights:
Recordings from last Saturday's masterclass are now on Vimeo (I sang alto in the quartet). The full webinar (2 hours) is at https://vimeo.com/441702046/938feb78e1, and excerpts of just the class (27 minutes -- about a third of the taping) are at https://vimeo.com/441706837/2705f97cbb.
Mary Alexandra Agner's "Slipper and Shard" was published by Gingerbread House at the end of July. The line that sparked her take can be found at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/113130.html.
comments
It's serving as the site of assorted weeds and wildflowers this summer. I had some old seeds that I didn't want to dedicate proper garden or container space to, so I scattered them into the pit, including a packet of poppy seeds that I vaguely recall receiving at a museum event in 2017. It was the right call: I enjoyed the few flowers I happened to see, but they weren't vibrant or numerous enough to have warranted more effort.
All the seed sheets I finally planted this year (one from a magazine, one from a condolence card, and one the card on which a gift bracelet had been mounted) have been a bust. I might start marigolds in the planter where I'd stuck the bits of bracelet-card.
A butterfly was feeding at length on the zinnias today, and I spotted a grasshopper on them yesterday. Party time!
There's so much going on. I'm about to go fall asleep in the bathtub for the second time today, so here are just two of the highlights:
Recordings from last Saturday's masterclass are now on Vimeo (I sang alto in the quartet). The full webinar (2 hours) is at https://vimeo.com/441702046/938feb78e1, and excerpts of just the class (27 minutes -- about a third of the taping) are at https://vimeo.com/441706837/2705f97cbb.
Mary Alexandra Agner's "Slipper and Shard" was published by Gingerbread House at the end of July. The line that sparked her take can be found at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/113130.html.
comments
July 25, 2020
Rain falls on the faces of my friends
The subject line is from Yehuda Amichai, whose poem "God Full of Mercy" is among those I bookmarked in Into English, which I finally returned to the library this morning. The book was recommended by Marissa Lingen earlier year, and I posted about it Monday morning and yesterday night at Vary the Line.
Reading Robert Alter's compilation of Amichai poems would fit my mood right now, but I'm not ready to borrow print books from the library, so it will go on my someday list. It's not as if there isn't plenty to read and do in and to this house. I am almost-put-my-phone-in-the-washer tired, I will be working this weekend on tasks I'd hoped to go yard on a week ago, I didn't make time for the three e-books the library will reclaim today, I missed a meetup with Asheville dancers because my shift went past twelve hours, and both my workout and mindful eating practices went to hell.
But! And! I met a bunch of deadlines and planted more tomatoes, and sowed seeds for basil and cornflowers, and poured two bags of cedar mulch around the roses. I have a fresh stack of postcards. And I did in fact remember to look at the moon tonight (as well as smelling and sipping good coffee all week).
comments
Reading Robert Alter's compilation of Amichai poems would fit my mood right now, but I'm not ready to borrow print books from the library, so it will go on my someday list. It's not as if there isn't plenty to read and do in and to this house. I am almost-put-my-phone-in-the-washer tired, I will be working this weekend on tasks I'd hoped to go yard on a week ago, I didn't make time for the three e-books the library will reclaim today, I missed a meetup with Asheville dancers because my shift went past twelve hours, and both my workout and mindful eating practices went to hell.
But! And! I met a bunch of deadlines and planted more tomatoes, and sowed seeds for basil and cornflowers, and poured two bags of cedar mulch around the roses. I have a fresh stack of postcards. And I did in fact remember to look at the moon tonight (as well as smelling and sipping good coffee all week).
comments
July 21, 2020
I've always wanted brook trout / for breakfast
The subject line, which I typed into this window two days ago, is from Raymond Carver's "Looking for Work." It incurred a sudden jones for pan-fried fish, which I hadn't planned on cooking, and the canned tuna in the pantry wasn't going to address that, nor the tofu-fish cakes in the freezer, and moaning about bar-crowding putzes wasn't going to make me feel better, so I closed my laptop and wrote postcards instead.
Had I started this entry this morning, the subject line probably would have been "The letter A was once an inverted cow's head," from Arthur Sze's "Water Calligraphy" (username=okrablossom, there's zucchini in there as well, albeit as in a frittata rather than as frites). I just posted some notes about Sze (and other translators) over at Vary the Line.
On Saturday afternoon, I ate at a restaurant for the first time since March 13 -- a fried "chicken" sandwich with fries, washed down with a sorrel drink and ginger beer, at Vege-licious, a vegan soul food joint adjacent to Fisk University. The three of us spread out across two picnic tables behind the restaurant. (The heat index had reached 102 F by that point, so there was no competition for the seats -- there was a steady stream of takeout traffic, but only one other group of diners, at the opposite end of the large tent.) This was after a taping at Hadley Park for this event (co-sponsored by NMAAM, FUUN, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Huntsville):
I sing alto in the quartet; it was our first time singing together as a quartet, and the soprano's first time singing one-to-a-part ever. We did well, all things considered, and Patrick is well worth listening to. Register at https://bit.ly/323IZwn to view the webinar this Saturday.
This may be the year I learn to can vegetables, as there are now forty tomato plants in place in the yard, and another dozen or so waiting for me to clear ground, and a handful of cuttings from the starters that looked too far gone to tend to further.
I have coaxed some vetch into sprouting on a formerly barren strip next to the porch. The balloon flowers are fantastic right now, the zinnias are admired by passers-by, and I'm harvesting a few peppers each night.
comments
Had I started this entry this morning, the subject line probably would have been "The letter A was once an inverted cow's head," from Arthur Sze's "Water Calligraphy" (username=okrablossom, there's zucchini in there as well, albeit as in a frittata rather than as frites). I just posted some notes about Sze (and other translators) over at Vary the Line.
On Saturday afternoon, I ate at a restaurant for the first time since March 13 -- a fried "chicken" sandwich with fries, washed down with a sorrel drink and ginger beer, at Vege-licious, a vegan soul food joint adjacent to Fisk University. The three of us spread out across two picnic tables behind the restaurant. (The heat index had reached 102 F by that point, so there was no competition for the seats -- there was a steady stream of takeout traffic, but only one other group of diners, at the opposite end of the large tent.) This was after a taping at Hadley Park for this event (co-sponsored by NMAAM, FUUN, and the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Huntsville):
I sing alto in the quartet; it was our first time singing together as a quartet, and the soprano's first time singing one-to-a-part ever. We did well, all things considered, and Patrick is well worth listening to. Register at https://bit.ly/323IZwn to view the webinar this Saturday.
This may be the year I learn to can vegetables, as there are now forty tomato plants in place in the yard, and another dozen or so waiting for me to clear ground, and a handful of cuttings from the starters that looked too far gone to tend to further.
I have coaxed some vetch into sprouting on a formerly barren strip next to the porch. The balloon flowers are fantastic right now, the zinnias are admired by passers-by, and I'm harvesting a few peppers each night.
comments
July 7, 2020
rompecabezas
This word showed up in my Spanish progress test today. Its dictionary definitions include "jigsaw puzzle," "something complicated," "problem," and "headache." I am delighted by this word.
Two years ago today:
Warrior pose on paddleboard
I was on that lake probably 3-5 times most weeks that summer, being determined to make the most of my Locals Unlimited pass with Nashville Paddle Company. I'd like to get back to being on the water that often, but first I need to regain my workout groove. I was feeling the burn during tonight's light effort, both from the arms routine and from sweat stinging raw skin. But my foot is no longer twanging, so resting it was the right call.
A recurring theme the past two days has been letters between women. During yesterday's lively NMWA happy hour in honor of Frida Kahlo, her letter to Georgia O'Keeffe sparked some interest. And, a friend on Twitter shared Jodie Comer's marvelous recitation of a letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf.
comments
Two years ago today:
Warrior pose on paddleboard
I was on that lake probably 3-5 times most weeks that summer, being determined to make the most of my Locals Unlimited pass with Nashville Paddle Company. I'd like to get back to being on the water that often, but first I need to regain my workout groove. I was feeling the burn during tonight's light effort, both from the arms routine and from sweat stinging raw skin. But my foot is no longer twanging, so resting it was the right call.
A recurring theme the past two days has been letters between women. During yesterday's lively NMWA happy hour in honor of Frida Kahlo, her letter to Georgia O'Keeffe sparked some interest. And, a friend on Twitter shared Jodie Comer's marvelous recitation of a letter from Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf.
comments
July 5, 2020
upgrace
Oberlin's Baroque Performance Institute posted some lovely clips from the archives to SoundCloud last month. I especially enjoyed the "Chamber Bach" concert, which included Wilhelm Friedemann Bach's Concerto a duoi cembali concertanti, F10 (a double harpsichord showpiece), and the real find was what happened to be next in the queue - Trio Rosa Mundi's rendition of Anthoine Boesset's "Je voudrais bien ô Cloris," which in turn sent me down a rabbit-hole with future distractions such as the 1629 French Court Aires with Their Ditties Englished by one Edward Filmer, as well as Wikipedia's mention of an entire festschrift chapter devoted to the song's "notational and performance problems." Maybe. My nerdiness only goes so far, and I have a history of falling asleep while others happily truffle around for author-composer-choreographer intent for hours, but I'm enough in love with this piece that I tracked it down at the IMSLP (where Book 6 of Boesset's many court songs is archived under Bataille, who arranged the lute parts):
Anyhow . . . my workspace is lit in such a way that SoundCloud's "upgrade" menu label looks like "upgrace" during the afternoon, which is an almost-word I'd like to play with more some other time. It came to mind as I patted dirt around some of the tomato plants as night fell, having cleared enough room for two A. J. Reds, three Celebritys, and one Mary Huddleston. Some of the vines have tiny yellow flowers, and there are tiny white flowers on some of the pepper plants; the more mature ones seem bushier than their predecessors. There's one mallow (aka French hollyhock) that's putting out a blossom every few days, new buds on the Sky's the Limit rosebush, and the start of a really nice cluster of balloonflowers. The fireflies were out in force as I detangled vines, and there was a loud extended ruckus among the owls next door and some other critters a few minutes after midnight. I hope it didn't involve the bunny the BYM has been saying hi to almost every evening.
comments
Anyhow . . . my workspace is lit in such a way that SoundCloud's "upgrade" menu label looks like "upgrace" during the afternoon, which is an almost-word I'd like to play with more some other time. It came to mind as I patted dirt around some of the tomato plants as night fell, having cleared enough room for two A. J. Reds, three Celebritys, and one Mary Huddleston. Some of the vines have tiny yellow flowers, and there are tiny white flowers on some of the pepper plants; the more mature ones seem bushier than their predecessors. There's one mallow (aka French hollyhock) that's putting out a blossom every few days, new buds on the Sky's the Limit rosebush, and the start of a really nice cluster of balloonflowers. The fireflies were out in force as I detangled vines, and there was a loud extended ruckus among the owls next door and some other critters a few minutes after midnight. I hope it didn't involve the bunny the BYM has been saying hi to almost every evening.
comments
July 4, 2020
so many cows
I did not have bovines on my mind at the start of the holiday weekend, but when Here & Now's segment on Hawaiian cowboys streamed from my car radio on my drive home from Bates Nursery, I figured I was being steer-ed both to borrow the book (Aloha Rodeo) from the library and acknowledge the moo-vement of the critters through multiple realms of my life, including my Thursday-Friday binge-read through a fistful of "Texas Cattleman's Club" Harlequins (I don't remember how the November 2014 boxed set landed in my queue, but I'm guessing the dude in a suit cuddling a cat for Sheltered by a Millionaire might've caught my eye). Even Duolingo is in on the theme:
Speaking of beaches, I thought about spending part of the weekend paddleboarding -- I haven't been on the water since Christmas Day -- but prudence and logistics won out: I didn't want to deal with probable crowds, I didn't feel up to getting my gear back in order (this week's timelog: 40+ hours within 4 days), I have a ton of housekeeping and homework to plow through, and neck rashes don't play well with sunscreen.
Plus, I'm singing in a (physically distanced) quartet a week from now, and the director made a point of asking participants to "use your awareness as we approach the start of July. Everyone has a different risk tolerance, and while you might personally feel confident and safe, your awareness and concern for your fellow singers and especially for [the workshop leader] is appreciated. Consider operating with a little more care for the 2 weeks before the clinic." As I updated my "things to defer until July 12" last night, I thought about how I take more care with my health when I have a significant performance on deck: I'm less inclined to take chances on iffy food, I become even more wary of contact with potential germ vectors, and I try to get enough sleep and water to look and sound my best. (On the other side of the coin, I'm so hyped up and keen to catch all the things during festivals that sleep too often gets shoved aside in favor of going to one more party and madly scribbling notes well past midnight.)
We've been playing with a new tool called MyChoralCoach, which has been offering entertainingly ruthless feedback:
I'm feeling good about my progress - the past two days, I've consistently hit the tritone jump I've been practicing (and often overshooting) the past two weeks. This week I'll concentrate on breath (timing and control), as well as singing my part against each of the other lines (e.g., playing only the bass line on the piano while I sing the alto, and then doing the same with tenor and soprano) to lock down my ability to carry it. (I'd be reliable enough if the clinic were happening today, but it's a great feeling when I can put in enough prep to level up from "enough" to four-ways-from-Sunday solid.)
It does mean saying "no" and "not yet" to other shinies, though. Add in the two new pages of dance caller homework that arrived today (on top of the one I've read but not yet worked through), and my odds of enjoying Stratford's King John while it's free dwindle to unlikely. Same with other performances and socials on offer. And, as I admitted to my publisher earlier today, "Writing's pretty much in the trunk (not just the back seat) for the near future -- work, health, dance, music, activism, and other priorities are more demanding/rewarding at the moment. But I also feel confident about it grabbing back the steering wheel within a few years. It has a history of doing that."
If, when I was a child or young adult, you had told me that I'd willingly spend holiday time studying Chinese and working in my yard over watching Shakespeare or devouring a biography or ogling Roger Rees in The Crossing, I would have rolled my eyes and dismissed you as a condescending what-do-you-know. But here we are. With the Mandarin, it helps that I'm close to reaching checkpoint 2 on Duolingo, it's not my mother trying to drill it into me, the boulder on my shoulder has become a somewhat lighter chip, and my expectations are super-low: It has never come naturally to me, and I won't invest the time to get fluent, but I'd like to acquire enough functionality to handle small talk with servers, relatives, and other people who tend to assume I already have the words in my head. It's telling that the two Duo lessons I've felt most comfortable with so far were "Food" and "Drink," and that I still understand "She drinks iced tea" six hours after reviewing it is further than I've ever gotten with this linguistic barrel of monkeys in past attempts.*
As for the yardwork: my allergies were so nasty as a kid that I pretty much woke up every morning with my eyes crusted shut. Moving to Chicago was a relief, I have access to better healthcare and medication than I did as a kid, and I don't have to contend with my parents' issues, such as their belief that I could overcome my clogged breathing passages with sheer discipline, or my mother's extreme fear of addiction (Mom. It's okay to give a dying man morphine, and I'm careful about how much diphenhydramine I'm taking now).** Getting fresh air has become a frequent go-to in my mental health toolbox, and weeding feeds the same instant-gratification circuit that Duolingo does -- it's visible results for low stakes, with some fun mixed in (cartoon characters, random sheep jokes, baby grasshoppers, fearless fireflies . . .), and when I screw up (sorry, little radish seedling that I didn't water in time), it doesn't feel like a big deal. (It's often not a big deal in other realms, but one can overcome only so much squashing-the-butterfly-alters-the-entire-trajectory-of-the-universe programming at a time.)
Also, Bates Nursery was giving away free flats of veggies yesterday, and so I brought home 32 tomato plants that need to go into dirt sooner than later. I had forgotten how much I like the scent of tomato leaves.
For dinner tonight, I made turkey-zucchini-mushroom wontons (fried and steamed) while listening to today's Splendid Table episode with Carla Hall, which included a guy from Alabama asking how to use MSG. Y'all, a lot about the 21st century is awful, but 2020 still beats 1980 and 1990 where I'm concerned. Also, there's enough compos back in my mentis that I greased the steamer correctly the first time around. (When I made bao last week, I spent five minutes coating a pan with mirin before realizing what was wrong.)
* A reason I enjoyed Jackie Lau's Pregnant by the Playboy: the hero discusses feeling lost in Cantonese class as a child, and how he's really bad at languages in general (a situation compounded by his brother Julian's mastery of Cantonese, Mandarin, French, Toisanese, and English, plus familiarity with Spanish, Japanese, and German). I feel ya, dude, especially when I remember being compared with family friends and classmates who were better at all the Good-Asian-Girl things. (The two things really separating me from the field were creative writing and activism, which were respectively unimpressive and alarming on my parents' GAG-meter. And it has just now occurred to me why I felt compelled to defend at length the teens who trolled the Tulsa rally when some criticism showed up in my in-box.) I'm never going to be wholly mellow about Mandarin in any case: I made a point of using an Amnesty International address label in my copy of Yong Ho's Beginner Chinese when I acquired it in 2011, and when it fell out today, I replaced it with a label featuring a cat (because my mom didn't like them, and I am that petty). That said, I thought a lot about my mom today, as I scrubbed kitchen light fixtures and put on a floppy hat to ward off the sun and wondered what she would be saying to my aunts about Hong Kong. Also, my Korean Tennessean cousin sent me metallic markers for my birthday, and I used one to practice writing the characters for "mother" and "also" across a worksheet.
** Some of it is tangled with generations-deep peasant frugality, and I regularly have to talk myself out of being pound-foolish. My grandmother left the box of band-aids alone even when she had unhealed wounds on her leg. My mom arguably waited too long to start treatment for cancer. I was going to wait until my annual to get the neck rash checked out, but the aloe, ice packs, and other DIY treatments aren't vanquishing it, so today I finally did the PhysicianNow thing -- which from what I can tell is fully covered by my insurance.
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Speaking of beaches, I thought about spending part of the weekend paddleboarding -- I haven't been on the water since Christmas Day -- but prudence and logistics won out: I didn't want to deal with probable crowds, I didn't feel up to getting my gear back in order (this week's timelog: 40+ hours within 4 days), I have a ton of housekeeping and homework to plow through, and neck rashes don't play well with sunscreen.
Plus, I'm singing in a (physically distanced) quartet a week from now, and the director made a point of asking participants to "use your awareness as we approach the start of July. Everyone has a different risk tolerance, and while you might personally feel confident and safe, your awareness and concern for your fellow singers and especially for [the workshop leader] is appreciated. Consider operating with a little more care for the 2 weeks before the clinic." As I updated my "things to defer until July 12" last night, I thought about how I take more care with my health when I have a significant performance on deck: I'm less inclined to take chances on iffy food, I become even more wary of contact with potential germ vectors, and I try to get enough sleep and water to look and sound my best. (On the other side of the coin, I'm so hyped up and keen to catch all the things during festivals that sleep too often gets shoved aside in favor of going to one more party and madly scribbling notes well past midnight.)
We've been playing with a new tool called MyChoralCoach, which has been offering entertainingly ruthless feedback:
I'm feeling good about my progress - the past two days, I've consistently hit the tritone jump I've been practicing (and often overshooting) the past two weeks. This week I'll concentrate on breath (timing and control), as well as singing my part against each of the other lines (e.g., playing only the bass line on the piano while I sing the alto, and then doing the same with tenor and soprano) to lock down my ability to carry it. (I'd be reliable enough if the clinic were happening today, but it's a great feeling when I can put in enough prep to level up from "enough" to four-ways-from-Sunday solid.)
It does mean saying "no" and "not yet" to other shinies, though. Add in the two new pages of dance caller homework that arrived today (on top of the one I've read but not yet worked through), and my odds of enjoying Stratford's King John while it's free dwindle to unlikely. Same with other performances and socials on offer. And, as I admitted to my publisher earlier today, "Writing's pretty much in the trunk (not just the back seat) for the near future -- work, health, dance, music, activism, and other priorities are more demanding/rewarding at the moment. But I also feel confident about it grabbing back the steering wheel within a few years. It has a history of doing that."
If, when I was a child or young adult, you had told me that I'd willingly spend holiday time studying Chinese and working in my yard over watching Shakespeare or devouring a biography or ogling Roger Rees in The Crossing, I would have rolled my eyes and dismissed you as a condescending what-do-you-know. But here we are. With the Mandarin, it helps that I'm close to reaching checkpoint 2 on Duolingo, it's not my mother trying to drill it into me, the boulder on my shoulder has become a somewhat lighter chip, and my expectations are super-low: It has never come naturally to me, and I won't invest the time to get fluent, but I'd like to acquire enough functionality to handle small talk with servers, relatives, and other people who tend to assume I already have the words in my head. It's telling that the two Duo lessons I've felt most comfortable with so far were "Food" and "Drink," and that I still understand "She drinks iced tea" six hours after reviewing it is further than I've ever gotten with this linguistic barrel of monkeys in past attempts.*
As for the yardwork: my allergies were so nasty as a kid that I pretty much woke up every morning with my eyes crusted shut. Moving to Chicago was a relief, I have access to better healthcare and medication than I did as a kid, and I don't have to contend with my parents' issues, such as their belief that I could overcome my clogged breathing passages with sheer discipline, or my mother's extreme fear of addiction (Mom. It's okay to give a dying man morphine, and I'm careful about how much diphenhydramine I'm taking now).** Getting fresh air has become a frequent go-to in my mental health toolbox, and weeding feeds the same instant-gratification circuit that Duolingo does -- it's visible results for low stakes, with some fun mixed in (cartoon characters, random sheep jokes, baby grasshoppers, fearless fireflies . . .), and when I screw up (sorry, little radish seedling that I didn't water in time), it doesn't feel like a big deal. (It's often not a big deal in other realms, but one can overcome only so much squashing-the-butterfly-alters-the-entire-trajectory-of-the-universe programming at a time.)
Also, Bates Nursery was giving away free flats of veggies yesterday, and so I brought home 32 tomato plants that need to go into dirt sooner than later. I had forgotten how much I like the scent of tomato leaves.
For dinner tonight, I made turkey-zucchini-mushroom wontons (fried and steamed) while listening to today's Splendid Table episode with Carla Hall, which included a guy from Alabama asking how to use MSG. Y'all, a lot about the 21st century is awful, but 2020 still beats 1980 and 1990 where I'm concerned. Also, there's enough compos back in my mentis that I greased the steamer correctly the first time around. (When I made bao last week, I spent five minutes coating a pan with mirin before realizing what was wrong.)
* A reason I enjoyed Jackie Lau's Pregnant by the Playboy: the hero discusses feeling lost in Cantonese class as a child, and how he's really bad at languages in general (a situation compounded by his brother Julian's mastery of Cantonese, Mandarin, French, Toisanese, and English, plus familiarity with Spanish, Japanese, and German). I feel ya, dude, especially when I remember being compared with family friends and classmates who were better at all the Good-Asian-Girl things. (The two things really separating me from the field were creative writing and activism, which were respectively unimpressive and alarming on my parents' GAG-meter. And it has just now occurred to me why I felt compelled to defend at length the teens who trolled the Tulsa rally when some criticism showed up in my in-box.) I'm never going to be wholly mellow about Mandarin in any case: I made a point of using an Amnesty International address label in my copy of Yong Ho's Beginner Chinese when I acquired it in 2011, and when it fell out today, I replaced it with a label featuring a cat (because my mom didn't like them, and I am that petty). That said, I thought a lot about my mom today, as I scrubbed kitchen light fixtures and put on a floppy hat to ward off the sun and wondered what she would be saying to my aunts about Hong Kong. Also, my Korean Tennessean cousin sent me metallic markers for my birthday, and I used one to practice writing the characters for "mother" and "also" across a worksheet.
** Some of it is tangled with generations-deep peasant frugality, and I regularly have to talk myself out of being pound-foolish. My grandmother left the box of band-aids alone even when she had unhealed wounds on her leg. My mom arguably waited too long to start treatment for cancer. I was going to wait until my annual to get the neck rash checked out, but the aloe, ice packs, and other DIY treatments aren't vanquishing it, so today I finally did the PhysicianNow thing -- which from what I can tell is fully covered by my insurance.
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