Awake

Just quickly... a sorry housework update

Hello,

I've been completely submerged in a writing project over the past couple of weeks that was absorbing all of my writing energy, but now I'm up for air, while I let the thing sit and rest while I give myself a little distance from it, and wanted to say "hello!" though all that I've been doing is catching up on all of the really boring chores that I wasn't doing while I wrote, but should have been.  So since I put the project down I've scoured the stove top (believe me it needed it), finally washed our mattress pad and flipped over the mattress, which for me is a tremendous accomplishment, and vacuumed the bedroom, and paid bills just in the nick of time.  This afternoon I plan to walk to Union Square to replenish vegetables - it's high summer now, when I find the market totally unbearable on Saturdays due to crowds, so Wednesday is my new favorite day to empty my freezer of compost and buy vegetables and berries!  Fortunately the neighborhood small markets are now open on weekends, so I have an easy way to replenish if I run out.

I've been thinking again about how the cheaper I get the more eco-friendly my lifestyle is - for instance lately I never seem to have enough quarters so I've been mostly air-drying clothes in my apartment.  The downside, of course, is having days where my apartment seems to have been taken over by an underpants-weilding monster.  On the other hand I'm less overwhelmed by the process of folding and putting away, because I do it gradually as things dry.  Note, however, that I'm very easily overwhelmed by anything in the category of housework!

And, also in the green / cheap category, I plan to make my own household cleaner for the first time soon - the classic white vinegar/water combination, and I have some citrus essential oil I may add a few drops of, because, it sounds fun!  I've been meaning to do this for over a year, but it's taken me that long to use up all the expensive 'eco-friendly' sprays under my sink - probably thanks to my somewhat lazy housekeeping habits.  I actually am pretty confident that the mixture will work just as well as the Method brand spray I'm running out of, as I've used white vinegar for other household purposes, but I will let you know!!

Well that is all - but I've been MEANING to make my own hazelnut spread, so hopefully I will have that to report on soon, and I always have been MEANING to talk about how when I was 14 and got my hands on the Story of O, I thought the most horribly (literally) shocking thing I'd ever read, but when I read it as an adult, the most exciting thing about it was that the heroine has a housekeeper who comes EVERY DAY.  Oops, I guess I just spilled the beans!

À bientôt, j'espère!!

East or West...

I just got home yesterday, late in the afternoon.  At the moment I feel wonderful: as my father said when I called yesterday to announce my arrival, "east or west, home is best."  I have a feeling though that "wonderful" will end around 3:00 PM today, when I'll be longing for a nap - an eight-hour nap, that is.  And when I get back into the grind of housework and worry and all the pressures that come from "real life."  The obvious solution is to be rich, I had better head right to the self-help section of the bookstore that always has about a dozen books on that topic (or perhaps I should just write my own book about how to be rich and hope that it will make me so?  Sounds like such a dubious claim to fame, I'd use a pseudonym...)

Istanbul was wonderful, to me it felt exotic, at the risk of using a loaded word.  It surprised me in ways that had nothing to do with multi-colored tiles, though there were so many of those that at times when entering a mosque I felt as though I'd stepped into an inverted china teacup.  Things I would never have guessed are that the subway tokens are light plastic disks, not dissimilar to what you'd use to play backgammon - and the men working in shops have nearby cafes bring them strong, bitter tea in delicate little glasses (hot!) standing on glass saucers, or drink coffee out of tiny little painted coffee cups (no paper 'to-go' cups visible here) - and most of those women who are practicing purdah wear a colorful long coat, belted like a trench coat, with their matching silk headscarves (as elegant as some of these outfits were, I couldn't help thinking about the heat!).  And of course there's the whole modern part of the city, including several Soho-like areas, where fashionable and chic Istanbul residents can sip espresso and buy outfits by Celine or Chloe ... and there's a beautiful museum of contemporary art right on the Bosphorus.  I wish we'd had a whole week there, but that just means that I'll have to go back some day!

A few more pictures:

Tiles at Topkapi palace...

More...

Spice Market...

Oups, Vienna!

Postcard from Somewhere Near Vienna

 
We arrived in Vienna yesterday afternoon, after five days in Schwabenland ... lots of roses, countryside, and potato salad ... not to mention an enormous palace ... and today a  little excursion to where grapes and poppies  grow along the Danube.  Beautiful!  No time to write more now - but wanted to show just a few more  pictures!

 

Above, from the grounds of Germany's largest castle... the Ludwigsberger Schloss

And below, going for a walk just outside of the Marbach town center

 

hallo

 
a quick hello from deutschland, from  my husband's teeny computerthat I can't  quite manage - we just left Munich yesterday, where we had a very relaxed stay.

There's something very  special about the light there... this from a side street where I had a very nice glass (glasses, rather) of Prosecco in the  early evening... and spargle - there is  asparagus everywhere here, the fat white kind that's a specialty - and delicious sweet strawberries too.  We came at a nicet time!

 

And who knew there was surfing in Munich?  This in the Englisher Gardens... thelargest park in Germany!

 

Now we're nearStuttgart, and today we drove by the largest carwash in all of Europe, but sadly I wasn't quick enough for a photo...

Nettled

I am going to write a very quick, sloppy post because I am supposed to leave in exactly one half hour to go to Newark Airport, where my husband and I are going to take a plane to Munich late tonight for several rounds of family visits... and after a couple stops in Germany and a stop in Vienna, we're going to Istanbul just us two!  Hooray!  I will try to post a photo or two...

And I've been meaning to post this one.  I was stung by a nettle.  Have been igoring them at the farmer's market because I saw them sold at $4 a bunch - but nettles are weeds!  Shouldn't I be paid for helping to clear out weeds?  Some people buy goats to eat weeds!  (Well, maybe)...

But when the price came down to $1.75 I was tempted.  After all, in reading about hippies and homesteaders somewhere ('somewhere' = a very reliable source) I'd learned that nettles used to be considered a real panacea - it's got all those nice leafy-green vitamins: calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, B's and A's, etc.  But you've got to cook it, for obvious reasons, and I made the mistake of plucking the leaves like lamb's quarters.  And yes, they are called 'stinging' for a reason - they've got those tiny sharp little hairs and will go ahead and sting you.  A little or a lot, depending on you.  

Result: they taste fine, but worth it for the hassle?  If I had a field of something that nettles were choking out, I'd eat 'em all up and say 'thank you very much'.  As for me - hm - I'm going to stick with bok choi and kale and the usual suspects.  I'm so boring when it comes to these dietary experiments!

I'm sure if I were a better chef... (but I tried)...

hasta pronto!

More Spring

First, I just love the tulips that are still everywhere - in the winter, we decorate the city with little lights and tinsel, but in the spring, the city seems to decorate itself.  With the help of municipal gardeners, of course.

This dapper gentleman, by the way, is WIlliam Seward, who was Governor of New York, State Senator, Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln - and orchestrated the purchase of Alaska.  I'll let you guess whether I remembered all of this off the top of my head, or if I had to look it up.  I like the way his legs are so casually crossed, the draping of his trousers and the tie around his neck... he must be quite distressed at the appearance of the oversized-t-shirt-wearing tourists snapping pictures of the Flatiron Building across from him.  If only they would snap his picture, too, and then be inspired to dress accordingly...

Muse

When I graduated from college in the late 90's, I had plans for myself.  

My "practical" idea was that I was going to be a professor (English).  I could just imagine myself, the chicest of all the college professors (which, no offense to college professors, on most campuses would not take much), bringing my students to profound revelations as they all fell in love with me.  I would develop an eye-opening new theory about John Milton, write a book or two, and attend conferences, where I would naturally be much admired for my combination of erudition and elegance!

My more immediate, impractical-daydream sort of plan, however, was that I'd simply be discovered as an "it" girl.  Think of Chloe Sevigny, for example: just a quiet girl from the New York City suburbs, like me, who got discovered for wearing a nice hat (or something), and then got her own column in Sassy (I think), and then had an article written about her in The New Yorker, and a movie role, and so on and so forth.  Of course I didn't have Chloe's iconoclastic sense of style, or embedded mystique, or coy expression, but I figured it might happen.  And if that didn't work out, I had an impractical-daydream back-up plan: to dance in music videos. 

Surprisingly, though, when I moved to Manhattan a few months after college, while my roommate and I went out often, and danced a lot, I was not discovered as an "it" girl, nor was I recruited to be in music videos.  The city was filled with 22-year-old girls  going dancing, and the most recognition my roomie and I got was that we could sometimes get in to clubs for free because we were "on the list," and I think we maybe even got to hang out in a VIP room or two, which were exactly the same as any other rooms except they were better because not everyone got to enter.  Oh, and how could I have forgotten?  We had our picture taken for a book that never came out.  What might have been!!

And shockingly, now in my mid-30s, I am neither a professor (which I don't regret), nor a former-it-girl (don't regret that, either), and I haven't been in any music videos at all (which I regret a little, but it's probably for the better).  In fact, I not infrequently have days when I wake up and wonder, "what am I doing with myself, anyway??" and think I should run to the nearest employment agency, resume in hand, and get a job, any job - so that once hired I can sit in a corporate office again, wishing I were doing something more creative.  

But all is not lost: I've come up with a new impractical-daydream career: Muse.  A muse is a woman who somehow gets to know a big fashion designer, entrances him (for I've only heard of male designers with muses) by her great sense of style, and then is brought on staff to just wear the clothes and express opinions about things: "I think I'd like this better with a buckle," or, "what if we make one in red?"  

Now the hitch, of course, lies in the phrase "somehow get to know."  Sadly, muses tend to be very well connected.  Perhaps they come from an "important" (e.g. mind-bogglingly wealthy) family, OR are former fashion models, OR they plunged headlong into the fashion/art worlds straight after graduation, their tiny (if any) incomes (and consequently their wardrobes) bolstered by regular help from Mum and Dad.  

But what if you just KNOW that, if given the chance, you'd make a really excellent muse, possibly the best muse ever, the most reliable, organized, on-time, well-read muse (though certainly not the best groomed - but that would be part of the charm), yet you can't quite see how the chance will ever be given?

I'm going to think about this, and will post again on the topic when I come up with the answer!

Spring Gardens

It's impressive how in the Spring the city (and its many block societies) are so generous in providing flowers to 'decorate' - there are banks of tulips in all shades of pink and lavender all along the Park Avenue median - though somehow every time I cross and admire I don't have my camera with me.  And in another sign that it really is spring now, I bought my first bunch of asparagus at the farmer's market yesterday - and I actually hadn't had any since last spring, so those stalks tasted especially green and refreshing!   I also got a massive bunch of kale for $2 that I was told was especially sweet because it had been 'wintered over' - the roots covered with tarp over the winter, so when the leaves grow in the early spring they have the sweetness that the roots have been storing up all that time.  I'll have to try it and report back.

I took the picture above outside St. Vincent Ferrer, a church along Lexington Avenue in the 60s - sometimes these small 'surprise' gardens on corners are the nicest spring surprises of all.

I wanted to write today about something quite different - a funny 'short' I saw called "Keeping Fit," made in 1942 - but I'll have to save it for another day when I am less rushed.  In the meantime just wanted to keep this alive!

When did this happen?

How is it that every winter, I forget how colorful the world is with leaves, and every spring they take me by surprise?  When I stepped outside this morning, it suddenly seemed like an entirely different season ... just in time for May.  I saw a lot of women out wearing nice skirts and dresses for spring (or in one case, a pair of seersucker shorts and sandals - I think she's one season ahead) - it makes me want to put on something pretty and light and floral myself.  So as usual I have to remind myself that there's a reason that I don't own any florals... (they make me look like an extra from Little House on the Prairie, all I'm missing is the bonnet) 

On that note, I have to get to work, but this afternoon I'm going to head down to the farmer's market where there's probably still not much but where, due to nice weather, I'm bound to see people eagerly snapping pictures of the food.  Of course, I do it too, but there's something humorous about the multitude of people with enormous SLR cameras, zeroing in on things like piles of scallions.  Sometimes I want to tap one of these people on the shoulder and say, "you can eat them too, you know!"

Tea Biscuits

I have a new passion in my life, and it's LU Rich Tea Biscuits, these cookies that are sort of like the bottom half of a Petit Ecolier but without the chocolate slab on top, and butterier.

Of course, it's an unseasonable eighty degrees outside, so it seems rather silly to be sitting around eating tea biscuits after lunch (and dinner).  Tea biscuits are the sort of thing that I think go with rainy, fifty degree days in March or November.  To be eaten with tea, of course.

But I think I've gone crazy for tea biscuits because as I've mentioned before, I tend to want to eat whatever people are eating in the book I'm reading at the moment.  And over the past week or so, I've been indulging in a re-read of Cold Comfort Farm, which I first discovered a few years ago in the "British Literature" section of the McNally Jackson bookstore on Prince Street, and bought within minutes of opening it.  I'm glad I did, because it's the sort of thing that I like to peep into every once in a while, and in fact lately I've developed a sort of obsession with the heroine, Flora Poste, who as of this moment is officially my idol.  (Long gone are those high school days when I wanted to be just like Dorothea in Middlemarch... I can't remember why anymore, but I think it had more to do with what I perceived at the time as unselfconscious candor, than with her choice in husbands.  I'll have to reread it to find out!).  No - instead I want to be like the ever-sensible, determinedly cheerful, Flora, who likes everything to be neat and tidy, and whose favorite book is The Higher Common Sense by the Abbe Fausse-Maigre.  If only such a volume really existed!

Cold Comfort Farm was published in 1932, and apparently Virginia Woolf was absolutely disgusted when it won a prestigious award in 1933 (the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse).  It's really a parody of a certain sort of British pastoral novel, and the florid, "earthy" style popularized by DH Lawrence and his many offshoots.  Young Flora Poste enters this rural setting, where every bud and dew-drop is ripe with symbolic meaning and her relatives are mired in unhappy drama, and marches straight through, determined to get everyone into order before getting on with her own life.

The biscuits appear in a scene in a tea-shop where she encounters Mr. Mybug, a writer who just loves tramping around the countryside on long walks in any weather.  Excerpt below:

[Flora] was just beginning on her fourth buscuit when she became conscious of a presence approaching her from behind, and before she could collect her faculties the voice of Mr Mybug said:

'Hullo, Flora Poste.  Do you believe that women have souls?'  And there he was, standing above her and looking down at her wtih a bold yet whimsical smile.

Flora was not surprised at being asked this question.  She knew that intellectuals, like Mr Kipling's Bi-coloured Python-Rock-Snake, always talked like this.  So she replied pleasantly, but from her heart: 'I am afraid I'm not very interested.'

So I say, if this Flora is eating biscuits when she makes this sort of reply... I want some, too!