The Oracle said Yes

I made a pilgrimage to Delphi, walked in the footsteps of my ancestors, culturally if not biologically. Humanity is one unbroken chain, immortal in our cussed tenacity to survive and multiply. One would wait hours after having travelled weeks to gain an audience with the priestesses of Apollo, perched on a marble egg above a crevice in the mountain. There is no more oracle, there is barely the shell of a temple, but I found a place that felt close and asked my yes or no question. 

Will I have a love so epic as to make the gods jealous - like the love that Alcyone and Ceyx had for each other?

The lovely Alcyone was the daughter of Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind, and her mother was either Enarete or Aegiale. She was the devoted wife of Ceyx, King of Trachis, in central Greece. Ceyx ruled his kingdom with justice and in peace. Alcyone and Ceyx were admired by gods and mortals alike for their great physical beauty, as well as the profound love they had for each other. They were so happy in their marriage that they used to often playfully call one another Zeus and Hera. This infuriated the chief of the gods who regarded it an audacity. 

Zeus waited for the proper time to punish the arrogant couple who dared to make themselves comparable to gods. Ceyx was still in mourning over his brother's death and deeply troubled over some ominous signs that had observed. So, he decided to consult the oracle of Apollo at Carlos in Ionia (Western Anatolia). Alcyone, however, tried to dissuade her husband from his decision to travel through the dangerous seas to consult the oracle. She reminded him of the danger from the fury of the winds which even her father, the god of the winds, often found difficult to control: she put pressure over her husband to take her along with him. But Ceyx wouldn't put his beloved wife through unnecessary danger. 

Alcyone watched with a bad feeling as the ship carrying her husband was getting away from the harbour. The punishment Zeus, the chief god, decided this was an opportune time to punish the couple for their sacrilege. He launched a thunderbolt that raised a furious hurricane engulfing the ship which began to sink. Ceyx realized that the end had come for him and, before he got drowned, he prayed to the gods to allow his body be washed ashore so as to enable his beloved Alcyone to perform the funeral rites. 

As Ceyx gasped his last breath, his father Esophorous, the morning star, watched helplessly, shrouding his face with clouds, unable to leave the heavens and rescue his son. The atonement The lovely Alcyone waited for her husband for a long time, praying continually to the gods, especially Hera, queen of the gods, for the safe return of Ceyx. Hera felt profound sorrow for the tragic fate of Ceyx. She sent her messenger Iris, goddess of the rainbow, to look for Hypnos, the god of Sleep and comforter of the afflicted, to whom was assigned the mission of gently informing Alcyone about the death of her husband. Hypnos, in his turn, entrusted the mission to his son Morpheus, an expert in forming apparitions. Morpheus created a life-like specter of Ceyx which revealed to Alcyone the tragic circumstances concerning the shipwreck and death of her husband. In profound grief, Alcyone ran to the seashore beating her breasts and tearing her garments. She suddenly beheld the body of a man that had been washed ashore. Coming closer, she realized it was the body of her beloved Ceyx. After performing the last rites and unable to continue living without her husband, Alcyone threw herself into the sea and got drowned, determined to join her husband in the land of the dead. 

The gods on Olympus were profoundly affected by the tragic fate of Alcyone and Ceyx, as well as their wonderful love for one other which not even the frosty hands of death could extinguish. In order to atone for his rash action that was responsible for this tragedy, Zeus transformed the couple into the Halcyon birds (kingfisher). The myth lives till today through a phrase The phrase halcyon days owes its origin to this beautiful myth of Alcyone and Ceyx. According to the legend, for tow weeks every January, Aeolus, father of Alcyone, calms down the winds and the waves so that Alcyone, in the form of a kingfisher bird, can safely make her nest on the beach and lay her eggs. Hence, the term "halcyon days" comes to signify a period of great peace and calm. 

Source: www.greeka.com

hunger

I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps. I hunger for your sleek laugh, your hands the color of a savage harvest, hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Pablo Neruda

men in my hair

Always

I am not jealous of what came before me. Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth, to start our life!

Pablo Neruda

to be a saint

St. Elizabeth

BY ARACELIS GIRMAY

I run high in my body

on the road toward sea.

I fall in love. The things

the wind is telling me.

The yellow sky quiet

in her quiet dress.

Old birds sending news

from the reddish hills.

& the one hawk flying

in the distance overhead.

That hawk is what

the wind says. In love

with the heaving

of my peacock chest,

with my lungs, two wings,

such flying things,

but mine for now, just for now

as I open my stride

above the good, dirt road,

fall in love with the mustard

& coriander dust,

& the far, far mountain

beveled by light, by rain,

the easy eye of the sun, now,

smoke floating across the hillside

like a face I knew once very well.

Very well, I fall in love

with the flowers & the wash

hung like prayer flags, see,

in red Juanita's yard. In love

with the earth the color of earth. In

love with the goats, their bellies & hooves,

& the goat mouths bleating

as they greet me on the road.

I fall in love. How they wear

their strange & double-eyes.

How they do not blink

or laugh at me

or say a thing I understand

when I ask them in my English,

because they circle around my feet,

as if they always knew me,

Were you my children once?

Did I know your names?

Oh, little magics?

Little children?

let the lover be

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

absentminded. Someone sober

will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

-Rumi

How a trapper keeper can ruin a souffle

My sister is a teacher. She works with special needs kids. This pretty much makes her a saint and also adds further evidence to the case that she can in no way really be related to me. I think she must have been switched at birth. Somewhere in the world there is a misanthropic, chain smoking, brunette lawyer or ad exec of about 29 sitting up late at night writing a blog about how she must have been switched at birth because she has nothing in common with her blonde, blue-eyed sisters with their sunny dispositions and endless patience, not to mention altruistic career choices like peace activism or teaching special needs kids in a public school. Don't get me wrong, I'd dig her, but my family clearly got the better end of that little hospital mishap.

One of my sister's colleagues concocted a plan to incentivize listening for a particularly intractable student. The kid kind of has his own thing going on and doesn't really want outside input. So the teacher devised one of those sticker incentive programs wherein you accrue a certain number of stickers, each sticker earned by one instance of listening and then following directions, and once you've reached a pre-determined goal for sticker accrual you can turn that into a reward. Like an eraser. Or a pencil. The stipulation was that the teacher would ask the kid something and if he responded by the second time she asked, he earned a sticker and was suddenly on his way toward the exciting goal of winning an eraser. Oh, the joy. The kid picked up on this system pretty quickly and learned to only respond the 2nd time something was asked of him.

Two things. This teacher does not own a dog. Dog training 101 states that you never repeat a command. Because if you are willing to say sit....sit......siiiiiiiittttt....sssssiiiiiiittttt.....SIT......SSSSIIIIITTTTT!!!!
Then the dog understands that the first 5 instances of "sit" are some kind of random human foreplay, and the only one that really means anything at all is the sixth one that is shouted at ear piercing decibals with crazy eyes and popping veins.

The other thing, how lame are grade school incentives? An eraser?! A pencil? A trapper keeper featuring Strawberry Shortcake art on the cover??

That last one was awesome and I learned my times tables perfectly up to 11 until I accrued enough points to earn that beauty. I didn't do well at all with 12. I'd already got my trapper keeper, Seriously, what was my motivation for further memorization of something trivial like being able to multiply by 12? That was my reasoning at 9 years old and apparently I had not been educated about the english measuring system, which for no fucking good reason is somehow based on 12. Prematurely earning that Strawberry Shortcake trapper keeper has haunted me my whole life and led to some really bad kitchen accidents involving the miscalculation of ounces. Because it's only based on 12 when you're talking about inches in a foot, it turns out it's based on 8 when you're talking about ounces in a cup. Do not get me fucking started on the english system of measurement and trying to cook anything out of a British cookbook. Nigella is a whore.

(I love Nigella. I didn't mean that. She taught me that you can freeze leftover wine in ziploc bags and use it later for cooking. Or, sometimes, in case of emergency. Wine emergency. It's a real thing, people.)

Kitchen Chemistry: Kombucha!

This is my 2nd installment of Cheap, Green & Probably-Won't-Cause-Death: the Kombucha experiment.

I've had a bad kombucha tea habit for about 5 years now. I classify it as a vice because each 12oz. bottle runs about $4.50 and can only be found with certain dealers, shady organizations such as Whole Foods & Wild Oats. It's a fermented tea drink and depending upon which corner of the internet you ask, it's either going to cure cancer or possibly kill you because it's fermented & unpasteurized. As in most things I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It's a low-calorie, refreshing drink with pro-biotics that while much healthier than soda probably will not cure cancer. As for its raw, unpasteurized nature, it behooves you to be mindful of cleanliness should you endeavor to make your own, as I have.

Meet Velma Mayweather "Mother"

Step 1: Procure SCOBY
Scoby, sometimes referred to as the kombucha mushroom, or yeast mother, stands for Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeasts. I named mine Velma Mayweather. Gifted to me by a kombucha brewing co-worker, I know she came from a good home. You can buy a SCOBY online, or you can start your own simply by purchasing a bottle of raw, unpasteurized Kombucha (Google the directions if you try that one.)

Step 2: Procure large glass or lead-free ceramic jug
I found a green ceramic 1.5 gallon jug with a spicket. It's perfect. If you get a glass jug you will need to keep your kombucha in a dark, warm place, like a closet or in a cabinet. Ceramic you can leave on the counter.


Step 3: Make sweet tea. 
Black or Green Tea, any flavor, even Lipton. I use 12 tea bags & 2 cups of sugar for 1.5 gallons. There are thousands of recipes out there, so look around. I brew the tea, add the sugar and pour it in my jug adding cold water until it's full. Cold water also brings the tea close to room temperature which is where you want it before adding your SCOBY. When sweet tea is room temperature just add your SCOBY in with the tea that is in the packaging. It might sink, it might swim. Doesn't really matter either way. Don't pour the kombucha from your SCOBY mother into the sink, that tea will help start your batch. Cover your jug with a tea towel NOT A LID. Your SCOBY needs to breathe. I secure the tea towel with an elastic ribbon. Rubber bands are popular for this purpose as well.

Go on vacation. She'll be fine.

Step 4: Go away
Leave your mother alone. Go on vacation if you like. You can start tasting your kombucha around the 1 week mark. You can leave it to ferment for 2 weeks, depending on the flavor you prefer. It's sweeter at 1 week, more tart & wine-like after 2 weeks. The warmer it is, the faster it ferments.


NOTE: Contamination can occur. Should you be unlucky enough to grow mold on your SCOBY throw it out. Start over. There is no saving it.


Step 5: You might be finished
While you were off skiing, learning Mandarin, on a 7-day bender or snorkeling in the Maldives your mother produced a daughter. The daughter SCOBY will form at the top of your jug and will be an 1/8 to a 1/4 inch thick. Now you have two! This happens every time. Feel free to share or retire your mother to a jar in the fridge as a back-up.


If you like how it tastes, drink up! Strain it into containers and store it in the fridge. Start your new batch by brewing more sweet tea, adding your daughter SCOBY and about a cup of the kombucha you just made.


Step 6: You are an overachiever
There is a process called secondary fermentation, of which I am a big fan. This last batch I ventured into grape flavored kombucha, which is so delicious. I used pint mason jars, poured about an inch of grape juice in the bottom of the jar & then filled it up with kombucha and secured the lids. Then you set the jars in a dark place for a day or two and then pop them in the fridge until you're ready to drink them. The secondary fermentation also adds fizz.


THE END

Grape Kombucha & a couple unflavored

Is it dangerous? Am I going to poison myself? Was I taught nothing about food safety as a child?! This unfortunate American fear of natural foods is something that I have been working through for a few years. I grew up drinking unpasteurized milk, straight from the barn to the table. I now make my own cheese. Many delicious foods are fermented or "spoiled" - sour cream, bread, vinegar, wine, yogurt, cheese, beer, cider, on & on. I find comfort in knowing that these foods have been made for thousands of years in places without antibacterial soap, running water or electricity and still, the human race survived. Plus, they didn't have Google. I'm feeling pretty good about my odds.