The Arrogant Emu

I alternate between being snarky and dismissive toward modern poetry, and being irritated with people who are snarky and dismissive toward modern poetry. Still, nevertheless, after a evening spent reading various modern minor poets, I really want to just go and dash off a book or so myself, because so much of what passes for poetry these days are just elegant or elliptical phrases with line breaks in. I think I can get a whole book of poems out of life at home. The gerbils in the cage, scrabbling at the glass as if they hoped to one day dig through it.(=metaphor for existence) The crickets coming in through every pore of the house (=sin? the mundanities of life? distractions?). A broken garbage disposal. (almost TOO obvious).

Yes, maybe that’s it. I can make it about the Protestant work ethic, guilt, and redemption. Self-discovery through housekeeping.

And come whatever else may, I really, really love this poem. Whole families shopping at night!

Really Damn Good Channa Masala

Chop up an onion into the size of onion chunks you like to find in sauces and such things.
Heat some oil in wok. Drop in about half a teaspoon of cumin seeds, and then some more, because you don’t have any ground cumin. If you have ground cumin, skip the extra. Once it starts spattering, pour in the onions to keep the seeds from spattering out onto you. Add some garlic - a glob will do if you’ve got pre-chopped stuff, if not, then a few cloves. Grate in some ginger. A little more than half the garlic is a good amount. A pinch of chili pepper, if you want, or a dried chili. A chopped fresh one is recommended, but I don’t have one.

Now the fun part! Spice, spice, spice. If you have groud cumin, add a spoonful, and a spoonful of coriander, and a spoonful of turmeric. Now, take tomato paste, of the kind you’d use for pizza sauce and the like, and pour enough in to make the mixture look like a sauce. If you have tamarind juice, add some. I don’t, so I don’t know what it’ll do. Let this mixture bubble and hiss at the bottom of the wok, until some of the water seems to have boiled off from the tomato paste, and the onions are looking cooked.

Add some chickpeas. If you have a can of middling size, add the can; if you have anything else, add about the amount you’d need for a middle-sized can of chickpeas. Add a half-spoonful of garam masala. If you, say, aren’t living in a house with a former Indian inmate, then you can fake it by putting in tiny bits of the component spices - fennel, coriander, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, pepper, and anise.

Turn down the heat. Let simmer.

Eat over rice. Delicious cold.

I’m employed! And I love my job! And I have no sleep! So now I will get some! My room is infested with crickets! Add your own exclamations here!

I’ve found the perfect title for the book of Sarah’s poetry: To Walk With Only One Bit of Eye.

Hey, blog members who’ve read Sarah’s stories that I’ve posted here from time to time. Should I put line breaks in them to make them look more like poetry, or should I boldly leave them as they are, and say that she’s redefining the prose poem?

More St. John’s press clippings! I’m on a roll!

Did you know there was City Dock webcam? I sure didn’t!

Oh my.

You see those "women who stripped naked" etc.?

I think we got in the paper!

My, how things get exaggerated. Someone sheds a hoodie for a tank top, and now we’ve become naked women? I’m impressed.

I sold something on Ebay! Ye for me! Nine dollars and 89 cents, baby! World, here I come. Um. Something like that.

I was wondering idly whether any two people can trust each other to the degree needed to sustain a permanent attachment - not merely a permanent association, and not merely a temporary attachment. For trust, trust, trust in oneself and in the beloved, always seems to be the great theme of those who counsel, but all trust seems to reach its limit, and it’s right that it should! There are those things in the world which should not be trusted, and which it is stupid to trust -

That’s it! That’s the difference between trust and faith. Trust is fine, trust is great, trust is a wonderful thing, but trust is a human thing and thus mortal! To say another way, trust may be supported by choice, but it is still at its root a thing of the emotions. Or perhaps there are two different sources for trust, each with its own limitations - choosing to trust, and feeling trust. Feeling trust sustains temporary attachment, choosing trust sustains permanent association, but they will neither alone nor in combination suffice for the relation of one person to another.

"I don’t like it! I won’t eat it! It’s disgusting!" yells the child.

"You’ll eat it and be grateful for it!" snaps the parent, losing patience.

And thei child eats sulkily, feeling not grateful but resentful, for he does not know what the parent has learned: that it is a choice to enjoy food, it is a choice not only to eat, but to eat with gratitude. And what the parent (perhaps) does not remember (though it would do him no good if he did) that the child will never understand that it is a choice until he has grown older, and either been very hungry, or been responsible for feeding himself.

* * * *

I’m going without, now - by no means depriving myself of nourishment, but at least knowing mild hunger - reminding myself that despite my comfortable surrounding, my financial matters are strict, and reminding myself of the grandparental motto ‘If you don’t work, you don’t eat!’ I’m trying not to eat anything that costs over a dollar a pound, at least not until the money starts to come in - when I start to actually work. I’m employed! I have jobs! Three of them - they’re just all waiting for my fingerprints to come back.

I’m beginning to feel the pinch. I have enough money to live on, but until I have income, I’m not spending money on anything but rent and utilities. And so I can’t drive friends to and from work or school - if I take out my car, I will have to put fuel in it, and that would cost money. I can’t make cookies - we’re out of sugar, and I have no money to buy more. I can’t make bread - we’re out of flour, the same. Luxuries all! But one begins to feel one’s freedom curtailed when one realizes one can’t afford to drive to the store, and couldn’t afford to buy things there anyway.

I’m such a rich American. It disturbs me.