Peeking into the rock

My friend Glen Fitch decided I needed to read Master and Margarita so he ordered it for me and I regret that because it's a nice hardcover edition and it couldn't have been cheap but...I didn't last fifteen pages. I am allergic to stories where the Devil shows up to caper around and claim that whoever the author doesn't like is in cahoots with him. And I just didn't like it as a block of stuff to read. Not much of an Ambrose Bierce fan either, which it reminds me of. When it comes to satire, I kind of like stuff more on the line of The Good Soldier Schweik (or Švejk) or Iceland's Bell (as difficult as that can be to read: it's pretty grim).

What I bought myself is an immense tome, part cookbook and part social, ecological, and economic history: A Mediterranean Feast by Clifford A. Wright. I love it. I'm on the second pass. The first pass I read the parts I thought would be most interesting first--it's really immense and I was a bit daunted--and when I had read all of the book in that piecemeal way I started again at the beginning. You can probably tell I love it. I got it at the used bookstore for $7.50! That's downright amazing. I already had what I think is a fix-up of notes he took while researching the book (though I don't know this for sure), Mediterranean Vegetables. That one is in encyclopedic form and it drives me crazy because it is so raw and unedited and full of errors I can catch (the pointless little errors that arise when you're doing a large work very fast) but it's also magnificent and lots of fun to reread and I do reread it frequently. The bad editing made me worry about A Mediterranean Feast but I've only found a couple of that kind of errors in it so it's more relaxing to read. His main premise is that historically the Mediterranean was anything but a feast, and it's the poverty of the land and people that drove history in such a way that it seems to be the center of a lush life now.

It's interesting how shallow the Mediterranean food tradition is. I've already wondered foir a long time what the food was like there before tomatoes--it seems it was completely, utterly different. I would have thought that tomatoes would have pushed out other fruits in traditional sauces and it seems like that is not the case. People weren't eating the same sauces with plums or something in the tomato position. And while durum wheat and dry pasta has been known in the Mediterranean for centuries, it wasn't such a popular thing in Italy and elsewhere until the nineteenth century.And so on.

He looks at the cooking history of Spain, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia, with peeks at other places--he picks these five because of the documentation that exists and their importance at various times in the history. He includes a little information about classical Greece and Rome, but there's not as much information that far bacl and the story really gets cooking in the thirteenth century an on. The sixteenth century is a big focus. The book is arranged according to topics, and each region is visited in each topic, and their interrelationships are heavily explored too.

I heartily recommend the book, and now I have a hunger for similar books about other places.  The food I've been most interested in these days is Central/Eastern European and Western/Central Asia, and I enjoyed reading Please to the Table, about Russian cooking, but it's not anything like as deep or scholarly as A Mediterranean Feast. Any suggestions? Mostly for things I can get from the library...

On another front: I bought my membership to FOGCon. There is a story behind this I'll tell later.

Still another front: Zluta Zluta Zluta all the time. If it was up to her, we'd be walking ten miles a day. She is almost a year old and has become markedly mellower but she's still excitable and high energy and she demands something every forty-five minutes to an hour and a half.

Oh, and I'm like a day or two away from having the semi-final draft of The Drummer Boy ready for beta readers. If you were thinking of being one of them, contact me. I'm actually finishing off another few of my bagatelles also, so that I have something to do when I have to stop and think about the main project.

I have more evidence that Affordable Care is an imperfect system and we really need single payer, but I'll give that its own post.

If I look at the Drummer Boy as a thing in two parts, not only is it more balanced, but it has symmetry.

And I think I also can describe it better if I'm thinking of it as one a nineteenth-century novel "in two books."

Meanwhile I was looking for a picture of a guy playing a tapan, and I found a Polish drummer who looks exactly like Yanek. (It's the first picture, Piotr Bruski) The band, Bubliczki, also just so happens to play the kind of melting-pot wedding-music with many sources and influences that is the 21st century equivalent of the music Yanek plays when he ends up in the city.

Again a couple days of not posting where I actually wrote stuff. But this morning I wrote 1500 words before breakfast. On not-Poland. It was easy. And Yanek made a decision, and the chapter is finished, and there are two chapters to go before I get to go back and rework everything to make sure it all makes sense and that the same terminology is used all the way through and also to make sure that the chornology is correct and that the direction of things is consistent (consistent enough, I mean).

I'm looking forward to it.

I had a really lovely conversation with personheadblueghostghost about the way my stories end (or don't, actually), and it caused me to finally see something I might be able to do to fix that problem -- which sounds like a non-revelation when I say "take more time at the end, and after it" but it is, because I've been operating on a different principle and while I could see I wasn't getting the ends squared away right, I didn't realize  -- somehow, and I guess the density of my brain is quite variable -- that the principle itself was the problem. My idea is that once the initial and secondary issues are resolved, the story loses its interest -- and while I do know that stories need a cool-down period, I've always been reluctant to impose on the readers' good nature after that point. So imagine a very shy person who's built up all their courage to tell you the story of their life to now, or to relate the exciting events of the recent revolution, who gets to a certain point, and then suddenly says, "well, so, um, that's it, I guess, I won't trouble you any more," and they flit out the door before you can even ask them "But what happened to the guy with the carnation?"

So I'm not going to be that person in this book at least. Even if it means I have to write another chapter beyond what I am planning to write.

On another front, Truffle's evening agenda last night appeared to be a walk of Yummy Well-Scented Indefinite Doom: if I had let her determine the entire walk, I don't know if we'd have gotten home before midnight. After a while I determined that we had to go home anyway. She actually argued with me about it. The reason this is news is that some months ago I was lucky to convince her to go around the block every other day.  I don't know what has changed, except that I've been initating stronger and more strenuous walks myself.

I realize that I started this journal to keep track of my writing progress, but I've been using it mainly to complain. But I have been writing and writing all along.

So, this is what I did today:

Words today: 1019
Chapter  32 wordage: 2182
Total wordage (estimated as I have not been bothered to set up the master document or write down accumulated words): 170K
Estimated till the end of the draft: 3 more chapters? 15 K more words?

Writing anxiety of the day: All novel long these guys have been terse and uncommunicative.  Suddenly they're talking and talking and talking. Too much dialog? Is it in character? Is anything they ever do in character? Am I in character? Who am I? What am I?

happy little details of the day: workers talking about the strike in the same coal mines Yanek's unit was supposed to be protecting during the war, and which are owned by the relatives that disowned him before birth; and the beer being the same brand as I referenced in the green people story set in the same place a hundred years later.

Tomorrow: more goddmaned angsty dialog. Maybe some action on the factory floor.

On another front, I punted and put the violetta and violetto (yes, those are their names) artichoke plants into large pots for now, meaning that I transplanted some oregano and moved some freesia bulbs. I know it's not the time of year for the bulbs, but screw it.

Also: neighbor had a baby so I took their dog for a walk.

And: I tasted my horseradish leaves (raw) and they are kind of like arugula, not very much like the roots at all.

Reading: A Simple Haban Melody by Oscar Higuelos (bathroom book)
was going to start What is the What but I can't handle it right now, any more than I can handle Those Bones Are Not My Child: I guess I need something less harrowing at the moment.

Just finished: Periodic Tales (you can have it now, Emma and Jason) and The Handbook of American Folklore

about to read: I'm not sure, I have this immense pile of books from my dad and stepmom.

writing:
I got my guy into a situation I've been planning for a year and suddenly it's like I can't imagine how this would actually go.

Having a Mr. Earbrass moment anyway. Just re-read a bunch of earlier chapters for reasons and they read like a dull biography to me.

In no order, of importance or chronology

1. Last physical therapy appointment yesterday. I can do so much more than I could a year ago, and my physical therapist gave me a few even harder things to do. I'm still working on loosening the muscles and flexibility and strength, but I'm also working on balance and stability too.

2. I have an interview Friday for a job that pays 175% of what my old one did. It's a lot more work, including things that are hard for me (a lot of deadlines, and a lot of conversational Spanish), but it's good work.  My housemate does the same work, and she's overwhelmed, but she's been moving and also dealing with some other personal stuff. Also, the job has insurance benefits.

2a. There's a job to apply to in Bonny Doon. That's actually worse than Scotts Valley. Anyway, it's half-time. It could end up costing me more in transportation than it pays in wages. (There's a story as to why there's a bunchof those names up there, having to do with a guy named Scott, but I never remember the details)

3. As for Nano, I think I will get my fallback goal done: I'll get to the end of the battlefield stuff. I planned to get to the end of the draft, but this has been really, really difficult, and I have been doing more research and problem solving than word piling.

3a. the last third of the book keeps getting more complicated . . .

4. Irreproducible recipes:

Steamed broccoli, shirataki (noodles made from tofu, very nice if you're going low glycemic), tomato sauce, cheese, heat it all up and there you go.  Irreproducible because the particular tomato sauce is made of sad elements in the fridge.  Hint: two anise seeds is more than a quart of tomato sauce can support without large amounts of other things in it. You'll be balancing flavors for hours until you give up and say it's good enough to eat.  I thought Italian sausage has anise in it, so it would be nice in a sauce too? But it was wrong. Anyway, I did prevail and I am eating this now.

5. (or 1a?) I have something to wear to the interview, because at Thanksgiving I snaggled up some of my stepmother's clothes.