Day the first: an orientation.

It begins, the beginning of the academic year, in the middle of a week which already feels long. To wit:

• Sunday, when we drove home from Idaho. Does this count? Didn't we go to Idaho for the fun of it? Does driving home on a Sunday count, legitimately, as a part of a long week? I'm not saying I'm being a grownup about it, okay? I'm saying that driving home from a vacation, just like flying home across the Atlantic and practically a whole continent after spending a blissful nine days in Scotland, is the worst, and it categorically inaugurates everything that comes after it as 'long.' 
• Whew, so much whining after a vacation!
• Monday: meeting meeting meeting. Meeting! Even with friends: meeting x 4 = math, which is the worst.
• Tuesday: MEE E E E e e e ting. So much meeting.
• Wednesday: the first day. After which come Thursday and Friday, with their iffy qualities and also: more meetings.

allow me to illustrate.

Well, just so you know that my whining game is legit. Because it is LEGIT.

I had a good writing summer. June and July, I wrote a poem or revised a poem every day. Adding that to the poems I wrote in April (the cruelest month), I have about 90 poems happening. Add to that: my current manuscript was a finalist twice and a semifinalist once in national book competitions. And now summer is over, and said manuscript is done being a finalist, which, no matter how many pep talks you give yourself, or how many times you remind yourself of encouraging things that your writer friends have said, you have to pick yourself up from it, frankly. It feels a little bit like failure.

This helps.  To wit:

And indeed, when I came to the U.S. to become a poet, and when my first book was rejected by the first three publishers I sent it to – FC2, Coffee House, and Wesleyan University Press, as I recall – I was undaunted.  And when my third book took nine years, over 20 revisions and 4 cycles of rejections before it came out, I never thought that this was wrong. It’s not that I thought that my writing was so great and that all I needed was to keep putting it out there until I’d reach the occult threshold of the 76th attempt, but rather, that I came to believe in duration. How a narrative becomes itself in time. How cycles of dormancy and expression are weirdly nutritive. How failure itself becomes a site of possibility: an aperture for chance; for the conditions of the work to arrive in a different time to the one in which it was begun. I learned to continue, to keep moving forward, to keep writing, whether the outcome of that writing was visible – perceptible – or not. I learned how to re-write my work with as much passion and joy and curiosity as I had given to the writing of it. I even invented a chant: Re-writing is writing. Writing is re-writing.

Yep: "cycles of dormancy and expression are weirdly nutritive....failure itself becomes a site of possibility: an aperture for chance; for the conditions of the work to arrive in a different time to the one in which it was begun."

I hope you noticed that I linked to Bhanu Kapi's commencement address. I block-quoted from it. And then I quoted from the block quote. I'm trying to reorient myself. Not a bad thing for a person to do at the beginning of the semester.

In other news, there are practically no vegetables in my house. Not to mention not much of anything else, what with all our travel travel travel (and the subsequent meeting meeting meeting). So once I conclude this orientation session--orienting you to my new semester, since no students showed up for this actual orientation session IRL--I am going to work out, and then buy some broccoli.

It's going to be great. Everything--the writing, the nutritive failure, the semester, the workout, the broccoli. Maybe especially the broccoli though, which is itself super-nutritive.

Open letter to the vegetarian option.

Dear The Vegetarian Option,

Because there was no fish option, which is what I usually opt for at the occasional institutional dinner event, you and I met again last night, The Vegetarian Option, at the round table on the far edge of the room, the giant ballroom filled with dignitaries and rich people and a bunch of us employee types, who were there to season the conversation and decorate the event. I keep thinking that things have changed--that "vegetarian" is actually a cuisine, maybe, at this point. I know I've eaten vegetarian food that has the imagination, the inventiveness, the je ne sais quoi of cuisine, that still fits the criterion "vegetarian." I cook this kind of food all the time.

But not you, The Vegetarian Option. No, there you sat in the bowl, all overcooked penne and saucy sauce, and cut up green-and-yellow summer squash and the occasional incongruous carrot chunk.

First of all, penne pasta: you are not optimal for this non-optimal dish. You are hefty where you should be subtle, and you are tubular and in general, suitable for other treatments, such as baking in cheese. Al forno, penne pasta: you are optimal for that.

Second of all, green-and-yellow summer squash: you are not currently seasonal, and you are in fact usually tasteless. You are a veritable place-holder of a vegetable. Not even the fancy decorative cut-outs in the shape of leaves with leaf-vein divots on the tops of them can address your deficiencies, vegetable-wise.

Thirdly, carrots? I love carrots. But a carrot, particularly in chunk form, is not--how shall we say?--relevant to this dish.

But most of all, The Vegetarian Option, you are lousy with thoughtlessness, rife with lack of care, with I'm-just-here-to-fill-a-dish-ness. You imply that the vegetarian, because she does not care for meat, does not care about food at all. I am taking it personally, The Vegetarian Option. From henceforth you are my nemesis and I shall not rest until you, The Vegetarian Option, behave like actual food, rather than the fodder you actually are.

I mean it,

lisa b.

I love the smell of fresh basil in the morning.

Yesterday we bought a metric ton of vegetables and fruit--mostly vegetables--at the farmer's market. This matches the metric ton of vegetables and fruit we bought last week. I could not help myself. The historian likes to get sacksful of grapes from this one family, and I like to buy piles of basil and arugula and eggs and bread and peaches and corn. Hence the tonnage. All this food made me feel pensive.

Me: I'm going to cook a whole bunch of things tomorrow, and then we can just eat it all week. Like, corn salad . . . and pesto . . . and quinoa salad . . . and that one sausage casserole for singing son and his family [note: a baby is arriving at their house soon, so the sausage thingie is to put in the freezer for a rainy day, aka a day when there is fussing and diapers and no time to cook.] . . . and gazpacho and ratatouille and vegetable curry!

The historian: [noncommital but encouraging remark. He's heard me in this enthusiastic fantasy before. Still, everyone acknowledges that this would be a good thing, all this cooking and putting the food in a state where we could actually eat it, as opposed to watching it become slowly, slowly less edible by the day in the refrigerator.]

Me: . . . and caprese salad!

Little did any of us know, least of all me, that I would wake up in a state of being moved in fact, as opposed to "in theory," by the Spirit of Cooking. I got up and made myself both toast and a list:

• pesto
• sausage thing for singing son
• corn salad
• quinoa salad
• vegetable curry
• caprese salad
• ratatouille
• gazpacho
• red beans

The list also comprised a pile of other stuff, non-cooking stuff, almost none of which I've done. It turns out that cooking motivates me more intrinsically than grading. Huh, who knew.

I actually ended up cooking only about half of the things on the list. But I think I can make two or three more of them tomorrow. And that means, the people, that at our house we can just about do no cooking all week, which, in a week with a pile of upcoming meetings and less spare time than is actually desirable for an activity I like to call "living my life," a lot of food ready to eat with no more effort than opening the refrigerator door, a spoon in hand, is a good thing.

From the chronicles.

The Soup Chronicles, that is:

And verily, she did arise from her bed of affliction: and lo, there were squashes and onions, peppers and garlic galore on the tops of the counters. And she found it was Wednesday, yea, the Wednesday of pulses, and thus she must soak the remainder of the Yellow Nightfall beans in the water that ran from the tap, yea, the water that ran clear as rain.

And the chopping of the peppers, onions, and garlic was terrible to behold, but greater still was the immensity of the hellfire, aka the sauteing, though the medium was the purest of olive oil, yea, the olive oil which is called "Extra Virgin."

And suddenly, there was with the cook a multitude of the heavenly host, saying: Glory, there is soup!

IN OTHER WORDS, the people, it is again Souptopia at the Megastore, one day after another. Chili, then roasted butternut squash soup, and tonight, carrot soup with red lentils and basil.

And lo, her refrigerator yieldeth all for the good of the soup.

Amen.

The historian quotes scripture. Plus bonus video.

Me: . . . because I'm at an age where sleep is harder to come by.

Historian (doesn't understand this alien language I'm speaking): Really?

Me: But you don't have any problem sleeping, do you? That's because you have the good temperament.

Historian: That's right. Saint John the Good.

Me: Good temperament, I said. Besides, you are good. You're not venal.

Historian: As opposed to you. You wouldn't say you're venal, would you?

Me: I sure am. I am quick to anger and consumed with envy.

Historian: Just the opposite of what you're supposed to be.

Me: (quick to wrath, therefore fuming)

Historian: You're supposed to be . . . what is it the Book of Mormon says?

Me: . . .

Historian: Slow to anger and quiet as an . . . owl? And wise as . . . a goat.

Me: Wise as a goat.

Historian: . . . or maybe that's the Bible, but not translated correctly.

New video:

Market. from lisab on Vimeo.

Utah, I am home.

Why are you unseasonably warm, Utah? Why are you developing a bad case of the smogs? Why does airline travel make one feel as though the blood has thickened ever so fatally in one veins, and also, and curiously, sweaty?

Utah, I have stories to tell about the curious pleasures of airports: a reason to read Esquire, a moment or 200 to oneself, the chance to read a whole book at a time, time to contemplate one's next move, time to think about and feel everything about the trip--how much fun one had and how much one misses the daughter one visited--and about home. But I am glad not to be in an airport now, even giving the airports their props--the flights were on time, people were helpful, my bag made it with me despite having to change airlines and a stop in Denver, both ways.

Mainly, though, Utah, I am glad to reconnect to my own life and routine. I am very glad to be with my husband. Tomorrow, I will develop rolls and rolls of film. I will be glad to have the photos to remind me of my darling daughter and of the wonderful places we visited together. I will take Bruiser (I believe he was named State Dog in my absence) for a walk. I will go to the bank and write a poem and begin reading a new book. I will see loved ones and eat Utah vegetables. I need to be here, I am glad to be here, though my heart, it turns out, my heart is both here and also everywhere.

Cold storage.

This year at the October farmer's market, it is genius! Somehow things have held until now, so there are still peaches, plums, tomatoes, basil, melons, beans, along with winter squashes, potatoes, greens, pumpkins. Today, we got apples from a guy who literally picked them last night--Macintoshes, and so unbelievably good. He also had late crop peaches, O Henrys, that he let ripen on the tree, picked within hours of our buying them. Unbelievable! Given yesterday's and today's weather, it seems a little unseemly to be eating fresh tomatoes and green beans, let alone peaches, but there you are: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow there may only be gruel, but today there are peaches and tomatoes.

Here are some things we saw at the market today:





















Squashes & pumpkins




















At Sun River




















At Chad's


















At David's


















At Tremonton Girl's


















Tremonton Girl and husband