Marshmallows and Song

I've been waking up to marshmallows lately.  Well, if by lately I mean the last 3 days.  The inspiration for this has of course been December birthdays.  Not mine, mind, but if you're gonna turn a year older in the bleak midwinter, you might as well do it while inhaling slightly updated childish delights such as marshmallows as a vehicle for hot chocolate.

So when somebody wise (or possibly evil) posted a Smitten Kitchen recipe for homemade cocoa on Facebook, and I stupidly clicked the attached link for springy fluffy marshmallows, and I realized a friend and classmate would be turning 29 (oh, to be 29 again!) in an appropriate time frame to guinea pig said recipes, what else was I supposed to do?  Alas, there are no pictures of any of this stuff in production because (what else?) I cobbled everything together around 9PM on a work night and ain't nobody got time to clean marshmallow goo and chopped semisweet chocolate off hands to grab a camera after a long day at work.  Whether the chocolate mix was a success I cannot answer because I gave it all away.  As for the marshmallows...

One thing I need to remember to put on my wish list: an electric mixer.  Stand mixer would be ideal, but honestly after building up Popeye biceps in my right arm trying to get the sugar mix to turn "white and fluffy and almost tripled in volume" I started to long for my slightly crappy Kalorik multi-purpose that got lost somewhere in my last move.  That said, the 'mallows might've turned out a bit denser because of the hand mixing.  The egg white portion came out lovely and peaky though, 'cause that was easy by comparison.  And the grace note?  (Because I used to be a "singer" and there's always a grace note.)  Um...whiskey.

Why there is a bottle of nice whiskey on the bottom shelf of my fridge is a story for someone else's grandkids.  It's sort of not even my whiskey, unless adverse possession rules get shortened in the case of food products.  But if it's booze and I'm making desserts, the temptation is undeniable.  So remember that line about using your choice of flavorings?  Screw the vanilla, mate.  Reach for the Glenfiddich.

You know you've done a proper job when your friend sniffs the gift bag and breaks into a shit-eating grin.  Because you've just brought booze to work.  Yep.

And now I've got a Ziploc bag of leftover whiskey marshmallows to pop in my (Irish cream flavored) coffee in the mornings.  Which is a dangerous combination, as it makes me prone to nostalgia and poetry.  (It would be songs, but I'll spare you the husky morning voice.)  Which is why I'm leaving off with a poem from my last few months in North Myrtle Beach.  Enjoy while I go lick the marshmallow residue out of my mug.

Wanderlust

I.

It merely is: the call of the morning star

too late or early, empty cracked highway at sunup

and the fear to close your eyes at the bend

for memories lost, or promise of loss to come,

rootless since rooted in all, the unspooling rope

of cosmos and microcosms dangling on a hope,

a dream of undivided attention, a fleeting eternity:

Is that the blank these tires grind, an unbeaten path,

a worn and wearing groove worth longing for?

II.

My favorite cloud is cirrus, wisped harbinger of change,

favorite sound the seashell's roar, a shifting secret

mirrored from nautilus chambers, favorite color

the turning of leaves, taste salted caramel

burnt dregs lingering like the aftermath of passion

so much unrequited, disappointed, bauble trophy

that at its purest could shake the bowers of gods.

I tire of familiarity, once-beloved smug cold embers

that I would, of my own gnarled hands, rekindle

though it be immolation, staring bewildered, silent

forevermore, remains of lifetimes, now as then as always

inert, without even the dream of awakening.

III.

This is not a rejection, love, my polyglot song,

no recrimination but invitation, to you alone,

whose face, not features but essence, remains etched

among those migratory stars I never cease to fly to.

How will you find me? The little dark woman

with untamed hair picking a way through sea-debris,

eyes attuned to the dance of tides, already distant:

the sea, the sky, the morning star, the myriad paths

twining multitudinous that lead from me to you.

Come, my love, the partner in my peregrinations,

let us answer, alone, together, the urgency of universes

forming colliding consuming consigning to gaseous flames

our own desire unslaked, like the draw of twin stars,

gravitational, a transfer not of light but of lighter spirit

that, bigger than we can hold, drags us in its undertow.

The Girl Who Writes

Part two of my saga is not really a part 2.  I just needed an excuse to post a story.  Why, you ask?  Wait, do I know you yet, and/or do you know me?  At the moment I don't have a designated story blog (did I ever have a designated story blog?), seeing as I write them so infrequently as to make it not worth the work of maintaining yet another website thingy.  And so on occasion I post stories and poems here because they take up time that I would otherwise spend knitting.  Or doing legitimate work.  Because independently wealthy is a trait for other people.

In any case, if you do know me, this story is strictly fictional except for the setting.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, etc. etc. you get the drift.  And I will proofread this hashtag before posting this time:

#thegirlwhowrites

Wine Country

It had been too long since she felt a warmth like this. The beginnings of sunburn prickling on her bare shoulders. The first stars igniting over their heads as the Miata jostled its way over the weatherbeaten roads back into town. She ought to feel guilty, spending the day in wine country with a man who wasn't her husband. Instead, for a span of a few stolen hours, she felt free.

Not that he was her type, really. She knew full well what that was: tall, thin, gray-eyed and intellectual. Come to think of it, her husband wasn't her type either. And he hated wine: complained about the sourness and the booziness and couldn't tell a Chardonnay from a Riesling. Jim, on the other hand, was going through one of his phases and threw himself into the excursion with a natural ardor. Her bastard brother. Not by blood, of course, but the sort of fickle, just on the edge between screw-up and success life-lover you shook your head and couldn't help smiling at. The last thing she wanted from him was sex. But as a travel companion, he was ideal.

Neither one could quite remember whose idea it was. Although, “I didn't know there was wine country out here,” she admitted, looking out onto another gray winter day over the slovenly Mississippi. However it was, finally there came that weekend that dawned without a cloud and with that first capricious inkling promise of warmth, and Rob had to work, and next thing they knew they were following country highways into Hermann or Hannibal with the top down. She vaguely wished for a hairband. And a pair of shades. The latter more so as they passed the first party trolley and were promptly mooned.

It was the drive as much as anything, they agreed. God's country. Vast stretches of low-lying farmland you could see a lightning bolt clear on the other side of, and punctuated by short knobbly trees you could just imagine cowering and buckling from the heat of the full summer sun. Desolate as any English moor for all the flatness and promised fruitfulness. Here and there they passed a farmhouse with the paint peeling off in chunks, or a silent group of cows. It was like having Whistler in her brain to provide commentary. That was while sober.

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times,” she quipped as they found themselves in another crowded parking lot with loud music wafting sourly overhead from rented speakers. This time the “estate” grounds were littered with Viking hats. “I won't ask,” she said. “Better not to,” he agreed, turning the key in the ignition.

Then, just as they began to despair, there it sat on the rise of the next hill: quaint, unassuming, unsullied, with nary a trolley in sight. Like a revelation, she thought, and wondered if he thought it too.

And of course, inside, the wine beckoned. Hot and cold on the tongue, lingering on the palate, teasing her memory with not-quite-placeable aromas. He developed a yen for Vignoles. She grew misty-eyed over a tawny port and referenced mead-halls over an oak-matured ice wine. Once the spell was cast, she knew, it would be difficult to undo. She realized she didn't care.

A clatter at the door made them look up from their individual reveries. A shaggy golden retriever, still soaking from a run-in with a hose, dashed in one entrance, through the storefront, and back out the opposite door, followed by a trio of young men in various states of wet formalwear. She watched them and thought vaguely of Whitman's twenty-ninth bather, the young men still handsome with the flush of good health and spirits and someone else's wedding. The proprietor turned up a patrician nose, mortally offended at the intrusion. As for Jim, he laughed and went back to his wine.

They settled on the lawn for a few moments afterward, stretched out in the shade of a venerable oak just getting its leaves back. Her head swam with port and poetry. Not for the first time, she wished she could fly, or at least drift through the cosmos on the perfection of the moment, lie weightless with nothing but the unblemished blue of sky as a mattress and listen to the whispering of the cooling breeze through new leaves.

She knew his thoughts held a different color, that he was aware of the curves of her body through the thin shirt, the heave of her breasts with every half-contented, half-melancholy sigh. But she wasn't her body anymore, more Emerson's transparent eyeball, and the risk to her physical form didn't concern her. Besides, she sort of relished the danger of not knowing whether he had the control today not to do as he wished. He did: she always did bring out a protective impulse as well as the unexpected desire. It was why she trusted him.

The landing was always the hardest part, the slight jerk and thud of re-inhabiting her body, the realization of oak roots digging into her back muscles and the slight dryness to her mouth as the wine dissipated. He waited quietly for her return. “Ready?” he asked when she finally looked up. She nodded, pushing aside the sense of responsibility a little while longer. First she would savor the evening drive.

Alternate scenarios floated through her mind at intervals. What if the car went over a rickety guardrail on a lonely river and her last thought would be of the starry night? Nuit étoilée, her mind filled in automatically, wryly. Or what if she found herself actually attracted to Jim, proposed they run away together and escape the boredom ingrained into her soul by a cold winter and a bland marriage? Would he do it? Sometimes, she thought, watching him drive, his thoughts as occasionally visible as hers, it would be so much easier.

The house was dark as they pulled up. Or course, he'd gone to his sister's, realizing she wasn't home to help ponder the old dilemma of what should they do for dinner. She shrugged, settling the dullness back onto her shoulders like a ratty security blanket. Jim watched her do it, as he had on countless occasions before, and didn't comment. It sat among their many secrets, like wine country. One day, perhaps, it would become a tradition.

The Girl Who Reads

"So they wrote about literature, and used characters as codes.  At Cambridge, they had passed each other by in the street.  All those books, those happy or tragic couples they had never met to discuss!  Tristan and Isolde, the Duke Orsino and Olivia (and Malvolio too), Troilus and Criseyde, Mr. Knightley and Emma, Venus and Adonis.  Turner and Tallis.  Once, in despair, he referred to Prometheus, chained to a rock, his liver devoured daily by a vulture.  Sometimes she was patient Griselde.  Mention of 'a quiet corner in a library' was a code for sexual ecstasy...She never wrote that she loved him, though she would have if she thought it would get through.  But he knew it."

---Ian McEwan, "Atonement"

Today, Cecilia sweater looks like this:

And I'm re-familiarizing myself with the original novel that inspired the sweater because there's something to be said for text and language that of necessity can't really make the jump to the screen.  Especially for a story about language and storytelling, that can be a little...limiting?  Then take out language altogether (well, unless you count knitting charts and instructions) and you have quite the challenge.  Still, she looks rather more like I intended now that I've revamped the lace pattern.  And I have the added benefit of waxing philosophical on reading and literature.

There's an essay/short story I found online this morning while nursing a coffee (and the after-effects of two espresso martinis from the night before) that stuck with me more than it should have precisely because of its glorious literary snobbery.  The original can be found here.  Don't worry: it ties all my yarns together about as well as my trusty circulars are doing at the moment.  How well that may be is debatable.

The point is I relate more than I really have a right to relate to the "girl who reads" of the title.  I see patterns when I probably shouldn't, empathize more than is strictly good for me, and live vicarious happily ever afters that likely will never exist.  I think I have been in love precisely once with a real flesh and blood human being, precisely because he saw me as the girl who reads...at the time...and wasn't afraid...at the time.  Because he saw my funny voracious little mind with its need for poetry and stories as an asset, something that turned our tawdry little relationship into a LOVE STORY in big city lights.  And like all stories, this one couldn't possibly translate to real life, at least not directly and without losing some of the inherent beautiful textual and contextual complexities.  Sometimes, knitting patterns are so much more satisfying, aren't they?

Still, I think I'm doomed to associate Cecilia sweater, not with my usual thecraftydoctor tagline, but with the slightly ironic hashtag #thegirlwhoreads.  Which means future posts about said pattern will likely feature said hashtag.  Anyone who can relate is also welcome to beg borrow and steal.  It would be...interesting, in any case, to start a trend.