making stock: a gallimaufry

Following

The weather. All over North America it’s cold. No snow here, not yet, but hard frosts overnight and the air has that arctic echo running through it. Last night I got up and looked at the stars, hard and cold in the dark sky. This morning, looking for something else, I found this photo of my older grandson on the beach at Ruby Lake in January, probably 9 years ago. How mysterious the sky and the rays of the sun as it set beyond the lake. Everyone feels so far away, that family in Gatineau, another in Victoria, and the other? Who knows? They were scheduled to fly to Europe on Friday and their first flight was cancelled, rebooked for later in the day. Did they make their connection to Berlin? They feel very far away. In the night, I was humming Bruce Cockburn’s song:

Now I’m sitting here alone and sleepless
and wondering where you are
And wishing you were here
On the coldest night of the year

Listening

The other day, we watched John Huston’s film of the James Joyce novella, The Dead. I’d seen it years ago but somehow my mood on a cold January day wanted the lamplight, the sorrow of an early love, and oh, the music. The moment when the departing guests stop at the foot of the stairs because a last song is being sung, “The Lass of Aughrim”, by a lingering guest, Bartell D’Arcy, played by the wondrous Irish tenor Frank Patterson. And down the wide staircase, his golden voice, and that sad old story. So I found a recording online and this morning I’ve been listening to it, transported back not to Dublin but to Clifden, John King’s pub, where on an autumn evening, if you were lucky, a man whom you knew was a farmer out towards Ballyconneely stood and sang, unaccompanied, that beautiful song. And how a woman stood after and sang “Donal Og”, also part of “The Dead”, and how it felt that your heart would break.

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.

Eating

Last night I roasted a duck, glazed in the final half hour with balsamic vinegar, honey, and lemon, and we ate it with a sour cherry sauce spiked with port, a dish of soft polenta, and salad of greens and strawberries. Tomorrow, I’ll make stock, the best base for wild mushroom risotto.

Finishing

I finally finished a quilt begun in fall, using two lengths of hand-dyed linen, and now I am looking at this bar graph sent to me by my second grandson, created to tell me the colours he wanted for the quilt I’ve promised him. (I made one for him when he was very small but he will be moving to a new house later this year and he’ll have his own new room. Time for a bigger quilt…) If you can think of a design using those colours, please tell me, because I’m lost. (TIGER BEETLES RULE!!!)

Appreciating

We have a woodstove in our kitchen, not a cookstove but an airtight, and it’s where I sit in a wicker rocker to sew, to think, to drink my first cup of coffee each morning. And in this period of cold weather, there is nothing nicer than wood heat. I am appreciating the stash of dry bark I can use to get the fire going first thing, its deep warmth, and how it feels like the oldest comfort on earth.

Liking

At the pool this morning, the air was cold! For some reason the heating system wasn’t working as it should. But the water was only a degree cooler than usual so once I got into my laps, I was fine. And even better when the lifeguard, who knows I don’t like to swim without music (because I hate listening to myself breathe), put on a soul/rhythm and blues playlist. Back and forth in the blue water, with Amy Winehouse’s rich voice, Aretha, a few others, condensation fogging up the big windows.

Remembering

This morning I was making the coffee when I suddenly remembered the dream I’d had two nights ago, a dream of a street in Toulouse where we walked ten years ago on a February afternoon and where a treasured necklace, of turquoise heishi beads made by Fannie Garcia of the Santo Domingo Pueblo near Santa Fe, anyway, where that necklace slipped its clasp, and how I never knew until later that day. I dreamed of the street, my hand on my neck, and in the dream I wasn’t sad because earlier that week I’d met the Venus of Laussel face to face in a Bordeaux museum, and knew that was the greater gift.