what are the evolving sagas in your life right now? what’s presently unfolding?
every tuesday i ask myself this question. usually i have some kind of answer that feels interesting or appropriate to share. i don’t think i do, this week. things are always moving and changing and updating themselves and gathering momentum and winding down, but for this week, none of those things are in the medium-low orbit (hey, from the subtitle) that i usually mine for these semi-autobiographical introductions.
some people i know believe firmly that you need some kind of saga to be evolving in your life, at all times. i don’t know if they would agree with that statement if i asked them, but their actions day in and day out do reveal a deeply rooted need to be centered in, or at least peripheral to, some kind of perpetual unfolding. maybe they would agree if i put it in those terms. maybe they would go hmm, yeah i guess, probably, if you put it like that. maybe if you put it like that.
relationship arcs, i think, are one of the classic examples. one of the more interesting examples, definitely. there’s job stuff, i guess, too. personal projects although that can be hit or miss. hobbies generally do not fall into this category i don’t think. there’s no three-act structure to a hobby. you’re not going to be quietly spending months gradually getting better at a hobby and then suddenly one night receive a text from your hobby that was clearly meant for someone else, a text that hits you like a surge of icy water and suddenly snaps months of almost-subliminal grinding and shifting and tension into terrible focus. so i don’t think it really fits.
i do have some potential candidates for sagas on the horizon. most notably i am going to try to make a wheel of vegan camembert cheese. this doesn’t count as a hobby because it has a discrete beginning, middle, and end. there will be a definite result. i could break it into three acts. i could relate it as an anecdote.
and i think that’s the only one that’s solidified enough that mentioning it here won’t jinx it. so let’s get into it this week.
1. painting
as i’m approaching the one year mark of this little newsletter project i have been riffling back through the archives a little more frequently. it’s a little bit of a cliché to do year-end retrospectives but like many things it’s a cliché for a reason and is therefore still worth doing. i’ve been looking back at old recipes to see if i want to try and improve them. and i’ve been looking back at the art i’ve made this year to see if there are any pieces i want to revisit.
so far, there aren’t. but i was struck by just how varied the quality of these pieces has been. and the fact that the first two are arguably the best in the whole run. i wonder what that says. i have some theories.
another trend i noticed was that a lot of the “ah fuck it i’m out of time” type pieces were some of the ones i liked the least. with rare exceptions. pretty clear lesson to be learned there as well.
anyway, this week was shaping up to be another one of those weeks where five days went by with basically no inspiration striking me, thereby forcing me to squeeze the bottom of the toothpaste tube on day six and bloop out some kind of something. which is sort of what happened here but enough toothpaste did end up blooping out to brush your teeth with. another killer metaphor.
sketch. i think this is straightforward.
early colors. one thing i may have gotten better at this year is using the methods available through digital painting to get a little better at cheating with the colors. i can lay down some colors i think i want, then put atmospheric tints over them gradually until they end up settling into a more harmonious spot. and then i can repeat that cycle. you can see it with the greens in the background. by painting the sky first, and painting some of the green at less than 100% opacity, some of the blue of the sky blends with the green, and you get something that still reads as green in context but is not really a green you might ever think to pick up first.
filling in the composition, and working the colors out a little bit more. there’s a tonal overlay on this one that helps bring things together. i’ve started using these more as intermediate tools as well as finishing tweaks.
making the foreground trees way way bigger than they were before really helps the perspective snap into focus, i think. and of course adding tiny little birds in the distance is a great hack for establishing a sense of atmospheric perspective and scale.
i didn’t really look at any reference paintings of sci-fi book covers or anything to see how a planet or large moon should actually look in the sky but i think this does an OK job.
2. poem
“campsite poem” - winter 2021
silver mist, shading pink
morning ice just below the dock
one last deep breath
morning’s first car, distant, southbound
whispering off the face of the earth
3. mac and cheese
i have definitely made this before but apparently i did not write about it. i guess it’s pretty simple so maybe there’s not much to say.
one thing people have convinced themselves they would miss, to an unbearable degree, were they to go vegan, is cheese. i guess maybe that’s true. it feels like cheese is one of those things like bacon or chocolate, where due to the heroic efforts of some food industry lobby marketing campaign, it occupies a completely outsized chunk of the American psyche. maybe that’s cynical. bacon is definitely in that category, 100%, and that’s not cynical, but cheese, i don’t know.
i think like a lot of things it’s much easier to give up than you might expect. but giving things up is something i have never really struggled with that much.
anyway - there are a lot of good vegan cheeses out there. and in fact as i mentioned i am starting the weeks-long process of trying to make some vegan camembert from scratch. so one way you might make vegan mac and cheese is to use some of that vegan cheddar cheese that’s really pretty great, and melt it up with some plant milk of some sort, and stir it up into your noodles. you could do it that way, and i have done it that way. this time, though, i had some carrots to get rid of and i didn’t feel like buying a whole thing of vegan cheddar shreds that i would be unlikely to finish anytime soon.
i don’t think i used the butter, in the end. so ignore that. or use it, if you want. it definitely wouldn’t hurt.
this is an adaptation of a recipe by one of my favorite vegan food people, thee burger dude. it’s incredibly easy. not quite as easy as just melting some cheese, but almost.
you have some cashews, carrots, plant milk, nutritional yeast, lemon, some spices (turmeric, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder), and salt to taste.
soak the cashews in boiling water while you’re briefly boiling the carrots. the carrots will want to be fork tender. i let the cashews sit for about 15 minutes in that hot water and it seemed fine. i haven’t done any kind of a/b testing when it comes to cashew soak times.
pile it all up in a food processor or blender and let ‘er rip. i gotta say, a high-speed high-capacity blender would make my life a hell of a lot easier sometimes. that’s gotta be pretty high on my list of upcoming future purchases.
eventually you get a nice bright yellow sauce. add some lemon juice and salt to taste. you can see it’s a little grainy here still - you can strain it if you want, but i decided i didn’t really care, i didn’t mind the texture.
at this point the sauce is done. you can use it for whatever. queso dip, if you want. or mac and cheese. you could probably use it in like, a crunchwrap type situation or breakfast burrito or something too, now that i think of it. i didn’t think to save any of it.
i threw some stuff on from three or four of the various jars of homemade condiments i have in my fridge. it’s pretty versatile stuff, actually. and it’s cashews and carrots and plant milk, so i think it’s at least nominally decent for you. maybe.
i also baked some with broccoli and bread crumbs for lunch today.
one more pic. yummo.
4. seven serene scenes
i. you have just finished your last midterm before winter break, slipping quietly out the back of the hall and out into the dark. snow has been falling all day and campus has been emptying out all week. you have a party to go to tonight, but you have five or six hours until then.
ii. the water dripping off the eave occasionally hits the little ceramic frog at exactly the right angle to send a silvery prickle of cold splashing across your toes. there’s wood smoke in the air. the patio is full of murmured conversations but none are loud enough to snatch your attention from your book. you have three chapters to go.
iii. you drifted just close enough to the surface of sleep for the bell of one of the first trains to awaken you. the room is still dark but has the unmistakable tint of morning creeping around the curtain. someone several apartments away is quietly moving around. your big quilt has been shrugged off to one side, and rolling over, you wrap yourself back in its warmth and sink back, your fading dreams rolling back up to meet you.
iv. you’re halfway there. the AM radio station that has been quiet fuzz for the past hour is starting to pick up conversations again, in this new corner of the country. your buddy in the passenger seat has been asleep for a while now but you don’t have a turn to make for another hundred miles. you catch the eye of the girl in the back seat in your rear view mirror, and smile, and point at the mountains that have been growing larger off to the left. she rubs the sleep out of her eyes and smiles back.
v. the stars are starting to sparkle down through the skylight, and the wood paneling you and your friends have started to laugh at is glowing, warmed by the lamps on your nightstand, dresser, and floor. the shower in the background is hissing but you know it won’t be warm until you get to the bottom of the page of this month’s advice column, glossy paper crinkled under your fingers.
vi. all the rooms of the house are full. there’s bread in the oven but it won’t be done for another half hour. there’s more rain coming in tonight, they say. you have three more shirts to iron. a pleasant grumbling of hunger is starting deep in your belly, and you can smell the leftover soup starting to simmer.
vii. there are three weeks until the election and you are out just past sunset, your clipboard half full of names and signatures. out here things are further apart and you have a half mile to the next address - the lights are behind those trees now but the road will curve around and bring them back into view. the snow is crunchy with the cold but you wore layers. you haven’t seen a car in forty minutes. you pause and just then the brightest shooting star you’ve ever seen streaks across the deepening night sky, disappearing over the treetops.
well i think that will do it. have a good week everyone. see ya next tuesday. bye.