You Hated Spain

You Hated Spain    Ted Hughes

 Spain frightened you.

Spain.

Where I felt at home.
The blood-raw light,
The oiled anchovy faces, the African              
Black edges to everything, frightened you.
Your schooling had somehow neglected Spain.
The wrought-iron grille, death and the Arab drum.
You did not know the language, your soul was empty
Of the signs, and the welding light              
Made your blood shrivel.
Bosch Held out a spidery hand and you took it
Timidly, a bobby-sox American.
You saw right down to the Goya funeral grin
And recognized it, and recoiled                  
As your poems winced into chill, as your panic
Clutched back towards college America.
So we sat as tourists at the bullfight
Watching bewildered bulls awkwardly butchered,
Seeing the grey-faced matador, at the barrier          
Just below us, straightening his bent sword
And vomiting with fear. And the horn
That hid itself inside the blowfly belly
Of the toppled picador punctured
What was waiting for you. Spain              
Was the land of your dreams: the dust-red cadaver
You dared not wake with, the puckering amputations
No literature course had glamorized.
The juju land behind your African lips.
Spain was what you tried to wake up from          
And could not. I see you, in moonlight,
Walking the empty wharf at Alicante
Like a soul waiting for the ferry,
A new soul, still not understanding,
Thinking it is still your honeymoon              
In the happy world, with your whole life waiting,
Happy, and all your poems still to be found.

April Fools

One year for April Fools Day, my older siblings came up with a brilliant trick to play on my father, the best April Fools Day trick to date from the Smith household.  

We had (and still have) a marble bust of a young girl, that looks exactly like my sister Jean when she was little, and is there for called The Jean Statue in my family.  My dad of course loved the Jean Statue, (and still does).  The plan was to make it look like my brother Teddy had knocked the statue down and broke it.  Concocting a home-made plaster of paris, mixing water and flour, they had a white clay like substance that they could manipulate.  Now the next few steps were set up to take place right around the time my dad would come home from work.  They very very carefully placed the statue on the floor, with Jean's face down.  They then put the flour pieces around in a couple broken chunks.  The next step, was to all wait in place.  When my dad came home, after a strategically planned amount of time, they somehow made a big crash in the other room while Teddy stood close to the face down bust.  There were gasps and whispers, trying to act as if they were just as surprised as my dad was about to be, when he came sprinting to the noise.  Now, this next part happened very quickly: It seemed like it was one fluid motion of my dad entering the room and seeing the scene to when he had Teddy across his knee bum up, with his hand above his head moving in a downward motion towards Teddy - when everyone called out and grabbed his hand, trying to prevent innocent Teddy from actually getting spanked!  They successfully stopped my dad, and it took some time to show and explain that the statue was fine, it was a joke, April Fools!  And Teddy didn't even flinch through the whole performance.  He was ready to take that spank for the sake of the trick.  My dad was quickly relieved.

If I was alive I was not old enough to be involved or even remember, but this story has been told many times since.  My dad tells it with pride at the cleverness of his children.

What animal would it be?

A month ago, my brother and his wife went out to dinner for his birthday, and I watched the baby.  Because they are so sweet and thoughtful, they said that I got to go out to dinner with one of them while the other watched baby Dallas.  I chose (they always make me make decisions and I hate it) John since it was for his birthday after all.  


Last night we finally had our dinner date.  We went to the same restaurant they went to, called Animal. (Side-note - they are supplied by Schaner Farm!) Our reservation wasn't until 10:15, so Lily was almost ready for bed by the time we left.  When we got there, J asked if we could actually just sit at the bar, but it was too full.  That is what they did last time, and said it was much more quiet and the bar tender was super nice.  So we were seated at our table, and it was really loud.  The restaurant was more like a tapas place, J explained, and that we could decide on a bunch of plates and share.  We chose five things, and I will tell them to you in order of least favorite to best:


5. Quail fry with grits, bacon, and honey jus.  Least favorite because it was so nothing special, and a little disappointing.  It was like a boring fried chicken. Fine, but the only thing we didn't eat all of.  


4. Local Burrata with homily, tomatillo salsa and red onions.  It was good, but not as good as everything else.  I really liked the crunch of hominy with the really soft cheese, and then the warm onions.


3. Bone Marrow with toast.  So so good, I've never met a marrow I didn't like.  It was cooked with garlic and had a little bit of parsley on top, mm mm.


2. Chicken liver pate.  I really loved this, it was warm and so smooth spread on top of the toast, which was crunchy but not too crunchy.  And the best part was that it had a strip of blackberry jam on top, which I would never think would taste good on pate, but it was right up my alley.


1.  Flat Iron, potatoes and artichoke, with fondue.  The cheese was melted aright over the meat, which was nice and pink, it was the best part of the meal.  But it was also the last thing to come so I was almost too full to even try it.  


Oh yeah, and then the part that was really the best, but is judged on a different level than the dinner, is dessert!  We had a bacon crunch bar with salt and pepper ice cream.  There is nothing bad about that, there can be nothing bad about that! 


Afterwards, Lily asked me what animal it would be? A Honey badger?  Yes, definitely a honey badger: ultimate badass of the animal kingdom.  

Panorama

After graduating from high school, I delayed going to college for a year.  I spent the year at a boarding school in Lugano, Switzerland as a Post-Graduate studying art, photography, literature, etc.  My roommate Emily was also a PG, trying to put off the next step in growing up by traveling the world and continuing to learn in the classroom, like I was.


The first night there, the school held a "dance" on a boat on the lake.  For the returning students, this was a fantastic event to see all of the friends they had been away from for the summer.  For the handful of new students, particularly PG's, this was a strange and boring event, where we sat around in our little black dresses (the girls, at least), getting to know the few people we had met from our dorm in the last two days, but not really meeting many new people.  Interestingly, though, the people I had met at that point were my closest friends for the rest of the year.  


Emily and I were sitting and talking, realizing that we had a lot in common, and realizing that this year was going to be a lot of fun (despite my intense feelings of regret and anxiety over the situation).  We were sitting on the back of the boat, outside of the room, so we could see the buildings around us, as well as the sea and the stars.  There was a pause in the conversation, what had just been said I can't remember, but we both looked up at the sky at the same time, and both gasped at the beauty that struck us.  We saw the big dipper - a very familiar symbol to both of us - but it was upside down from how we usually see it, and it was filling the entire sky.  I think the reason it seemed to awe-some at that moment is because it is what we needed to see just then.  It was something that was so familiar, and something that we both had a deep love for - the stars.  But we were both seeing it from a new and strange place, obscuring the object from how we were used to seeing it.  We were about to experience culture, people, places, in an obscured sight, but it was going to be beautiful, and new.  We were going to experience the adventure together.


The day before we left, we decided to go on a walk together up the mountain, like we had done many times, we were going to enjoy the panorama one more time.  It was the end of the school year, so it was late spring/ early summer, and most of the dandy lions (Emily's favorite 'flower') had already blown away and died.  But as we were walking back down, we found two perfectly intact dandy lions in their white puffy stage, not yellow flower stage.  We each picked one, and on the count of three made a wish and blew the pollen into the wind.  


It was if the dandy lions were there just for us, to say goodbye to our year and make a final wish, just as the big dipper was there our first night to make us realize what we were about to embark on.   I never asked Emily what she wished for, and I can't tell you what I wished for, or else it won't come true.  

Trudy

My best friend is named Trudy Victoria Andrzejewski.  She is exactly 338 days younger than I am, and have know each other and been friends since the day she was born.  When my family moved to Cleveland, we moved next door to the Andrzejewski's, and our parents have been friends since.  When Trudy was born, our mother's thought, how perfect, we can pass down Katie's clothes to Trudy.  But after probably six months this was no longer possible.  She grew tall and fast, while I didn't grow much.  These days, however, we are the same size and have very similar tastes (go figure) so we are able to share and trade.  On multiple occasions, we have met wearing either the exact same outfit, which is ridiculous, and more often we have been wearing very similar things.  For example, a red plaid flannel shirt with navy blue shorts and a brown belt, navy blue keds, our hair half up and tortuous shell sunglasses.  I don't just mean a white t-shirt and jeans, this goes way beyond that.

We only went to the same school until I was in fifth grade, but that never stood in our way of having a sleep over almost every weekend - well, me sleeping over at her house.  We tried to have sleep overs at my house, but she somehow always ended up in her own bed in the morning (it was only next door).

When my family outgrew our house, we moved 1/2 a mile down the street.  Trudy and I arranged a meeting spot in between our two houses, at the "potty house" and would often call the other and just say "let's meet halfway."  We would meet to go on walks, to go to each other's house, or most recently, to go to On The Rise, our favorite bakery.  They of course know her by name, and reserve two chocolate croissants whenever she tells them we are coming.

We have always dreamed of marrying twins and having a double wedding, and practiced it very often with our barbies.

Trudy is the most motivated person I know, which is very funny because I am the least motivated person  I know.  My sisters asked me last week how it has felt to grow up in her shadow.  I told them it was totally worth it to get to be her bff.

It has been said that your best friends are the ones you fight with the most, because its their opinion you care about the most.  I can understand why someone would say this, but in our case, it is quite the opposite.  We have been in one fight, and it goes a little something like this...

When we were about 5 and 6 years old, I spent the night and didn't pack any clothes for the next day.  This happened often, and in the morning, I asked if I could borrow some clothes.  On the top of her laundry bin was a pair of blue short-alls (overalls that were shorts) that had purple and blue flowers all over them.  They used to be mine, and since I decided they were no longer fashionable, I had given them to her.  She tossed them over to me giggling, and said that I could wear them for the day.  I giggled back, and tossed them back to her.  Our giggles quickly faded,  and we continued to toss them back and forth, until one toss of the short-alls caused the metal part to hit me in the eye.  Because we stayed up late talking, I was a little more tired and therefore irritable that morning, so I decided to have a fit, and started to cry.  Trudy was not having any of that, so she said either I could wear them or go home.  I left and went to sit in her little brother's room in my pajamas and she went downstairs for breakfast.  From the plastic blow-up couch in Michael's room, I could hear Lori (her mom) ask Trudy where I was.  Trudy answered in as snarky a voice she could produce, "I don't know, crying!"  Lori ordered her to go upstairs and apologize immediately, without knowing anything about what had happened except that I was upset.  She figured out quickly roughly what had happened.  Trudy stomped up every single creaky step until she reached the top, peaked her head around the door frame, and mumbled "I'm sorry."  I said, "(sniff) me too." I put on the short-alls, and we walked downstairs together to enjoy our delicious raspberry pop-tarts (Trudy always gave me the crust of hers) and chocolate milk.

We never needed to fight about anything else.

Cigarettes are bad for your health

My sister Sarah is three years younger than I.  She, like me and like the rest of us, is not very athletic, nor does she enjoy doing any sort of exercise. (We were recently laughed at for saying we were really bad at sports when someone asked us if we wanted to play beer pong, "beer pong doesn't take any athleticism!" they told us.  They put the two of us on a team against three moms who had never played before.  After we won (barely), they understood why we said that.)  Until a month ago, I would say the last time Sarah did anything more strenuous than hustling to class or breaking it down on the dance floor was exactly four years ago, the summer before her senior year of high school, when the dean realized that she didn't have enough P.E. credits to graduate, so we took a free yoga class at the ATMA center, which is across the street from the Shell gas station (which will make an appearance later in this story).  Sarah doesn't have her drivers license, and she is not terribly good with directions (it is close enough to walk to from our house), so I drove her and went with her to each class - and we had fun doing it together, and would have the other one to wake us up if we started to drool during the meditation at the end of class, and have the other to giggle with about the old men in our class.  Not to mention exercise and PE credits.


Last month, a hot day in June, my brother had a day off of work so we decided to make a day and sip and swim.  Sandy made us de-licious drinks, and our other brother joined us with his wife and baby, and my dad came too when he got home from work.  Because we had been outside most of the afternoon, we didn't make any plans for dinner, nor did my brother have any cigarettes left.  This may seem insignificant, but it becomes a pivotal moment in the day.  I suggested that we get my favorite pizza, but since they don't deliver, I offered to pick it up.  Sarah offered to ride her bike to go get Sandy some more cigarettes.  You may be thinking, why didn't I just pick them up when I was out?  Very reasonably I did make this offer, but Sarah said she was feeling sluggish, and was just itching to get her blood moving.  We all made sure she knew the way, and made her repeat to us that she knew where to go.  When Sarah went to get her (or rather my mother's) beautiful powder blue bike with a basket on the front from the garage, she realized that the tires were both flat (like I said, none of us are very athletic, including Mom, so she hadn't ridden it in a while).  But, she was going for it, she had already decided that she was doing this, so she found the pump next to it, and started to pump the tires back into shape.  She was out there for quite a while, the rest of us were inside ordering pizza and waiting for it to be ready, we didn't realize that she had not left yet.  And, to be totally honest, we were giggling (well at least I was) that she was so gung-ho do to this.  It was a little out of character.  Before I left to get the pizza with my dad, we did see her roll out.


The timing for the next part of this story is better than I could have made up.  Just as we are pulling home and parking, my dad and I see Sarah, Teddy, and Sandy all stepping out of the Suburban, and then pulling the bicycle out of the trunk, and Sarah's head was down down down in shame.  I at first was worried she was hurt, but then I was just really curious what happened.  This is the story she told, and it took me asking many questions to get every detail:


After working on the tires for a long time, she finally decided to just give up on the front one and ride the bike a total of 7 blocks to the gas station - on one flat tire.  When she got there, she was a little tired, but went inside and asked for a carton of camels, or whatever it was Sandy asked her to get.  The cashier asked to see her ID, and she reached into her carpet bag purse.  When she was doing that, she started to sway back and forth and had to hold on to the counter to get her balance.  The cashier asked if she was ok, and she barely mustered out "no" before she fainted!  Poor Sarah!  The paramedics came, and she tried to tell them that she was fine, she was fine.  They checked her pulse or whatever it is paramedics do when you faint, and they called home to get the boys to come pick her up.  They asked her some questions like why did she think this happened: "because I rode my bike for five minutes and that is the most physical activity I've ever done."  What did she have for lunch? "three chocolate covered donuts."  I don't remember the other questions, but those had the best answers.  So they called our house and the brothers came to get her.  She was so embarrassed by the whole thing, she didn't even eat any pizza, well, not until she took a tiny nap and drank tons of water.


I should add - Sarah is really thin, and she doesn't always eat like this.  Now that I think about it, maybe she does.

Po Chu-I

A Dream of Mountaineering


At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed a mountain,
Going out alone with my staff of holly-wood. 
A thousand crags, a hundred hundred valleys-
In my dream-journey none were unexplored
And all the while my feet never grew tired
And my step was as strong as in my young days.
Can it be that when the mind travels backward
The body also returns to its old state?
And can it be, as between body and soul,
That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong?
Soul and body - both are vanities;
Dreaming and waking - both alike  unreal.
In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;
In the night my steps go striding over the hills.
As day and night are divided in equal parts-
Between the two, I get as much as I lose.

Frost

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean
Holding the curve of one position
Counting an endless repetition

Dinner with Uncle Sandy part 3

3) Active vs. Passive Beauty


Uncle Sandy brought up a theory that he has been working on for some time: the idea of active beauty versus passive.  To illustrate this concept, he used my brother's dogs.

Pfeiffer, the white dog is a shining example of active beauty.  He has been called the ugliest dog in the world - but he is good hearted.  Riker, the black dog behind him is beautiful, knows he is beautiful, and therefor does not do much to win the affection of others.


Active beauty is the beauty of your actions, it is the beauty of Mother Theresa, and it is  the beauty of the saints.  In the movie "The Agony and the Ecstasy" Michelangelo is seen drawing the faces of people on the streets.  When someone asks him if he is trying to draw the devil, he responds "no, the saints!"  It is because they are filled with active beauty they remain beautiful and attractive to others, even though they might not be that easy on the eye balls.  Passive beauty is what you are born with, it is what is inate.  But it is the active beauty that we must strive to actively cultivate for ourselves and with what we need to surround ourselves.  A great example of someone who is both of these is my mother.  She is always trying to make the people around her happy, at the expense of her own happiness, or at the expense of her own night of sleep.  She is also so passively and effortlessly beautiful, whether she realizes it or not.


To add to Uncle Sandy's theory, I think there must be a certain amount of active beauty that turns into passive - for example, when a person is so kind and thoughtful that is it no longer a conscious action of theirs but routine.  Poor little Pfeiffer has awhile to go before he gets there... And I don't think it works in reverse.  It is not possible to have such good looks that they leak into your personality and make you nice!


I also compared this to the idea of retinal vs. conceptual art.  Although there is cross over, Conceptual art tends to be a work of active beauty because it working and making the viewer work to find the beauty that it contains.  Retinal art is art that is created to be pleasing to the eye - the definition of passive beauty!  Or, as Aristotle said it "that which seen is pleasing."

Dinner with Uncle Sandy part 2

2) Story of B.I.

When my uncle was very little, they had a dog that he loved very much.  His name was B.I. but he never knew what that stood for.  When Uncle Sandy was four years old, B.I. passed away.  He went up very bravely (wiping away a tear) to his mother, who was cooking in the kitchen.  He said, "Mummy, when I die (having a proper understanding of life) and if I go to heaven (having a proper expectation of life) will B.I. be there?"  His mummy, my Mamoo, stopped what she was doing and turned to him.  She said to him, "in heaven, you are perfectly happy.  So if it would make you happier to have him there, then he will be there."  And Uncle Sandy is still looking forward to seeing his puppy when he gets to heaven - among other things of course.

Dinner with Uncle Sandy part 1

Uncle Sandy is in town for a doctors conference, and so he came over to dinner last night.  There are three note-worthy stories from dinner...  I will break it into three posts, though.


1) Hamburger recipes


Dean Martin's Recipe:


Needed:
2 lbs ground chuck
Salt and pepper
Whiskey
Frying pan


Instructions:
divide meat into four patties, and season.  Drink whiskey, and cook to desired doneness.  Enjoy burgers




Frank Sinatra's Recipe:


Instructions:
Call up Dean-o
Drink his whiskey
Eat his burgers

Schaner Farm

Let me try to sum up the most wonderful 24 hours to you as best I can: A Weekend on Schaner farms. 

Emily (one of my four roommates) and I made up our mind that morning to just do it and take the train down to San Diego from LA to visit the home of Sara our roommate on the farm that we had heard so so much about for the past few years. Emily used her charm to get us two seats together on the train, and we chatted it up for two hours while looking upon the pacific ocean's crashing waves beside us. When we arrived, Sara Schaner gave us directions to head W to the water, then turn right and walk until we met her. This was especially fun because Em had a rolly suitcase which wouldn't go in the sand. We eventually met in the middle and S walked us back to where she had set up for the afternoon in the (kinda cloudy) sun. E waited on the sidewalk while I went to put my toes in the water and meet cousin Josh, who E of course nicknamed "Surfer Josh" due to his wetsuit and board, he loved that because all his friends call him "farmer Josh". 


We then walked to the Schaner farms truck, which had three seats, and there were four of us, so there was a little squishing but nothing we aren't used to. We drove about 40 mins through the winding mountains of Valley Center up to the farm! The first thing we saw was the "fence" our friend Danny built with Jake, Sara's brother, when he made is visit to the farm. Then we saw the orange trees along the drive to the house. We came inside, S showed us around the house, her room, their great kitchen, then... the Emus! They just got seven baby Emu's and of course our Ema the Emu fled to them with open arms! 

(this is the ONLY picture I took that weekend)

Then Jake showed up and we all drove to the next mountain over to their cousins farm and swam in their brand new resevoir, which Jacob kept telling us was reverse osmosis so it was good enough to drink, so I told everyone Emily peed in it. We drove back to the house in time for dinner, and who was there but Mary D (a friend from school that lives in the area)!! What a wonderful surprise! Dinner was of course fantastic with salmon, pasta with fresh pesto --don't worry, no pine nuts, fresh berries and tomatoes, quinoa, etc. 


Afterwards, Jake gave us a tour of "down below" or the actual farm part and we saw all the different trees, we checked the squirrel traps, ate the kumquats, held the baby chicks! stirred the chicken feed, saw the shrine to Mary that farmer Peter built, and watched the sun set on the gorgeous rolling hills. That is the part that was the most surprising, is how it was in the mountains! We went back up and Mary challenged Joe to pingpong because she said she was so good - but she lost horribly. Joe promised not to tell anyone at school (since she is a teacher at his school) if she promised not to tell anyone that a couple of girls called him up that night to talk!  One of them was a De La Torre, and apparently all the girls have a crush on him, no surprise there! 


We played a board game, and of course Jake won and everyone else lost interest, and then we snuggled up into bed and played "would you rather" that Mary D had in her head already and just kept throwing them out there. One example:  You are taking your boyfriend home to meet your family and you can not make any excuses for him or whisper to your mom "I don't really like him" or anything like that.  So, would you rather: a) he has one finger picking his nose at all times, like if he goes to cut his meat he has to switch hands but does it so there is always a finger in or b) he has the worst B.O that you have ever smelled in you life.  Jake came in and told us to stop giggling, that people were trying to sleep, so we tried to quiet down.


Then in the morning, we got up with the roosters to go to 7:30 mass, and met tons of cousins afterward. When we got back to their house, we all helped to make a divine brunch, (Jake had gotten up at 6 to make the pancake batter and Mrs. Schaner said not even she did that) and Rose made stuffed squash blossoms which were amazing! not to mention the fresh fruit and orange juice. Soon after that Ross (Sara's bf) showed up so we got to see him interact with the family, which was very fun! Joe teases him a lot and almost put cayann pepper in his waffles. Then we went shooting with Paul and Joe, Ross and Steve (his friend and also his sisters boyfriend and he is even taller than Ross!) Paul and Joe showed us how to shoot each different gun, and we missed every single clay pigeon, but hey, no biggy, right? When we returned, Mrs. Schaner had made two different batches of cookies, like mother like daughter.  After that we were going to go swim in the resevoir again, but we looked up train tickets and realized that if we wanted to get back at a reasonable time, we would have to leave pretty soon. So Sara and Rossy-Poo went to swim while Jake stayed back to drive us 40 minutes (what a gentleman) and walk us to our train (chivelry is not dead!) We rode back not sitting together, but both managed to snag seats on the oversold train that was full of people standing, and we both made buds with the boys next to us (sort of).

I hope this was not too long winded, and do not worry because we missed Kate and Adrienne, the other two roommates, every minute! I can't wait to go back, and I hope the wombates can all make it sometime soon!

Epiphany

"Epiphany is an unveiling of reality.  What in Greek was called epiphaneia meant the appearance, the arrival, of a divinity among mortals or its recognition under a familiar shape of man or woman.  Epiphany thus interrupts the everyday flow of time and enters as one privileged moment when we intuitively grasp a deeper, more essential reality hidden in things or persons.  A poem-epiphany tells about one moment-event and this imposes a certain form" - A Book of Luminous Things


Lately I have been encouraged to write, blog, or somehow channel creativity regularly.  It seems that a blog is the most practical way to do this, but I struggled with coming up with a point of view or a direction to go in with what I wrote.  I was struck by the above passage from an anthology of poetry, and I realized (or had an epiphany...) that I did not have to have a specific thing I focused on, but rather, I can illuminate that which I am moved by in the everyday flow of time.  I can share stories my dad tells at the dinner table or things that strike me about society.  As I try to illuminate my path right now in the greater sense and try to determine where I am going, perhaps by holding a flashlight on certain instances in my landscape I may find something something hidden in what is revealed.