Intermission Over.

chili oil. not related to pie.

Today is a very important day.

Today is the first day I have made a gluten free pie crust that actually did exactly what it was supposed to.

Today is the first day I follow all the directions on the recipe because I do not have to 'get creative' to make it work.

Today is not the first day I have made excellent crust.

strawberries for pie

all the flours for gluten free crust

It is however the first day which I find myself actually wanting to use a rolling pin. And that, that is worth celebrating.








I wrote the above words and took these photos *last* Saturday...and it was an important day. But I really do not know what I was building up to with them. I had an idea of giving reasons for why I don't have a food blog and I probably was thinking about how all of my creativity goes into food these days. This morning's invention in my not awake but not asleep state being chocolate chip pie crust. In the shower, I contemplated putting berries into banana bread. Raspberry banana bread. That's where it's at. With chocolate. Or Nutella. Or just with butter.

However, I am not the sort that should start a food blog on my own. I am easily distracted. To take photos AND write AND cook is asking too much. You will notice that I have no photo of my finished pie. I forgot. In the birthday-ing and the eating, I forgot. Some processes should not be interrupted for photos. Sometimes photography is the natural outcome of the way you live and watching the world around you. But sometimes, sometimes photography gets in the way of the living. You begin seeing so much, begin saving so much seeing for later...that you hardly have any at the time. I don't like that.

Anyway, I've lost myself again. I will be found in the pages of my newest endeavor: Radical Hospitality. It is a book which is both validating so much of what I have always wished I could express and challenging me to be a bigger and better person than I am right now. Why can't healthy things feel only exciting and wonderful? I have growing pains already which only mildly encroach upon the excitement.

It is a new time of life for sure. And soon, very soon, I will be heading home...except, everything is different. Therefore, there will likely be the requisite musing about home and place and people about ... two or three weeks from now. For now, I leave this virtual page with two quotes. One which has followed me from a poet I heard earlier today: "Becoming a person who does not do things just because I can."

I do not yet know its significance in my life and ponderings but for now, it has gentle muse-shaped claws which are hanging on until I have the space to think about it. I think it is related to becoming someone who is free, who thinks enough about what they do and who knows themself well enough with honesty that they are not subject everything and anything which makes a demand of them. Life is so much more than keeping other people happy.

And the second, from Ray Bradbury since he passed away this week and there are few people who I would  love to spend a day, or a lifetime, trying to see the world in the eyes and the shoes that he did. I love the way he looked at and described life.


“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Ok, and a third:

“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Sometimes it's better not to rationalize what you feel.

From a time before college. A time before Portland. A time before living on my own. ... A time before 'growing up' meant doing things you did not really want to do. A time before I knew what I would get to do that was never really planned. Before bungee jumping and food allergies. Before I was finally the one to move away. A time before airplanes and a boyfriend. A time before...now. A time no less simple or uncomplicated. Just, before.

This is a story I am sure to rewrite again and again until I find exactly what I am trying to say.

I have my mother to blame for my love of flowers,
which is not such a dark thing to blame your  mother for.
It is most definitely her fault though. 
I remember, summers at the farmer’s market.
Always waiting until we were ready to leave 
to go to the vendor we had asked to save our favorites.
It did not occur to me then 
that we did not have money for flowers
--but she bought them anyway. 
I learned from her
to love summers and flowers;
and that beauty is worth the price you pay.
At least, it is worth it for flowers
--More than makeup or high heels.
Flowers cause no pain.
And so I learned to love those summers, 
just us girls: my sister and my mother and I,
between my father and my stepfather,
between one school year and the next,
deep in that place of rest
between one remembered event and another.
It is a gentle space
too quickly unappreciated
for its lack of busyness 
and for its brevity.

Unofficial Title: [Something New This Way Comes]

I want to write
but it has been such a long time.
All of the words try to come out
ahead of each other.
As you can imagine,
this makes communication difficult.
Pretty soon, there is no message.
Just me breathing in so many words.
My lungs become jealous for Oxygen
--and that’s not fair because, well,
I need both.
And yet I get neither.
I guess I am out of practice.
I always forget how clumsy practice can be,
even for simplicities like breathing.
Breathe before you speak.
Or risk running before you can yet walk.

It's been a long time.

Luck Runs Out

I am not a lucky person by my own standards or anyone that I know. I don't find $100 folded up on the ground when I need money...or even $5. My health is not a constant. When I don't study for tests, I don't pull A's with made up elegance. No pots of gold. No four leaf clovers. The wishes I make on stars, birthday candles, eye lashes, and in tunnels are all still in the works if they are coming at all.

On the other hand, I suffer from no great amount of bad luck. The mirrors remain in tact. The things I do on Friday the 13th prosper. Black cats are ... just like white cats except, well, black. And so on.

But it takes a lot more than luck to get by. Luck runs out. It leaves. It wears thin. It turns sour. And yet... yet I continue to make it. Despite all of the "almosts" and close calls that have filled the pages of my life daily, I am still here and still heading into some kind of future. It bewilders me. It is not by my amazingly strong will either. Many a time my stubborn will has been determined to go in what turns out to be the wrong direction.

I think it is called it blessing. I think it is named grace.
...I think it makes me want to paint again.

And I would. But I cannot yet breathe. My lungs are full of water ...or mud. Better yet, my lungs are vacuumed shut and emptied. Yes, that is the feeling. And I keep wondering if I will ever breathe again. Oxygen would be so sweet. Like sugar. Or maybe less sweet and more like fine salt. Or cold. Like snowflakes. I forget just now. What's worse is I feel myself arguing against it. "If I let myself breathe again, it will consume me for the rest of my life."

But I forget how naturally it comes. It does not distract from the rest of life. It is no threat. So what if it consumes my life? Without it, there is no inhale.exhale. rhythm. Without it, I am certain to forget how easily luck runs out and how gently grace finds you when you stop running.

Real Quick:

...a reading from Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Gollins Pratt. I found this in a book I randomly picked up while I was babysitting a sleeping child.

"When we speak of hospitality we are always addressing issues of inclusion and exclusion. Each of us makes choices about who will and who will not be included in our lives...Issues of inclusion and exclusion, while personal, are not just personal. Our entire culture excludes many people. If you are in a wheelchair, for example, you are excluded because there are places you can't go. If you are very young, if you are very old, you are excluded... Hospitality has an inescapable moral dimension to it... It is an issue involving what it means to be human. All of our talk about hospitable openness doesn't mean anything as long as some people continue to be tossed aside...

"But calling hospitality a moral issue does not tell us the whole truth about hospitality either. A moral issue can become bogged down in legalisms, and hospitality is no legalistic ethical issue. It is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself. Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality."