There are a couple of things I can say I’ve learned from this grad school experience so far.  Or, maybe I learned them last semester, and will unlearn them this semester.  But I know, now, that teaching is not my calling.  I know now that I would rather work on a chain gang than teach English composition.  I also know that I’m not an academic.  That one was pretty hard to swallow.  What’s the point of doing all this, then?  I don’t know.  I just also (somehow) know that I have to finish what I started, and that something surprising will open before me.  At some point, in the next year and a half, a door is going to open.

They have killed the rooster, thank God,
but it’s strange to have my half
of the valley unreported. Without the rooster
it’s like my place by the Chinese elm is not here
each day. As though I’m gone. I touch my face
and get up to make tea, feeling my heart claim
no territory. Like the colorless weeds which fail,
but don’t give in. Silent in the world’s clamor.
They killed the rooster because he could feel
nothing for the six frumpy hens. Now there is only
the youngster to announce and cover. They are only
aunts to him. Mostly he works on his crowing. And for
a long time the roosters on the other farms would not
answer. But yesterday they started laying
full-throated performances on him. He would come
back, but couldn’t get the hang of it. The scorn
and the failing went on until finally one day,
from the other end of the valley, came a deep
voice saying, “For Christ’s sake, kid, like this.”
And it began. Not bothering to declare parts
of the landscape, but announcing the glory,
the greatness of the sun and moon.
Told of the heavenly hosts, the mysteries,
and the joy. Which were the Huns and which not.
Describing the dominions of wind and song. What was
noble in all things. It was very quiet after that.

It was so tasty, and yet consists of we-know-not-what.  It reminded me of the time I ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s Karmel Sutra ice cream, only to discover that I had just ingested 1120 calories in one sitting.  That’s 40 grams of saturated fat, I also discovered, which is 200% of a person’s DV.  I immediately went and laid down on my bed and felt weird for a few minutes, then got up and rather gingerly went about my business (which I think was watching a movie, at the time, so maybe I didn’t get up).

In other news, I’m going to campus today for a Writing Center meeting.  I went yesterday to get some random stuff done, and that was the first time I’d been back since I handed in my last paper early in December.  I’d wiped my brain clean of all things school-related over break, but realized, on my way back from campus, that I actually am ready for school to start.  I think.

the shadow of a dragon
skims its surface,

wide wings spread for a water landing
or a small-animal snatching,

then scatters itself among the trees
on the bank
and beyond the bank.

These last few days before I go back to school have been bittersweet.  Not having anything I absolutely have to do, I do things I want to do, like take photos, eat all the Christmas candy, and make creative cakes, macaroni, pizza.  Also I hang out online, which is this great international picture gallery of our projected selves.  Not a bad thing at all, necessarily.  But it does mean that many people’s “profiles” and blogs are set up like long halls of fame, bursts of success and enthusiasm bookended by silences or empty chatter.  That might be about how I do it, although my bursts of enthusiasm center on my failures as often as my successes.  I think.  But reading several peoples’ New Year’s posts, listing triumphs and adventures from 2011 and making cheery predictions for 2012, I got kind of down.  Envy, I suppose, plain and simple.

It’s been a strange year, and the year rolling itself out at my feet seems equally strange.  I don’t have the same unqualified optimism for this coming year as I thought I would, being back in school and having a great new husband and all.  My great desires — for love and friendship, for beauty and writing — seem to be fully planted, now, in my life: where childhood and adolescence did the pre-work of planning, wishing, and pining, adulthood is turning out to be a great deal of weathering, persevering.  And I’m not really doing all that well.  Finding a niche (?) for my vocation (writing) is clearly going to be tough, and doing the work of pursuing people — loving them — is no longer riding waves of affection and like-mindedness.  It’s now fighting momentum, excavating bitternesses, forgiving.  Welcome to the Real World, you say.  Yes.  Maybe 2012 will be my first real year of adulthood.

2.  Mead’s Quarry Expedition

This morning, my plan to go to Mead’s Quarry kept getting almost-thwarted.  Mead’s Quarry is one of several abandoned and flooded marble quarries in South Knoxville, owned by the county but maintained my Ijams Nature Center.  Some money got pumped into them recently, so their reputations as places to go and illegally skinny-dip with your single friends while you’re all super smashed has been materially damaged.  Alack the day!  They’re now Places to Take Your Posh Out-of-Town Company—which I have not yet done but will—and talk about Historic Knoxville and Cormac McCarthy.  The quarries now have brick-paved lookouts and lightly-graveled hiking trails, and some informational signs and hip-looking fences have even appeared at spots with a lot of quarrying detritus lying around, looking overgrown and picturesque.

Anyways where the hell was I.  Oh yeah.  So I got out of bed this morning with the express intention to be at Mead’s Quarry no later than 900am with coffee in my new thermos, journal, Julian of Norwich Vol. 1, a pen, and my camera, which would have a roll of film in it for the first time in at least 12 months.  I’m dipping back into my profound love for wild places, empty spaces, and zero agendas.  I even left my phone at home, which I actually didn’t mean to do, but ha.  Perfect.

But since I ruined a roll of film trying to make my camera eat it while its batteries were dying, I ended up having to buy two rolls of film and a new pack of batteries ($26).  And even then the back wouldn’t close all the way, so I had to tape it shut with duct tape.  Got to the quarry at 10:15.  Oh well.  Point is: I made it.  I walked where I wanted, took pictures of dry grassy brush with fluffy, sparkling seed-heads on it, a circular bricked area with no obvious purpose in a strange place off the path, and a nice one of Mead’s Quarry Lake.  Wandered.  Ended up wandering up the trail that winds around the quarry counter-clockwise, and takes you on top of the bluffs.  Where I wrote a poem that has a Billy-Collins-silliness, but which I like anyway.  I’m posting it by itself—let me know what you think.

1.  Look for more school books at Central St. Books and Union Ave. Books.
2.  Have a phone date with Katie J.
3.  Do Yoga X.
4.  Send a group of poems to Michael M.’s journal.  (1/5/12)
5.  Find something really great to make for dinner.

This is my husband, demonstrating his love for beer.  He got his brothers, dad, and friend Jason beer for Christmas, and he couldn’t get over the feeling of owning that much exciting beer at once.  So I figured it’d make sense to take a picture, for us to remember the beers by.  What a wealth of beer!  Oh, we’ll never forget.

Anyways, today Marshall is making a Sierra Nevada pale ale clone brew, and I’m going to photo-document parts of that process, and I also wanted to put up pictures of the cake I’m making and the new cake plate I got yesterday.  It’s just bustling over here.

Small kitchens being the mothers of inventive cookbook placement.

After having reconstituted the wort with boiling water.  That’s grain in that bag.

This is what the grains look like after giving up most of their sugars and flavors.  Still gorgeous.

Just added Cascade and Perle hops.  Cascade hops are the most aromatic of hop varieties, I believe, and just one sniff of those pellets opens up a celestial vista inside your head.  I don’t even have the time or brilliance right now to describe that fragrance.  Except to say that it’s one of my favorites.

The couch is really distracting, sorry.  It was the only place I could find enough light.  It may also be my favorite piece of furniture that we own.  (Thanks to Natalie!)  But the cake: it’s a Martha Stewart recipe, and I have to say it smells amazing.  Flour, sugar, cocoa, safflower oil, buttermilk.  Not in that order, nor in the proportions that order implies.  My plan is to fill it with raspberry preserves, and make another one tomorrow by the real recipe, which calls for caramel filling and chocolate frosting (for which I had to buy 1 lb. of chocolate…1…lb…).  So, I’m sure I’ll botch that royally and end up making a trifle out of it.  But whatever.

Also, the one that’s broken-looking on the top?  That’s the first one I unpanned (dispanned?), and I was so excited by its gorgeousness that I kind of — I don’t know — yelled a little, or gasped, and dropped the pan on it.  So, it broke.  Yay, me.

This cake stand plus some fancy cake pans received for Christmas are the reason for this weekend’s cakes.  Isn’t milk-glass just stunning.  I love it.  $15 at one of those places at Central and Broadway.

I really do love this cake stand.  I waited for a long time to get one, because most of the cake stands you see new or used are tacky etched-glass or cheapo glued-together pieces of lameness. Lovely.

An awkwardly large photo, but it shows how the yeast are just tearing it up, in there.  Little cyclones of particles bubble up from the bottom every few minutes — pretty crazy.