You're a Naughty Puffer, Aren't You?

Risking delight with Jack Gilbert (Recipes you can double)

new scultpure at a park we frequent

Hi friends. I’m at a bit of a loss for words. All week I’ve been wanting to share my little stories, then when I opened Substack to write you, a voice inside was worried. What if it’s not worth something? Nothing works faster to strangle my voice than whatever part of me/the world wants it to mean something - to be worth someone’s time, to be of value, because we don’t have time for your bullshit! (lol?) Honestly, I preach the antidote all the time: our bodies are finely-tuned instruments. Whatever is wanting to be expressed is usually meant to be expressed right then. (I mean, are we meant to express the sentiment, “I hate your face!” right to your boss’s mug? No, but a small grief party in a bathroom stall or a hotly worded journal entry at a coffee shop after work may be in order.)

It’s interesting to see this stranglehold play out in real time this morning. Don’t embarrass yourself! No one cares! Great silencers. The best.

Lucky for you part of me is an exhibitionist. I believe this part is a bridge to our greater humanity. This part does not believe I have to earn my keep. This part knows I am loved and golden - we all are - and that we need each other, even in our stumbles and boringnesses. I guess I believe our Little Nothings make our Great Something, so move over stranglehold! Pass the mic.

fire hydrant after Halloween. Is this cape trying to find its former owner or does this fire hydrant believe it can save the world?

Yesterday I went to Costco for tortilla wraps which we call fwaps in this house. (This fact has corrupted my mom’s brain. She once was looking for this item at a store herself when an employee asked her, “Can I help you with anything?” She thought, “Oh fudge, what are they really called? I can’t ask where they keep the fwaps!” LOL) I went to the store right after school drop-off, actually after an appointment but still in my just-dropped-off-my-kids outfit. After passing the batteries and computers I don’t need, I was surprised to find myself sloughing my yellow sweatshirt and blue raincoat and trying on winter coats.

I mean, I wasn’t *really* surprised to find myself doing that. This girl loves a winter coat. I have never reached maximum capacity for staying warm, though maybe I am reaching it now, as hot flashes creep into my days. They are almost always when my kids are around. How does science measure a parent’s despair/temper flares versus a peri-menopausal individual’s hormonal balance? My physician’s assistant, whom I love and is male, is not terribly helpful on this topic, as you might imagine.

Kara / Neil Young looking at her physician’s assistant / Robbie Robertson, who generally rocks the house. I am actually pretty suspicious of RR - the victors of history get the documentaries/Hollywood cash, etc. etc. - but I love my PA anyway let’s move on

What I’m trying to say is I bought a new winter coat for myself, and it’s great and makes me feel like I am seal hunting on ice floes which is what I require all my clothing to make me feel. It was made by Nautica, which I would never otherwise trot out but I have to tell you because on my way out of the store, after grabbing fwaps and milk and dried cherries, I looked at my receipt and saw an item called a Nautipuffer and it made me laugh so hard. I am a woman who buys a naughtipuffer, yes I am, I am nothing if not that.

When I reported that later as a high point of my day, Tim said naughtipuffer sounds like something British people accuse each other of being. “Well, aren’t you a little naughty puffer, then?” That made me laugh hardest of all.

After dinner I made him record it on my phone, prompting more giggles and what some would call an unsuccess. (Is anything a fail if it brings total delight? No!) We recorded several versions. Here’s the first one, which came out Minnesotan:

Here is The British Version, honestly a pale imitation of what made me spit out soup at the dinner table, but technically proficient (like the soup):

pretending we have a closet for all of our linens. I bought a tub to hold extra blankets and pillow cases this week so the family garbage doesn’t take over my son’s closet anymore. you know what? my effort solved nothing but I tried. And no, this did not bring total delight, but I’m not sorry I tried.

you’re gd right to demand the highest performance from your sheet set! accept nothing less than perfection. (I’m kidding here - I could sleep on concrete - but I did chuckle when I saw this. We are so obsessed with the idea of performance that we’re now making it mean nonsense)

morning sun on whatever this is

make a wish

what happens when you don’t demand perfection - ouch

Waylon and Willie in their “youth:” I appreciate how human they look. haggard and hairy, like tired parents who have had enough of the BS and are gonna stay in the furthest corner at the BBQ to amuse one another / heal each other with stories

it’s always duck o’clock somewhere

two entries for the Amateur American Bake Off that runs in my dining room many days. a collection of serpents and a witch’s finger. ask the bakers about their favorite (playdough) flavors

Miscellaneous Eggs

One day last week I was under a table rifling through LPs (almost every month of my life I think, I should whittle those down, give away the classical guitar LPs I’m never gonna listen to, and every month I don’t do it). For some reason, my grandmother’s old church cookbooks were next to my LPs (on the ground, obvs, which is where everything in our lives seems to get “properly” stored since having children). I spent the next thirty minutes under a white sheet, under a black table (the puzzle table), pouring through these cookbooks, looking for names I knew and reading old recipes and ads for businesses with phone numbers that had letters in them, including one for the funeral home my relatives still run. (Yes! I am related to morticians #spookybrag)

a good dessert . . . with Saltines

Party Bubbles (Do Not Double Recipe.)

which weird lonely tree shall I choose for my friend Jef?

how can one ever pick?

rainy day snapper

nature. resiliency

a pothole I’d forgotten I like until the leaves clung to it, reminding me of its sudden circle in the middle of green, like a yolk, like a hushed and elegant Japanese design

I have been head-in-sand cooking lately. I could not recommend it more. Firstly, because then you will be able to answer the ten-year-old who at some point every day will ask you what’s for dinner, like a foodie asking about the specials at their favorite restaurant. You will have an answer. You will know the specials. You will be a good waiter! (You look good in those black pants.) Secondly, because you will have something to do with your hands. You will have something to do besides referee tedious squabbles for the next five hours before bedtime. And you will perhaps fill the house with warmth and happiness - or at least balance - after your children have been at school for too many hours, paralyzing their butt cheeks with hard chairs and challenging their ear drums because teachers with otherwise kind souls use actual microphones like MCs on bad trivia night. Poor everyone!

“Emily is Aunt Emily??”

lol (making fact fancy)

rainbow garlic

nothing boring about these kitchen takes! and zero Saltines used (sadly?)

dinner

However, if cooking is *not* your thing, here’s an excellent post on Virgina Sole Smith’s Burnt Toast newsletter called The Fallacy of Eating the Way Your Great-Grandmother Ate, which discusses how her British grandmother served evening tea instead of dinner - toast, sponge cake, and a cup of tea. We should definitely bring this back! I am already fantasizing about years when dinner will basically be an apple, maybe a potato if you’re lucky.

Alright, friends. I’m sending you loooooots of comfort and kindness and space for processing right now. The world is in so much turmoil. What kindness can you bring to yourself as you navigate your day? What self-compassion can you start with, then move out from there to the world?

With love & patience,

Kara

P.S. Looking for the Jack Gilbert poem I linked to above, I found a different Gilbert poem that seems fitting right now - it’s below. I also realized I was looking for the last line of one of Tim’s stories, which was kind of a sweet moment. The line: “And now, through the window, I saw how claustrophobic it must have been - not nearly enough room for a group of believers and their god. At least not a big god. In that moment, though, it didn’t seem shameful that they’d tried.” From The Machine We Trust <3

A Brief for the Defense - Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down / we should give thanks that the end had magnitude / We must admit there will be music despite everything. Poets, huh? Gotta hand it to them. Come to think of it, these lines are also clutch: If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction / we lessen the importance of their deprivation / We must risk delight. To be fair, I could see a reading of this poem that criticizes the thoughts and prayers mentality. I just want to acknowledge it because while poets and poems don’t write policy, insufficient responses to tragedy are real.

And now for something completely petty: I discovered in my internet roaming that The Sun magazine didn’t know who Jack Gilbert was until his death! Which feels poetic justice-y for me because, as discussed before, in my admittedly small efforts in the past I’ve been unable to get The Sun to even blink in my direction. Does it feel good to pretend I am as mighty as Jack Gilbert and one day they will rue the day they missed my entire oeuvre? LOL. To be fair, I am late to lots of parties. I shouldn’t hold it against them! But sometimes it’s fun to hold meaningless grudges, isn’t it? It can be self-esteem building for a time. And then hopefully the heart grows and gets ready to shed its old layers. Is this me shedding an old layer? (Not yet! she responds gleefully.)

Okay, I’m really going now. I’m sending you courage and hope for evolving theories and strengths. May we all invest heavily in the now, and with delight whenever possible.

this week my kids found a small collection of old holiday cards and were newly delighted by the images, jokes, and sentiments. on birthdays and other premier present days, my youngest especially cannot be bothered by cards, but in the middle of the week on a boring Tuesday? bring on the Hallmark puns.