Kindliness: A Link

I am looking for feedback on my short piece, Kindliness. At Miss Eldredge's suggestion, I am pursuing publishing it somehow, somewhere. To do that, though, I need it to be trimmed, polished, and buffed. I do not have abundant time to do that now, but to do it right, I would enjoy critical, revisionary feedback. Just click on the word and you can access the GoogleDocs copy. Please provide comments here. And both of my roommates have read it and enjoyed it, so don't worry about me freaking them out. I hope you find it enjoyable.

Between Meetings

The other day I calculated my time commitments. Assuming 35 hours per week at the bakery (that is a minimum, really), 9 hours for class, 2.5 hours of study per hour of class time (when it is usually 3 hours) or about 23 hours, and 10 hours per week for my assistantship, I end up with a total weekly commitment time of 77 hours per week; or 11 hours of commitment per day. I am on my third day (likely of four) in which I leave home for work around five o'clock and don't return until after eight. What is all of this about? Well, it is about work, study, and meetings; oh goodness, the meetings.

I am between them for the moment, so I am not getting into them. Scheduling, let it be said, is a sorrowful time-sucking part of my life. Everyone's is different and no four people seem to share any time at all. What madness. I am not the only participant in this absurd scheduling debacle, but I worry that it is having a numbing effect. My nights of sleep are progressively shortening while my days never seem quite long enough. I still haven't made my mascarpone & cranberry brioche, though I am on my second batch of brioche dough from work and my cheese needs consuming soon. Nor have I had any opportunity to work on my compost bin, though I think I need a few more pieces of wood, maybe a few pallets to deconstruct in order to make them.

That said, I affirm that in the face of exhaustion I am happy. Classwork is demanding and abstract, potentially too abstract for me right now, and my work is satisfying. My friends and colleagues, when I see them, are dealing with similarly debilitating lifestyles, and so we commiserate together taking what sustenance we can from each other's small successes--book reports, led class discussions, cooking and baking delights, bicycle endeavors, and so on. For some crazy reason we are happy. Crazy, I know.

For some time I have felt that I did not know what to do with my time, but now I feel inundated, saturated with the potential to accomplish. Even my days off involve research, cooking, cleaning, building, biking, and learning. I feel infused in a way that I have not known for some time. Not only that, but I recognize a sense of myself-in-the-world as lively, active, motivated, and connected. My frustrations are generally frustrations of "not quite" rather than "not at all;" that is, I am bound to that I believe in and take pleasure in, even when those burdens are difficult to handle.

Now, if I can manage to pay the bills, everything will pan out just fine.

I am still alive; Lavender Cake and Farmers' Market Recipes

Almost two weeks since I last wrote. Wow. I feel like I ought to confess or something. This has been a whirlwind, constantly moving from one endeavor to another, spinning and spinning and spinning, but here I am and rather than being in the same place, I feel that I have accomplished so very much. First, I would like to post some recipes that I have made recently because I have been baking and cooking plentifully, much to the joy of my friends here in Flagstaff--especially my roommate Tim. Some of these have been grand endeavors and some small affairs, but they have spurred an admiring little following to devour whatever I produce. Here's the list: peach pie with homemade crust, lavender cake with lavender frosting, hearty pear-walnut/almond-basil soda bread (two different times, mildly different recipes), chocolate brioche, farmers' market bruschetta, and farmers' market marinara. I won't provide recipes for all of these delights, but I want to provide a few.

White Cake with Lavender
Original at AllRecipes.com
I made this for Cori's birthday and though I liked it, the frosting ended up very sweet. The lavender amount was nice, but I could have used more, I think.

Ingredients
2 3/4 cups sifted cake/pastry flour
4 teaspoons baking powder (I used 3 tsp due to my high altitude)
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 egg whites
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar (though I plan to blend turbinado sugar and honey in the future, probably about 1/2 cup honey and 1/2 cup turbinado sugar)
3/4 cup butter
1 cup whole milk
2 teaspoons dried lavender flowers
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
9 inch round cake pan

Directions
1. Gradually heat milk until just before boiling--try not to scald, which forms a thin layer on top--and stir in dried lavender. Allow to steep while preparing other ingredients.
2. Blend flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.
3. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Blend sugar and honey if applicable. Mix in 1/2 cup sugar or sugar combination, beating only until meringue will hold up in soft peaks (peaks may not be possible with turbinado and honey).
4. Cream butter in a mixing bowl. Gradually add remaining sugar or sugar mixture, and cream together until light and fluffy. Add sifted ingredients alternately with lavender-milk a small amount at a time, beating after each addition until smooth. Mix in flavorings. Fold meringue into batter thoroughly. Spray nine-inch cake pan round thoroughly or use parchment paper to line the pan (I found a spring-form pan at the thrift store I plan on using in the future), and pour batter in.
5. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 35 minutes. Cool cake in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. (Original directions use a 15x10 inch cake pan, or two 9-inch rounds which I did, but the cakes were so thin the tore as they came out. Experiment for yourself, but I think that one cake in a 9-inch pan may provide the best result. Baking length will increase appropriately.)

Lavender Frosting
Original at Everything Baked
The same recipe, sans food coloring and I kept the flowers in the frosting.

Ingredients
1/3 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon dried lavender
at least 3 cups powdered sugar

Lavender Frosting Instructions

Gradually heat milk in a saucepan until just before boiling, stir in lavender and remove from heat. Cover and allow to steep for at least ten minutes. Pour lavender milk into mixing bowl and beat in powdered sugar a little at a time until reaching the desired consistency. (A glaze uses less sugar, whereas a frosting requires more but is sweeter. If you are using this for a single cake rather than a layered one, I would suggest a glaze consistency.) Spread or pour (if a lighter glaze) immediately over cake.

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Farmers' Market Bruschetta
I did this last summer and really enjoy it. It is a way to make use of cheap seconds at the market, enjoying the great flavor of tomatoes later in the year. Bruschetta can be frozen and lasts well in the fridge because of the red wine vinegar. It is highly flexible for local accents and personal tastes. Cutting everything up takes time, especially the tomatoes which can be blanched, peeled, and smashed if preferred.

About 8 lbs fresh tomatoes, diced (I'm pretty much guessing here)
1-2 Tsp coarse sea salt
About one bulb of garlic, coarsely chopped
1-3 big red or white onions, diced
About 1/2 cup shallots, finely chopped
Other fresh veggies as desired
About 1/4 cup dried oregano
3 Tbsp dried thyme
3 Tbsp dried parsley
2 Tbsp dried rosemary
2 Tbsp black pepper, preferably coarse ground
1 to 1 & 1/2 cups olive oil
1/2 to 1 cup red wine vinegar

Prepare fresh ingredients and add tomatoes with salt to a large pot and bring to a boil. Allow tomatoes' excess water to boil out before adding onions, shallots, and herbs. Keep the mixture at a low boil to allow the dried herbs' flavor to disperse and for them to absorb some moisture. (This will also drive roommates crazy.) Add olive oil and red wine vinegar, stir, and return to boil. Taste and add further herbs, salt, and veggies to taste.

Allow to cool and store in the refrigerator or freeze. Allow frozen bruschetta to thaw thoroughly (24 hours in the fridge), stirring regularly.

To serve, lightly toast thick slices of bread (French or Italian styles, preferably), evenly spread bruschetta on toasted bread and broil for 7-11 minutes. Optionally top with grated cheese. If the bruschetta is room temperature or warmer, toasting on bread will go more smoothly; if cold, the bruschetta tends to saturate the bread quickly.

Farmers' Market Marinara
To get rid of my rapidly spoiling tomatoes, I used most of my remainder for marinara. A similar process, but involves more boiling and no red wine vinegar.

4-6 lbs fresh tomatoes, finely diced or smashed
1 Tbsp coarse sea salt
6-10 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup shallots, finely diced
1 onion, finely diced
1/4 cup dried oregano
2 Tbsp dried rosemary
other herbs as preferred
1/2-3/4 cup olive oil

Boil tomatoes with salt until thick, stir in remaining ingredients and cook to desired consistency, season to taste. The marinara will thicken somewhat when cool, but may loosen up when heated for eating. Can freeze, but similar to bruschetta for later use.

Both of these can likely be easily canned if you know what you're doing. At this altitude, I would need equipment I don't have and time I can't really afford, so into the freezer it went. I probably made the equivalent of a half-batch and, after all the water boiled out, got something like a big bottle of marinara. It is pretty good, though.

Kindliness: Reflecting on Writing Horror

I wrote another horror story today. Strange. I read plenty of weird, macabre, and suspenseful fiction these days and have always enjoyed scary movies, especially those that are tongue-in-cheek funny. Writing, though, comes with its own baggage. Generally I am very perturbed and uncomfortable writing these stories. Violence increasingly turns my stomach whether it is fictionalized or real. I still enjoy my frights, but prefer them to be suspenseful and quick rather than the increasingly popular drawn out torture-style violence. (Cultural anthropologists are examining more and more the relationship between torture-style violence in entertainment and the reality of torture in global politics, finding some illuminating tension therein.)

The parts in these stories that I write most rapidly are the violent parts. In a way, I can envision them most clearly and that plays its part, but I think what is really at play is the clarity of that vision frightens me and I want it out of me. This is particularly true with the torture scene I have written in my weird fiction-style detective story. Most of the torture is twice removed, first because a character is telling the story to the protagonist/narrator, and secondly because it occurs behind a heavy wooden door and is mostly auditory. When the image is clear, it comes all at once to the character and weighs on him for the rest of the telling. Vincenzi--the protagonist--even muses later that Murlough wanted to tell the story to get it out, to get it away from him. In a way, my writing of horror fiction feels very akin to that: Getting away from it.

Not only that, but my stories can be so readily cited to a medley of memories, acquaintances and friends, present conditions, and new challenges. This present one was inspired pretty directly by Joyce Carol Oates' reading of a Eudora Welty story which takes place from the perspective of a murderer of a black man involved in the Civil Rights Movement, being moved by the story, going to my apartment bathroom, and noticing the shower curtain was pulled to the side. I almost immediately had an opener:

She would leave the shower curtain to the side, not spread out to cover it all. Every time I might go in for one thing or another I would tidy it over, maybe rinse a little out of the tub. Just practice a little kindliness by not mentioning it. That's how I look at it: A kindliness.

You see, cleanliness has played a weird and powerful role in moving in. I want to make the place welcoming for my roommates and guests, especially since I have been here longer, and so cleanliness is a means to make space for them. I don't want it to be perfect and I am not pathological about it, but I was struck by the potential to be so.

I drew very much from a former roommate who drove me up the wall. She condescended regularly and made even my room a very small place to live. Ultimately I found escape in the library and an unused common room. I sort of set up a camp away from my place where I knew she would have to go out of her way to complain, an issue I couldn't really handle if I were to complete the papers on which I was working.

Again, I am struck by the oddness of writing the story. The protagonist is, to me anyway, a clear hybridization of this former roommate and myself. The narrator is an uncomfortable and passive-aggressive synthesis of this characterological conflict with a subdued pathology about her. Really, though, believable characters--especially villains--must be heavily founded on specific people. It is the flat, bland character that destroys the functioning of a story and the color of sound writing.

Simultaneously I am very hesitant and distinctly anxious about sharing this story. My current situation is panning out very well and the violence has nothing to do with my own situation. Rather, it is a magnification, a frightening examination of the realities of sharing space with someone; especially when the attempt to share space results in the failure of real cooperative cohabitation. In a way, it is all about potential energy. I recall physics class in high school where we discussed potential energy, like a boulder at the top of the hill having the potential energy to roll down the hill and build up momentum. The narrator in this story recognizes that potential energy and acts on, descending in this tidy, maddened way down the hill and into action.

If you recognize my commitment to non-violence and want to read the story, let me know. I am happy to share it, but the notion of posting it is anxiety-producing. I think about this process openly because I am on ground I have only ever seen from above and now I am on it, navigating it with my own feet and hands and eyes and ears. I can't say that writing macabre fiction is especially satisfying except in that it is patently unsettling and I generally hold that being unsettled is positive. Being unsettled, one sees the world in its shakiness, in its uncertainty, and its various conflicting potentials.