betsuni
betsuni's JournalRay Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine."
"The boys bent, smiling. They picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly on crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun. ... So, plucked carefully, in sacks, the dandelions were carried below. The cellar dark glowed with their arrival. The wine press stood open, cold. A rush of flowers warmed it. ... The golden tide, the essence of this fine, fair month ran, then rushed from the spout, to be crocked, skimmed of ferment, and bottled in clean ketchup shakers, then ranked in sparkling rows in cellar gloom. Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered.
"Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in your glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the seasons in your veins by tilting glass to lip and tilting summer in. Nothing else in the world would do but the pure waters which had been summoned from the lakes far away and the sweet fields of grassy dew on early morning, lifted to the open sky, carried in laundered clusters nine hundred miles, brushed with wind, electrified with high voltage, and condensed upon cool air. This water, falling, raining, gathered yet more of the heavens in its crystals. Taking something of the east wind and the west wind and the north wind and the south, the water made rain and the rain, within this hour of rituals, would be well on its way to wine. Douglas ran with the dipper. He plunged it deep in the rain barrel.
"Even Grandma, when snow was swirling fast, dizzying the world, blinding windows, stealing breath from gasping mouths, even Grandma, one day in February, would vanish to the cellar. ... Yes, even Grandma, drawn to the cellar of winter for a June adventure, might stand alone and quietly, in secret conclave with her own soul and spirit, as did Grandfather and Father and Uncle Pert, or some of the boarders, communing with a last touch of a calendar long departed, with the picnics and the warm rains and the smell of fields of wheat and new popcorn and bending hay. Even Grandma, repeating and repeating the fine and golden words, even as they were said now in this moment when the flowers were dropped into the press, as they would be repeated every winter for all the white winters in time. Saying them over and over on the lips, like a smile, like a sudden patch of sunlight in the dark. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine."
April 23, National Picnic Day
Peggy Knickerbocher, "Sandwich Subculture: Bread is your bowl when the picnic's in a loaf"
"I am reminded of the Sunday picnics we went on as a family when I was young. ... We knew something was up when my mother asked us to pick up a few loaves of French bread and some hard rolls on our way home from church. ... My mother took the warm loaves of bread from us, sliced off the tops, and pulled out the spongy centers. Into the largest loaf she stuffed chicken that she had cut into pieces and cooked with port and orange zest, a recipe inspired by Alice B. Toklas. She then replaced the top of the loaf and wrapped it tightly in linen tea towels to retain the moisture and warmth. Depending upon her mood, she filled the other loaves and rolls with all sorts of concoctions. In one she stuffed olives coated in chopped parsley; in another she stuffed sliced cherry tomatoes, feta, and red onions tossed with olive oil; in a third she added red and green peppers cooked with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, and oregano. And there was always at least one roll filled with caramelized onions. Offering to help, we cooked some Italian fennel sausages to fill a baguette.
"We drove ... to one of our secret picnic spots under a grove of eucalyptus trees. There we spread out the red blanket and unwrapped the towels covering the bread. Using the towels as napkins, we each got a fork to dip into the various salads and savories my mother had prepared. We ate the chicken with our fingers, and as the pieces disappeared, we were left with the tasty remains of the bread. Our parents often brought a fully stocked wicker picnic basket into which my father stashed a shaker of martinis. My brother and I usually settled for some slightly warm ginger ale. For dessert, we ate some of my famous lemon squares or a box of gingersnaps, perfect with the Maxwell House coffee my mother brought in an old navy metal thermos.
"If the air got chilly or it started to rain, the meal was lots of fun to eat in a deserted barn, or we would park the car on a country road and pass the stuffed rolls around, licking our fingers a lot in the process. Whether we ate inside or out ultimately didn't matter ... . And with every last crust of bread eaten, there were never any dirty dishes to worry about."
A Japanese spring picnic (I can't seem to stop watching these sorts of vlogs where people are cleaning or cooking or walking around or just at home doing nothing -- there are so many all of a sudden -- with descriptions of quiet, slow, relaxed, cozy, countryside, simple, peaceful life and so on. Kind of annoying but somehow soothing.)
Angelo Pellegrini's "The Unprejudiced Palate"; Anthony Bourdain at the Waffle House.
"I found, first of all, the meaning, the consumable, edible meaning, of a simple word, lost in the dictionary among thousands of others -- the meaning of the word abundance. I had known scarcity, had lived on intimate terms with its agonizing reality; and the discovery of its opposite, its annihilator, was an experience so maddening with joy, so awful and bewildering, that I am not yet recovered from the initial shock. ... When I arrived in America, I recalled and immediately understood a saying I had frequently heard in Italy. When one had met with a bit of good fortune, such as an unusual yield from the vine or perhaps a meager inheritance, his friends would say to him, Ha, you have found your America.
"I was not immediately impressed by the skyscrapers, the automobiles, and the roaring trains of the metropolitan centers along the eastern seaboard. ... What was immediately impressive were the food stalls; the huge displays of pastries and confections, the mountains of fish, flesh, and fowl; the crowded cafes, where the aristocrat -- or so he seemed -- sat beside the drayman in overalls, gulping coffee drawn from huge urns and soberly eating ham and eggs; eating such fare without any visible display of joy, as if in obedience to some distasteful duty -- as if it were yesterday's polenta! Ham and eggs! (Come to your senses, ye brave Americans, and spare your noble dish the corrupting catsup! Amend your constitution -- you did it once against misguided gourmets -- that you may enjoin forever such culinary adultery.) Ham and eggs with fried potatoes, stacks of buttered toast and coffee -- that was my first acquaintance with American food. It remains to this day my favorite dish.
"The sinful waste among the native population left me amazed and horrified. ... Old and young alike drew from their lunch buckets huge sandwiches of homemade bread filled with meats, jam, and precious butter. They took large bites from the center and threw irreverently upon the ground 'the fringe of crust.' The slabs of apple and raisin pie ... were seldom entirely eaten. Only a few ate the neatly folded flaky crust at the edge. In view of what I later heard women say about making piecrust, this fact convinced me that the ways of the American, as of the Almighty, are inscrutable."
"After a few bites of waffle, a burger, a hunk of generic T-bone, and some hash browns, one feels drawn right to the center of what makes our country great":
Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1925).
"Paris is devine. ... Because ... in only a few blocks we read all of the famous historical names, like Coty and Cartier and I knew we were seeing something educational at last and our whole trip was not a failure. ... So when we stood at the corner of a place called the Place Vendome, if you turn your back on a monument they have in the middle and look up, you can see none other than Coty's sign. So I said to Dorothy, does it not really give you a thrill to realize that that is the historical spot where Mr. Coty makes all the perfume? So then Dorothy said that she supposed Mr. Coty came to Paris and he smelled Paris and he realized that something had to be done.
"I mean, Mr. Spoffard and I spent one whole day going through all of the museums in Munich, but I am really not even going to think about it. Because when something terrible happens to me, I always try to be a Christian science and ... I deny that it ever happened even though my feet do seem to hurt quite a lot. So even Dorothy had quite a hard day in Munchen because her German gentleman friend, who is called Rudolf, came for her at 11 o'clock to take her to breakfast. ... So he took Dorothy to the Half Brow house where everybody eats white sausages and pretzels and beer at 11 oclock. So ... he wanted to take her for a ride but they could only go for a few blocks because by then it was time for luncheon. So they ate quite a lot of luncheon ... and took her to a matinee. So after the first act Rudolf got hungry and they had to go and stand in the lobby and have some sandwiches and beer. .... So after a heavy tea, Rudolf asked her to dinner and Dorothy was to overcome to say No. So after dinner they went to a beer garden for beer and pretzels. But finally Dorothy began to come to, and she asked him to take her back to the hotel. So Rudolf said he would, but they better have a bite to eat first. So today Dorothy really feels just as discouradged as I seem to feel, only Dorothy is not a Christian science and all she can do is suffer.
"So he said there was a famous doctor in Vienna called Dr. Froyd who could stop all my worrying because he does not give a girl medicine but he talks you out of it by psychoanalysis. ... So Dr. Froyd and I had quite a long talk in the english landguage. So it seems that everybody seems to have a thing called inhibitions, which is when you want to do a thing but do not do it. So then you dream about it instead. ... So I told him that I never really dream about anything. I mean I use my brains so much in the day time that at night they do not seem to do anything else but rest. So then he asked me all about my life. ... So then he seemed very very intreeged at a girl who who always seemed to do everything she wanted to do. ... For instance did I ever want to do a thing that was really vialent, ... did I ever want to shoot someone.... So then I said I had, but the bullet only went in Mr. Jennings lung and came right out again. So then Dr. Foyd looked at me and looked at me ... . So then he called in his assistance ... . So then his assistance looked at me and looked at me ... . So then Dr. Froyd said that all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep."
Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast."
"The fireplace drew well and it was warm and pleasant to work. I brought mandarines and roasted chestnuts to the room in paper packets and peeled and ate the small tangerine-like oranges and threw their skins and spat their seeds in the fire when I ate them and the roasted chestnuts when I was hungry. I was always hungry with the walking and the cold and the working. ... My wife and I had called on Miss Stein, and she ... had been very cordial and friendly and we loved the big studio with the great paintings. It was like one of the best rooms in the finest museum except there was a big fireplace and it was warm and comfortable and they gave you good things to eat and tea and natural distilled liqueurs made from purple plums, yellow plums or wild raspberries. These were fragrant, colorless alcohols served from cut-glass carafes in small glasses and ... they all tasted like the fruits they came from, converted into a controlled fire on your tongue that warmed you and loosened it.
"You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. ... you could always go into the Luxembourg Museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way.
"I should have bought a large piece of bread and eaten it instead of skipping a meal. I could taste the lovely brown crust. But it is dry in your mouth without something to drink. ... Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when you are hungry. Eating is wonderful too .... It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a litre, and for potato salad. The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draught of beer I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes a l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce. I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with the bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the distingue and I drank half of it."
David Sedaris, "Jesus Shaves": explaining Easter in beginning French class.
"We'd finished discussing Bastille Day, and the teacher had moved on to Easter, which was represented in our textbooks by a black-and-white photograph of a chocolate bell lying upon a bed of palm fronds. 'And what does one do on Easter?' The Italian nanny was attempting to answer when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, 'Excuse me, but what's an Easter?' ... The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. 'It is,' said one, 'a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and ... oh, shit.' She faltered and her fellow countryman came to her aid. 'He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two ... morsels of ... lumber.' The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. 'He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.' 'He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.' 'He nice, the Jesus.'
"We talked about food instead. 'Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb,' the Italian nanny explained. 'One too may eat of the chocolate.' 'And who brings the chocolate?' the teacher asked. I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, 'The rabbit of Easter, he brings the chocolate.' 'A rabbit?' ... 'Well, sure,' I said, 'He come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand he have a basket and foods.' The teacher sighed and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything that was wrong with my country. 'No, no,' she said. 'Here in France the chocolate is brought by a big bell that flies in from Rome.' I called for a time-out. 'But how do the bell know where you live?' 'Well,' she said, 'how does a rabbit?' It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes.
"I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that seems pretty far-fetched to begin with. In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom.... If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. ... A bell though -- that's fucked up."
"Seeds" from Garrison Keillor's "Leaving Home."
"Bud took the snowplow off the truck Wednesday evening, being tired of driving around with it banging up and down. He said, 'It's sure to snow now, but it'll just have to melt. I'm through thinking about it.' My attitude exactly. I put away my parka in April and put on a jacket. If it turns cold, it's not my problem.
"Aunt Mary ... ventured downtown on Thursday. ... When it's icy, Ralph sends one of his boys up to her little house with her groceries, but she looks forward to when the sidewalks are clear and she comes down to shop, which she likes to do every day. She brings her five or six things to the counter and Ralph rings them up and says, 'Nine dollars and eighty-four cents, Mary.' She looks down at the little group of things and says, 'Nine eighty-four? Are you sure?' ... She can see all the numbers of the prices on the labels. But $9.84? For these few things? Two jars of Taster's Choice, a can of tuna, a can of pears, a can of corn, and a packet of marigold seeds. It's impossible for this to cost $9.84. She looks at Ralph. ... Ralph has acted in this play for years. He knows his part. He waits as she goes down the list again, adding it up slowly in her head. Then Ralph says, 'Ah! That should be $1.49. That's $9.74.' Well, that's more like it. 'I'm sorry, this is just one of those days.' She gets a quarter and a penny change. She puts the goods in her shopping bag. She walks home, feeling a little better.
"Down the block, at the Feed 'N Seed, Harold has set up the old wooden bins to put seed packets in that have arrived from the Milton Seed Co. ... The salesman, Ritchie, ... says to Harold, 'You got to build excitement, make a visual appeal to the passer-by, and your walk-ins, you got to make them think seeds the minute they come through the door.' ... But seeds are all the Feed 'N Seed sells -- that and feeds -- so if you weren't already thinking seeds you probably wouldn't come in... It's spring itself that builds excitement and makes a visual appeal to the passer-by, and if the prospects of spring don't excite you, probably crepe paper won't have a big effect. But Ritchie believes this is going to be it, the big year, the great garden boom, when Milton triples its tomato-seed sales -- big growth in the carrot-and-beet sector, cucumbers up this year, beans up, pole beans way up, gross national kohlrabi, eggplant .... He's on the road for Milton six days a week, crisscrossing the district in his '78 Rambler wagon. It's full of crepe paper, styrofoam cups, and burger cartons. The carpet is ripped and the floorboards are mulched with dirt from a hundred little towns. Old seed samples take root there ... and soon it'll go to a junkyard and sit. Corn and beans will grow up in it and muskmelon vines come out of the seats. ... And the most luxurious ones grow on the seat where he sat. It's all waiting for spring to happen."
Cherry blossoms and "Essays in Idleness"
"Should we look at the spring blossoms only in full flower, or the moon only when cloudless and clear? To long for the moon with the rain before you, or to lie curtained in your room while the spring passes unseen, is yet more poignant and deeply moving. A branch of blossoms on the verge of opening, a garden strewn with fading petals, have more to please the eye. Could poems on the theme of, 'Going to see the blossoms to find them already fallen' or 'Written when I was prevented from going to see the flowers' be deemed inferior to 'On seeing the blossoms'? It is a natural human feeling to yearn over the fallen blossoms and the setting moon -- yet some, it seems, are so insensitive that they will declare that since this branch and that have already shed their flowers, there is nothing worth seeing any longer.
"In all things, the beginning and the end are the most engaging. ... Are blossoms and the moon merely things to be gazed at with the eye? No, it brings more contentment and delight to stay inside the house in the spring and, there in your bedroom, let your heart go out to the unseen moonlit night. The man of quality never appears entranced by anything; he savors things with a casual air. Country bumpkins, however, take flamboyant pleasure in everything. They will wriggle their way through the crowd and stand there endlessly gaping up at the blossoms, sit about under the trees drinking sake and indulging in linked verse-making together and, finally, oafishly break off great branches of blossoms to carry away. ... As for blossoms, the single cherry is best. The double cherry was once found only in the old capital of Nara, but these days it is everywhere, it seems. The cherries of Yoshino are all single flowers. The double cherry is a peculiar thing, gaudy and distorted, and there is no need to have it in the garden. The late-flowering cherry is also unattractive. It is repulsive to see it crawling with insects.
"When a large vessel filled with water is pierced with a tiny hole, though each drop is small it will go on relentlessly leaking until soon the vessel is empty. The city is filled with people, but not a day would go by without someone dying. ... Be they young, be they strong, the time of death comes upon all unawares. It is an extraordinary miracle that we have escaped it until now."
Yoshida Kenko, "Essays in Idleness" (1330)
"During their brief explosion, the cherry blossoms are said to represent the aesthetics of poignant, fleeting beauty: ephemeral, delicate in their passing. The way to celebrate their poignancy, naturally, is to drink large amounts of sake and sing raucous songs until you topple over backward. It is all very fleeting and beautiful. ... In addition to Cherry Blossom Viewing, you have Moon Viewing, Snow Viewing, Wildflower Viewing, Autumn Leaf Viewing, and Summer Stargazing. As a service to readers, I have prepared a handy chart listing each phenomenon, the season in which it appears and the correct way in which to observe it:
Cherry blossoms Spring Drunk on sake
Wildflowers Summer Drunk on sake
Harvest moon Autumn Drunk on sake
Autumn leaves Autumn Drunk on sake
Snow on ancient temples Winter Drunk on sake"
Will Ferguson, "Hokkaido Highway Blues: Hitchhiking Japan"
The Diary of Anais Nin, March 25, 1932:
"Late at night. I am at Louveciennes. I am sitting by the fire in my bedroom. The heavy curtains are drawn. The room feels heavy and deeply anchored in the earth. One can smell the odors of the wet trees, the wet grass outside. They are blown in by the wind through the chimney. The walls are a yard thick, thick enough to dig bookshelves into them, beside the bed. The bed is wide and low. Henry called my house a laboratory of the soul. ... Enter this laboratory of the soul where incidents are refracted into a diary, dissected to prove that everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where he sees himself too small or too large, too fat or too thin, even Henry, who believes himself so free, blithe, and unscarred. Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not need to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. One need not be branded by the first pattern.
"Fred, Henry, other friends, and I at the cafe. Talking, discussing, arguing, storytelling until the lights went out in the street, the night was dispersed, and a dim, shy, sienna-colored dawn entered the window. The dawn! ... Henry thought it was the dawn itself that was a new experience. I could not explain what I felt. It was the first time I had not felt the compulsion to escape ... . At a party, at a visit, at a play, a film, came a moment of anguish. I cannot sustain the role, the pretense that I am at one with others, synchronized. Where was the exit?
"Henry's responses to all things, his capacity for seeing so much in everybody, in everything. I had never looked at a street as Henry does: every doorway, every lamp, every window, every courtyard, every shop, every object in the shop, every cafe, every hidden-away bookshop, hidden-away antique shop, every news vendor, every lottery-ticket vendor, every blind man, every beggar, every clock, every church, every whore house, every wineshop, every shop where they sell erotica and transparent underwear, the circus, the nightclub singers, the strip tease, the girly shows, the penny movies in the arcade, the bal musettes, the artist balls, the apache quarters, the flea market, the gypsy carts, the markets early in the morning. When we come out of the cafe, it is raining. Rain does not bother him. Hunger or thirst only. Shabby rooms don't bother him. Poverty does not bother him. You drink a fiery Chartreuse at a zinc counter. In life he follows his impulses, always. The only thing which surprises me is that he has no desire to meet other writers, musicians, painters, his equals. ... 'No,' says Henry, 'What would they see in me?'"
Anniversary of the March 11, 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
"Everyone who experienced the tsunami saw, heard, and smelled something subtly different. ... The one thing it did not resemble in the least was a conventional ocean wave, the wave from the famous woodblock print by Hokusai ... . The tsunami was a thing of a different order, darker, stranger, massively more powerful and violent, without kindness or cruelty, beauty or ugliness, wholly alien. It was the sea coming onto land, the ocean picking up its feet and charging at you with a roar in its throat. It stank of brine, mud, and seaweed. Most disturbing of all were the sounds it generated as it collided with, and digested, the stuff of the human world: the crunch and squeal of wood and concrete, metal and tile. In places, a mysterious dust billowed above it, like the cloud of pulverized matter that floats above a demolished building. ... 'It was like a solid thing. And there was this strange sound, difficult to describe. It wasn't like the sea. It was more like the roaring of the earth, mixed with a crumpling, groaning noise, which was the houses breaking up.' ... 'What stays in my memory is pine trees, and the legs and arms of the children sticking out from under the mud and the rubbish.'
"For the first time in a century of human development, the land was in a historic, virgin darkness. No illuminated windows blazed upwards to obscure the patterning of the night sky; without traffic lights, drivers stayed off the unlit streets. The stars in their constellations and the blue river of the Milky Way were vivid in a way that few inhabitants of the developed world would ever see. 'Before nightfall, snow fell,' Kaneta said. 'All the dust of modern life was washed by it to the ground. It was sheer darkness. And it was intensely silent, because there were no cars. It was the true night sky that we hardly ever see, the sky filled with stars. Everyone who saw it talks about that sky.'
"'There were strange smells of dead bodies and mud. ... The men of religion began to feel self-conscious. ... 'The Christian pastor was trying to sing hymns, but none of the hymns in the book seemed right. I couldn't even say the sutra -- it came out in screams and shouts.' The priests lurched uselessly in the rubble in their rich robes, croaking the scriptures, getting in the way. 'And when we got to the sea -- we couldn't face it. It was if we couldn't interpret what we were seeing.' He said, 'We realized that, for all we had learned about religious ritual and language, none of it was effective in facing what we saw all around us. ... I realized then that religious language was an armor that we wore to protect ourselves, and the only way forward was to take it off.'
Richard Lloyd Parry, "Ghosts of the Tsunami, Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone"
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