Month: August 2017

slowpoke

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I, ever the nagging tooth infection, am abnormally obsessed with teeth.

Not in quite the same way as my old friend, Mike, who became obsessed with his own tooth care so as not to leave behind a toothless skeleton.

Also not in the way that most Americans obsess about the cosmetics and perfection of their teeth and smile. But in an all-encompassing way. Months ago, I stumbled on a book, Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America by Mary Otto, which actually made me cry, and also, more importantly of course, chronicled the American love affair with cosmetic dentistry (and its accompanying expense) and the relation between tooth care, oral health and poverty. But this was not enough. But I was not sure how to drill down (ha – I know – not funny) further.

Last week I read some books on teeth, Teeth: A Very Short Introduction and Evolution’s Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins – both by Peter S Ungar – that delve into evolutionary theory and how teeth have developed – in humans and other species. As I read, particularly as one book went into detail about the types of teeth in other species, I wondered to myself, “What am I doing? Why am I reading this?” Yes, I was fascinated – riveted even – but it still seemed so far off course from what I would normally read or be interested in. I thought for a moment that it might just be deep-rooted (ha – again, not funny) respect for the level of obsessive detail scholars (in any field) bring to their work. I would not have the patience or depth of interest in any field to carry out the kind of painstaking attention and focus that these researchers in archaeology, paleontology, biology, anthropology (and various other sciences) dedicated to their ongoing work.

But it was certainly more than that because I don’t read multiple books on other topics just because I admire the compulsive need of the scientist to chronicle his/her work and hit upon discoveries no one has made before (or broaden, deepen, confirm, refute or upend the existing scholarship). No, it’s just a weird fascination with teeth. In Ungar’s Teeth, as I happily read along in delight, this was confirmed in a long passage about the teeth of snails, slugs and other molluscs, confirming my answers to this internal self-questioning.

“Then there are the mollusks. Tens of thousands of species, from slug to snail to squid, have ‘teeth’. These form in rows on ribbons of chitin in the mouth called radulae. Many mollusks use these structures as a comb to rake up microorganisms, or as a rasp to scrape food from rock or shell. Radulae typically move back and forth like a handsaw. While radular ‘teeth’ tend to be small and recurved, shapes and sizes can vary with species and function in feeding. They can even vary within individuals. In fact, a change in diet can trigger a change in shape for new ‘teeth’ formed to replace old, worn ones. Also, some radulae are extremely specialized. Whelks, for example, commonly have three long, sabre-like ‘teeth’ in each row. These are used to drill through barnacle and clam shells with the help of secretions that break down calcium carbonate. And cone snails have radulae modified into hypodermic needles to inject venom. These have barb at their ends, and can be extended from the mouth like harpoons to attack and paralyse prey.“

I had to laugh at my own oddity.

Photo (c) 2017 S Donaghy

subtle change

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I may finally have emerged from a grey-food period. I was eating mostly the same mundane meal daily because it was easy, healthy and almost instant. But I’ve finally decided I should put in a bit of upfront effort and prepare some variation and make a few meals for a few days in advance.

My latest go-to, at the very least, is very colorful, although not necessarily pretty. With a base of a grain mix of quinoa, buckwheat, millet and amaranth, I throw in some beans (kidney or black usually), red and/or yellow peppers, red onions, asparagus, baby spinach, tomatoes and who knows what else? And then sometimes add a bit of salmon or a few prawns, if I am in that kind of mood (prefer mostly vegan eating but sometimes seem to need a change).

I think my laziest thing is that I don’t want to bother cooking, so if I do it all at once and make a bunch of well-measured out bowls and cook enough of this grain stuff to many such bowls, I don’t have to think about it every single day. I know people have been saying that to me forever – just take the one ‘hit’ in terms of time, prep, patience, and you will thank yourself. But even that, until recently, I could not force myself to do. But I suppose alongside all the rest of the changes this year, thinking ahead and preparing even for the most boring thing I can think of (eating) is something I can ken.

Now the question remains: will I ever bake again?

bold-tender-shy

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Before the Sun Goes Down
–Astrid Hjertenæs Andersen

Before the sun goes down

I’ll lay my wildflower hand
in your hand’s white wicker basket

and bold-tender-shy I’ll encircle you
as day and night would encircle
the trees of day and night

and my kisses will live like birds on your shoulder.

Original

Før solen går ned
Før solen går ned
vil jeg legge min markblomsterhånd
i din hånds hvite flettkurv

og freidigblygømt vil jeg omslynge deg
slik som dag og natt omslynger
dag- og natts trær

og mine kyss vil bo som fugler på din skulder.

Photo by Somin Khanna on Unsplash

 

The woman: Smile, nod, stay watertight

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It’s easy to dismiss it all with a casual, if pensive and somewhat distant, “It just never happened for me” when answering people’s intrusive questions about why you’ve never married or had children. I, for one, often flash to multiple interviews with former US Attorney General under President Clinton, Janet Reno, who died in 2016, and all the times she was forced to answer the question about whether or not she had wanted to marry and have a family; not one to be forced into answers on even the toughest of subjects, she seemed always to reply with some version of “it just never happened for me” (referring to herself as an “awkward old maid”). I don’t know if there’s any more to her story – and it doesn’t matter. She was – and is – entitled to that privacy. Aren’t we all? But that constant, awkward, pesky question about what we want, but didn’t get, persists… and always invites Janet Reno into my brain.

But it’s so much more complex than that. People want easy answers, if they are really looking for answers at all. They are not truly curious; they just want to pry a little bit and see if some horror story will come bursting out. If your inner dam of tears doesn’t burst upon their initial inquiry, they move on and start boasting about their progeny and their accomplishments. Possibly even their progeny’s progeny. Because, yes, like it or not, you’re at that age: near the very end of the possibility of fertility, while many contemporaries and peers have moved into happy, if quite early, grandparenthood.

And you, skin shriveling and pruning with age and passage of time, smile calmly, nodding along, feeling the rush of all the suppressed grief hit the buttress again and again. Smile, nod, stay watertight.

 

Photo by Raphaël Biscaldi on Unsplash

little and dead

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Lullaby for my Dead Child
–Denise Jallais
You shouldn’t be afraid of the dark
Or of worms
Besides
Now you can play with the rain
And see the grass come up

You shouldn’t put dirt in your mouth
And sit still waiting for me
Besides
We’ve given you some flowers
To console you for being little
And dead.

Original

Berceuse pour mon enfant mort
Il ne faut pas avoir peur du noir
Ni des vers
D’ailleurs
Tu pourras jouer avec la pluie
Et regarder l’herbe pousser

Il ne faut pas mettre de terre dans ta bouche
Et rester sage à m’attendre
D’ailleurs
On t’a donné des fleurs
Pour te consoler d’être petit
Et mort.

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

not yet human

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Birth
–Louise Erdrich
When they were wild
When they were not yet human
When they could have been anything,
I was on the other side ready with milk to lure them,
And their father, too, each name a net in his hands.

Photo by Arteida MjESHTRI on Unsplash

“stripped as you are”

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XIII (Dedications)
–Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Photo by Linh Pham on Unsplash

a proofreader’s song

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Knowledge
-Nina Cassian
I’ve stitched my dress with continents,
bound the equator round my waist.
I waltz to a steady rhythm, bending slightly.

I can’t stop my arms
plunging into galaxies,
gloved to elbows in adhesive gold:
I carry on my arms a star’s vaccine.

With such greedy sight
my eyelids flutter in the breeze
like a strange enthusiastic plant.

No one fears me
except Error,
who is everywhere.

Photo by Muneeb Syed on Unsplash

shot against the light

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If only I had known sooner, I could have known and learned so much more. But as usual, I only learned about the connection at the end, when all the hidden material folded outwards – all the clumsy lies.

Nothing but a Man
–Nadia Tuéni
Nothing but a man
let’s execute him against the door.
The morning of taking him away was robed
with the freshness of water;
it would be best to finish him off
against a door of blue wood.
His knees were knees of water
a forehead of oak under the rain.
He told me: ” talk
of this flower dying according to the curve
of a thought,
of oblivion it offers in the shelter of
the sun,
and of multiplied love”. . .
Enough.
We shot him against the light
and let hatred rise like baked bread.
Maybe I’ll weep for him.
It was simple in the deep earth
and brief.

Photo by Oumaima Ben Chebtit on Unsplash

unhappy shirts

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A Tailor Called Sorrow
–Betti Alver
Yesterday in drizzling rain
on the road,
depression came
with its scissors open.

He put unhappy shirts
around the necks
of children,
and stitched black markings
on the lives of others.

Around the red faces
the tailor called sorrow
let a cloth with death silk
in it
hang,
and mingled white basting thread
in their hair.

Photo by Igor Ovsyannykov on Unsplash