Louisiana, May 2010
How does landscape and surroundings inform our writing? Think back to the landscape you grew up in…does it manifest itself in your writing today? Or do you see more of your current landscape? So for today’s prompt, think of a word that best describes that landscape. Take that word and do a 100 word writing exercise. See what comes to mind when you focus on that one landscape word that permeates your unconscious the most.
I have been waiting a week to try this one, ever since I saw it posted on Marcus Samuelsson’s blog . It did not quite turn out like the picture on the blog, but it was quite good. As a side dish, I made green beans.
I actually prepped and measured out everything before I started cooking so that I could easily cook both at the same time. The green beans only took about 10 min, the same amount of time the chicken needed to simmer in the sauce. I don’t think that I got the sauce quite thick enough, but it tasted fantastic. Now I have left over sesame sauce to use for dumplings on Saturday.
Cooking the green beans was a new cooking experience, they had to be stir-fried at a very hot temperature to get them to “pucker” and turn that brown spotted color that you see when you order them at a restaurant. I was afraid I was going to set of the smoke-detector, but luckily that did not happen. Overall, a very tasty, fairly quick, and easy dinner to make. I made my own take-out!
I also came up with a great addendum to my musings on balance. Unfortunately, I completely forgot what I wanted to say. So, I will add ALWAYS WRITE YOUR IDEAS DOWN! I can’t even count the number of times I have written the perfect line in my head only to forget it the next day.
Photo by Mihai Coman (http://mcoman.com/)
I think that often in New York we are trained to be on our guard at all times, wary of anyone who crosses into our precious space bubble. And, a lot of the time, that is a fair way to go about the day, especially on the subway. We are constantly inundated with alerts of “If you see something, say something” (translation for non-New Yorkers…if there is anything that looks remotely like it could be dangerous, try to hunt down someone to let them know) and “hold on to your personal belongings.” Despite this defensiveness, strangers do commit small, random acts of kindness.
I was riding the cross-town L train this afternoon, seated and wearing a skirt. A strange, tall man got on the train a station after me, left his bike leaning against a pole, and went to sit on the opposite end of the train. He just left it standing there. After a few stations, another passenger came up to me and started to say something about how dangerous the bike was. I looked up from playing with my cellphone (technically a bad idea on the train) and quickly defended myself, “It’s notmybike.” But he explained himself, he wanted to warn me that if the bike fell over, it could really hurt my legs. “Thanks,” I smiled, embarrassed that I had d assumed that this man was trying to blame me for the bike. It was large, rusty, and totally unstable.
Despite our tenancy on the train to pretend like no one else exists, this stranger got up and came over to warn me about the bike. In this city of millions, people do watch our for each other. A little bit of kindness like that really made my somewhat disastrous day much better.
It has been almost a year since my trip to Turkey, and my writing on those travels has been rather…nonexistent. I’ll start to dip my toes into that with this picture. In the Cappadocia region of Turkey are these quite fascinating natural land formations known locally as “fairy chimneys.” Early Christians used this landscape to carve out safe havens from their persecutors. They build networks of houses and churches into the soft stone.
Today, most of these are open to the public to explore freely. One of the things that was most interesting to me is that instead of building something, you just would carve it out. So, a table is not built of wood, but carved out of the surroundings. You can also tell from this picture that the weather was not exactly the most beautiful in early May.
One of my all time favorite authors is Nick Hornby. His prose is just brilliant. The kinds of passages that you want to grab the nearest pen and underline to share with everyone you ever meet. So I thought I would share a few of those goodies here.
“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”- High Fidelity
“Have you got any soul?” a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I’ve got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can’t seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn’t be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.” High Fidelity (although the book is so British, I can’t help but always picture a sad-eyed John Cusak with floppy hair).
“All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. … But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not.” The Polysyllabic Spree
I apologize for the lack of pictures today, but between my super old Mac, WordPress, and the magic that is TimeWarner’s internet, it is just not happening. Have a good weekend!
Storm from a Williamsburg Rooftop, Summer 2011
I would say you become a New Yorker after surviving an earthquake and hurricane within a month. And Godzilla. Or most likely when you truly believe in the greatness of the G train. But I read this really lovely article by Jackie Berg on Thought Catalog. She says it happens when, “It happens when your outstretched hand on the promenade can trace the entire skyline with memories. Underneath your pointer is that street where you felt your heart shatter, but only because thousands of hearts trudged onto shore from that street and into tenements to build the life you complain about. You connect the dots.”
And concludes, “These moments and yours – let’s sit together and quietly reflect when we step away from our respective New York nights and ride home together.”
Of course, there is always Gawker’s take on it all, “No, it’s after ten years in New York. Everyone knows that. Jesus fuck.”
Get inspired to write some poetry!
I am a huge fan of Daniel Radcliffe. I saw him in all the Harry Potter films (obviously) and in Equs on Broadway a few years ago. For graduation, my brother got me tickets to see him in his latest play, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It was fantastic! Since then I have also seen The Woman in Black (movie). It wasn’t the greatest movie ever made, but for a thriller/ghost story it was pretty fantastic. The setting/visuals were stunning. I hear he is wandering around Brooklyn filming his latest movie, where he stars as Allen Ginsburg. One of these days, I am hoping to cross paths with him. Or maybe just wait outside the theater to get his autograph.
Ok, yes, St. Patrick’s Day was this past Saturday, but I really wanted to share the awesome NOMs Sarah and I made to celebrate.
First, we baked and decorated Guinness Cupcakes with homemade cream cheese icing.
Here is us mixing things together. We used this recipe online. As suggested in the comments, I actually substituted in the Brooklyn Brewery’s Chocolate Stout for the Guinness to give them a richer flavor.
They were absolutely as good as they look! Chocolatey without being too rich, and the icing was a great consistency. I think that making them the night before and refrigerating them really helped make them firm. I will be making these again soon.
I also wanted to make a more traditional Irish food. I found this recipe for Irish Soda Bread with Cranberries on the website of one of my favorite food blogs written by chef Marcus Samuelsson (his restaurant is in Harlem).
Here is Sarah kneading the bread. This one was so simple to make. I have never made bread before, so this was an easy first try.
The instructions were easy to follow. In the end, we had a beautiful, delicious loaf of soda bread.
