And Yet

Maybe the problem is that I put my faith in a ghost.

I compare every subsequent path to someone who left

Without saying goodbye

And yet

The frozen perfection of kindness

Is enough to bait my breath

And hold me in suspended animation for the rest

Of my days nights afternoons evers

And ever and ever and ever again.

And yet, never did I receive anything by way of an explanation.

Never did I gain closure, relief, the courtesy of definition

And yet.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

And I get no feeling of being seen

In quite

The way

That he saw me

Then.

 

I get no relief in being known

The way

He knew me

Then.

 

And now?

Now is not then.

I am worse

For wear

And I tear myself into quarters

Like papers caught in the act of concealment

Erasure

The consolation of knowing that drawing and then quartering up

A document

Renders it invisible.

 

I am your retraction.

 

The attraction of a frayed end

A complete lack of explanation

A hesitation when I asked, amid tears,

Recovering from a terrible betrayal

I reached for your hand across the kitchen table

I said

Why did you

And you gave me

No response

And yet.

And yet you were still the frozen image

Of perfection

Of understanding

Of seeing what no one could see

Your compassion

Your gaze

Your

Your

Your

And yet

Still yours

After all of this silence

This no explanation

Lack of an answer

I am in love with the frayed edges of a cut rope

Of a hypothetical

Of a once

Of a yet

Of an almost

 

I am still waiting for punctuation

 

 

 

OB, 4 Oct 2019

Pelmeni: The antidote for winter blues.

Since the shift of man from a nomadic lifestyle to that of a more settled one, few developments have been as monumental as the ones pertaining to food. At least, as far as I’m concerned. Step aside, invention of the wheel: I’m here to talk about dumplings.

It seems as though every major culture in the world has a variation of dumplings, from the humble momo of the Himalayas to the rich  (and ever-popular in Pittsburgh) Polish pierogies. As a culture that has assimilated every conqueror and turned them into cultural collaborators, Russians, of course, have their own version of dumpling: pelmeni.

These pelmeni are dearly loved in my family. A recipe that has been passed down through my paternal grandmother and employs her old-school techniques, I would recommend you only embark upon this if you have about four hours to kill. The process is slow, which is what makes it a popular wintertime recipe — when it’s cold outside and even the dogs don’t want to leave the porch to do their business, make some dough, put on your latest Netflix binge, and get to work. The nice thing about this recipe, however, is that it will yield approximately 200 little dumplings, able to be batched out in Ziploc bags and frozen in perfect serving sizes.

The filling:

2 lbs ground meat

You’ll need three kinds of meat for the best results, as well as the most traditional taste. In my family, we do a blend of turkey, beef, and lamb. It keeps the recipe fairly lean while giving the pelmeni a rich flavour.

One large onion or two medium ones, finely minced

One bunch parsley, finely minced

One bunch dill, finely minced

Between 1-4 cloves of garlic, depending on your personal feelings about it

One heaping teaspoon of black pepper

1.5 teaspoons of salt — if you’re a big fan of salt, use a little more, but I’ll talk later about how you can increase the salt taste when you’re cooking the final product

Mix all of the above ingredients in a large bowl, ideally by hand, to get the mixture fully incorporated. You can use a spatula if you’re weird about touching raw meat. Add roughly one cup of water — the mixture should be loose and kind of wet, the consistency of thick sour cream, in my mom’s words. [NOTE: For two pounds of meat, as in this recipe, you may end up using up to 2 cups of additional water, depending on the fat content of the meat you use. As you shape your pelmeni, and the meat mixture sits out during the process, it begins to take on water and thicken up again. Don’t be surprised if you have to add water to your meat mixture midway through the shaping process.]

Cover the mixture with plastic and set aside.

The dough:

In a separate bowl, or a stand mixer, you will use a tried and true technique my grandmother had passed down from her grandmother, which she taught to my mother, which my mother has taught me, and now I am imparting to you fine readers. Follow along closely, but I promise it’s not hard.

You’ll need 6 eggs for this mix. 2 eggs = 3 eggshells full of water. Don’t panic, this will all become very clear. As I mentioned, this is my paternal grandmother’s technique from the Ural Mountains. No measuring cups were available then, and much in the spirit of pinches, dashes, dabs, and handfuls, the “egg full of water” fits neatly into that style.

First, you’ll open up the end of an egg with a small, sharp knife, careful not to break the entire yolk.

Dump the egg contents out into the bowl. Retain the egg shell.

Now, fill the egg shell carefully with cold water so that it fills up entirely. This is an egg’s worth of water. You’ll fill it up and empty it into the bowl nine times, if you recall our earlier equation. Add the remaining 5 eggs into the mix at this time. Then, begin beating your egg and water mixture with a whisk. Fold in 5 cups of flour, one at a time.

Empty the dough onto a well-floured cutting board. Turn the dough in ample flour a few times so it’s easier to handle. Cut the dough in half and put the other half into a plastic freezer bag. Set aside at room temperature.

Working with the dough left on the cutting board, continue to work the dough in more flour. It should feel soft and fluffy in your hands, and neither stiff nor overly sticky. Cut this piece you’re working with into another three pieces, and set the other two aside, covered in plastic wrap or into another Ziploc or freezer bag so it doesn’t dry out. In the meantime, roll the piece on the cutting board into a long round sausage about 1” in diametre.

Cut the sausage into little segments, up to 1″ but no bigger. This will yield you small, manageable pelmeni that are easy to portion out and freeze, and yields a greater quantity in total.

Each little segment is then pinched into well-floured dough balls, covered in more flour, and set aside on the board. You can continue adding ample flour during the entire dough process, so nothing becomes sticky or difficult to manage.

Then, in batches, begin taking the dough pieces and shaping them into a rough circle. Continually flipping them in more flour, use a small rolling pin and roll each one out into a flat disc, flipping them in flour and rolling again, until you get a little round disc about 3″ in diametre.

 

Prepare a baking sheet with wax or parchment paper dusted with flour. Set a small bowl of cold water near your work station. This will be available to use just in case you are have trouble making the edges of your pelmeni stick. A simple dab of your fingers in the water, then onto the dough, will act as a glue. And remember, less is more — you don’t need a lot of water to make this work.

So, here’s how you put it all together:

Take one round disc into your left palm. With your right hand, spoon a little bit of the meat mixture and set it directly into the center of the disc, trying to keep it in one clean little gob. Use your fingers underneath the disc to get the last bits scraped off of the spoon, avoiding getting the meat on the edge of the disc.

Then, with your right hand, fold the disc in half over the meat in your left hand. Pinch the two sides together in the middle of the touching edges.

Starting at one side, pinch the corner and neatly “sew up” the edge from the corner to the center pinch. Repeat all the way around the other side, until you have a little closed up half-moon dumpling.

Now, take both corners and draw them toward each other, creating an overlap of the corners and pinching firmly into place.

Set the completed pilmeni in neat rows on your baking sheet, careful not to let them touch too much, lest they all stick together and ruin your hard work.

Essentially, you continue to repeat the first few steps until the dough is gone: take a section of dough, roll it into a long snake, cut the segments, shape them, round them, roll them out in more flour, construct your pelmeni, and place them on more lined and floured baking sheets.

Now, this is a very important step, because after all of this hard work, the worst thing of all would be to watch everything you’ve done fall apart. This is also where doing this in the dead of winter comes in handy, because none of us have freezers big enough to hold all of these little guys. You want them to sit in freezing temperatures for a MINIMUM of two hours. If you have a porch or balcony, or maybe an unheated attic in which you can open the winters and create a walk-in cooler, cover the sheets very lightly and carefully with plastic wrap or cheesecloth (very careful not to press on the dumplings) to protect from the outdoor elements and set them in the cold to firm up.

Assuming you aren’t feeding an army immediately after the freezing step of this process, the best thing to do is to portion out the pelmeni in little freezer bags. I like to do 10 to a bag, as that is a perfect serving size for one person. It’s also a nice round number and makes the counting more pleasant, if you’re a little bit obsessive like that.

When you’re ready to cook, serve, and eat, here’s what you’ll do:

Fill a pot with salted water. Here is where the additional salting is useful if you like things salty, or if you discover that you skimped on salt during the filling process. I do a generous pinch of salt, personally, but you do you. Add a bay leaf and a few black peppercorns. When the water comes to a rolling boil, toss in your desired portion. Once your pelmeni all float up to the surface (usually after about 10 minutes), set a timer for two more minutes of cooking. Drain, and serve with a splash of white vinegar, a pat of butter, and sour cream on the side, if desired. You can also finely chop some fresh dill and toss it on top. Lesser men have used ketchup, but keep that blasphemy far away from me.

Na Zdorovye!

 

 

 

 

Fermented Cabbage: Gut health, and drinking to your health

I’ve written about cabbage before, when I gave the recipe for golubtsi in an earlier blog post. I assure you now, cabbage will come up over and over again, as Russians, Jews, and the bulk of the Eastern European population have found every use under the sun for cabbage since its introduction from the Far East centuries ago.

Today’s recipe for fermented cabbage, known in Russian as kvashenaya kapusta, or popularly referred to in the States by the German “sauerkraut”, is a staple side dish on every Russian table. It can also be used in a variety of recipes, which we will cover in future posts, but this is your base on which to build. It’s also a popular zakuska after a toast and a shot of vodka. In the famous Russian comedic film, Shirly Mirly, the protagonist, a young man, goes to his alcoholic mother’s house where a series of miscommunications and mise en scenes force him to say, “Mama, kapusta [fermented cabbage, of which she has bucketfuls at all times] is great, but you need to keep some meat-based zakuski on hand, too.” It’s a phrase often repeated among Russians of my parents’ generation, and just one more piece of proof for fermented cabbage’s ubiquity in the culture.

Joking aside, cabbage has been known as a homeopathic cure for stomach and intestinal issues. In its fermented state, it becomes an immensely effective probiotic, regulating the good bacteria in your digestive system.

WARNING: Health professionals would have me tell you that you must take great care making this at home, since improper fermentation can lead to a bad case of food poisoning, but if you follow the recipe below and its proportions closely and carefully, I have a lot of trouble believing you’ll run into any problems. I’ve been eating homemade kvashenaya kapusta literally since I was two years old and have not been sick from it once.

The recipe:

8-10 tbs salt

4 tsp sugar

4-6 cups of carrot, finely grated

4 whole LARGE green cabbage heads, finely chopped [NOTE: avoid cutting the core of the cabbage or the top leaves into the mix, as they can be tougher and more difficult to break up and ferment.] 

This is a recipe done in repetitive batches . It requires some arm and hand strength, so in a way you shouldn’t be surprised that this process comes from country women in Russia, arguably one of the toughest and most self-sufficient group of ladies around.

You’ll need a very large stainless steel or enameled pot — the one my mom uses is 15 liters, or about 4 gallons. This is where you will build your fermenting layers. I also recommend setting it on a kitchen chair, so the physical process of mashing the cabbage is easier on your arms and shoulders. Put a cloth down to protect your upholstery, with the pot on top. Here is where you’ll start.

Into the pot you will place: one head of cabbage, chopped, one cup of grated carrot, one teaspoon of sugar and 2-3 tablespoons of coarse or kosher salt sprinkled on top.

Then begin the process of mixing it together and mashing it, like so:

Make sure you’re getting every handful of cabbage and crushing it lightly to break up the plant cell walls.  The goal is to get the cabbage pliable and receptive to taking on the salt and sugar, so that eventually it starts to give juice. You don’t need to crush it to the point where it becomes like wet rope — remember, you still want a little bit of crunch when you bite into it a week from now.

Once you’ve gone through the entire batch in the pot, smooth the surface as much as you can with your hands and use your knuckles to push each square inch into the bottom of the pot. Try not to leave any air in the space between the crushed cabbage leaves; this will allow your fermentation to be more even.

With the next batch, repeat the initial step as before, directly on top of the smashed-down first layer. Place your next batch of cabbage, carrots, salt and sugar directly on top of this mashed surface, and turn and crush this fresh layer on its own, WITHOUT incorporating the pressed-down first layer. When finished, push this layer down with your knuckles directly on top of the first one. Once again, be mindful of air pockets and spaces.

Repeat this step two more times until you’ve gone through all of your cabbage and carrots. NOTE: If this yield is overwhelming and you would like to make less than what this recipe calls for, then only do the mixing and mashing batch step once, or twice, or however many or few times you like. We go big in this family, so our batches are always enough to feed a family for dinner with plenty left over.

Finally, place a dinner plate on top of your cabbage, with at least five pounds of weight on top. You can use a brick, a free weight, or a big rock like the kind my mother stole from a real estate office’s landscaping 20 years ago and uses to this day. Go rogue — I won’t tell. Last, you cover this weighed-down plate and the pot with a layer of cheesecloth. It cannot be plastic wrap! The cabbage must have air coming through the cloth in order for the ferment to be successful.

Set this pot in your kitchen and allow it to sit in room temperature (do not allow any warmer than that) for 7 to 10 days*. Every day, during this time, take off the cheesecloth, plate, and weight, take a stick (a long dowel rod from a lumber or home improvement store would do nicely, but feel free to improvise like my family did by creating your own) and poke 10-15 holes in the cabbage, making sure to get all the way to the bottom of the pot. This releases the gases created during the process and prevents the cabbage from becoming bitter in taste at the end of the process.

*The amount of days typically depends on the time of year — wintertime might extend the process, whereas a particularly hot summer could yield you great results in a week flat. Feel free to taste the cabbage any time you uncover it to poke holes in the mix to see how it’s going.

Once your batch has been completed, batch it out in containers, covering each batch with the juices accumulated at the bottom of the pot. You MUST refrigerate at this point in order to vastly slow the fermentation process, otherwise the batches will quickly become too salty to consume. The fermented cabbage can sit in your fridge for up to three months.

So how do you serve it? As I stated in the intro, this is a great side dish for the table. When serving, mix it with sunflower or olive oil, a little white vinegar, a sprinkle of sugar, and finely chopped green onion or dill. Dill is a much-loved herb in Russian cuisine, so for maximum authenticity, that’s what I recommend. Don’t do this in the containers ahead of time — it tastes best when these things are added fresh and set on the table up to an hour ahead of mealtime.

And always remember, if your friends are on you about the number of shots you’ve taken, remind them that you’re counteracting the damage by using the probiotic-rich kapusta as your zakuska. Na zdorovye!

 

 

 

 

Country mouse.

I took the dogs for a walk this morning since the extreme heat and humidity have been brutal in the last week — Dobermans don’t do well with extreme heat or cold, due to their lack of undercoat. Today promises rain and even as I write this, the room has darkened perceptibly and now, just now, the rain has begun to fall.

On our walks through Elliott we normally take the road to the top of the hill, turn right, and approach the Overlook. It’s funny to live in a working-class neighbourhood where tourism is minimal and the buildings are 95% residential because no one goes up to the Overlook, not even on a sunny Saturday morning, and it’s never overrun and over-trafficked like Mount Washington. So, the dogs and I journey up that way and we run into a couple of people at most — sometimes they want to pet the dogs and greet them, other times I hear a quiet murmur as we pass: “Beautiful dogs,” or “I think those are dobermans.”

On our way back, I take a parallel road down and I nearly always lead them down Comstock Way, a steep alleyway that promises a scenic view of numerous backyards. Ever since I moved here just over a year ago with Mishka, I discovered a piece of property with a substantial farming space at the back edge of the property abutting the alley, surrounded by deer fence and always abundant with plant life. After I got Daria, I kept making it a point to walk through the same alley. Sometimes we would run into a cat, but mostly the street is silent, to the point where we’ve never even interrupted a car on its descent or climb.

Today was different — as I passed my favourite urban farm property, I saw a man spraying the plants. “Good morning,” he called as we passed. “Good morning,” I said, and stopped to tell him I always marvel at his property when I pass and that I make a point of taking Comstock just to see it. This turned into a lively conversation of about 20 minutes. I learned a lot from Tony Reiss, beyond his succinct German name. He, like most of the residents I’ve been running into in Elliott, has lived here for most of his life. He and his parents started their life as a family on 281 Advent which is just a few blocks away from where we stood. He’s 65, single, and an only child by the gist of the conversation, which was that his parents had him late in life, and he spent his adult years taking care of them before they passed, so that he never had time to settle down and have a family of his own. He keeps a cat for company.

We talked about the beauty of nature and how people my age — and hell, people his age — don’t garden, don’t spend time outside anymore. Tony lamented that they all sit inside air conditioned buildings at home and at work and when it comes time to do something outside, the excuse is, “It’s too hot outside,” and in the winter, “It’s too cold outside.” I agreed wholeheartedly. When I talked to him about what I grew and how much of it I had, my pumpkin patch, my squash plants, my abundant tomatoes, he kept laughing and shaking his head and saying, “If only you were 30 years older, or I was 30 years younger,” and I said, “It’s funny how life works, isn’t it.” He has 35 years on me to know that better than I do.

Tony taught me to put a small handful of Epsom salt into a spray bottle filled with water, and to use it on my plants to give them a boost when they are growing. He told me to bury four or five matchsticks in the ground around my seeds to increase the magnesium in the soil. We talked about hardy greens for the 98 degree weather we’re having and he said, “Black seeded Simpsons,” and for green beans to keep them from growing too tall, I could instead plant the Kentucky bush varietal, and keep the beans low to the ground and easier to manage. When we talked about my budding pumpkin patch, he told that when he was still a kid, his next-door neighbour planted a pumpkin vine down by his car in the driveway, and the vine grew all the way up to the back doorstep before it produced a pumpkin — right on the very end.

While we were discussing the garden and all the things Tony used to grow versus the things he cut down, the groundhogs ate, the deer tore through, he kept saying, “Next year, if I’m still alive then,” and I found myself thinking, what could he possibly have to worry about? If he’s 65 he’s got loads of years left, and if he’s outside all the time, planting in his garden, eating the fruits of his labour and presumably not drinking or smoking himself into an early grave, he can stick around for a while yet. Before we parted, he joked that in thirty years, if I don’t have anybody, I can come look him up if he’s still kicking. Amazing that no matter how old a man gets, he perks right up at the attention of a woman. That, if nothing else, will keep him alive and well.

I sit writing this at my kitchen table, the windows wide open to let the cool rainy air into the house, a basket of ripe tomatoes in front of me. I talked to Tony about my lifelong dream of retiring to the country — sell everything off and buy a few acres in Kittanning somewhere, have 20 chickens, a pig, some goats, maybe even a horse. Of course I’d still have Dobermans. It breaks my heart that I’m a rarity. Tony called me a country girl when we spoke. I found myself beaming with pride despite myself. I said, “That’s how I was raised.” I’ll go visit him when my yellow squash has matured — I’ll bring him a few vegetables and we can sit outside in the sun and talk about the beauty of nature.

 

On depression.

I feel like the pathetic definition of a first world problem today. I’m leaving for Paris tonight, I’m getting a week off of work with no conflicts, I have money saved up to pay for everything while my mother and I are there, and yet, I’ve been burdened with immeasurable sadness and crippling anxiety for the last four days.

Morgan left for Russia on Wednesday morning and I’ve been heartbroken over his absence since the day before the flight, and it seems my anxiety has only mounted since then. I feel deeply lonely in a way I haven’t in a long time. Mishka is picking up on the fact that not only am I not feeling right, but I’m also leaving for a week. I had to hand-feed him his breakfast this morning because he was too depressed to muster an appetite.

The weather has been hot all week, punctuated with moody thunderstorms — my favourite kind of climate — and I can’t even smile about that. I go outside to sit in the sun to conjure up some vitamin D, some recourse for my depression, and it doesn’t help. I print images to start a new drawing in the studio and once I’m done printing my references, I lose the will to climb the stairs to the attic and begin work.

I had a nightmare about D the day Morgan left. I didn’t realise how much I unconsciously view him as my protector until this nightmare occurred in the wake of his leaving the country. In the dream, there was some kind of party taking place at my home, and it was evening. I turned and D was climbing the stairs to where I stood. I yelled at him, pushed him, tried to make him leave. The dogs were not around for some reason. I understood that D had fooled my parents into trusting him, and was now standing in front of me, half in denial, half in mocking condescension, and told me it was inevitable that we would get back together. What did I ever do to you? he asked me, and in the dream, I couldn’t remember my list of grievances, only my anger and my intense fear. I woke with my heart pounding out of my chest. It took me an hour to come out of my dream-state, even as I walked around the house and interacted with my parents and checked my phone.

The following night I had a nightmare that I had some type of auto-immune disease, that would give me months or only several years to live. The only symptoms I had were fatigue and heart palpitations. I placed my hand on my chest and felt my heart thumping rapidly under my palm. Later, I was trying to find information on a young man that also had the disease, but discovered that in despair he had killed himself after receiving his diagnosis. In the dream I contemplated keeping it a secret from my parents so that they could spend my last days with me without the sadness and urgency that the knowledge of my illness would bring.

I can’t shake my heartache, my anxiety, or the fatigue that follows emotional exhaustion, no matter what I do. I’m so sad I almost don’t want to go to Paris anymore. The only thing I want to do is curl up in a dark room and stop moving for a week. And the sense of guilt that prevails as a result of these feelings — why can’t I snap out of it? I’m so fortunate to be able to go on a trip like this; I have so much to be thankful for — is almost too much to bear, restarting the cycle of guilt and anxiety.

I thought writing about this would ease my conscience and the burden on my heart but it’s only succeeded in helping me state the facts coherently. The feelings are still there.

Andrew.

When I was in college, I had a friend named Andrew who lived in a Squirrel Hill apartment with hardwood floors and two little cats. There was a little closed-up fireplace in the bedroom where he created a small pagan altar, where Ganesh and Kali and the incense burner lived in dusty harmony. We sat in front of this altar once at an absurd hour of the night, talking about spirits and gods and regular people just like us. The cats darted their triangular heads around the room as though following a rubber bouncy ball pinging off of every part of the walls and ceiling. “They can see the spirits,” Andrew would say, before taking a sip of his tea and uncrossing and recrossing his legs under him. He always wore all black — button down shirt, slacks, leather belt, and thick black men’s socks — it was his daily uniform. In the summertime, like on that night, he would remove his socks, slowly, carefully, partway through the night, curling them like a cotton accordion down his feet as they came to reveal his careful, clean feet, olive-skinned, with soles softer than mine. I never consciously watched this practice but as I remember him now in that room, that detail comes to mind, and it makes him more human, more real.

We haven’t spoken in years, and in fact have lost touch in the most real sense of the term, an interesting accomplishment in the age of social media. But then, I’ve deleted my Facebook, and removed myself from most cliques I used to know, and therefore have not the slightest connection to whom I could reach out and ask, “Is Andrew doing well?”

We used to text late into the night when we weren’t spending time together; he would tell me stories of the gods and deities and occasionally sprinkle this spiritual academia with references to modern life, to the base and banal, with such a casual air that I was forced to laugh at the absurdity. Watching Andrew come down from the clouds and join us mere mortals was an experience. Once we went to a mutual friend’s house with uncooked sheep’s brains and a collection of spices in a plastic Giant Eagle bag, and Andrew cooked for us while we smoked rose-flavoured shisha out of a tarnished hookah and watched Imani and Jonas play chess. (I still have a sketch somewhere of the two of them bent over the wooden board, proof of an altogether unique and lovely night that now seems relegated to the pages of made-up magic).

When the brains were cooked, Andrew prayed in Sanskrit over the meal and we all took turns dipping and twirling our fork tines in the split skull of the beast. I wondered idly if we had participated in some Satanic ritual without knowing it, then shrugged it off as I glanced at Andrew grinning impishly over our feast. He was diminutive, kind, and sensitive, a child of July, and his black curly hair only amplified his childish wonder at the world. A man who would come to my apartment and pet my cats and tell me that they knew the great mysteries of the universe could not possibly have dealings with the devil, only understand that there are grey areas in the world, ones where good and evil were not cut down the middle. Throwing the mysterious creatures of the in-between casually into one bin or another, in Andrew’s mind, was like ascribing morality to the weather.

We drifted apart when we became too close, something that happens when two people decide to share 100 percent of themselves with another human, one as equally fragile, flawed, judgmental, and terrified as the rest. I tried to make plans with him once, and not wanting to say no to anyone else who had asked me to see them that night (of which there were a few — my novelty in this clique led everyone to be fascinated by the new toy, that is, me; I was not accustomed to popularity of any kind so I did not know how to pick and choose), I kept putting off the time of our meeting. In trying not to hurt anyone’s feelings, I hurt his, but he had the pride and self-worth of a man several years older than the idiot twenty-year-old unable to commit to him now, and said, “No. Let’s not hang out tonight. It’s clear I’m not a priority for you.” I spent the next few days apologising to him profusely, and we saw each other again since that night, but it was never the same. The part of himself he had laid bare for me to experience had been injured, despite my best intentions. As is the custom for any person with low self-esteem who suddenly begins to receive attention, I did not look discerningly at the people who were asking for my time and my companionship. I chose quantity and betrayed Andrew in a momentous and indelible way.

Over the years that followed, likely to temper my grief at losing a dear friend, I convinced myself he was irrevocably flawed in all the ways that should have prevented me from continuing a friendship, even though all of these things were, of course, not true, and entirely unfair. Even now, a niggling detail of our rift tickles my memory, but I can’t seem to conjure it to the fore and see what it is. I am convinced it is some other terrible way I betrayed him in addition to that night, or perhaps alongside it, but my early-twenties conscience did too well a job in burying it deeply enough that it would not rise up again. There are many instances like this, I am sure, in which I lied to myself about the ways I discarded others. Self-preservation ensured that I would not go mad with guilt and so set in motion the curation of a graveyard with stone slabs so heavy no one could resurrect the bad memories and bad choices, even if they desperately wanted to.

I wish there was someone I could turn to and ask, “How is Andrew doing? Is he okay?” but I’m convinced he is happy and well wherever he is. He had a beautiful heart with strong self-will and self-respect to couple it, and I’m sure that it has carried him far. I don’t know who he is anymore. He once said to me, while I was lamenting over a person who had been duplicitous with me, “We never really know each other. We only know our perception of that person.” And perhaps we wouldn’t even recognise each other today, in body or in mind. But I am convinced, that on those late-late, midnight-into-dawn nights, we knew each other truly and wholly. And I am a better person for having seen into his heart and watching the constellations of his spirit move across his inner night. I hope that for him, my betrayals like a handful of small, sharp straight pins, faded in time, and I became a fond memory, rather than a headstone in his own graveyard of thoughts and remembrances.

Writer’s blocked.

Loneliness isn’t something I’ve felt in a long time. After my PTSD in the fall, I self-isolated and was self-destructive and angry and hopeless, but I never felt lonely. I wanted — however negative the source of this desire — to be alone, for everyone to stop calling me, for everyone to go away. So, when I began to feel loneliness in the last few days, I didn’t know whether to treat it as another problem to heal through therapy/introspection/etc or if it was a sign that I am actually, truly healing from abuse and fear at this point. A desire to reach out and see and speak to people I trust, a desire to forge new friendships, is it desperation or is it a good sign? I’ve stopped being able to hear my own instincts in the last year.

Mercifully, winter was mild this year, and passed through quickly. Spring has been a true spring — rainy and grey for days at a time, punctuated with spurts of sunshine and soft breezes promising the onset of summer. My hyacinths and daffodils bloomed and wilted over a month ago. I threw wildflower seed liberally over every flowerbed and am now waiting impatiently to see the new growth bloom with flowers. I walk through the garden every few days and whisper to the bright green shoots and pregnant lily buds, the tiny green black currant berries and the slow, shy edamame sprouts, encouraging them and gently touching every new leaf with the tips of my fingers.

The woodpecker I hear every day in the trees across the paper street has migrated to the top of the light post in front of my house. He tap-tap-tap-tap-taps, stops, plucks at an errant grub, then re-commences tapping, always in the same pattern, the same tempo. I wonder if it’s instinct or a conscious pattern recognition, a savant percussionist with spotted black and white wings and sturdy beak. I made to question him but he barely glanced down into my yard before flying away. I called my dad the second day that I saw him. “I made a new friend in the neighbourhood,” I said. Most of my friends these days don’t speak much, but they bring me a different kind of comfort. Surrounded by plants and animals, I think less, worry less; I am more present in the moment. For a while I told myself I would finally cultivate within myself the art of meditation. Padding quietly through my garden one morning, I realised I had already achieved it, in my own humble way.

I keep contemplating starting a painting, a drawing, a sculpture, a poem, and then something halts me in my path and I step away and do nothing. I can’t pinpoint the source of my intimidation, my unwillingness to begin. I would blame it on a lack of inspiration but my dreams have been so vivid, I feel as though the other world is screaming at me for my lack of productivity. Here are some ideas, the voices spit, irritated. Do something, damn it. But my hands stiffen with fear and lines come out clumsy, artless; my articulation falls away from my tongue and I’m left with something akin to wooden blocks in my throat instead of the elegant ribbon of prose that used to flow from my lips.

A while back, when I stopped making art, I changed careers, changed the people I surrounded myself with with the exception of a close personal few, sought anonymity so that no one I knew or spoke to knew or remembered that I am, was, an artist. I did it so that the pressure would come off of me to produce something of worth. I achieved that anonymity. No one around asks me anymore how my work is coming, and I am free to make art without deadline or nagging questions. But now, what is the excuse for not creating? I pour so much love and energy into my plants and my flowers, into keeping my house clean, into the dishes I cook in my robin-blue kitchen. What of paper, what of ink, what of wood or stone or song? These mediums have sat in a layer of dust for too long. I wish I knew what it would take to break away from my own fear of failure.

For Alex.

I had lunch with Alex today at Nicky’s Thai on Western. It rained last night but it’s been a windy, lovely 70 degrees all afternoon. We ate and talked about how he just completed his PhD and is taking a job in Boston. He’s leaving May 1st. It’s the end of an era.

Alex has been in Pittsburgh for almost 12 years — it would be 12 if he had plans to stay through August. We have been friends that entire time — thick as thieves from the beginning. Alex has been the most steadfast and true friend I could have ever asked for, from taking museum trips with me and spending hours in hookah bars and tea shops, talking about philosophy and science and pop music and sex and funny anecdotes, to the dark days, when I would break down in what I now know were terrible anxiety attacks and he would come over to find me huddled on the cheap linoleum of my old apartment kitchen and put his arms around me and squeeze me tight until I could find even breaths again.

Alex is an immensely rational, logical, and skeptical person: a true scientist. BUt he never questioned or ridiculed my vivid and sometimes clairvoyant dreams, never told me to get over myself when I was struggling emotionally. I told him once of a dream I had in which, during a winter’s night, we pulled a windowless van into a suburban cul de sac and began to break into people’s houses through their basement windows. In one of the basements was spool upon spool of yards of rich fabrics, which we unrolled and spread out between us like a picnic blanket to examine. There were ones deep as the sky, studded with twinkling stars; others were deep purple and had red clouds billowing on them like the watery edges of galaxies. We were going to make the sky together.

This dream was a beautiful description of the lifeblood of our bond: our pursuit and appreciation of beauty in nature and in each other. It has stayed with me with vivid clarity all of these years, and will stay with me into old age.

I have lost so much and so many over the last twelve months: a painful and I’m sure, necessary, part of my growth. When you cut down a tree you can see rings that are fat and full among the thinner ones. This, I’m sure, while a wonderful process of growth for the tree, can also be painful, causing bark to splinter and crack, the way stretchmarks line the body of a pregnant woman. This was a fat-ring period of my life. I know I can and will never return to the person I was before last March, but even though I at times miss her, I don’t want to look back. I would rather run headlong into unknown mountains and forests than to be reduced to a pillar of salt. As far as I know, salt has no growth rings.

Alex is a part of my life and always will be, but the pain is in knowing the physical immediacy of his presence will no longer be there. He is moving miles away, and seeing each other will require adjusting schedules, saving money, buying bus or plane tickets, planning a budget. No longer will I be able to catch him on a night we are both free and invite him over for leftovers and wine, or go to his house to smoke weed and play with Carl, his orange tabby, while we watch Samurai Champloo or Adventure Time or French films. That era has passed and it breaks my heart to think that maybe I didn’t appreciate it while I had it, even though he had steeled me for years to the fact that after he completed his PhD, there would be no work in this city challenging or lucrative enough for his level of knowledge and expertise. I knew that for years and lightheartedly lamented it, even while I pushed through those bad thoughts and changed the subject for my own sake.

I have no regrets, however — what kind of a life is that, to be mired in the fear of what you already know you can never change? — and I’m sincerely happy for his next step in life. In a matter of months, his girlfriend will be joining him in Boston, and he will be building a life for himself, a life of meaning and fulfillment. How could I want anything else for someone who will always mean the world to me?

Of heroes and cowards.

If you accept the reality that the vast majority of the people you know will let you down, you will probably live a much easier life. Vast majority is probably a conservative estimate: most of the people you know are cowards. The problem with our society is that, in many ways, we have become too civilised — we hide behind paperwork and legalities, while we save our barbarism for things we are afraid of, which is why there are so many hate crimes and legalised injustices, from the marginalisation of the LGBT community to housing discrimination against people of colour. But when it comes to defending a woman from the constant and consistent psychological abuse of a past partner, or barring a belligerently racist person from entering your establishment, things like that — we pull up all kinds of laws and decrees that protect those people.

“There isn’t anything I can do.”

“My hands are tied.”

“I would say something but it would hurt my reputation.”

“People will think the wrong thing if I stand up and speak out now.”

We have the president we deserve. We voted with our cowardice. We abstained from voting for the other side by pretending to hide behind our lofty idealism, or we voted for the guy we have with our ignorance and fear and hatred.

2016 was the year that I watched every single person I reached out to walk away from me. And it’s true that no one owes me a goddamn thing — I’m not Mother Teresa, I don’t deserve a medal or undying loyalty or brave acts, do I? — but it would have been nice to watch someone, anyone, stand up for me and say, “You are in pain because someone destroyed you. You didn’t deserve that. It’s okay to feel the way that you feel. You are justified.”

I spent the last half of 2016 waiting for vindication that never came. The law didn’t help me, my friends didn’t help me, I isolated myself in my big house and the smallest handful of people attempted to give a shit, but not really. The only person who would actually do something huge and monumental to ensure that I never have to be afraid again is my dad. And the irony there is that no law would stop him. So, to protect him from being punished later for his valiance, I shut up and kept my fears and my rage to myself. Told him the courts took care of it, that he wouldn’t dare come near me again.

And now he’s winning again. And everyone in the only community I ever felt I belonged to, well, they stepped aside and let him pass. Welcomed him with open arms, essentially. My former friends, people I learned with and partied with and confided in and worked alongside. He’s a fairly intelligent sociopath who can put on a button-down and look really polite and respectful and play the role of the sane one in the argument. And somehow I have to hold it together, because if I choose to fall apart and drink all day and skip work and injure myself, I will look like the insane one. I will be Ophelia, and everyone will look at me with scorn or pity or both, and no one will ever talk about how he held the weapon and how a monster lives inside of him.

I pray for his destruction every day. I know it’s not my place to injure another person, much less take a life, but the sound of his name, his presence in a room, causes me to fall to pieces. And I wonder how many days until I’m completely undone. It’s an arms race to the death.

Clockwork’s Alex never learned to be good. He only learned to be un-bad. The court uses the feeblest conditioning to deter criminals, but were the laws dropped for even a second, every criminal would return to his ways. No one teaches them how to be human. They only lock away the monster so they don’t have to address the looming darkness. Stop gaps. Ineffectual systems. They are creatures of habit and of hatred, opportunism. Vultures.

In the fairy tales, the monster is destroyed, and good prevails. Then you grow up and find that the world is full of monsters, and the cowards they’ve enslaved. The brave are ostracised and reviled.

He has taken so much. But he will never take my voice again. I’m here. I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep using my voice. I swear it. I was quiet for too long.

 

Resolutions.

Goals for 2017:

Stop giving a fuck about things that annoy, give more fucks about things that bring joy. Footnote: this applies to people as well. If you do not enrich me, don’t expect to see much of me in person or on your social media accounts. Pointless activities: internet-stalking exes, talking at length about what a worthless piece of shit Trump is, attending social events simply because I’m afraid said person will think I hate them if I don’t (I don’t — hating someone requires time and energy and therefore fucks to give).

Budget better. Drink less (at least in public) in order to be able to afford to budget better. Find a book to teach me to budget better. Don’t buy shit I don’t need — however, definitely continue to buy more expensive things I consider investments, when aforementioned budget allows.

Read more. Even if just ten minutes or three pages a day. Rekindle my love affair with the printed word. Work through the Towering Guilt Stack of books I’ve ordered in the last year.

Believe that I am enough. Pretty enough, fit enough, smart enough, capable enough, fearless enough, kind enough. Believe this and never stop.

Bury my ghosts. This is the same resolution I make every year, but this year, I put the last tangible reminders of Garrett in a small wooden box and intend to bury it in the woods somewhere. But the lesser ghosts, the older ghosts, the angry ones, the banshees of regret who wail in my ear at moments of weakness — be gone, all of you. Rest.

Good riddance, 2016. You were the hardest year of my life. I’m stronger than I ever was before. I got this.