I like wind

Tilting Quilting from Andrea Dorfman, interviewed by this joy+ride.

This makes me happy. And nostalgic for my clothesline.

Pears and chocolate

 Mr. Putter and his fine cat, Tabby, 

a series by author Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Arthur Howard.

The pear sings of autumn, with its green speckled skin blushed red, its flesh juicy, sweet and slightly musky. Getting the perfect pear from farm to table is a complicated, risky business, according to chef Alice Waters, and requires knowledge and skill all along the way.

"First the pear must be picked from the tree when it is mature but not fully ripe. It must experience a period of cool storage," Waters writes in "Chez Panisse Fruit." "Then it must be brought out to room temperature to finish ripening. At every step of the way, from tree to market to kitchen, it must be handled gently to avoid bruising. Determining the point of perfect ripeness isn't easy at a glace; most pears do not indicate by their color when they are ready. The signal is a slight yielding to gentle pressure at the neck. And then, what wonderful eating from a carefully tended pear!"

A Bartlett.

While the experienced farmer and appreciative chef view the pear as a work of art, in my neighborhood they're a bit of a nuisance. Around the corner from my house are three trees whose pears have been ignored by all but the crows and my youngest son. As we picked our way through smashed fruit and pecked cores, 2-year-old Ivan spotted a whole pear.

He picked it up and turned the hard, green fruit over in his small hands. It probably was a Bartlett, the most widely planted pear in North America and one of the most popular pears in the world. The Bartlett, along with most modern varieties like the D'Anjou and Comice, were developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are descendants of the European pear, Pyrus communis, cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. The Bartlett is the classic pear, wide in the neck but clearly pear-shaped -- or, botanically speaking, pyriform. And if Ivan's pear was a Bartlett it would need only a few weeks off the tree before its skin turned a golden yellow and its flesh became sweet and buttery.

But I believe that in Ivan's mind this unripe pear already was perfect, fallen straight out of a story he'd become so smitten with that he takes the book with him in the car, in the bathtub, in bed. He reads it sprawled on the floor, curled up in a big chair and with his oatmeal at breakfast. It is "Mr. Putter and Tabby Pick the Pears" and is one in a series by writer Cynthia Rylant and illustrator Arthur Howard about a cantankerous old man and his twitchy cat.

In this story, Mr. Putter has a penchant for pear jelly, but his "cranky legs, cranky knees and cranky feet" prevent him from climbing the ladder and picking his fruit tree. So, he sets to knock the pears out of the tree using a slingshot and apples, but his aim is way off and he spends an afternoon "zinging" all the apples into his neighbor's yard. The next day, the neighbor arrives with pies, jellies and cider. While Mr. Putter feasts, he figures out what he's going to do with his pears: wait for them to fall and then he'll "zing" them into his neighbor's yard and wait for the pear jelly to arrive.

Ivan loves it.

It's hard to explain why one story resonates and another doesn't, why we leave some books half read, yet return to others, again and again. Pages are pawed, spines broken and whole passages become so familiar they can be recited by memory, yet we never grow weary of the tale. I've seen this love affair develop in my three older children, who find a comfy corner, snuggle in and sigh with delight as they open a book. It's an infatuation that spills into real life, so sticks become wizard wands and patterns are purchased for the necessary prairie bonnet. And now it has begun with Ivan, who carried the pear home, found the slingshot and called me to the yard.

We aligned the smooth, heavy pear against the slingshot's rubber band and released it. Thud. The pear landed on his toe. Again we pulled, the slingshot snapped. Thud. Ivan threw himself on the ground and yelled through angry tears.

"It's not working! It's not working!"

We went inside and returned with a second slingshot (a benefit of having older brothers), and tried again.

More tears.

Again.

Another tantrum in the grass.

Again.

Then -- zing! -- the pear sailed two feet and dropped.

"That," Ivan said, "was awesome!"

In the end, the pear was pocked and bruised, best left for the crows to finish off. For this recipe, we picked our pears from the market, where I followed a few general rules from Alice Waters:

First it's best to buy green pears and ripen them at home because it ensures that they weren't picked past their prime and decreases their chances of bruising. At home, the pears can be stored in a loosely closed paper bag and kept at room temperature, where ripening can take as long as a couple weeks or as little as a few days, so check daily for that slight give in the neck when gently pressed.

"You do not want to miss that moment of perfect ripeness," Waters zings, er, sings.

Chocolate Almond Squares
Adapted from Raley's "Something Extra"
Serves 6

Ingredients:
One perfect pear
A sheet of puff pastry
Almond paste
Chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 400-degrees Fahrenheit. Place a sheet of puff pastry on a baking sheet and fold up a small rim on all sides. Sprinkle about one-fourth of a pear, peeled and diced, 2 tablespoon crumbled almond paste and a few handfuls of chocolate chips in center. Bake for about 12 minutes or until lightly golden and puffy.

 

Three cheers for mediocre

Across the street.

Beek or what I did on a good sky day

noun

1. To bask or warm in the sunshine or before a fireplace, stove or bonfire.

*

One son was running a fever and everyone was missing soccer, but my family hasn't come close to filling the summer camping quota, so this was the weekend to go. But then the newspaper promised days of rain and we bailed because if there's one lesson I've learned after four kids it's this: Sick kid + soggy tent = sucky weekend.

But then Saturday arrived with a sky as beautiful as an abalone shell, creamy pinks, iridescent whites and feather blues, and by the time I finished my run and returned to a house, now smelling of coffee cake and bacon, the sun was shining.

There was only one thing to do: take my coffee to the front steps and beek the sun. After swigging the last of my cup, I invited the sun in for a visit and thought you might want to come too.

Sit here.

Or here, the replacement for the couch that refused to fit through the front door (a bench better for practicing perfect posture that curling up with a book).

Look at this delicious light.

Rare shadows in the office lined with bookshelves.

After chores and the smallest son's nap, we headed out for a hike, but in the 20 minutes it took to get there, clouds had rolled in, and by the time we hit the trail home, rain was falling.

That night, while cooking spaghetti and listening to National Public Radio, the local station cut in with the next day's forecast: "And tomorrow's weather is ... wait for it ... rain."

Sigh.

First lesson learned about living in Seattle: Seize the sunshine when it comes.

Tears with my tea

September afternoon, Seattle.

Long ago my father and I drove the old Chevy pick-up into mountains burned by wildfire. For hours he'd cut and I'd haul the logs, my ears ringing from the whine of chainsaw, my arms aching from carrying blackened wood. At the end of the day, I lay down in the scorched field and watched puffy white clouds blow across the sky.

Faraway in a forest sits the wide trunk of an ancient tree, and from inside this trunk grows a smaller, younger tree, pulling its energy and life from the decaying stump.

Once upon a time a cell smaller than a seed burrowed into my father, took root and grew into a miniature version of the corpse flower, which now blooms in his right lung and has been given a name, cancer.

Yesterday it rained inside the trees. I stood under the branches and drops hit my head and I listened to the patter of water on leaves, but when I walked out from under the trees and into the street, it wasn't raining. All around me I heard water falling, but not where I stood in open space, under a heavy sky.

Lacuna or wandering through negative space

luh-kyoo-nuh
noun

September morning, Seattle.

1. A blank space or a missing part.
2. Small cavity, pit or discontinuity in an anatomical structure.

*

There is much to say. And little. Since I put down my pen and stopped recording my thoughts, summer has slipped by, minutes ticked off in traffic, at the beach, under the dull skies and mist of Seattle, a cool summer, short on warmth and sunshine that surrendered early to autumn.

When I moved, I packed all I love and now it surrounds me -- husband and children, books and pictures -- but when I open the door to our house an unfamiliar smell greets me and I've yet to learn to avoid the squeaks while walking across the wood floor.

All images by Molly Bang, author of "The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher," a 1981 Caldecott Honor Book.

A friend sends sagebrush in the mail and I open the bag and inhale the pungent, tangy, dry scent. I pass it to one son and he buries his face in it, breathing, breathing until he blinks back tears and pinches his nose.

Oh, he says, I've missed this.

I say nothing. There is nothing to say.

"A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass."
-- Henry Moore

The place I love is not the place I live, and so there is a cavity, a lacuna, in my life. I mislead you if I sound sad, for I'm not, nor am I suffering from a shortage of sun (which, when it shines on Seattle, turns it into a glorious city). No, I'm just acknowledging that for which I yearn, what couldn't be boxed and loaded into the U-Haul, clear blues and burnished golds, night skies sugared with starlight, and the familiarity between old friends.

The days spent in Seattle have felt like a vacation. I marvel at the mist that soaks me, at the clams that spit and the plankton that sparkle in dark waters. I inhale the forest's smells of rotting leaves, soft moss and lush ferns. I eagerly climb aboard the bus to lose myself in the city. But I cannot return home.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,

but the empty space within it

is the essence of the house.

-- Taoist philosopher Lao Tse

As a stranger, I invite in all that's foreign, opening the windows of my brain to the morning fog, which smudge the names and places that leave me smarting with loss. This move erased me around the edges and I've yet to fill what is empty.

One morning I run through damp streets and discover where the world ends. Road and sidewalk meet grass, then fence, then blackberry bush, then cliff, then tree in the woolly tangle of gray that whispers the secrets of salt and gull and the growl of fishing boats. And for a moment I imagine leaping off, tumbling through negative space, that part of the world that lies around and between things, the pause, the gap, or, in Japanese the ma, falling through the muted world until I'm snared by the brambles' thorns where I'd stay, eating berries and crunching tiny seeds.