On Windblown Hair and Being Human

Windy at Palazzo Pitti
Originally uploaded by tiffybex.

I've been drawn back to this picture several times, though I'm not sure why. I like it, though it's not like the best picture ever taken, and I'm making a funny smile like I'm afraid my teeth will fall out if I open my lips.

I thought maybe it had to do with the fact that this is the first and probably last time that my hair has been photographed doing that windy, devil-may-care supermodel-in-front-of-a-fan thing, but I don't think that's really it either. (Though I do like the association.)

After thinking about it, it may be that it's one of the least self-conscious moments of my adult life that's been photographed. (At least that I know about. Yikes.) Anyway, I'm the type who freezes up when photographed, who becomes instantly enmeshed in a thought process: Should I tilt my head? Should I show teeth? Should I angle my hips just so?

I have been afraid most of my life of being called out as less than perfect, less than put together. I've wanted to be in control of how I look, what I say, how I present myself. This is not to say that I'm not fun or spontaneous--with the right people, I can be who I am, and let go those issues of control. This is, incidentally, how I knew Jason was the one. Not only did I feel great love and attraction for him, but I also felt instantly like myself when I was around him. Totally accepted.

Anyway, over the last 3 years, I've learned a lot about how to let go, and how to reveal myself to the world and not be afraid of what people will say. This had a lot to do with my MFA program and what I learned about writing.

For the first 3 semesters, I was so conscious of my audience, so painfully aware of their comments that I kept my writing under control. I wrote what I thought was intelligent, impressive, lyrical. And my writing skill was never doubted, really. What was under scrutiny was my ability to connect. To tell a story that became more than pretty words. To tell a story that was in and of itself a distillation of the experience of being human. I've come a long way, and while I still catch myself holding back sometimes, I'm much more able to be vulnerable--to be sick and hopeful, ugly and redeemed--to give myself over to the world and not be afraid to live in it.

I like this picture because I am in it. Of course, the windblown hair doesn't hurt either.

Sweet Heat

Last night, Jason and I went to Chuy’s for the opening night of their annual Green Chile Festival, which celebrates all things wonderful about the Hatch native.

If you live in Austin (or Dallas, Houston, or San Antonio), you must go and sample some of the items on the menu. Last night’s standouts were these: The Macho Burrito and the Green Chile Brownie.

The former was macho in all the right ways: Hefty, persuasive, confident. Zesty but not abusive, straightforward and honest. No lies from this burrito. The roasted pork and green chile tomatillo sauce were enough to convince me to surrender to its charms. Yes, I am in love with this burrito.

The brownie though, is what has stoked my lust. It was a brownie a la mode, but with a hint of green chiles mixed in and topped with green chile syrup and bits of almost candied chile. Oh my. A hot brownie. Chocolate and red chiles have been done—look at mole for a traditional example—but I’d never tasted this particular combination of sweet and green chile. It may be quite common, but if so, I’m unaware of it. In any case, this is a combination that somehow makes the sweetness of the dessert so much more pleasurable.

I once had a mango-habanero crème brulee, and it was much the same. There is a kind of “all circuits on” effect, where the heat on the tongue intensifies the enjoyment of the dessert, though not by making it sweeter, only tastier. It's hard to explain, but come to think of it, the sprinkling of cayenne on sweet corn (as is widely done in Latin America) has a similar effect.

It’s as though the soothing, palliative experience of sweetness is sharpened (and completed) by the sting of the burn, just as comedy is made more whole with moments of gravity, or drama is with moments of comic relief.

I am not a “food writer,” though I do like to think and write about food, especially as we experience flavor and how the taste of things creates emotional response, but I do know that balance in food is highly prized. The more I think about this as a principle the more I recognize how much of our food is unbalanced—too salty, too sweet, too rich. I am not going to say that a too-sweet cookie will wreck your life, but too many may corrupt our sense of balance. And, who knows, maybe just like a small foot injury can change the way you move, an injury to this sense may end up producing far larger effects.

Anyway, all I know is this: Spicy brownie = Deep thoughts

Thanks, Green Chile Festival, for freeing my mind. Now, the rest of you, go, and see what I'm talking about.

Leaping in the Rose Garden

In the Rose Garden
Originally uploaded by tiffybex.

Eventually, I'll post photos besides those from my honeymoon, but right now, they're giving me a lot to write about, think about.

Like this one, for example. To me, it represents the rewards of adventure, even if that adventure is a small one. In the Rose Garden below the Piazzale Michelangelo, it began to rain. So Jason and I headed for cover, and found the building you see him standing in front of. It turned out to be a restroom, and since he needed to go, he stood there waiting. I didn't need to pee, so when I saw this little doorway into a faded, glazed over conservatory structure, I decided to take a peek. It looked like just an abandoned part of the building, but when I walked in, there was the most beautiful little grotto, with artfully arranged rocks, lush ferns, dripping springs and a lovely mural of Florence on one of the walls. (I have a photo of this, but it just didn't come out too well.) None of this was visible from the outside, and even though people could see me in there, no one followed me. I guess it wasn't on the list of things "to be seen."

It's the sort of thing you find when you're not really trying to find something. When you're just satisfying curiosity, and a sense of adventure, and then you're presented with the most amazing gifts. I also got a perspective for this photo of Jason that would have otherwise been impossible.

As Joseph Campbell wrote: Leap, and the net will appear. I agree, and add: Leap, and the net will appear, filled with treasure.

True of life, I think, and definitely true in writing. Here's to leaping!

Writing at the Old Stove

Writing at the Old Stove
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

Here I am scribbling away at The Old Stove, a charming Irish bar in Florence. When inside this bar, one forgets that one is in Italy, until of course you see the lunch menu and see all the panini offered on it.

I am fairly looped in this picture (one wouldn't know from the keen look of concentration on my face) but I am working on a poem.

You might think that because I was on my honeymoon, it was a swooning, romantic stanza, of the sort people in love are supposed to write. But instead I chose to play, by writing a poem based on words created through anagrams of the phrase "Firenze, Italia."

This resulted in a very strange poem that made very little sense. I told you I was looped, right?

Here is my drunken Florentine poem:
A tail in rain,
an ear at nite,
a net afire.
A fine fleet,
a finite zeal,
tear it and feel Zen.
Tile it, rent it, leer at it.
A fine rifle and a rife tale.

Totally senseless. And yet, glimmers of something in simple play. I particularly like "a net afire" and "a finite zeal." Who knows what, if anything, will come of this.

But I do know that we should play more, all of us. We should be allowed nonsense, allowed "free rein." When I am with Jason I am more playful, one of the reasons we complement each other so well.

So much of life is nonsense, and why shouldn't we enjoy the felicity of coincidence?

After all, an ear at nite could be the start of a rife tale...

Still Life of Husband With Beer

Jason with Forst
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

(and espresso.) We're nothing if not self-medicators.

OK, so this picture is REALLY blurry. Sorry for that. I probably should have learned how to take pictures with my new camera *before* I went to Italy. But alas, there was all that wedding planning and pre-marital sex to be having. Left me little time to figure out how to FOCUS a camera, apparently.

This picture, smeary as it is, reminds me what I love about Italy. This was about 11 p.m., and we are drinking espresso and beer on a square, enjoying each other's company, no feeling of hurry, no feeling of shouldn't-we-be-doing-something-productive? I hate that feeling.

That beer was $10, which I also kind of hate. The espresso was probably around $3-$4. The espresso there is worth it--the stuff we drink here just doesn't compare. I don't know what they do differently, but it's frothier, richer, more complex. Ours is just so bland by comparison.

And while the Italians know what they're doing with their wine, I can understand why they don't have much to say about their beer. This beer (Forst) wasn't bad--fresh and crisp, though a little bland--but we had some Moretti, which was a bit like some smelly formaggio in beer form.

Still, I'd pay $14/person all over again to rent out that table on that square, where Jason looked up the word for 'pig' on the pocket translator (under his right hand) so he could write in my journal: Ti amo maiale.

I love you too, pig.

Kickass Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a recipe I adapted from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. (Best old-fashioned baking cookbook ever, by the way.)

I changed a few things (like adding wheat flour and dark chocolate chips to give it more texture and complexity) but everytime I've made these people really like them. This is my favorite recipe for CCC's, mainly because they balance the sweet with a hint of saltiness (from the salt, duh, and the baking soda.)

Not-So-Sweet Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

½ cup of whole wheat flour
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1 1/3 sticks of butter (about 10 1/3 tablespoons)
1 large egg at room temperature
½ cup of dark brown sugar, tightly packed
½ cup of white sugar (or ¼ cup of Splenda baking blend)
½ cup (heaping) dark chocolate chips
1 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp of vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. In bowl, combine flours, salt, and baking soda. Set aside. With a mixer (stand or hand) cream together butter and sugars for approximately 3 minutes. Add vanilla and egg and mix well. Add flour mixture and beat well until thoroughly mixed, but do not overbeat. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.

Drop by teaspoonful onto ungreased airbake cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until just turning lightly golden brown. Take out of oven and let them rest on the sheet for 1 minute, then remove to a cooling rack. Makes 2-3 dozen small cookies.

I'll try to get a picture of these up here at some point, but for now, just trust me on these!

View from Boboli Gardens

View from Boboli Gardens
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

Jason says this photo could have been composed better (which is probably true, but that's not the point), but I really like it. It is such a specific picture for me. I knew just how I was feeling, just how it felt to come to the precipice of the gardens and look out over the city. I love the feathery tree in the foreground and the smears of clouds, and the Tuscan haze and the clutter of buildings.

It is the kind of view that you look out on so that you can look inside.

Empty Rooms

Santa Croce Interior
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

The photo here is really more illustration than the focus of today's entry. It's the interior of the Santa Croce church in Florence, if you're interested, and the photo just has this kind of beautiful but inaccessible atmosphere about it.

Which brings me to a potentially upsetting trend that I'm seeing in my students' work. In about half of the stories we've read for workshop, the author keeps us at a chilled, emotional remove from the characters, including the main one. This distance is extreme, and quite devoid of empathy or even genuine interest in the inner lives and workings of these people. The stories seem to be *about* detachment, isolation, distance, hollowness.

It's really all very depressing.

Anne Lamott, in her fabulous book for writers, "Bird by Bird," writes about how necessary it is to know one's characters: "...look at your characters again," she writes. "You've got to go into these people, and since you don't know them, this means that you need to go into you, wonderful you, who has so many problems and idiosyncrasies--you, who will be able to figure out what is true for these people and hence, what they would or would not do in a given situation."

In that passage, it's the part about going into yourself that resonates the most for me. I know from my own experience that this is true, and so when I see writers writing zombies on the page, I wonder if it is that they have little or no "self" to go into.

I've been known to extrapolate the apocalypse from almost any writerly gaffe, but this is so pervasive, so trendy, so similar, that I do find it unsettling.

The only reason I'm not prognosticating the death of emotionally affecting fiction and getting ready to slice my wrists is because I believe that even if these writers feel empty and emotionless now, if they keep pursuing the craft, a quickening of human sentiment and empathy will fill them.

When this happens, and they revisit their previous stories of detached, distant characters, I hope they will ask: Who wrote this? and really not know.

And that is why I spend two and a half hours on Wednesday nights teaching fiction for $17 hour.

My husband

Jason
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

This somewhat blurry photo is of my husband on our honeymoon to Florence. Even though it's not quite in focus, I had to put it up because of the smile and the look on his face. A look he's giving me, his goofy wife who's pointing the camera at him and fumbling with camera buttons.

I love him for a look like this. And for many other reasons, and for absolutely no reason at all. I just love him.

Last night, we watched the final episode of the HBO series "Six Feet Under." And I won't spoil it or anything, but it was powerful, and reminded me how ineffably beautiful our lives are, our time on earth is. Looking at my husband (and at a photo like this) makes me feel this even more keenly. I am so aware of how much I love each moment that I'm with him (really, nearly all the time--of course he sometimes drives me to exasperation) that I sometimes get melancholy about it, saddened by the remote knowledge that our time together is actually finite.

I'm not sure what I believe about the afterlife--have no idea, as no one really does--but the lyrics to the song from our first dance seem to sum it up. They're from Ben Folds' "The Luckiest":

I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

What if I'd been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

And in a white sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

Next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I'm sorry, I know that's a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

What is this damn thing?

As you may have already noticed, I have been making some changes around here. Cleaning up the joint. Trying to figure out what the whole purpose of this blog is for me right now.

Probably soon I will rename this blog, and when I do, I'll give you some advance notice. Basically, this became an unfun place to be for me, so I avoided it. Why did that happen?

Well, for starters, I'm too fucking wordy. I bored myself to death. One can only imagine what happened to the stray visitor. I apologize for any blogging fatalities whilst on my superhighway. So, I'm aiming for concision, interest, and hopefully, a sense of humor. Trust me, I am more fun in person than when I'm writing. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm looking into it (and looking into drinking while blogging as a possible cure). For that, go to Liquorsnob.

So, in an effort to reinvigorate my blog, here are some guidelines I just invented that I will soon be breaking:

My blog should be a place to:

• Communicate
  
• Blow off steam
  
• Have fun
  
• Teach someone something
  
• Feel free to experiment with writing
  
• Think
  
• Develop a community
  

My blog should not be:

• A procrastination device
  
• A place to whine or complain
  
• Done for the wrong reasons
  
• A chore
  
• Done at the expense of my off-line life and relationships
  
• Too fucking serious
  
• A soapbox
  
• Tedious
  

Next step: Applying said guidelines in a somewhat consistent manner and renaming this sucker.

Newly Married

reflective bridal
Originally uploaded by tiff_hamburger.

Anyone who knows me knows that I recently got married. This picture is from my wonderful photographer, Vanessa Escobedo Barba.

I have been married for just about two months, and while we had been living together before, being married is somehow different, though the difference is difficult to pin down. It may have something to do with a deep, mystical connection forged in our souls at the moment we said "I do."

Or maybe it's because we can say we love each other more than pickles and know exactly what we mean when we do. We're a conspiracy of two, on a secret mission, and no one can break our code. After all, it's a language shared by two people in the whole world, making it of little linguistic interest, but making a world of secret meaning for two people who talk an awful lot about pickles.