Jacob’s Ladder

Then named Jacob, by his thigh deceived,

Israel, on some god-hallowed eve

Slept and dreamt of his progeny.

He tangled god in his legs and arms,

Pressed against the hardened

Organ of the lord.

Jacob grappled with god’s lather,

And after, seeded the steppes,

Raised the white tents and

Lit the lions’ plain with fire.

Israel fingered Yahweh’s lyre-

When filled, descended the ladder.

Cruises don’t usually get quite so much airtime between the commercials as in them. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. But last week you could indulge in a gluttony of cruise-ship lust if you so desired; the Carnival Triumph (sic) failed spectacularly and super-publicly. Horror stories of creeping sewage and feces-lined hallways, hungry mobs and thousands of ruined Valentine’s Days finally docked in Mobile, Alabama with an assist from a few workhorse tugboats. The media loved the story, first for the poop, then for the overreach.  It’s a perfect time to (re)visit David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” and today he would have been 51.

An early paragraph from the luxethnography, about the horrors of a cruise gone right:

Apple Upside-Down Skillet Pancake

Use a cast-iron skillet or a high-sided sauté pan to hold this large, puffed pancake as it rises.

Makes 4 servings

2 large eggs plus 2 large egg yolks

1/2 c milk

3 tbs unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus 1 additional tbs for pan

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 c plus 1 tbs flour

3 tbs sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

4 tart apples, such as rome or granny smith, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp grated nutmeg (optional)

maple syrup for garnish

1. Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk the eggs and egg yolks, milk, melted butter, and vanilla in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, stir the flour, 1 tbs sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt until uniform. Set both bowls aside until step 4.

2. Melt the remaining 1 tbs butter in a 10″ cast-iron skillet or high-sided sauté pan set over medium heat. Add the apples and cook just until they begin to soften, about 2 minutes.

3. Stir in the remaining 2 tbs sugar, nutmeg, and the cinnamon; reduce the heat to medium-low and continue cooking until the sugar melts, forms a sticky sauce, and starts to caramelize, about 5 minutes.

4. Use a fork to stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture -there should be no flour visible, but the batter may still be grainy with undissolved flour. Pour over apples, then place the skillet or sauté pan in the oven and bake until puffed and brown, about 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before cutting into quarters and passing the syrup on the side.

This is also great with pears instead of apples. Substitute 3 ripe pears, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced.

recipe from ‘The Ultimate Cook Book’

Bogeyman Sleepless

nights like this, roaming the dark
halls of someone’s home, suffers
flashbacks of bogeyboy days,
boy grades, and the stupid way

he’d scare himself in bed–A-
lone, so young and somewhere hi-
ding in his very house, some-
one very, very nice. Un-

usual merry sounds chirp
from the closet. Faint baking
smells torment the bedroom air.
A cozy terror impends.

Tonight a driven man will
make the children twitch under
some delicious new night-thrill.
Consummate professional.

Thus begins Bogeyman, Geoffrey Woolf’s new collection of poems; what follows are Bogeyman’s exploits, various and unpredictable, licentious and inscrutable. Buy this book. And come to Geoff’s reading at Chase Public on February 23rd.

RIDDLE 45

A moth ate songs–wolfed words!

That seemed a weird dish–that a worm

Should swallow, dumb thief in the dark,

The songs of a man, his chants of glory,

Their place of strength. That thief-guest

Was no wiser for having swallowed words.

-from the 1000 year old Exeter Book

if you can’t find meyer lemons, do not be discouraged. you can still make a mean lemon curd. however, you may need 4 lemons. decrease the juice to ⅓c, and follow the recipe as stated.

Meyer Lemon Curd

Ingredients

• 6 egg yolks

• 1 cup sugar

• 3 meyer lemons, juiced (you should get a generous ½ cup. Make sure to strain it, to ensure you get all the seeds)

• 1 stick of butter, cut into chunks

• zest from the juiced lemons

Instructions

1. In a small, heavy bottom pot over medium heat, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. Add the lemon juice andswitch to stirring with a wooden spoon, so as not to aerate the curd. Stir continually for 10-15 minutes, adjusting the heat as you go to ensure that it does not boil. Your curd is done when it has thickened and coats the back of the spoon. Drop in the butter and stir until melted.

2. Position a fine mesh sieve over a glass or stainless steel bowl and pour the curd through it, to remove any bits of cooked egg. Whisk in the zest.

3. Pour the curd (a single batch will make one pint of curd) into your prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace.

4. Eat on toast, stirred into plain yogurt, put in a pre-baked tart shell, or straight from the jar with a spoon.

recipe from ‘food in jars’

Wondering what to do with all the leftover egg whites? How about a gin fizz! Or maybe marshmallows?

Add to that the fact that many of the most legendary players have died young, or mysteriously, or tragically at the height of their powers: from legendary musicians like Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown, to underrecorded legends such as Wardell Gray and Freddie Webster. The specter of what might have been hovers over the recordings by the musicians who died young, leaving the listener to wonder what they would have expressed, had they lived.
One musician who bucked these trends is Dave Brubeck, who died in December, the day before his 92nd birthday. He toured up until two years ago, and recorded prolifically: we do not have to wonder much about what was not recoded, or what was not expressed. Due to his popularity, he had ample chance to record many of his excellent bands, as well as his symphonic compositions; his longevity gave him ample time to express himself through his playing and writing.
And yet, for much of his career, he was anything but a critic’s darling: his popularity and his lack of cool (he was a Californian who grew up on ranches, worked as a cowhand, and never seemed to be interested in trendiness) prejudiced many tastemakers against him; however, musicians such as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Charles Mingus befriended him and lauded his music, for its singular originality and his uncompromising dedication to improvisation.
At the same time, his huge output of music also demonstrates a danger inherent in such prolixity: many of his records, especially those for Columbia in the 1960s, feel perfunctory, and he was not afraid of recycling ideas. Brubeck took risks, however, and even if some of them did not come off, he also gave us many excellent records and excellent bands. Of course, his masterpiece, recorded with his greatest band, is “Time Out,” an instantly recognizable classic, but he made exciting recordings up until the end of his career: look no further than “Double Live,” which demonstrates that his bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s could still play with fire and passion, if less innovation than his earlier ensembles.
Dave Brubeck was an original, and we were fortunate to have his contributions to the world of music, as well as his goodwill and humanitarianism, for so long.

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

- T.S. Eliot

Hopefully Nathan will have something more meaningful, definitive, and cohesive to share about our trip to Windsor, and maybe I will too, but for now:

1. Why did the bartender tell us he sometimes likes to stand right there (where he was standing) and pretend to be talking with patrons (in the seats we were sitting in), while actually he’s watching hockey on the big screen behind us?

2. What is the effect of medium on a brand’s logo and its reception… e.g, do shifting illuminated pixels communicate transcendence, or ephemerality?

3. About the moment looking through the gray snow, across the international border, and out of everything in the United States we could only see the logo screen and supporting decorative light rings (not pictured)… was that moment by design?

4. What is it about narrative that makes it more effective at asking complex, pointed questions than actual complex, pointed questions (not suggesting that any of these are)?

5. At whom is the art at top-flight casinos directed? Especially the statues?

6. Who coordinates product and packaging design/marketing across international borders? What is it about “44% less fat” that screams Not-america?

7. How did the cigars I bought there turn into cigars of Dominican-origin, while retaining the name on the rings? This is a federal mystery. Ask me.