Doppelgänger

Dear readers: I am taking a quick vaycay & visiting my mom & going to a knitting conference (no really) & all sorts of groovy stuff in the Greater Hartford area. When I get back, I will return to the usual rant format but until then a seasonal tale that happens to be true....

I have been plagued by doppelgangers all of my life & so have you. Officially they are those things that look just like a person, a person you know, maybe even you but it is not that person (or you), it is an evil spirit.

I used to think I saw them because of my very poor vision. That is I would think I saw someone I knew do something they would never do & then I would tell myself that I must have mistaken another person who looked a bit like that someone I knew doing something in character for themselves just not for the person I thought they were. I had a vague sense this was not strictly correct, but if you tell your teachers there are evil spirits impersonating your classmates, they call your mom.

I finally had to accept they were doppelgangers in October 1988. I was walking with my roommate J*** & her friend D***** through the woods. We had left the path quite by accident, but there were a lot of leaves on the ground & it had become obscured. None of us worried much; we were on a slope & could tell which way was up, which way was down. All three of us could find north any day & on all but the cloudiest of nights & it was the middle of a clear afternoon. Besides, both J*** & I were familiar enough with the area that we knew wherever we emerged we could find our way. They were having a conversation about another high-school friend & I wandered off, not really interested.

I was a few yards behind & up the slope when I saw it. It was tall, taller than any of us, thin, & blurry. It had a vague, blueish quality & it was moving fast, closing the distance behind the two of them. I shouted. They both turned & suddenly there was nothing there. We laughed, I said it must have been a shadow, admitted it creeped me out & moved closer in.

We finally reached the bottom, the trees were not as dense & we could hear distant traffic sounds. I stopped to look around, see which way our car was likely to be & I saw it again. It was shorter now, had long dark hair & was wearing the same blue shirt as D*****. We got the h*ll out of the woods.

Nowadays, I do not worry too much about the doppelgangers I can see. After all, if I can see them, they are not coming for me (the rest of you are on your own). What does freak me out are the ones I cannot see but my dogs can. As I type this, Farley-Boy is sitting on the rug in front of the back door staring out the window behind me. He keeps turning his head to the side, looking at me & then looking back out the window. I really really really hope there are squirrels hanging from my new window screens.

Stars malign

One day earlier this month my horoscope more or less told me to go back to bed (what it actually said was any new endeavor undertaken that day would not be successful). The funny thing is it was a very stoopid day. Among other things I undercut a straight edge binding by less than 1/2 an inch. The result is the same as if I had undercut by twelve feet but somehow I felt it more. I also poured a cup of semi-hot coffee into a plastic-bag-lined garbage can instead of the sink & the very full jar of little snips of fabric & thread I collect when I sew into the sink instead of the compost jug.

I wonder if the day would have been so annoying if I had not read my horoscope. Or do I actually do roughly the same absentminded things everyday but this day they registered? A famous critic says (said, I am sure he is dead; all famous critics are dead right?)... Let me start again, I heard once that all art is about context. One piece may look the same as another but it is separated by context: the period of the painting, the period of the painter. the period of the viewer.

I do not think this is hogwash exactly so much as not germane. My experience of any piece of art on any given day is my own experience; the only context that matters is mine. You can see how it can be hard to sell me art, as my own context is often covered in dog hair & nothing that will be covered in dog hair should cost very much.

Not surprisingly I have a limited patience for ART that just hang around. A well crafted bowl, excellent. A quilt, well you know how I feel about that. Even a picture of a place I have been or a person I know &/or admire, wonderful. But all the so-called art in YOUR house is complete crap.

This perspective ties very nicely with all the qualities of my star sign. Apparently we are belligerent blow-hards. & a bit primitive technologically. Anyone who reads this blog knows I have only a semi-serious relationship with spell-check so maybe there is something to it.

A, on the other hand, is at the opposite end of the horoscope & according to reports is dreamy & ethereal requiring a strong sign (MINE!) to get through the day. Now that I know that, I am pretty sure I pour something somewhere wrong once a week or so.

Swithun

Swithun is really more a groundhog than a saint. If it rains on Saint Swithun's Day it will rain for forty more days. So, is it raining where you are?

While alive he was an advisor to the king & while barely alive he (apparently) requested to be buried out of doors. I had no idea indoors was an option in 852 but there you are. His weather-management came later, when his cathedral was expanded, remodeled, etc. & they made to move his remains inside. But they could not because...can you guess? Forty days of rain.

Is it me or do parts of this sound familiar?

The last time I had this feeling was reading the review of Mamma Mia in the New Yorker. I know, I know, they always give away the end, but it was the only magazine in A's bathroom that was not the journal of the American Physical Society or -my personal favorite- Vaccuum Technology & Coating. As I read the review, I was reminded of a very silly movie I used to watch on tv, back when cable was just a twinkle: Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell. The last time before that, I remember being tricked into watching Keanu Reeves reprise a role I am convinced was originally played by George Segal. & Wikipedia says I might be right. So there.

Before anyone gets too excited about the groundhog being totally divorced from this loop, you should do a little multiplication & discover that 6 more weeks of winter is exactly 42 days. If you are hoping for rain on Saint Swithun's Day, let me suggest invoking the Patron Saint of Rainmakers.

Are zombies the new black?

Much of the Austen worshiping world is all a-flutter over the new book: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. I confess I read the whole d*mn thing & it is just what it claims to be: Pride & Prejudice more or less in its entirely with extra zombies. There are also some ninjas, so be prepared.

C****** works at the library (which I believe I have mentioned) & maybe a year ago, maybe more she told me about an after-hours event/picnic/whatever where the talk wandered up on the latest romance genre: supernatural beings. Imagine Fabio only darker, inside & out. Because she works in processing, she has a pretty good idea what is new to the shelves & she was talking about cart after cart of paranormal bodice-rippers. & then came one of those questions Carrie Bradshaw never asked: is anyone interested in having sex with humans anymore?

Lets face it, teenage boys have been imagining sex with unreal beings for decades . You did not think those pictures in playboy were real did you? I had roommates that posed for playboy; I saw them naked more often than I would care to say & well there is a lot of airbrushing that goes into that magazine. & then there is that bit of folklore (that might actually be true) that american tv kept airing 'magic' women (Jeannie & Samantha come to mind) because who could possibly be interested in a tv-show about a normal one? I know I'm not.

I doubt this love affair with the undead is all that new actually. They are certainly very popular right now & were with...the Victorians. But in between, I think you could make a solid argument for James Bond being not among the living. Think about it, it makes sense; who else is so hard to kill except for a guy that is already dead.

& I am not sure where I am going with this. I have been reading the Betsy Queen of the Damned books: very foolishly funny & very Carrie Bradshaw, although I have managed to avoid Twilight completely. I am proud of this in the same way I am proud of never having seen a Rocky movie. No really, impressive, huh!

But I digress: I have been unable to avoid all the other-world characters in every film, book & tv-show & I guess it has been on my mind. Now that I think about it though, I think the undead might be the original black. & they are not back, they never went way.

Nightshade pizza pie

For my most recent bookclub I made eggplant pizza. I deliberately blanded it because one of our members is pregnant & I have heard women-in-that-condition can have sensitive stomachs. My aunt was so sensitive she could not cope with the color red. Then mom-to-be was not there & we all had duller-than-usual eggplant pizza.

Eggplant is one of the nightshade vegetables we should all avoid because...they are shrouded in superstition. I sometimes get confused & call them the hemlock vegetables. I do not know why. I have never gotten confused & called them the belladonna vegetables. I am not one of those people who learns from my mistakes; instead I seem to learn to make the same mistake over & over again. I used to have the most convoluted route to Brainard airport because the first time I went, I got lost & for the next ten years I got lost in exactly the same way every time. Fatiguing.

I do not seem to have this problem cooking; I never seem to memorize a recipe wrong, although I have had trouble reproducing results. This is how I make Nightshade Pizza Pie:

First you need to make the dough. I have a bread machine. I make a yeast dough, so it continues to rise while I am making the pizza toppings part. You do not have to make your own dough, or even 1/2 make it like I do. Let's start again:

Have dough. & spread it on your pizza stone or pan or whatever you use (A likes to set pizza directly on the oven racks. yes, our oven is a mess). I got a head of myself again. If you are making dough, start the dough, but if you are not, go straight to the eggplant.

-cut up a single, medium sized eggplant into bigger than your thumb but not too big pieces. Rinse them & set them in a colander to drain. I turn a dessert plate upside down & put the flour canister on top if it the press them a bit, but I doubt it really makes a differences. I leave it like this for 20+ minutes so that the eggplant can dry, which DOES make a difference later (that the eggplant not still be wet from the rinse, I mean).

- thinly slice as much garlic as you think is a good amount. I like three cloves, for blander-than-bland I used one. Melt the garlic (when I said thin, I meant thin, GoodFellas thin) in a light oil.

- if you are not making your own dough & adding the basil to the dough, you want to add it now. For blander-than-bland I skipped this step entirely. It was pretty bland. How much basil is up to you, less is more if it is baked into the dough vs in the oil.

-add the eggplant to the garlic, mix well for a minute or two. Turn the heat down to medium, cover. Start checking back after 8 minutes or so, you are looking to see that the meat of the eggplant has started to break down but is not yet mush. You will know it when you see it, I promise.

- now back to the dough. Spread it as thin as you can. Pinch the sides, if you like, but if you are using a yeast dough it will not make any difference in the end.

-smear a thin layer of tomato. Again, this is your choice: you can use leftover spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, something from a jar, etc. I prefer leftover spaghetti sauce supplemented with real tomatoes (i.e. from a garden, recently). In a pinch, salsa will do. You need it to smear evenly, so you might need to mix in up to a tiny bit of oil, but this is rarely necessary unless you are actually working with a paste. Leave yourself about 1/2 inch between the edge of the crust & the outside of the tomato smear.

-pile the eggplant straight from the pan onto the tomato covered dough.

-pile crumbled feta cheese on top of that.

- put it all into a preheated 400F oven for 20 minutes & serve immediately or when you get around to it. It is good hot, room temperature & probably cold. I do not know; even the bland version did not last that long.

Losing things

At the beginning of this week I lost my keys. This is especially impressive as I have almost as many key-chain do-dads as I have keys. I say almost because I removed the little monkey that could be considered a stuffed animal when I realized it was tempting the dogs to bury the keys in their bed, their toy basket or (most problematic) the yard.

I looked everywhere, starting with the obvious & ending with sifting through the garbage, walking the yard with a flashlight & calling A at work (twice) just in case he picked them up by accident. In the end, I found them a day+ later in one of the first places I looked. Lame, I know.

But then I scaled up. On Wednesday I closed the gate at the top of the driveway, opened the emu yard & did a few chores. Two hours later, there was no sign of Cleo. That's right, I lost a giant pre-historic bird. That cannot fly. Or see very well.

Around dusk, I learned he was up at B***'s, scaring his dogs half-to-death. I learned this when a woman pulled into my driveway & told me my pet bird was up at her house: "the cracker house, up on the hill". This threw me until I remembered what passed for a hill in Florida versus Connecticut. She could have just as easily said "the house next to the blueberry field", "the second driveway on the left" or "B***'s house", but she did not. She seemed surprised that I knew B*** by name & still did not have the faintest idea who she was. I did not have the heart to tell her we have never bothered to learn the names of any of B***'s girlfriends (or wives for that matter).

Otherwise she could not have been nicer about it. Okay, she could have been nicer, she seemed a bit freaked (this was after I said she REALLY did not need to worry her dogs would hurt the bird; she needed to worry in the other directions), but in her shoes I would have been raining holy hell, so I think she was a brick. B***, as usual, was jovial-in-the-extreme. They had company for dinner & everyone seemed to enjoy the idea of me chasing this crazy bird around in the dark with a bucket of apples & a dieing flashlight. I have NO DOUBT all the crazy incomer stories were told & retold.

It was a long night & early this morning I walked back up there (he settled somewhere for the night & it is not possible to find an emu in tall grass if he does not stand up) & found him rummaging through the undergrowth, trying to avoid the sprinklers (did I mention Cleo was on the edge of a giant blueberry field? & that it was about 18F overnight, 22F when I left the house? Well he was & it was & it was) right away.

A & I both were wide awake well before dawn. I had not slept well worrying about my pet velociraptor & A got a phone call at 5:30 or so to go over some confusion in the 2009/2010 research budget. As soon as there was enough light for me to see (which is considerably less light than most need to see; yes, I am a creature of the dark), I took a bucket of feed & the rest of the chopped apples up the 'hill'. By the time A got there, I had Cleo eating from the bucket & had impressed the farm workers with my machismo, hand feeding the giant bird that had been hissing & kicking at their dogs (none of them were crazy enough to go near him themselves).

Cleo would have happily followed me (& the bucket of feed) home, but those same dogs objected to his passing them & in the end, A threw a blanket over him, lifted him into the bed of the pick-up & sat on him while I drove home. Once home, A lifted him out, took the blanket off & Cleo has been walking around his yard, his feathers ruffled (no, really) since then. As far as we can tell, Antonelle is not speaking to him. When he goes near her, she turns away. I leave you to imagine the dialogue between that unhappy couple.

Bad luck always comes in threes (or twelves or two hundred & forty sixes) so I am a bit worried about the next one, nine or two-hundred & forty four things I am going to lose.

Saint Denis & companions

Today is the day of Saint Denis & Companions. I admit it was the companions that piqued my interest. I was of course immediately diverted by the legend of Saint Denis carrying his own head back into a village north of Paris following his martyrdom. The idea of a of headless body roaming the countryside had such a 'chicken' quality I needed to know more.

In the usual way of these things, the stories of several men have morphed together, been well-seasoned with fiction & mixed in a great big bowl of time. The general gist seems to be Denis founded a church, converted many with the zeal of his preaching, his success made others jealous & so he was martyred in a manner that removed his head from his body.

I admit, under ordinary circumstances I would have lost interest, but I remained intrigued by the Companions. While named right there in the day, the index does not discuss the companions at all. My mind wandered to other companions.

The first famous companion I thought of was salt-sucking creature in the original Star Trek. I discarded this as unlikely; everyone knows the salt vampyre inhabits another galaxy & besides it probably could have convinced the jealous priests/whomever to keep it around. Also, it is companions, plural. How many salt vampyres are we supposed to accept?

& so my mind wandered to other companions. Maybe they were not human & that is why they were not named. But then Saint Francis of Assisi's day (last week-end as it happens) would doubtless have included animals, too.

Or maybe they were somehow expunged. Something was undesirable about these companions. Maybe they included his wife & children. The cult of Denis dates back to before the period that the church had acquired considerable wealth. Part of how the church hung on to property was preventing priests from marrying & entailing land & goods to their descendants.

A more undesirable companion to the 21st century church might be a homosexual lover, but they have not been very thorough about removing same-sex references to other saints. Saint Aelred has been out of the closet since before closets were invented. The more widely known Saint Sebastian is considered the patron of homosexuals & has been for a very long time, whether the church put this on his letterhead or not.

Besides, the church's behavior has always been more lenient toward the homosexual priest than the priest who wants to marry a woman & raise a famiy, so it is very hard to imagine that this is the reason for the Companions anonymity.

It took a bit of digging (!) but I eventually found that the Companions are the two other men martyred with him & buried in the same grave. It was so passive, I wondered that they were included in the day at all. It seemed so small, in the grand scheme of things & so ordinary, like the ridiculous three-on-a-match superstition.

Then I remembered Henry Hector Munro & his famous last words. Just before being killed by a WWI sniper, he said "Put that damned cigarette out". & then another mind, another voice was gone.