apples, obviously

i spent some time in the hudson river valley this past weekend. this was the land of my childhood, and the leaves and rain and sun and river were so nostalgic, i could throw up. (i won't get into the amateur body building competition which was the ACTUAL reason we went that way any more than to say that i was entirely fascinated by all of the bronzer and egg whites.) (okay, i will get into it a little bit: louie's sister, rene, has found herself drawn to this aspect of fitness and health, and that meant that on saturday, i sat with the marven family, including grandma emily, in poughkeepsie high school to watch people who look like this walk around on stage.)

we also went apple picking, which is the aspect of this entry i hope you'll stress when you talk about it later over dinner. guys, apple picking is the BEST. if you have absolutely no pressures on your time and a penchant for plucking, i urge you to give into your whims. megan and i returned home with more apples than is okay, and that is why i am making apple pie this evening.

an internet shout out to Twig and Thistle, a blog i found when trying to find an adorable pie recipe.



spoiler alert: ain't no way you can be a body builder AND eat this adorable pie.

the day i lost my friendship with megan bennicoff

it was today! i'm not sure how much recommending y'all do for people, but i have been doing my fair share lately. i have all sorts of friends who are doing things like "applying to college" or "applying to the sycamore house" or "trying to get parole", etc etc. one of these "friends" is megan bennicoff, and she asked me (via the internet) to fill out a recommendation form for the peace corps.

the first sign of trouble was when i was given the option to fill out the pre-set form questions or to upload my own letter of recommendation. SUCH A TRAP. obviously if i go with the pre-set form questions, i am occupying the lowest stratum of intentionality available on this green earth. it's like the Looking For: Whatever I Can Get option on facebook: all you really need to be my friend, at this point, is a finger to click Accept with. maybe a face.*

after clicking the pre-set form question box, i was then made to click a box that would adequately describe why i know her. (what i WON'T tell you is that it took me about twelve minutes of trying to figure out a way to honestly describe why i was her employer before seeing that Friend was an option on the line over.) HERE is where the peace corps blew up my spot. after each description of relationship, the recommend-or is required to fill out a timeline. a timeline! and when i wrote "2003-present" i got an error message that read "The field format for this question needs to be MM/YYYY."

THE PEACE CORPS SPOKE THE END OF OUR FRIENDSHIP INTO BEING.
sure, there was still the option of picking a future date, but that seemed a little fatalistic. which is why it came to a close today, guys. 09/2009 marks the end. i feel liberated, sure, but i also feel cheated out of my right to be friends with megan bennicoff indefinitely. i'll miss her. she ate the strangest food of anyone i knew. also, she is still my roommate. and we spent the day together, which was super awkward since we're not even friends.




*one of the stranger things i learned recently was that a lady in france GOT A FACE TRANSPLANT when her dog ATE HER FACE. that is all.

i live in harrisburg.

i love this town. i have the advantage of not having grown up in central pennsylvania, so i'm not sick of it yet. my friends that were born here have that sort of geographical velveteen rabbit syndrome, warily eying it all in distrust and boredom (before ultimately being stricken with scarlet fever). but i know that i will still feel a whirling stir in my heart when i cowboy-squint into the susquehanna, trembling funnel cake in hand at a riverside fest (which are things that happen compulsively, and which are 200% attended by sweating families, limply holding hands and eying everything with distrust and boredom.) truly i tell you, my heart soars with the smog tumbling up from three mile island's stacks babel-ing toward the heavens, a nod to a tenous, chernobylian grasp of sustainability. (spoiler alert: i wrote that sentence ONLY because i wanted to use the term "chernobylian." but rest assured that i CAN see three mile island from four out of seven bridges spanning the river, and that it is comically scary.)

a concept i write about too often is Being Known and how that looks and whether it feels okay or not. how it looks as a citizen of harrisburg, for example, is that 80 percent of people in my life know that i love the number 2 on the menu at roxy's. (eggs over medium, sourdough toast (because it is delicious and delivered fresh everyday), potatoes-whichever-way-they-happen-to-be-that-day, coffee, gruff/sweet/annoyed waitstaff, strange wallpaper, and a neckbreak staircase to the basement bathroom. perfect.) it feels okay to Be Known in this way, and it also feels like i am predictable and a little bit gross. it reminds me of when, a few years back, we would go to Wings On Wednesday at kokomos, and louie would faithfully order the chicken fingers until it became clear that he was expected to. i think it's a safe bet to assume nobody wants to be known as The Guy Who Always Wants Chicken Fingers.

a sidenote: i was third-handedly referred to by our roxy's waitress as "church-goey" to a fella i currently work with at the swanky pan-asian restaurant. i think this description is hilarious.

Being Known also means, in harrisburg, that i will be constantly reminded of how very very small and navigable this place is. a favorite restaurant of mine is Arepa City on 2nd street, which serves very venezuelan food very late very affordably. (lately, since my work schedule means that i have almost no human interaction during the day, i have taken to nighttime conversations with nighttime friends at nighttime establishments, one such being Arepa City.) the chef, daniel, is becoming a fast friend and the best example of the theory laid out in the first sentence of this paragraph. by methods i am unable to guess (and am also being very consciously untold), my friend Chef Daniel found my blog (this one. that you also found. good job.) and has been reading up on my piffle-y thoughts. each time i have implored that he tell me how he even knows who i am, as i drown my black bean empanada in jarringly-awesome guasacaca (i promise it's a word and that it is a jarringly-awesome thing), he refuses to tell me until i write about him on this blog. i am honoring his wishes with this paltry entry, and i am encouraging all y'all locals to eat up. i'll come along, as long as you go late enough for me to join.

i have more to say, but i am sleepy. i will close by telling you all that i cleaned my room for the first time in a long, long while. it's a little hard to tell, though, because i have old house structures taking up every corner of free space. i have dresser drawers piled up like smokestacks. (all of these things will be used as canvases for an art exhibit at midtown cinema during the month of december. Being Known as a scavenger of sidewalk trash heaps is also a familiar thing to me. i will write more about this show later, but you should know that justin arawjo and ollie mikse are taking the advertisement-of-this-show to task, tackling this sucker like a huge squid, say, might attack a ship.)

peace, dearhearts.

i am writing graffiti on your body

i got a tattoo! here is the story: megan bennicoff, perhaps the person who knows the most about me, is edgier than me. because of that, she promised me a tattoo for my birthday last december. saturday, we were finally both free on the same day.

"lapè" is the haitian creole word for peace. i really like peace, guys. and, my understanding of peace was challenged considerably by my trip to haiti. i am more and more convinced of romero's words that "peace is generosity; peace is dynamism." the reality of peace on the ground requires social equality and global health and fewer hungry bellies. i want to remind myself of that always.

also, if you google "lape", like i did, you find these:

LAPE	: Local Alcohol Profiles for England
LAPE	: Low Altitude Parachute Extraction
LAPE	: Laboratoire d’Analyse et Prospective Économiques

number 2, please.

demons, alpo, etc

so, i am dog-sitting this week for my friends, the lawpenroses. (a sidenote is this: i am fascinated by the combined-last-name-upon-marriage phenomenon. i applaud it for its egalitarian efforts, and i look forward to a day when my daughter, ophelia laribeestephenopoulos marries william tinswinton, and they become the laribeestephenopoulostinswintons.) dog-sitting is way easy, and it takes the form of me walking in a better neighborhood than my own and eating free granola as i watch ruckus, my charge, chew on an actual pig ear (which is a thing i will always almostvomit at the sight of).

my story:

[also, louie's reaction was "wait, that's it? that's the whole story? that's stupid. that's like saying you almost fell but didn't." which is why i hate him.]

so, last night, around 4:58 a.m. (i am acknowledging the disconnect of "last night" and "a.m.", whatever), i am sleeping in the lawpenroses Incredible Bed. all of a sudden, ruckus STANDS UP and starts howling toward the open bedroom door, which, because of the angle, i can't see out of. obviously, at this point, i know that a gunman is in the hallway waiting (now) for the dog to shut up so that he can come in and kill me. so, i flip on the lamp and start talking to the person not sharing my bed. "man what time is it?" "[deeper voice] man i don't know. shut up, Ruckus." etc etc. i also begin replaying sophomore year's Self Defense gym-credit-class in my mind, but honestly the only thing i learned there was how to somersault/belly flop away from a wooden sword. as time sweats out of me, i remember the time a few years back when i had seen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the only film after which i had prayed to Christ for protection over me from demons. i switch my fear to demons and presume my wide-eyed peering. i spend eight minutes in prayer and contrition, knowing that the REAL danger lay in locking eyes on a guman/demons and wetting the lawpenroses' Incredible Bed.

ultimatly, this story ends in me falling asleep in a pool of my own anxiety. i survived. that's why louie think's this story is boring. i think he never updates his blog. so it seems we are at an impasse.

the hardest year of my life

this is how i will remember 25. sitting in a pool of light by a window, nursing a cup of coffee and a small ulcer in my gut. this life is dolce, for sure. and it is tacked, stretched over the canvas so tightly that i think the untacking might be disastrous, flinging clear across the room.

i have begun a lot of things, lately.

i have begun to research kurdistan. my sister is moving there in a little more than a week. i don't have any words for this right now.

i have begun to smell like bok choy because, lately, i started as the barista/expo at a swanky pan-asian restaurant. my nights have become later, my feet have become achier, my vocabulary has become more asianculinary. for example, i now know what congee, sudachi, and tataki are.

i have begun to lesson-plan. come september, i will start teaching a few times a week at a latino community art center. i am teaching creative writing and recycled-craft-making to kids in a low-income community. this is so close to my heart that i can't even breathe.

i have begun to write bylaws. i have, lately, joined the board of an urban sustainability non-profit to continue my work with environmental education and forestry. i have also begun wooing smart people to my court to help me do this, and if you are interested in that crap, holler at your girl.

i have begun to write sku numbers. since selling things at a recycled-craft shop in harrisburg, manufacturing crafts has been squeezed into pockets of my day. a set of coasters when i wake up, a curtain made of slides before bed, etc.

i have begun to love, dearly, the walk from midtown to downtown. it takes about 25 minutes for me to amble from my home, past all of those hanging-ferns-from-porches-wide-grinning neighbors, to the bok choy. that time is mine. it is hot, sweaty, alone, and mine. it slows me down to feel every minute. to see every fern.

these beginnings are filling me up. dolce, sure, but i'm pretty full. i am remembering earlier times in my life when i have been This Busy, and i am gearing up for implications. i am writing apology emails in my mind for all of the times i won't be coming out for a drink. sorry, guys. i am also gearing up for later, and a time of life when i will look back on how dolce this was.

dolce, dolce, dolce.
filling.

making do

i'm broke almost always, and that fact has formed my backbone. most of what i think of as beautiful, fun or delicious can be made out of things that don't cost much. (exceptions to this rule are college, traveling, and cheesecake.)

how that is playing out in my life tonight is that i am making zucchini hummus because we have so much more zucchini than is appropriate. i got my recipe here. i will let you know if it's delicious.

culinarily,
liz