Thursday, March 14, 2024

We the daughters


 

We the daughters of bountiful deities 

We the daughters of bountiful deities

dangerous girls taken to the underworld 

changed into our every her and we

so earth burst with wrong flowers

robbed of color we Persephones all hers 

our bags bus tickets and rifles 

on wordless television we every us 

girls together our apples sparkt 

the night sky 



Saturday, March 9, 2024

Pig and farm report March the Eighth: storm watch edition






The wind was high this morning so I got out of bed and quietly ran down the hall to turn on the tea kettle and the coffee pot and to heat up the oven so I could bake the dough I prepared yesterday the first time in 15 days I have wanted to bake or eat wheat or much of anything else for that matter.


The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.


1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, 6, 7, 8 then repeat quickly with grace and grief but breathe between 6 and 7 and sail through 8 spin on the edge of a copper penny hold your breath then start again 1, 2, 3, 4.

Wind gets under my skin. It feels like panic needles it ricochets up my spine like some kundalini junkie robot waiting to jump me on a dark street corner and drag me back to my home planet. Wind makes the power flick off then on then off it causes the trees to wave their crazy arms and screech outta the way! outta the way! in their keening tree voices and squirrels bombard my roof with tiny pine cones in their terror. In my wee brain the moon controls the tides which controls the wind which controls the celestial bodies which control not only my thoughts but my mood swings. Huge swathes of mood swings. Crazy Girl mood swings but Crazy Girl no longer lives here just water and big trees and bigger water and waves sloshing up the earth’s crust saying howdy!


The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.

What was Beethoven living in this moment? How many times did he divide the inflection of a measure until it was perfect? If you look at his original scores he tells exactly what he was thinking there and there and then faster there too. He wrote during storms. Like this one. He too hunkered down his ear pressed to the piano’s throat so he could hear the low pounding chords that rolled through everything he ever wrote.

I went outside a few minutes ago to throw my coffee grounds and a little water on my blueberry bushes and a bat flew in front of my face. Luckily she didn’t bring her friends. Bats have never bothered me but they startle when they swift by in their nun’s habits and nun’s stares always looking quite horrified to see me. I told her not to worry and she flitted her way back under the eaves like a black Victorian mourning hankie.


The best way to count this measure is to think of it as one statement that's divided in its inflection.


This is what I learned from playing and recording the entire cycle of Beethoven symphonies. That and don’t cry.


I’m breathing through the wind storm. Deep sucking breaths that taste like every psychiatrist I’ve ever seen in a professional setting. They always said just take a breath now which I always did deep sobby furry screamy wet breaths that felt like drowning. If you tell me to take a breath these days I might just reach out to slap your mouth. It turned out the breaths helped nobody except the psychiatrists themselves. Telling a person in trauma to just breathe is horrible and cruel.


I am roasting garlic now my oven redolent and broken things to do with my hands while waiting for the tides to recede. The good news is my shingles pain didn’t kick in until just now the longest I’ve gone without feasting on gabapentin and Tylenol first thing in the morning. I’m sitting on my bed with Jupiter snoring loudly and Hal curled in a tiny ball at my side. I feel both loved and a little bit like Meg waiting for the witches to appear and I can keep an eye on the fickle trees from here in case they decide to whip into my bedroom my snowy white bed my down comforter oh the comfort of finally having a good sturdy bed after so many years of sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes that served as a balm against the sprung box spring in that old damp sooty house.


You're out of the woods

You're out of the dark 

You're out of the night

Step into the sun 

Step into the light

Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place

On the Face of the Earth or the sky

Hold onto your breath

Hold onto your heart

Hold onto your hope

March up to the gate and bid it open 

Open!







I’m making an extraordinary clean soup with spring onions wee carrots young turnips white beans and half a zucchini sliced thin and one baby bok choy leaves and all. I added a bouquet garni of fresh thyme and dill salt and pepper some dried herbs de Provence some pepper flakes salt and pepper lemon juice and clear vegetable stock. I’m just letting it simmer on the stove because the shingles are making the right side of my back to seize up again. Bloody hell.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Pig and farm report March the fifth

 


rabbit


little one eye nothing 

there is no redemption 

turn the key name your children Flood 

and Agency the river is on fire dropped 

back into its muddy socket my left

hand stitched as the dragon 

bowl shattered I’m sorry 

I forgot the names of everything 

my stupid head made a racket

what will you leave 

what will you carry











Saturday, March 2, 2024

Pig and farm report March the second

 


I have blisters all over my back. Six days ago I sent a photo of a small section of it to my darling friend Mary Moon and she told me it looked like shingles because damn she is smart and she knows things. I right away called my doctor and they said can you get here in 20 minutes? Holy crap I can’t ever get into the clinic in under six weeks so that was kind of scary. I’m all set up with gabapentin and Valovyr (that’s not the actual name, but I’m lying in bed and don’t have the pill bottle next to me but it’s like Aclovyr but a billion times stronger. Horse pills I take three times a day. Crap.

Enough of all that stuff nobody needs to hear it but if you think you have an itchy blister, get yourself to a nunnery.

Ps. The doctor I saw, Oksana,  who I have long suspected of being a nazi) took one look at my back and said CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE SHINGLES! As though I had just won washing machine on a game show.

Day six of My Shingles Travel Diary

First destination: bed

Second destination: kitchen

Final destination: bathroom

Rinse, and repeat

This here is a cloud of brand new $30 white sheets from Wally World. I haven’t purchased new sheets since I moved in here seven years ago. They are too gd expensive so this is a very big deal for me. My old 2 sets of sheets had no workable elastic on them And we all know about what happens when the elastic is gone from anything, underwear and sheets being kind of the worst, so both old pair are now basically worn tablecloths. I’m waiting for my son to get here to put the new sheets on because I can’t move my arm without screaming Pain Demons. 


Just saying hello but I’m shaky. Reading The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki my second read. It’s huge and deep and wild and thoughtful and tender and heartbreaking and I needed a comfort book and a heartbreaking book because the shingles hurt so bad I just want to weep and this allows them to appear.

Also: I’m completely out of chocolate and just writing that made well up with stupid tears. Kids, please get a shingles vaccination. And send emergency chocolates.


A paragraph from The Book of Form and Emptiness 



Friday, March 1, 2024

March the First



The girl’s names were Alice the boy’s names were Jack. Their room was a wheel on a ship. Approach cautiously. Rouge was the place they were looking for. Play wounded in battle. Trism Bear scouted the courtyard. Bears have no patience with rhetoric. Drink up feel the beer rise. Alices disappeared in the past making police work difficult. Take care at the conference of birds plague masks unguents curious recipes. Alices lowered the shawls from their foreheads under the influence of pebbles. Jacks leapt to their feet. Safety’s luxury came late. Broken glass on the Marilyn Shrine honey pots butters a candle made from fat. The moon was down but there was enough light for horses to ford the river. Cherished a secret grudge against breathing machines. Did not let Trism Bear hear. Alices and Jacks were homeless and waiting for food. Desolation Point. The difficult miracle of anvil and wince. They are what was found there.




Saturday, February 24, 2024

100% full

 

This is the Winter Threnody moon.


I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m currently being plagued by skin demons.

A morning ripe with consequences flies circled fleas in the carpet images of the bridge collapsing over  over as I begged the Animal Gods for sleep last night but I have placed mirrors in its armpits I have changed everything I need to grieve for this peculiar loss the psychic horde faces who people with goblin induced insomnia know we are covered in light pink ash a smoky bulk a network of vague there is no sacrifice only feral and the sound of an arm or leg breaking that inner crack a blistered shoulder a tender heavy body I am not ready to embrace the spiral a way of being here and not being here the secret club the code eye level with lions and their ways of bright dangerous love


Thank you Darklings for coming back 28 mph winds I swear these full moons, make it worse.


Pax

Rebecca 


Friday, February 16, 2024

Pig and farm report

 


This morning at 5:30 I turned on my oven then scrub-a-dubbed two enormous russet potatoes poked holes in them put them on two sheet trays opened the oven and promptly dropped the trays and the giant potatoes down the inside front of my oven i.e. the lava pit clackity crash my wild giggling as I held the oven door open with my knees so nothing would fall on my bare feet. 


On Boxing Day 2022 I caught my oven on actual fire and it has been failing ever since burning things from the bottom up burning things from the top down I have to add more and more mattresses on top of the pea to get anything to bake without incinerating my safe space without bursting into flame like a 19th century vampire or an American witch.


I want to be quiet in my own kitchen. I want to be quiet in the morning with a cat under each arm and coffee and a book and a pastry and have perfect hair and wear a velvet dressing gown. My jaws ache like they still hold teeth. 


It is spring today but yesterday it snowed I don’t know how to open a pineapple my hands are weak and the pineapple has spikes. I need a cleaver I need a machete. I need a sword and possibly a crown. I want to be the queen of my kitchen but I am the jester the court clown.


You may think you don’t have to poke holes in your potatoes but it only takes once to have a potato explode a bomb going off sending potato shrapnel every which way then you realize you have a self cleaning oven so you turn it on and a fire starts inside but the oven has locked itself so you can’t get in with the fire extinguisher and you panic and run around and pull your hair and grimace then you Google how to open your oven when it’s locked which you should’ve done when you moved in but you did not because who knew the damn thing was going to catch on fire certainly not you and now you think everything is going to catch on fire all the time and you walk around cautiously holding a pineapple in one hand a fire extinguisher in the other.


Can a pineapple explode? How do you even get in there? It seems precarious like opening a porcupine. I googled How To Tell If Your Pineapple Is Ripe and a woman in black trousers and a gold shimmer shirt told me to smell its bottom (I did) and squeeze it to see if it gave (it gave nothing and my fingers said stop.) The shimmery woman also told me to look for yellow and shiny but not too much yellow or too much shiny but maybe she was describing her own clothing.


There are daffodils blooming here on the island robins tweeting in the yard and snow geese flying in from Russia where they have winter villas.


Have you ever baked a huge russet potato and then wrapped it in a tea towel and put it in your bed as you slept to keep your body warm? I did this when I was Laura Ingalls in my old horrible rental when the slumlord refused to fix the furnace. Now I use potatoes to make gnocchi a fancypants pasta or to fry with an onion and a pepper and slather in ketchup. 


I have never slept with a pineapple in my bed. Things never got that weird.


From Radish King


When I was Laura Ingalls


The best parts of me were sewn shut.

I shaved my sister’s head.

We set fire to a can of paint in the neighbors garage.

I rolled my skirt high above my knees and got frostbite.

We were ordered to close our holes but we called them portals.

I stole sugar from the infirmary.

Ice cured everything and if it didn’t we stayed sick. 

We ate a barn owl for breakfast.

Lark drank poison and we just stood there.

Pa broke out the windows with his beak.

All our dogs were named  Jacky-Lame-O.

The Horses bled from their hooves. 




Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Shrove Tuesday



It’s Shrove Tuesday. Let us eat pancakes and drink to excess and bare our breasts to strangers and get all that pesky sinning out of the way so we can shrive and confess tomorrow. I am so tired of Christian Amerikkka. The incompetent men who run the whole shebang and their frightening wives with their hate spewing and righteousness and bunkers full of gelatinous bone broth and their eleven children and their "modesty" and their Husbands or Hubbys or He who is the actual Christ of their family and the wives who are only there to bow down and serve their holy men. We are not a Christian nation but imagine if an ad ran during the Super Bowl advertising a loving deity who was not Jesus. It makes me red in my soul not anger just emotional stigmata and wariness it makes me afraid. I want to run down the road yelling LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! 

There are seagulls in my yard fighting over a small bag of Cheetos. The seagulls are blood fems. My lilacs have formed tight little buds and it's still winter. My lilacs are dark fems. I bought a bunch of store tulips and one of them had two heads. Last week I dismantled one of my bookshelves and moved it into my bedroom leaving behind this pile on the piano bench in the library I like it because it looks like one of those artsy black and white pictures Serious Writers use for their author photos. Except for the can of Endust sticking up like the monolith you know the one with the apes which is hilarious because I despise dusting and usually I leave dust alone unless it starts eating something. 
 

In other news I went to the Country Store a couple days ago to buy canning lids and toilet bowl cleaner and I did this because I yam what I yam.



My Son The Photographer took the photo up top in New Orleans the year before Katrina. I love the utter gorgeousness of those colors and the allure of that great city.


Dear Darklings, thank you for reading. You are brave and curious creatures.


Friday, January 12, 2024

Pig and farm report

 


15° when I woke this morning after a night spent dreaming about Tom Cruise an oddball fascination of mine that apparently has never stopped even though I don’t think about him now in awake hours  

quiet in body and mind the delicious ease of morning    vegetable soup on the hob thick soft naan I made yesterday wrapped in a tea towel   lingering excitement of yesterday’s first brief snowfall   

before the house wakes I am 18 or 19 I am living on the mountain getting up to milk the goats standing still as a cloud settles down until it reaches my feet and hide them   it feels like floating 

None of this is writing writing it’s old person rambling I catch myself doing it every once in a while but I don’t care this thing that happens when I am flooded with memory   washed over a baptism every time a soft feminine fever   with bready angel wings yeast in the font   

now I am collecting bees in a jar at four my brother convincing me to crawl into the neighbor’s window to thieve whatever might interest four year old and five year children   now at 50 having a panic attack right before being slid into the terrifying hole of the mri birdcage snapped firmly over my head   now at 29 I’m camping on Camano Island with my toddler son building a fire in the morning thinking how lovely it would be to live here some day   now again at 19 on the mountain baking bread for 12 people on a frozen morning a cloud still floating in my body   now remembering in my seventh decade   now at 26 getting married but in love with someone else  

I understand Alice’s changing deeper than ever  here this morning with a cat on my lap and one at my feet in front of a propane fire and I know this is good and pure and right




Dear Tom Cruise’s Weird Teeth,

TomCruiseTomCatTommyTommy if you told me to put my hands down get in the car I would even if I just watched you kill a man I’d keep breathing if you asked me to be your pretty girl stickgirl with pattycake breasts gaze into your starey INTENSE HAZEL EYES do what you asked in spite of you being a level above CLEAR I’d be your stickgirl hide Klonopin and Lithium in gluten free vita-muffins that I’d bake from scratch with dairy free frosting to cure you from your twitchy needs all your polars and I’d never Blow I’d let you stick an E-meter in my head while I chanted TOMTOMTOM and waited for you to get level med-compliant you’d give me a Liberty Boat a Prada bag and a snowmobile I’d be your tall bendy stickgirl we’d become Universal Unitarians or Methodists no one would take our photos unless we asked your hair would find its gray I’d get thinner and thinner I’d stop eating for your love my Thetan to your Xenu no leaks your billion year contract stickgirl in magazines and interviews at every movie you make with popcorn extra grease in the middle and Twizzlers in Aspen your brand new stickgirl brand new religion bang bang hard rolling hips slap hands and fire you’ll love me like a sticky sugar-tit horse I’ll even do my own stunts except for those that involve crawling inside anything then we’ll go to Hollywood the Holyland and sail the boat on weekends.

Love,

Becky

Your Stickybun Stick Thetan Girl Princess










Friday, January 5, 2024

Pig and farm report king tides & A High Wind In Jamaica edition


I'm typing as fast as I can because the winds are at 30 mph currently and picking up which means power can blink out in a hot second. Sometimes I get tiny fierce headaches in the place where I cracked my head wide open. Today is one of those days but my headache may be caused by anxiety or rather ANXIETY the little death to those of us who suffer. Currently I have anxiety about my blood pressure which is too high even though I am doing my best not to add flakey maldon salt to my freshly buttered bread and when I test my blood pressure with the expensive wrist sphygmomanometer I’m pretty sure my blood pressure shoots up I because I'm so anxious about how high it will be. 

My other anxiety concerns my beautiful house. I've never owned a house before and I never believed I would because I was working three jobs just trying to make ends meet when I lived in Seattle. Then my horrible mother died and left me a pile of money bog knows why we hadn't spoken in 50 years guilt maybe but I bought this beautiful house I paid cash for it so she will never be able to unhouse me again. 

Sometimes I hear the new to me house creak and whistle and groan and I freak out and my son tells me I was traumatized from our old apartments and rentals and slumlords. I know this is true. King tides and high winds make me anxious because I live in a forest and trees are not permanent on this earth. I've seen trees dance and literally walk during earthquakes and I've seen my trees here bend and sway and do-si-do like nobody's business then lash and fling themselves against my windows. Two years ago a huge tree collapsed through my neighbor’s roof and she just left it there for months. I have enough science knowledge to know that the king tides do not cause the whipping wind storms but it sure looks that way sometimes.

I am cold even though the heat is turned up. Anxiety runs up and down my bones like Wiley Coyote with piano keys tinkling. Maybe I'm going blind. Maybe I have typhoon. Or dropsy. Or the gallons. I'm reading this huge biography of Beethoven. All his physicians with their weird and deadly cures. It makes me sad. Along with being deaf Beethoven was a drunk and most likely a drug addict (removed 80 empty medicine bottles from his room at his death) and he suffered terrible acne and sciatica and he was retaining water so his physicians drilled a hole in his stomach and stuck a hose in there and let his insides drain out into a bowl under his bed and they froze good german wine into ice cubes for him. He had pneumonia but it is certain he died from physicians not knowing what the hell they were doing. Just typing that makes me want to cry and so I will. 

I have had gut issues all my life stemming I believe from being punched regularly in the stomach by my sibling. When I was at the hospital bleeding all over the place from my head I told my assigned doctor that the reason I fainted was because of gut issues. I told the attending physician that all my physical problems stemmed from gut issues and the attending physician said Oh I believe you and then nothing more was said proving to me that he did not believe me.

I am a tumble down mess red in tooth and claw like the tumbling tumbleweed of yore my body a ghost town with dust and saloon doors flapping open and closed and my neck feels funny and I need to drink more water don't we all just need to drink more and more and more water until they have to cut a hole in our guts to let it stream out at our ends. But I am PRESENT I am inside my body. I am notating Jerusalem it is lovely inside my face a red sky sloop down weepweepweepweep stained beyond anything that might occur in the bathroom.

Jupiter sits on my chest and begs me to stay I will stay because she is the Magiker sleek and black the high priestess of this house and we are dizzy with mustard pricks. When my phone rings I drop it out of my hand. My throat is a yellow eyeglass. My lungs are wasps but in spite of all this I baked a goddamn gorgeous cake feral in its chocolately ganachey truffle goodness.

Thank you Darklings for reading this far. Love, Rebecca




Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Pig and farm report sourdough bread edition

 

I have always found it odd that people hide recipes or charge for them. But that’s just me. This is sharp cheddar and dill sourdough bread. I am giving you my recipe and I tried to add my method with times included and there are probably a few mistakes in there because it’s early and I am typing in bed on my iPad which is generally haphazard for me. The recipe and method are in a different font sorry about that. This bread is delicious and my personal favorite. Remember that yeast is a living thing and all times are subject to change because of temperatures and the baker’s experience and also the baker’s temperament. I tend to be impatient and learning how to bake sourdough bread has definitely helped me with that. When you start this loaf make sure you have a day to relax and get into it. You don’t want to be rushing. Read through the recipe a few times before you start. I suggest keeping a sheet of scrap paper to check where you are in the recipe. Especially beginning and end times. (Hmmm…did I start this bread at noon or at nine? You don’t think you will forget but it’s easy to get lost in the process. These days I have a  notebook dedicated to writing down each recipe and each bake). Ps. One of my lines got wonky as I was revising and. I don’t know how to fix it without going into the original document. Sorry about that. Let me know if you have any questions.



500 g flour 

300 g water

50 g dill pickle juice from the pickle jar

150 g chopped sharp cheddar

8 g chopped fresh dill

150 sourdough starter

11 kosher salt

25 grams olive oil


  1. 12 PM. Roughly combine the flour water pickle juice and starter. Cover and put it in a warm place for one hour. You don’t want to knead it at this point or mix it a lot. This is called fermentolyse. It is just to let the flour absorb as much moisture as it can before forming gluten. Don’t put the salt in yet!

  2. 1 PM. wet your hands and then add the salt by pinching it in, then scoop up the dough and slap it a few times on your work surface, rolling the the back of the dough over on front of the dough. This is called a French slap or a slap and fold. You can see the dough come together quickly when you use this method. What is happening is the gluten strands are breaking apart then quickly combining again and gaining strength. If you want to do the stretch and fold method here, of course you can. Cover the dough and put it in a warm place for another hour.

  3. 2 PM. Sprinkle or spray your work surface with a little bit of water. Don’t add any more flour at this point. Take the dough out of the bowl with wet hands and spread it out as flat as you can get it on your work surface in a rectangle shape taking care not to tear the dough. You kind of have to gently pull and coax it. Spread the chopped dill with wet fingers all over that surface, then put the chopped cheddar on top of it (just like you would butter and sugar when making cinnamon rolls) then carefully fold it up like a thick burrito. Put it back in the bowl. Cover it for 30 minutes or until the dough sort of relaxes out of its burrito shape. This is called laminating.

  4. 2:30 PM. At this point 2 1/2 hours have passed. I do coil folds 3 or 4 times with 30 minutes in between each one until there is enough gas and air in the dough to resist. Usually by four hours the dough is ready to shape.

  5. 4 PM. Time to pre-shape the dough. Sparsely flour your work surface, carefully dump the dough out, making sure you don’t rip it then gently pull the dough out into a small rectangle. Pull the sides together and pull the bottoms together and roll it into a ball. Cover it for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes you’re going to make that ball tighter by pushing it to the left and pulling it down toward the right while forming a ball then pushing it up and pulling it back. What you’re doing is creating surface tension so the loaf holds its shape when you bake it. This takes a little bit of practice but it’s easy once you get used to it. Now it’s time to place that ball seam side up into a banneton or tea towel lined colander or bowl.

  6. 4:30. Finish bulk proofing for 1&½ or 2 more hours, depending on how warm your house is. This is the bulk fermentation stage. Remember that this stage actually starts as soon as you mix your starter in with your flour so it starts at the beginning using this method. In my house bulk fermentation takes about 6 hours in the summer and 6 1/2 to 7 hours in the winter all together.

  7. 6PM-ish. Cover the dough and put it in your refrigerator overnight.

  8. 7AM. The next morning place an empty Dutch oven in your oven and preheat the oven and pot to 500°. Let the cooking vessel stay in the oven heating up for 30 minutes. This will give your loaf the desired spring up.

  9. Gently tip your dough right side up on a piece of parchment paper. Using a lame, razor blade or very sharp knife and gently but quickly slash the top of the loaf. 

  10. Very carefully remove the Dutch oven, remove the lid and place your dough into the pot, using the parchment paper as a sling. Please wear heat proof gloves doing this. I like to spray the dough with a little spray bottle at this point to help the spring.

  11. Bake at 500° for 20 minutes with the lid on for oven spring, then lower the heat to 450° and bake for another 20 minutes for color.

  12. Let the bread rest for two hours before you cut into it. If you can bear it.


Notes: I use a scale to measure everything. Weights are much more accurate than volumes. I add olive oil to make the crust softer. If you want a crispier crust don’t add it. I roughly chop the cheese up then put it in the freezer for 20 minutes before I add it to the dough. This keeps the cheese from completely disappearing into the dough. There are videos all over YouTube showing the methods I wrote about here. Use this valuable resource! 


Remember fail better and all sourdough fails taste amazing.


Let me know if you have any questions. I’ll answer them in the comments!