A Cat, clocks and cookbooks, late April, 09

I woke at two thirty this morning. Nothing too out of the ordinary these days. Seems to be something that my body requires me to do. Wake and think. Get a feel for the world. Start the day before the rest of the neighborhood stirs. Watch for the false dawn, listen to the birds in the trees and the blackberry hedges wake along with the first grey light of morning.

This morning I woke up and knew that I had to go downstairs, make sure that I didn't leave food out on the counter all night long. I fell asleep watching some Korean actioner, but the covers and the cat and clocks made it all too easy to knock out early. It wasn't as if the movie was bad or boring, but it was more a case of fatique, of overload, of more of the same thing, of being tired from the previous night's broken sleep.

I don't think that I suffered through this kind of sleeplessness when the Estranged One was here. Those nights were filled with a different kind of white noise. In those days the world was packed with responsibilities and children and household duties. I went to sleep in those days exhausted and slept the sleep of the just. Now I just wake up and listen, listen for the sound of breathing that isn't there, or, at the very least, listen for the sounds of my cat purring and know that that cat, gawd bless his furry hide, is the sum total of all my efforts over the last three years to do my best to live down the impact of you in my life.

I woke to a full bed, one half covered with books and coverlets and pillows thrust aside to make room for me and the cat. I woke to a house half filled with ambient light, thrown into my upstairs room from streetlights and municipal buildings and distant shipyards. I woke to clocks ticking, to many different sounds of machinery unwinding and dozing and standing by. I woke and thought of many people, of my children, of my Estranged One, of Mi Novia, of My Colleague and especially of you. I know that I woke to those quiet sounds and soft light and that purring cat because of that misguided sense of of honor I courted when we parted. Of honoring that love we shared. But I have no regrets, for whatever it is that I have going on in my life right now is what I bought and paid for. I brought this honor of mine to the dance. Yeah, I brought it and I have to live with it and dance with it until dawn.

I woke to the words "Pyrrhic victory" and had to come down to make sure that the spelling was correct, to make sure I had the definition down. I found out that to suffer a Pyrrhic victory is to win but to do so only by suffering staggering losses. I woke knowing that I was able to "keep" the house, but that the house, that victory, would be one filled with silence, a sort of silence that can't be filled with the sound of records, or movies, or the turning pages of cookbooks. I found that the silence that I heard at two thirty this morning was the kind paid for at a very high cost.

I know that you couldn't pay that price, but, instead, you went on to pay an even higher price to shut down the jealousy of a suppressive man and to silence the needs of your heart. I wonder what it is that you hear when you stir in the middle of the night. What is it that wakes you, that drives you to get up and check on your children, to pad down to the kitchen, rattle the doors, peek out the window into the darkness of your cul-de-sac? Is your restlessness a sort of universal sighing of the heart? Or is it something that runs much deeper, something that binds the love of your children and your form of staunch self sacrifice along with your blind religious convictions?

I need to go to bed here in a moment and think about the upcoming day, figure out what it is that I want to do with it besides strap on my work clothes and head off to the branch. What do I want from here on out beside a tidy house, a close cropped yard and a clean conscience? I do know that I woke to an empty bed and that's for reasons bigger than any martial problems I might have or from girlfriends that don't fit the bill or the fact that even after all this time and after all this fuss I'm still married to a woman who hasn't lived with me for almost four years. It's a much bigger thing, more a visitation of the sins of my father than a true reflection of my surroundings or my needs or who I really am. I woke this morning to a beating heart, an empty bed and a purring cat and for now, along with distant ticking clocks and the hiss of tires on the road, that is enough.

For now the weight of your memory is enough to fill that side of my bed, the side that is supposedly empty. That memory...cherished, impractical, beautiful, relentless, disturbing... helps to keep me restless, helps to keep me warm.

That and the cat, clocks and cookbooks.

Buenos noches, mujuer. Tu quiero.

Your WHMB

"It's my favorite time of month", the last great Calcopo, 4/28

What's funny is that I can't remember what book we were reading that month. We had already celebrated a belated March reading group at Kopachuck a couple weeks before. That was grand. Was it the Persian Pickle Club that month? I know we covered Five Quarters of an Orange in February. I believe it was in February. I do remember listening to La Boheme with you on the couch while you finished up that volume. Didn't I go to the opera that month? Or was it March?

But April. What was April's book? We plowed into Corelli's Mandolin in May. But I don't really want to remember that month's meeting. The book will stay with me always. The movie was just okay and I know that I'll never go back and watch the rest of it. I'll never understand why I can't make anything more than a mishapen pizza, but I made two of them that night and neither one was touched. What a misbegotten night that one was.

So, what did we read in April? Ivan Doig? I just unloaded a huge stack of discarded book club books that I accumulated for us back then. I should have scrutinized them closer before I passed them along. It was a mighty big stack. I would pick them up two at a time at the East Bremerton Friend's kiosk whenever I saw titles that I thought we might like. After a while we had a ton to choose from. Each month you would rifle through the stack and pull that month's official selection. It was handy. No shopping around, no titles to put on hold. I still remember how we had to generate phantom members each month for your sake, especially when we took our meetings to town, but I also remember how you were dogged you were in reminding me that it was a group of two, exclusive membership, no other readers allowed. I know a couple times other folks expressed interest in joining...how could they not? They were interesting meetings. Supper out in town..The Boatshed, Hiro Sushi, Azteca amongst others..and the conversation witty and everywhere. But it was our time.

As you often said to me, it was your favorite time of the month.

So, when I woke up this morning, thinking about all things I had to do today to prepare my home for guests this evening, I had to wonder, what replaced that in your life?

I know that that particular day was a fluke. Our book group traditionally met monthly on the 27th. My day off was on the 28th, a Friday, to make up for my work day on Saturday. Saturday was just going to be a scheduling day at the branch, nothing major. So we both woke up that Friday morning knowing that we had a full day to goof off. Generally those meetings were pretty tame. Dinner, chat, call it a night. But that day was going to be something else entirely. Was it the weather that beckoned us outside to play? Was it because we knew had the whole day to ourselves? Or was it just that you wanted, more than anything else, to make a mark someplace, put a notch on the skin of the world that said to the universe that you were there, that you had really lived that day?

Jane, it really was all about you, kiddo, about getting away, about finding, even for a moment, some private space of your own. Those books we read were passports. Those club meets, they were like secret tree house meetings where you could be Jane, you could break away from your roles and obligations and community ties. For a couple hours you could talk and eat and play, play without rules and restrictions and constructs of someone elses making. What a concept.

So we did. Play in a big way. Took that meeting on the road. Hit up a nursery off 16 in Gig Harbor. Did a bit of shopping for sundries at Target. Went across the bridge and had a great time in the aisles of Trader Joes. Had a magnificent supper at Vuelve a la Vida on Pacific. Took a drive down to Ruston and broke out our blanket, watched the ships pass by on the Sound. We had thought about a ferry ride over to Vashon, but the night got late really quick. We had dessert to eat, things to do. We made time in way that only old fashioned lovers can.

But time had a mind of it's own that night. It was playing the role of Fateful Time, of Last Call for Lovers. It had plans for us and little did we know that what we had that day would be the last best thing we ever did. The high water mark. The Last of the Great Calcopos.

The next day was as long as it was silent. You disappeared off the radar, only to show up much later in the day on Sunday. Your talks had began in earnest that night when you got home. Life, as we knew it, anyway, was over. Endgame. On to other things.

I've tried to start book groups with other folks since then. They never really jelled, not the way ours did, and really, how could they? I now run a bookgroup out in town at the branch, but that, my dear, is a different thing altogether. I read books when I'm interested, but a book has to catch my eye, drag me in. I take recommendations, grab books off the Books to Go shelf, find titles that move fast and are well written. I read a lot of cookbooks. Pass along a lot of interesting titles I've read to The Estranged One.

But nothing compares to the thrill that I used to get sitting down and talking about books with you. That little group of ours, the Calcopo Forest to the Sea Book Discussion Group, was one of a kind.

And yes, it was my favorite time of the month, too.

Your WHMB

I'm not asking...

..for you to condone or condemn or contemplate my decision. I am not asking you to applaud or cheer or pray for me. I am not asking for you to tell me to stop, to go, to yield, to drop dead in my tracks, to sprint, to do the fifty yard dash to the finish line. I am not asking you to please me, tease me or release me. I am not asking you to make me do anything, to tell me move on, to have me somehow come to some understanding with you. I am not asking you to talk some sense into me, to turn away from me, to yell or scream or call the cops on me. I am not asking for you to be my friend, my enemy, my silent partner, my pal, my lover, my confident, my sidekick, my everything, my total and complete nothing.

No, I am not asking for a damn thing from you. All I am asking is that you just keep on doing what you are doing. That much I can bear. That much I can understand. That much I know. What you are doing is just fine. I allows for me to watch from afar. It allows for you to be my muse. It allows for me to be some sort of pathetic, overwrought, hard drinking, endlessly writing, love-shocked literary figure. It allows for me to write and write and write about you and never have to hear your complaints, wash your underware, clean your coffee cup, make your side of the bed, carry your weight or worry whether or not you care enough to continue.

By walking the path I am on I can read the papers and know that your children are successful, that your spouse is doing what he did before, which was running your children's sporting events. By standing on the sidelines of your life I can catch glimpses of you passing by, which is all I can do in the cheap seats. Here in the nosebleed section I catch whiffs of your life. I see your name everywhere, watch that silver Focus of yours buzz by, hear about you and know that, in that hearing and silent distant watching, that you are okay.

I have no idea how your heart is. I see things, pick up vibes, and that has to be enough.

So, don't ask for me to stop, to change my ways, to let go. Don't do a thing. You keep to your path and I will keep to mine. As lines go they just might converge later on. Maybe not. No matter.

Just don't ask me to stop loving you. There would be no sense in that. I've tried. You've asked me to, told me to stop. You've let me go. And still. When we meet. Our eyes, our words, all the unspoken things, give it all away.

You can't ask the world to stop turning.

Ask me to do anything and I'll consider it, but just know that in all that asking I'll just keep on loving you anyway. Anything else you ask me to do or not do is just there for me to contemplate.

Your WHMB

Be Jane, 4/23

I was weeding the home economics stuff today..cookbooks, home repair, sewing and such..and I came across a book that was put together by an outfit down in LA that empowers women to handle power tools and feel good about tearing up their homes. "Be Jane" was the phrase those gals had on their t-shirts in the photo spreads. In fact, there were a lot of "Janes" in that book, least ways, that was the middle name they were sporting on their bios when they chronicled their various power tool adventures.

It's the little things like that, like that whole Jane business that draw me in, that carry me up and away and out of my day. Yeah, damn yer eyes, M. I sat out my yearly evaluation and thought better than to mention you even sideways. On the way home I waited for the light and thought I saw you pass, but the wahini doll was missing from hte dash and besides I know you would have honked, or, at the very least, hit your brake lights. I took in lunch, stood before the living room windows and watched eagles fly over the inlet, then went back to the computer to find out more about Be Jane.

Be Jane. How could you not be? You are truly the only Jane I know who's worth her salt. I still remember an early note from you, one you wrote to me right after I set up your lovelandtokrl63 email box. In it you chronicled a typical day, told me all about house cleaning and new carpets and company that was coming in from out of state. You gave me the rundown of all that needed doing in preparation of that company's arrival..bathrooms that needed cleaning, food that needed prepping, endless things that needed doing, seeming by the only adult in the house that could handle them. I think I remember you telling me that you saved toilet lid replacement, maybe even some plywood assignment in the attic space for the man of the house but, outside that, I don't think there was a thing that needed handling that you couldn't or didn't do.

Truly you are a one woman outfit. A force to contend with. You could teach those Janes down in LA a thing or two about how Colorado transplants handle housework and entertaining and such. You were and still are the real deal.

So, take a look at the link below, find out what else those other gals are doing. Maybe you need to brush up on your table saw techniques, but, then again, I doubt it. I still remember the day we lopped wood together in the living room with my miter saw. You were a true hustler back then, made that miter saw sing. Heck, call and ask for a t-shirt, gal. They should send you one for free. Hell, M you are the original "Be Jane" poster girl. Yeah, get that shirt and take a picture in it and send it to me. Preferably after a rough night's sleep or a hard day's bit of work around the house.

Face it, Jane, you can be my poster girl anytime.

Your WHMB

http://www.bejane.com/

Calendars and corners, 4/20

The intersection of Wheaton Way and Sylvan Way is by no means a pretty corner of town, but it does harbor an awful lot of soul. We can thank the moon and raspberry pops for that.

But full moons and frozen treats don't come along every day. Most days that stretch of road is pretty hard to take. Face it, the intersection of Wheaton Way and Sylvan Way is a mess. It's a curious mix of businesses, that's for sure, all tied up together with a ton of traffic, a mess of telephone poles, a tangle of electric wires, and a god awful sense of aesthetics. The wacky mixture of over the top signage, shoddy architecture, incongruent style and questionable taste is sometimes a bit too much to bear, but then, when you think of Highway 99 and the mess that that one's made up and down the coast, well, that little patch of heaven in East Bremerton is just par for the course.

Regardless of how it looks I find myself haunting that part of town on a fairly regular basis. First off, there's a Grocery Outlet, a Value Village and a tasty pizza joint, Westside Pizza, all anchoring down one corner of the strip. Up the block and around the corner there's a Goodwill, a pawnshop, a pho restaurant, a number of Mexican joints, a post office and the library. Regardless of how it looks I find myself over in that part of the world every week for business, for shopping, for noshing and for any number of other low-brow consumer pleasures. At one time that neck of the woods was also a spotting station for you, too, M, a sort of Stations of the Cross, Bremerton-style, but we both know that those days are long gone.

So I suppose you can say that whenever I hit that part of town I am wisked away into a zone of rough nostalgia. Those memories generally play fast and loose with me, if only because they encompass both the good and the bad sides of life, and sometimes, when I really want to probe deeply, even the ugly side of it, too.

But today the weather was bright and cheery and all things were sweet and right in the world. I just finished dropping off the library van and received a small handful of accolades for a job well done for the program we presented at the WLA conference. As I walked to the bus stop I figured in a few minutes of shopping, and took in a phone call with the Estranged One as well. Those talks are coming along nicely, and today I found out that The Boy will be coming back in May. I figure if I just keep to the course that I've set for myself these last couple of weeks I should be good to go for the rest of spring and into summer. Good in that I wiped my slate clean and that I've set my mind to go forward on my own for awhile. Just me and the cat and work and the house. The Boy. Your memory. That sounds like a mighty fine plan for a pretty spring day.

But back to that intersection. Gosh, couldn't they make it a bit more pretty? Bury those wires, unify those storefronts? Make sense of the parking, the lighting and that ragged mix of businesses? Looking around it's easy to get distracted while I'm doing my business there, to be once removed from the moment, but that has more to do with personal history than with the wacky assemblage of buildings spread out before my eyes. For instance, whenever I sit and wait for the bus, the bus that will take me back to the ferry, I also find myself waiting for a phantasm to appear, for the ghost of that small silver car of yours to go whizzing by on it's way to a coffee date or a rendevouz up the hill at Bataan Park. Strange, but there it is, the power of suggestion and space and old times.

Old times. I know that this month, poised on the edge of the anniversary of Your Talks, is an open calendar filled with events that I prefer not to revisit but find myself gawking at, like a man standing on the edge of a great and messy automobile wreck . April 28th is looming. It will always be The Day, the last of the Calcopo's, the last great moment where we ruled and everything, I mean EVERTHING, was possible.

And yet I know that when that day comes and goes that it will be just another day, that I will be very much aware, yeah, very clear on, that those plans we generated are just dust and memory and so many calendar pages on the floor. Just as well, for what I see coming up on the 28th looks to be just another pretty spring day and for that I am eternally thankful.

In the end I suppose it's all about how I want to honor that place, that sacred ground of memory. That Grocery Outlet is still my prefered place to food shop, but it is also charged with helping time stand fast, with holding onto those little moments, ones where we gathered canned tomatoes and raspberry pops in those very busy aisles. The Value Village doesn't have that green oversized chair we sat in anymore but it does have our holographic image stuck somewhere there in the book racks and toy aisles.

Pat's is not immune, either, and our phantoms float around someplace near the coffee counter. That whole damn parking lot is loaded with ghostly stereoscopic imagery, of cars and vans and teary eyed lovers in passing, and that is something else entirely, something that I have to be in the mood for, or else I just move along quickly and get myself on down the road. Every time I go there it's just like coming home, and yet everytime I arrive I find myself wanting to catch the next flight out of that old life and back into my new one. Thank goodness for that, too.

Someday I might leave this region, and if I do I know that I will find my way back there, if only to stop and listen and look, look to see if I can find the ghosts of those two sweet people who found their way onto a park bench in front of Value Village one summer evening, just to sit and snack on frozen treats, talk to the locals and watch the moon rise up through the wires.

Wheaton and Sylvan Way. A geocache site of our hearts and my very weary soul.

Your WHMB

The similarity of those road trips, 2006, 2009

Six new cookbooks on my coffee table, Jane. A nice haul from this year's conference, a sweet reminder that once again I managed to get home safely from yet another long road trip.

The big difference between my old trips and this one is that I rode in from Spokane last night without a notepad by my side. I did have a van full of boxes and bags and books to fret over, a co-worker by my side to chat with and a head full of fatique to keep me busy. I was tired from a too soft hotel bed, from too much wine the night before and a very long conference week. Somehow even that little speaking engagment I shared with my colleagues managed to take it out of me. I have to wonder how I ever handled all that storytelling I used to do as a children's librarian oh so long ago.

Riding and writing at the same time can be hazardous but it was something I did regularly during those Boise roadtrips back in the spring of '06. Once I got home home I would try to decipher the scribbles I managed to jot down at seventy miles a hour, then tried to figure out where and when I put them down along the way so I could match them up against my mental road map of the trip, then put two plus two together and wrap it all up in a email to you. Those road trips which I loved so dearly then seem so long ago now. The last trip I took back there in November ended up being a true dark night of my soul experience. I've already related to you how that old NWPTS57 email box was left open, how my small stack of letters to Mi Novia were discovered but how an even bigger cache of letters was discovered and opened up. Letters that I had written to you over the last few years. Seems that even now, four years after the fact, that you are still influencing my life.

Four years ago I took the very same trip that I took this last week. It was a strange conference for me. I only got to go because a fellow staffer dropped out, and so that put me on the road at the last minute. That round of travel, both coming and going, was done in the dark. I couldn't quite get the "feel" of that conference. I suppose it had to do with the fact that I didn't really know the in's and out's of conferencing back then outside of chatting with old colleagues, eating meals and attending workshops. The ride back home was a somewhat hard one, too, one that I shared in a tandem two car sort of way with a salesgal from some Seattle book concern that I met during the vendor's meet and greet. I think that small event somehow presaged the upcoming summer debacle and added to the already simmering pot of trouble that was stewing in my life at the time. You came into my life well before Spokane but were already part of the grand unraveling, we just didn't know it yet.

So, when I contrast those very rough and rugged times with the trip I just finished up, I have to wonder what sort of low grade level of maturity I was working with back then. "If I knew then what I know now" is a phrase that has been circling the wagons around in my head all week long. So much has happened between now and then that I feel like I'm living a completely different life in a whole new package of skin. Who was that man that went to that last conference? Certainly not the man who lives on Kitsap Street these days. I've had no choice but to change, to grow up, yet still recognizing that some things are outside my realm of influence. Such is life.

But know that somethings never change. I never bothered to do more than just check my email this week, leaving Mi Novia in the dark and more than likely enlightening her all at the same time as to the status of our relationship. I also maintained an almost daily phone connection with My Estranged One, if only to make sure that the phone bridge remained strong and unchanged for the sake of our kids and our good relations. And know that I once again became a victim of my ragged heart. I must admit to this small thing, to seeing someone from across a room that I wanted to talk to a bit more, so I left an email address with so that she could send me a bibliography of the materials she booktalked during her workshop. Stupid, I know, but let me tell you why.

She looked like you.

My life is turning into a Lyle Lovett song. I still remember that one February road trip I took, the one after that night the Muzurkas and Lyle seranaded our bliss. I took that Lyle Lovett and his Big Band tape along with me and played the hell out of it on those long and cold thousand miles. What song should be on it but "I married her because she looked like you". What song do you think was playing in my head all the way back home from Spokane? Yeah, that song.

What's funny is that you could have been that woman by now. You could have been in I-School this year, finishing up that MLS we talked about that spring. You could have been in front of that workshop on Friday talking up children's books. It could have been you, and from a distance, with these old eyes and this endlessly hopeful Mexican heart beating inside my chest, that gal practically was.

So, know that while I didn't write down any notes to you on this trip I was endlessly referencing you along the way in my mind and in my conversation with colleagues. That I found things to stick in an envelope to send along to you someday. And that I found some sort of peace with you that only comes with committed dedication to stilling the waters and wishing for some sort of salvation, a salvation that will only happen when I manage to reconcile the past and the present and make some sort of sense of my goals, needs and desires outside of those I had with you.

And while I can't write any more post trip emails to you or make any plans involving you in my life I can still take road trips and collect cookbooks along the way, and that, my dear Patroness of Cookbooks, is reason enough to say that you came along for the ride, both then and now.

Your WHMB

Threes, 4/13

The basis of any good folk tale is a story filled with elements of three. Think of any good quester story and the lad or lass in it has to go up against or overcome some combination of challenge or events that add to up to three in order for the quest, the challenge, the story, to be finished successfully. Jack in the Beanstalk is a good example. Up the beanstalk Jack goes, first to grab the bag of gold, then to grab the hen, then once more to bag that singing harp, all in the end to overcome the legacy of the evils that the Giant brought into his family's life. He was successful, but at a cost.

We go out in search of adventure or redemption or grace, and sometimes find that going out once, even twice, is not enough. The third time is the charmer. My dear, I've been going at it in threes...three years, three good friends, three different ways of setting back the clock and three forms of hard lessons learned. I feel like my thousand league boots are getting a bit worn and are needing a rest.

Three things came up today that brought you to mind, Professora. I wasn't looking for them. I never do. They were just there, silent and unobstrusive, waiting to be recognized, just as they always are. I suppose some might say that I obsess, that I force those patterns to appear out of thin air. I suppose if I paid as much attention to the world of finance or the sports pages my life would be completely different, filled with different quests, different symbology, but instead I tend to find things in the world, flitting about, things that lead me back to you. It's not as if I try to find them. It just happens.

I suppose it's not too much different than trying to decern my future while looking at tea leaves. You can't force tea leaves into a pattern any more than I could change the course of that hail that fell and hit my roof this afternoon. I think of chance and know that sometimes you are where you are and things happen. Good, bad, indifferent. My cat probably felt that way this evening when I happened to be in the room when he got that damn collar of his caught in his mouth. Things just come around, things just happen. In the case of the collar I was there to unstrap him. What if it had happened earlier, while I was at work? Or out of town at conference? Sometimes you just have to be there to see how you react, to see what life brings, to make changes, to accept challenges.

Sort of like the way that we happened. We did, you know. Happen, in a big way. A major happenstance. Our year was like a chunk of stone falling out of the sky, dropped hot into our laps. Just like that. "Zowie!" A white hot piece of space junk that penetrated the intrigity of our space suits. We found about out about intregity loss the hard way, the way that astronauts find out the hard way about emergency decompression in space. We took that hit unwittingly, not thinking too much about it at the time, as it was such a small hit but a major life changing force all the same. We heard the "sssssss" of oxygen escaping but went about our lives with a happy smile on our faces and didn't think a thing of it.

I think of the past few years and it seems that every spring has brought new people into my life. People of importance, people who keep trying to change my life by ripping open my suit. I keep trying to find the duct tape, something to keep that decompression they cause at bay. I keep taking hits, walking the same walk as before, thinking that somehow those space walks I take will be different but in the end I keep finding that the moves I make, the words I mouth, the same small dangers I try to avoid are always present. I never seem to learn that to walk "out there" is to leave myself open to hits, to hurt, and in turn, hurt other people, too. Those hits tend to lead to a loss of compression, to a small whistling panic, to small moments filled with dunderheaded wonder. Each encounter that I trip headlong into is yet another rip in my intregity suit. Another big case of "oh my". Or better yet, "damn, here we go again!"

So, today, I talked on the phone with two people who've mattered alot to me and watched a third one pass me by as if I was a column of smoke. It lead me to believe that my life choices, my people choices have been less than sound in recent years. But more, it lead me to believe that I have been trying too hard, since that spring came and you went in '06, to replace you. Instead of laying low, instead of retreating to the safety of the space capsule and building myself up again I've kept up the old ways of doing business . I finally realized that my sense of self, my integrity suit, which has gotten thin to the point of sheer madness, has broken down completely and has left me totally bare assed. I'm to the point where I don't want to waste my time like that anymore. I want to take a break from the dangers of space, leave that whole pursuit and being persued thing alone for awhile. Rather, I want to just lay low, play with my cat. Write my kids, write stories, write in my blog. Strip ivy from the back of the little house. Walk my groceies home. Sweat. Ride my bike. Fly a kite. Paint my walls, cook interesting dishes, entertain without hope of finding love and just love my friends, instead. Wake up alone and sleep tight. All that.

Just like that.

What brought this on? You, wonderful you, delivered to me in the form of a three references, one this evening in a Wes Anderson film..certainly it had to be that relentless Bowie soundtrack and the wistfullness of Hunky Dory. Another came to me in a book titled Music Lust, the reference being just a small note about that lovely Norah Jones album you gave me, mentioning that it was considered one of twenty of the most important recordings of the first part of the 21st century. Then there was this dual Jane reference, one in a Naked Chef cookbook I picked up the other day, the other again in that Life Aquatic film. I don't even have to look for you and there you are, coloring my life.

But you did. Greatly. Gracefully. Like a wicked rainbow or sultry sunset.

I am ready, though, to give it all a break. I need to stop chasing those rainbows and sunsets thinking that I'm going to find you again. I need to sit and watch them, instead. Watch them fade and blend into the scenery and become one with the world, with my heart and with my soul. Let those colors do their thing while I tend to other things, like my garden, my kitchen, my work, my cat, my friends.

You, Jane, you are and will always be my friend, the eternal paintpot of my soul. My neverending font of threes. My quester story without end. But I must say that it's time to hang up that suit, that raggedy integrity suit that we played in, the one that has taken all those hits since you've been gone. Know that it's now washed, cleaned, dried and pressed and hanging up in my closet, waiting for other adventures at some later time and place. In terms of threes the last tale is coming up, then we'll both know how the end of the story goes.

Happily ever after would be nice.

Your WHMB

Easter Eves, 4/11

The rain is falling hard today, not the sunny day that I was expecting or needing. I watched my neighbor mow his lawn yesterday and thought to myself that I should do that, too. Didn't. Felt that it wasn't a big deal, that I would be out in the yard Easter day. Didn't happen. Turned into an inside day, instead. Good for me, good for the basement.

Yesterday was an inside day, too. I was running a bit wee from too much celebration the night before, wanted the day to slip away, so I spent a bit too much time in bed in the morning, watching movies, waiting for the weather to give me permission to run errands. It didn't and so I worked hard inside instead. The day was fulfilling, even if I didn't tear down ivy or make a store run to Safeway.

I thought of you over the course of the day. While I watching the clouds rolling in. While I pondered supper. While I discoursed with myself over movies and emotions and such. I thought of road tapes and the importance of road diaries like I saw in Elizabethtown. I thought of the glories of cherry trees blossoming and then thought about how hard it is to watch those blossoms go away. I prepped my supper today and know that I was selfish about it, too, about wanting to spend Easter by myself, but then again I knew that our creedo, that non-negotiable thing, that kid thing, was in place and that no one would get in the way of that.

The kids were in my thoughts all day long and so were you.

I thought about our "dual religion" pact, and knew that your 4 square and my Catholicism would clash somehow, especially today, especially over things like church management, symbolism, architecture and the humping of bibles to church. No matter, I still woke up and thought of you, of your big annual Easter gatherings, of your dedication to your church and the obvious lack of dedication to mine. Never mind that our souls are not up for discussion at the moment anyhow and that whole everlasting thing that has kept us apart is nobodies business but our own.

So, while I watched a movie in bed yesterday afternoon I thought of you, of our day in that very same bed three years ago, watching not a movie but the cherry petals falling before the hail outside my window. We watched the sky go from robin egg shell blue to slate grey and back to blue again, all in the course of three blessed hours. I watched the sky yesterday and hoped for a repeat of that same blue to grey shift but all I got was cloud cover. That heavy grey would have been great for my film break.

So, my love, I wish for you a wonderful day. I am sure that you have had that. To your health and, hey..Aleliu! He has risen!

Yours, WHMB

Rellenos in the mix, fall 2005

I was cleaning out my email box the other day and came across a response from you, one you sent to me in '06, after I had sent along to you an article about fish tacos. It was a lively travelogue about a woman who, along with her boyfriend, traveled the length of Baja in search of the perfect fish taco. Your words to me were heartening, as you said that you knew where to find the best fish taco, and that was in the kitchen of little house on Kitsap Street.

I know that I can dredge up that receipe anytime I want by Googling Sunset magazine and Baja tacos. It was that combination of chipotle mayo sauce, hot chili slaw and beer batter that made that fish sing. I can remember the frustration I felt at first not finding the tiliapia that the recipe called for, but the meat man at Saars came through, found a box full of frozen pieces in the back and saved the day. In the end the fish tacos turned out to be sublime eating, but we managed to guild the lilly that evening by frying up a bunch of impromtu chili rellenos as well. Not as tasty as they could have been, as the batter was a bit heavy for the dish, but there they were, one more dish we managed to pull off together as well as a nice stack of tasty burrito stuffers for the next day's lunch.

Making rellenos has always been a bit of a hardship for me, more of a mystery than something I've managed to master. More edible mundane labor than a true labor of love. Always welcome, sometimes even tasty, but always a little less than legendary. My mom once took a trip up to Grants Pass when I was new in that town, and she whipped up a batch for C and me from memory, along with her world famous fruit sauce. Tart and sweet and only slightly hot, that sauce made those rellenos sing. The batter she pulled together made all the difference as they were light and fluffy, not oily or heavy like ours. Those rellenos she made that day were something to aspire to.

So, fast forward to this morning's desk work and my typical review of the nation's signature on-line papers. I found the recipe attached below in the LA Times, a dish I felt to be an interesting cross stitch of my even older world into ours, a overlap of two loves and a place I've never been to before but heard an awful lot about.

So, there. A bridge between past and present. Let's get past the ignominy of those heavy rellenos we made and try this El Chollo recipe on for size. It looks to be mighty easy and pretty tasty, too. I've been looking for my "third recipe" for the weekend and that one may be it. Good Easter food to go along with a fresh pot of beans and nice steaming pan of sopa de la roz. I'm thinking you'll find that there's more than one place in South Kitsap that makes sublime Mexican food. And besides, it's all your fault, you know. That whole recipe thing. Thank goodness for that.

Besitos, mi amor.

Your WHMB

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-sos8-2009apr08,0,3844905,full.storyMB

Cookbook love story, 4/9

I have a luncheon date tomorrow with sixty of so of my closest friends, Friends of the Library, that is. I have a nice role to play at their appreciation luncheon: I get to give a little talk about cookbooks. I'll be grabbing a handful of titles off the shelves there at the Poulsbo branch to share, but then I'll also be bringing along a handful of cookbooks from my own collection as well.

I think of cookbooks and of course, right away, I think of you. I carted around a dozen or so titles for years, wore them out and yet rarely used them. I think I was tired of my cooking when I met you. I was proficient in the kitchen but I needed new skills. I needed a muse. When the mind is ready a teacher will appear, indeed.

Was that teacher the box of pears I hauled over that snowy pass to pass along to you? Was it those lemon shaped bowls I found lying along side that stack of mysterious Pyrex glasswear at that garage sale in Boise? Was it Ina Garten's book dropping in the slot that fateful afternoon? I know that when I found those bowls I thought they were special, but I didn't know that they would lead to a renaissance of sorts. That they would open up a whole new world of adventure and acquistion for me. I had no idea that when I bought those bowls that I would be making a friend for life, never mind that that friendship of ours has had to go into hibernation for it's own good. All I know for certain is that due to you, due to that "make me creme brulee and I'll be your friend for life" statement of yours, that cookbooks and untried recipes now rock my world on a regular basis.

Tomorrow I'll get up in front of that group and talk about cooking and cookbooks and do a few goofy demonstrations with lunch meat and cans of soup and such. But know that those dishes that I'm baking to take along are all goods that we shared, talked about, tasted together. And while I won't be making a cheesecake, a pot of curry or a full out Thanksgiving dinner for that crowd, I will be taking along a Sandtorte for a doorprize, a pan full of creme brulee to show off my sugar burning skills with and slicing up a pineapple clafouti for folks to taste.

Darn that Ina Garten. Her Barefoot in Paris may changed my way of looking at cookbooks and how I collect crockery and kitchen gadgets, but it was you sharing it with me on that long ago day that changed the way that I appreciate and hold onto friends, no matter how far away they may be. I picked up that book again today and found it to be a true time traveling device, and yet it allowed me to be firmly grounded in the minute. Thanks to Ms Garten and you I have a beautiful cake baking in the oven, a sweet little program to deliver and a half dozen ramekins ready to be filled with custard.

It was a love story that got me here and cooking in the kitchen today, M. Loved you then, love you still, dashed creme brulee promises and all.

Thanks. Professora.

Your WHMB

Norah Jones, take two, 4/04

Long have I searched second hand for a copy of Norah Jone's Come Away With Me. Looked up and down the coast and looked hard but only met with indifferent luck. I managed to unearth copies twice now, but both experiences were marred by finding the case empty. Imagine my joy, then, when yesterday I stumbled upon a copy of it in the stacks at Goodwill! Clean box, no scratches on the cd! Super clean! Popped that cd into my small stack and then took off next door to finish up my grocery shopping.

So, to finish up this short and sweet post I slapped that cd in the deck last night..and waited. Put it off till morning. I've listened to that title all too many times now and know what kind of emotional hand grenade it can be. Sunday morning came late but it came all the same. Started it up and...what the heck. It wasn't Norah Jones at all..it was The Dave Matthews Band!

Okay. It was a clean copy, a piece of music I didn't have in my collection. Not quite what I would have spent three dollars on yesterday but still. Another piece of music you turned me onto a while back. In the meantime that cd you burned for me, that very same Norah Jones I thought I bought yesterday now has a very clean and pretty box to sit in. Your writing, new case, all the lyrics. Into the satchel.

The search continues.

Your WHMB