Baking Bread and John Keats

Baking Bread and John Keats 

I have been baking bread for fifty years yet still, rarely, ‘get-it-right’. That’s not to say I bake every week. Sometimes a month or more will pass with only commercial, or semi-commercial loaves from the local market gracing our table.

I will say, emphatically, the selection and quality of baked goods available today at the market is infinitely better than what the industry convinced us to eat back in the fifties/sixties. I still recall advertisements on many of the television western serials for Langendorf, Weber’s, Bond, and Wonder bread, and who knows how many other related brands urging us to fill up on their tasteless white product in order to become a healthier, smarter etc. young man/woman. Things don’t seem to have changed much, only the product.

I don’t have a mixer with a dough hook to mix my ingredients, (but neither did those early Middle Eastern people 8,000 years ago) but I often use a bread making machine for the initial blending and kneading. Many times, especially if I am consciously mired in some esoteric/philosophical internal discourse, or wondering just how many varieties of tomato seed I should plant, I dispense with the machine entirely, and do it all by hand. I’ve always done a lot of things by hand.

Simple breads are easy, and I don’t understand why more people don’t make their own bread, at least part of the time. With only four or five ingredients what could possibly go wrong? Or be easier? I just baked a loaf of Italian Sandwich Bread from a recipe I found in one of several dozen bread baking books on the shelf and it is, for a simple, basic, white flour bread, delicious, especially toasted.

So what was it I intended to say? I think I wanted to say a few words regarding John Keats, but like wind-dispersed pollen those thoughts have escaped their capsule and are miles away.

Grass Widows and Okra

 The Grass Widows are blooming on the basalt plateaus along the Columbia River. Little shards of fragmented blue sky floating and swirling in snow-melt rivulets. A something to fill any vacant spots in anyones heart. But, standing in awe of the tableau before me I wondered just how necessary, or important, are any of us in this sad, and often desolate world. Humans seem to be the okra in the stew.

Let me explain the ‘okra’ reference.

After my escape from the Air Force in 1964 I shared an apartment (Cedar Crest) in South El Monte with a good friend who had also recently been released from the Air Farce. A party time ensued as we attempted to distance ourselves from, and erase any dark atmospheric aura the military might have stained us with. And we were poor, like most of the other dwellers of the complex.

Well, trying to reduce our daily expenses we took to going around to other apartments (after their assumed dinner time) and asking for any leftover food they might have. Whatever they offered we added to our pot. As a result, every dinner became an unknown surprise, but something we, and many other apartment dwellers looked forward to. We kept the ‘Hobo’ stew happily simmering for several days/weeks(?).

But it all came to an abrupt end one evening. Something was amiss, something in the bubbling pot felt slimy, and was not particularly palatable. It had crawled across our collective tongues and found wanting. Our evolutionary and revolutionary dinner stew was brought to a sudden and final end. Nothing could redeem us.

We examined, analyzed, and finally decided the ‘Trojan Horse’ that had brought down our nightly communal dinners was the okra!

I eat just about everything but still can’t bring myself to eat okra.

The Magic and Promise of Cervantes

 The Magic and Promise of Cervantes, with apologies.

Who among us has not, at one time or another, entertained the dream, the idea, of a life dedicated to overcoming even one of the many injustices inflicted on the human race in this fractured and tortured world? To try, despite uncountable odds, to right even one unbearable wrong? To fight fiercely and fairly for a just and noble cause? To dedicate ones heart and soul and body to the challenge. To… to, but wait, I hear the orchestra tuning their instruments.

But there are other worthy challenges, some within the grasp and capabilities of mortals.

I have spent most of my life in, and with books - blame that, if cause be needed, on my father. (If only every child was so afflicted). And, occasionally, out of the tens of thousand books that have passed through my hands and eyes, the words of some of the authors have resonated with a frequency approaching the hum of gravitational waves rippling through the cosmos. It is the sound of no hand clapping, but of harmony. But the desire to read more of their works, and to know more about their lives and times, is for some of us overwhelming.

Thus are we disposed to accept the challenge.

May I set the stage? I shall become a knight errant and impersonate a lonely man of books. Come, enter into my imagination and see him! His name... Lorenzo Hawkins, a country bibliophile, no longer young ... bony, hollow-faced... eyes that burn with the fire of inner vision. Being retired, he has much time for wine and books. He reads and studies books from morn to night, and often through the night as well. And all he reads excites him, yet oppresses him... fills him with indignation at man's murderous ways toward literature and books. And he conceives the strangest project ever imagined... to become a knight-errant and sally forth into the world and search out all publications extant written by, or in some way connected to the authors of his dreams. No longer shall he be plain Lorenzo Hawkins… but a dauntless book sleuth known as… Lorenzo cercatore di libri.

He will seek out the hidden, the blatant and obscure. Thrift shops, garages, barns. junk stores, abandoned cars, storage units, boats moored at marinas, bedrooms, igloos, foot lockers, yard sales, the tents of the homeless, and anywhere else a book might hide.

Somewhere he feels certain he will find his Dulcinea del Taboso.

Remembering the ‘Teddy Boys’

 Remembering the ‘Teddy Boys’

It was around 1951, and I was a young lad of nine or so living in Stourport-on-Severn in England. I’m not sure, even now, how I ever became aware of the term “Teddy Boys”, or how I understood what the word represented. I do recall that I was told, in some way or other, that they were a group of young people that dressed in rather fancy Edwardian clothes and would beat you up and steal your candy, or take the penny or two your mother might have given you for a ‘lady finger’, without provocation. Avoid them at all costs, I think I was told, even if you might one day become one of them.

One day I decided to go downtown for some reason, perhaps to visit my grandmother’s confectionery, but to get there I would have to run the gauntlet of what I thought were the “Teddy Boys” who hung out at the amusement park. Yes, I do recall passing a few rather specious and intimidating ‘Clockwork Orange’ type young lads leaning against whatever they could find to support themselves, but other than what I considered a definite scowl, I passed unhindered.

What can I say?

The Young Man and the Lake

 

The Young Man and the Lake

A Story of Redemption

He was a young man who fished from a rental rowboat on a small lake fed by the effluent from a sewer plant and he had gone eight minutes without taking a fish. In the first four minutes a boa constrictor had been with him, but after four minutes, without catching a fish, the boa constrictor told the young man he was as unlucky as Saul, which is the worst form of unlucky, and left. The boat continued to bob up and down with every flush of a toilet. The young man continued to fish, too embarrassed to return to the marina without a catch. The sun glared down from a cloudless sky. The young man dipped his hat in the water and sighed. He looked across the lagoon and into the trees, but he could think only of the fish that might be swimming beneath his boat.

His name was Lorenzo, and he

How to Recognize an Old Logger

 How to Recognize an Old Logger

They have a splintered view of things

and walk with a wooden gait.

Their tongues are know to burn

under the heat of words and

they love kindling

always carry a knife

to whittle away at things,

and people.

They smell of sawdust, fir sap,

tobacco, gasoline, and oil.

Their limbs are knotted.

There are burls

at each knee and elbow.

They worship Paul Bunyan.

Their children receive

wooden toys for Christmas.

If in doubt,

look for Spanish moss on the

north side of their faces,

or listen for termites

in their teeth.

Watch their eyes outgrow their faces

at any mention of the spotted owl.

Few are known to reach the age

of old growth -

they prefer it that way.

from The Whinkla Chronicles

The Whinkla Chronicles

Yesterday, many of my most recent fears were regretfully realized when I stumbled across a cache of partially burned papers buried in one of the fire pits Whinkla uses on Thomas Hardy night. l had been taking his dog Alexis for a walk along the irrigation ditch that runs across the rear of his property, and having no though at all about anything whatsoever except noting the clarity of the evening sky something below the bank caught my attention. Calling the dog to heel I scampered down the muddy incline to investigate. It was a bundle of tightly rolled pages of yellow paper, and although the pages were matted from soaking in water the text was still quite legible. I glanced at the topmost page:

Notes on the Synthanation of Crhontium Silate

and Pltaferonic Acid

(extrapolated from the analysis of results

obtained from experiments conducted

between March 27 and July 15 2007)

NOT FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION

and thought immediately of rekindling the fire of Guy Fawkes.

After reading the cover sheet I decided not to read any further but to take the bundle of musty paper home to dry, and if possible retrieve from the soggy wad what information I could, but for what purpose I had no idea. Should I discover something untoward about my friend Whinkla would this mark me as a potential betrayer? Why did I think this handful of fool scrap might be of any importance? And were these pages really in Whinkla’s hand? Why didn't I simply raise my eyes to the top of the nearby Douglas firs, and the timeless firmament, which was my wont, and go home?

There were stars enough in the sky on any night to satisfy anyone's curiosity, but, on this night my interest in the papers was piqued beyond any stellar wonderings. I wrapped the manuscript in my jacket and tucked it carefully beneath a thatch of heather, and whistled my way back to Whinkla's cabin. After a glass of a remarkable Cabernet and a potpourri of casual literary talk I made my anxious way back to retrieve the manuscript. It pained me to decline Whinkla's kind and very rare offer to walk me to the edge of the dry lake and see me safely on my way home. He had never done this before.

I pressed my hand against my stomach where I had hidden the papers and . . .

The Bus

 The Bus

It had been a long day, beginning in the noisy 4 am marketplace of Santo Domingo, and now, in the darkness of early evening his destination was still more than three hours away. The road inland from Santo Domingo was filed with potholes, some deeper than his axles, as it had been since the first time he was driven over it more than five years before. He remembered that first encounter, the two flat tires, and the slow, embarrassing tow to Ciudad de Valles. The road had not improved. It was only that Leon. the driver, had adjusted to the horrible conditions that he still made the twice-a-week journey.

It had been a long day, which was not to say he was complaining. He had been built for work, and required only a little rest once in a while, gasoline to fuel his heart, oil to keep his joints moving quietly, and a caring driver to assure his happiness. But as he had grown older - just how old was he, he wondered, It seemed the hills were just a little steeper and the heat and cold more noticeable. His joints creaked despite the grease and oil, and his body ached more often than it once did, and the unforeseen jolting bumps in the roadway gave him a headache, still, it could be worse he told himself.

They had passed through Pedro Santos and were nearing the turnoff to San Juan del Rio where he knew the road would deteriorate even further. Then, perhaps for contrast, and to lift his spirits, he thought about the time he had transported a group of European tourists to Mexico City. On highway 85 he had shown all of them how his tires could hum.

During the last hours of the journey he had time to consider his passengers. The young couple, no more than teenagers, who had flagged him down just south of Ciudad de Valles. They carried one tattered. brown leather suitcase held together with a length of hemp, and a net bag filled with overripe oranges. It was obvious they were in love, perhaps recently married, or running away to get married. They had seated themselves toward the rear of the bus and when the old man with the parrot got off at El Abra they had taken his place in the back seat.

He could feel the warmth of their bodies pressing together as they fought against sleep. And there was the noisy family occupying four seats near his middle, two on each side of the aisle. Behind them were their homemade wooden crates, one holding two bedraggled chickens, and another a young turkey. In another wooden box a small pig grunted and squealed. Directly behind the driver was a middle aged man who cradled in his lap a wicker cage holding five bright canaries. Across the aisle a middle-aged American couple, on their way to experience the strange and surrealistic concrete garden at Los Posas, dozed and listened to music written in an unknown tongue. Almost everyone was asleep. Only Leon and himself were alert and watching.

As they passed Tlalcolteno and turned on to Calle 5 de Mayo Sur he felt a few raindrops speckle his windshield. They were climbing into the Sierra Gorda mountains now, toward the town of Xilitla, and in a half an hour, maybe less, he would be resting quietly behind Leon's house as the passengers he had carefully cradled picked up their baggage and ambled off into the darkness to continue what was left of their lives.

Washing Dishes For The Millennium

Washing Dishes For The Millennium

The sink was overflowing with greasy dishes from an unremembered meal and it seemed like a good idea at the time to wash them. Or was that a bad idea? Who could tell? I decided to wash them, having only two options. But as I filled the cracked enamel sink with hot water, almost steam, the cups and saucers, plates and bowls began to move about and break apart. They fragmented into salmon-coloured, fish-shaped pieces that darted around in the dish water like pike-hunted perch.

 

I blinked and found myself gazing out the two-paned kitchen window. I could see dawn was arriving, or perhaps it wasn't. Who could tell? Had I been washing dishes all afternoon? All evening? In the sink the salmon continued to frolic and disintegrate into smaller and smaller fry. I thought how happy they might have been had they been real salmon, or even sardines, and able, under their own cognitive powers, to travel down the dark drain on an adventure worthy of Huck and Jim, or perhaps leap up the dripping water, into the faucet and fin their way back, through mists and times to the place of their birth. Only they didn’t, they continued to deny whatever identity they might have had and continuing dissolving into a sandy mud that covered the bottom of my sink. I remember, I was upset, my cast iron skillet wasn’t dirty. I could have put this abrasive product to productive use, as a cleanser. I watched the school of salmon fry swimming back and forth, rubbing their granular, rough-scaled bellies against the bottom of my skillet and pulled the plug. I watched the salmon disappear down the drain.

Or was that simply gritty clay?

Who could tell?

A Little About Kleadrap

 A Little About Kleadrap

I suppose I ought to tell you a little more about Kleadrap. As I said earlier, it's a small town. The main street runs east and west with perhaps five or six streets intersecting at a strange angle. It seems the surveyor who laid out the grid for the town was new at the game and failed to take into account the magnetic declination for the area, roughly 25 degrees. As a result all the cross streets intersect the main business street at something greater or less than 90 degrees. Each block thereby became a parallelogram. To compound matters, when the early pioneers constructed their homes they measured from the center of the nearby cross streets to lay out the foundations of their homes rather than employ the 3:4:5 ratio. As a result all the buildings in Kleadrap are parallelograms. The one time visitor may not be aware of this as the difference is slight and as all buildings in Kleadrap conform to this aberration it is not particularly noticeable. Visitors may leave with a nagging sense that something didn’t seem quite right but be unable to identify the reason for their unease. Of course the inhabitants are made aware of this aberration every time they lay down tile or wall-to-wall carpeting. None of the walls in these homes meet at a right angle.

Kleadrap has a population of around 600 people, a few more during the summer and fall when picking season (beets, rutabagas, and onions) is in full swing.

Main street accommodates one market, one gasoline station, one tavern, two gift shops, a post office, and two other buildings that are vacant most of the time, or house various businesses with a shelf life of only a few months.

Tax time sees and accountant move in and rent one of the apartments above the tavern, and once in a while a local, or occasionally an out-of-state, artist sets up shop, but there are too few people in the community, either permanent or transient to make any business thrive.

This was not always so. An opera house once stood at the corner of Third and A street. A twelve-grade school house, located next to the falling-down grange building, graduated twenty-seven classes over twenty-seven years. Now only the discovery of an agate marble, or tip from a spinning top indicates the activity that once took place.

Time dissolves everything, even memories.

Whistling Dixie for Beckett

 Whistling Dixie for Beckett

We have put the ghosts to bed and tucked them in. Alice will climb the stairs and sing them a lullaby and kiss their formless, gossamer foreheads. I will yank the cork from another bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and get a fresh glass from the dusty cupboard. Time is whistling Dixie in the withered leaves of the trees outside the sliding glass door. From a neighbor’s field of old growth conifers our resident owl sings for its supper; hoots religiously, as it does every evening, as if nothing of significance has happened in the world since yesterday to pause its mournful, haunting cries. Ritual can become dogma.

I hear the ghosts turning in their sheets and fluffing-up their pillows. The darkness grows deeper, longer. The cabernet descends as I raise my glass.

There was a time in my life when I considered becoming human, or at least attempting a facsimile. That urge passed quickly.

Winter continues, despite my best effort to ignore it.

My discontent is meaningless, but no less real. I wait.

The only sunshine available is behind my eyes, and I have many anxious seeds.

Bearing the Weight

 Bearing the Weight of winter

Eighth consecutive day of frigid weather, and more of the same in all forecasts. On most of the past seven days we have struggled to reach the twenties, and most barely crept above zero. The effect is cumulative. The first storm brought light, almost weightless snow that was almost a delight to shovel (My snowblower refused, and still refuses, to start, and without a place to work on the problem will likely remain inoperative for the remainder of the winter). Shoveling snow is therapeutic.

But the ephemeral fairy snow was soon followed by a succession of freezing rain and sleet events which have now constructed a carbon-steel covering over everything. It is impossible to shovel, and fruitless to chip at with a pick-ax. We are obviously not going anywhere for several more days. I only hope the roof can hold the accumulating weight.

When I was younger, up until my late seventies, I considered such atmospheric assaults a challenge. I loved the feel of sub-zero wind flinging itself against my face, and the tingling sensation in my fingers and toes as they began to freeze conjured images of nordic music. Of course the warmth of the nearby house was only a few long yards away. But, this continued cold has finally seeped into and through the house foundation, and when my under-house thermometer reaches the mid thirties I turn on a small electric heater. Thankfully I can program myself to wake whenever necessary. But if the power ever goes out for any length of time I’m not sure what I will be able to do to prevent the water pipes from freezing. I’d like to say I don’t worry about such things, but of course I do. Warmer (?) weather is in the forecast for the middle of next week, but all is relative. 

Waking in Winter

 Waking in the early morning - 7 am. Room as dark as the underside of a beached whale. Silence in every corner of the room. But outside there is a rustling akin to a moth's fluttering wings as snowflakes drift aimlessly from the vault of sky to find rest on roof or bedroom deck. I pull up the fluffy down comforter and turn on my side. Time for a pleasant, dreamy post sleep nap. . . .No! I turn back on my back, driven by guilt at my sloth, my indolence. I move various extremities in a rhythmic pattern: ankles 30 rotations in each direction. Move hips up and down forty-five times each. Neck rotations for a minute or so. Shrug my shoulders for as long as it takes me to find the intent to get out of bed. Thus do I prove to myself that I am still in control of my motor functions. And yet another day evolves into a vague sense of reality.