Apropos of nothing, I have come across the following proverb from William Blake: “The cut worm forgives the plow.”
I don’t feel the need to belabor the point, but it got me thinking. Who is the plow in my life?
Also, remember the World’s Best Brownies that I crowed about (linked for your convenience)?
Well, throw that recipe out, because I just made the basic brownie recipe from The Joy of Cooking, 1997 edition, and I believe, firmly, that this is the best recipe for brownies ever. I made it with my gluten-free flour blend, reduced the sugar by a smidge because I used bittersweet chocolate, and needed to bake it for much longer than the recipe time, but good lord. These are the best brownies I have ever eaten. Crispy, shiny top, deep chocolate flavor, and the best mouthfeel/chew of any brownie I have perhaps ever had.
Turns out, more sugar + real chocolate = amazing brownies.
Also, kudos to Austin Kleon, an artist/writer I have recently started following again after a dust-up on Twitter caused me to block him in a fury many years ago (the internet makes me sensitive). There is still something about him that rubs me the wrong way, but I am enjoying his lists and (nearly) daily blog. So maybe more of that in this year – short missives instead of a once-monthly tome.
I cannot decide if this is a good sign or a bad omen.
As I write this, it’s nearly 2020, the last Saturday night of the decade, to be precise. I am alone, lying snugged under a blanket and biting my fingernails to the quick as I alternate between watching season three Better Things and scrolling through Instagram.
It’s not an unusual way for me to spend a Saturday night in general; the only thing that sets this one mildly apart is an unusually strong craving for a brownie sundae and the fact that this is right around the time when I think of the upcoming year.
I do wish, just once, that the end of the year found me looking back with warm contentment at the preceding 12 months, not white-knuckling it into the next year. This past Thursday night, a friend of mine was attacked by 15+ kids and beaten, sent to shock trauma the day after Christmas on what should have been a fairly routine Thursday night reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans at Khristian’s studio in the CopyCat building.
We were waiting for our friend who had just texted that he would be at the door in a minute. When he didn’t arrive after texting, a quick glance up the street at the police cars and ambulance told the story – just a block away and a minute or two after his text, he was knocked off his bike and set upon by a roving group of kids with nothing better to do and a whole lot of despair to expel.
He is better than he might have been had it not been stopped so quickly. Quick intervention by a mail carrier, concerned neighbors, and an uneasy feeling from Khristian meant that from beginning to end the whole incident lasted about ten minutes. Enough time to shove him around and shatter an ankle, but thankfully not much more (other than the trauma of the attack, which I am certain felt like a lifetime).
Seems odd, maybe, but this incident got me thinking again about home.
I have been back in Charm City for almost six years now. I grew up in western Maryland and went to college at UMBC, spending several years in Fells Point when Harbor East was a wasteland of abandoned warehouses and Druid Hill Park was still a place you didn’t go after 5 pm. I was once pinned down in a rowhouse by gunfire in my capacity as a counselor for women in transitional housing, and I saw my first dead body on the sidewalk in front of The Buttery (the restaurant featured in the movie Seven and has now been replaced by what is referred to as the “Ouija 7-Eleven“).
The city has always been dangerous.
But this feels different.
When Sicily and I came to visit after Dane died in 2013, we felt like we were coming home, but since I have been here it hasn’t fit quite right.
I love my house. I love my street. I have built a community here, in my neighborhood and among the people I have met. I have been lucky in my work and in the friends I have cultivated.
But it doesn’t feel like home.
I thought Baltimore would be the place where I would feel settled, and although there is a familiarity about it, and it is more home than anywhere else I have been, it’s not quite the comfort I have been seeking. I don’t feel held in the bosom of this place as much as I thought I would.
In this city that could be so great, with so many brilliant people from all walks of life and such a perfect location and size, there is so much daily desperation and pain that I find it hard to leave the house some days.
Is this the midlife crisis, the actual one instead of the one brought on by Dane’s death, where I make bad choices and rash decisions?
Super possible.
Fast forward four days – it’s New Year’s day, and I have been awake since 4, out well before midnight. I have already walked the Loch Raven Reservoir (found the new friend in the picture above), painted, edited some poetry, and felt regret for a decision I made last night. Khristian always says you feel lighter if the decision is a good one, but I don’t feel light. I am not sure if it matters.
The tone of the post is rambly and ranging – from New Year’s resolutions (eat more Daim cookies) to brutal attacks to what makes home and now finally bad decisions.
I don’t know what to say, but I feel compelled to write, and as this is my party, I will cry (write) if I want to, platform be damned.
I do wish everyone the happiest of new years. Hopefully, it’s a damn sight better than the last one.
