Today, I had the most glorious idea. What if the pickle juice that I had sitting on my counter could be reused? Obviously, I am not the first person to have this flash of brilliance.
Just your average pickle.
Some research shows that there are a couple of things to do with it. It can be added to chicken salad, potato salad, tuna salad, basically any mayonaise-y salad.
Or you can take it, add some salt and pepper and olive oil and have yourself a homemade vinaigrette.
But my favorite idea is reusing the brine to make fresh refrigerator pickles. It's like getting all the goodness of homemade pickles without any of the work. And I get to feel good about not wasting that brine! Win win!
Here's what I'm going to add to mine: onions, fresh garlic, fresh dill, and of course, cucumbers. Now I just have to wait a few weeks and eat them up. Pictures to come when they're ready.
If you want more detailed instructions, check out this great site, which includes info on making extra brine, should you need it.
Yesterday, I took a long foray into Youtubeville. It started with a song I heard on Pandora at work:
Which is definitely winning the award for best hair.
Then I went on to Chamaeleon Church, which featured Chevy Chase on drums, something I didn't know. Here's their song "Off with the Old":
Not my favorite of theirs, but still, it lead me down the direction I want to go in. For future reference, remember that there is a lyric in this song that goes:
"And there are some things that shine more than the stars
And we are everything, cause nothing's really ours."
Just keep that under your hat for now.
Listening to them lead me to Anne Briggs, whose great version of Willie O Winsbury I am posting here:
Like so many old folk songs, this one tells a story. Here we learn about the king's daughter, Janet, who has "lain long with" Willie of the Winsbury and become pregnant. The king declares that Willie should be put to death and calls the man before him. But when he sees him, he says:
"It is no wonder," said the king
"That my daughter's love you did win
For if I was a woman, as I am a man
My bedfellow you would have been"
And he promises Willie not only his daughter's hand but all his lands, to boot. Willie states that he will take the lady, but not the lands, and the song ends like this:
He's mounted her on a milk-white steed
Himself on a dapple grey
He has made her the lady of as much land
As she will ride in a long summer's day
A long roundabout route to the same location: the concept of ownership. As you can see, it's plagued people for as far back as the 1500's, since there is some evidence this song may have been about Madeleine of Valois, who was married to Scotland's James V.
The notion seems romantic when confronted with the hard facts of our bodies. But there is something about this idea that is singing to me over the needy grumblings of my stomach or the straining of my eyes. I am struggling to put it well, but the idea comes to me now that there is a kind of freedom in objecting to the worship of things, or perhaps, in the recognition that all the things in our lives, our books, our chairs, even our bodies, possess their own life that continues even after we are done with them. Or they done with us.
In that sense, a folksong is the best impetus for this thought because it was the type of song nobody claimed to own. These songs were, in a way, free to meddle and ebb as they would with the outside world.
I promised myself that I would include some knitting articles here, since that is part of what I do, as well. And today I had the great opportunity to take part in the creation of the Blanton Museum's Knitted Wonderland Project, a community knitted art project from the mind of Magda Sayeg, operator of Knitta Please.
Magda's projects usually entail covering urban surfaces with knit material. Here's one of my favorite examples of her past work:
A bus covered in knit materials in Mexico City.
The goal of the Blanton project is to cover upwards of 90 trees in knit material, from the base of the trunk to where the branches start. It is an extraordinarily huge project, and over 170 Austin knitters turned out at the informational meeting to help.
I'll be checking in over the next couple of weeks to report how the project is going, and posting some pictures of the completed effort.
But for now, I'm a bit interested in meditating on the concept of the project, which is to turn ordinary or urban landscapes into something cozy and warm. The idea is to kind of create a sweater for the whole world, if you will.
In a world that's about convenience, utility and efficiency, how can we apply this sweater concept, perhaps more metaphorically, to the rest of life, without risk of degrading into a foggy and overly-sentimental new-age love fest? No one wants to lose their edge. Knitting itself, which is a slow act of creation and love, is not always a cozy act. There are frustrations that attend it. Stitches are dropped and gaping holes are made. Sweaters turn out too large or too small. But it may well be that acts of love are not always acts of softness, but a testament to all things: the frustration, the learning curve, the glory, the mistakes, the completeness.
It may well be that our inanimate spaces can be part of this creative process, as well. These are good things to think about.
Here in Texas, the winter is finally setting in. The grass beside the parking lot is nothing but unkempt hanks of dry withered husks. A million birds flutter aimlessly from wire to wire.
I was going to begin this post with a meditation on bird migrations because it is true that I have never seen anything like the gangs of birds that gather here in winter. And it turns out that there are some interesting facts about bird tracking, like this article about scientists outfitting birds with tiny backpacks.
Then I was going to circle back to the winter and talk about some of my favorite winter things, like this song by Joni Mitchell.
But, as it turns out, that is not what I am going to post about at all.
Because when I went to search for that song, I happened to type in the first few lyrics in Google: "I woke up today and found," and let me tell you, some people are having some very weird days. Here are some examples:
Today, I woke up and found a small leg of what used to belong to a spider on the corner of my mouth.
Today, I woke up and found a banana costume laying on my couch. I've never owned a banana costume and I live alone.
I woke up today with black residue inside my nose, what is it?
But possibly the worst day of all is this, from KGB Answers:
I woke up today and found my dad eating a severd foot. What do I do?
To which the moderator has kindly and sensibly responded: "We would suggest you call the police, as someone has to be dead for this to happen."
Well, I have to say, best of luck to these folks, especially that last one. We can only hope that our days will be more bananas than spider legs.
Yesterday, as I sat thinking about another day, dreading its forceful onslaught, I heard, in the middle of my thoughts, a dog barking.
The barking sound came from underneath my window.It was rapid and loud, but brief.As quickly as it had started, it was over.
It reminded me of a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, which I have often come to in times of trouble, and after which this blog is named.
Here it is:
Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions---if that is what they are---
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.
Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins...
The bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.
The little black dog runs in his yard.
His owner's voice arises, stern,
"You ought to be ashamed!"
What has he done?
He bounces cheerfully up and down;
he rushes in circles in the fallen leaves.
Obviously, he has no sense of shame.
He and the bird know everything is answered,
all taken care of,
no need to ask again.
---Yesterday brought to today so lightly!
(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)
When I originally read this poem, it was the "other tree" of "glassy veins" to which I was drawn.What an image!But now the part that hits me is the man yelling at the dog.There are many times when I feel, as others must, like the simple dog; yelled at for flaws which are simply part of my nature.
This poem resurfaces in my life in times of stress.Without going on and on about it, this has been a time of great stress for me, and it has come to me to make a blog of it.
The point of this blog is not only to exist as a collection of things that are comforting, but also as an effort to slow the tide of the outside world and redirect my thinking toward something slower and more thoughtful.
In praise of everything slow and thoughtful will be our motto here.
