On the Road Again

With the saddest glances behind...

Honeychild Cleared

The vet came out today to examine Honeychild. Since Honeychild is, yes, "livestock," she has to have a 30-day Health Certificate to travel between states. After some prodding, listening, and looking, the vet nodded his head and declared her fit for transport.

Honeychild is, in fact, happier than I think I've ever seen her. She is so excited about spring. She also seems better behaved than ever -- I think she's trying to be especially good for fear I'll leave again.

Because I've had more free time this month than I've ever had in Oregon, I've gotten to spend more leisure time with Honeychild. I give her a good thorough brushing every morning before letting her out into her field, where she promptly drops to her knees and rolls in the biggest patch of mud she can find. She's shedding out nicely and her dapples are already putting on their summer shine.

Yesterday Andy and I saw a bald eagle soaring over her paddock when we pulled up. Today I didn't see the eagle, but I saw three red-tailed hawks circling instead. I also saw a slug that was at least six inches long.

The vet asked if Honeychild and I were planning on riding to Tennessee. "No," I said, "we're going by diesel engine. But if we decide to come back, we'll ride."

Coffee, Norton, and Me

I've been back in Corvallis for about 48 hours, and I've spent at least 40 or 42 of those hours clinging to my space heater. Despite my efforts at integrating my body into the space heater, and despite my long johns, scarf, and sixteen cups of tea, I've still come down with a cold.

I went to the grocery store today and bought a box of tissues and gallon of corn oil. Tissues for me, corn oil for Muley. Muley lost a little weight while I was gone. Poor dear. As much as I'd like to believe she lost her appetite because of my absence, I think it's actually the green grass's fault. I believe she is so smitten with the fresh green grass, as limited as her access to it is, that she feels the need to demonstrate her preferences by snubbing her hay.

****

This morning I took a walk across campus. The green grass was so green and the air was so fresh, I found myself laughing aloud. I was wearing my pink rain boots and several blocks from home I surprised myself by jumping up and down in a puddle. I really hadn't planned it -- I was just walking past a puddle, and then next thing I knew, I was jumping in it. I laughed some more and waved my yellow dinosaur umbrella around for good measure. Then I pulled myself together and continued on my way home.

But not before I noticed the rhododendrons. The air is so fresh today -- every day -- that I could smell the wet rhododendron blossoms when I walked past them. I think I must have gotten used to the city air in Chiayi, because this morning I felt so satisfied taking huge gulps of air. It tasted so clean and healthy that I felt extremely happy.

More than the air was making me happy, though. I was walking across campus because I had just been to the library. I was in the library because I wanted to check out the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry. While I was in the library I also chanced across a magnificent collection of Chinese poems put together by Kenneth Rexroth, and I had just spent ten or fifteen minutes reading these poems aloud to a captive audience.

I hadn't originally planned on going to the library when I left home early this morning. When I left home I went to the Beanery and read the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry with half a cup of coffee and half a scone. The introduction was so exciting and fascinating and illuminating that I felt I immediately needed to secure the postmodern edition of the anthology, as well. And so I bundled myself off to the library.

I hadn't really planned on going to the Beanery, either. When I first left the house I went onto campus to use a computer. The Beanery visit was a side-effect of my jet-lag. I woke up at 5:45 this morning and felt ready to start my day. Instead, I spent forty-five minutes enjoying the rising light from my pillow. When I finally parted from my blankets and stepped into the day, I wasn't planning on the Beanery or Norton or the library or puddle-jumping. They were the effect of spring, perhaps.

I think I've found a new favorite recreation in coffee and the Norton Anthology, though.

I visited Muley after dropping off the heaviest of my library books at home. After a thorough grooming, I turned her out on the green grass and read Tu Fu to her while she grazed. I don't think she paid much attention. But that's spring for you.

Happy Rainbow Birthday!

What is in the box, Joe?





A cake??? With an apple on it??? It must be for me!





And I am 42 years old today, that's right! It's funny, how Joe turned 24 last month, and I'm turning 42 this month...





We are so happy and we are so excited to cut the cake open. Because what is inside? Can you guess?





Taro pudding is inside! And vanilla pudding!!! And isn't it the best cake you've ever tasted? Yes, that's right, with coconut trim and dark chocolate hiding in the apple outline -- this baby
is a reaaaaal cake.





And how do we feel after eating two slices each? Something like these people... Reaaallly full but we still want more...




HAPPY RAINBOW BIRTHDAY! HAPPY RAINBOW BIRTHDAY!!! 100% HAPPY! 100% HAPPY!!!

Thoughts on Moving... Again

Admittedly, I shed a few tears in bed each night at the prospect of winding up my two months of leisure and leaving this warm, sunny land, where bananas are for sale on every street corner, haircuts cost $3, and I have a brother I can rendezvous with for lunch every day.

Though the testimony of my tracks may indicate otherwise, I don't like to move around. I like to open new doors ahead, but I hate to close the ones behind. Leaving Taiwan is sad for me: I don't want to go, but at the same time, I'm eager to see Honeychild and eat nachos at Block 15. Going home this fall, as exciting and necessary as it is, requires me to leave Oregon, which is also sad, because there are people and places and things I will miss. Going home is both heart-breaking and heart-mending. I tell myself sometimes I've got to draw in my feelers and concentrate on sinking my roots instead. I like to believe I have a sedentary nature. I see myself as a farmer rather than a wanderer. I like the idea of investing in one place, and of fostering relationships that are generations old.
I live in a privileged time and a privileged place. I can travel back and forth across countries and even continents many times in a single lifetime. I can go to faraway places without bidding a permanent goodbye to my homeland. I can stay in touch with people in other places while I travel. I can live in several places at once. I can shift my life three thousand miles and take more than a bundle of belongings. Generations past faced infinitely more challenges. Generations ahead may, as well. Love it while it lasts? Or don't spoil myself?

The answer to the riddle is go home. Go home for a while to recup and regroup. And then, when the wind blows, see if my roots are strong enough to hold me firm or if it blows me away again...

Build the Fire Higher, Dear

I'm working on a paper-cut of a hummingbird right now. I was flipping through photographs of hummingbirds online when one photo suddenly jogged my mind home.

We have a screened porch on the front of our family's home in Pennsylvania, and my mother keeps filled hummingbird feeders on the open deck leading to the porch door. The hummingbirds have been coming to these feeders for years. When I was eight or nine I spent a summer dressed in red and pink standing beneath the feeders with my fingers outstretched. It took some patience, but the hummingbirds eventually accepted me and sat on my fingertips to rest when they came to feed.

After a few days I became convinced I could distinguish between the hummingbirds (all ruby-throated). I knew there was a particularly bold male who liked to sit in the oak at the top of the clearing, and I thought he was larger than the others. I called him King something-or-other; I don't remember what. I kept a logbook and wristwatch nearby so I could take detailed notes of all activity. I must have been writing poetry that summer, too, because I remember one poem in particular that I wrote about the hummingbirds and our lilacs.

Another summer a hummingbird got caught on the inside of our screened porch. He pushed his beak through the screen and became stuck; that was how we caught him. Holding a swooning hummingbird in your hands is an act that requires the same degree of breath-stopping gentleness as painting Starry Night on a fly's wing (such painters synchronize their brush strokes with their heartbeats). This is how carrying a hummingbird feels: if you so much as blink your eye, you might involuntarily crush him.

When I held him in my hand I saw he had skinned his beak when pushing it through the screen. A small curl had been scraped back and was hanging near his nostril. A hummingbird with a skinned beak.

But the real memory that looking at these photos jogged is from three summers ago. I was home for a month preparing for my ride west; I suppose it was May. As I was hurrying in through the porch door one morning, something caught my eye, and I abandoned my course to look more closely. Held against the screen by the flow of air, down low near the handle, were two infinitesimal feathers. Hanging in the shadows, they looked charcoal gray. I pulled them carefully away with the tip of my finger and carried them into light. Held to the sun, they crashed and exploded the scarlet light waves with an intensity I've never witnessed in any man-made reflector. They were the red neck feathers off a male ruby-throated hummingbird. Brought back into shadow, they changed back to solid gray without even hinting at their previous brilliance.

Didn't the Aztec kings wear cloaks made of hummingbird skins? These men must have been blindingly radiant in sunlight. There was a huge market for skins in Europe during the mid-1800s. Hummingbirds were so fascinating and beautiful and incomprehensible that they were being caught and slaughtered by the thousands -- or, actually, make that hundreds of thousands.

This brings to mind a quote I read recently in the beginning of a book. I cannot for the life of me remember where I came across this... only that it was last summer. The passage essentially made the observation that some men, faced with nature or wildness, are so overwhelmed with love or passion for it that they can think to express themselves only by firing guns into it. (If anybody can tell me where I read this or where I can find it again, I'd be thrilled.) Is a similar compulsion at play when women demand avian genocide in the name of hat ornamentation? The desperation to possess beauty, I think, is the same.

But back to the radiance of yesteryear: I read in a recent novel (The Kingom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming) that when people began installing electric lights in their homes, women complained that their diamonds didn't shatter the light as well and appeared dull. Diamonds are most brilliant by candles and firelight. I suspect women appear more attractive by firelight, too; nothing hides the flaws so well as shadow, and what warmer light exists than candle-cast? Replacing our fires with wires has probably done a lot to dull our passions across the board; our diamonds weren't the only ones to be sedated.

The feathers I found on the front porch lived for a time in a dish on the windowsill above the sink, where I could move them between sun and shade at my whim. And then I moved them to a more secret place, where they remain -- another token of wildness stolen away into human possession.

A Taste Of...

A few nights ago I finished reading "Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone," a collection of essays edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. I borrowed this book from Joe, who recommended it highly, and who received it himself upon high recommendation. I recommend it highly, too, particularly if meals are anything you ever take note of, or if you enjoy or hate or simply ever experience eating alone. We all do, I think.

I love to eat alone. Sometimes eating alone is really awful -- I hated it most when I was in India, because I ate in so many restaurants and was already a point of attention -- but most of the time, when I have the time to exploit my solitude, I love it.

I love to cook alone, too. I love to be cooked for (though I've committed the cardinal sin of taking it for granted) and I love to cook with somebody else who loves to cook. I love to eat in big groups or in very small ones, particularly if I'm eating with people who love to eat and who love to notice what they are eating and who love to acknowledge that they are noticing what they are eating. I also love to eat slowly, and I love to eat slowly with other people, because then I can be doubly sure that the meal is serving its full purpose and is nurturing more than just our bellies.

My favorite food to eat is food that is identifiable. I can tell what it is, how it grew, or where it came from (air? earth? water?). I love to eat simple food. I can revel in those complicated Indian curries, don't get me wrong, and I can delight in those dishes melded of endless lists of ingredients. Again, I know I have, in my life, complained about these "ornate" dishes, as I have called them, but they have their place on the table.

I love food to be well presented, attractive, and aesthetic on the plate, and preferably the table, and preferably in the entire room, including the window and the view. But that's getting idealistic.

My favorite food of all time is the unassuming sweet potato. I could write 10,000 words in jubilation on the tuber, but I won't. Because I didn't eat sweet potato for dinner tonight.

I'll tell you what I had for dinner tonight, but only because I just read "Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant" and it's full of confessions from respected people about some of the scary, strange (and delicious) things they prepare for themselves when left to themselves.

And because I believe that what precedes a meal is relevant (it is always relevant to me), I'll tell you that this meal followed a good, hard, encouraging run (despite the fact that it involved two dozen tedious circumambulations of a running track). And a long drink of cold water preceded it, and some pleasant, if rushed, stretching. I was hungry.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and I waffled for a good five minutes in front of the canned fish section. If I don't eat enough protein, I start getting Charlie-horses in the night. And I wanted something that wasn't deep-fried. Most of the labeling was in Chinese, but here and there I caught "tuna!" and "sandwich!" in English.

I began thinking about Orchid Island, off the east coast of Taiwan, and how it has several tens of thousands of barrels of radioactive waste leaking into the ocean making people and fish sick. I thought about how the poor tuna have devastated populations and how they eat fishes that have already eaten smaller fishes and how they end up with mercury accumulated in their fat. I began thinking about how the oceans are connected, and began wondering where "American" tuna comes from anyway, and whether it's all the same tuna in grocery stores all over the world.

I decided I should eat smaller fish, like sardines or herring, as I always conclude when examining cans of tuna. I suppose I'm always looking for that label that will say "mercury free! Fished from an ocean with too many tuna! Extremely healthy! This fish wanted to die for you! Eat it and make the world better!" But I never see that label.

I found the familiar square tins - they looked like my kipper friends - but wait, these were all roasted eel! No kipper, no sardines. I went to the dried fish row and got a bag of shiny, dried, very stiff whole fish. They were so stiff I couldn't break them in half. They were mixed with slivered almonds and were about the same size. Very small. With hard, stern little faces. That was something.

And then I thought about my stiff calves again, wuss that I am, and how I wanted to run further tomorrow, and so I went and bought the cheapest can of tuna and thought about my future children and how I was endangering their health by exposing their tiny developing bodies to mercury my own body might be accumulating. What a sell-out.

I pondered vegetables for a good long while and ended up with three enormous and sparkling clean carrots (I think they power-wash them here before scrubbing them with brillo pads) and a bag of four long, thin cucumbers. Then I got some tofu, with a blessed label proclaiming NON GMO!, and soymilk, and hoped that my skin wouldn't turn white and my hair wouldn't start to fall out (isn't that what a high-soy diet is supposed to do to you?). I bought some fruit and crackers and was finished.

So what did I fix for dinner, you ask? Oh, it hit the spot. So I was tired, limber, freshly showered, and hungry. And I cut up half a carrot, and sliced up a whole cucumber, and then I dumped my can of tuna fish on top (which, unfortunately, was canned in some kind of oil), and then I poured raisins on top of that, and then, to top it off, a scoop of yesterday's cold brown rice.

Ahhhh. That was an hour ago and I still feel full, full, full. Aaaaah. Fresh food, fresh food, fresh food. My calve muscles are celebrating in a very laid back, relaxed kind of way. And I enjoyed eating alone because I knew that not many people would ever enjoy eating such a meal with me. And so, in my privacy, I could relish every bite, and didn't have to be embarrassed about such unseemly combinations.

Oh -- and I had some of those little dried fish for breakfast this morning. Pretty crunchy, and they seem to be sweetened with something, but they're alright, as long as you don't look too closely.