Smoked Porter

The best part of a bad day is when you're able to put the bad into context and realize all of the good that exists despite the bummer you're facing. A long hug and a clean kitchen (thanks to SB), a meal made together (using our new cast iron grill pan and grill press, as well as our surprisingly exciting salad spinner), two back-to-back Norman Blake records while sipping a smoked porter, and I am feeling pure gratitude. When it comes down to it, I could lose this job tomorrow and still have a decent savings account to fall back on and, more importantly, a loving and supportive family and the privilege of being well-educated. And, although at first I thought it was stressful to plan a wedding while facing job uncertainty, the wedding (and honeymoon!) are great fuel to keep me hopeful and truckin' to work every morning.

This week's CSA: mixed salad greens, garlic chives, asparagus, cilantro. PS. I ended up using last week's rhubarb in a dessert - it is just so good that way.

OH - And I listened to a pretty inspiring On Being episode today, during which a poet, Christian Wimen, recited a poem by Osip Mandelstam. It was the last poem he wrote before he died in a Russian prison camp. Listening to it read aloud was amazing, but here it is written out:

And I Was Alive
By: Osip Mandelstam

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear,
Myself I stood in the storm of the bird-cherry tree.
It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self-shattering power,
And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth?
What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,
All hover and hammer,
Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.
It is now. It is not.