julie & julia... delicious & delicious!

I've just finished reading Julie & Julia, and it's a really charming book. The memoir begins with author, Julie Powell, deciding that she is fed up with the mundane grind of her life as a secretary pushing thirty and living in Queens. To fight her feelings of ordinariness and waste, Julie decides to do something daring and unique: 1) cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and 2) chronicle her (mis)adventures in a blog.

Julie’s life (in an out of the kitchen) is a string of mini-disasters. She treats each kitchen mishap (food mill won’t work, lobster won’t die, not enough butter in the fridge) as a matter of grave importance. The upshot of this melodrama is a very funny series of events, narrated in Julie’s quirky, charming voice. The other characters are relatable and likable folks, particularly Julie’s husband, Eric, who is an unfailingly supportive partner-in-crime/cheerleader during the Julie/Julia project.

In moments, Julie’s observations about city life teeter on the irritating ramblings of a classist white girl. As a native New Yorker (daughter of immigrants, raised in Brooklyn), I was deeply unsympathetic to her gripes about living in an outer-borough and trying to communicate with non-English speakers. Such experiences are the stuff true city life is made of, and are not half as lamentable as Julie would have us believe.

Despite these moments, Julie & Julia is a pleasure to read. Powell's prose is easy to navigate and full of the rich, personal details that make so many of us turn to the voyeuristic blogosphere. And then, there are the recipes! The dishes are totally intriguing – more impressive than delicious, full of obscure, high-end ingredients, entirely too much butter, and strange animal parts.

(Plus, as Julie herself points out, there is a deep sensuality to the sort of cooking she engages in page after page. Each recipe is truly a labor of love, requiring more than a little bit of physical exertion, decadent ingredients, strange scents, heat, and time.)

It was indulgent and gripping to read about Julie’s experiments, and as she mastered the art of French cooking, so did I (in theory). I too learned how to make the perfect crepe, flip over omelets, and kill a crustacean several different ways. As a reader, I found myself celebrating each of Julie’s successful dishes and cringing at the violence and high-fat content called for in certain recipes – I shared in her kitchen defeats and victories.

This book entered my life at a very opportune time. My kitchen is not yet in cooking condition (an exterminator has been called), and my dinners have been last night’s Papa Johns, or Key Food natural peanut butter spread over an apple, or Farina microwaved with soy milk, salad out of a bag, or cheese --- just cheese. Thanks to Ms. Powell’s diaries I have been able to enjoy my fill of everything from artichokes to lamb to pink potato salad (which, interestingly enough, ain’t just a French thing – Dominicans eat it too).

But beyond the secondhand indulgence of each culinary catastrophe or triumph, I loved watching Julie fashion a new identity for herself over the course of the book. As Julie achieves something great and on her own terms, I felt pride for her and re-encouraged about the possibilities for greatness in my own life.

The true gift of this book is its message that we are all made extraordinary by the things that we decide to do. The projects that we undertake – whether social, professional, or domestic – give our lives meaning and define who we are.

Bon Appétit, indeed!

poems i like

This post is pretty self-explanatory. I am putting up a list of some of my favorite poems. Each poem title links to a website where you can read the text. I cannot vouch for the websites hosting these poems. I found the links on Google and just put them up. Consider this my disclaimer for any sketchy content you may stumble upon on these sites. This being said, all of the poems are worth reading. Please leave comments including thoughts about these pieces or a list of your own favorite poems.

"Love in Bloodtime" by Sharon Olds

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden

"This Living Hand" by John Keats

"Poema X" by Pablo Neruda

"Soliloquy of the Solipsist" by Sylvia Plath

"Theme for English B" by Langston Hughes

"I Ask the Impossible" by Ana Castillo

"Kitchenette Building" by Gwendolyn Brooks

"Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth

"To A Dark Girl" by Gwendolyn Bennett

"Cross-Fire" by Staceyann Chin

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

"From the Dark Tower" by Countee Cullen

"1 Corinthians 13"

seen

These vignettes are based on people and scenes I have encountered on New York City subways. Big up to the Q, the A, and all my other trains. Also, please don't take any of these vignettes and say that you wrote them because that's just not true!

Seen

A little girl boards the train. She is two, maybe three years old. Her mother is with her, peddling. I search my pockets, but I have no singles left, no change. At the bottom of my bag, I find a couple of crayons. They are left over from a weekend trip to a diner with my nephew and niece. We ate burgers with mustard and onions, French fries, and heavy sweet shakes. They colored pictures of hot air balloons and sailboats, while I took photographs of them with a digital SLR, the kind with dials that click and whirl each time I focus, adjust, and snap.

As the woman and her daughter make their way across the car, I retrieve a handful of crayons. I extend them to the woman. I say, "I don't have any money, but I have crayons."

She smiles at me and runs her fingers along my palm, picking up the crayons. She nods thank you and begins to move away. I reach back into the bottom of my bag and see that there is one crayon left.

“Oh, here. I forgot one,” I say. I hand the orange crayon to the girl.

The child’s face breaks into a smile. Her eyes brighten and I see for the first time, their color. Her eyes are light blue with little orange spheres in them, like burning worlds suspended in sky.

“Orange!” she says. “Orange!”

She squeezes the orange crayon in her fist and moves away from me, smiling, trailing behind her mother, chanting.

Orange! Orange!

* * *

Coming out of the Union Square station, I see an old woman and a child – her nephew? Her son? Her grandson? The woman coughs into her shoulder. She is hunched over – to reprimand the child? Because she is ill? Because she cannot stand? She clutches a cane and boxes the child into a brick wall. He is stuck between the low, menacing curve of her, her cane, her limbs. In one hand, she balances a cigarette between two fingers. She presses her face close to the child and smoke floats above their heads in the night. “It’s a dangerous world,” she says, and coughs.

* * *

This woman is over six feet tall. Her skin is a deep brown and her hair is like honey, uneven at the edges, and drab against the richness of her skin. She leans far away from the pole, dangling her self. I do not know whom she is speaking to when she shouts.

“I’M A FUCKING PRINCESS!”

* * *

There are three boys. You can tell they’re brothers. They look mixed, all café con leche skin and soft gold fros. They have ashy hands and ankles and wear plain plaid shirts and pants that are only just too small.

They sit down right on the floor in the middle of the car and begin to play their instruments. The oldest has a guitar with long, unclipped strings. The middle brother has a tambourine covered in rainbow stickers. The youngest brother has only two drumsticks with him, to beat on the floor of the train.

Without much of an introduction, they begin singing, shaking the tambourine, strumming the guitar, and beating the floor. They play the Beatles.

I once had a girl, or you could say 

She once had me.

The guitar is perfectly tuned. Each string twangs when it should, drops, chimes with the next. The oldest brother plucks and strums. His brown hand is beautiful.

They half-sing, half-shout, with voices too young to startle. Their harmonies are sweet; their call and response is a game.

Marco?

Polo!

I love this song.

The bells on the tambourine ring and the boys look so alike. I look up and down the car. Folks are smiling, rummaging for change, or swaying with eyes closed as the train charges ahead. I wonder what they are remembering.

We talked until two,

And then she said it’s time for bed

They don’t look at anyone or at each other as they play. In my mind, I see a motel room without chairs. And a thin woman, maybe with gold curls like theirs, laughing. A small fire blazing from damp logs, maybe driftwood, the kind that sparks blue and green, and smells like the sea. A box of wine on a cheap rug.

I get out a dollar. The boys finish up the last few bars.

And when I awoke, I was alone

This bird has flown

They do not say much. They collect their coins and move to the next car.

soccer, venus, & feminist grunting

In June, I spent some time watching pick up soccer games. It was fascinating for me to watch people who love the game so much running, jumping, kicking, bickering with each other, and laughing on the field. Besides my short-lived basketball career in seventh grade, I have never been involved in team sports. When I used to practice muay thai, it felt like a very personal commitment to me that was ultimately about my body, confidence, and mental strength. It was also a way for me to belong to a community of people who loved the sport and trained hard. I have had a glimpse of the deeply personal and communal nature of sports, but as someone who has never followed any sport on television nor attended many sporting events, I was still very intrigued by the pick up soccer game. Here are some photographs I would like to share from that day in the park. I shot these pictures using a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT.

Watching soccer that day in Fort Greene park was not just a window into the world of team sports; for me, it was also a window into the secret world of men. The ways the men interacted with each other felt so foreign to me: the aggression (two fights nearly broke out during the game), easy camaraderie, competition, and modes of communication felt so far from anything I have ever been a part of.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend the U.S. Open. I saw Venus Williams play and she was awesome. She seemed to win easily and have fun while doing it. She was gracious during the on-court interview after the match and the crowd was crazy for her.

I must confess that there was one small thing about her performance that made me a tad uncomfortable. Each time she served or returned a ball, she screamed or grunted. If I were serving a ball at upwards of 100 mph, surely I would grunt or scream too. Yet, I found myself cringing and embarrassed that a stadium full of people (many white, many male, many affluent) were watching her grunt and scream. The sounds seemed so sexual, so guttural and embodied.

At the time, I was very aware that my response was problematic. My embarrassment was due to my own internalized sexism. I was embarrassed for her and I was embarrassed for me. Each time she cried out, I, too, felt exposed. I felt like my physicality - strength, sex, body, presence - was being publicly articulated.

By the end of the match, I was making noise myself. Screaming and cheering and jumping up and down for Venus. I am not proud of my initial reaction during the match. Her grunts were the cries of ecstasy and exertion that must come from playing so spectacularly.

What would I have preferred? Neat silence? Control? Holding it in or holding back? Of course not.

Perhaps what I felt is the same shame that causes women to clap their hands over their mouths when they speak too loudly or out of turn, or when they make too much noise during sex, or when they say something unladylike.

One of my favorite zines about consent includes the following quote:

"Analysis does not equal immunity."

I am a feminist, but that doesn't change that I've got to work to decolonize my mind. Sometimes my thoughts are racist and antifeminist and perpetuate all of things that hate and hurt me. I'm a work in progress. For now, my goal is to be a little more like Venus. It was an honor to see her play. She is powerful and a supreme athlete. I did not take the above photograph of Venus, but I like it. It seems as if she is singing or dancing, as well as winning whatever match this is from. Cause that is what she does. And she is good at it.