Category: Living

10q

Remember when you were in elementary school and you were supposed to write a letter to yourself to be mailed at a later date? An exercise in self-awareness (if you took it seriously) or silliness (if you wrote about boys), maybe embarrassing, maybe revelatory, maybe a little bit of both. I’ve never been a diary keeper (this here is the closest I’ve come), so for me that sort of time-capsule exercise is the only private kind of rumination I might have had. Until I heard of 10q. It’s sort of amazing. Once a year you answer 10 questions, and then a year later, your responses are e-mailed back to you (and if you keep it up, all of your past responses are saved for posterity). I did it last year and just got my responses back.

To the question: What are your predictions for 2012?

My Answer:

We may move, we may nest, and there will be a terrible election that will take over everything and solve nothing (really).

 

See? You should do it. Get started here.

 

image of Gramma’s beautiful watercolor hydrangeas. Oh to have her garden!

Silent and Great

Sweetheart was born and bred in Rockaway. A slender wrist of sand between the vice-grips of the Atlantic and Jamaica Bay, his part of Rockaway (nestled between Riis park and “The Buildings” far off in the distance) is a safe haven, a real old fashioned Rockwellian neighborhood, boys on bikes tearing around the 20 or so square flat blocks of small but well maintained white-shuttered bungalows, well kept lawns, geraniums, impatiens, front porches, and everywhere, American flags. A neighborhood of teachers, cops, firemen. From the bay side, you can see the entire languorous spread of Manhattan, the Empire State and Chrystler buildings standing, silent and great, for the old guard in midtown, and the riot of downtown seemingly (and actually) miles away. A distance you can’t really feel when you’re in the city, but from afar seems silent and great. We were there last night, visiting his Mama, getting some supplies for his sister’s wedding this weekend, the mundane. From afar, streaming up from downtown the light was on, the beam shining up, up, up endless into the heavens, silent, and great. I didn’t take a picture. My heart was silent, and great.

 

image of Manhattan from Rockaway from here

Mixes

It just so happened that a late model pickup truck needed to get from the fresh and salt-blown Maine coast down to Virginia for the gilded fall. It just so happened that the last lobstery gusts of New England summer were blowing us south too, so we volunteered to drive it down. We leave in a bit, and since the truck only has a CD player, we’re sitting on this rock, where The Checkley no longer stands, making mix CDs to take us into fall like it was ten years past when we didn’t know the preciousness of adventure, but we certainly understood well the value of a good mix.

 

fabulous Checkley image from here.

A Bushel and a Peck

Sweetheart and I camped right along the extreme tidal flats up where Maine becomes Canada and the water rises and falls 25 feet with every hi-lo tide. We were in Cobscook Bay, “cobscook” being the Passamaquoddy tribal word for “boiling tides”. Part of the allure of our state park campsite was that at low tide “adventurous campers” (said the park literature) were permitted to go out into the expansive mud flats and get very dirty in the search for heretofore unknown to me softshell clams. Clams so fat and juicy and salty-sweet they can’t even close their shells all the way. We arrived just at low tide and ventured out to secure our dinners, while all the while the incredible fast and furious waters chased us back to land. We pulled a bounty, put them in fresh water to let them filter out their grit while we prepared the fire and tended to our sore fingers. When the coals were jewels, we banked and stoked and roasted the clams over the new open flames. Their salty juices hissed and spit, we melted butter in an enamel coffee cup by setting it at the edge of the fire, and spooned from the jar of cocktail sauce we picked up in Lubec (it was the easternmost cocktail sauce of the United States). Washed all down with dark brown beer it was a joyous supper indeed. And for dessert? The berries we had picked along the hiking trail that morning. It may seem simple to say, but it’s a certain city epiphany: how honest and good it feels to catch, pick, or harvest the food you eat yourself. To provide. When the fruits of your labors are actual fruits, foraged in the open, free in every sense.

Wanderlust vs. Homesickness

Oh, hello. It’s been a bit since I’ve been here. Sweetheart and I arrived back in Brooklyn late last night, flash floods, lightning, and Hyundais with no headlights and Jersey plates changing lanes without signalling choking every feeding vein back into New York City, returning to the apartment to find a broken window, a few (dead) cockroaches on their backs in the living room, and a liquefied melon we’d forgotten to take with us. Oh my. To say we’ve been out adventuring is a bit too simple, adventures we’ve had for sure (I’ll share some soon!), but really, we’ve been out searching is more like it. You might could tell that I’ve been bitten by a pretty serious wanderlust this summer, an itch I’ve been doing my damndest to scratch with hot springs and sweet corn, headscarves, big dinners, and old, best friends, but it wasn’t until I got to my dear friend Jay’s house (the one he’s building from scratch with his own Sweetheart, embedding carved Buddhas into their poured concrete footings to protect and serve) that I got it. The heart of the matter: that I’ve been out wandering to find home. I’m not sure exactly where that is yet, honestly at this point it’s more of a feeling than a location, but I’ll keep you posted on my searches and adventures. Because home is where I want to be, pick me up and turn me round, this must be the place.

Governor’s Island Love

As if this life-size statue of liberty face, oysters on the half shell, picnics in big open airy spaces, ferryboats, elegant decay, and views of Manhattan laid out like a hot breakfast weren’t enough, read this article about all of the new upcoming awesome goins-on at Governor’s Island and get excited!

ps. I love my Soludos.

Lil’ Harvest

Our little garden is chugging along—presiding over the (spotty) new lawn our landlord insisted on planting on the hottest day of the year—and weathering the stifling New York City heat (made even more mouth-breathingly hot by the hundreds of AC butts panting out the back of everyone’s brownstone, pointed at our zucchinis) surprisingly well. We pulled this ‘lil harvest on Sunday- two sweet knobby cukes, one lone, long red basque sweet pepper, two small banana peppers, and a mess of basil. Our eyes are trained on our one reddish tomato (one!), and anticipate its ripeness by the end of the week. Three meals worth of bounty isn’t too much- but it’s pretty darn good.

Kitten Caboodle

Seriously considering getting Mr. Nipsey Russell this New York Apartment friendly under-the-chair cat hammock. On my pros list: small, doesn’t take up extra space, would fit perfectly on the Danish modern. Cons: could it possibly live up to the majesty/warmth of perching atop the record player receiver? could it replace the fortress of the cardboard box? We shall put it to a vote and see. In the meantime, a girl can dream.

Thanks to Smills for keeping her eyes peeled for me.

Early Summer Offerings

Today I took my first cup of cold brew coffee out to the backyard to survey our small domain and water our little container garden and I was positively struck with early summer wonder. First off: the simple joys of homemade cold brew are not to be taken lightly and it is ever-so-much more enjoyable than I thought possible to drink it with a cuppow mason jar top. Right now there is a ton of (fabulous-yet-frustrating) construction going on in the backyard as our awesome landlord Bernie and his yappy yorkie Zeus put up new fencing, plant big lovely boxwoods, lay down a patio, occasionally spar at our window with Nipsey the Cat, and make a big mess everywhere including in the cucumber pots. In the midst of the construction chaos, ground strewn with power tools and trash, our little garden is still thriving. Is this a New York parable? Our Early Girls are putting out their first little green maters, late breaking broccoli is rearing its head, zucchinis are blossoming, nasturtiums are up, all of the little hot peppers are putting forth blossoms (the big one already has two peppers on it!), the first strawberries are almost ready to eat, and all of the herbs are thriving. It’s always the little things that matter most.