JUST AN ORANGE

do you think an old heart can’t sing
do you think an old heart can’t dance
with a love that belongs to spring –
nor i – till i took this glance

in a mirror long put-by – denied
the least touch of light (there being
no cause but to let it hide)
yet now there’s this sudden seeing

this astonishing flow of longing
that gives the dulled glass a shine
and so many lost wants thronging
(must i fear the eyes aren’t mine)

dream has shaken its sheets out
a freshness (discarded) restored
muted rhythms let loud beats out
(scared hopes being reassured)

unfathomable scores its chances
(love’s fingers plucking the strings)
can’t you see – this lame heart dances
can’t you hear – this dried heart sings

You, my daughter
Youngest of the pre-school ballerinas
Transported by the quick, quick movements
Of your tiny legs,
Arms floating blithely
Like the wings of angels
Your entire body in a grin of rhythmic joy
Moving in that nonchalance of joints
Sauntering in innocent defiance
Of the studied discipline demanded
By your instructor’s level tones.

How can he know
You will dance purely on a stage of starlight
With every action winged and fired by grace?

I was excited to ask Linsdey of Cafe Johnsonia to write about her experiences in the kitchen, because she really is a culinary wonder. And even better, Lindsey shares her talent with those around her and they get to benefit from it (especially their taste buds). Art is a good thing to share. And I do believe that cooking and baking are an art. One, that I have yet to really attempt, but that I appreciate. Thanks for sharing, Lindsey!

Sometimes when I read a beautiful poem or look at a spectacular painting, or hear an orchestra playing exquisite music, I get emotional. Cooking and baking conjure those same emotions.

Even as a young child I was interested in food. What I didn’t know was that my environment was limiting my inner creativity. The artist within was being prevented from escaping and flourishing.

Then I moved to New York—the most pivotal, wonderful thing to have ever happened to a girl from a small town in the Mountain West.

Moving to New York was like adding water and sunshine to a seed that lay dormant under a forgotten piece of earth. I was just waiting for the small ray of light and a few molecules of water to feed me so I could grow.

In one fail swoop, I was introduced to ingredients and cuisine from foreign lands. Suddenly there was more to dessert than chocolate chip cookies or cake and ice cream. And dinner was more than meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

When I moved to New York almost seven years ago, I was twenty years old. I was naïve, yet I thought I had the world all figured out. I had traveled abroad. I’d been to a few years of college. I knew it all.

Working as a nanny during my first year in NY taught me more than just how to take care of four small children simultaneously. I was living with a family who truly appreciated fine cooking and the art of cuisine. To a girl who grew up on canned veggies and Hamburger Helper, this was uncharted, but exciting, territory.

During that year, I shopped at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Citarella, Dean and Deluca, and other gourmet markets. I ate at fun places in Manhattan. I was given my Professional series KitchenAid mixer by the people who employed me. They could see that there was something in me bursting to get out. Sure I could whip up a batch of cookies and cook spaghetti. But there was so much more awaiting me.

When I married my husband during my second year in NY, the union of my new found creativity and his unique sense of taste and smell collided in a wonderful way. I cooked and experimented; he tasted and critiqued. There were failures. There were successes.

All the while, I thought I was just having fun.

One day I was having a pity party—why wasn’t I born creative? Why couldn’t I sing or dance, or paint? Where was all my talent?

My husband told me something I will never forget. It was engraved upon my very soul. He told me that he’d never seen someone who was so creative. And what did I think I was doing in the kitchen all this time? Was that not pure, unadulterated creativity? Was I not an artist?

From that point on, cooking and baking took on new meaning. As did life–I saw myself for who I really was. That part of me that had been hidden and locked away was finally let out all the way.

I had finally found my true self.

Now maybe that seems like a stretch—“finding myself.” Isn’t that what people do when they go on long road trips with their friends or backpack through Europe? Or go through a horrible, debilitating illness?

I never thought of myself as being creative—not in the littlest, tiniest bit. Creativity was something reserved for poets, painters, musicians, vocalists, and photographers. (To name a few…) The thought of being an artist in the kitchen never occurred to me.

I enjoy the process of cooking. It has never become mundane to me.

I pour over recipes and cookbooks as someone might a book of poetry. I can tell by looking at a recipe how it will turn out and how it will taste. I appreciate what lies behind the scenes even more than the actual finished product.

Surely it must be the same with any artist—my medium is just different.

I adore the feel of bread dough between my hands. The smell of searing meat, melted butter, and toasting spices awakens me. I get excited watching butter and sugar whip in my stand mixer. I love to frost and decorate cakes. The joys and possibilities in the kitchen are endless. I’m always finding new ingredients to try. I’m always thinking of a better way to execute a recipe. Sometimes I don’t even need a recipe.

For the first twenty years of life, I was unknowingly stifled. The last seven have been a rebirth of sorts. And I hope the next five, ten, or fifty years bring as much wonder, excitement, and pure exhilaration.

I’m scrambling an egg for my daughter.
“Why are you always whistling?” she asks.
“Because I’m happy.”
And it’s true,
Though it stuns me to say it aloud,
There was a time when I wouldn’t
Have seen it as my future.
It’s partly a matter
Of who is there to eat the egg.
The self fallen out of love with itself
Through the tedium of familiarity,
Or this little self,
So curious, so hungry,
Who emerged from the woman I love,
A woman who loves me in a way
I’ve come to think I deserve,
Now that it arrives from outside me.
Everything changes, we’re told,
And now the changes are everywhere:
The house with its morning light
That fills me like a revelation,
The yard with its trees
That cast a bit more shade each summer,
The love of a woman
That both is and isn’t confounding,
And the love
Of this clamor of questions at my waist.
Clamor of questions,
You clamor of answers,
Here’s your egg.

I was completely captivated by this interview on Fresh Air,  about a new book by  L.A. Times journalist Steve  Lopez about his friendship with a homeless schizophrenic musician named Nathaniel Ayers.

The Book is: The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music.

The glass stems of the clouds are breaking

the gray flowers are caught up

and carried in silence to their invisible mountain

a hair of music is flying

over the line of cold lakes

from which our eyes were made

everything in the world has been lost and lost

but soon we will find it again

and understand what it told us when we loved it

Ben, my husband, took this picture on a visit we took to the Musee d’Orsay. Museums often abound with students of art scattered throughout, pencils or pastels in hand, sketchbooks or large drawing boards on their laps. But this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone there with their easel and paints copying someone else’s work.

Each time I come across this photograph I’m curious: who is this man? He is obviously an artist, and a very decent one at that. He’s from an older, more formal generation. He wears a blazer (what a funny word) over what is certainly a button down shirt that looks pink in my original photograph. He is wearing it to paint, with oils, I assume.

Why has he chosen to make a copy of this particular painting? Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but also the best way to learn about, or become like, what one is imitating. He is still interested in learning, in perfecting his own techniques, in creating something beautiful.

I wonder, when did he start painting? Is it his life’s work? Is is something he did on the side while supporting a family with a more conventional job? Is he content with his art? Or is he rushing to fill an unrealized dream before it’s too late?

But whatever his reasons, I like that when I look at this photograph he’s there, standing before the easel, paintbrush held delicately in his right hand, placing a dot of paint carefully on the canvas, every single time.