Hello from Paris!
This week I have been very busy not doing all the things that I feel I should do. Instead, I picked out a dress for New Year’s Eve…
Not for me, of course, but for somebody.
I have also been working on a novel that no one has requested, and may well be too tasteless to find an agent and publisher, and convert into cash.
It is a relief sometimes to be useless. It is especially amusing for someone who trades in reality to make things up. Though ironically I even find a use for that, when I find myself watching myself, curious about my own imagination, wondering how much it’s been constrained by a world which tells me all the time what I should think and I should do.
Sometimes I hate how careful I am, how the world has its grip on me. My anger comes out in weird ways and places. Like in my cooking. Which I do with pleasure and love, but also rage. I hadn’t understood that until recently. But there it is. It’s the only explanation for what happens when I try to make things like cornbread which I grew up with, and brings back more memories than I’d like.
Recipe Cornbread Surprise
Will it be dense, light, sweet, savory? Who knows, really? It’s a surprise.
Ingredients
flour
cornmeal
baking powder
salt
butter
eggs
milk
water
bowl
pan
heat
resentment
desire
You can almost taste it—cornbread, but there isn’t any in the house. There never is. Or in stores either because you’re in France, and not Kentucky, or even New York with its Black population that migrated up from down south, inadvertently resulting in those strange, sugary saran-wrapped squares in bodegas, and sometimes even on grocery store shelves next to enormous shrink-wrapped muffins larger than an infant’s head.
But still, you need it. It will give you meaning, is almost an ontological thing. And you could, if you wanted, go online and find dozens, no thousands, of recipes, all with their clearly outlined steps and instructions, that you’d first have to choose between, and then submit to. You can almost hear the voice. First do this, then that. And it gets on your last nerve. The whole idea of it. How to do things. How to do things right, which presupposes so much. All the judgement of good and better and wrong. Sugar or no sugar. How much? Should you add corn? Cheese? Want fluffy or dense? In any case it must be always the same. When who gives a crap, really? Will you die if you make it wrong? If it changes? Will the roof collapse, world end, will you be homeless? And conversely, if you follow the steps just right, do everything in exactly the right way, exactly the right order, measure to the gram, reproduce like a fucking machine, what’s the pay-off? Where has it ever gotten you—doing things right?
And, if truth be told, what you’d really like to do is blow something up, or knock it down. But all you have is your desire for that cornbread maudite. So what you do grab a big spoon and use it to dump a bunch of flour in a bowl, then a bunch of cornmeal. Probably it should be around two cups in total, but because you don’t really care, maybe you’ve only got a cup there, a cup and a half. If you stare much longer at it you’ll want to smash the bowl, so you press on. Add a spoonful of sugar, and some baking powder, maybe two or three teaspoons, maybe not, and a pinch or two of salt. And stir all that up. Then you remember you need a pan, and look for one that’s not too big, and you put a big lump of butter in it, and slip it into the oven which you’ve turned up to godknowswhat 200C or 400F which is a nice round number so the butter melts and the pan heats.
And while that’s happening you crack a couple of eggs over the flour, and dump in some milk, but not too much because you want some for coffee tomorrow, and begin to stir with a fork. After a few strokes it still looks super dry, so you add some water. By then the butter’s melted, and you realize you probably have too much, but that’s okay, nobody’s ever complained about cornbread being too buttery, and you drizzle that into the batter, which you give a quick final mix, and glop back in the hot pan still dripping with butter, and return to the oven.
You don’t know how long to cook it for, but even with that skimpy amount of batter (pause briefly to regret not adding more flour, more cornmeal) it won’t be less than 10 minutes, so that’s what you set the timer for. After a few minutes you peek through the glass window, and are consoled that it’s rising, so you can’t have screwed it up too badly. It doesn’t look done when the alarm rings, so you wait until it pulls away from the side, and gets reasonably golden on top, and when you stick a knife in, it comes out clean.
That’s when you pull it out, turn the oven off. Declare it done and cut out a chunk which you eat smeared with blueberry jam. Which, surprise!, is pretty good.
Speaking of Kentucky…
My family seems to be okay, but my god… the tornadoes. They even made French news.
Destruction of East River Park
There are acts of god (nature), then there are what humans get up to. Like the willful destruction of the enormous East River Park in New York in service of the breathtakingly corrupt New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and his real estate cronies who replaced a perfectly good design to fight global warming and save existing trees with one which cuts and bulldozes and destroys in a plan experts say has no chance of helping save the city from flooding, and may make things worse. On the upside, certain somebodies are making a shitton of money. God, I hate de Blasio.
Dept. of Oldie But Goodie
I’d tell him that, sure, maybe solo camping as a woman is somewhat dangerous. But you know what else is dangerous? Going anywhere, every day. And even that isn’t as dangerous as giving in, staying home, letting my life become a collage of other people’s limits and expectations. Men and women live in different worlds with a one-way glass between them....
--Blair Braverman
From Britain
‘Absurdity’ of police logging rapists as women
Why I’ll Be Reading More and More about Economics
[Ivan] Illich was among the early critics of standard economics and modern capitalist notions of “development.” He challenged the premise of “scarcity” built into this framework of thought and highlighted the dangers of unlimited growth. Standard economics, he noted, has no sense of “enoughness.”
I am increasingly interested in economics, and capitalism, which have always affected politics, but have a powerful new weapon in social media and targeted messaging which hones in on “identities” — no longer tools for progressive social change, but “niche markets” for whatever you happen to be selling whether it’s a candidate, or a shoe. Or in my case, a bicycle.
At any rate, the field seems to offer insights necessary to me as I try to digest thoughts about the individual confronted with what are essentially the monsters of market (and social) forces, which will hopefully lead to ideas about how to resist. Or not. Maybe you’ll just get more recipes.
Dept. of Blowing Minds
An essay on the Artificiality of time. Which really hurt my brain.
And finally…
Frau Perchta, Terrifying Christmas Witch
…if should you really irritate her? Like, say, not only is your flax not spun, but your house is a total mess (this domestic goddess/witch hates a messy house) and you’ve even failed to leave out a traditional bowl of porridge for her? Well, then her rampaging will extend far beyond your slovenly spinning room. She’ll do nothing less than steal into your bedroom, disembowel you and replace your guts with rocks and straw.
That’s it for this time.
Disgruntedly yours
Jelly Mit Cornbread
P.S. If you’re looking for a holiday present, think about ordering a copy of The Lesbian Avenger Handbook: A Handy Guide to Homemade Revolution.
Or why not, Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger…