Place:Abandoned. Wild. Quiet except for a spiky gull's call.
Me: Climbing, like dune grass, or motionless, like fog. Breathing at the pace of waves. I got away from normal [appointments·work·email] to get back to normal [whole·imaginative·energized].
I plan to post a little more from my Small Escape.
I nearly fainted when I saw a large package of haricots verts at the store - French green beans, thinner than our green bean varieties here. I get more delirious over haricots verts than I do over clothes, shoes or jewelry. Their consistency and flavor are more delicate in a firm, fresh way, than larger, meatier beans, their stature like the thinnest, highest stiletto heel to a shoe lover.
When I'm in Paris, at the end of a long day out walking and a big meal at noon, I cook them up for supper, with just cheese, baguette and red wine. It's comforting to know haricots verts, like all green beans, are a great source of Vitamins A, C, potassium, magnesium, folate and riboflavin, because those nutrients are so good for the heart, which is important when it's beating hard with excitement from food. It balances itself out.
This time I blanched them two minutes with some equally swoon-worthy young asparagus - asperges in French, doesn't that sound beautiful - makes me want to sing, or better, listen to "Je t'aime". Then I rinsed them in cold water and dried them, stir-fried them in olive oil in the wok until just tender, in the last half minute adding a couple tablespoons of fresh minced garlic, a tiny amount of minced ginger, a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, and a few dashes of balsamic vinegar. They're topped with broken walnuts.
When you can't get to Paris in the spring, you can taste Paris in the spring, right on the farm. Everything is starting to vibrate. - -
"One of the things I always tell my kids
is that it's OK to head out for wonderful,
but on your way to wonderful,
you're gonna have to pass through all right.
When you get to all right,
take a good look around and get used to it,
because that may be as far as you're gonna go."
"I became very interested [in the question],
can I still stay in this business
and be effective and make a living,
and not have to play this fame game?
I wasn't any good at it.
The fame game was kickin' my ass."
"You gonna tell me the history of the blues?
I am the goddam blues. Look at me. Shit.
I'm from West Virginia, I'm the first man
in my family not to work in the coal mines,
my mother scrubbed floors on her knees
for a living, and you're going to tell me
about the goddam blues because
you read some book written by John Hammond?
Kiss my ass."
I was six minutes early for my haircut, so I finished listening to the NPR interview on the car radio with the filmmakers of a new documentary about Bill Withers called "Still Bill" ("Still Bill" is also the name of his second album in 1972). No matter how overplayed "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Lean On Me" were when I was in high school, I still didn't turn the radio knob back then, and I couldn't turn him off now. The timbre of his voice put me in either a small dark bar or a sunny meadow, depending on the song, the day and what the mood was behind my closed eyelids. His simple lyrics and the way he sang about love made him someone I admired - not from my head, but from my heart. I could never sit still in my mother's kitchen when Dee Dee and I listened to "Use Me" and it even got us up off our butts to finish the dishes. Oh and I smiled through "Lovely Day" and "Grandma's Hands:" Billy don't you run so fast, might fall on a piece of glass, might be snakes there in that grass, Grandma's ha-a-a-ands, sung with nostalgic love. Would I have remembered his quiet songs if you'd asked me a week ago what my top ten favorite songs are? I don't think I would have pulled them out of where they were tucked away from consciousness. But here I was feeling like I'd come home after missing it for too long.
So when I heard that two guys have been making a documentary about him for seven years, I listened eagerly to hear what they had to say about him. Was he for real? You spend seven years with a person and you'll get a clue about whether they're that wise, tender soul behind the simple sweet songs you love. The quotes and descriptions of him the filmmakers talked about confirmed that he is a real guy who is wise from experience and self shaping, uncomfortable with fame and the ways his studio wanted to market him and his music. In a 2005 interview, he talked about CBS Records trying to get him to cover Elvis Presley's "In the Ghetto" and sexy up his blues with female backup singers. As if he needed added soul like that. That's when he said what he said about being the blues, not selling 'em. Good for him he's managed to live pretty nicely on royalties from his 1970s and 1980s songs, without becoming something he wasn't.
I turned off the radio and went in for my haircut knowing I'll be using that line about taking a good look around all right with my students, because that might be as far as some of them will go. I happen to know from experience that all right can be pretty wonderful. Or maybe it's more like deciding for yourself what wonderful is.
Bill Withers says in this first video of "Grandma's Hands" that it's his favorite of his songs. After that I also posted "Harlem," his first single, which didn't make it big the way the flip side "Ain't no Sunshine" did. In fact, yesterday was the first time I'd heard it.
My photo at the top is of the March 8 New Yorker article about him and the documentary.
I just love hearing his songs again, and I guess I hope he sticks with his version of wonderful and doesn't start touring, unless he really wants to. - -
A lot of the time the halls of my building really are this empty. Professors are in their offices with doors closed while they silently pore over texts. But these shots are mostly after hours, so it looks extra quiet. My building whispers: English Literature, writing, scholarship. To me - heaven. In theory, at least! As I tell dear DS, I am a very literary person for someone who hardly reads. At the end of the day, this time of year, the evening light slants in across the hall from the grad student lounge, from the open stretch of trees leading to the bell tower, where my favorite beech tree stands. This is the part of campus that looks like a quintessential university.
Sadly, the 110 years this building has existed may be its life span, since it will be demolished in the next couple of years. It doesn't have enough structural integrity to withstand refurbishment, and things have begun to fall apart, as you can see. I'm pretty sure in the new addition across campus where they'll move us I won't have a big office with a high ceiling and wide oak trim on the doors as I do now. So I'm enjoying every moment I work in this space. I do look forward to being close to the river when we move, but I will miss this hall. Most of us in my department - professors and students alike - love this old building. But some can't wait to be rid of it, poor thing.
I get too attached to certain old things. I never want to see them go, even when they're decrepit. There are lots of cracked, chipped, broken and threadbare items in our possession that should probably be tossed. Like this chair that belonged to my mother and her step-mother before her. I don't want to re-cover it or get a new slipcover made. It's not just that I don't want to worry about ruining something brand new. I really like it aesthetically. When a thing is beautiful to start with, made of fibers, wood or ceramics that are well crafted, it becomes more beautiful as it ages. Some things look bad even when they're new, like blue plastic tarps. But I guess beauty is as they say in the eye of the beholder. And if I had just lived through an earthquake, watching my house crumble into rubble, a blue plastic tarp as the sky begins to open up in a shower would be a beautiful sight.
