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Month: January 2004

Pam for Dogs

Pam for Dogs

The dogs love skiing but we have one little problem — they get snow stuck to the fur between their toes and it ices up in hard little balls that really bother them — and because the ice balls hurt, the dogs stop and lick them, which only makes them worse. Owen, my puppy, also has problems with snowballs adhering to his feathers, especially in the back. He’ll be running along with tennis-ball sized snowballs hanging off his ass, which looks really funny, but doesn’t make him happy.

So, what’s the solution? Pam cooking spray! Who knew? They didn’t like getting sprayed so much, but it really works … we skiied all the way up Suce Creek (a mile and a half) and back down and they only had little tiny snowballs between their toes — and no hanging snowballs off their feathers. They were happy, and because their feet weren’t bothering them so much, everyone was much safer (dogs stopping to lick their toes when you’re flying downhill on ice can be dangerous for everyone).

Rivers and Tides

Rivers and Tides

Yesterday I went to see the documentary about Andy Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides. It was extraordinary. I’ve known about Goldsworthy’s work for a long time — when I was a bookseller, I loved Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature, but I’d never seen his work in motion. In the movie, there are these extraordinary images of his art floating out to sea, or a long sinuous chain of bright-green leaves working it’s way out of a pool and flowing downriver.

Goldsworthy himself was also inspiring. I’ve been having a terrible time getting any work done these past weeks — my sorrow has hit the immobilization stage where it seems all I can do is sit on the couch with the dogs and watch daytime reruns of Judging Amy and Law and Order. So seeing Goldsworthy talk about how he goes out and makes something every day really helped. He didn’t say he goes out and makes art every day, just that he goes out and makes something. He was also terribly moving discussing the relation of time to his work, that it’s all ephemeral, as well as talking about his attraction to “black holes” which seem to puncture right into the dark soul of the world. He made one in the base of a tree the day after his sister-in-law died young, and it seemed, on screen, to be the perfect expression of the mute mystery that is grief.

So in order to get off the couch and away from the TV, I drove to town and splurged on a copy of Godlsworthy’s book Time, which discusses many of the works he created during the filming of Rivers and Tides. Here’s a quote I liked:

I often see works — a balanced column of rocks, stacked icicles– looking stronger with each piece that is added, but also know that each addition takes it closer to collapse. Some of my most memorable works have been made in this way, and some of my worst failures could have produced some great pieces. Beauty does not avoid difficulty but hovers dangerously above it — like walking on thin ice.

Gospel of Greens

Gospel of Greens

I’ve fallen in love with cooked greens — thank goodness I put so many of them up last summer. But I am running into leftover issues — I made beet greens for dinner with Bill and Maryanne and Jim last week, and had a bunch left over. They’d already been cooked just about to death, so I didn’t want to eat them the way they were again, so I made a sort of crustless quiche with them. I beat three eggs with about a cup of cream and a nice grating of nutmeg, then put the lefotver greens in my gorgeous Emile Henry pie plate and poured the custard over. A grating of gruyere on top, into a 350 degree oven for about half an hour, and there was a beautiful yellow and green dish, spicy greens on the bottom, lovely custard on top. Yum.

I’m really excited about growing more greens next year — broccoli rabe (which I love and which is impossible to find up here), two kinds of chard, two kinds of kale, two kinds of beets (as much for the greens as the roots), an assortment of Italian chicories. I’m not a big salad eater, but I’ve become absolutely addicted to greens, which considering how good they are for one, especially someone a little stressed out, is a comfort. All that iron and potassium and just dark green-ness.

Seeds of Hope

Seeds of Hope

I ordered seeds today from Seeds of Italy and Cook’s Garden. I have a lot of seeds left from last year, many lettuces, the beans that never grew because they were eaten by bugs, the melon that didn’t make it, the eggplant that did, and three kinds of tomatoes. This year I’m branching out — I ordered two kinds of broccoli rabe from Seeds of Italy, as well as, gasp, five different tomatoes, some laccinato kale, an intriguing-looking egyptian beet, and a couple of chicories. I can’t say enough good things about Seeds of Italy — last year I ordered seeds from them and everything grew like mad. And tasted great. From Cook’s, I ordered two kinds of carrots, brussells sprouts, more beets, more kale, chard (two kinds) and a bunch of flowers.

Seeds are coming in the mail. Spring will come; I’ll plant my garden again, and somehow learn to live with the fact that I didn’t take Patrick’s keys away from him that last night at the Bar and Grille. I’ll grow flowers and things to eat and somehow learn to live without my only real family member. Summer will come and my garden will bloom again and I can sit under the apple trees and try to write this memoir about how Patrick and I saved one another, and hopefully by then, I’ll have some idea of how I’m going to save myself from this predicament. I can’t help but think that ordering and planting seeds can only be a big part of that salvation.

Family things …

Family things …

Normally I’m not particularly invested in things, especially in light of having spent the past three months trying to figure out what to do with all of Patrick’s belongings, but this week has brought both the arrival of Patrick’s furniture from California, and today, from my grandmother, two lovely silver trays that belonged to my great-grandmother Charlotte.

It’s kind of nice, these family things around me. When I left California, I felt so bad for leaving Patrick that I gave him all the good furniture. And while this is the last way I would have wanted to wind up with it again, I really like having our things back. This is a great coffee table, and sitting here on my couch, with my feet on the coffee table, typing this entry feels homey. The little antique card table and the two captain’s chairs that originally belonged to my parents are good to have around — they’re pieces of furniture that I’ve known my entire life, and since there isn’t much that survived the various moves and financial disasters that punctuated my childhood and adolescence, it’s lovely to have them in the room.

And then there are the pictures and tschokes — I opened a box yesterday and there were the three little antique quail decoys I bought for Patrick two years ago when I was in Paris. It was a delightful purchase, one of those French transactions that seem to bring an entire relationship along with it as the salesman and I discussed at length (in French no less, a thrill in itself) the many ways in which these little guys are tres charmant. And while it gives me a terrible pang to think of how and why they’ve come back to me, nonetheless, having our things around me makes this little house feel more like the house we shared in California, and that is a comfort.

It’s good to be home, and to feel this home integrating with the home Patrick and I shared for those couple of years. It’s good to find old beloved photos, and new ones I hadn’t remembered, and to have to find places for new things from my grandmother (who doesn’t part lightly with her things, so the gift was doubly appreciated. Of course old silver is one thing, but the real treasure is her Matchbox car collection, a collection she jealously guarded and rarely let us play with as kids. Which seems weird now, but at the time made sense in a kid kind of way — we didn’t like sharing, so why should she?).

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Back home in my cozy house after my tour of the Rockies. Ten below outside, so no dog walk this morning, and I’m planning on just hanging out in my sweats catching up on old NY Times, reading and puttering around.

Christmas was wonderful, thanks to my friends Hope and Matt — I cried all the way across Wyoming on my way down there, overcome by the reality of Patrick’s death, and by the fact that, for the moment at least, I had no home. I love doing Christmas, and when Patrick and I were roommates we had several festive wonderful Christmasses with friends. And this year, driving across the gorgeous desolation of Wyoming, I was finally swamped by that feeling I’ve been fighting off for weeks, the one I call “on Lear’s heath”. So it was in something of a rocky state that I found myself arriving at the top of Sweetwater Canyon, washing up on Hope and Matt’s door like the Christmas orphan. And god love them, they took me in, frazzled edges and all.

Of all the people I thought about going to for Christmas this year, Hope is the one who I knew would really get the surreal sorrow of my current situation, since she lost her two older sisters and her father in a plane wreck when she was thirteen. Sometimes I think the world is divided into two kinds of people, the ones who know disaster first-hand, and everyone else who has only a theoretical knowledge of the way things can come apart in an instant. So we had a great Christmas — we cooked a lot, roast beef one night, goose the next, then the leg of lamb we’d intended to have for Christmas eve but which didn’t arrive until Christmas Day. The other Matt, their neighbor ,who fishes salmon for a living, came up to join us and we all got festive wearing our paper hats from the Christmas crackers. We ate too much, drank too much, played with the kids and their toys, went for snowy walks with the dogs, took the boys sledding, and everyone took naps in the afternoon. It was a lovely lovely Christmas.

Then to Telluride for a few days, which was weird. The funky mountain town of my 20s is gone, and in it’s place there’s now a sort of Aspen, complete with packs of hip people running around milestoning every experience to see if they’re having enough fun, constantly looking over their shoulders to see if someone else is having more fun than they are. I skiied a little bit, and had a lovely New Year’s potluck with old friends from my 20s — and then fled with relief.

So, I did it. I got to the far side of the holidays and managed to have as nice a time as was possible under the circumstances. It was good to get away for a bit — the walls had been closing in on me here before I left. I was bouncing off the walls with sorrow and missing Patrick and dreading the holidays, and after ten days away I returned home filled with happiness and gratitude to be back in my little house in my little town full of people who love me.