Life meanwhile—real life, with its essential interests of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions—went on as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity... -Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)If my last post was grounded in the mood of the…
It seems that February somehow managed to slip away from me. One minute I was in the kitchen, making ice cream, broiling grapefruit and blanching endless amounts of greens from our CSA box (aphid season is upon us) for gratins, all while fantasizing about the many blog posts I would and should write about these…
Let your soul be whole or split, let your perception of the world be mystical, realistic, skeptical, or even idealistic (if you are so misfortunate), let the creative devices be impressionistic, realistic, naturalistic, the content lyrical or narrative, let there be mood, impression -- whatever you like; only I beg you, be logical -- and…
I have a small confession to make: despite my best intentions and my resolutions for the new year, I've already cheated. Maybe even more than once. My Saturday work plan isn't going so well and, about those cookbooks I supposedly swore off, I found myself overcome by temptation about three weeks ago when I took…
After a semester of grading, more grading and endless office hours, only one more 8 a.m. class stands between me and freedom (or, as I refer to it in my mind, time to write my dissertation). An even more comforting thought is that this is probably the last time I'll ever teach this course--especially at…
When we eat alone we often break all the rules surrounding not only what to eat but when to eat and even where. And this is true regardless of what we know about cooking or about what makes a proper meal...Solo meals can be all corn and tomatoes if that's what you like. Solo meals…
I remember her every word and every intonation. I will not repeat what she said, though it will always echo in my daydreams. The broad sense of it was that she was offering me everything...All would fear us and love us and no one could ever touch us.-Zachary Mason (The Lost Books of the Odyssey)I've…
You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You…
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Leo Tolstoy (What is Art?)Ok, ok, I know what you're thinking: anybody can make a sandwich. That is in fact a true statement. In fact, its very truth is probably the reason that I'm telling you about it. It's not…
While she stands alone among the dripping vines she cannot make a connection that she knows is there. There is a blankness in her thoughts, a density that feels like muddle also, until she realizes: the Annunciation was painted after rain. Its distant landscape, glimpsed through arches, has the temporary look that she is seeing…
Dining with Dostoevsky 