Julie & Julia: a personal blog story

Julie & Julia (Sony Pictures, 2009) was the most immediate and pressing reason for me to start writing this blog a week ago. I simply ran out of reasons not to do it.

Thinking that writing a blog would be both very difficult and expensive, I resisted the idea for years, resigning myself to live in self imposed ‘silence’ as a writer. Somewhere in my mind I knew, however, that the true reason for that prolonged and stubborn resistance is the fact that I was (still am a little) fearful of net invisibility and rejection. I did not want to become a literary cyber ghost, someone writing facelessly into the vast, heavily trafficked, hectic and overly competitive void of cyberspace and its wondrously monumental and ever-evolving offspring: the internet.

But here I am, seven days later and some 50 postings later… and loving it! My creative and literary juices are flowing again and I know some curious and other friendly visitors have come to take a peek at my newly surfaced Island and to see (in the case of my friends and family) the end result of my tireless efforts in writing and choosing templates and widgets in my computer over the breakfast area table during the last few days.

Thank you beforehand and come back often to see how things are improving. It will only get better as my confidence and level of comfort writing in this new medium grow and I get a better sense of what makes my readers and myself ‘tic’ and what works and doesn’t work in the design and layout of the page.

Thank you Julie & Julia et al. Until next posting…

Bon appétit!

ANYBODY OUT THERE...

VISITING MY ISLAND...?

Brief history of the birthday cake

Birthday cakes have been around in one form or another for many centuries and throughout many cultures the world over. In ancient Greece and Rome, flat round (moon) shaped cakes sweetened with honey were baked for those celebrating a birthday, though the more current idea of an actual cake (not a flat piece of sweetened bread) with candles can be traced, according to some sources, to Germany (though the Greeks did use candles on their unleavened cakes to represent the light of the Moon in honor of the Goddess Artemis).

There is also growing evidence that flat, honey-sweetened cakes were also baked in ancient Egypt, preceding Greece and Rome.

During the 17th and 18th Century, with the advent of new food sources, foodstuffs, new baking and culinary skills and techniques the baking and decorating of cakes makes a leap forward, thought these much elaborate and sometimes ridiculously impractical confections became the almost exclusive privilege of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent the colonized territories of the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The voracious and innovative mercantile impetus of the Industrial Revolutions in England and France during the late 18th and throughout the 19th centuries also gave raise to new standards of production and mechanization for many industries and crafts, including baking, thus creating a need for broader markets beyond just a reduced group of royals, nobles and rich bourgeois families. The birthday cake had arrived at this point to the beginning of its proletarianization, claiming henceforth its iconic place in the palates and preferences of millions of people, notably so in Western societies.

My fashionista friend

This girl

has a sense of self.

This girl has a taste for wine.

This girl knows Prada and Glamour

and sips green tea

from her Jimmy Choo's...

This girl likes Brazilians

and kicking and boxing.

This girl loves Seattle,

proclaims herself

a fashionista

and thinks

for some reason

that I'm cool...

This girl from the mist

is worth much more

than the sum

of her outfit

and outward projection.

This girl

with the Blahnik's

has a brain

and a heart.

Dragonslayer

Fearsome waters,

quiet lake

pregnant

with the mystery

and the faint promise

of antediluvian,

saurian enigmas

objects of curiosity,

greed and wonder.

Swanlike and billowy

the silhouette scurries

too quick a motion...

Unsolved waters.

Willful depths.

Unwilling tale

told once again.

The sycamore tree

Stabbed by lightning,

the evening bleeds of light

and voltaic arches

contorted in zip-zags

of progressive,

terrifying trajectory

that threatens

the passive land

and the livid sky above.

The final spark

ignites the darkness.

Sudden torching of heaven.

Sordid raping of the earth below.

Acrid smoke, embers and ashes...

The sycamore tree

is no more.

Eclosion

First

it oozed

slowly and thickly

snakelike

in its waving motion

and shape.

Then

it burst forth,

like a pre-birth storm

wetting

the cracked earth,

lustily

leveling and mounting

crags,

promontories,

infinitely bottomless

crevices

resetting the cycle

and pushing forth

life.

Implosion

Bottled up inside

the voice was a whisper

then a waning flame

then a puddle

minuscule and

shallow puddle

devoid

of larvae

of tadpoles

of paramecia...

Exile's end

Elegant moment

of crisp,

voluptuous,

productively ambiguous silence...

I have returned

incorporeal, almost winged,

demigod

of uncertain audience...

The dying bird

Such dignity in such a small creature.

It trembled in my hand, and then rebelled.

It quieted down and closed its beautiful, febrile eyes.

I felt it breathe and pulsate

dysrhythmically:

death announcing itself in its listless wings

(sleeping little head

buried

in the occasional, subtle ruffling of breast feathers).

Because of you I renew my faith,

I renew my essence.

I regenerate

my capacity to love and to accept

those judgments and verdicts

bestowed upon us

by astral,

arbitrary,

unyielding wills

divorced from all rationality

but

indispensable

in maintaining the balance,

the status quo

the Universe itself,

its equilibrium.

All I ask

is for you not to suffer,

that you may fly serene and freely

in otherworldly skies…

I ask that you not be devoured

while still alive

by a hapless, hungry beast

tending only

to its own instincts,

and the piercing demands

of self-subsistence

compelled

by the foreseeable victory

of thrusting jaws

over flightless feathers.

I ask that I never stop

feeling,

loving,

receiving by giving,

that your memory will beat

forever

in my heart.

Hemispheres

Between daylight and inner penumbra

the border

physically erected

by plastic blinds

landscape

the unnerving and predictable geometry

of the window

now yellowing, quivering and glowing

as if ready to burst,

hopeless and defeated

in its effort to diffuse

the growing threat

of vampiric,

blood-thirsty light.

My Island

Singularly alone in the flat and blueless ocean:

arid, wind-swept, lonesome and battered Island.

Soul, Doubt and Feeling reside here:

ongoing war, futile struggle,

atomic to end all atomics:

cannibalism of Soul by Doubt and Feeling,

no Doubt, no Feeling...

No Feeling, no Soul.

Desolate, magnificently bleak domain

where I dare lay the corpse of my youth

hemorrhaging of wants, mistakes and sorrows...

Tomorrow perhaps

I'll surf the rainbow

before plunging into the terminal abyss

of boredom, regret and sameness

but tonight

my Island cradles

the lonely, only seed

left here by hope.

I must remain.

I must provide.

I must prevail.