Smoke Dreams: k d lang

Two songs about the bittersweet feeling of suspended animation I describe in the post. This is from lang's great 1997 album, Drag.


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Dreaming Wide Awake: Lizz Wright

The title track from Wright's 2005 album.


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In a hiatus

We've reached the point we knew would come: we've temporarily worked ourselves out of a job. The last big project was splitting the firewood, which we completed a couple of weeks ago. There is still much clearing to do, but it's on the waterfront. The waterline backs up sufficiently for us to walk on the shore, enabling us to do that work, but not until deep winter, when there is a more-or-less permanent north wind blowing water out of the creek. (Our tides here are almost entirely driven by the prevailing winds instead of the moon.)

And so, what to do? Psychologically we are are not permanent yet because we really don't "live" anywhere--this current roof over our heads is a mere way-station, populated with as many of our things as necessary to make life possible, but it's not really ours. We have done all the day trips in the region that can reasonably be done between sunrise and sunset, and haven't really discovered anything anywhere that makes us want to return. Our two home bases, Edenton and Elizabeth City, are well served by restaurants, but very poorly by movies, so we are well fed, but other entertainment comes mainly via either Netflix or DVR'd movies off the TV. We do scare up the occasional odd job: we're working on the boat and dock at the moment, preparing to install new seats on the boat and making the lift run more efficiently. We want to paint the wicker furniture we've found in antique stores--the pieces are in excellent shape but their white needs touching up, and it makes sense to have that done before we move. It seems to be staying warm enough here well into autumn for us to be afforded the occasional 60-degree day that makes that outdoor job possible.

Otherwise, strings of empty days loom ahead. I'm more OK with that than Steve, who was not raised for introspection or a life of the mind. He does welcome the occasional day off, but usually as a reward for some just-completed hard work, which is his normal medium. When he gets down to spending hours playing Monopoly on the computer, it's clear he's scraping bottom.

We've been in one stage or another of "move mode" for about two years now, from the disruption of preparing the Arlington house for sale, going room to room dismantling and re-creating (remember that?), to the emotional roller-coaster of the selling process, to the physical move itself, to making ourselves ready to hit the ground running when we finally take possession of the new house, free to tackle all those new chores with the big exterior work behind us. We're very smart, very efficient.

But we've been living in anticipation all this time. Our present has been completely filled with preparation for the future. I'm the first to acknowledge it could be a hell of a lot worse--at least we have a future, and a very bright one at that, to prepare for. But what I wouldn't give for a group of friends who were a mere phone call away for an invitation to dinner and conversation. That day will come, I know. But it's not here yet.

Pavane: Gabriel Fauré

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I've posted this piece before, but it's just perfect for the cloudy quiet of the day, and lovely enough to bear a repeated listen. The Pavane has been hugely popular since it received its first performance in 1888, and with good reason.

I found the lyrics, in French, and include them here for your curiosity. They speak of "love, the great conqueror. "

C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs !
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé ! Les reines de nos cœurs !
Comme ils sont provocants ! Comme ils sont fiers toujours !
Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours !
Faites attention ! Observez la mesure !
Ô la mortelle injure ! La cadence est moins lente !
Et la chute plus sûre ! Nous rabattrons bien leur caquets !
Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais ! Qu'ils sont laids ! Chers minois !
Qu'ils sont fols ! (Airs coquets !)
C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs !
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé ! Les reines de nos cœurs !
Et c'est toujours de même, et c'est ainsi toujours !
On s'adore ! On se hait ! On maudit ses amours !
On s'adore ! On se hait ! On maudit ses amours !
Adieu Myrtille, Eglé, Chloé, démons moqueurs !
Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos cœurs !
Et bons jours !

Ida Comes Calling

We are all warm winds and driving rain today as what's left of Hurricane Ida makes herself felt. She'll be here today and tomorrow, another house guest, less welcome than the ones to whom we've just bid farewell, but here for a shorter time. Since we can't work outside on anything, a big chunk of computer time is available. And that leads me to some random musings.

I was recently found on Facebook by one of the boys who made my first couple years of high school (high school for me was grades 8-12) a living hell. He actually "friended" me. Like all bullies, he appears totally oblivious to the havoc he wrought all those years ago, and comes to me all friendly-like. I took him up on the friend offer just so I could take a look at what he considers worth sharing about his life today. There he is, those familiar features now encased in rolls of fat, smiling out at me, the happy grandfather. His interests and his politics are the polar opposites of mine, which is not surprising. I'm pondering taking the opportunity to thank him for teaching me some important lessons in life--patience and perseverence in the face of extreme unpleasantness being the most important--but will likely instead simply ignore him. Still, it was a shock to get the message, and interesting how those ancient insults to the soul still resonate. It's also remarkable to reflect on how far behind I have left that life and those people.

We bought a canoe! One of the houses we pass every day on our drive to the property suddenly had this shiny red number in the driveway with a For Sale sign attached. It's a fiberglass 2001 model in very good shape, and we got it for less than half of what it would cost new. The creek we're on is ideal for a canoe and we had been toying with the idea of getting one, especially since Gary, our builder, actually designed a large, overhead space in our garage specifically for hanging a canoe. So now we can fill the space. Can't wait to take her on her maiden Lunker's Creek voyage. A canoe was pretty far down on our list of needs/nice to haves, but when you're faced with a deal like that.....

This is harvest time. The ubiquitous soy and cotton fields we pass everywhere in this part of the state are beyond ready to be relieved of their burdens, and little by little they are being emptied by combines and their fruit hauled away. Farmers actually defoliate (and kill) the plants in order to prepare them for picking, making it easier for the machines to do their work. And we're learning that mechanical harvesting is a labor-saving but inefficient process--right after picking, there seem to be as many cotton bolls left in the fields and scattered by the side of the roads as there are packed in tractor-trailer sized bales, and the birds are enjoying a bonanza of fallen dried soybeans.

And speaking of birds: lately there is amazing activity among the starlings here. Thousands upon thousands of them are flocking, flying in a westerly direction in the mornings and then coming back eastward at dusk. They stop to rest in the trees surrounding the property and create a racket that requires you to raise your voice to be heard. I've checked the obvious websites, including the Cornell bird program, to find out what's going on, but so far have come up dry. Since starlings have colonized the entire continent, there isn't much migration really going on. So what gives? Maybe they're flying from soy field to soy field, gorging during the day and returning to their home roosts at night? Whatever it is, Alfred Hitchcock's imagination had nothing on this spectacle.

Collards and hamhocks for dinner tonight. Yum! Am I in the South or what?

FOOD FRIDAY!

PORK GOULASH

I'm making time today to get this into the queue so I won't forget to tell you about it. It's a real winner that I had tucked away for a good 25 years before I ever even tried it, just last week. (One more reminder that it pays to go off the beaten path and try something "new." Obviously, since I had gone to the trouble of collecting the recipe in the first place, I must have thought it had possibilities. I just never got around to making it.)

Once I decided to post the recipe, I had to figure out a good name for it. I collected it as "Rindfleisch und Schweinenfleish-Gulasch" but that seemed pompous, and besides, "Rindfleisch" is beef, and I left the beef out. I thought about "Hungarian-Style Pork Stew," but "goulash" is a word everybody knows (and it was part of the original name), so that's what I settled on.

Goulash is usually served over buttered egg noodles, but I put it on mashed potatoes and it was scrumptious. Do whatever you want!

2 lbs. pork shoulder, cut into cubes for stew
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup Hungarian paprika (smoked, if you can find it)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup low-sodium beef broth
1/2 cup dry red wine
1 15-oz. can mushrooms stems and pieces, undrained
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
6 thyme sprigs, tied in a bundle
salt and pepper
10 oz. frozen peas
1 cup sour cream (can be low-fat but not nonfat)
1/4 cup fresh parsley, minced

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Heat oil in a dutch oven until shimmering. Add pork in batches so it is not crowded, sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, and brown thoroughly on all sides. Set meat aside as it is browned. Add third tablespoon of oil to same dutch oven, then add onions and carrots and stir until they begin to deglaze the pan and turn brown. Add garlic and cook just until fragrant.

Sprinkle paprika over onions and carrots and stir to coat vegetables, then sprinkle flour over all and stir to combine. Add the broth, the wine, the mushrooms with their liquid and the Worcestershire and cook, scraping bottom of pan to completely deglaze, until sauce begins to simmer and thicken. Stir in thyme bundle, along with reserved pork and any accumulated juices. Cover pan tightly (using foil between lid and pan if necessary) and bake in oven for 2 hours or until pork is fork tender.

Remove goulash from oven and set on rack. Remove remains of thyme bundle. Stir in peas, cover, and allow them to cook in the hot sauce for 10 minutes. Just before serving, stir in sour cream and adjust salt and pepper as needed. Sprinkle parsley evenly over all and serve over mashed potatoes or buttered egg noodles.

In which I discover life outside The Project

This backyard visitor may be the most exciting thing that happens today. There's still hope, since it's only 8:30 in the morning, but rainy days like this one cause life as we currently know it to screech to a halt.

I think I've either created a false impression that we are constantly busy with The Project, or maybe it's a kind of vicarious fantasy life that my reading friends have conjured for us because of the things I usually write about these days, but allow me to set the record straight: we have no life whatsoever outside The Project as long as it remains a "project" instead of a home. We are in limbo, in purgatory, in-between, and a rainy day like this one makes that abundantly clear. Even after a rain, when the sun is back out and the weather is dry, we still can't do much because where we "do" things is on a construction site where there is only dirt. Dirt becomes ankle-sucking mud after a rain. There is nothing. to. do. I suppose that should make me happy because it gives me a chance to write here, but look: all I'm doing is complaining!

But even as I write those words, I am reminded that we actually are getting a few other things accomplished during these waiting days--things that we had almost given up hope of ever doing. For one, we're having my chair re-upholstered. The current upholstery is showing its 25 years of daily use; the chair needs a face-lift to feel comfortable with whatever sectional sofa we eventually buy for the new great room. Our Deep Creek neighbors came through once again for us, this time with the name of a favorite upholsterer up in Elizabeth City, and we took a picture of ther chair to her last week. We're waiting for an estimate.

Another long-put-off project was the repair of our three antique clocks. Over the years in Virginia they had all stopped working, and because of prices there we despaired of their ever again being more than beautiful but non-functional conversation pieces. (The repair of just the clock pictured in the linked post would have been $300.) Once we got here and started haunting antique stores, we asked the proprietors if they knew of anyone who repaired antique clocks, and always came up empty. So in a spare moment I simply googled "antique clock repair" in eastern North Carolina, and came up with two local shops, one, again in Elizabeth City, and the other on the Outer Banks. I called the E. City guy and he came all the way down here to look at the clocks and give us his estimate. He fixed all three clocks, the one pictured, a companion to that one, and an Emporer grandfather clock, for less than the price of the one clock in Virginia. Repairing the grandfather clock had special meaning because my father had made it from a kit, his first retirement project, back in the 70s. So now we have three lovely clocks ticking away here, keeping (more or less) accurate time. We already know where they will go in the new house.

It's now an hour later than it was when I started here, and guess what? There is something happening today more exciting than the goat visit. We got the estimate on the chair. We're off to Elizabeth City!