funny how i jokingly made a comment last week about how important routines & actions are when it comes to questions of identity and self knowledge and so forth and sort of leaned on my dedication to putting these out on tuesdays as a way to put a point on that little series of observations. and now it’s wednesday.
just goes to show.
i got a little fancy with my scheduling this past week, needed to be in central oregon on tuesday morning for a site visit for work so i figured heck i’ll just take monday off and work the three-ish hour drive into a weekend trip to take some of the sting off the long travel time. good in theory, worked pretty well in principle too, until i got back to town tuesday evening and instantly had a bunch of other work-related fires to attempt to put out. and bags to unpack and laundry to do.
and of course it was also daylight savings time. which, you know. that never helps.
but it was nice to hang out in a weird dark angular little 80’s condo in sunriver oregon and do some cross country skiing on terrible rental skis and ride cruiser bikes around. and see friends and meet new people and do a very small, appropriate-for-a-30-something, amount of drugs. and put off getting the stuff together for this newsletter, beyond Having Experiences and Seeing Things etc.
and of course nice to see a very interesting work thing or whatever. big piece of land or what have you. important not to forget that.
let’s get into it.
1. painting
it’s the first painting of the second year of this newsletter which i kind of actively hate! wow. a landmark. a milestone!
let’s start with some sketches and see what kind of sage advice / self-reflection / life lessons we can wring out of this.
the sketches this week are fun and loosey goosey. i will admit that. i’ll freely cop to that. it’s fun to do some doodling and sketching while something else is going on in the background, like a conversation about insane roommates (i think) and it’s also fun to look back and see how your brain wired up those memories and what little snippets and anecdotes arise in your head when looking at the shapes and shadows you drew.
first pass at colors. the idea here was to get kind of a “central oregon” vibe down. the forests out that way are very interesting in that there is essentially zero undergrowth or middle level of foliage (not sure what this is called. middle growth.) there’s a lot of contrast between the trunks of the trees and the dirt they sit on, a surprising amount, actually, if you were just going to go by gut or instinct. you can see for a long way through those trunks.
as per usual i put this away after the first pass, and picked it up later, and actually looked at some reference images, and took another pass at the colors. this time i was also determined to keep some people in the image. they did not get much more refined than you see them here but they did stay through the whole way. thumbs up.
refining shapes and layering and colors. the idea was kind of growing on me at this point to have that building be in a warmer, brighter spot in the middle distance, because of a clearing in the woods etc. and so forth.
whoops. big jump here. sorry about that.
one thing about those central oregon forests is there really is not too much happening on the ground plane, and i found that difficult to represent with my typical bundle of brushes i use. the trees mostly really do just kind of end like that, boinking straight into the dirt, in a way that looks fake. so i just sorta faked in a bunch of nonsense with various textures and it mostly doesn’t look that great.
but scroll up to see the final, anyway.
2. poem
“bedtime poem” - march 2021
the water’s finally coming through the cracks
the old bricks have done their best
it’s almost time to close up shop
i’m setting all my little lists on fire
i’m dusting off all my memories —
one last time; here in the dark
red dirt, wide skies
smell of smoke
3. vegan bolognese
i put “vegan” in the title this time. just to be clear on what we’re doing here.
i had a hankering for some pasta this week. and i was thinking of things i could do with TVP besides tacos or burritos. sometimes it’s as simple as that.
there are a lot of different vegan bolognese recipes out there, and there are a bazillion more non-vegan versions. i didn’t really follow a particular method but i read four or five recipes and kind of agglomerated my own thing together with ideas and methods from each of them. worked pretty well i guess. i am not a bolognese expert so it’s hard to say.
look at all that stuff! wow! celery, carrots, onion, garlic, mushrooms, plant butter, fennel seeds, red pepper flakes, white wine, tomato paste, miso paste, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, oat milk, cashews! crushed tomatoes! didn’t even get the TVP in the picture, or the pasta!
first step, carrots and celery and onion chopped up into tiny pieces. i used a food processor for this. i believe some people would refer to that as “cheating.”
next, some mushrooms cut into tiny pieces, some cashews which i toasted in a skillet, and some fennel seeds. this is sort of the base of the “meat” substitute, although we will also be adding TVP to this. just at a slightly later stage.
also i am using cashews here because i am allergic to walnuts. people seem to use walnuts way more often though. so if that option is available to you.
cook up the mushrooms and fennel seeds in some olive oil or plant butter, and then stir them into the cashews, along with some balsamic and some soy sauce. this gets set aside.
meanwhile, the carrot-onion-celery sauce base is going over medium ish heat with some olive oil or plant butter. i believe this is the base of a lot of sauces. i’m not qualified to say for sure.
i added the TVP in at this point, after the carrot-onion-celery mix has been going for maybe 7-8 minutes. i’m not sure if it really matters, since the idea with the sauce is to eventually let it go on low for quite a long time, but maybe adding it at this point helps it absorb flavors and moisture better. i did not pre-soak it.
then added the mushroom-cashew mix
stir it up, season it, add some oregano and red pepper flakes and garlic and allow those to get fragrant, then i added some white wine to deglaze (or whatever you call that), let that cook off a bit, and then added some oat milk and let that simmer down as well.
then it looks like i skipped some picture-taking. but basically you add the crushed tomatoes and some water, bring to a simmer, then cut the heat to low, cover and let it burble away for like, 45 minutes. stirring occasionally. this was the biggest point of difference between all the recipes i looked at. some people even suggested throwing it in the oven instead of keeping it on the cooktop. but the basic premise is to keep it on low heat for a long while and let it simmer itself together. i think i let this go for about an hour and a half, all told, and it could have used just a scooch more time probably.
when you’re getting close to the end, you do the thing where you cook your pasta, save some of the water, then mix the pasta into the sauce along with the water and stir it all up to get things nice and coated. i bought slightly less pasta than i needed so mine ended up very sauce-heavy.
which is ok, since the sauce was delicious. garnished it with some basil. yummo.
4. three rules
the aliens just landed. they’re saying on the news that they’ve taken over the capitol. all of the capitols, actually, they’re saying, i think they’ve taken over every seat of government. it was pretty quick but then again they do have a lot of very advanced technology, so maybe not that unexpected, actually. and it was surprisingly bloodless. couple of misunderstandings, here and there, i think they said on the news. a couple of unfortunate accidents.
anyway they must have picked up our language pretty quick, all of our languages, because they did some speeches earlier, made some announcements. my buddy was saying they were probably hiding in the asteroid belt for a while, observing our societies and learning about us and decoding our language and so forth. but i was thinking, maybe they’re just really smart. you know? they have pretty big heads, they could be pretty smart.
the weird thing is they only have one demand. get this, they only want one thing. they’re gonna start going around and interviewing everyone, they’re saying everyone is gonna have to talk to them sooner or later. i guess they’re not in a big rush, which is good, i mean i have work most days so i can’t really just bail on that. but sooner or later they’re gonna come around and talk to everyone.
on the news they said all the aliens want is to hear from everyone, every single one of us, what their three rules are. is that crazy or what? is that the weirdest shit you’ve ever heard. why come all this way, why make a big fuss, i don’t get it. but they’re here now and we’re all gonna have to give them an answer, no rush but definitely, you know, in the next few weeks probably.
for me, i’m like, woah, i’ve never even thought about that shit, you know? i mean i try to live my life in a certain, by a certain way. gotta have like, a compass, i guess, you know? right and wrong, all that. but i never thought about it like, rules, you know, and three seems like it’s too small of a number or too big. the bible had ten, that’s a good number of rules. what about you, have you thought about it at all? i guess if i’m the first one telling you this, probably not, i mean they just got here, i know you were at the gym earlier, maybe haven’t thought about it much.
the weird thing too is like, okay, is there a right answer here? am i gonna get freakin vaporized or whatever? ray guns and shit? i mean probably not right because, you know, there’s like a billion of us on the planet or whatever, that’s like a billion different rules times three. but maybe they average them out or something? maybe you have to get two right. i kind of wonder what everyone’s gonna say, actually, you know? like we all know some people who it’s like, woah, okay, yeah, no way. no way, man. you know?
anyway yeah i’ll leave you alone. i got work in a little bit here, i’ll let you get to it. let me know what you think of, though, i mean, if you wanna share. let me know when it’s your turn, if you don’t mind. i’ll hit you up after they talk to me, for sure. let you know how it went. okay take it easy. okay yeah good luck, same to you.