Cake Making, Merry Making

And so, the morning of the big day, the frosting was made and the cake assembled.


I was nervous about this frosting/filling; when you've never done it before, it's hard to know for sure what "thickened and bubbly" ought to look like. How thick? How bubbly? And what's going to happen if I don't get it thick enough? And what if it overcooks?


But rather than letting fear overcome, I used my best judgment; it stuck to the cake pretty well and I hoped that was a good sign.


And did I mention that I also am now the proud owner of a round cake carrier? Here we are, ready to drive to Arkansas.


Cute candles, are they not?


Closer up.


Cute family, are we not? (Someone smart knew we had to make the photo before starting in on food, or else we never could have gotten all those young ones back in one place. And their shirts would likely not have been as clean as they are.)


They let me light the candles.


Happy Birthday, Daddy!

How Sweet It Is

Ha! I just realized that in nearly eighteen years of marriage, I must have never made a traditional round cake. At least not since moving to America 14+ years ago. I know this because I did not own a set of round cake pans until this morning, unless I have some in our Croatia kitchen that I've forgotten about. I do have a couple of ten-inch cake pans inherited from Grandmother, but I haven't ever used them to bake a cake.

After a quick morning trip to Williams Sonoma, I am now the proud owner of two eight-inch round cake pans, and I am in the process of making a real round, two-layer cake that will have candles on it tomorrow for my dad's birthday.

In case you wonder how I managed to live this long without such a common kitchen element, I guess it's because when we married, we didn't have a traditional wedding shower. We had a money tree, and we wound up needing most of the money just to pay for getting around in the States until we got back to Croatia. So I've never had a lot of things for kitchen and dining that the books say I ought to have. And when you don't have those things, you learn to find recipes that use what you have.

Anyway, if this cake turns out well, birthdays may never be the same again!

I'll try to add photos later, 'cause I'm sure you're all dying to see the process. (...And as you can see, I added the photo.)

Lux Arumque

Light,
warm and heavy as pure gold,
and the angels sing softly
to the new-born baby.

Monday nights are rehearsal nights most weeks. I began singing with the Memphis Chamber Choir almost two years ago. I had been to their Festival of Lessons and Carols and felt transported by the experience. Then a friend introduced me to the director, and Geoff's enthusiasm for not just music, but for worship, created a connection with me, and I auditioned and started singing.

(I had sung before with the symphony chorus, and the Rhodes Mastersingers chorus, and both were wonderful experiences. But I like being with a smaller group, offering music at no charge, and singing the music in the church setting it was written for, not as a performance for an audience of people, but as an offering to the ears of the One who is the subject of most of the pieces we sing.)

So, week after week we meet and sing. And sing, and sing. It's always enjoyable, sometimes tiring, and every now and then soul-stirring.

Tonight we began work on "Lux Arumque" by Eric Whitacre, a song with a somewhat odd history. It began as a poem (above) written in English by a poet named Edward Esch. Whitacre liked the poem and asked his poet friend Charles Silvestri to translate it to Latin.

I didn't know anyone other than students translated from English to Latin, but he does, and so then Whitacre set the Latin text to music. And the result is a feast for the ears, the imagination, and the soul.

It's easy to find and listen to via Youtube, by the way, if you want to.

Of course we just began it tonight, so it wasn't an incredible rendering. But the music itself, even mediocrely sung, is so lovely, and it just hangs in the air so that everything feels exceedingly alive, even when we're only holding out a chord.

And it just hit me at one moment tonight how absolutely amazing this thing we call singing is. I sat there with my eyes closed and could feel the air vibrating all around me, and I knew that it was all energy...energy was being transformed into this beautiful sound....and somehow that was coming from the bodies of these human beings all around me. We just move our lungs and throats and mouths in certain ways, and the very air changes. And every human being is born with the ability to do this.

And when you add the metaphoric heart to the literal lungs and all, this music has the ability to join heaven and earth, as my friend from the previous post put it.

So, I just sat there thinking all this in the space of a measure of music, doing my little part to add to this amazing music and feeling blest that I can.

And for a moment, the light felt gold.

Eternity in their heart

On Reaching Middle Age, with Friends

I planned a meal of food—
My food was love, instead.
Sweet joy and peace and hope—
With these my soul was fed.

I hoped not to feel old—
My heart instead seems young:
The years to come a song
Now waiting to be sung.

Here you are, Lucy. One more poem! You have coaxed me out of hiding.

I wrote this the night of my birthday several years ago. For various reasons, that particular birthday weighed heavily on me. Drazen had the lovely idea of having a real birthday party, something I hadn't done since childhood. I cooked and cooked, everything Italian, and had as many girlfriends over as our house could seat to eat. They ranged from a kindergarten friend to a friend made in the previous couple of years, and even one friend made in Italy was there.

As you can tell from the poem, it worked. My focus shifted drastically.

I have since had times of struggling with my age. Not so much the gray hair--I feel I've earned any sign of wisdom I might be graced with. But it's the things I haven't done that I thought I would have done by now, and the things that most likely will not be a part of my life, no matter what.

But I find Drazen's cure still works. Friends. Relationships. Old ones, new ones, green ones, blue ones. Oh, wait, the poem part is over, isn't it?

I love the verse from Ecclesiastes, "He has also set eternity in their heart." I feel the effects of time in my body, and I see them in the mirror. But more and more in my heart, I sense eternity. And friends are a big part of that, as you see them aging along with you and see their hearts growing and deepening, and you become less and less alone.

And the friends who have died....they just make eternity seem closer, more real.

Why am I thinking about this tonight? It's not my birthday, and I haven't noticed new gray hair, or re-injured my knee. I guess it's because we sang a requiem service tonight, in honor of local servicemen lost to the war, and people murdered in Memphis, in the past year.

A friend who was there told me later, "The music was just beautiful. It brought earth and heaven together right here."

I don't know when my true "middle age" might have been reached, or when it will be reached. But it just doesn't seem so important in the context of tonight--a night which, by the way, had a good deal of friendship and food both mixed in. Maybe food is also part of the mix....

I'll end with the piece we sang immediately following the reading of names:

Give rest, O Christ, to your servants with your saints:
where sorrow and pain are no more;
neither sighing, but life everlasting.
You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind:
and we are mortal, formed of the earth,
and to earth shall we return:
for so did you ordain,
when you created me, saying:
"You are dust, and to dust you shall return."
All of us go down to the dust;
and even at the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Books

My sister, the librarian, had this set of questions on her blog and suggested that we her dear readers answer them on our blogs. So, for the fun of it, here we go.

What was the last book you bought?

Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, by Kathleen Norris.

Name a book you have read MORE than once.

Mere Christianity, the Chronicles of Narnia, To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, Les Miserables (no, just kidding on that last one….I would like to read it again, but I don't know when it might happen....)There are others. I tend to re-read things I want to stay around in my mind.

Has a book ever fundamentally changed the way you see life? If yes, what was it?

Hearing God, by Dallas Willard.


How do you choose a book? eg. by cover design and summary, recommendations or reviews

I love to see books done beautifully, but I generally buy them because of what I’ve read in reviews or heard from friends.

Do you prefer Fiction or Non-Fiction?

I love reading good fiction, and because of life activities tend to read a lot more nonfiction.

What’s more important in a novel - beautiful writing or a gripping plot?

I see no point in making it an either/or issue. Good fiction is written well, which includes having a plot that matters. I’m not in need of “gripping” plots, as I don’t thrive on suspense. I think a lot of bad writing is out there that people “can’t put down,” but I’m concerned about the effect reading such stuff has on people’s minds….

Most loved/memorable character (character/book)

I don't know that I could pick one....I might have to think about that and maybe write about it separately someday.

Which book or books can be found on your nightstand at the moment?

I don’t keep books on my nightstand.

The ones by my reading chair are way too many….and yes, I’ve started them all….Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak (re-read) and A Hidden Wholeness, Marsha Sinetar’s Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow (re-read), Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart, Gary Thomas’ Sacred Marriage, Slavenka Drakulic’s Café Europa, Norcross and Guy’s Leaving It at the Office, Poe and Mattson’s What God Knows, Barbara Sher’s It’s Only Too Late if You Don’t Start Now, The Life of Teresa of Avila by Herself, The Music Lover’s Anthology of Poetry…..and a few more……And I’ll probably finish them all over the course of a few months, on an as-needed basis.

What was the last book you’ve read, and when was it?

The last book I remember finishing was Tolkien’s The Return of the King. That was in September.

Have you ever given up on a book half way in?

A wise piano teacher once told me, “Life is short. Play only music that you love.” I feel the same way about reading. If I get into a book and don’t find myself really loving it or really learning something from it, I’m not going to finish it unless it’s required for some reason or another.

A Sign

When we went to Mountain View, Arkansas, a couple of weeks ago, on our way back we stopped at Johnson's Freeze Inn, in Wynne. My favorite ice cream stop for many years, it is a very small building, the kind of place where you used to just stand outside and receive your goods through a sliding window. Some years ago they added on, so a few people can sit down inside, and no one has to stand in the rain. They even added a drive-through window. It's still small and very obviously locally owned, not part of a chain, and I love to stop there.

So, I didn't get a picture of Johnson's, but I did get this picture of the school mascot that was on top of a sign in the parking area. Not sure if you can tell, but it was clearly handpainted, probably one of a kind. And I just love that expression on the face.

I do miss living in a small town!

Aaaackkkk!

"The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world's nations."

--Business writer Polly LaBarre, quoted by Daniel H. Pink, in A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

It's an interesting book, and that quote is not the focus of the book, or even the chapter I'm reading, but it sure got my attention.

How do we change this??

Another Poem

"You should put more poems here," Lucy commented a couple of posts back. I've thought it over and decided to be brave and do just that.

So, here is another poem I wrote in high school. I do not have this one memorized, by the way. I came across it recently while going through things in my office.

It must have been graded strictly on form rather than content, because it got a 100.

After a Day in the Library
When I Wanted to Talk

Miss Browning, our librarian,
Was heard to threaten, "Hush!"
If soon you do not quiet down,
Your body I shall smush."

But I continued talking on:
I couldn't hold it in.
And then I learned that in her view
That was a deadly sin.

She kept her vow, and although now
I'm far from being dead,
My eyes peep out from 'neath my knees,
And toes sprout from my head.

You see what I mean about content?

I really wonder what inspired this poem, because I didn't tend to be a talker, and I don't recall Miss Browning being particularly severe. It must have been an unusual day when I did talk a lot, and perhaps not being used to reprimand, I was just very impressed by hers? I don't know.

Actually, now on re-reading, I see themes of social stereotyping, violence, rebellion, hamartiology...It does have some pretty important content when you look more deeply. Ha!

Lucy, do you still think I should put more poems here? :-)

Plato's Geranium

Last time I wrote about geraniums, it was the graceful tale of the last bloom of my geranium despite a long period of neglect, when most of the leaves had dried up.

This time I think the problem was that I overwatered when I first brought them home. (I had been instructed last year to water them often, because since they are hanging and exposed to the wind, they can dry out quickly.) Well, shortly the blooms all wilted and began to disintegrate. I thought the right thing to do was to pinch them off, the way you do with many flowers to encourage growth. And, of course, to water less.

Apparently geraniums are different from the flowers I am used to, because it did not work. They have not bloomed since. They've provided nice green, but since I bought them for the vibrant red flowers, it has been a disappointment.

But one morning I was in the room that opens out to the back porch, and the sunlight was coming in at just the right angle to create the geranium shadow on the curtains.

It's not anything like seeing those amazing red blooms, but it was really lovely, and the photos give an idea of that.

Fall is really here in Memphis now, and as the flowers fade, this seems like a good image for the end of summer.

(P.S. Can anyone read my curtains and tell me what they say??)

Time

Finitude

The ticking of time is to me odd.

Minutes and moods mingle in ways

That seldom make sense. Did we select

A way for a why, or a why for a way?

I wrote that in high school for an assignment that had something to do with Beowulf and caesuras, if I remember correctly. I remember a couple of points were docked because "w" and "wh" are not really the same sound, and the accent does not fall properly in the first line, but my teacher (my beloved teacher, Mr. Wright, written about long ago on this blog, who would not be pleased with this long and awkward parenthetical interruption) liked it, and I did, too.

I wish I could remember things now as well as I remember so many things from long ago! I hadn't thought of that little poem in a long, long time, but it came to mind tonight. I found a book, a collection of essays, with the title What God Knows: Time and the Question of Divine Knowledge, and started reading it tonight. The first essay looks at Hebrew conceptions of time as contrasted to Greek, and looks at how modernity cemented and further developed the Greek way of looking at time. Which is a problem when you're reading things written originally in a culture steeped in the Hebrew constructs. The author, Harry Lee Poe, spends a good bit of time in Genesis 1 and Revelation, and looks at cultural time differences, linguistic differences, and even a bit of physics.

The part that called up my little poem was this:

John receives a glimpse of human affairs from the perspective of eternity, but through the lens of fantastic imagery. John is shown a variety of tableaus cloaked in vivid imagery. All of the colors, numbers, gems, creatures, events, and objects have a symbolic, metaphorical, sometimes allegorical, and poetic meaning; and this kind of meaning applies to conventional time constructions like days, months, and years as well. Both Revelation and the Genesis 1 account of creation suggest the problem of confusing the measurement of time with time itself. The measurement of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, years) is a human construction. Just as some people measure space by feet and inches and other people measure the same space by meters and centimeters, some people measure time by the moon and some by the sun. Either one of these methods is strange when you come to think of it, but no less strange than the method of measuring time by the vibration of atoms!

So maybe I was onto something with that little poem way back when. (After reading this, it just doesn't seem important to figure out how many years ago it was.)

If anyone can shed light (ha, no pun intended) on the photo below, I will be grateful.

It is from San Gimignano, and I took a picture of it just so I could try to understand it. I've had no luck finding any information about it. It seems to be a sundial of sorts, or at least a representation of one. The words, I'm convinced, must be French, though I can't make literal sense of it. You can see them clearly if you click and enlarge it. From my Italian, my guess is that it's saying something like "everything holds itself [together]." Can anyone help me? (Maybe my reader in France?)

(And the clock above is the Astronomical Clock in Old Town Prague. I did not take that picture.)