A few weeks ago, Patrick and I watched the Martin Scorsese bio-pic on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home, and just recently watched I'm Not There, the mash-up of real and fictionalized Dylan anecdotes, accounts, characteristics, and influences that features Marcus Carl Franklin and Cate Blanchett, among other notables. You could say we're on a kick, but I don't think it's considered a kick if it lasts our whole lives. (It will.)
I've wanted to write about the Scorsese flick for weeks, wanted to say eloquent things about the emotions it elicited, wanted to discuss Dylan's persona and genius and sartorial selections.
But I can't.
Maybe what it comes down to is utter awe. At Dylan. At Scorsese. At the 60s and at the fact that Dylan didn't hear music, but heard sounds and a feeling behind the sounds.
But probably, what it comes down to is my own direction. I've been in Seattle for just about three and a half months now, working three jobs, tripping over my own feet to attend family and friend gatherings, and lacking the brainpower to actually read in my time off--one of the things I was most looking forward to after completing my Masters degree. Just three and a half months, and I'm over it. Three and a half months, and this is entirely the wrong direction.
I'm applying to graduate schools. Again. To just a few programs, since I decided to do this pretty much yesterday and applications are due in the next three weeks. I'm not sure that I've found the exact right programs, but they are more right than wrong and that counts for something when you're working three jobs that barely pay the bills.
I'm applying to teaching positions, mostly at some online universities. Seattle is an intensely over-educated area and the competition for low-paying, low-level teaching jobs is fierce. Plus, if I work online I can teach in my pajamas! While baking bread! And I can vacuum as a break from grading papers!
And this weekend, I'm going to read a goddamn book.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Mulling (Over) Spices
In my kitchen, I don't pay much attention to the expiration dates on spices. That's what fresh herbs are for. I'm probably wrong--and this is probably why I'll remain a cook and not a chef--but I don't think two week old ground nutmeg is more flavorful than two year old nutmeg; and if I really wanted fresh, I'd grate my own damn nutmeg.
I have spices that I bought in Bellingham, in college--a yellow and red canister of Greek seasoning, purchased either at the Mediterranean specialties store behind the Sehome theater or the Greek Festival that happens every September a little north of Western's campus. More recently, though still a few years back, I have spices that I bought in France. When I reach for nutmeg, you see, it's actually mouscade, and cumin is...wait, cumin is cumin...My herbes de Provence, unfortunately, is long since used up, and though I can find the mixture in grocery stores in America, I find it rather distasteful to pay $8.99 for something that's one Euro in France.
What's interesting is that I've moved, many times, and these spices are still with me. I moved from France, to Bellingham, to New Hampshire and around New Hampshire, and back to Seattle. And I stuffed my glass spice jars in socks and gloves and wrapped them in washcloths and rammed them in nooks and crannies of boxes and suitcases. They've been shipped via UPS, and USPS Media Mail, tucked sneakily in a sock under Harry Potter (you have no idea how tempted I was to write Socrates...), stuffed into U-Haul trailers being towed across America by a Ford Taurus and crammed underneath Clementine's hanging chub in a Hyundai.
To be fair, there are plenty of things that have made all of these moves with me, cookware I have owned for years, knitting needles that have traveled overseas, a birthday card given to me at age 13 by my Aunt Karin. And perhaps I should, instead, be mulling over the things that haven't made it: clothing I left at Goodwill, books I no longer want to read, love tokens and photographs, dishes I always hated. I guess instead of considering what we do and do not hold on to, though, this is more about what we choose to take with us, what we decide, purposefully, to retain.
In my case, I suppose, it's a particular spice blend called Quatre Epices, unlike any you can find in the United States.
I have spices that I bought in Bellingham, in college--a yellow and red canister of Greek seasoning, purchased either at the Mediterranean specialties store behind the Sehome theater or the Greek Festival that happens every September a little north of Western's campus. More recently, though still a few years back, I have spices that I bought in France. When I reach for nutmeg, you see, it's actually mouscade, and cumin is...wait, cumin is cumin...My herbes de Provence, unfortunately, is long since used up, and though I can find the mixture in grocery stores in America, I find it rather distasteful to pay $8.99 for something that's one Euro in France.
What's interesting is that I've moved, many times, and these spices are still with me. I moved from France, to Bellingham, to New Hampshire and around New Hampshire, and back to Seattle. And I stuffed my glass spice jars in socks and gloves and wrapped them in washcloths and rammed them in nooks and crannies of boxes and suitcases. They've been shipped via UPS, and USPS Media Mail, tucked sneakily in a sock under Harry Potter (you have no idea how tempted I was to write Socrates...), stuffed into U-Haul trailers being towed across America by a Ford Taurus and crammed underneath Clementine's hanging chub in a Hyundai.
To be fair, there are plenty of things that have made all of these moves with me, cookware I have owned for years, knitting needles that have traveled overseas, a birthday card given to me at age 13 by my Aunt Karin. And perhaps I should, instead, be mulling over the things that haven't made it: clothing I left at Goodwill, books I no longer want to read, love tokens and photographs, dishes I always hated. I guess instead of considering what we do and do not hold on to, though, this is more about what we choose to take with us, what we decide, purposefully, to retain.
In my case, I suppose, it's a particular spice blend called Quatre Epices, unlike any you can find in the United States.
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