love is waiting - adoption story

I've been sort-of following these friends' adoption story for a while now...what a long process they've been through. They decided over a year and a half ago that they wanted to adopt a child from Africa, and through prayer, saving money, more prayer, traveling, working hard, raising money, traveling some more, and lots of holding on to hope throughout, they've finally met their son. I'm so touched by this video of theirs...thought you might be, too.

Please read up on their blog if you wish! I especially love the post about Arthur's birth date.

the authority of true compassion

Feeling challenged and inspired by this excerpt from The Return of the Prodigal Son -- words from Henri Nouwen's close friend during a time of inner turmoil:

You have been looking for friends all your life; you have been craving for affection as long as I've known you; you have been interested in thousands of things; you have been begging for attention, appreciation, and affirmation left and right. The time has come to claim your true vocation — to be a father who can welcome his children home without asking them any questions and without wanting anything from them in return. Look at the father in your painting (Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son) and you will know who you are called to be. We..., and most people around you, don't need you to be a good friend or even a kind brother. We need you to be a father who can claim for himself the authority of true compassion.

if you give a baker a trip to Texas...

The thing that happens after you go to Austin, TX is that you want to make pies. Big, hearty pies. And then re-decorate your house with rough-hewn wood and mexican-inspired patterned textiles and coarse weaves and some quirky metal chairs. And then maybe eat a taco.

And you want to do all of this immediately.

Well, the closest recipe I've found to "immediate" tonight is this one...from a Northeastern bakery called Sweet Melissa's, but don't judge, because I don't have any Southern cookbooks (not yet, at least). I was craving something with fresh fruit -- if any state could make me forego my chocolate obsession for a few days, it would be Texas -- or California, or okay, many states in the union, but TX was it this time -- and some kind of special twist, like so many of the places we stumbled upon during our three-day stretch in Austin.

Fortunately, the buttermilk+lemon sounds appropriately tangy and Texan and the produce from blueberry season sweetens the deal.* Unfortunately, "immediate" in pie time is still a few hours when you have to pre-bake the crust. But, fortunately again, I've got plenty of smile-colored memories to sift through as the oven does its thing and I settle back into this humid city I love to call "home."

Sweet Melissa's Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie

To make the pie:

1 prebaked 10-inch piecrust made from All-Butter Pie Dough (I'm lazy and used Pillsbury Ready-Made)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch, sifted
8 Tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, butter, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk, zest, and lemon juice until smooth. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the prebaked pie shell. Place the pie plate on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or foil. Bake pie for 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden and the custard is set. Remove to a wire rack to cool to room temperature before topping with the blueberries.

To make the blueberry topping:

1/4 cup apricot preserves
1 Tablespoon water
1 1/2 dry pints fresh blueberries, picked through, stems discarded

In a small, heavy saucepan over medium heat, whisk together preserves and water, and cook until melted. Strain through a sieve into a medium bowl, add blueberries, and stir gently to coat. Pile the blueberries on top of pie.

Serve the pie chilled or at room temperature. It keeps tightly wrapped in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. (Eat fast. Find friends to help.)

*Next time, I think I'll add lavender to the crust...inspired by this place's lemonade, but first a favorite little flavor here.

courtyard, late may

teen leans on mom

he plays video games

father swings daughter

through the air; claims

“she likes twirling”

husband murmurs to wife

neighbor jostles neighbor

watermelon ripely drips

juice from our lips

we toss green rinds

in the fire pit

this is what you see us by

For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of -- to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless.... Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon to her seemed limitless.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

via this fine book

there is meat on the bones

As part of the "new direction" of the blog, I forgot to mention that I'd like to share writing that inspires me, and open up a conversation about it if possible -- about the writing, or ideas expressed in it, or the writer of it...or none of the above! Whatever feels comfortable. But it's important to me that I get the sources of my inspiration out there so I don't feel like it's all in my own head. So here's the first one...

The following was called a "biography" of Bon Iver -- whether it's technically of the artist or their latest album, I don't know, but it's just beautiful.

First it was For Emma, Forever Ago. The soul in a refraction of icicles. A moment hanging like breath on air. And yet life – even still life – is not still. The story is not a story if it does not unravel. Your eyes you may cast backward, but the heart is locked in the chest and must beat forever forward. Bon Iver, Bon Iver is the frozen beast pressing upward from a loosening earth, one ear cocked to the echo of the ghost choir still singing, the other craving the martial call of drums tumbling, of thrum and wheeze. The desolation smoke has dissipated, cut with strips of brass. Celebration will not be denied, the cabinet cannot contain the rattle, there is meat on the bones.

It's there right away, in the thicker-stringed guitar and military snare of "Perth," and "Minnesota, WI." Anyone who had a single listen to For Emma will peg Justin Vernon's vocals immediately, but there is a sturdiness – an insistence – to Bon Iver, Bon Iver that allows him to escape the cabin in the woods without burning it to the ground. "Holocene" opens with simple finger-picking. The vocal is regret spun hollow and strung on a wire. Then the snare-beat breaks and drives us forward and up and up until we fly silent through the black-star night, our wreckage in view whole atmospheres below. The vocals in "Hinnom, TX" ease to the muffled depths, while the instrumentation remains sparse and cosmic. "Calgary" is a worship song to everything For Emma mourned, and at the point in the final track "Beth/Rest" when Vernon sings, "I ain't livin' in the dark no more" it is clear he isn't dancing in the sunshine, but rather shading toward a new light.

"Bon Iver is often equated with just me," says Vernon, "but you are who surrounds you, and for Bon Iver, Bon Iver I wanted to invite those voices as musical catalysts." Thus on the track "Beth/Rest" and throughout the album, we hear the pedal steel of Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Bill Frisell), the uniquely layered low end of Colin Stetson's (Tom Waits, Arcade Fire) saxophones, the riffing of Mike Lewis' (Happy Apple, Andrew Bird) altos and tenors, and the lush horns of C.J. Camerieri (Rufus Wainwright, Sufjan Stevens). Bon Iver regulars Sean Carey, Mike Noyce and Matt McCaughan contributed vocals, drums and production, Rob Moose (Antony and the Johnsons, The National) helped with arranging and added strings, and fellow members of Volcano Choir, Jim Schoenecker and Tom Wincek provided processing.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver was recorded and mixed at April Base Studios, a remodeled veterinarian's clinic located in rural Fall Creek, Wisconsin. The main recording space is constructed over a defunct indoor pool attached to the clinic. "It's an unique space and destination; it's our home out here," says Vernon, who purchased the structure with his brother in late 2008 with the sole intention of converting it into his ideal recording studio. "It's been a wonderful freedom, working in a place we built. It's also only three miles from the house I grew up in, and just ten minutes from the bar where my parents met." The creation of Bon Iver, Bon Iver was a three-year process, and Vernon says the completion of the studio paralleled the completion of the album. "I was writing and recording in the windows of time snatched between tours in support of For Emma," he says. "When I finally came home to hunker down for a solid stretch there was a feeling of solid ground and an opportunity for liberation waiting in the space for me."

In the absence of solid ground, the whirlwind becomes a whirlpool, and Bon Iver, Bon Iver is Justin Vernon returning to former haunts with a new spirit. The reprises are there – solitude, quietude, hope and desperation compressed – but always a rhythm arises, a pulse vivified by gratitude and grace notes, some as bright as a bicycle bell. The winter, the legend, has faded to just that, and this is the new momentary present. The icicles have dropped, rising up again as grass.

- Michael Perry

a new direction

Hello there!

I've been away for a while, and I'll pass no blame to anyone who has given up on me or my blog!

I've never been totally sure what I wanted this blog to be, honestly, or why to blog at all. That's probably been quite clear, with all the starting and the stopping and the randomness. But some time away has helped me see what I might like this ol' blog to become.

I suppose to preface, I should say that I've never considered myself a writer -- not at all. Writing has never, neither in the recreational nor in the professional sense, been a "must" or even a strong "maybe" in my life plans. But lately I've been filled with a desire to write.

I mean filled, like...dog-earing pages, memorizing phrases, sipping and then slurping and then gulping well-written wines to the point where I've asked myself: can I do it too?

That kind of filled.

So, here goes. A new(ish) blog, dedicated to love of language and the world. A place to clarify my thinking and sink my hands and heart into a creative pursuit that has always given me profound satisfaction, whether I realized it or not. And hopefully a place that will bring someone else (you) to a state of mind that's altogether not totally unpleasant. :)

So, yeah. If all else fails, just consider me an English major trying to put all that money to decent use. (And trying not to overuse emoticons. [I do solemnly swear not to exceed one per post.])

Hey again, friends. :)

(shoot! lied already.)