The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty-Five: Tranquil

A dictionary resembles the world more than a novel does, because the world is not a coherent sequence of actions but a constellation of things perceived. It is looked at, unrelated things congregate, and geographic proximity gives them meaning. If events follow one another, they are believed to be a story. But in a dictionary, time doesn't exist. ABC is neither more or less chronological than BCA. To portray your life in order would be absurd: I remember you at random. My brain resurrects you through stochastic details, like picking marbles out of a bag.

—Edouard Levé


A writing prompt from a book I'm reading asks, How did you get here?
I drove; I flew; I walked out of the sea. Maybe...

I think of a friend writing about her time in the Congo. Gunfire and Land Cruisers. Road blocks and outrage. White foreigners; the failure of the UN; the importance of remaining neutral so everyone would make it home alive.

How did you get here? I think of Mike and I scouring the Downtown East Side, listening to anyone who would talk to us.

How did you get here? I don't know what I expected the writing life to be. Early mornings and strong coffee, an ocean view and a comforting hearth? Late nights and expensive scotch? Tom Waits? Ernest Hemingway? Something romantic, probably. Not glamorous necessarily, just more cohesive, tightly knit like high-thread-count sheets, without the confusion and doubt—should I just tear them up, turn it all into rags, buy new linens? Is this what I ought to do, what I'm meant to do? What does it matter anyway when there's bills to pay and dinner to cook, and the answer buzzing inside you like an angry swarm of hornets.

How did you get here? I jumped off a banana-seat bicycle when I was five and threw my fists in the air—my father holding the bike steady until he knew I could balance, and then his quiet triumph cascading behind me all the way to the corner; I ran up a hill; I slid down...let's say, a few times; I took a train, a bus, a merry-go-round; I decided I didn't like ferris wheels, or hot dogs, or low-budget ale; I waited in line; I learned to ask questions; I paddled a canoe; I bought a dog (he got me further); I fell in love; one foot in front of the other; Upstairs, Downstairs and Are You Being Served—PBS with my grandparents on Saturday night, short glasses of port on a TV tray, the volume turned as loud as it would go and my grandfather, blind as a bat, humming along to the intros; I listened to his murky breath lingering too long on Amphora tobacco—in and out, tranquil behind heavy drapes and long winters; I payed attention.

How did you get here? Mr. Donavon reading our stories out loud to the whole grade six class and then saying to me, Don't ever stop writing.

How did you get here? I told a beautiful woman at a party that I loved her. A stranger. I never saw her again. I was 19. 27. 32. Her lips were cold and she smelled of leather; her breath was hot and she tasted like cinnamon; she turned her head and walked away.

And on and on. You know how it goes, this life—meaningful, nonsensical, the most important, the least likely. 

How did you get here?

I wrote.

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty-Four: Zest

If I had to guess, I would say that my love of cooking, of fine food in general, did not come from my father. I absorbed many of his passions—woodworking, for example, and laughter—but mercifully few of his dietary preferences. People joke about Spam, but in our house it was Flakes of Ham. And Chicken. Not that my mother or I ever ate it. She added the requisite Miracle Whip and somehow managed to turn it out onto bread for him, but I couldn't even stomach being in the kitchen when she opened the tins. I shudder to think, even now, how food achieves such a status: Flaked. At the least, it was an atrocious misuse of homemade bread.

Yes, my mother taught me to cook, to love cooking, and bread was a cornerstone in her culinary repertoire. Saturday mornings in our house revolved around grains, and by the time I was out of bed the Red River cereal was already soaking in a bowl of molasses and water on top of the iron radiator in the kitchen, it's sweet warmth hovering in the hallway outside my room. When she'd returned from her morning run, the dough was ready to punch down. This was my job—the only part of bread-making I ever cared to learn, and my favourite part of cooking at all—and I executed the task with a sort of luminous zest.

Swinging like a boxer (I learned eventually that such gusto was not required), I'd sink my fists deep into the first bowl, deflating it like a balloon and allowing the suction to swallow my wrists; then, recoiling quickly and imagining myself to be Mohammed Ali, I'd jump around to the second bowl and plant a strong right jab into it's doughy centre. After replacing the bowls back on top of the radiator, I'd head off on some other Saturday activity—The Smurfs, maybe, or He-Man, or swimming lessons at The Y—until payment was offered: One warm slice, fresh out of the oven, slathered in butter and drizzled with honey. Not a flake of ham in sight.

 

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty-Three: Person

If you were to question me on plausibility
and likelihood, or if you came
with no question at all
just smug disbelief
and a roll of the eyes, maybe

I would tell you
about the darkest night
of my life

and how the moon still
crossed the sky
and the alders
still gathered it up
in their long, slender arms
and held it there, safely
till dawn.

There are so many ways to learn
about greatness and triumph.
Go ahead, ask the eagles, ask the goldfinches,

ask the hurricane—

We did not come here to be shy
and afraid. We came only
to rise above ourselves
and be held there 

by our own magic.

Who is the person of my wildest dreams?

Who will I become?

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty-Two: Practice

A haiku:

Patiently waiting
for practice to make perfect,
the violin shrieks.

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty-One: Sizzle

tru luv 4ever.

Jodi was here; kris is a playa; Melanie & Trevor 4eva; a gigantic 3D star facing the toilet—all of it suddenly lunging towards her. Like a pendulum she swings out, half-drunk glass of wine sloshing past a toilet paper dispenser. She could write a book on what she's learned from bathroom walls. But not now. First she must steady herself, face the tunnel of a glassy eyes and low cut bras, bump and sway across the dance floor. Sizzle for her man.

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Forty: Chop

Southwest Turkey Lurkey with Chorizo Cornbread Stuffing

Step One: Jalepeno Jack Cornbread

This is the recipe I used. It's a good one:
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/08/jalapeno-jack-cornbread-recipe.html

I doubled this because we had a big bird and let's be honest, you can never have too much stuffing. Use butter instead of shortening, and add a little brown sugar. I cooked the bird, Ferdinand, on Saturday, so made the cornbread on Wednesday, cut it into one inch cubes and left in a bowl with a ted covering it so as it had time to get stale/dried out.


Step Two: Brine
On the same day as the cornbread, you brine your bird comme ca and place inside a Tupperware tote. Clear out some space in the fridge and be careful you don't break your back wrestling him in there:

1 cup kosher salt (make sure you use kosher because the intensities of salt varies considerably so if you substitute with sea salt or iodized it will not have the same flavour in the end) per gallon of water—whatever it takes to cover the bird;

1 cup of sugar per four gallons of water;

a couple of each: oranges, limes, lemons, all sliced;

I also threw in poultry seasoning and some paprika. What the hell;

Mix all the salt and sugar with some boiling water, enough to get it dissolved, then add ice cold water to the mix until the water is as cold as you can get it before you fit the bird in there. Then sit it in the fridge for at least 24 but up to 48 hours. You need to pull it out of the brine about 12-16 hours before you cook it. Don't rinse, but do pat dry and then stuff back in the fridge. I talked to him the whole way through this, obviously. And named him. And thanked him. We listened to the CBC. He seemed to like this.


Step Three: Day of cooking
Ingredients for stuffing (I made up the amounts): dried cranberries; sliced apricots, apples and chanterelle mushrooms; chopped onions, garlics, celery, cashews, and pecans; poultry seasoning; cubes of cornbread; chorizo (I only made half with chorizo—the half that went in the turkey—on account of vegetarians needing to eat something too).

Rub: I made this part up, so I'm not sure what to tell you in terms of measurements. Wing it. I think I used about a half cup of butter, three chipotles, a tablespoon of cocoa, half a cup of honey, and the zest from one orange. Melt butter, toss everything in the blender and whirl it around till smooth, taste test, sit overnight in fridge. When I put it on the bird I only used about half the rub because I didn't want to overwhelm people with the spice. In retrospect, I could have used more.

Bastey Baste every hour. Some people say you don't need to but I think that's bullshit.

I had wanted to do a cranberry salsa but it didn't work out (I recommend it though) so I did cranberry sauce with frozen and dried cranberries, dried apricots (diced), candied ginger, and ground cinnamon.

Step Four: Eat!
And enjoy.

The Word-a-day Writing Challenge

Day Thirty-Nine: Sulphur

I imagine it had something to do with the seductive intrigue of power. Undoubtedly, it had also to do with defiance. Boredom. Working parents and slack afternoons. Be home by suppertime and don't get hurt. That was the only real spoken rule. There were a number of other rules, of course, that went unspoken, so we snuck around when necessary and didn't ask obvious questions. In our defence, we were ten and eleven. And anyway, Scott's older sister, Patti, smoked duMauriers and topped up pilfered vodka bottles with water before tucking them away again at the back of the liquor cabinet.

So. We weren't that bad.

It began in the park up the street with a few books of matches that Scott's mom kept at the back of a kitchen drawer. Then the sizzling burst of a whole box going up, the large ones his dad stashed on a basement shelf for power outages and campfires. The sharp crack of sulphur against the back of our noses made us squirm, but that particular curiosity that children have for dangerous things—like high speeds on steep hills and licking frozen flagpoles—outweighed our better judgement. Soon we'd created a whole industry of fire, incorporating plastic bags, rubber soles, forsaken GI Joes, nearly empty paint cans, and just about anything no one would miss.

Safety was our only oversight. It never occurred to us to have water nearby, or a plan. As much as we found the introduction of new elements thrilling—a spray can of WD 40, for example—we did not anticipate wind.

And so, one clear and breezy afternoon in October, the hillside behind Scott's house went up like rocket. A forty meter swath of brittle yellow grass and squat shrubs twisted into whirling tendrils of flame and heat waves. With one strong gust, a massive body of fire stood before us, shoving its shoulders into a canopy of maples and licking its lips at rooftops and power lines. Translucent wings of orange-red feathers and sparkling blue shadows thrust open and closed around us, fanning thick coils of smoke out into the neighbourhood. The threatening beauty of it, the magnitude, was mesmerizing. If it hadn't been so perilous, we could have stood and watched all day. Except—

Ooooh. Shit!... Scott hunched down low away from the heat and smoke as Patti screamed at us from somewhere nearby. What in the FUCK are you little shits doing?! Jesus! She'd been smoking out her bedroom window, thankfully, and was pointing at us with her cigarette hand. I have to go, Greg. My asshole brother is trying to burn the fucking house down. She at least told us to run before the fire department arrived, probably because she was in some way meant to be responsible for us.

When Scott's dad came home from work that evening, he let us walk out behind the house with him to assess the damage. Even the dirt itself lie in scorched tufts, with charred fingers of shrubbery poking up through it. Looks like someone gave it a buzz cut, eh Dad? Scott grinned eagerly. Jimmy shook his head and patted Scott on the back. This is no joke, son, he said. I'm glad you kids were nowhere near. Someone could have been seriously hurt. He pulled a pack of Player's Lights from his chest pocket and turned back towards the house. You two be safe now, ok? Half an hour till supper, Scott.