Category Archives: writing

on writing, rewriting, & taking notes

Whales? Whales!

Friday I drove to Race Point where Right Whales have been feeding for more than a month. I just went for the drive, the beach. As I made my way down the sand, I heard a couple begin to exclaim. Whales, I asked? Yes, indeed. Kindly lending me their binoculars, they pointed, I peered but saw nothing but white caps. The blue was extraordinary, a deep aquamarine tinted by three o’clock sun, and the white was vivid. Handing back the borrowed lens, I watched from the beach, encouraged by the courteous pair. And there it was, a dark smokey plume of spray, signalling Whale! I saw many such plumes, my first sightings since I moved here, and I was ecstatic. I watched, until it got too cold for me, and I turned to head back. I thought of Stanley Kunitz and his Wellfleet Whale, and Adrienne Rich, whom we lost a few days ago. Many more people had gathered, and every so often, I turned back, to see another soft spray of air blown exuberantly into the air, as if to say, we are here, here we are.

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, read by Anne Waldman, NYC,5.23.2009.

needing chocolate

1 Reply

chocolate by jules from chocolate-2 23 august 2009,14:45

Can one’s body need chocolate? Like the way one can thirst for water, or instinctively know it’s time for some greens. The body, being smart, can figure out what it needs, and while one may hanker for cookies, it’s not the body that wants the muffin. It’s the eyes, the mind, maybe the tongue. But there I was, breaking off pieces of 72% cocoa dark chocolate, and my body demanded more. Was it detecting some antioxidant lack, some iron deficiency that only this baking chocolate could satisfy.

It wasn’t eating chocolate, but baking chocolate, but it wasn’t the baker’s squares, the unsweetened serious variety used to make brownies back in the day. They were the ignots that fooled, that made us believe in its sweetness until we tasted it. But today I –that is, my body–craved Green & Black’s and it was not satisfied with one piece.

It was bought and used for brownies, but there were two bars. The extra bar was for future brownies, only they were partly broken into banana bread. Had the entire bar been used, maybe the bread would have turned out better, because as it turned out, two medium bananas are not a substitute for three.

This week, there is heavy cream in the fridge, meant to make scones that never got made. It was delicious in the coffee. I wondered though, since I’m so used to shaking the soy creamer, if it would eventually turn to butter, because I absent-mindedly shake it too. There is creme fraiche, too, but I’m not sure why it’s in the fridge, but it has slowly disappeared, a spoon in this, a spoon in that.

Calcium.