Or perhaps I should say that I was mesmerized by Smith’s lack of a certain crafted “voice.” There is something there, in the text, that summons the same unmediated quality that we are accustomed to finding in oral histories and eyewitness reports. This isn’t art, a friend had said to me. She just kept talking, until she couldn’t. She just kept talking, until he was dead. This wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t completely false.

The magic in Smith’s voice lies in her ability to hold the illusion of being completely transparent. The cadences, the diction, seem as plain and artless as a child’s attempts at narration. The importance lies in the verb, “seem.” There is nothing transparent about this voice, there is nothing artless. But we believe Smith, we let her convince us that she is doing nothing more than talking.

A gulf separates Just Kids from a work like Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. Like Didion, Smith is consumed with the need to recover and remember a time, now halcyon, before the catastrophe. But Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking is self-consciously a “work” in a way that Just Kids is not.

Writers, in the depths of grief, attempt to invent a new language. Our existing vocabulary seems completely inadequate to the task before us: how can we narrate grief’s shapeshifting experience, how can we decribe the way our bodies crumple before this, this thing that has no boundaries or edges, that seems not to obey the usual distinctions of inside/outside, self/other?

Grief transforms geography. It forces us to re-evaluate everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve touched. Nothing is certain after death passes before us. Everything is transformed, even the ground beneath our feet. These are the truisms, that banalities, that we mock in sentimental writing, and yet when death appears for us, we feel them, sharply, because we have no other choice.

* * *

“Was anyone ever so young?” — Joan Didion

They were “just kids.”  Smith wrings, out of this phrase, all of the innocence and longing that we associate with childhood. The basic narrative, here, is conventional, a double bildungsroman where two innocents help each other find their place in life. Patti becomes a poet/singer-songwriter, Robert becomes an artist. But it is Smith’s very adherence to form and convention that renders Just Kids so very touching. The specificity of their luck, their fate, is undone by the bildungsroman‘s sweeping universality.

Smith’s pas de deux with Mapplethorpe rendered tangible the ways in which a partnership can foster creativity. Smith’s story made me both wistful and jealous–those were the years when I, too, thought I could make myself into an artist. Those were the years when I, too, believed I was a poet. Throughout my teens and twenties–was anyone ever so young?–I held onto that fragile identity. What I would have given, in those years, to have had someone undo the fear and solitude. I had editors and interlocutors–but I never had the creative partnership that Smith and Mapplethorpe shared. In retrospect, I am tempted to say that would have changed everything. I am not sure that would be honest. But I envied the rock-steady love that passed between Mapplethorpe and Smith.

***

I re-read Just Kids a few months after I returned to the United States. I still envy Smith’s intense connection to Mapplethorpe. I felt, in the second reading, the sharpness of my solitude, the finite edges of my existence, in a way that I hadn’t noticed in Madrid.

There are a million stars in the night. None of them are mine.

]]> http://hananomono.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/bookshelf-patti-smith-just-kids/feed/ 0 kimikocat DSC_1360_2 http://hananomono.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/apple-galette/ http://hananomono.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/apple-galette/#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:55:36 +0000 Cynthia Houng http://hananomono.wordpress.com/?p=2013 Continue reading →]]> Take me to a patisserie, and 9 times out of 10, I will order a fruit tart.  They deliver the perfect combination of flavor and texture.  They are also surprisingly easy to make at home.  This is a simple pastry recipe that yields a flaky crust, reminiscent of a true puff pastry.  In the fall, I like to fill the crust with a brown sugar/cinnamon/apple mixture, with vanilla ice cream on the side.  You can fill the galette with any combination of fruit.  Figs and honey would be another delicious fall combination, perhaps with marscapone ice cream.  Pears, or pear and frangipane, are wonderful as well.  In winter, I use apples (peeled, because the skin toughens in storage), or frozen fruit (keep in mind that frozen fruits will exude more liquids).

In summer, you might try a mixture of berries, or berries and apricots, or cherries and apricots…  I like to bake my galette in a 9.5″ pie pan, because the fruit juices tend to bubble and run (berries exude more juice than apples and pears), and the pan’s sides keep the mess to a minimum.  After all, the point is to enjoy the galette, not to spend hours scrubbing the oven.

Ingredients (proportions take from this Gourmet recipe):

This is a quick, easy, and satisfying side dish, ideal for a cool fall night.  Cut a butternut squash in half, and then slice into rounds.  Preheat the oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit.  Coat the squash rounds liberally in olive oil, and place them in a cast-iron skillet (or other oven-proof baking dish).  Peel two good-sized shallots, and then slice into rough chunks.  Toss them into the pan with the squash.  Sprinkle the entire ensemble with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, then scatter sprigs of thyme over the top.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the squash is tender and caramelized.

Frankfurt is a shockingly modern city, all concrete and glass.  Little remains of medieval Frankfurt–for Frankfurt, as for so many German cities, World War II was a transformative experience.  But even in the middle of so much modernity–and even postmodernity, as the European Central Bank is headquartered in Frankfurt–the city has its bastions of tradition.  Apfelwein continues to occupy a prominent space in Frankfurt’s culinary landscape, and it was at an apfelwein restaurant that we received our first taste–quite literally–of the city’s hospitality.  We sat next to a table of racuous, cheerful German women, who must have taken pity on us, two Asian girls sampling goulasch and wurst.  When they left, they sent over plates of pickles and rye bread, a tureen of “green sauce” (Grüne Soße), and another pungent dish of Handkäse, or sour milk quark cheese.  They lingered a bit over their apfelwein and watched us taste their gifts, exchanging small pleasantries in our broken German (Danke! Schmekt’s!).

Nightfall over the Main

The old Frankfurt Opera House

But I really fell for Frankfurt over an evening in a French restaurant. We’d spent the afternoon wandering through the magical Liebieghaus, a sculpture gallery installed in an old mansion on the banks of the Main.  Though it was only August, the Frankfurt nights were already cold, and we wandered, hungry and chilled, through the posh neighborhood behind the Liebieghaus, searching for a likely dinner spot.

We spotted a cheerful painting of a rooster on a side street.  Beneath the sign, a French bistro.  The tables on the sidewalk were all full.  We stood on the sidewalk, wavering over our decision, and one of the diners spotted us and waved us over.  “Eat here!” Her voice was full of enthusiasm.  “We live just across the street and I swear this is our second kitchen.”  The other diners nodded and concurred.

The food was simple, but rich, classic French bistro food made just a little heartier to please the German palate.  For an amuse-bouche, we had a smoked trout mousse, which we spread, liberally, on little baguette rounds.  We had a wonderful venison terrine with tart red currants embedded, like gems, in a sweet/salty matrix.  The terrine came with perfect cornichons, as well as an entire palette of little pickled/preserved vegetables.  We had lamb and coq au vin for our main courses, and creme brulee and chocolate mousse for dessert.  Course by course, everything was fresh, clean, and classic.

Towards the end of our meal, the woman who recommended the restaurant came to bid us good night.  The night ended on a graceful note of warmth and conviviality, a reminder that dining out need not be a cold, exclusive affair, nor does it necessarily have to be about culinary inventiveness, or be about the search for the next “it” restaurant.  Sometimes, it is quite enough for the experience to be purely sentimental, a reminder that food, and the pleasure that it brings, serves, in the best way, as a lowest common denominator, a way of reminding us of our common humanity.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes; I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man—
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem’d
To his great heart none other than a God!
I ask’d thee, “Give me immortality.”
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,
And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,
And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was in ashes. Can thy love
Thy beauty, make amends, tho’ even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From any pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renew’d.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro’ the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosen’d manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek.

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
“The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.”

Ay me! ay me! with what another heart
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch ‹ if I be he that watch’d ‹
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood
Glow with the glow that slowly crimson’d all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss’d
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East;
How can my nature longer mix with thine?
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die,
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave:
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts,
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.

My birthday was last Sunday.  For the occasion, I baked 2 dozen cupcakes.  I had the vague idea that I would try to recreate a beloved childhood birthday cake, from my days in Taiwan.–a vanilla genoise cake, filled with strawberry jam, whipped cream, and various tropical fruits, and iced with an extremely light vanilla buttercream frosting.  For my cake base, I used Martha Stewart’s vanilla cupcake recipe:

The recipe states that it makes one dozen cupcakes, but my bowl of batter yielded about 24 smaller cupcakes.  As I’ve mentioned before, I am a bit of a Luddite, and my kitchen is largely devoid of electrical implements.  I went the old-fashioned route and creamed the sugar and butter by hand, using a large wooden spoon.  (And I may just stick with this route for small batches, as the spoon is easier to clean than a mixer.)  If you want to go the same Luddite route, just remember to soften the butter – let it come to room temperature.

For the frosting, I chose a lemon-cream cheese frosting, which is the simplest thing in the world: cream 16 oz. of cream cheese with 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar, and then add lemon (and vanilla extract, if you like) to taste.  Again, I creamed the sugar and cream cheese by hand.  I did let the cream cheese sit at room temperature, to soften it.

I made the strawberry sauce by cooking one package of frozen strawberries (the season for fresh strawberries is over) with generous amounts of sugar and honey.

The batter yielded a rich, yolky cake with the sponge-like texture of a genoise.  Once they had cooled, I iced them with the cream cheese frosting and drizzled a bit of strawberry sauce on top.  The flavors came together nicely, but the cakes were just a bit dense, so the hunt for the perfect cupcake base continues.

Next time, I will treat the genoise like a genoise, and use it as the base for a strawberry-filled layer cake.

The space is nothing, cinderblock institutional construction, with drab faux-tweed carpets and white blinds.  It is, however, something like Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own.”  For years, I’ve been most comfortable in motion.  Airports and hotel rooms carried a calming anonymity.  The open suitcase served as the only mark of my existence, and tomorrow morning time could reverse, and after housekeeping, the room would once again become anonymous.  The hotel room does not belong to me.  It does not belong to you.  It is a screen upon which we can project our desires.

And the motion?

Those countless hotel rooms, train compartments, airplane holds – these were the myriad stages upon which I played out my dreams, writing and rewriting the movie of my life.  I became used to watching the narrative turn, as movies often do, on a series of montages and quick dissolves.  Our protagonist picks up her suit cases and exits the train.  She wraps herself in a shawl and turns on the overhead light, preparing for a long flight ahead.  And like a movie, there were always those crucial little elements, to lend continuity: the pink cashmere shawl, the bottomless Marc Jacobs bag, the little pens and notebooks that signified my status as a writer, the gleaming silver computer.

In waiting rooms and airport lounges across the world, I recognized other members of my species.  We were, the lot of us, floating through the world, carrying only a vague sense of the arc that would become our lives.  Transience, in those years, was beautiful.  I was never really for touchdown.  I fell in love constantly, with cities and landscapes, but never settled.  For years, I could not pass SFO–what was then my “home” airport–without feeling the  quick, sharp call of the road.

I was skimming the surface of my life. I recognized myself in an old Joan Didion essay, titled (aptly) “On the Road.”  Didion wrote, “I apprehended…those particular illusions of mobility which power American business.  Time was money.  Motion was progress.  Decisions were snap and the ministrations of other people were constant.”  My itinerary was a ready framework.  I might not be able to tell you, in any given moment, what I wanted to do with my life or what I thought about the situation in Washington, D.C., or Sacramento, or Beijing, but I could tell you where I would go next.  I took great comfort in watching for my next stop.  Florence. Milan.  Madrid. Amsterdam.

You might say that I was avoiding any deep engagement with substance of my life.  Or you might say that I was delving deeper into myself, diving into the wreck, as it were, because often–perhaps all too often–those long flights and quiet nights were spent in solitude, just myself and the computer, and the glowing screen.

Both statements would be true.

In those years, I assiduously avoided buying furniture.

And then there came a point this summer, somewhere between Frankfurt and Amsterdam, when I realized that I was ready to find a place that I could call home. I was tired, suddenly, and wanted Woolf’s “room” of my own, a place where I could rest, and write.  A point around which things could revolve.

So, I went out and bought some furniture.

Albers’s Sweet Corn Bread

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup Albers® White or Yellow Corn Meal
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups milk
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I always use corn oil, I think it enhances the flavor)
3 Tbsp butter or margarine, melted

PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Grease 8-inch square baking pan.

COMBINE flour, sugar, corn meal, baking powder and salt in medium bowl. Combine milk, eggs, vegetable oil and butter in small bowl; mix well. Add to flour mixture; stir just until blended. Pour into prepared baking pan.