grateful saturday: really

When I moved to Ithaca, I left my job. I had some strange, feminist feelings--like feminist guilt. I tried to wrap my head around why, considering we decided on the move together, I felt guilty or, somehow, like a small woman walking behind a man. Sure, Jesse had the job and I was losing my own job, my own income, and whatever odd "prestige" comes with teaching college, but we were moving towards my family, towards my home and the East Coast...a lot of it was my decision.

I still feel strange--small still--about it all.

I quit my job, a job I did love in an industry I'm worried and stressed about. For awhile, I've been assisting at a bakery in Ithaca. It's been rewarding to see home skills in a faster paced, higher volume setting. It's been amazing to see self taught ideas in practice. It's also been really difficult: a recipe doesn't work the same in higher volume and there's a lot that a home cook has to learn by trial and error. Oh, and let me tell you that four in the morning is a time I rarely want to see as often as I've seen it since doing bakery delivery.

From the bakery, I learned to value home skills and the idea of being self taught. It's given me a lot of confidence though it pushes into those stranger feelings about womanhood and what it means, in our culture, to be a woman.

Now I'm starting an even new chapter: I'm going to be working for a spa in town. While my job description and title are still being worked out, I'm grateful to report that I'll be giving myself time to pursue another self taught interest in inner and outer beauty / holistic health. I start at Rasa Spa on Monday, being trained for a full two weeks to better understand the wellness benefits of bodywork, energy work, aromatherapy, and other rejuvenation treatments.

A total spin in career, but a path that I've been interested in and that I've wondered how to pursue in a more realistic sense. Sure, I've made a lip balm here or there, given myself a hair steam even, but I've only recently started to understand the necessity to attend to circulation, relaxation, and my body as a part of my whole person. I'm really grateful.

I'm also grateful for this arrangement of rocks, wood, dried flowers, and a (I think) rusted hose handle I found in the garden. All of these items were sitting in the house, waiting to be arranged into something lovely for the back hallway. Spring cleaning is off to a good start this weekend.

Beeswax (from Ithaca Farmer's Market) and Mineral Oil (from Wegmans) were warmed up, stirred together, and made into a lovely wood polish. 

Here it is all finished. I love how easy this was to make and it smells like honey, makes the wood look wonderful. I know I'm supposed to wipe it off the wood for a really effective polish, but the glow of leaving it on the wood for a couple days and letting it just naturally fade it way more appealing. I'm grateful for how easy it is to attend to and care for objects, to make them last longer. I see, all the time, how much better the house feel when items are cared for and enabled to age.

Since Jesse's away this weekend--competing in Houston at the USBCBC, I've been reading about coffee flavors and doodling coffee sketches. I think I'll add some color to this black and white and take a better picture. Since the Kenya just came in to the shop, I've been excited about apricot flavors and citrus! My tongue must be getting ready for summer.

Project Object #3

I've wanted to do a remodeling of the apartment since we arrived here: more wood, more whites and browns, better frames and picture arrangements. Oh, most importantly, curtains. A headboard (I keep reminding myself by posting it over and over again).

I keep delaying this because, let's face it, renting is so temporary. I am feeling a bit nest-y, a bit ready to have a nest. Part of moving from Chicago was to start thinking about more permanent things: home, family, yadda yadda. That whole quarter life crisis thing--something my generation probably invented--hit me hard.

Before playing house, a spring cleaning is in order for the apartment, my mind, and my body. Thinking about the cleaning/purge, I retreated to the dining room where there is organization, some sense of calm and arrangement. Of course, work needs to be done in that room, but it feels like a room and it doesn't feel like an apartment, like something we can't change because we don't live here (funny how Jesse and I talk about our rentals as places "we don't live in").

One of my favorite pieces is in that room: an owl lamp from RR#1 Chicago. If you get a chance to visit Chicago, be sure to stop in here and say hello to the amazing people who work there too! The building is worth seeing--it's an old pharmacy and the cabinets and woodwork were maintained. Stunning.

There's always air plants all around the store too, they act like candy at the end of grocery shopping and I always end up buying at least five of them before leaving.

Anyway, Jesse and I spent some awkward Christmas seasons together considering that we started "courting" one another when we were both still in or ending relationships. Our first Christmas without that drama needed some really great gift giving. I'm kind of fanatic about gift giving--to the point that I'll actually wait past holidays and birthdays to give the "perfect gift" and I often over gift too. I bought Jesse a million small things that year, that "first" Christmas. Then, a few weeks later, I came home and wrapped up this pretty little object:

And this kind of started a collection of birds. Collection bordering on hoarding and coveting of bird like objects (sadly, not birdlike eating).

It was great though--it was after holidays, after gift giving, and it was something that was so "Jesse" to me. I remember him coming home after work to a pretty big box sitting smack dab in the middle of our teeny tiny apartment. We sat on the floor and he opened the gift.

We've moved three times already with this fragile little guy and, each time, I worry he'll chip or something tragic. He hasn't and he's always ended up in the most organized room (good luck charm? feng shui wonder?).

Oh, did I mention he lights up?

Post Happy Hour Tornado and Internet Wandering

After looking for the library at Cornell and finding out that there are several libraries and I didn't know which was which, I called it a day and met some friends for happy hour. I think that seemed like a reasonable reason and a more than reasonable way to end a day.

It was a bit of a celebration as I've gotten a job! More details to come soon, but my earlier mornings at the bakery and my struggle to catch up to the skill sets needed to produce in high volumes are over. It was a great experience and it taught me and Jesse a lot about our future artisan bread bakery and what we want from it: smaller volume, more speciality products, and variation. I thought a lot about how you cultivate your own clientele and how you have to decide how much of your product will change based on feedback and how much will just stay the same and wait for customers to alter their own perceptions. My mind spins thinking about it, thinking about how difficult it is to make those decisions. Most importantly, I learned two things: I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I want to add salt and pepper to everything; if possible, onion and garlic too. Bread seems a better fit in this way. Also, I learned that it takes time to teach yourself a new skill and you have to make time for that learning. Jesse and I have a lot of work ahead to become self taught bread bakers--a lot of work.

This week was mother's day preparation: soap for moms, grandmoms, and fabulous ladies who are similar to moms.

Soap flavors were "pantry" based: oatmeal honey, ginger and honey, cinnamon and clove, lime and almond, lavender and vanilla, and coconut and lemon. There was a lot of zesting and grating. 

I wanted to make tags that said "mother" but realized I never call my mother "mother" anyway.

After the clay dried (this is just sculpting clay and it was "no bake"), I painted a bit of yellow paint and rubbed it off so it settled into the stamp groove. Some of my rubber stamps didn't take well to being in clay, they just weren't happy.

I separated the varieties with craft paper, wrote the flavors on it. If this was more "professional," I would have liked to have print pressed the labels since my handwriting makes it look a bit homespun (though it is homespun).

Then I added ribbon (from my grandma's old store, I love this ribbon and can't imagine what I'll do when the roll ends) and tied the labels on to the whole thing. I haven't decided how to box them yet so the tags don't crack, but much tissue paper will be involved.

I rather like the individual one and am considering how I could use food coloring to "stamp" the paper design into the soap next time.

Aside from packing, I feel ready for Mother's Day!

These soaps smell great and I added vitamin E or coconut oil (if there was a coconut flavor) to the batches so they're extra good for you. I'd like to learn how to make milk based soaps, I know glycerin is safe, but it just seems like a milk base would be even more natural. And I'm playing with more exfoliants like seeds and thicker zests next time too.

To give credit, I got the idea for the tags from Poppytalk's polymer gift tag tutorial; these are way more professional looking and she used higher quality clay (I suggest ones that can bake) and I love the smaller cutters she used for shapes whereas mine are just exacto knifed.

Otherwise, I've spent the week resting up for the new job and trying to practice, in my head, the new responsibilities...self actualization right?

Of course, I've been daydreaming too:

Summer leaf printing seems like an absolutely necessary craft: Here's a pretty example from ahyiyi

Of course, these large scale driftwood projects seem good too: Mitsuru Koga

I'm really glad there's still reason for spicy soup in warmer weather because this carrot and apple soup is something I'm going to make this weekend while Jesse's in Houston.

I did say that if I got this job, I'd detox or start to get healthier since I've been using uncertainty and job transitions as a reason for sundaes and peanut butter binges. So I'll be trying the Martha Stewart 28 Day Mind and Body cleanse. I'm starting Friday!

If we ever finish building the print press, this is our next project: Woven Leather Stool

There's a whole pile of wood that I want Jesse to bring home from work so we can play around and make something like a DIY pallet headboard or a spool table (for outside!).

from First Came Love

Spring cleaning and spring detoxing starting tomorrow! Looking forward to changes. Speaking of changes, my song of the moment surprised me: Jakob Dylan? You've changed, and it's for the better. I love this song.

RECIPE OF THE MONTH: April and pasta

Flour marked the beginning, the first thing I knew in multitude: white, whole wheat, spelt, quinoa, rye, arrowroot and so forth. Only, I didn't know the difference. I just knew that there were rows and rows.

The co-op seemed to have more flour than the grocery store. The type of person buying the flours I didn't know or didn't understand were the type of women who could wear an L.L. Bean sweater and pull off that understated-beauty look; that I-just-went-for-a-hike-and-now-I'm-going-to-do-something-else-you-don't-have-time-for-and-still-turn-heads-without-putting-on-mascara look. I wanted to be that woman and I wanted to know those flours. I was, in fact, obsessed with knowing what those flours did, what they tasted like, and how they changed baking.

I knew flour mattered—it's gluten and proteins, its composition had physical and sensory effects that would spill over into the cookie, the quiche, the dumpling. The difficulty is the heritage of the baker, my own lineage of women: I come from a line of women who put flour on their faces to “pretend” time in the kitchen. As a child, picnics included a trip to Friendly's and my mother and I throwing away the bags, the evidence, and putting the food into a basket to surprise my father at work. An Easter meal was store bought, but we pretended the labor by dusting dried herbs and salt on the floor. We even dipped the rolling pin in the flour if there was a pie involved. Always, we put put our hands in the flour, patted our faces and clothes just a bit. Just enough for an effect.

In my childhood, I don't remember my mother buying a new bag of flour. I remember the flour, in the yellow tin labeled, in brown lettering, "FLOUR." If I think about it long enough, the flour was clumped, it smelled a bit like cinnamon or whatever else was on our hands when we dipped them in there. The flour was white, old, and ornamental.

Food making was performance art.

My mother's mother didn't even bother to perform or pretend. She left the can of canned spaghetti in full view, admitted to tuna in everything, and chewed on a butterscotch candy and a laxative instead of the meal anyway. It's no wonder my mother's relationship with food was performatory, was rooted in an idea of femininity that was exhausted by the labor of making a meal, so exhausted that she was always “too tired to eat.”

It added up to this: women worked in the kitchen and women were tired from that work. To be a real woman, you had to be really tired. If you aren't working in the kitchen, you're less of a woman, but if you are really tired, you can gain some of the femininity you “lost”. Being a woman in the age of easy and fast cooking meant being skinny, tired, and remembering to make your exhaustion seem caught up in the activities you weren't doing anymore (cooking).

This relationship with food, with femininity, and with the performance of both is something I didn't accurately notice until I left home, went to college, and made my first batch of homemade pasta. It's also something I haven't worked out in my head and something that might only be true for my own line of women—my mother and grandmother.

I never doubted, the way my mother did, my own relationship to my gender. I didn't feel an obligation to "do" anything specifically female. I didn't chew on laxatives to stay small and tired like my grandma and I didn't pretend to do domestic chores and feign exhaustion like my mother.

I did decide to make my own pasta because I moved into my first apartment. Because I went shopping and bought "basic" pantry and refrigerator items without even knowing what a basic pantry or fridge looked like. I bought flour, baking soda,butter, eggs, salt and pepper, and a few cans of tomatoes. That seemed "basic." None of this seemed “gendered” to me or caught up in gender issues; it seemed like a contemporary problem of not knowing or valuing food.

When it was time for dinner, I was helpless. I hadn't picked up anything to actually eat. The fridge had an open baking soda container (just like home), butter, and those eggs. The pantry was worse. I typed in the remnants of my basic grocery shopping into a google search to see what I could make, what recipe would come up. It was a recipe for egg pasta.

Viola! Pasta! Pasta, as I knew it, was an easy meal. An out of the box and onto the plate meal. Perfect.

I started to cook the pasta and it was my first experience with flour types: "Tipo 00 Flour." What? In other recipe searches it was called farina di grano tenero, which only made me panic more.

I didn't know, I couldn't have known that flour came in more varieties.

I used the white flour I bought, the flour that only said "White Flour" on the label and followed the directions. The recipe, as I remember it, was pretty basic, but it was the first time I learned that pasta was not something that just came in a box:

Place about 1lb and 6oz flour on a board, make a well in the center, and crack 6 eggs or 12 yolks into the center. I used 6 eggs because it seemed like a hassle to separate yolks. Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth, using the tips of fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time until everything is combined.

I can't even explain how cool this was. The flour literally "acted," it took in the eggs and changed. I'd never seen this. Brownie mixes and cake mixes just don't act the same way the flour was acting. There was a reaction, there was some change, something to see, something happening. With a bit of work, everything bound together and I had a lump of dough. I was in love with that lump of dough and, without knowing what kneading was, I touched it enough that I probably ended up kneading it. I didn't understand the glutens or how this action was expanding the glutens, was helping the pasta firm up and become springy. I just wanted to keep touching this thing that I'd made and, every time I touched it, it changed a little. The dough started to feel silky instead of floury.

Of course, I ruined it after this because I didn't know that dough needs to rest and I didn't have a pasta machine or anything to help me shape it. I rolled out the dough and cut it into strips of pasta, stuck it all in some boiling water.

Everything stuck together. It was the most visually disastrous thing I'd ever made. I added a pat of butter to the top of the mound and ate the pasta.

I didn't care that it was terrible, incorrect, and ugly. I was so pleased with making my own pasta, so pleased with watching flour alter--to me, the meal tasted great.

After this first try, my first time really making anything from scratch, I felt really empowered. I think it usually happens around eighteen that we start to realize that our relationship with food is a mutual relationship: we have to give time to learn about food preparation, food ingredients, and flavor combinations. We have to give time and we can give time to the whole process of knowing our ingredients, even making or growing them. There's something empowering about our own hands and minds (sometimes tongues) being responsible for our own food and eighteen is a great time to recognize this responsibility, maybe even authority, over our own consumption.

What I liked about making my own pasta is what I still like about making food on my own: I developed an intimacy with an ingredient that I assumed was an ingredient on it's own. I thought pasta was pasta and didn't bother to think about what (or who) made pasta. Learning that the "ingredient" was composed of other ingredients instantly allowed me to think about eggs and flour, about how they also come from something else that I could learn more about.

This marked the beginning of my fascination with flour and flour types, with grains and how grains are grown. Since making this egg pasta, I've reached out to other types of pasta made from different grains and flours. I've also educated myself about flour components and how flour types influence a recipe in structure, texture, flavor, and aesthetics.

I don't know how this alters my understanding of a new kind of femininity, a new kind of domesticity, or any of the issues my mother was dealing with. I do, however, think that the idea that cooking is akin to knowledge, to making, and to having authority is affecting my understanding of what it means for me to be a woman. More importantly and more simple to unravel, I'm glad I've broken a pattern of sorts. I'm glad I've developed a camaraderie with food that was broken by my grandmother and isolated from my mother. Participating with food and food making has let me separate myself from the poor body image my grandmother and mother struggled with and it's let me enjoy the range of sensory experiences eating offers.

****

For a great post and recipes about homemade pasta, check out Leite's site

weekending, week beginning, and good news!

Thanks to the lovely Joslyn over at Simple Lovely, I've won a necklace! The necklace in question is a pretty little darling that my mother will be receiving for Mother's Day--rose gold chain with a gold kiss weight as the charm. f. is for Frank, Shannah and Casey, have an aesthetic that's moving past the contemporary overkill of "cutsey" and pushing to see how the strange and the organic can make new and interesting designs. They are making some jewelry that's unlike anything I've ever seen before--like this mixed hickory slice necklace:



I'm not going to lie, I got a bit bored--in Chicago--of seeing jewelry that wasn't trying to make a statement or was trying to make a statement that other designers were already making. I almost stopped going to craft / art fairs for awhile (almost, but I'm too much of a groupie to stop). I f. is for frank is refreshing for its ability to see how subtle changes and mixed tones / golds and metals can really alter a piece of jewelry and our orientation to how we wear accessories.

Winning a giveaway was a great way to start a week, especially a week where I'm starting to really think about jobs and direction. This was good motivation to look back at my children's books and work and think about what is collecting and what needs to be attended to so it isn't "just gathering." Time to consider DIY publishing?

Ending a weekend, one of the first weekends where I didn't have an early morning bakery delivery or any kind of "work," is much easier with this kind of goodwill and spirit. That doesn't mean I don't miss the weekend:

There were a lot of trees this weekend.

And all the trees looked eager for spring. 

Luckily, there are some early bloomers like lavender and sage. And this makes me, Jesse, and hopefully the winter-tired trees, think that we might soon be past the darker days. 

It helps to have a holiday, some chocolate, and any kind of game where you get to find plastic eggs. 

I'm awake enough, even after a 4:00 am morning, to attend trivia tonight and become familiar with Ithacans instead of just driving around and exploring our new home on my own. I hope I'm awake enough in a few hours when it's actually time for trivia.

gratitude Saturday: a practice in spring

Will be spending the week practicing sewing--napkins, hopefully, for Jesse's stint in Houston with the USBCBC--and then reminding myself about the possibilities and beauty of screen printing and printing. This tutorial from Poppytalk is wonderful for home printing, but I really want to go back and look at all the Lotta Jansdotter books I have that I haven't had time to really read.

The weekend was eventful! My folks came up, my sister and Jason came up (minus Willow sadly), and Jesse and I got a chance to eat good food, drink good drinks, and relax with our lovely family. I'm extremely grateful for that time and how it enabled me to see the Finger Lakes more fully, feel more optimistic, and think about my own goals and desires in this difficult flux and economy right now.

Actually, Jason and Tara reminded me--a few times--that I've done a lot and this sense of "not doing enough" is temporary, is probably not true, and will yield something good in the long run.

Gratitude Roll:

1. chickens and eggs

We forgot to hardboil eggs for Easter, but we did search around for plastic eggs filled with candies. Either way, I love eggs and how much their yolks change depending on season and chicken type. These little guys were at the market looking extremely proud of themselves.

2. water and waterfronts

The market is right on the waterfront and you can watch the rowers, gather around the docks with warm tea and sandwiches, and enjoy a Saturday morning properly. Ithaca is a small city, which is new to me, and it's been nice to get to know the farmers at the market and to know that you'll run into the whole community right there, all in one place. Small town politics are something I'm just starting to understand, but everyone hears everything you say and everyone has an opinion--it's like a family. At first, I was a little startled by how much people were into people's business, but it's nurturing and it reminds you that things have consequences, that things matter.

3. photographs of strangers--specifically photographs of older men with amazing socks or shoes

It's popular in taverns here to have pictures of regal looking older men--love it! Look at these saddle shoes. For people who know me, I'm amazed at feet and how they are culturally and spiritually symbolic, something we care for enough to make looming metaphors about. This is slowly becoming a shoe fascination...a dangerous one for a penny bank account like my own.

I can't think of a better thing to feel grateful for than time with family, but the chocolate for the holiday helped make it even better. 

Scenes from a thankful weekend:

Architectural drawing to swoon over.

decorated window

Jesse walks past brick buildings

Project Object #1

Jewelry box sold to me as an herb box. It's the blues and whites that appeal to me--I've always had blue bedrooms, in every house I've ever lived in. Reminds me of traveling, reminds me that I don't have to be grounded in a way that's limiting. I can house or nest, but keep my head in the clouds or thinking of the next thing to do. 

Since it's small too, I don't feel tempted to buy more jewelry. My mother's mother collected charms, wore charm bracelets and you could hear her coming. She exclusively wore navy, black, and browns too. I imagine her sometimes and think about having some kind of "signature" piece, having something that's distinctly me. I wonder if that's still a practice in our culture or if it's somehow compromising to have a "thing" be a part of your identity, but there's something romantic or alluring about the idea of being "herd" coming. 

I'd love to see these necklaces popping out of the drawers. 

Jill Bliss

Working on the Maps series for Fill in the Blank Gallery, I noticed that I left out an encounter with the natural world. Sure, there were images of birds and deer--animals that influence my poetics a lot--but there wasn't a real sense of place established.

Continuing the series, I'm thinking that Jill Bliss's work--introduced to me by Mint Design Blog--will largely influence my thinking about maps. I love how her work shows nature as the composition of itself, as its own beginning and end. Her newest book, Drawing Nature, has tips about how to integrate the natural environment into the one we are artistically creating.

I can't wait to get my hands on her book and to begin really fulfilling an appreciation of space / place and region through more aware attention to how nature is coming into my poetics. There's a giveaway of the book at Mint--fingers crossed for giving away being gotten by these hands.

Bliss's work for culinary kinship

At the bakery, in my poetics, and in my cartography practice, I'm really becoming more and more present in Ithaca, in Central New York. I'm starting to feel less Midwestern, less Chicagoan. Getting my hands on some wild ramps this week will certainly help this goal!

Weekly Round Up

Another rain day in a series of days where April thinks it's March. It is also day off of work and with post office errands and reading to catch up. I'm getting ready for a spring detox for the end of April and most of May, that means I'm enjoying more tea (herbs from Kingbird Farms):

Before the week's over, here's all the things I wished I'd already gotten to or started on:

• will make this spoon oil recipe and start spring cleaning!
• I need to read this blog, adore these recipes, and try not to fall in love with the "him" in the kitchen (especially since it's his partner who's keeping the blog)
• this shirt is fantastic, what grocery item am I willing to give up in order to own it?
• our windows need some serious attention--these garlands, new drapes, anything to change what's there right now
• I'll be making these pantry soaps for spring
• and I'm finishing up baby slippers for some babies who'll be being born at the end of spring and early summer

Before I can even get started on all of this, I need to spend some more time oohing and ahhing at how lovely this vimeo video is, The Elegant Cockroach. 

The Elegant Cockroach from UPPERCASE gallery on Vimeo.

Jesse and I have three children's stories that I'd like to see illustrated and edited by this time next year. Ms. Martin (writer) and Ms. Augustine (illustrator) are going to provide some serious inspiration towards that goal. Have you seen anything like this? It's so lovely.

gift giving and the dangerous practice of self google

In an effort to reconnect with poetry--a difficult reconnection since technology, being out of graduate school and academia, and flux have made poetry seem like "something else"--I had to google myself. This was good and bad:

The bad:
Oh man, I've written some really ridiculous things, people spell my name wrong often, and I can't believe how many typos I've allowed. I hope my students never noticed, but I know they did since we laughed about it in classes often. Also, I don't feel so comfortable with an online presence in general...I'd like to drop into the world and be in that living/real world.

Yesterday, at work, Kim asked me if ginger would brown overnight if we precut it. I "googled" the question to see the answers. The whole time, we were talking about how strange it is to "google" a question, to not just experiment or see what happens. It's a scary thing to already know. Luckily, we were so engaged in our own conversation and the huge oven at work doesn't let me get an internet connection anyway, so we did experiment. For deeper conversation and thinking about this, I suggest the book Cognitive Surplus (I'm sorry I talk about this book all the time).

The good:
I like poetry and poetic communities--though there are parts of this that could have gone into the "bad" section, but I don't feel like that at this moment.
I like finding, for instance, someone who read something I said and thought it was "smart"--look here, this made me blush blush blush and treat myself to a truffle (or four). I'd like to talk to this person to see what was appealing, what was "smart" inside of the comment...someday.
I also re-discovered Goodreads and my author profile there. I think that this network was a good kick in the butt to remind me that people read, that communication is entirely possible through poetics and making. I've been needing more kicks in the butt lately as I've dropped in production, submission, and motivation since going through a year of preparing to be wed and preparing to move / quit my job / and uproot.

All of this flux!

And in all of this, time for gift giving! It's spring and there are some notes that need to be sent, friends that need to be contacted, and love that needs to be shared. I have two days off in a row and today was dedicated to eating lots of pasta, sending out cards, and updating computer things. Tomorrow will be a bit healthier--running again, making soap, and continuing the practice of gift giving.

Here's what was packed up today--cards and love notes not included:

slippers I knit for my current boss who has been extremely patient while I learn how to quickly convert to grams, multiply and divide batters, and know when coffee cakes and muffins are done...patience is so valuable.

learning whipstitches will make the leather sole look a lot neater.

luckily, I keep show boxes for this occasion and practiced bow / ribbon tying with Paper Source before getting married--an important skill!

in the box!

The attached card with a tree tamp is from the "error" holiday cards. I kind of think they turned out great, but they were a bit too creepy to be our holiday cards. Jesse and I have lost a lot of silk screening skills, including pulling the screen. We're looking for Ithacans who are pros and can help us out at remembering what we once knew how to do.

Chocolates from NYC, this is a vegan chocolate and it is made with health in mind.

 Health and cholcalate? A dream come true!   

Found this adorable photo album and I know exactly who to gift it to!

I wrapped up a few knitted bunnies and a sown bunny toy for friends and friends who have new babies. I sent out a few cards to Chicagoans who I haven't talked to in awhile to remind them that Jesse and I are in Ithaca and that we still miss and love Chicago and the people there.

I love making care packages. There are so many details to consider: boxes, packaging, wrapping, printing, those details make me so happy. I can't wait to home dry some fruits for a summer care package of granola bags to friends, but I do want to fix my typewriter--make that, find someone to fix it--so that I can be a bit more creative with the cards. 

Wrapping gifts, folding boxes, and writing cards made me feel more connected than the internet searches and self google experiment. I have to admit though, I'm glad those links are up for past poems and books in my projects page, it's rewarding to be developing a presence or participatory role in poetry again. Too often, I meet people who "used to" do something and found themselves giving it up and, you can tell from their tone, missing what they were doing before. Is it a contemporary condition to "want it all"? 

New Poems To Look At, Read, Hold Up To The Light: From Sidebrow

Today I made lemonade at work. The three of us drank it and talked about forcing wild flowers, finding places where ramps grow. It was kind of a perfect moment--a "summer is coming" moment. I don't like to wax sentimental about moments or perfection, but there it is.

In other news, I've got some new little poems up from book that's looking for a home and is in a few readers hands right now for edits, acknowledgment, and attention. Check out these little lovelies if you get a chance--they are post move, pre employment, and strange: POEMS. While you're there, look at Sidebrow, they have some good work, some really keen editing, and the kind of variety you don't see in a lot of web based poetry these days. I don't want to pin down their aesthetic, I like that there's just attention to the craft of gathering work that's good. Oh, that makes me sound like I'm bragging a bit.

grateful saturday

I've been reading The Secret of Happiness and trying to follow, at least, part one of the PERMA acronym: positive emotion. I've tried this before and each time it seems like a good idea: gratitude journals as a way to reach positivity.

Oprah loves them. I met this beautiful woman once who loved them--and seemed happy--I often think that doing things beautiful women do is somehow going to translate to me becoming more beautiful; this is probably stupid and embarrassing to type. And I hear rumor that this is verging on "trend"...enough that there's an app for it: igratitude.

I'm not a journal person. I took a great class with Lisa Fishman where we read, kept, and discussed journals. Amazing class. My work was better, my poetics were clearer; can't say much for translation outside of "work" and poetry, but it was AMAZING. Class over, journal over. Not my first round of journal beginning and ending. And not my last.

This Christmas, Jesse bought me lovely journals from Sprout Home, a store we liked in Chicago, but LOVE in Brooklyn. I was totally committed to documenting our move, our new marriage, and every detail of days. It lasted for about a week and it felt like complaining. Journal ended.

So I try again, digitally and with gratitude. I try again because today the upstairs neighbor's bath leaked into our hallway and the neighbor's way to handle it was less than perfect: she let us deal with it. We mopped it, we put the bucket under it, and she, for whatever reason, cried upstairs. I was irritated. I was confused. I was thinking that I get irritated and confused too often and I needed to figure out how to think differently...

Can you teach yourself to think differently? Gosh I hope so.

I was reading that moving your eyes back and forth from one direction to another can help both sides of your brain connect--a therapist tried something like this on me once too, called it "rapid eye movement" (which made me hope there was a nap involved). There wasn't, it was actually traumatizing. Let's move on past that episode. I was reading about suggestion too, how suggestion can really change perception. Sure can! Once I thought I swallowed a needle because my sister joked about it. We went to the emergency room, had a ton of X-rays, and found the needle in the couch later that evening after 6 hours in the ER. Suggestion, it's a big deal.

What I'm saying is, yeah--I wanna be grateful and stuff. I wanna be positive. Who doesn't? Even R.A. Dickey, the pitcher, wants to be a better person--he's planning to climb Kilimanjaro, he's a "late bloomer" (Jesse's words), and he's positive enough to talk about Hemmingway in the middle of a baseball game. That dude rocks!

So here's what I'm grateful for, here's my positive emotion for Saturday:

1. We saw flowers today, tons of flowers. They're all over Ithaca. Some of them droop when the sun isn't on them and then stand up a bit more when the sun is around. This is totally cool to watch and it makes for good conversation if you're running out of things to say with someone you're walking with.

2. Jesse made granola today while I spring cleaned the drawers under the sink. The granola in question was called Christmas granola, which means we're not exactly seasonal, but we're indulgent or something. I'm grateful for the granola because of how it made the house smell, because of how high it filled our granola jar, and because Jesse made it while we were both in the kitchen listening to music and having a good morning together. 

3. I'm thankful that job transitions, life transitions, and all of this flux is something I get to share with my partner Jesse. Granted, he's watching sports most of the day, but he looks funny while doing it. 

surprising and good news, new poems are up and they are "bits" of failures

I really like The Highest Number. I like that they see failures and shortcomings as still meriting some attention. I read these failures and think, "Man, if I wrote that, I'd have given myself a cookie."

Before moving from Chicago to Ithaca, I sent them some of my failures and was surprised, today, to learn that they had been not only accepted but posted over a month ago. Cool? Yeah, it's cool.

Here are three of my failed poems that I still adore and can't part with or alter up at Highest Number: ITTY BITTY SHORTCOMINGS

pretty sure it's spring and James Elkins is on my mind

First: small yellow birds have returned to Ithaca! 


Second: I watched larger black birds with red accents on their wings pick up pieces of debris for their nests, was surprised by how much weight they could bear. 


Third: I'm getting ready to make some herbal tinctures while I research a possibly new and exciting career path!


Now for the blog post:


James Elkins' Stories of Art is one of those reads that I read again and again. Lately, I've been reading it with nostalgia: I miss teaching art. I left teaching art and writing for a number of reasons and career transitioning is up and down at best. One of the primary reasons I left was because I wanted to focus on my own craft and craft making--sadly, leaving has shown me that teaching art actually gave me more time, more reason for making. Learning to be an independent maker is harder. Academia is comfortable, it enables the process. 


In trying to figure out my own process--and not just in art, but in being a wife, a daughter, a sister, a person--I've gone back again to Elkins' work. If you haven't read chapter one, where the discussion of mapping art history is contained, do yourself a favor and mosey over to this SAIC site that has the whole chapter ready for your reading. 


I'm working on a map of my own process for Mary Ayling from Fill in the Blank Gallery, but I'm thinking that this is going to be a series, a three month series dedicated to weekly map making. Right now, I'm doing this on regular sketch paper because I like the idea of a graphite series after seeing some gorgeous post-it note sketches at the Gimme! Mott Street store. Kristen Leonard's sketches were awesome, careful, and totally bizarre. I've always loved the way graphite can look like lino or even like etching, and I have a major appreciation for the kind of patience it takes to not smear the pencil, to make the lines exacting, to make each line in general. 


Here's a rough draft of the first map--where I'm mostly trying to think about how duality and time are part of my poetic process:

I need to work out the arrows and the writing/font, but I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming together as a map. When I think about the poetic process, it's less messy than my visual arts process. Probably because I'm "trained" in poetry and I just try my hand at other arts. I want, badly, to start realizing more about the visual work in my literary pursuits. I always considered poetry visual and just want to really push into that part of language--as object, as something "seen"--but it's sonic capacity seems valuable, it's cerebral too. How to approach the multi dimensionality of language? I'll probably separate the maps, compartmentalize them a bit, to see if I can tackle one question at a time.

relocation location loci and dislocation

In Buffalo, I made way to other places. Found means to walk on train tracks or follow a river to see where it went. There's not much more to remember besides leaving--keeping the pursuit of leaving. Until I finally left. 


Then I was gone and seemingly very far away. 


It was time to go home when Jesse and I married and started making our own home. Our own sense of home. It was time to go home and see mountains again, wear some flannel, and forget the rat race I'd gotten into when I was blinking or sleeping. Jesse and I were working--we were always working--and we were tired. Our home was tired.


I don't suggest moving immediately after a marriage. It's been difficult and all of our plants died when we were driving across states. I don't know when we'll feel settled or honeymoon-ish. Television makes me think this needs to happen. Literature makes me surprised people even try to make this happen. Either way, hard.


This weekend, we got to get away from our new home and take a trip to NYC. A four hour drive.


When we got there, it was a lot like our old home. Everyone moving to get somewhere. But now that we are in our new, slower, home, we could slow down more. We didn't walk as fast--not like when we were Chicagoans. We noticed things like cherry trees and space. We noticed more in general.

NYC loveliness 

I'm not suggesting we've come to any terms with our new location or that we've improved in our readjustment, but we've started to open our eyes again.

In Ithaca, Jesse is roasting coffee. His hands our burnt, once his eyelashes. It's a physical job and he's tired often; he's wondering when and if he'll get to integrate his QC knowledge, his passion for statistics and databases, and see how roasting can become something that works with brewing. He his anxious sometimes for things to move faster. My dad says most young people are anxious for things to move faster and we should really try to value things moving at the pace they move. 

I'm working at a bakery. 4:30 am deliveries and baking scones, muffins, cookies, and bars for the rest of the days. My hands, too, are burnt. My tastebuds are tired, which is a surprising feeling. I'm excited about food and food research, flavor profiles, and flavor developments. I spent a good deal of time, in NYC, looking at the food and seeing how aesthetics matter in sales. I listened to people who wanted a cookie that "looked homemade" and then complained when the edges were too spread. I noticed the difficulty of consistency in something that has so many variables. Easier to sell a burnt cookie with even color and shape than a "just right" cookie that might dip in the middle. 

We are both doing these new things and wondering if they are the "right" things or the "forever" things. I keep telling myself that things are temporary, nothing needs to be the way it is for always. Then I look at Jesse, at my new husband, and I hope somethings are not temporary.

It's difficult.

I haven't been writing too much, but I'm going back into old work and attending to what wasn't developed or finished. I'm finding my older voice and putting it into a new place, to see how the dialect is influenced, how the words are changing to look more like this coast. 

handmade paper drying

Look for new work and keep watching to see me try to figure out how to make poetry more akin to a visual art (something I already consider it to be). I've been papermaking, working on building a home press, and trying to see what my poems want me to do next. This is--like our marriage--about process and change. I'm in the process and I need to figure out how it is happening and what I can do with it and within it.

paper mulch and screen