superstar

Apparently, if you live in Australia and google "girls in ties" I am the very first link to come up. I am perhaps overly excited to be the first link from any google search (internet validation anybody?), but more so for ones involving drag.

childhood's end

I know it's boring to talk about the weather... But it's back up into the 40's here and even supposed to get into the 50's later this week. Wow.
I've been reading one of my brithday presents, "Lost" by Gregory Maguire (the guy who wrote "Wicked"). It's quite good, and I've always been kind of a sucker for fairy and folk tales (I adore the brothers Grimm to this day, and I miss my mom's Italian folktales book very much), and this book is kind of a story combined with nods to many of these tales. It's about an author writing a book (of course), and she talks a great deal about how what we read as children is a) very important, and b) sticks with us.
"The person who would become a lifelong reader should stumble upon very rich stuff first, early, and often. It lived within, a most agreeable kind of haunting."
I've been thinking back on my early reading. I characterized my reading life to my friend Carolyn last night as follows: Pioneer stuff and things my parents read to me (Oz, Narnia, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who I loved beyond measure for several years), Sci-fi and Fantasy and Horror (oh my. Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, the folk/fairy tales again, anthologies, and Stephen King), "serious" fiction in early college, and then theory and politically relevant stuff now. These also seem fairly clean-cut in retrospect, like there wasn't a lot of crossover (except I always had a thing for "serious" fiction, I think partly because it was my only form of bragging, like "oooh, look what I'm reading!" Plus it's great.). I wonder if that order means anything, and if what I learned first influences me to this day. Did Narnia and Oz fuel my (sometimes) obsession with folklore? When I was in Alaska, for example, how much of the inside of my head was thinking of "The Call of the Wild" and "Julie of the Wolves"?
If anybody else would care to let me know thoughts on this, or what they read as a child, I'd be very interested to hear it. I'd kind of like to go back and mix and match my periods, see if there is still allure to the things I've abandoned. And when I'm home for Christmas, I think I'll read me some Italian mythology.

do not love the priest instead of god

From my original poet buddy Aaron.

Sex Without Love
by Sharon Olds

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

sexy food

I stayed up late to finish "Julie and Julia" last night and I couldn't resist dogearing this passage:
"Somewhere along the way, I discovered that in the physical act of cooking, especially something complex or plain old hard to handle, dwelled unsuspected reservoirs of arousal both gastronomic and sexual. If you're not one of us, the culinarily depraved, there is no way to explain what's so darkly enticing about eviscerating beef marrowbones, chopping up lobster, baking a three-layer pecan cake, and doing it for someone else, offering someone hard-won gustatory delights in order to win pleasures of another sort. Everyone knows that there are foods that are sexy to eat. What they don't talk about so much is foods that are sexy to make. But I'll take a wrestling bout with recalcitrant brioche dough over being fed a perfect strawberry any day, foreplay-wise."
It reminds me of this Dorothy Allison story (called, I think, "The Lesbian Appetite") (which is maybe why somebody who googled "lesbian cooking" got my blog?) in which all of her sexual encounters and flirtations involve food, including one incredibly hot scene with some eggplant... Anyway, I don't know how incredibly new or original it is to be looking at the confluence of food and sex, but I certainly enjoy it. For me, I don't know if it is always sexual (maybe just sexual in a less-recognized way?), but I love cooking for other people so much more than I enjoy cooking for myself. Granted, when it's only me it's not such a big deal if everything ends up tasting like ass. But I love working so hard to bring somebody something that will make them happy and full, that tastes good and that they will appreciate and hence validate my however-many hours spent preparing it. Perhaps for me sensual is a better word than sexual. Although never underestimate the erotic power of a good cheesecake...

;)

I got searched today for both "lezzie" and "sadomasochism" (from Beijing!). Interesting

(see title below)

So the book I'm reading that I described below is pretty good so far (which is to say that I've only read about three chapters, and I'm enjoying it). It's called "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously", by Julie Powell. My favorite part so far is the second chapter, where the author writes about first finding her parents' copy of "The Joy of Sex" and then soon after reading "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and realizing (at age 11) how similar the two books are. Excellent.
I made my potato leek soup tonight, and as promised it was fantastic and had barely any ingredients. Here 'tis:
about 3 cups diced potatoes
2-3 cups sliced leeks
2 quarts water
2-3 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste
(In reality, I used two largish potatoes and, um, enough water to cover them entirely with some to spare. Also I probably only used like half a cup of leeks, maybe a little more, because I wasn't sure I wanted that many. But whatever.)
After peeling and dicing the potatoes and leeks, put them in a large pot with the water and salt and boil for about 45 minutes to an hour. Mash them up with a fork or spoon (I used a potato masher), leaving the soup a little chunky but not too much. Add the pepper and butter. If it's going to be a while before you eat it, let it cool uncovered and then bring it back to a simmer before serving.
Here's what Julia had to say about it: "smells good, tastes good, and is simplicity itself to make." True.

the road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes

It snowed last night. There were all these dire warnings on the weather channel: "foot of snow... everything's gonna be shut down... 50 mph winds..." but it's not really that bad. Not that I've been outside...
My birthday is tomorrow, no big plans but hopefully I'll see a few friends and all that good stuff. Anna bought me a book about a woman who decides to revitalize her life by cooking every recipe in a Julia Childs french cookbook, and now I'm really craving potato leek soup, which is odd because I'm not that fond of leeks. The power of suggestion is huge.
I guess that's it. I don't have anything too interesting today.