#14. Not Going Out Like That Bird.

#12. The Second Agreement

"The horse is going to do what the horse is going to do" says Michael, matter-of-factly, as if this is very deep and explains anything AT ALL.

"but what if the horse is really thirsty? Why is the horse so stubborn it won't get what it needs to survive?"

"The horse is going to do........."

GRRRRRRR

The easiest way to make yourself crazy is to try to figure out what goes on in people's heads.

I'm a total stress-case about all kinds of stuff, including the sky literally falling, and the likelihood of my hair growing back out in a year.

And I get my feelings hurt. I do. But I don't spend a minute worrying about the WHY of what someone else might be thinking. About me. About life. About the sky falling or my fucked-up hairdo.

It's that horse's own fucking problem if it dies of thirst.

#7. Jam

I made a resolution two years ago to never buy jelly or preserves or pickles ever again. It was partly because we were poorer than we are now and partly because I liked the idea of using fruit that would be otherwise wasted and being able to control the amount of sugar my family was eating. I am proud to say I have, for once, stuck to my damned guns about SOMETHING, and achieved this very tiny goal.

During the summer, it's easy to glean and forage stone fruits and purple berries and there are terrific things happening on the door of our fridge, but by January, I'm busted. There might be a few jars of marmalade for making orange chicken and the kids aren't fans.

I bought 6 lbs. of conventionally grown strawberries for $6 and made a few pints of jam this morning and I feel good and bad about this but mostly okay I guess since the myth of tasteless berries doesn't apply when they are from 120 miles away and only few days old.

It's not hard, if you don't currently jam, and it's a great saver of the mushy fruit (GRAPES!!!) that your kids don't eat. Save the ones from the bottom of the bag that you throw away every single  time. Freeze them even.

#incaseyoudontdrinksmoothies

#5. How I Get Down

I could never be on Top Chef.

First, the length of the application. Maybe there is a reason you never see more than 2 or 3 really great chefs each season and the reason is 26 pages of menu descriptions, videos, social media reference-getting, and essay questions. Real chefs are busy cheffing and then drinking and then sleeping so.......

Second, I cannot sharpen a knife to save my life and so I use my SaniSafe and an antler-handled steel that is about 100 years old and made out of the earth's first carbon, probably, instead of my Global and Shun, pretty much ALL OF THE TIME, because it can be kept up fairly easily, instead of feeling inferior about one's ragged vegetable cuts.
If you're a line cook you should probably be like a Renaissance bladesmith and be able to get a razor-edge from a little tiny stone with no problem. I can hone, but I'm no shaver saver. I have also never sawed an animal in half, which seems to be a requirement these days.

Third, I like shortcuts. If something works as well or better than something else, I don't want kitchen snobbery against hillbillies to raise it's ugly head when I'm just trying to show you how the grannies do.

If you're a caterer/private chef/stay-at-home mom you can save yourself a lot of time/trouble by not trying to impress anyone and just cooking if you will spend less money on cheaper knives. This and other stories that will make food people cringe. Please come inside.

PASTA does not know if the water is hot from the faucet or the stove and the iron content is the same if your water is filtered in your kitchen so how about saving an extra 20 minutes and starting with hot to boil it? Oh fuck. Chemists can back off. I asked my Master Chef teacher this in cooking school and he had to give it to me. If you live in Appalachia and your hot water is rusty, this is not useful advice, everyone else, you are welcome.

GARLIC is so much easier handled using a microplane to grate it instead of the whole smashing it with salt all over your cutting board situation. It saves it from staining your board and is less messy all around. While we are at it, is your microplane the skinny long one? Go get the shorter, fatter one. She's better at getting the job done without your cheese or garlic or lemon or whatever slipping off the tiny little edges.

FREEZER BOUILLON  is not my idea, but I make mine with no fennel, I add four roasted portobellas and use homemade tomato paste which is just reduced crushed tomatoes with some sugar and wine. It takes a bit of time, but it makes about a quart and is worth it or I wouldn't bother telling you because you know I hate typing. When you make soup or gravy throw some in instead of a creepy packet with all the chemicals, Not having to chop and prep a bunch of vegetables as a base is a fantastic headstart on a school night when you had to run errands all afternoon and do not want to feed the people you live with pizza again. I make one with just herbs and salt too, and stir it into green soups and risotto and pasta sauce.

CANDIED NUTS AND SEEDS make a salad for children more fun and I scoffed at the nice lady that taught me how to do it with just powdered sugar but I will give it up to Carmen Cortez for this little trick: Boil 2 cups of water, blanch 1 cup of nuts for 30 seconds. I do not care which nuts. You choose. Strain, throw in bowl with 1/2 cup powdered sugar, spices if you want, maybe some chili flakes. Bake at 400 on middle rack on lined sheet pan until they are toasted. Check every five minutes. Your oven might be hotter than mine.

CREUSET BUT NEVER ALL-CLAD unless Bar-Keeper's Friend is really your friend. I know it looks so pretty on TV, but just don't. Creuset is the Meryl Streep of cookware.

I hope these things are useful to you in this New Year of our planet spinning crazy tiny in the huge Outer Space. We could all use five more minutes and a cleaner kitchen and I feel like we are taking ourselves too seriously. Make it easier by cheating.

#wonttell

#3. Before Pinterest

I used to rip out bits of paper that had words I wished I'd written.

Some people, told of witness trees,
pause in chopping a carrot
or loosening a lug nut and ask,
witness to what? So while salad
is made, or getting from A to B
is repaired, these people
listen to the story
of the Burnside Bridge sycamore,
alive at Antietam, bloodiest day
of the war, or the Appomattox Court House
honey locust, just coming to leaf
as Lee surrendered, and say, at the end,
Cool. Then the chopping
continues with its two sounds,
the slight snap to the separation
of carrot from carrot, the harder crack
of knife against cutting board,
or the sigh, also slight, of a lug nut
as it’s tightened against a wheel. In time,
these people put their hands
under water and say, not so much to you
but to the window in front of the sink,
Think of all the things
trees have seen. Then it’s time
for dinner, or to leave, and a month passes,
or a year, before two fawns
cross in front of the car, or the man
you’ve just given a dollar to
lifts his shirt to the start
of the 23rd psalm tattooed
to his chest, “The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want,” when some people
say, I feel like one of those trees,
you know? And you do know.
You make a good salad, change
a wicked tire, you’re one of those people,
watching, listening, a witness
to whatever this is,
for as long as it is
amazing, isn’t it, that I could call you
right now and say, They still
can’t talk to dolphins
but are closer, as I still
can’t say everything I want to
but am closer, for trying, to God,
if you must, to spirit, if you will,
to what’s never easy for people
like us: life, breath, the sheer volume
of wonder.

-Bob Hicok

Bathwater

The rope wasn't much and she didn't know if it was strong enough, but it was the only thing she could find.

Her feet were covered in mud from the river bank and her shoes slipped each time she pulled back to tighten her grasp, but she kept hold, gripping the nylon cord until she couldn't feel her fingers, to keep the baby's face from being submerged.

This is the image she had in her head when she noticed that the screaming had stopped and that it had been coming from her own mouth the entire time.

She wasn't sure how long the policeman had been standing there asking questions, or when the doctor, who was now pulling an amber-colored liquid into a long syringe, had arrived. She hadn't called him, had she? She didn't remember being inside the house at all.

It was so loud.
Unbearable.
All the time.
You could never have told her that one child could make so much noise or mess. He spent most of the morning at preschool and the afternoon at her mother's until she picked him up on her way home from work, but the amount of suffering he put her ears through in the few hours a day she spent with him was like the torture she'd seen on TV when they did the thing where the prisoner is blasted by awful music every few minutes. The relentless jarring of the nerves is worse than the water-boarding, some have said and she could believe it.

Thursday.

Just a Thursday.

Change the diaper, make the breakfast, do the dishes, pick up the blocks, vacuum the living room, fold the laundry.

There was no explanation. She knew if she thought about it, she wouldn't be able to bring herself to do it, and there was no more not doing it, so she simply tucked the last sock into it's mate and walked over to where the baby was playing. She picked him up and carried him into the bathroom where the tub had been filling with warm water.

She told the investigator this fact, the warming of the bath, so that he would know she cared, that it mattered to her that the water was womb-like.

She held her son then, held his head, stroked his hair, felt the fat, padded bottoms of his feet on her thigh, and told him how much she loved him. She kissed this into both his eyelids and tickled it into his nose with hers and then she stood up, turned, and plunged him headfirst into the water.

Later she would tell the doctor that she couldn't remember what happened next, but that was not the truth. What happened was the thing that would eat her heart out of her insides if the court did not decide to kill her, this remembering, of the tiny body thrashing as she pushed down.

He had fought hard, that boy of hers, kicking until his lungs filled, and when he became limp in her arms, she let go and started screaming.

That's the thing they don't tell you about the voice in your head shrieking SILENCE, about this word called mother.

There is no relief, not a moment of peace in the quarter of a bloody hole that wrenched out your borne.

She knew this when she turned on the faucet.
She knew it when the stretcher wheeled out a small black bag and loaded it into the white van.
She especially knew it when the walls of the white room started howling each night that
there is never, ever silence because that sound you can't get rid of is your blood still living and it won't ever be quiet until you are the one who is drowned.

Django. Unchained.

When Jamie Foxx was a young man his name was Eric Bishop and he lived in Terrell, Texas.


A tiny town about 75 miles west of the farm where my great-great grandpa had workers who were not slaves because it wasn't allowed anymore even though they lived on the property, did the dirtiest of work, were paid with food scraps and an outhouse, and were called Negroes instead of men when written about as if they were a different species, altogether.

Eric Bishop was an exceptionally talented football player, student, and classical pianist. He would perform at the holiday parties of the elite in the area. How brightly-lit the houses, so gleaming the cars in the circular driveways.

It was at one of these colonial palaces that he had a life-changing moment when he knocked on the door and was greeted by what may or may not have been a perfectly pleasant man in all other ways. The story gets twisted. It's hard to be objective when you have human feelings and teams to pick. We get not being evolved confused with being an evil person.

The gentleman who answered the door gave Mr. Bishop a perfunctory greeting, and then followed with "your friend has to wait outside. I can't have two niggers in my house at one time'.*

And I thought being called fat was bad.

I am not going to put asterisks in the word like you all do. If I said it, I want you to roll the ugliness of it around on your tongue. We can't get rid of the ugliness until we really taste it. What do asterisks taste like? When we spit it into the napkin and tell the hostess it was tasty it doesn't help her be a better cook. I digress.

I know this because it was told to me by Mr. Bishop, now Mr. Foxx, at the Standard Hotel on a golden April day ten years ago. He related it to me as context after telling me that 'TC' (Tom Cruise) was the only 'white dude allowed in his house'. He must have realized what an odd thing to say it was so he gave me the details. You guys know I can't pass up a good story.

So I asked him how it made him feel. That's all. Floodgate opened. Holy fuck. Imagine that. A white girl asks a total stranger, a movie star, even, how he felt getting called a nigger. Wait. Is an honest conversation about race relations in America about to happen? Holy fucking crap. No way. YES WAY.

YES WAY YES WAY YES WAY.

You guys give the words so much power that you are all scared of them. They are words. They have no actual power. Asteroids and hurricanes have actual power.

Maybe you have to be on that side of it to feel safe talking about it. Maybe when you get called fat or fag or nigger a few times you are less invested in societal pleasantries than straight white liberal arts graduates who lived with their parents until after college and have never been truly fucked with in any substantial way but now rule the airwaves discussing bloody, gutty, true real tragedy in one breath and organic turkey in the next.

I don't know.

I spent all night talking to him about it. He even took a shower while I climbed around on that foot. Not putting out with anything but my brain. So fresh and so clean. He answered and asked and it was like every episode of all the Tavis Smiley/Rachel Maddow shows should be because Mr. Foxx is a warrior. A Gladiator, if you will and love Olivia Pope like I do.

Gladiators fight the lions while the Romans watch and comment. Gladiators kill the monsters you're sure live under your bed. Gladiators are not shocked and indignant when someone's throat is ripped out of their neck. Gladiators pick up that guy's shield and keep going.

Don't be scared to ask and say and do. Don't keep the truth hidden in your drawers. Get in the ring and swing your sword a few times. Gladiate.


*edited to reflect actual verbage. When Django came out a few years later, this was the story Mr. Foxx toldand though I'd already heard it, I may have gotten the words mixed up 5 margaritas deep. Sue me.