Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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 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.
Friday, September 17, 2010
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.
~~~
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.
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.
~~~
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.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
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:
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.
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.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Display and Connectivity
An aside:
Due to the lack of connectivity in my apartment, and in the spirit of trying to make sense of Flagstaff, I expect that I will be posting more regularly via the Tumblr account than through Blogger. For those who notice these once in a while on the Facebook feed--as all posts are routed to the Facebook via the Tumblr--nothing besides slightly more frequent posts will be noticed. For those who follow the blog itself, you may want to check more regularly at the Tumblr (http://bakingphilosophy.tumblr.com). The Tumblr will continue to be where articles, videos, images, and links will be posted more regularly.
~~~
For many people, this will be nothing new. I have had many conversations with women that have included this sort of consideration, but I felt it rather potently today, just a few scant hours ago.
The undergraduate students are returning to NAU. Many, many of them appear extraordinarily young. I suppose that is in part due to the playful activity of first-years in the early stages of orientation. They have some sort of treasure hunt afoot in order to get a lay of the land around here. I suppose I have done something similar in my few trips to campus--when I visited in early summer, last Tuesday, the Monday before--and have biked through and adjacent to it while in Flagstaff. Suddenly there is the grand transition about the campus, a metamorphosis or awakening into itself. Very soon, it will be an academy again where classes are commonplace, professors instruct, and students are everywhere.
I spent most of my morning amidst the SLUGG garden, a student-run garden near my department's offices, where I read and thought and wrote and generally enjoyed the clear air, bright but shaded light, and near absence of fellow students, my age or younger. I moved to North campus for lunch and after lunch, read for a spell outside the library while ominous clouds scuttled in overhead. I realized my posture and demeanor, and at one point my tone, were just so, sculpted as it were to make clear certain personal affectations.
Somewhere along the way, I had put myself on display for people to see. It has occurred to me that I make more of an effort to dress this way or that over the past year, but this had all the more to do with composure, eye contact, stature were intended to inform everyone of my status, my persona, my image of myself as a graduate student, intellectual, and informed--let's use the term...--resident. I can't say why, exactly, but there I was strutting my feathers just as any other peacock might.
Anyway, I have since moved inside to use the internet, power, the facilities, and to avoid the rain. I feel more myself inside, less strained to make myself into a particular manifestation. Instead, here I am working on my computer, taking advantage of wireless that I do not have in the apartment. I want to feel like the showmanship was a sort of game rather than a mask, that it is something I can play that doesn't play me. All the same, I know that the line between them is thin and that worries me.
Due to the lack of connectivity in my apartment, and in the spirit of trying to make sense of Flagstaff, I expect that I will be posting more regularly via the Tumblr account than through Blogger. For those who notice these once in a while on the Facebook feed--as all posts are routed to the Facebook via the Tumblr--nothing besides slightly more frequent posts will be noticed. For those who follow the blog itself, you may want to check more regularly at the Tumblr (http://bakingphilosophy.tumblr.com). The Tumblr will continue to be where articles, videos, images, and links will be posted more regularly.
~~~
For many people, this will be nothing new. I have had many conversations with women that have included this sort of consideration, but I felt it rather potently today, just a few scant hours ago.
The undergraduate students are returning to NAU. Many, many of them appear extraordinarily young. I suppose that is in part due to the playful activity of first-years in the early stages of orientation. They have some sort of treasure hunt afoot in order to get a lay of the land around here. I suppose I have done something similar in my few trips to campus--when I visited in early summer, last Tuesday, the Monday before--and have biked through and adjacent to it while in Flagstaff. Suddenly there is the grand transition about the campus, a metamorphosis or awakening into itself. Very soon, it will be an academy again where classes are commonplace, professors instruct, and students are everywhere.
I spent most of my morning amidst the SLUGG garden, a student-run garden near my department's offices, where I read and thought and wrote and generally enjoyed the clear air, bright but shaded light, and near absence of fellow students, my age or younger. I moved to North campus for lunch and after lunch, read for a spell outside the library while ominous clouds scuttled in overhead. I realized my posture and demeanor, and at one point my tone, were just so, sculpted as it were to make clear certain personal affectations.
Somewhere along the way, I had put myself on display for people to see. It has occurred to me that I make more of an effort to dress this way or that over the past year, but this had all the more to do with composure, eye contact, stature were intended to inform everyone of my status, my persona, my image of myself as a graduate student, intellectual, and informed--let's use the term...--resident. I can't say why, exactly, but there I was strutting my feathers just as any other peacock might.
Anyway, I have since moved inside to use the internet, power, the facilities, and to avoid the rain. I feel more myself inside, less strained to make myself into a particular manifestation. Instead, here I am working on my computer, taking advantage of wireless that I do not have in the apartment. I want to feel like the showmanship was a sort of game rather than a mask, that it is something I can play that doesn't play me. All the same, I know that the line between them is thin and that worries me.
Alterity, Binary, Solidarity: Reflections on Cultural Alterity by Ofelia Schutte
From 26 August 2010, around 10:00 pm
I feel inspired. I picked up a few books from the Cline Library at NAU the other day and couldn't help but snatch a few philosophy books. It has been over a year since I have taken a philosophy course and it seems... unsuitable. Perhaps I have begun wearing clothes that do not quite fit. (This is actually true, I have taken to enjoying the fit of large tee-shirts despite—or because of—their slightly too small cut.) One of those books is Women of Color and Philosophy which contains the essay mentioned in the above title.
Here are a few lines that have me thinking:
The first half of the essay—which I read yesterday and so is somewhat less fresh in my mind—has to do with the mechanics of intercultural dialogue, especially in the context of asymmetrical cultural authority. It provides a solid means to the later parts, but it is difficult to parse clearly from the quotes themselves.
Well, it got me thinking of an article I am very interested in writing. I want to understand a means for engaging in trans-cultural ethical conversations in an egalitarian way. That is, I want understand or articulate the tools needed to fairly converse about ethics between cultures. This is a long-term piece that was set by the wayside last summer but hope to return to eventually. It is still a puzzle that thoroughly interests me.
But being in Flagstaff, a stranger to this town of visitors (I think of A Garden in Winter, which I wrote this last Winter in and Spring and have posted here), these words and my thoughts steer elsewhere. I feel deeply motivated to explore “points of contact” and to negotiate out of “rigid self-other binaries.” I have no one in this town I know well; that is, even with the earnest and heartfelt kindness of Miss Johannesen, I cannot deny that we are still getting acquainted. This is by means a sleight to Miss Johannesen, only a recognition of the brief—if noteworthy time—we have known one another, and I refer to Julia here because if I am friends with anyone in this town, I am friends with her.
That said, I have an abundance of acquaintances I am eager to understand better. In no great amount of time, I would like to call many of these people friends; unfortunately I feel that doing so now would be somehow premature. Nonetheless, Ms. Schutte's words ring deeply. In exploring the dialect of this specific place (by specific, I mean this point in my personal history; this time of beginnings, firsts, and mottled understanding; this particular locale being Flagstaff, NAU campus, the Village Baker, the apartment complex; and the network of friends in Lincoln, around the country, and new bonds here) I wish to foster a tongue appropriate for dissolving boundaries and authoritarian expectations of those around me.
How is it that one might make light conversation with someone without imposing on her/him the sort of filter or rules of engagement that Schutte describes? Mostly, it seems, one makes a quiet, even tacit effort to open one's mind and ears to listen more carefully. Schutte decries the way a dominant audience will splice together the easy bits of a cross-cultural conversation and make up a conclusion to fit her/his expectations. (She uses particular gendered grammar mechanics I here avoid.)
A broad openness to the language of another person—not just words or tone, but body, gesture, accent, reference, personal narrative play a part in her/his language—necessitates a disrobing of the tools we have come into the habit of using to understand one another. Especially in this town of visitors and transients—words with intentionally overlapping but not synonymous denotation—such an effort to unequip oneself is especially demanding; it leaves one more open to harm, naked before a person. Such nakedness may lead one into blunder all the same, but erring in such a way almost equally facilitates a resolution. Whereas the dominant interlocutor claiming understanding where there is none is much more likely to fatally wound a developing relationship.
In some way, I hope I have been engaged in this vernacular for some time. I often attempt to articulate my understanding back to someone in the midst of a conversation. In effect, I hope to say, “If you mean this, then I understand you pretty well. If you do not mean this, then I would like us to step back again so that we can right my course.” The effort here is to work simultaneously in the same direction. This, I suppose, developed out of attempts to actively listen to people I want to understand clearly, but it also plays into this role of spacious conversation. With this sort of interpersonal, cultural space we can more clearly navigate around as well as with one another.
I feel inspired. I picked up a few books from the Cline Library at NAU the other day and couldn't help but snatch a few philosophy books. It has been over a year since I have taken a philosophy course and it seems... unsuitable. Perhaps I have begun wearing clothes that do not quite fit. (This is actually true, I have taken to enjoying the fit of large tee-shirts despite—or because of—their slightly too small cut.) One of those books is Women of Color and Philosophy which contains the essay mentioned in the above title.
Here are a few lines that have me thinking:
“What are the points of contact today between feminists from developing countries and western feminism?” (60)
“Postcolonial feminisms differ from the classic critique of imperialism in that they try to stay away from rigid self-other binaries... Postcolonial feminisms call attention to the process of splitting of culturally dominant subject in terms of the demands placed on the dominant subject by culturally disadvantaged others.” (61)
“People in mixed unions that are based on parity... are very strongly motivated to understand each other, as well as to communicate with each other so as to communicate with each other so as to deepen and strengthen their understanding. Such individuals commit themselves to lifestyles in which giving of one's time to reach out to the other, as well as making space for the other's differences, are part of the very fabric of daily existence, neither a forced nor an occasional happening.” (63)
The first half of the essay—which I read yesterday and so is somewhat less fresh in my mind—has to do with the mechanics of intercultural dialogue, especially in the context of asymmetrical cultural authority. It provides a solid means to the later parts, but it is difficult to parse clearly from the quotes themselves.
Well, it got me thinking of an article I am very interested in writing. I want to understand a means for engaging in trans-cultural ethical conversations in an egalitarian way. That is, I want understand or articulate the tools needed to fairly converse about ethics between cultures. This is a long-term piece that was set by the wayside last summer but hope to return to eventually. It is still a puzzle that thoroughly interests me.
But being in Flagstaff, a stranger to this town of visitors (I think of A Garden in Winter, which I wrote this last Winter in and Spring and have posted here), these words and my thoughts steer elsewhere. I feel deeply motivated to explore “points of contact” and to negotiate out of “rigid self-other binaries.” I have no one in this town I know well; that is, even with the earnest and heartfelt kindness of Miss Johannesen, I cannot deny that we are still getting acquainted. This is by means a sleight to Miss Johannesen, only a recognition of the brief—if noteworthy time—we have known one another, and I refer to Julia here because if I am friends with anyone in this town, I am friends with her.
That said, I have an abundance of acquaintances I am eager to understand better. In no great amount of time, I would like to call many of these people friends; unfortunately I feel that doing so now would be somehow premature. Nonetheless, Ms. Schutte's words ring deeply. In exploring the dialect of this specific place (by specific, I mean this point in my personal history; this time of beginnings, firsts, and mottled understanding; this particular locale being Flagstaff, NAU campus, the Village Baker, the apartment complex; and the network of friends in Lincoln, around the country, and new bonds here) I wish to foster a tongue appropriate for dissolving boundaries and authoritarian expectations of those around me.
How is it that one might make light conversation with someone without imposing on her/him the sort of filter or rules of engagement that Schutte describes? Mostly, it seems, one makes a quiet, even tacit effort to open one's mind and ears to listen more carefully. Schutte decries the way a dominant audience will splice together the easy bits of a cross-cultural conversation and make up a conclusion to fit her/his expectations. (She uses particular gendered grammar mechanics I here avoid.)
A broad openness to the language of another person—not just words or tone, but body, gesture, accent, reference, personal narrative play a part in her/his language—necessitates a disrobing of the tools we have come into the habit of using to understand one another. Especially in this town of visitors and transients—words with intentionally overlapping but not synonymous denotation—such an effort to unequip oneself is especially demanding; it leaves one more open to harm, naked before a person. Such nakedness may lead one into blunder all the same, but erring in such a way almost equally facilitates a resolution. Whereas the dominant interlocutor claiming understanding where there is none is much more likely to fatally wound a developing relationship.
In some way, I hope I have been engaged in this vernacular for some time. I often attempt to articulate my understanding back to someone in the midst of a conversation. In effect, I hope to say, “If you mean this, then I understand you pretty well. If you do not mean this, then I would like us to step back again so that we can right my course.” The effort here is to work simultaneously in the same direction. This, I suppose, developed out of attempts to actively listen to people I want to understand clearly, but it also plays into this role of spacious conversation. With this sort of interpersonal, cultural space we can more clearly navigate around as well as with one another.
Traveling Meditations III - Water
Meditations on Water – From 11 -13 August
(Note: The night of 10 August was spent in a hotel in Santa Fe. That part of the trip was very enjoyable and included the St. Francis of Assisi Basilica, the Contemporary Native American Museum of Art, a stroll through the Old Square, and other events. My aims for this series of reflections does not include Santa Fe.)
Coming upon the Painted Desert has its own sort of reality to it. I recalled a story in one of my Lovecraftian story anthologies—the specific one I forget—in which an adventuresome couple goes into the Southwest in hopes of discovering this poorly mapped establishment. The suggestion is that it is a ghost town, but in truth it is a weak point between boundaries between our world and something like the dream world of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Through the Gate of the Silver Key. Out in the Southwest, one has a definite sense of proximity to some other place or thinness of our own sense of time and space. The air is thin and changes quickly, in the summer monsoons footsteps are rapidly washed away, animals are sparse and elusive (except for the damnable mosquitoes), and distances can seem inaccurately far or near. Not to mention the brilliance of stars and the weight of the sun playing their own peculiar mental tricks.
I can also recall the fantasy novels I read in my adolescence based on the Magic: the Gathering card game, a significant notion of which were bubbles of disparate time. These spatial bubbles took on faster and slower temporal movement, sometimes drastically so, which made transport between them of living matter very difficult. (Imagine stepping through an invisible barrier and suddenly feeling numbness in your leg as the tissue therein used up its oxygen and half again or twice the speed as usual; meanwhile your heart moves at an expected rate and under-supplies oxygen to your muscles causing strain and potentially damage.) The trick between movement from one place to the other was through water, which acted to soften the temporal discontinuities and to dampen their effects so that one might move from one place to the other without damage. (The series also emphasized water as a transporter by crafting an interdimensional, the Weatherlight, as a flying ship, closer to a caravel than a spacecraft.)
In its way, these weird fiction and fantasy stories got something right. Water does play a profound role in facilitating the movement through time in a way that we cannot easily appreciate. Water has both the direct, short-view impact on the surroundings—saturated soil, hydrated plants and animals, replenishing groundwater, spurring growth, etc.—and the startling long-view effects—carved bedrock, soil removal and transportation, changing ecosystems, shifted rivers, filled in lakes, glaciers and their rending of stone, etc.—that are so outlandish it is difficult to appreciate without at least a little abstraction. Not only that, but these events happen simultaneously with each circulation of water.
The signs of water and its reflection left in stone are everywhere in the Painted Desert and especially in the Petrified Forest section therein. Over many thousands of years, water gradually deposited sediments that the stream was inadequate to carry. If a stream is fast moving, it can carry larger sediments; if it is slow moving, and likely lower, the stream can only carry fine sediments and will deposit the larger ones. In this way, one can see the seasonal variations in the ancient streambed in the sediments of the Painted Desert. Not only that, but the later carving of the Painted Desert was the result of water as well, water that cuts through the ancient bed and exposes the undulations of the streams forebear.
Shallow, ephemeral creaks and rivers carve out washes in the desert landscape, areas of calm, smooth sand that mark the easy and well-traversed passage of storms. In the monsoon season—summer months when brief but intense rainstorms, likely thunderstorms, roll it and dump fat drops of rain in the region—these washes will fill up in little time at all. The are the main vein of the innumerable tributaries all over the landscape, tributaries as thin as a finger that continue to reveal mineralized tree trunks and fossil caches all over the landscape.
Even before the present, intemperate impacts of rain, the landscape was dominated by a tropical or subtropical climate and ecosystem. The Petrified Forest is the result of a strong river that carried down whole trees during flooding events upstream, only to drop their driftwood loads when the river flow calmed. These stripped trees would become waterlogged and sink, where they would be covered by sediment and ash, the minerals in which would replace the original lignin of the trees resulting in the spectacular mineralization of the Petrified Forest. It seems that no matter what happens there, water will be a ruling factor in the landscapes manifestation.
I cannot help but ponder the sense of thinness in the air. Has it always been there? Is such a perception the result of desert aridity, a foreign environment, rapidly changing weather? Do I feel far from the usual because I am markedly distant from my normal circumstances of paved lanes and geometric buildings?
In a place so much defined by water, I laugh at the reality of carrying so many liters of it with us. Dustin and I would hike for miles, drinking occasionally in the not unpleasant heat. We are boys of the Midwest where heat is thick and humid and cold is sharp, dry, and painful. (Dustin's time in Louisiana, I think, does not breach this sort of expectation.) Strolling in the sunshine without humidity in the way, we feel ourselves clearly moving, unhindered by the usual weight of our previous circumstances. We are infused with not just our own energy, but the excitement and mystique of this uncommon realm.
(Note: The night of 10 August was spent in a hotel in Santa Fe. That part of the trip was very enjoyable and included the St. Francis of Assisi Basilica, the Contemporary Native American Museum of Art, a stroll through the Old Square, and other events. My aims for this series of reflections does not include Santa Fe.)
Coming upon the Painted Desert has its own sort of reality to it. I recalled a story in one of my Lovecraftian story anthologies—the specific one I forget—in which an adventuresome couple goes into the Southwest in hopes of discovering this poorly mapped establishment. The suggestion is that it is a ghost town, but in truth it is a weak point between boundaries between our world and something like the dream world of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Through the Gate of the Silver Key. Out in the Southwest, one has a definite sense of proximity to some other place or thinness of our own sense of time and space. The air is thin and changes quickly, in the summer monsoons footsteps are rapidly washed away, animals are sparse and elusive (except for the damnable mosquitoes), and distances can seem inaccurately far or near. Not to mention the brilliance of stars and the weight of the sun playing their own peculiar mental tricks.
I can also recall the fantasy novels I read in my adolescence based on the Magic: the Gathering card game, a significant notion of which were bubbles of disparate time. These spatial bubbles took on faster and slower temporal movement, sometimes drastically so, which made transport between them of living matter very difficult. (Imagine stepping through an invisible barrier and suddenly feeling numbness in your leg as the tissue therein used up its oxygen and half again or twice the speed as usual; meanwhile your heart moves at an expected rate and under-supplies oxygen to your muscles causing strain and potentially damage.) The trick between movement from one place to the other was through water, which acted to soften the temporal discontinuities and to dampen their effects so that one might move from one place to the other without damage. (The series also emphasized water as a transporter by crafting an interdimensional, the Weatherlight, as a flying ship, closer to a caravel than a spacecraft.)
In its way, these weird fiction and fantasy stories got something right. Water does play a profound role in facilitating the movement through time in a way that we cannot easily appreciate. Water has both the direct, short-view impact on the surroundings—saturated soil, hydrated plants and animals, replenishing groundwater, spurring growth, etc.—and the startling long-view effects—carved bedrock, soil removal and transportation, changing ecosystems, shifted rivers, filled in lakes, glaciers and their rending of stone, etc.—that are so outlandish it is difficult to appreciate without at least a little abstraction. Not only that, but these events happen simultaneously with each circulation of water.
The signs of water and its reflection left in stone are everywhere in the Painted Desert and especially in the Petrified Forest section therein. Over many thousands of years, water gradually deposited sediments that the stream was inadequate to carry. If a stream is fast moving, it can carry larger sediments; if it is slow moving, and likely lower, the stream can only carry fine sediments and will deposit the larger ones. In this way, one can see the seasonal variations in the ancient streambed in the sediments of the Painted Desert. Not only that, but the later carving of the Painted Desert was the result of water as well, water that cuts through the ancient bed and exposes the undulations of the streams forebear.
Shallow, ephemeral creaks and rivers carve out washes in the desert landscape, areas of calm, smooth sand that mark the easy and well-traversed passage of storms. In the monsoon season—summer months when brief but intense rainstorms, likely thunderstorms, roll it and dump fat drops of rain in the region—these washes will fill up in little time at all. The are the main vein of the innumerable tributaries all over the landscape, tributaries as thin as a finger that continue to reveal mineralized tree trunks and fossil caches all over the landscape.
Even before the present, intemperate impacts of rain, the landscape was dominated by a tropical or subtropical climate and ecosystem. The Petrified Forest is the result of a strong river that carried down whole trees during flooding events upstream, only to drop their driftwood loads when the river flow calmed. These stripped trees would become waterlogged and sink, where they would be covered by sediment and ash, the minerals in which would replace the original lignin of the trees resulting in the spectacular mineralization of the Petrified Forest. It seems that no matter what happens there, water will be a ruling factor in the landscapes manifestation.
I cannot help but ponder the sense of thinness in the air. Has it always been there? Is such a perception the result of desert aridity, a foreign environment, rapidly changing weather? Do I feel far from the usual because I am markedly distant from my normal circumstances of paved lanes and geometric buildings?
In a place so much defined by water, I laugh at the reality of carrying so many liters of it with us. Dustin and I would hike for miles, drinking occasionally in the not unpleasant heat. We are boys of the Midwest where heat is thick and humid and cold is sharp, dry, and painful. (Dustin's time in Louisiana, I think, does not breach this sort of expectation.) Strolling in the sunshine without humidity in the way, we feel ourselves clearly moving, unhindered by the usual weight of our previous circumstances. We are infused with not just our own energy, but the excitement and mystique of this uncommon realm.
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