Through a Glass Darkly

Interesting to see how many of these I’ve eaten. . . . You can find more info here.

Here’s what to do:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea (mmmmm Chinese medicine)
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns (these, and other delicacies of dim sum, are among the top foods i miss)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar (Mmmmmm cigar)
37. Clotted Cream Tea (Clotted cream is a food of the gods, truly, but I have never had it in tea)
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (Or insect, anyway–on a dare, as a child)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whiskey from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (I am from Georgia, after all)
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (I’ve eaten it before; I would not eat it again unless I were starving or McDonald’s starting carrying free-range organic beef–seem likely?)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine (I would’ve been all over these in B.C. if I could eat cheese curds anymore!)
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. kaolin (Even being from the state known for this back in the day, I find the inclusion of kaolin on this list quite odd)
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill (only if I were starving)
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie (Loved them as a kid, wouldn’t touch one now)
78. Snail
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu (Haven’t a clue where to do this)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate (I would guess I have had it in gourmet chocolate, but I can’t say for sure)
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Kindness
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense and more,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them –

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided –
and that one wears an orange blight –
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away –
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled –
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing –
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

–Mary Oliver, from “House of Light”

The puzzle dreams have reached a fever pitch.  Last night it was an ongoing series of snatches about a product in development, a product I was feverish to develop.  A plastic basket semi-divided into three circles.  I couldn’t get the product to come out right no matter what I tried.  I’d half wake up and puzzle over it some more; I’d think if I turned on my side the puzzle could be solved.   Then I’d delve back into the full dream state, always searching, never finding.  Whether they are about food or technology or numbers or . . . plastic baskets, the puzzle dreams consume my sleeping time and leave me waking up already tired. Or still tired, perhaps. There are always too many variables in the non-sensical equations for the puzzles to ever be solved.  I say to myself, I get it.  I do. I can’t figure it all out–I know this. There are too many equations in life, and that’s okay. It’s all okay. But I’ve had these at least since I was 17, if not since early childhood, and I can’t make them stop.

Then there are the nightmares.  They go away for bouts and then come back. They’re back.  Lately the number-one theme is separating from Dan or getting divorced from Dan.  We’ve reached the point, years from now, where our relationship is stale and we’re sick of fighting with each other.  We’ve reached the point where one of us doesn’t love the other. I’ve cheated on him.  He’s cheated on me.  I’ve caught him in a web of lies.  On and on.  I wake, overcome—afraid or angry or sad, always filled with loss—and curl myself around Dan.  Or wake him while I start to cry.  Or stew in the bed, half-asleep, thinking of course he’s not snuggling me, because I know what he did. The emotion is so intense that it may linger for hours, occasionally most of a day.  “One purpose of dreams is to prepare you for what could come,” Dan says.  “And your mind is pulling from the past, which is understandable.  But it’s not the present, and it’s not our future.” And I know–I do know.  I don’t think my psyche is trying to tell me anything dangerous about our relationship.  Some part of me is just scared.  I’ve relaxed more and more into this relationship, and it’s wonderful.  I trust Dan more than I thought I could ever trust a guy.  I have a good marriage, a marriage that is downright easy most days, and only very rarely difficult.  We listen. We try. We give. We stop. Or we start. We do.  We do what we need to do to make each other a priority.

So I don’t want to be scared.  I don’t want to be puzzled. I’m okay with letting things unroll as they come.  I trust that good can come out of not now knowing, that the good won’t always abandon me and leave me with the worst (or that Dan won’t do the same).  I trust these things, and I need rest.  I crave true rest, good rest, the way other people crave water after a hard run in the hot sun. I’m desperate for it at this point, and nothing–not narcotics or psychologists’ suggestions or hard exercise or anything else–has calmed my mind’s ever-roiling state.  What am I supposed to learn? I ask.  Anything? Is it random? Am I missing something I need to know? Is there some key to this missing peace?  I want to wake, fully rested, to jump out of bed with vigor—just occasionally.  I want one night, a single night, without a dream that’s frightening or disconcerting or frustrating.  Then I want to repeat that, over and over.

I’m determined to have a good day at work today.  And so far, it’s working: I haven’t gotten teared up, haven’t wanted to scream at anyone, haven’t felt my blood rocket through my body with a blood pressure increase.  It is only 8:34 a.m. at this point, but I’m going for a zen approach.

“If everyone at Habitat didn’t accidentally skip a dedication, then it will be okay. There’s very little that can go wrong there that’s actually earth-shattering.” –Advice from my former boss, a wise woman

Deep breaths. . . .

In our case, since our only expense for the car pre-gas is $60/mo. for full-coverage insurance and ~$10 toward oil changes, gas would actually have to get really, really, really expensive before buying a Smart would make sense from a purely financial standpoint (though there are environmental ones to consider, as well).  But it sure is painful at the pump each week or so.  As with many families all around the world, the increased cost of gas and the increased cost of food have required juggling other numbers in our budget—and changing the gas/grocery budget nearly monthly—to make our bottom line come out (approximately) right.

Well, I’m typing this on a new computer—on my new MacBook!  Until now, I’d always used Dan’s old laptop, which is at least 5 or 6 years old.  I didn’t really care since my main concerns with computers are word processing and internet, but we’ve spent the last few months having fits with that one over and over and over.  The internet going out on it (but only on it, not on Dan’s, when it’s a shared connection) for two days was the last straw.  And while I don’t care a whole lot about having a really nice computer, we agree that I probably will care when grad school starts in (wow) a year and two weeks.  I’m assuming this thing will last me at least 5 years, unless I really get into writing professionally, maybe.

The crazy, wonderful thing is that we are in a place in life when we can make a decision to buy something as expensive as a new laptop and know that it will not hurt our financial situation, that we will pay cash for it and make up the dent in our savings in a brief period of time. For a non-profit worker and a Ph.D. student, I think that means we’re doing pretty well. (Of course, being reticent to spend that kind of money except when we really need or want to is part of what enables us to be in good condition.) We got a student discount by buying it at the GT bookstore with Dan’s ID, we got a free iTouch that we’ll sell to recoup some of the cost, and we got a free photo printer that we’ll also sell.  So it doesn’t come out to cost us much more than $1000 with all of that, even with the extended warranty (which we don’t usually buy for things, but which Dan feels is worthwhile for Macs).

It’s gotten long (though this is with my head tipped back), and Dan’s trying to convince me to keep it that way.  I daydream about getting it all cut off to about 2″ long around my head—the shortest ever. I don’t know if I’d really like it that much, but it sure would be easy to deal with.  The problem is, I don’t know what to do with it when it’s long.  Wearing it purely down is really hot this time of year, and it really looks best down the day I wash my hair and not after that. (You can’t wash curly hair daily unless you want to kill it.) And with me working out a lot (well, not the last 3 weeks, but otherwise), it really would be better to be able to wash it more often than I can.   Perhaps one of my new-activities-of-the-month should be to learn 5 new ways to wear my hair off my neck. . . .

In any case, what’s remarkable to me in this photography is not my hair but how much smaller I am than I usually visualize myself being. After I saw this photo and was surprised, Dan took another one of a broader range of my body to show me how hourglass-shaped I am. It’s funny how you can inhabit a body and yet not see it as it is.

See?

Good times. (Dan doesn’t like this photo of me because of how my head is tipped back—he says it makes my face look distorted—but I like it. I think it just looks like me.  Other options I could have used are on Flickr.)

I went back to work yesterday after spending half of Sunday night awake with pain that seems to have returned with … not a vengeance, but a surprising amount of force, anyway.  I was pretty much on this linear path to getting better until Sunday. This morning, after being up again last night, I opted to stay out of work for another day.  Going back yesterday was enormously stressful, and I wanted to cry at every little thing.  When I got home yesterday, my goal was to stay in bed as much as possible.  I read magazines, took a bath, and went to bed early.  Margaret brought us dinner (a delicious, delicious risotto–bless her heart) so that I wouldn’t have to cook on my first day back at work), and for that, I was quite grateful.  My goal today is to rejuvenate myself so that I can make it through the rest of the week staying at work at least most of the day each day.

Hey, this is news from this girl who has been extremely easily exhausted since surgery.  The pain sucks somewhat still, but the pain comes and goes.  (I discovered I am now allergic to Percocet—I itch all over, and wake up clawing myself—so I’ve been going through this recovery with Advil only.) The biggest issue (moment-to-moment, anyway) is that I get exhausted really easily, so I was very pleased to discover I could make dinner last night with Dan’s help.  It was a scaled-back version of what I had pictured making yesterday morning, but it was the first meal I’ve made for myself (much less others!) since surgery:  local-vegetable-focused BL-fried-green-Ts with pureed zucchini-basil soup. Yum.