wow here it is! the inaugural issue of “four things.” it’s funny how many little seemingly irrelevant decisions i had to make when i was putting the ideas for this week together, while knowing that i’m planning to do this weekly this year. naming convention for each issue! how should i use the subtitle! what should i call each section! what’s the best way to format a poem for this! are there too many images? am i going to come to hate every single one of these little choices and regret the snap decisions i made?
who knows. but here it is. a painting, a poem, a meal, and a thought.
hope ya like it. if you didn’t, i don’t need to hear about it.
1. painting
some of you may recognize this or something like it - this is up near the bonneville dam. i drove out there kind of on a whim this weekend and found a little interpretive nature trail that i’d never heard of, with a nice view across the river. the towers in the sunlight struck me, and compositions like this make me think about scale.
2. poem
“smoke poem” - summer 2020
the coffee is bad
i’m living their dream —
well,
someone’s dream.
wood, scarred
fabric, dusty
face, that has witnessed passage
there’s no way you’re a believer in anything but a car payment
there’s no way this is your dream, too
it’s sour but it’s what i have
to not drink it for the right reasons is pretty stupid too
i’ll learn a lesson next time.
another short poem, also summer 2020
i can’t remember the first thing i ever said to you
but i can’t remember the last thing anymore either
so
i think that’s okay
3. carrot lox
the thing i miss the most is absolutely fish. fish seems like one of those things that’s very hard to get right - something about the texture, the translucency. the flavor too a little bit. so this weekend i tried two new things: spicy tuna rolls, where the tuna is tomatoes, and this - carrot lox.
let’s first look at some beautiful shots from my kitchen so we can see how it turned out:
yum. boy, that looks good huh. well good guess - it was!
first you bake the carrots in a bunch of salt. they need to be covered in it apparently. you bake them at 375 for about 90 minutes.
they come out looking bedraggled and tired. but this is good.
next you slice them up into slices about the size of salmon slices, whatever that means to you. i have actually never been much of a lox guy. my grandpa growing up used to catch and smoke his own salmon and we’d get cans of it in our stockings for christmas. he used what i think is called a “hard smoke” method, and he was doing this in alaska, and so for those reasons the softer floppier smoked salmon hasn’t ever really been my bag. but i figured this was worth a shot.
so anyway, once they’re sliced, you marinated them in oil, a little rice vinegar, some salt, some liquid smoke, and i added a dash of soy sauce and some kelp flakes i have.
i would add more salt in the future and maybe a little less smoke.
then you marinate them for 2-3 DAYS. i ate some on the second day (today) and i will eat some tomorrow and we’ll see how that goes.
and then you put them on a bagel with some cream cheese (i used Tofutti’s vegan cream cheese, it’s very good) and some dill and some red onion (i just got my knife sharpened again so i could get these little papery slivers of onion.)
wow! neat!
pretty easy! very tasty! just takes a little bit of patience and some carrots.
4. garages
there are lots of little standalone garages here in portland, and maybe in your city too.
one thing about these little garages, is that a lot of them do not have little extra roofs on the front, above the doors:
(no roof)
(no roof)
(no roofs)
…but some of them do have an extra little roof, right above the door usually, sometimes in the same style (or kind of) but sometimes feeling like it was just added in there after the fact.
see? feels extra. this one has a gutter and everything.
most garages get by just fine without this little roof, but some people feel very strongly that their garage needs a roof.
who are these people and why isn’t the usual way of doing things working for them?
did they get one very large drip down their collar once and swear never to live through that experience again? were they bringing very dry groceries in, or important papers?
or maybe garage roofs used to be the default, and what i’m seeing all over the city now is a backsliding, a fall from grace. people just don’t roof their garage doors like they used to. things are unquestionably going to shit, and maybe this is one more example.
i don’t really have a solid theory. i think it’s just one of those things.
give it a think next time you’re out and about.
well i think that’s it for this week. not bad for a first time, maybe! in any case, i’ll see ya next tuesday. just realized “see you next tuesday” is one of those things that spells out a rude word. time will tell if that makes it more or less appealing for me to say every week in the sign-off here.
hope you all have a good week. bye.