June Bug

"I tie knots in the strings of my spirit to remember."

- Jack Gilbert

       It's been a rough month. Colorado is burning, the land hurricane has wiped out power and felled trees from Illinois to the mid-atlantic, and the AC in my boyfriend's truck is broken. It was 104 for a few days last week, and I spent most of my day off laying on my bed with the fan on, Guthrie on the floor, reading a book.  Summers here are like winters in most other places.  I stay inside, watch Friday Nights Lights for hours, pile paperbacks next to my bed, and generally lament the state of affairs.  It's like inverse seasonal depression.

Austin has a strangely sexy appeal in summer, though.  It's the season the city does best.  The patios are  brimming with folks holding sweaty glasses of cheap Texas beer, Barton Springs is packed with tattooed fellas and the occasional topless lady, paddle boards abound on the damned up Colorado, known here as Town Lake.  It's a time for late night bike rides, a reason to make swimming the sole focus of one's day,  a reason to break bread with neighbors and sweat it out with the rest of the city.  The grasshoppers die by the dozens every night, especially downtown, trapped in by the concrete, and in my neighborhood the cicadas cries are like a symphony you cannot shake. 

I resisted writing for the last few weeks because I was thinking a lot about death, and I didn't know what to write.  I sat on my couch at 1 am, after riding my bike home from work through the darkened streets, and cried as I read about the shootings that occurred in Seattle, about the grief and fear that rose from those awful few weeks.  I heard about the death of the daughter of my Mom's friend, killed in a bicycle accident in Boston, where she was studying for her Master's in teaching.  I thought about her a lot although I never met her, tried in vain to find a sense of solace in death that comes so unexpectedly.  My filter is growing thinner as I grow older- I am careful about the movies I watch and the books I read, and I am struck again and again by our lack of control.  I still don't have the right words for all this, but I know it as a lot to do with the power and purpose of grief, the way that we move though loss, and the way that we, in turn, choose to live.

To cope with all these big, gaping thoughts, I started cooking. My friend Will, fabulous writer and friend, introduced to some ladies who have kept me company these last few weeks. The first is Molly Wizenberg, author of the book "A Homemade Life," and creator of the blog Orangette. Her writing is so crisp, so descriptive, and her recipes so tied to memory, and family, and connection.  On the same trip to the bookstore I also came across a hardback copy of Deborah Madison's "Vegatarian Cooking for Everyone," for five dollars!  I have some ideas in the works- Molly's Ginger Chocolate Banana Bread, Deborah's Rosemary Foccacia.  I found a recipe for a Turkish shrimp dish in the stellar magazine Edible Austin, and there is a bottle of wine from Walla Walla that Steven gave me on Valentine's day that still needs drinking.  (The Washington wine came with a bundle of Texas Bluebonnet seeds!)

I haven't cooked much lately, relying more on the cheap, easy option of expired sandwiches from work, cold pizza, and the occasional leftover salad.  Thrifty, yes, but soul nourishing, no.  If I eat one more sad turkey sandwich on dry Carroway bread, I might punch a tomato.  A popular and powerful truth is that food connects us to something far greater then our stomachs.  I felt like I was losing touch with my power to create, and I was grasping for a connection to something nostalgic and comforting.  Last week I made zucchini cakes, with feta and green onion, fried in a pan of oil on the stove.  I have never been able to replicate the first magical time I ate them- late at night in the Methow Valley, with my friend Samm and Aunt Michelle, zucchinis fresh from her garden, the radio on softly as the stars came to greet the night in droves.  

That didn't seem like enough nostalgia, so the next day I made yam enchiladas, first inspired by a dish at the Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham, Washington.  Try their salmon chowder, it's mind blowing.  Also, once I went there after hours with my friend Gabi so she could flirt with the bartender. (This place was in our college town.)  He poured me one too many Oatmeal Stouts while he made googly eyes at my pal, then I proceeded to yak in the parking lot.  It was a hilarious night! Needles to say, Yam enchiladas were perfected at 3911 Wallingford Ave, in the old kitchen with the yellow paint, while we listened to the rain outside, or Danny Schmidt, and built our friendships that are more like family then anything else. 

Lastly, there was my first attempt at Sangria, white wine and sparkling lemonade, orange slices and big pieces of lemons and limes, in the glass watermelon jug I bought for $2 at Goodwill. From my overgrown yard I procured a few handfuls of ripe green tomatoes, which my roommate and I fried up and ate while watching the movie of the same name.  (Goddamn that is a great film- I think I cried at least 5 times!)

Suffice to say, I am on a roll, and although I am also on a budget, I plan to be cooking a little more. 

Alongside all of these heavy, brooding thoughts about the nature of our existence, I've been having a grand old time, too.

Steven and I have spent many afternoons drinking Ruby Red Grapefruit beer, listening to the radio, driving with the windows opens, and swimming in the cold water that is blissfully easy to access in scorching Austin.  We rode bikes to a free concert at Zilker park, where we saw Ben Kweller play, laid out on the grass and ate a bag on Santa Fe Barbeque rice chips. So good!  We jumped in Barton Springs that night with a hundred other concert go-ers, and people started whooping and hollering in the darkness, before the life guards kicked everyone out. (Good call, lifeguards, it was actually pretty overwhelming.) 

And the icing on the proverbial summer cake was a concert with the classy duo of Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, outdoors at Stubbs in downtown Austin.  I met up with some friends as the sun was starting to tire of the daylight, and grabbed a spot near the front of the crowd.  They played for hours, just the two of them onstage with their guitars and banjos and secret looks, their old timey charm and voices that seem to reach straight to that place that you can never quite find without their help. She played a song for the dearly departed Doc Watson, one that he taught her, and they finished with a song about heaven, about leaving the world, that left me crying as everyone joined in the simple chorus together.  

It's all a gift, a lot of it is, and although it doesn't ease the pain of losing, it helps us remember.

Well, I think you are all caught up now.  I have a hound dog in need of a walk, some laundry in need of a line, and some swimming holes to explore.  For those of you in Seattle, and those friends in far off places, know that I am wickedly homesick and counting down the days until I see your sweet faces.  So go on and try to stay cool despite the fact that the weather is tearing everything up- cook a nice meal, read a good book, and keep tying those knots.