i get the space in between.

tulip-beak in my garden, sometime last week.

(I know I took similar pictures last spring, but it never fails to make me strangely giddy when I see the first bulb-flowers pushing up through the soil. I love the pink-tinged beaks of the little tulip that have been digging themselves out from the cozy humid nests of soil like some sort of underground bird, mouth gaping open to take in the sunlight)

These are spring-songs -- not explicitly, but they do carry something very springlike in them. Go & listen, I have put them on yousendit & they are lovely.

Petite Suite: V. Bagpipes -- Béla Bartók (Bartók plays Bartók)

Lovely piano runs, birds hurrying about in the spring. It's all jaunty & has that loping sort of urgency that all Eastern European dances have. (His whole Petite Suite is dances, Ukrainian & Wallachian & whirling.) & I really love this recording of Bartók playing his own pieces, all crackly & gentle. Nagyon szép!

Transliterator -- DeVotchKa (A Mad & Faithful Telling)

More glorious keyboard, jumpy & running around with string-sweeps... it is a brilliant song & I am in love. However, because I am a linguistic dork, this line sticks out & pokes me: You better mean what you say /why don't you say what you mean / I never get anywhere / I get the space in between. It seems to me the narrator is really talking about the process of translation here, not transliteration -- the former deals more with meanings lost in those gaps & gulfs between subjects... whereas transliteration is the switching of alphabets, & doesn't deal so much with semantic fields. However, I don't care, because the song, his voice, makes me rather euphoric, & his use of the word really takes nothing away from that feeling.

chai cupcakes of goodness.

close-up of a thrummed mitten i am knitting... mar.17/08

Besides running a lot, & working on (or procrastinating from working on) my thesis, I have been baking a lot. This tends to calm me, as so many things are concerning me to the point where I have been having trouble sleeping... my body is definitely tired by 1 a.m. but my mind seems to think it's too good for resting & dreaming & other such healthy things. However, a chai cupcake before bedtime contains a lovely dose of sugar that lulls me into a slightly more relaxed state. I hope that these sweet things will either perk you up or calm you down, whichever you need most.

This recipe is inspired by the first chai cupcakes I made -- these little vegan morsels from the PPK. I decided experiment with another batch, to deveganizing the recipe as I am not averse to a bit of milk & egg, & also make a buttercream icing, and this is what I came up with.

The biggest difference between the vegan & non-vegan ones is the texture -- vegan = more dense, muffinlike. non-vegan = lighter & fluffier. The spice mix is the same in both!

Chai Cupcakes of Goodness

Wet Ingredients:

2 beaten egg whites
1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil of your choice
1 & 3/4 cup milk, in which 4-5 tsp. of loose black tea (something strong -- an Assam is good!) have steeped...
2 tsp vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
1 and 3/4 cups regular flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 & 1/2 tsp baking soda
a healthy pinch of salt
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardamom (make sure it's ground, not in the little pellets, or you will have potent crunchy surprises...)
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4-1/2 tsp ground cloves (ground-ness also very important here)
a wee bit of black pepper (or a little bit more)

Icing:

1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp-ish of cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice or nutmeg
3 - 3 1/2 cups of icing sugar
4-6 tbsp milk

Procedure:

First, pre-heat your oven to 400 F, & line a muffin tin (the large kind, with 12) with those little cupcake liners. (You can get nice recycled unbleached ones at Planet Organic, if you're interested)

Heat the milk in a saucepan on the stove until just boiling (don't let it scald!) Remove from the heat & stir in your loose black tea. (If you don't have loose tea, use 4-5 black teabags instead) Cover & let steep for about 10 minutes...

Meanwhile, mix all your dry ingredients together in one bowl, followed by the wet ones in another, adding the tea once it has steeped (filter out the tea leaves first!)

Then slowly mix the dry into the wet, & stir until there are no more conspicuous lumps.

Pour your batter into the tins, filling each liner nearly to the top. You should have enough for a dozen cupcakes. Pop them in the oven & bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until a poking-stick comes out clean... (Please check them carefully, I am only going by my oven here, which is a bit overzealous. You may need to leave them 15-18 minutes... Or, if your oven is even more overeager, just 10. Be vigilant! It would be sad to waste them...)

As you are basking in the glorious aroma seeping from your oven, you can make the icing... Start with slowly beating the spices into the butter (which should be all nice & soft first!) & salt, & then gradually adding 1-1 & 1/2 tbsp. of milk for each cup of icing sugar. Beat well! It's all quite approximate with the milk, so use your judgement as to the desired thickness of the icing. Taste often.

Once the cupcakes are done, let them cool completely before liberally applying little mountainous icing peaks.

Enjoy!

bod rahng-tsen.

red willow, lawrence lake, n. of athabasca, march 9/08.

Amnesty International: Stop the Crackdown in Tibet

I think the link above speaks for itself; I can't really think of anything eloquent to say right now that hasn't already been said. Just go and read and write a little note to the Chinese ambassador to Canada. I did this morning, and I am finding it heartening that the number of emails sent has more than doubled over the course of the day.

I've been involved for a number of years in Students for a Free Tibet, and Tibetan-related Amnesty events and campaigns -- I've been following the situation for a number of years, and while I definitely don't condone the violence against Chinese citizens in which a few pro-Tibet protesters have allegedly engaged, I think I understand how it's come to this, how people just can't take it anymore. And it's devastating how it has come to this -- but I also think it's really crucial that we look at the many, many peaceful protests spreading across the region, and the message that this sends. People are still demonstrating with great integrity, and this cannot be ignored.

More than fifty years of peaceful protest, and non-violence. I can't really articulate how angry the actions of the Chinese government officials make me -- there's been reports of unarmed Tibetans being shot, etc, and that the number of people killed is (unsurprisingly) much higher than what the officials are reporting, and the things the Chinese leaders say make me seethe, blaming the Dalai Lama for the unrest & lots of other ridiculous things, etc. Reading some of what's going on, the litany of abuses & all just makes me ill. (Not figuratively -- I mean throat-constrictingly, weight-in-the solar-plexus-ill). This feeling is accentuated by the fact I am still so disappointed in the majority of people living in Alberta for their apathy, for one of the lowest voter turn-outs in Canadian history in the recent provincial election (but that's a story for another time).

Can you imagine wanting change so badly, as badly as most Tibetans do?

So, if you're reading this (& I haven't already done so because I've been pestering you about this all day) please go support Amnesty International's efforts to help the young monks who were imprisoned after peacefully protesting the Chinese state's brutality, propaganda, and cultural genocide. Sign the standard email, & please try to add something personalized to the note. It will have more impact.

For those who believe that these kinds of messages do little good, I think it's important to remember the power of words now, especially with the silencing of media and observers in Tibet right now (removal of journalists from the area, persecution of Tibetan and pro-Tibet bloggers, etc). You can still write something even if there's a lump in your throat, like there is in mine.

So -- bod rahng-tsen! Free Tibet.


*For more information on the situation, the Students for a Free Tibet blog is updated frequently, as is the Canada Tibet Committee and International Campaign for Tibet. The latter two are excellent sources of general background information as well. Amnesty International also has plenty of information of Tibet-related information, as well as Chinese human rights issues in general.*

rambling about borshch, etc.

a pot of borshch, ukrainian xmas '07. mmm.

This article just recently brought to my attention -- it is a lovely piece of food-writing with the history as well as the politics & contemporary social context of one of my favourite things to both eat & cook: borshch! It's really interesting to me how the politics, the tensions between Russia and Ukraine permeate even discussions of the edibles of the countries. Debates over borshch ingredients easily fall into the West Ukraine - East Ukraine camps, with the former claiming its true Ukrainian authenticity, and the latter being 'too Russian' to know what real borshch would be, anyway.

& so I am sitting here (feeling rather hungry) & mulling over the myriad intersections between between food & identity -- how what we eat (& what we don't eat!) can define us socially whether it's something we consciously choose or something that is thrust upon us by those who watch us eat... I remember the attention (not always positive) received from having 'different foods' in elementary and junior high school lunches, friends with spicy lentil dals and curries or the chunk of pungent garlic sausage my mother would give to me...

And then of course the whole vegetarian issue and all that goes along with that, perhaps the most polarizing food-identity question here & perhaps the one that obviously inspires people to be the most vocal about their choices... the explanations (I remember my baba in disbelief the first time I told her that no, I wouldn't like any kovbasa...) & the defenses of the morals and ethics by vegetarians (and vegans, even more so) because of my own personal experiences with vegetable-eating, and how people reacted whenever my patterns of consumption changed.

The non-carnivore issue is perhaps the most conscious for most people in terms of food identity, but there are also the regional identities often based around what an area produces, & the pride in consuming this food (Alberta beef, etc, exemplified by the infamous bumper stickers)

And food becoming instantly recognized, nearly synonymous with a culture (haggis in Scotland, the massive kovbasa sausage in Mundare, Alberta, etc) and thus becoming a prominent marker of ethnic identity... there are many many examples of this... Food seems to also be the prominent way people attempt to experience other cultures (à la Heritage Days -- the food seems to be the definite draw there for many festival-goers) or their own cultures... A friend once remarked to me that 'we are Ukrainian, I guess, but we don't really do anything Ukrainian except eat a lot of pyrohy...')


& then in Yukon, I was taught about the necessity of having 'traditional foods' in one's diet -- people talking about how white-person grocery-store food might keep them physically alive, but it's not 'real food', they needed the food from the land, be it salmon or moose or soapberries, to really be full, sated, nourished living beings. I heard similar things from urban Inuit in Montreal, about the inherent health of their own foods, and have been told about the food networks of how when someone gets some 'country food' from a relative in the north, most of the community gets together to partake of it. Going berry-picking this past autumn in Yukon, and being given moosemeat by people in the community was very profound for me -- & I think I understood a little bit about how eating of the land reinforces a certain connection to that place.

I suppose in some ways for myself food is often very ethnically-linked, because I was taught to cook by my mother who is a fantastically brilliant, creative cook raised in the Ukrainian tradition by my baba, who ended up restaurant cook upon coming to Canada... The preparation and sharing of food is incredibly important to that side of my family -- whereas cooking and nourishing is not very important to my (Scottish) father and his relatives... & for me, cooking what my baba always made is comforting, both in the preparation as well as the sharing and the consumption. Very simply, I like to make things & feed people. It makes me happy.

As for culture and identity, I do believe that we each create our selves through the actions we choose to perform -- it is through those actions that ‘culture’ itself is reproduced & transmitted, and though it is small, and mundane, culture includes the act of making food. (I've been thinking about this even more since theory seminar on Friday -- it fits nicely with what Michael Jackson (no, not that one) talks about in 'Knowledge of the Body' in regards to the embodiment of culture, being-in-the-world through collective and common actions.

Anyway, lately I've been trying to transcribe some of the family recipes I know, as I want to make a Ukrainian-vegetarian zine... I have rambled about borshch many times in my blog, because I love it so -- one version of my recipe is here (see June 6th, 2006) & I have written about my soup-love many other times I'm sure... as well as in my beet-poem, which contains similar food-identity musings... A recipe for cabbage rolls, holubchi, is here too.

& before I cease my writing-which-is-falling-quite-short-of-lucid, here is my beet-poem, which has gotten around a lot in the past few years but apparently not into the blog...

making borshch

sawing away at the jewel-red woodgrain
of fresh rosebud beets
the juice stains my fingernails,
skin dry & papyrine from scrubbing,

earthy & pungent
from carrots & onions, scented like
the mysterious water & sacred sleep
of the soil –

& i think of my baba
& how her soup-stained fingers would be
like wrinkled pink parchments, speaking softly &
stirring, smoothing my hair –

& now my own hands, chopping
the vegetables for borshch, they become
hers, creating sustenance;

pulling up taproots, coaxing out
their subterranean blood
for nourishment, sweetness of the earth –

burjaky, chasnyk, krip i morkvy
bili pidpenky, selera i tsybulky
barabolja i zh kapusta

sing my ancestors, sending their breath
through the voice of the grasses, they
grow for us sweet dill
now shredded & stirred –

i will not reduce my culture
to its victuals, there will be no
monument to beets

like that giant forked pyrohy
nor stawnichy’s speared sausage

but i am grateful

to this garden of my foremothers, &

i cannot help celebrating these
vegetables
for these, they are my
roots –

ice-fishing.

arching water-grass, one of the chain lakes, n. of athabasca, dec.07

ice-fishers in the distance, also one of the chain lakes, n. of athabasca, dec.07

poem-draft. this poem & i need some space right now.

ice-fishing.

out on the frozen lake i watch you drop
a line down through a hole in the ice; we might
sit in silence for hours here, you & i, willing

the shadowy thoughts of fishes to notice this,
for one to sacrifice itself for sustenance – &
then the twitching of the thread, a northern pike
comes flailing to the surface –

i watch you now, bite my lip. unconscious echo
of the fish’s bleeding cheek, metallic taste of smoky air,
red willows bending, that red stain spreading in the snow –

& i can’t watch as you crack the skull on the frozen board,
thinking of the pooling in the spine, the delicacy of bones
splintering, icicles reverberating, falling off the house --

little prayer under my breath, & back to fishing.
you shuffle around, pain following in your
shaky footprints. snowbacked sedge-grass arching down
on the shores, rushes heaving under hoarfrost,

straining your back as you hunch over
that hole in the ice. & i know your ribs, your shins
are aching in this cold but you won’t say anything,
not even when its chilly hooks creep further in

& finally confront you, pull you up
from your watery black cocoon gasping
& thrashing like a pike on the ice –

oh, but pike, they’re the toughest fish, you’d say,
they’ll survive hours out of water, calmly flaring
the bloody rose-petals of their gills

& maybe they aren’t even afraid -- but
i watch you staring out over the lake, at the sky
frozen over with luminous white ice-floe clouds

& i am stricken by the cold rays on your face, do
you see it? that shimmering, dangling line, &
how your bright eyes are so hungry, so tired,
so old.

little scatterings of ashes...

rose-hip-sun, by the n. saskatchewan... jan.29/07?

(poem bits that find it too stuffy in the writing book...)

wantlessness

i)

when did i learn to stop
wanting?

woke up from dreams
of this, of clinging
like the last berry to a branch
& then

there was nothing left.

just a winter sunrise frozen,
reddish blur of a tongue
to the silver metal horizon.

kisses like cranberry pulses
clot in the woods, pulsars silent
in still snowless constellations;

a magpie flies by my window,
crisp soft flutter like
the shaking of a pillowcase,
all the longing falling away.

ii)

where do you stash
all that yearning,
trailing behind you
like a smoky tail?

trade it in for a
november cocoon
of ache & warmth,

leave it in a spruce midden,
for a squirrel to line its
winter nesting-place?

or sever the fibrous longings,
shake it out like tendrils
of rivergrass caught in a bootlace,

weave it in with
the roving in some mittens
knit it in between the thoughts,
each stitch of wantlessness

(then give it away
to someone who longs too much
for something they will never know)


iii)

when did i learn
that i’m never free
of wanting?

that it moves
like small circular
sorrows, cycles like water

down the river with the
the bone-brittle ice-lilies,
a seasonal funeral

when the snow starts falling,
the river holds its breath
& runes of frost appear

on my window &
i start to decipher a
jagged yearning,

aura blossoming slowly,
edging its way back in
to my head

with the meltwater,
slushy back alleys
in springtime coming

the creaking break-up,
rush in the gutter, see-saw
of the love-bird call

& the soft snow gives
under my boots, feels
a little too much like
my heart

i remember you well...

ice cracks, chadburn lake, whitehorse, feb. 10/08

flowers at -45 C -- whitehorse, yukon, feb.8/08

''Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.''



Dear old Leonard Cohen* said that, and it's very true. (Now, we all know how I feel about Mister Cohen, & how he stirs such great cognitive dissonance in me... But I think that this is something he's said that I can agree with wholly & without any qualifications!)



Anyway, I am very grateful to have my writing book full of ash-fragments. This makes me quite thoroughly & truly happy.



***



*I think he's written some brilliant songs (& some not so) but I really like them better when women sing them. Because a woman singing his words does wonders in messing with his slivers of misogyny, and plays with assumed gendered roles in a pleasing way.


See, there's this one:

Chelsea Hotel -- as performed by Regina Spektor -- mp3!

When he sings it, it just annoys me. When she sings it, the lines that irk me in his version make me smile, because she conveys the vulnerability, the denial of the song... whereas he sounds a bit bored, & arrogant. Oh Lenny.