Tail End of Winter

Well, I believe I've covered my neighbors here, haven't I? They're an odd assortment with an unfortunate habit of turning up in the same place I am, and the funny thing is, being unfriendly doesn't do a thing to discourage them. They include people who come and go at strange hours; talkative folk who have rap sessions in the parking lot in the middle of the night (sometimes when it's freezing); pseudo punks (who wouldn't know rock music if it rolled them into a muddy ditch); and an amazingly heavy-footed upstairs socialite who always seems to have it "all going on." She now seems to be styling herself a special agent, since she was wearing a trench coat when last seen.

Personally, I spend my days cooking and cleaning when I'm not job hunting, which makes me sound more boring than I am. I am actually a well-rounded person, decent conversationalist, and good human being, but I'd rather not cast my pearls before swine. This is not out of snobbery but rather out of a sense of self-preservation; there's no telling what you might step into if you so much as put your nose one-eighth of an inch in the wrong direction around here. And it used to seem like such a nice neighborhood!

Speaking of cooking, I don't think I mentioned the brownies I made last week, but they were really dee-lish, even though I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I had a couple of egg whites that I needed to use up, and the recipe calls for three, so I added a whole egg for the third one. They rose a little higher than they normally do, but that was great--"more" rarely being a problem when it comes to brownies, as you'll no doubt agree. Once those were gone, I made sugar cookies, and the only hitch there was that I was washing dishes while the last batch was baking, got distracted, and left them in too long. However, I only had to throw away two, as the rest were salvageable, if a bit crunchy. I'm eating the well-done ones first and put the "pretty ones" in the freezer. I have a lot left, and since I used my special cookie molds, they are all in fun shapes, hearts and Easter eggs. But the neighbors are not getting any of them.

I also made soup with tomatoes, kale, and chicken stock, but I had cleaned out a lot of magazines during my winter housecleaning surge and no longer had the recipe, so it wasn't the way I remembered it. I think I must have originally adapted the recipe to my own use because the one I found online that seemed most similar to it called for chicken, and I don't think I've ever made it that way. (There were some decent recipes in some of those magazines, but I had gotten tired of looking at them.) I always used sausage for this soup, but this time, I used leftover meatballs, and I think that made a difference, too. The meatballs were too dry to flavor the broth properly.

Today I baked bread. I had a feeling I might be low on flour, and I was. I had five cups, so I substituted ground flax seed for the sixth cup. (I have sometimes used oatmeal to round out a loaf, but the only oats I have right now are fancy Irish steel-cut ones that cost about $6 and are too expensive to use in lieu of flour.) I had to forgo kneading, as the dough was too sticky, so it went directly into the bread pans to rise. I couldn't even punch it down midway through rising because it struck to my knuckles when I tried it. So into the oven it went, and it came out of the pans cleanly half an hour later, though definitely browner and denser than it usually is. I ate some while waiting for my soup to heat up, and I've got to say, that is some healthy-tasting bread. It's got a slightly nutty flavor and is good on its own but would also make a good sandwich, I believe. However, I still prefer my average homemade white bread.

And that's about all I have to say this week. I feel that I should try to do something for St. Patrick's Day, but it will probably end up amounting to a bowl of Irish oatmeal for breakfast. I don't have a shamrock cookie mold, I'm not a fan of corned beef and cabbage, and the only time I tried to make boxty I was disappointed. I used to make a pretty good bread pudding from scratch, but I've already got cookies, as previously discussed. One dessert at a time, that's my motto.

Actual Facebook Posts

Oberon: Do you amend it then; it lies in you.
Why should Titania cross her Oberon?
I do but beg a little changeling boy
To be my henchman. 

Titania: Set your heart at rest.
The fairyland buys not the child of me. (A Midsummer Nights's Dream II, i)

Feb. 17  Me (In the car this afternoon, twirling the FM dial): "Doesn't anybody play straight rock 'n roll anymore? Do your duty, or sink with the rest." Yes, it's sometimes hard to find a decent song.

Feb. 20  Note to neighbors: callow youth, do not descend en masse on a lady who has been driving decades longer than you've been alive [Note: this was a math error. Fancy making yourself older than you are!], come up on her blind side in the dark, and tender parking advice in the guise of being helpful. If you want to be helpful, curb your loud music displays, tendency to attract partygoers who stand around and stare at those who actually live here, and peculiar porch behavior. You are not a credit to your nation; in fact, you detract from it with every breath you take. Also, please forbear to address me in future, unless the street is actually on fire. On second thought, not even then; you'll probably just get someone killed. Also, your taste in music sucks. The only good thing you played at your meet-and-greet on Saturday was "Born in the U.S.A.," and if Mr. Springsteen is not ashamed of you for co-opting his song for your own devious purposes, I am.

Feb. 22  You know that old joke about your dental fillings picking up radio signals? I don't know if that's even possible, but I do get weird bleeps and ringing noises that sound like they're from electronic equipment. My doctor said there wasn't anything I could do about it, but I think he thought I was talking about ringing in my ears from allergies. I just hope it isn't Russian spies! (or any other kind). More likely, it's some kid with a laser or something playing James Bond. It's bound to be illegal.

Mar. 4  Went to the Laundromat; had to run clothes through twice because detergent and fabric softener didn't rise out completely. Saw a weird guy who reminded me of someone who works at Kroger; he grossed me out by standing behind me while I was folding my clothes. Further weirded out by a car with electric blue headlamps that followed me onto my street and parked a little way up on the other side, just sitting there for a few minutes without (apparently) doing anything. They left as I was looking at my cell phone. Then I noticed a car with lights on parked on the OTHER side of Nicholasville Road, also just sitting there. I got my cell phone out again, and they left. I was taught to report suspicious activity, and I did, but the police basically just said next time call us while it's happening. While WHAT's happening? I told them I couldn't be sure the car wasn't there to pick someone up, so I was waiting to see what they would do before I got out--but that was a lot of strangeness in a short period of time. Not long after that, it sounded like someone fell hard down the stairs in the hallway of my building. So that's my Saturday night.

Mar. 6  He's back! I told the barista at Starbucks that the creepy clerk at the other location (MIA for a while but back on Friday) looks like he works in the porn industry at night, a tattoo parlor during the day, and the drug trade on third shift. He said, "What can I get started for you?" And I said, "Nothing."

Mar. 9  That was a cute display of calisthenics I saw over by the UK Library earlier tonight. If they were trying to impress girls, though, I don't think it worked. (Kind of annoying, though.)

Moral of the story: Get with the actual program, or live with yourself for the rest of your life. Think it over carefully.

Just Dessert

In between searching job postings, doing the dishes, etc., I managed to get to the grocery store this past Sunday. I was only planning to get a few things, and I don't often give in to impulse shopping, but I passed a table with King Cakes and pastries at half price and stopped to look. The other goodies they had turned out to be paczki, a pre-Lenten pastry traditional to Poland. I'd actually read about them; there was an article a year or two ago that mentioned the best places in Chicago to get them, but I didn't think I'd ever had them and couldn't quite figure out what they were.

Since they were on sale, I bought a box of four to satisfy my curiosity about the whole paczki situation. I was reminded of a friend from Texas with some Czech background who once told me about kolaches. Though normally pretty articulate, he was a bit vague in explaining what they were, though I gathered they were quite a treat. It wasn't until several years later, when I happened to be driving down the interstate in Texas and saw a big billboard advertising what's apparently "Kolaches Central" in that part of Texas that I was able to solve the mystery. A kolache turned out to be very similar to what most Americans would call a Danish. I bought one with fruit filling and one with cream cheese, and they were very good, and that was that.

As for the paczki I bought, they were covered with powdered sugar, and I chose custard over several other varieties. They looked just like what most of us call filled doughnuts, the kind you get in an assortment from the bakery along with crullers and regular doughnuts. They're flat and sort of oval, and according to the box, go by the name Berliners in Germany. I had one that night, and now I can tell you: a paczki is a yeasty pastry, just like a yeasty doughnut. The custard was good and the pastry was remarkably fresh for something that had probably been in the store for a few days.

It felt pretty decadent to be eating store-bought pastries when I normally stick to things I make myself. It was my only concession to the Carnival season, a bit of stray powdered sugar on my sweater testament to the fact that I'd been letting the good times roll dessert-wise. If I'd bought them a day earlier, I would have ended up eating the last one on Mardi Gras, but as it was, I ate the last one yesterday, the first day of Lent. That kind of defeats the avowed purpose; you're supposed to be using up all of your ingredients for one big indulgent bake-off before the fasting begins on Ash Wednesday. So I missed the deadline, but I have now crossed another European pastry off my bucket list, and maybe next year there will be another one.

You can never go too far wrong with European pastries, in my experience. Just use common sense when indulging.

Not the Kraken

I have somehow arrived at Thursday evening without a topic. Usually when this happens, something occurs to me if I just look at my screen long enough, but tonight nothing is jumping out at me. I've considered and discarded at least five topics, which is highly unusual. I think part of the problem is that I'm so stunned by what I read in the news every day that I hardly know what to say about anything. We've gone from a situation in which things on the surface seemed unremarkable (i.e., no more dysfunctional than usual)--though there were plenty of signs of unease at a deeper level--to one in which the unease is not only on the surface but growing stronger day by day.

Is this an improvement? It doesn't seem to be. I always hoped that there was a method to the madness behind Mr. Trump's theatrics, but if there is, I don't know what it is. It all seems so incoherent. Is this simply the result of a new administration led by a non-politician trying to find its feet? Is it going to get better? I don't know. I hope so. 

I will say that when the FBI director announced just before the election that new material had been uncovered relating to Hillary Clinton's email case and then announced shortly afterward that nothing noteworthy had been found that I was puzzled along with everyone else but not so inclined as many to condemn what he did. I assumed he must have had a reason for doing it. He didn't strike me as someone who would take such an action, knowing the effect it would have so close to the election, merely to play politics. I see him as a more serious sort of person than that. 

People are rightly questioning what role Russia (or some other entity) may have played in the outcome of the election, though my understanding is that some U.S. officials think it's nothing unusual for interference like this to occur. James Comey, by the same token, was roundly criticized for making an announcement about potential new evidence in the Hillary Clinton case and possibly changing the trajectory of the race. So here's my question: Do people think Director Comey is working with the Russians? Was he just whistling Dixie? Did he do what he did for no good reason? 

I've been unhappy with many of the actions of the new administration, which don't reflect what I think we ought to be doing as a country. Many of the president's Cabinet choices are downright mystifying, even when you try to give them the benefit of the doubt as I sometimes have. I don't follow the president's tweets, because so many of his statements are so odd that they might as well be written in a different language. If there are grown-ups in the house, I would be hard pressed to identify most of them--but in my view, that was also true of the last administration. I'm not sure when the last time was, really, that we had good leadership in the Oval Office. Do you think Donald Trump is the sole cause of all our ills? I don't, because he's only been in office for a month.

Is something slouching towards Bethlehem to be born? Is there no balm in Gilead? Do I dare to eat a peach? I think you'd have to be in a comatose state not to be concerned about what's going on in Washington, but my sense is that it's been building for quite a while, that a cumulation of ills is coming to a head. If Mr. Trump has a remedy, he's showing no signs of it. If someone else does, they're showing no signs of it either. We've gotten used to people doing things in a certain way in Washington, and now we have someone who seems to relish the creation of Chaos.

Hesiod tells of Chaos being the first of the gods, followed by Gaia, the foundation. Chaos gave birth to Night, and Night gave birth to Day, which shows, I suppose, that you can't always judge the end by the beginning. I just hope someone has a better plan than simply, "Release the Kraken." I can't imagine what that would look like in today's world, and I don't want to find out.

Steadfast

I went out for a walk a little later than I'd planned this evening, but it was one of those times when I thought it might have been lucky that I did. I say that because the sunset was really stunning, a fact I would have missed if I had gone out earlier. I was walking along, thinking that I might need to take a shorter walk than usual since it would soon be dark, but the air was mild and it felt like a fine evening, so I kept going. Meanwhile, the fireworks were getting underway behind me.

I was well into the walk when I realized half the sky was on fire over my right shoulder. Unfortunately, I was walking in the other direction, so I kept having to look backwards, but it was a show-stopper all right. The sun had set the clouds ablaze in shades of hot pink, an effect that only increased as the sun slipped further down behind the horizon. The sunset reached so far across the sky and was so intense that it made me think of the Northern Lights, except it was the wrong color and featured no psychedelic undulations, only a breathtaking blaze of color.

I did end up cutting my walk a little short since the light was fading. I turned down a different street than I usually do; it was tree-lined and stately, and I admired not only the elegant perspective from one end but all the individual houses with their lights turned on for the evening. It was like turning away from a Technicolor explosion into a scene painted by Thomas Kinkade. There was a bracing smell of woodsmoke in the air, and whether or not it was intentional, the street exuded a peaceful, welcoming ambiance. I decided to look at it that way, because sometimes it's better to take a break from the news of the day and just live inside the brightness of a single moment.

I finally turned west and was walking along, thinking, yes, this will probably end up being my blog post, though it doesn't seem like much to say, the idea of living in the moment so that the glow of a sunset doesn't pass you by. Everybody knows that. Of course, now that I was walking in the right direction to have a good view of it, the sunset had shaded into a moodier combination of dark clouds and smoldering pink, as if I were looking at the after effects of a volcanic eruption. I'd had to crane my neck to see the best part of the show, but the somber afterglow was in plain view all the way home, with the evening star shining bright and solitary high above the fray.

I'm reminded of the game I used to play as a kid, when I would sometimes imagine mountain ranges in a mass of clouds, a habit that can alter your view of the landscape dramatically if you hold the picture in your mind long enough. A volcanic eruption isn't something we're likely to see here, so my mind was busy for the rest of the walk in imagining the fiery peak that seemed to be barely hidden behind a bank of clouds. I'll admit, though, that it was nice to get home without encountering either lava flow or rain of fiery ash. Sometimes a thing imagined is better than the reality.

Several hours later, I'm remembering the fire in the sky and how dramatic it was, but the details are already fading. What remains most indelibly is the image of that solitary star, a grace note in a tumultuous evening and a counterpoint to the changing effects of cloud and light below. Now I'm thinking of Keats, which is taking me in a different direction altogether. If I had to choose between being the sunset and being the star, I think I would choose to be the star. What it lacks in drama, it makes up for in steadiness and luminosity.

Watching Jane Austen

The other night, I re-watched my DVD of Joe Wright's 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice (with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen). I've seen it half a dozen times or more, and the first time I saw it, I found it refreshingly modern, if perhaps a little rough around the edges. I hadn't then seen the famous PBS version starring Colin Firth and had nothing to compare it with except for the novel itself--nor had I much experience at that time in "seeing through" in the Hillmanian sense.

It may be that I'll end up doing revisionist readings of many of the books and films I've read, and this may be inevitable for an educated viewer, but it's sometimes disconcerting, as if a whole other film existed beneath the surface of the one I thought I was watching. It's tiresome, too, because, well--does one ever reach the bottom? I was certainly surprised at some of the details that jumped out at me this time; it's not that I didn't see them before but more that I didn't gloss over them this time in favor of simply following the story.

It's perhaps an unavoidable result of getting older that you also bring more of your own experience to bear on any text and therefore find more points of correspondence between fiction and life. Sometimes I miss being able to approach things more naively because a well-developed critical eye can be such a nuisance. It complicates experience rather than making it more fun and enjoyable--but so be it, I guess. You can't unsee things.

In the film, I noticed such things as gestures--a hand near the mouth or placed on a hip, a foot pointed just so; an expression that seemed at odds with the tenor of a scene; a bit of dialogue that grated; a pinafore worn by a particular character. I noticed the way a few of the characters reminded me of people I know and how scenes brought to mind incidents from my own life. Sometimes it was the smallest things: a character's look of lingering regret, a hand imperceptibly brushing the back of a dress, a handkerchief tossed into a crowd of soldiers, the unnatural pallor of a face. I was startled at the power these things suddenly had to kindle my own associations. I almost felt that someone had opened a window into my own life, with a surprising degree of accuracy.

My regular readers may remember that when I reviewed Peter Jackson's Hobbit films, I followed a sort of polytheistic reading of the characters. That is, I didn't see the characters as one-dimensional and continuous but rather as inhabiting different roles depending on the scene and the other characters with whom they interacted. This was a depth psychological reading based on the idea of the multiplicity of complexes and traits that make up an individual. I found myself doing the same thing with Pride & Prejudice, for it seemed to me that its characters moved in and out of roles in a way I hadn't quite noticed before.

The eldest daughter, Jane, seemed at times an ingenue blooming with her first experience of love and at other times something more reserved and unknowable, a watchful presence on the edge of things; Lizzie had a similar quality of seeming both to inhabit scenes as a daughter of the household and to stand outside them with an ironic, even supercilious air. The iconic scene of her standing on a rock at the edge of a precipice made her look more like a goddess in some high place, a figurehead on a ship, than a young woman contemplating her future. Even a minor character such as Georgiana, Mr. Darcy's sister, shows characteristics of a fluid personality, seeming to morph from innocent girl to someone with unusual forcefulness of character with one short line of dialogue and change of expression.

I admit I had never before given the film full credit for what seems to me its "coded" quality: of the way in which someone crossing a small bridge can seem to symbolize so much more; the way kisses can suddenly seem less than benign; the way an invisible Shakespeare-like gender shift sometimes seems to occur, transforming the import of a scene; of the way in which two characters difficult to tell apart begin to tug on my attention. (Why did the director choose to make the two youngest Bennet girls so much alike? When they're at rest you can see that they're different, but they are so rarely still that they could be mistaken for twins.) Some of the details are incongruous for no discernible reason. I found my attention drawn to things that seemed awkward and out of place, as if the film were a costume sewn so hurriedly that its uneven thread caught your eye before anything else.

Pride & Prejudice is, of course, a story about the politics and social games of engagement and marriage. A male acquaintance of mine once said he didn't care for Miss Austen because she made relations between the sexes seem so passionless, but this film takes in both the drawing room and the kitchen garden and injects a mood of earthiness into all the flirtations and jockeying for favor. In today's atmosphere of "total freedom" the constraints put on the characters' behavior and the many rules of propriety they're expected to observe may seem quaint to an unacceptable degree. I wonder, though, how much freer many of us are. In my experience, breaking out of a role, choosing freely, or trying to chart my own course has often seemed an exercise in overcoming one obstacle after another. This is much more of a problem now than it was when I was younger, ironically--or perhaps I was just not aware of it then.

Sexism, still as alive and well in the 21st century as it was in the 19th? The difficulty of being independent in a married world? Something to do with personality type? Some other explanation? Search your own heart and your own experience, and consider.

That Stuck Feeling

Alert readers of this blog may be wondering, "Mary, how did you spend your birthday week?" The answer is "very quietly," and when I say that, I mean it quite literally. I make a point of saying this because there seems to be an epidemic of people saying one thing and meaning another, and how this can be good is beyond me. I feel at times that I'm living in 1984, with all the strange utterances that come down the pike via the news each day. This doublespeak may be fashionable, but it's not amusing.

A few years ago, I noticed an acquaintance speaking very strangely, repeating words and throwing in a lot of double negatives, until I wanted to ask him if he was sure he hadn't had a stroke. Then I noticed someone else doing the exact same thing. Watching people on the daily news lately is a near replica of that experience. Surely all of these people can't have had strokes, so there must be another explanation. One longs for someone to simply say what they mean, in plain English. Will we ever see those days again?

I gather that large portions of the public are as confounded as I am by political events. The only comfort I draw from it (and it's not much) is that what has seemed obvious to me for some time, some fissure running through American political life, must now be clear to others. I thought that the air of the surreal that enveloped the law office I used to work in was something merely local, but if the whole country isn't by now aware of something strange at work in the political realm, they aren't seeing the same news I am. I had hoped that with a new administration in Washington, there would be positive change, but so far I haven't seen any evidence of it. In fact, I'm reminded every day by trifling events of how strange everything was shortly before I left the law firm.

Have you ever tried to report to the FBI or the police your sense that there might be some malfeasance taking place without being able to say exactly what it was? I have, and I can tell you that it isn't easy to communicate what the trouble might be when you only have suspicions. I have heard that they don't comment on ongoing investigations, but I still would have expected more interest in what I was telling them than they expressed. The only thing that really got a reaction was when I told them I sometimes had the sense that I was under surveillance and that my movements were being tracked. I'm not sure why, out of everything I said, that that was the thing they seized on, but that seemed to be the case. For me, it's not a vague feeling, but a conviction, and perhaps they did take me seriously on that.

Well, back to my birthday. It was a strange one, for sure. The evening before, I was out walking in the neighborhood as usual and became aware on at least three occasions that someone was walking close behind me. When that happens, I usually stop and wait for the person to pass. I was over on a quiet street not far from where I live when I heard footsteps, turned to look, and saw someone in a hooded coat trailing along behind me. I stopped to see what this person would do, and he/she (it appeared to be a woman) turned away from me onto a dead-end street and stopped, seemingly stymied by the lack of an outlet before turning around and going back the way she had come. I also noticed a car following along behind this person that stopped when I turned around. I wish I could tell you this was the first time something like this had happened, but it isn't. It was almost a replay of something that happened on the same street last summer.

I've seen so many of these unusual experiences that it's hard to know what's a real threat and what isn't, but the fact is that having people follow you down the street can't be good, no matter what the explanation is. I remember driving back from Cincinnati one Saturday, lo, these seven years ago now, and being startled by a sudden swerve of a pickup truck as we entered a shadowy area under an overpass. I went into work on Monday in disbelief and told several people that someone had tried to run me off the road, for I was sure that that is what had happened. One of the attorneys, uncharacteristically uncomfortable, it seemed to me, merely said that the same thing had happened to his wife recently. And that's the answer, that being nearly run off the road "just happens"? Is this the new normal? Apparently so, because it was merely the prelude to a whole sequence of odd events and disquieting experiences. Life hasn't been the same since.

I would have been glad to spend my birthday in a normal way, with friends, if I could be sure of knowing who they are, but the fact is that many people I know haven't seemed like themselves since all of the strangeness started. It's sad to say this, but it's true. I often get the sense that people know something of the problems I've been having without coming out and saying so--but no one is ever direct about anything. People don't always express disbelief when I tell them about some of the things that have occurred, but no one ever seems to know quite what to do about it. I have never been able to decide whether moving would make things better or worse, since I've had strange experiences away from home, too.

If this post makes you uncomfortable, I'm not surprised, but all I can say is, "welcome to my world." As a consolation for sticking with me through this unpleasantness, I'll tell you about one of my happiest birthdays, back when life was still normal and I didn't feel that I had to be looking over my shoulder all the time. I believe it was actually my 40th, and due to circumstances I won't go into, I ended up spending the evening alone. I wanted to make it special somehow, so I went to see a movie about a woman who was a writer and taking tango lessons--it was kind of offbeat but harmless as far as I know. I also went to the mall and tried on a couple of outfits that were different from what I would normally buy. I may have eaten out, too--I can't remember. It wasn't much, but somehow the conscious decision to be slightly adventurous--not absurdly so, but just a little--imbued the evening with a sense of possibility that was missing from some of my other birthday celebrations.

This year wasn't like that. Starbucks was filled with strange people that afternoon; I even saw someone who looked remarkably like California Governor Jerry Brown in the parking lot as I was leaving (I don't know what he'd be doing in Lexington, but famous faces are seen here from time to time). I couldn't sleep that night when I came home, as the building seemed too quiet except for some scuffling in the hallway in the wee hours. Once the oppressive feeling got to be too much, I got dressed and went out, thinking of waffles or an early cup of coffee, but in the end I really didn't want anything and just came back home.

Will next year's birthday be more normal? Only time will tell, but I hope so. It would be wonderful to feel safe and sound again.