Willow

You are an eight year-old girl, mucking about on the Raba’s banks. The reeds grew lush where you play hide-and-seek with your friends. The soil under your bare feet is muddy and squishy, cool and soothing. Dragonflies are plentiful; the occasional one helicopters near, at eye level, pauses in mid-flight, swivel-hovers showing off its jewelline splendour.

An old willow nearby offers cool respite from the noon-day heat. You creep through the reed stalks, silently, you think, but the crisp raspy sounds of your passage might give you away to be found. Once safely huddled near the mottled trunk, under shrouds of silver-green, you seek refuge in the thick shifting curtain of leaf-fall. Light that might sear your unprotected eyes out of the shade, is broken into moving shards twinkling into your safe hideout, and makes camouflage shadow patterns on your skin and clothes.  You want to remain there forever, part willow, part light and shade. Safe.

Farmer’s Market

A block’s walk from my apartment is the venue of our local Farmer’s Market. It houses an odd mixture of vendors’ stalls – vegetable growers, artisanal sausage makers, pie makers, garlic growers, purveyors of hand-made soaps, macaroons, jams, sauces and condiments, crafters of dubious quality hand-strung jewelry, bannock frying natives, hand crocheters and knitters who use really nasty acrylic yarns of ghastly colour combinations, the occasional potter and local amateur painters of  picturesque dabblings. The prices are exorbitant. Anyhow much of what is on offer is a bit too pricey for my wallet, or would be, were it not for the coupon program for low income seniors and families, of which I count as one. So, I do not flinch too much when asked to hand over $4 for a knob of Russian.  garlic or $3 for a couple of medium sized tomatoes. There is a $6 allotment for meat weekly included in the coupons, but a package of four artisanal sausages comes priced at $9, so every other week a purchase of one package is manageable. Otherwise, one might purchase a precooked sausage on a stick for $5. A 3 oz. piece of Sockeye salmon is priced at @ $17, so that is a market I find myself reluctant to frequent.

I do find the vegetables of such excellent quality that the act of eating freshly picked and fully at optimum ripeness produce is a tremendous pleasure. The weekly coupons are a welcome gift!

Last Saturday, my favourite vegetable vendor had two generous sized Vegetable Marrows left over at the end of market. Every August I am always on the hunt for these. They are not commonly grown  or seldom available in our little city as most people don’t know how to cook them. The vendeuse, Flor, asked me what they were, as this was the first year she tried growing them. Casting my eye around her booth, I collected an onion and a clump of fresh dill. As I handed over $6 worth of coupons to purchase the marrows, onion and dill, I explaine how I was going to prepare them fro my special feast for that evening’s meal. “Heavenly it will be!” I told her. She replied that she was wanting to ty that dish, as it sounded so simple to prepare.

Here is my grandmother’s recipe for Hungarian Tokfozelek (missing the umlaut and accent ague)

1 Medium Vegetable marrow – halved lengthwise, seeded and peeled. Cut each half into thin slices across the width, set in a colander, sprinkle with salt to release excess water in the flesh. Set aside for 20 minutes.

1 Peel and finely slice one medium onion.  Saute in butter over medium heat. While onion is softening, squeeze excess water from the sliced marrows, and add them to the transparent softened onions.  Stir, cover pan and lower temperature slightly. Stir several times over 10 minutes.

3 Meanwhile chop about a handful of dill fronds, toss into onion and marrow, stir and keep cooking.

4  measure out 3/4 cups of sour cream , add to the vegetables, stir in, grind on salt and pepper, let heat to steaming.

5 Sprinkle with Sweet or Hot Hungarian Paprika.  Serve with bread, chicken, sausage ,or pork steaks.  A green salad on the side completes this feast.

I often just eat this vegetable side dish by itself, if I have eaten my daily meat alottment already.

How to be important…

Oh, you are so busy, you tell everyone just how busy you are and insert the complaint of how exhausted you are.  There are so many demands on your time. Your presence is always required. You must not miss a meeting, a lunch date, a happening.  What if you are not present to make the right connection with an unknown but desirable someone who might push your interests farther forward? People admire just how much you accomplish, what efficient ways in which you use the time allotted you. Your list of engagements burgeons, so many obligations must be fulfilled.

But then it must be admitted that you are a force  of will over time, situations, and other people.  Do you even realize that once this life of yours ends so does all your importance?

Flash fiction. 2016

What do you want from me?

The heading above was the teaser line in my inmail box this morning.  It originated from the author of an ‘environmental memoir’ blog from @2006 -07”,which blog he morphed into a published book and then into a documentary which was shown at a Sundance Film Festival.  Out of curiosity I had followed his blog and had expressed to Rumpole then “Just wait, me dear one, here’s a fellow who plans to gain monetarily from his writing this stuff.” Well, reading between the lines, and of possible sub-text of potential intentions isn’t exactly as demanding as, say, brain surgery or understanding quantum physics, but I think I was quite right in my prediction.

Now, he asks, nicely, what it is I, and other persons whose virtual mail-boxes he regularly fills with news of his latest efforts to save the world, want from him. It appears he has written yet another book  ( he hopes a best-seller?) which he thinks an unthinking public with an unquenched thirst for yet another feel-good-or-better self help book eagerly hangs awaiting. He wants to form facebook  support groups, and is planning an eight week online course, complete with work book to accompany the new tome. The worst part of his solicitation letter is how he plays to the reader’s emotions with a fake candour, just-us-folks tone and appeals (subtle) to be crowd-funded. Ah, snake oil by any other name.  I suspect he must have close relatives in Nigeria.

It is pretty obvious there is a long history of soft-sell being a success in separating people from their hard earned resources, and for their often insightful ‘spidey sense’. I have, for years and unsuccessfully tried to have my contact information removed from his mailing list.  And, that is the only thing I want from him And, no, I have not paid for his first book, nor do I intend to read a library copy of it, ever.  As to crowd fund his endeavours, or to take him for any source of learning, thanks, but no thanks, not because I need not learn any more, but because I do, indeed, but not from the likes of such a smug, fake and glib source.

Seasonal abundance

I sit here, in early afternoon on Christmas day, still in my fuzzy flannels and cozy indoor socks, thinking of the ongoing abundance in my life, of loved ones, old friends and new  and wish for every one of you who read this to enjoy the same sensations of satisfaction of what your life has been, is and continues to be.

Untitled…

She sits , becalmed,

at first roll call.

One of expectant

recruits moored on hard stools.

 

“Ah, you have a dancer’s name!”

pronounces the teacher.

Her blood courses,

repeats,

“we’ll see…we’ll see”

steady laps on the shores

of possibility.

“There are many ways to dance.

Your purpose is to find the right

one for you.”

The teacher pauses

hands gently grasped,

sweeps beacon eyes

over a pulsing, breathing

eager flotilla –

first year dance students.

This koan, a bright beam to

summon while

the shoals of self-doubt

threaten a dancer’s purpose.

 

Her parents want

her to forget her need

to flow, surge, strain

to unite like water to shore,

bone, muscle and brain.

Yes, her Dad once said

in a fit of sarcasm

she could waltz about waiting

on tables, slinging hash, or

do a stately gavotte with a mop.

Mom weighed in with

the worst option.

“What if you end up a stripper?”

Memories like these need

bailing out like so much

nasty bilge water.

 

Isn’t a maiden voyage

meant to be a journey of

adventure, mishap, and surprise?

And, maybe disappointment?

Fussy, ingrate elderly…

Oh Joy! Some odd combination of words appear on my blog search terms.  “Fussy, ingrate elderly” can be plugged into Google and one is directed to my blog. This is downright weird, because I don’t like to think of myself as either fussy or ungrateful. Elderly yes, that designation is impossible to not accept. The evidence does not allow this.  The hair is shot through with white, the skin shows elephantine creasing and sagging, the voice emits wash-board harmonies, the cervical vertebrae squeak and scrape with bad horror-show door sound effects and the diminishing eyesight  helps me view the world, as if through a badly fogged wind-shield.

But fussy? Nah! Or, Maybe? Systematic in behaviour, perhaps.  We old people tend to be more careful in how we manoeuvre through the world. Step off a curb carefully – check. Always leave glasses within arm’s reach – check. Make sure dentures are in before going out – check. Look repeatedly in all directions before daring to cross a street – check. Read labels over carefully in the grocery store – check. In restaurants, read over menu  with an eye out for food easy to chew, not cause excessive flatulence or constipation – check. This cautiousness only demonstrates we are not in a terrific hurry, unlike younger folk.  There is a lot of tooth-gnashing and eye-rolling exasperation from witnesses who have not yet reached our advanced state of decrepitude. Think about this; what is there to be gained in rushing about? Oh, yes – a hum-dinger memorial service, and then, the Grave.

On the other hand, this extreme caution may have some elements of fussy  about it.  I mean, just because aged, one does not simply have diminished likes and dislikes, nor are these necessarily magnified. The only time we will cease to be not particular is when we no longer draw conscious breath. This condition is not age-related, but rather  universal with everyone equally afflicted. Why lob pot-shots at only the elderly.  We have not invented gluten intolerance, dislike of beans and broccoli, irritating loud sounds and long line-ups.

And what is this business about having to be grateful, constantly. Old people are just so thrilled to open their eyes one more morning, see the daylight, hear ambient sounds, be able to move about unassisted, have occasion to laugh, complain, assent, celebrate, regret, admire, touch and be touched. Permit us to be grateful and to be ingrates when occasions require, to be moody and be demanding if need be. After all the weather is, just is, in all its variability, as is being human.

Post-Apocalypse cooking…

Yesterday friend Bev and I traipsed downtown – she with her cane, and me with my rolling shopping cart – to partake of a celebratory lunch on occasion of her 76th birthday. Bev’s choice of restaurant was the newly opened Mongolian Grill at a local Mall. In our little municipality, currently in the throes of debating whether or not it might declare city status, there is a surfeit of Chinese, Sushi, Pizza and Burger restaurants, so dining out can be predictably boring, and less interesting than slinging the pots and pans at home concocting some unexpected meals. Thus the lure of novelty caused us some anticipation and promised a lift on an otherwise grey and dreary, overcast March day.

The restaurant was a typical mall frontage hole-in-the-wall, with bold signage outside and prosaic diner arrangement inside; a long counter holding a variety of food-stuffs to be selected from separated the food prep and eating areas. Not particularly redolent of a Mongolian experience, I thought, rather fancifully. The cooking arrangement fascinated me. It was a large round griddle, around which the “chef” ambled, stirring and turning over separate mounds of raw ingredients. It reminded me of sanitized indoor camp-fire cooking, free of the pesky odours of dried dung or wood fire, free of the bits of ash and cinders which inevitably land on food during outdoor cooking. So rather doubting that fermented mare’s milk might be on offer as drink of choice, I settled for a cup of hot water, and Bev, for a cup of tea.

The food portions seemed appropriate to the theme of Mongolian vittles, of what might be available to travellers on the Mongolian steppes – shaved meats, bits of a variety of vegetables, small clump of gluey rice.  Just the sort of stuff that the weary Mongol hordes might expect to prepare and eat whenever they rested in camp after their raids on far-flung villages, where, perhaps they were able to capture a stray sheep or goat, or a chicken or two, which had to be apportioned to feed a largish group. Of course, at the end of winter, they may not have had fresh cilantro, green onions or chile peppers with which to spice their daily rations. But here in North America, we can be pretend Mongol diners without fear of lacking any ingredients with which to tempt our palate. And, as an older women, we were grateful at not having to gather fuel, start and keep going a fire, kill, gut and clean a ptarmigan or goat, glean about the prairie for available green stuff to augment the meal. A fantasy, such as this is lovely to sustain, even briefly.

After lunch, Bev and I said our goodbyes, and I dragged my cart off to the supermarket to fill it with provisions. Standing among the array of vegetables displayed I had a flash of fancy that all of this bounty is illusory. What if those vegetable bins were suddenly empty? What could I glean on the way home with which to sustain myself? And if I were able to find the errant day-lily bulb in one of the municipal plantings, dig it up and proudly take home, how would I be able to process it via cooking if there was no fuel for my magical electric range? Would I resort to using a metal garbage can lid for a griddle, fuelled by twigs from my neighbour’s ornamental shrubs?

Of course, where I live, in a ten-story apartment block, neighbours are obsessed with pigeon populations roosting on the balconies. There is much neighbourly palaver and problem solving around the question of how to make the balconies unattractive to the pigeons.

Maybe there is another way to consider these birds. They are a post apocalyptic source of protein. The ingenuity people expend in trying to rid themselves of this nuisance, might well be turned to innovations on how to catch and cook them in the urban jungle.

I rather think this has been a good, if unexpected outcome of my Mongolian Grill feast with Bev.

No Mars trip for me, thank you…

Ah1 The lure of the exotic, the different.  Canadians want to travel to Mars, already. But why Mars?  Just because it is there? Why not the adventure down the nearby block, or alley, or path? There is enough strangeness, exoticism, difference close by. Why, the other day, as I was dragging my groceries home, my left elbow cramping, I stopped on the sidewalk and looked up, just because. The tree girdled by sidewalk concrete rose in its spiky wintery brushiness. Dark green-black speckled bark glistened with rain. A winter bleak sky as is only possible on the West coast of BC. A sleek crow busily fastened twigs into a rough area which on closer consideration appeared to be a rudimentary nest. It was joined by its mate, landing with economy and proffering another twig. The crows deliberated upon the placement of this fragment, seemed to be engaged in a telepathic discussion. The twig was added to the bristling mass, and they moved around in tandem inspecting. What a new and strange treat for me. A promise of spring continuity, of maybe a nestling soon to be observed.  Perhaps an occasion of observing flight lessons, of the cajoling that all parents implement in motivating their young. An opportunity to hear the sounds of crowish language, encouraging, prompting, cautioning.

Daily, I am reminded of the ubiquity of the uncanny, the novel, the never-before-experienced… and of joy in the present place.

New Year…

Di – di – daw, Dee Daw,

called the chickadee today.

A fine beginning.