The Souffle in Each of Us

It has been far too long. Far too long since I've written and I bet far too long since you've made a souffle. Now I am sure you can come up with a variety of reasons why you haven't made a souffle in awhile or if ever just as I have a variety of reasons why I haven't written. It doesn't matter. Now, you are here and I am here and so, let's be thankful for being present. But really, let's really be grateful for butter and eggs. Regardless of what you find to bind these two sentient creatures, such as chocolate or cheese, butter and eggs do their modest magic to create the true showmanship of any souffle.

Let's get it straight. Souffles are rather existential creatures. Seriously, they demand a lot of attention to make and they aren't intended as a dish to sit alone in the fridge as leftovers. You make souffles to be eaten right away. Despite their French origin, I tend to think of souffles as being more Italian in personality especially in their completion as if they come out of the oven all puffed up and wanting to grab the recognition of everyone in the room. Saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me. Tell me how wonderful I already know I am." But let us not forget their humble beginnings, especially this souffle that I send to you. It is far more pilgrim than pomp.

This souffle hails from perhaps the most solemn and least showcased vegetable, the carrot. Please don't expect this souffle to puff itself like Napoleon on a white horse nor will this be a dish that you might want to make for some hot date. This is Middlewest where we honor the quiet and stable creatures of this world. Here in Middlewest, the carrot is king. Yup, this carrot souffle comes off as not even the supporting side dish on Thanksgiving, more like the gaffer, the electronics guy who makes all the others shine, letting even the one hit wonder brussel sprout roasted in balsamic accompanied with dried cherries take a moment to be the Turkey's coveted sidekick. This carrot souffle is more of a mediation than a simple side. It's more of a dish to make while you are married than dating.

But for me, this carrot souffle symbolizes Thanksgiving in tastes and cultural texture (if that could be a term) For now, just roll with it. Thanksgiving is a time to be gracious, slow and mindful. To feel comforted in all that you presently have and have achieved. For years, my father would place five kernels of corn on each of our bare plates as a reminder that actually after the first Thanksgiving in 1621 was a period of great hardship and starvation. The five kernels symbolize how for days some Pilgrims were rationed just five kernels of corn, like some poorly dealt hand of even worse luck, to survive a whole days work of toiling on frozen soil and cold pews to pray. Don't get me wrong, my dad wasn't trying to make the day a real downer as much as a time to remember how little you can live on and still be grateful.

Thanksgiving is a such a modest holiday, a time to just eat and perhaps nap and read a book and slowly let the warmth of the room allow you to slip into memory or mediation. Perhaps one of my favorite Thanksgivings took place in a kitchen the size of a shoe box, seriously, I am sure most of you have larger closets than this kitchen. I was teaching in Poland, living with a British vegetarian and for some odd reason I wanted to bake a Thanksgiving meal in my Russian oven that sometimes worked.

What did work that year was the carrot souffle filling our apartment with the foreign smell of America, a whiff of what I wanted to try to show my roommate, that America had a quiet side, a humble beginning of sorts and that once a year our culture actually remembered and rejoiced. As if our own pomp could be dulled at least for one day in honor of the tastes of rosemary, turkey, cranberries, cinnamon, onions and juniper berries. Somehow these smells communicated more than my stories or family photos of what I wanted to try and share or show about being American.

I recall my roommate, Anna, walking into the kitchen confused yet drawn by the smells I had somehow managed to conjure up from bartering at markets. That night despite the fact that Anna hadn't eaten meat in over three years she ate her entire plate clean. I had a few Poles over and listened to music on our cassette player and tried to explain national holidays to each other, but mostly we talked about food.

How Anna would only needed to smell the faintest hint of an orange to be in her nona's (who lived outside of Rome) garden, Tomek said if he smelled warm strawberries in butter, he knew his mother was filled with spring and happiness, while she made berry pierogies. Each of us had some flavor that wasn't just a national dish or icon rather some memory of humility and grace. And food is like that, a little bit of attention and care and you can recreate something to fill a distant room far from your home, your family, your culture to share something as simple as carrots. Without translation.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

Carrot Souffle

2 cups carrots, peeled & diced
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup sugar ( I don't add sugar b/c the carrots are sweet enough)
3 eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook carrots in boiling water. Drain carrots and let cool for about five minutes.
3. Place carrots in blender and add butter, sugar, cinnamon, salt and eggs.

4. Add flour, baking powder and milk. Blend again.

5. Bake for 45 minutes or until fork ready, like a cake. Remember this won't puff.

6. Share and enjoy.

A Jar of Garlic

This coming week marks a two year anniversary with moving to Missoula. The story of how and even why I moved here is either too long or too simple to tell. Frankly, I can sum it up in just one word: hope. But I must clarify. I cannot say I moved West with the idealized hope of finding gold, wealth or even the antiquated idea of homesteading. Nor did I have the kind of simple hope in greeting cards such as, "Hope you are feeling better" with a picture of a fluffy cat wearing a beret. I would like to think I didn't move with a suitcase full of naive intent thinking life is always better somewhere else. Nor would I say I was searching for a different version of hope that was once lodged in a jar, Pandora's Jar, and circled out along with the other abstracts such as destruction and grief. The darker side of hope was surely not my intention either. The hope that I was chasing was simple, a hope to start again in my mid-thirties in a town I liked the sound of. Simply, Missoula has a high concentration of both writers and mountains and all I wanted to do or hoped to do was write a lot and ski a lot.

For most people, hope seems to fall to the positive side if life, offering one last chance in a mired of desperate feelings or a state of chancelessness. It can be that undeniable glimpse or fraction of light that can surprise even the darkest of hours--when even stars betray you and seem like just some other light for someone else to wish on. Yet hope strikes us when we least expect it and when we fundamentally need it the most. Now, I am not going to take this into a metaphysical realm, not completely, nor will I start bringing in religion either, but the complexity of hope fascinates me.

Perhaps my first sense of the difficulty with hope came from one of my ninth grade students, Maggie MacAlpine. Maggie spoke with a slight lisp and carried herself with an awkward stance of confidence. She always caught every error I made on any of her Greek Mythology quizzes and had the maturity of a thirty year old trapped in a young and awkward preteen body. During one of our readings of Epimetheus, the one who ignored the warnings not to take any gifts from Zeus, blindly took the gift of a woman who also came with a rather questionable jar. Now, I have to pause here to say how difficult it is to really teach Greek Mythology to ninth graders without having to go into polygamy, sodomy, rape or try to explain wife swapping? Basically with Greek Mythology you are teaching unedited sex education. Seriously, try to teach anything about Zeus PG-13.

Luckily I was teaching in Rome where billboards are unrated and mythology still makes sense in understanding Italian laws of attraction. There might not be a Zeus, but there are labels like Prada, Gucci and Dolce and Gabbana or controlling Italian nonas and mamas that wield some power over the city's men. So mythology was more like teaching sociology and Maggie MacAlpine was a quick study. After we had read how Epimetheus blindly doted over his mail ordered bride (via Zeus the all knowing post master), Epimetheus was more than smitten and basically let Pandora do anything, such as release all the evils of the world from her jar. So watching the new world that he and his brother, Prometheus, had so carefully made fall apart with the simple opening of a jar, Epimetheus finally realized the meaning of his name, "after thought." Concluding the fact that he was an idiot.

It was tempting at times to say, "okay kids, so what did we really learn from this myth?" Hoping to hear something along the lines of "Well, Ms. Walter, this myth clearly shows the problem with power dynamics between men and women and how you want to be sure not to be controlled by another person's motives especially if you are persuaded by superficial aspects like beauty and charm." This was a challenge. They were fourteen. They didn't even really like the opposite sex yet. Luckily though, I was in Italy and these were budding clones of fashion and sexual impression. I'd glance in the teacher's edition for the "right" answer and find something like, "Epi means after and this story clearly illustrates the power of afterthought or hindsight." What? This is so dumb, these kids read 10 pages for this answer, I thought to myself. What good would this answer really do for these kids in life? Do I tell something like, "Basically kids, you can tell yourself that your heart was broken and that you were mislead by this person whom you trusted for basically, linguistic reasons. Be sure to know the Greek root of your name and remember kids, It's called hindsight." Or maybe I could say, "Basically kids, never trust people with jars." No, they needed something more and Maggie MacAlpine was going to help us.

Maggie raised her hand and said, "Mthss Walther, thes is odd. If Pandthora released all the evilths in the world, then why was hope in there? I thought hopthe was good?" I paused. Looked out the window and smiled. I didn't want to interject or release my own dark side for these desk-seated, freshly-washed pink cheeked fourteen year olds. So I asked, "What do you think of Maggie's question, is hope a positive or negative feeling?" Looking around at blank and nervous faces, I said, "Or is it both?" "Have you ever felt "tricked" by hope?"

And I must say, what followed will go down in my mental history as some of the most fascinating discussions of metaphysical dilemmas posed. Yes by 14 year olds. Seriously these kids understood dilemmas and the temptation of hope that can blind them. Sure, they referenced buying video games they thought were going to be cool and ended up being lame, but at least they started to understand the importance of cause and effect of their actions brought on by the slippery duality and temptation of hope. No, I wasn't trying to form small jaded skeptics in my classroom. Rather, I wanted them to think through the repercussions of their actions especially if they were using naive or shallow reasonings. What were the results they were creating by their actions? Basically, I wanted them to learn accountability. I wanted them to think through what they were being tempted by and if they were willing to accept the possible results. Or so I hoped.

And so, even out of the classroom, hope finds me yet again today in this place that I feel grateful to not have been lead by shallow or simple reasons. This place is Missoula, but more importantly or metaphysically speaking this place is my heart for while I was driving into the darkness over mountain passes and along rivers lit by moon and October stars, I found myself falling into a city where I would also fall in love. Luckily, I wasn't led by own blindness brought on by superficial reasonings nor by shallow intentions. Not this time. Happily, I can say in these two years of living here, I've had to deal with both the darker and lighter side of hope and thankfully I've had to learn and keep learning my own answer I finely gave to my class in regards to Pandora's box: Each of us posses the power to choose how we want our gifts to be used, for positive and creative means or for negative and destructive results. We might not choose correctly all the time, but remember we aren't the gods and that makes us lucky: We get to choose which hope we want to live.

Cold Storage

Most days are either beef or wildflowers,

brief moments of sustenance or sun

filling the gardens of my mind with nothing

but garlic, whole heads posing

as papery fists that never bloom or hit

the surface without the hint taste

of swollen rain and tart onions. Even

when neglected, my heart, the bulb

of my body never rots, no matter

how hard I try. Forget about farmers'

almanacs, French techniques or thinking

the sky of soil pearls just you a private moon.

Your heart, bitter onion of your being, roots

in the basement of your neglect. Your savored weed.

The Loyalty of Recipes

So you're at a pot luck and you notice the chard and kale torte you bring seems to be one of those dishes that could so easily arrive and act happy as just the supporting side dish, passively sitting by the louder Mexican or Italian dishes. But it's not. People find themselves coming back and less publicly polite with their second time around portions. You notice the first timers took gracious sizes perhaps apprehensive of limp greens blanketed in goat cheese. The second and some third timers cannot help themselves, both in the amount and in their compliments. Someone finally turns to ask you, "Did you make this?"

This brings up one of my favorite moments in cooking, no, not the ego in saying, "why yes, I did actually make that fontina and goat cheese torte you seem to be stuffing in your face," feeling as if you won some ribbon for best hot dish. No, I am not that Midwestern, but hopefully Midwesternly modest. Rather, I enjoy continuing the statement with, "It's my mother's recipe, do you want it, I'd be happy to e-mail it to you." And so the physics of loyalty in cooking lives on. The sharing of recipes that were once written out on small note cards with stenciled wagon wheels or creeping lilies of the valley as a header and most likely written in an archaic and illegible handwriting that included the line: Recipe from: Ester or Judy.

The other favorite part of this interaction is how giving credit to someone else who most likely lives far away offers some validation or even a whiff of lineage and secrecy to the most basic chocolate chip cookie. But really the question is, how long must you claim your prized peanut brittle as laying honors to someone else? Until just when does it become yours? When do you have to stop claiming a dish as being inherited by your aunt in Houston, your mother in Michigan or your grandma, who bless her soul has passed on long before you wield her sweet Christmas buns each December. When are they really your sweet buns? When does the loyalty of invention seem to rest on your laurals?

This question of loyalty recently came to head when I was given what seemed at first as a just a bag of home made caramel corn. I must admit I do not have a compulsive sweet tooth that I need to keep in check, but what I was most taken by with this bag of salty sweet was how perfectly each kernel was coated. I examined the bag, put it up into the light and gently turned each piece to see any variation or trace of some blemished or burnt marks. But none were found. These observations occurred all before I had even opened the bag. And when I did, seriously, this could be claimed as Pandora's treat. I gently untied the ribbon and to find at first just a faint hint of sugar, enough as if to say, "just eat one, a sample per say." I ate one. And another. And as if I had been possessed but some sugar sultan, I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing. I was at work. And I was stuffing my face and probably making a lot of noise in the process. Soon I was not looking at each kernel as much as how much I could try to hold in my palm and stuff in my face without looking like I was a refugee displaced at a boulangerie.

As I noticed half of the bag was emptied in less than ten minutes, I turned to see if some whiff of cold air had come into the room and if I was going to be visited by something or someone who would demand I make some sort of life decision like keep eating the caramel corn or give up my first imaginary born child. It was at this point, I knew I had to do two things. One, share the rest of the "treat" with someone else and two, find out how to make it. Obviously, the first task was easy to do, but finding out the recipe was a bit more a challenge. The caramel corn was made by my boss, Cheryl. Now, I work at a non-profit natural health food store and frankly my boss is so modest that I am not sure she would even like to be called "my boss." She was once claimed (jokingly of course) as being "the ceasar of the grocery store", but that seems a bit totalitarian. I like to think of where I work as being a mini Sweden. Here, in our Sweden people are treated equally and fairly, most of the higher positions are run by women and even the furniture in the deli is a higher quality but similar Ikea design. My boss is a tall and willowed blond, who is fair and humane, so she's more like a prime minister if Sweden or The Good Food store were to have one.

I peered in Cheryl's office to see if she was busy and if I could get her recipe. Little did I know, that this caramel corn was usually made for the holidays and no, there was no amount of begging or flattering that was going to give me the recipe. Now you need to understand that I didn't leave the room and go back to scheduling cooking classes and hope whom I had shared the caramel corn with had more restraint than myself and might have left a few kernels. I stayed in Cheryl's office because I was incredibly curious about this recipe's history and more importantly, Cheryl's loyalty and her calm refusal to give me or anyone for that matter the recipe. Ever.

Cheryl told me her sister, Marsha, brought this recipe to her house one Christmas to make together as a sisterly gesture. For years after, Cheryl continued to make the caramel corn and claimed the fame and fabulousness to "Marsha in Helena". As the compliments came, Cheryl started to wonder, when is this Cheryl's caramel corn? Cheryl decided the logical step was to ask Marsha the time frame of recipe acknowledgment. The answer, simply Marsha stated, was three years. So as I sat in Cheryl's office still a bit rushed from sugar and curiosity, Cheryl in her sturdy and deliberate tone said, "Emily, people have even threatened to break into my house when they know I am not home to try and steal the recipe." I just nodded and said "whoa, that's serious." Yet in my mind, I could see someone dressed in black, searching through a drawer of recipes and a furrowed brow under a black hat change with intense relief in finally finding a fix to what may seem on the surface as just caramel corn. But really, it's caramel crack.

And so, you may have guessed it, I won't be including Cheryl of Missoula's caramel corn, but maybe for some of you the loyalty of recipes only needing three years will free you this coming holiday season. No longer will you feel entangled with explanations or the obligatory need to write long titles on your jars of coveted homemade pear butter first made by your Aunt Rita. Remember, if it has been longer than three years you can take claim, sit with pride, watch how that sweet potato and cumin side dish is yours and answer, "why yes, I did make this. Would you like my recipe?"

Today I give you a recipe that I have been working on for some time and I think I may be close to wanting to lay claim as mine. I am on the pursuit of crafting a tangy, but home-style mac and cheese and I think I found the combination. Of course, I first adapted it from Bon Appetit, but was mostly inspired by memories of eating something similar back in Portland, Oregon at Montage. I tell myself, I only have three years before I can change the title to Aunt Amelia's mac n cheese. Until then, I will lay claim to someone else, keep cooking and remain modest with this hot dish. Enjoy.

Northern Italian Macaroni and Cheese

6 tablespoons butter, divided

1 cup onions, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 unbleached all purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

2 cups Fontal, finely grated ( Fontal is like an elegant Monterey Jack as my good friend Cicelia says)

2 cups goat cheese, crumbled

2 cups Parmesan, grated

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 pounds Rainbow Chard

12 ounces macaroni

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

1. Melt three tablespoons butter in a large pot over medium heat.

2. Add onions and saute until translucent, about five minutes.

3. Stir in garlic, then flour and stir constantly for one minute.

4. Gradually whisk in milk. Cook whisking occasionally, until mixture begins to boil, about five minutes.

5. Add cheeses and stir until cheese melt, about two minutes.

6. Stir in cayenne and nutmeg. Season with salt and pepper.

7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 13x9x2 inch baking dish.

8. Cook chard in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about one minute.

9. Remove chard with slotted spoon and place in a colander and let chard cool.

10. Reserve pot with water and let it come to a boil and add macaroni.

11. Meanwhile squeeze water from chard and finely chop.

12. Cook macaroni until al dente, drain and stir macaroni in to warm cheese sauce.

13. Place half of macaroni in dish, smooth and layer chard.

14. Top with rest of macaroni and spread evenly.

15. Melt three tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan and then drizzle over panko and mix well.

16. Spread breadcrumbs on top of macaroni and bake for 40 minutes.

17. Let stand for ten minutes and serve.

Yields: I would say at least six hunger people who can take a lot of cheese

The Autumn Garden

Cool mornings with frost and afternoons with slow sun have always meant one thing for me: sweater weather. Contrary to poetical history, autumn is not a season of melancholy for me. Quite the opposite for I find myself more awake and more capable of sitting at my desk for longer periods of time. Maybe I don't feel sadden by this season for the mere fact that unlike during the era of Yeats and Rilke, I have central heating and can throw a sweater on with the faintest hint of a chill and get to writing. Writing seems to make more sense this time of year for when the sun is shinning and warming the rivers, I feel guilty taping out my fingers to syllables in my head instead of swimming and putting my face to the sun.

Plus, I think it is too expected to be melancholy during the fall. If you only see the shades of trees rising like some phoenix to only fall in order to die, then perhaps your life may feel like you are walking in some battle field, some lone survivor on a sidewalk crowned by maple and oak. Yet this seems rather Victorian and indulgent. What if the leaves were reminding us more to merely let go? What if sugar maples find pride in their dark red October hues and wait until winds lets them move on, or leave (no pun intended).

Growing up surrounded by birch and maple forests, I had certain favorite fall trees. Trees that during the spring and summer seemed to just meld themselves into the mass of woods, but once autumn came the slow sense of change reminded me to take notice of each individual tree, as if each species offers a slightly different shade to the whole horizon. I like to watch time unfold itself in colors. As if slow moving waves reach their crest and then fall into sand, each tree peaks and then fades into just bare bark and limbs. Winter ready.

I haven't been to a more autumnal place than Poland. It wasn't the contrasts of color as much as it was the shades of gold that seemed to rise out of all the fields and cobblestone city gardens. Gold against brick or warn out grey blocked houses, gold in forests outlining smoke choked cities, gold in a single tree outside my class room window. And at night, the shades of rich yellow under lights illuminated streets and lightened shadows. It was a time of such light in what has been to easily seen as such a grey country.

The golden autumn of Poland wasn't just a time for trees, but also lovers. I recall public gardens being a common meeting place for dates. Some man wearing what sadly seemed like his dead uncle's suit with a long stemmed rose, would pace and run his thumbs under each fingers' nail, walking off nerves and anticipation. You see, when you live at your house (which often consisted of three rooms including the bathroom) with your entire family; physical space is an issue. So public gardens were open spaces waiting to be filled with couples entangled on park benches. PDA or public displays of affection in this context probably felt more private than stealing kisses over the kitchen table with your grandmother staring at you over a plate of boiled potatoes.

And so this poem I include today may not have autumn shades, but the autumnal flavor of rising from some fall. My favorite kind of love poem. Enjoy the leaves, the small reminders of learning to let go, and to embrace the season of sweater love.

In the Public Garden

Every gym class, Stevie Flowers pissed

his corduroys. He hated dodge ball,

stood in the corner or hid

from the bigger boys who broke

anything or anyone small.

He read Make Way For Ducklings

sat on his knees with Buddha's

slow smile. I knew even then

he would be the one who loved me.

I still remember the metallic

taste of the bat that summer

we played softball. He cupped my face

while my nose bled, told me later

he'd tape my glasses.

But later it was others who stood

outside my window, holding

a book of Yeats, fly open

with a half-drunk grin.

It's always a simple request

at first.

In the Boston Commons, I pause

at the ducklings in bronze, still

like the boy who read to me.

Somewhere there's a man

I'd never think to run from.

Poet as Water

Recently, I saw a trailer for a film about John Keats' life. Or perhaps I should say, about his love life, which is much more film worthy than an hour and a half of someone coughing and sitting in a dank room in Rome trying to write poems. The irony of Keats being sent to the eternal city was that he arrived in January when all was wet with river and even the cobblestone streets under sun held ice all day long. I cannot tell you the cold I felt while living through two winters there and I certainly figured out how to say "bone cold" in Italian and purchased a coat that looked more like a sleeping bag with a fur collar to wear even in my apartment at night.

While I was teaching twelfth grade British English at the American School in Rome, I took a group of students to the Keats' House which overlooks the Spanish steps. We were taken on a tour by some overly-British Keats scholar who seemed to know the scent of the young poet's breath. While this scholar brought out artifacts and books, I couldn't help but notice how bored my students seemed. It's hard to convince a group of Italians that some meek man of 24 could contend with the likes of Virgil or Dante. They didn't even seem fazed by the fact that Keats was sent by his doctor to go to a Mediterranean climate, a respite from all the grey of England, only to find himself more ill-suited than ever while his more popular poet friends were off traveling in Greece and being Lord of something. Nope. Not even drama and death seemed to pique their interest. Not yet.

All the students acted sluggish and foot-heavy until we were lead into Keats' bedroom and shone his death mask. The students crowed the plaster and moved in closer. Finally a bit of curiosity filled the room while our tour guide's voice became a soft whisper. Keats had both a "life mask" and "death mask" and they were side by side each other under glass. Questions arose and suddenly I didn't feel like the outing was a complete loss. I stood in the back of the room, which is what you do as a teacher: you monitor and ask questions during the dull silences, feigning interest for everyone. But thankfully, everyone was engaged and I was silent. Trying to see over the heads of my students I couldn't identify which mask was which. I waited until everyone had left so I could get a closer look. No wrinkles, no lines, just lips and eyelids. Closed.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to see. As if images of death would be one of grief or anguish, but under the dusted glass of the case were two small faces of calm. As if they were just napping side by side; each other waiting for all the visitors and tour guide to leave them alone so they could wake up, look out onto the city and watch all the fashionable and beautiful people below.

We toured more of Keats' spots that day, including a cafe he used to frequent, and ended at his grave. We had another tour guide through the Protestant Cemetery and found Keats' tombstone with the inscription, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." It was the most decorated grave with fresh flowers and my students just kicked gravel around with their shoes and pulled out their cellphones from their pockets to check the time and for texts. I admonished one of my students, "Orlando, please get off your cellphone. It's a cemetery, you'll make all these dead people envious that you can talk and they can't." Maybe I didn't say that exactly, but it was usually humor I used with "disciplining" Orlando.

Orlando Miani stood at least six foot three, had a shaved head and large curled wooden earrings in both ears. Orlando was the kind of student that other teachers would say in passing, "Good luck with that one, Ms. Walter" and keep walking away. I had to meet with Orlando's father once. His father spoke of all the "bad things" Orlando had done in the past holding my eye contact as if looking for my compliance, looking like an overgrown child sitting in a student desk. His father appeared and acted more Germanic than Italian and perhaps was why Orlando stood as some Italian giant amongst the shorter Romans in his class. I cannot say Orlando become my favorite students, nor did I make some major breakthrough with him leading to some "after-school special" moment. And despite his father's catalog of horrors, Orlando pleasantly passed my class. But what happened that year which is far more impressive than passing was that Orlando understood Shakespeare.

I had decided not to teach Lady Macbeth as their textbooks had suggested that year, but Hamlet instead. My class of mostly twelfth grade boys, who were not in the AP English class and were most likely not going to Harvard or Oxford or even the voc-tech if Italy had one. These students were barely passing anything and not because they were ignorant -hardly the case, they were all just too busy enjoying life already, perhaps too experienced one might say. Such was the case with Orlando. While discussing Hamlet's need to do something and yet his inability to act on it. Orlando started talking. He didn't sit there and talk about his personal life or how Shakespeare made him feel, Orlando was both too cool and too private for that, but what he did say was that Shakespeare created this character of not acting to prod us, the audience to act. "It's as if he's (Shakespeare) giving us hindsight," Orlando just blurted out one day. Perhaps even surprising himself.

It's hard as a teacher sometimes not to jump up and down and scream, "yes, you crazy kids, yes you are finally thinking and not just feeling." I recall nodding, looking at Orlando and saying, "interesting point, does anyone want to expand on that idea of audience giving hindsight?" Yet privately, I knew Orlando was finally present in class. Privately, I wanted to tell him that he was right.

Later that year, I went to graduation and watched tall and bored Orlando collect his diploma and walk with his long gait off stage. I was getting ready to leave the courtyard after the ceremony and I felt a heavy tap on my shoulder and turned to be shadowed by smiling Orlando.

"Meez Walter, you are here. Thank you, really, you know you got me here."

"Oh, no Orlando, you got yourself here. We are all just players, just players Orlando, even me."

"Die Meez Walter, really thank you."

"You're welcome, Orlando" nodding I just didn't know how to even navigate hugging someone so big or so tall so I just smiled and walked away.

Had I had hindsight myself, I would have hugged him. I wished I had. Years later, I was informed by another student via a letter that Orlando had died in a car crash in London. He was only 22 and I believe going to art school.

I'm sure if you were to ask any of my former students from that twelfth grade class if they remember any lines from, "Ode to a Grecian Urn" or even our outing that fall day to follow Keats life, I'm almost sure they wouldn't. But I doubt any of them have forgotten the masks or if they have forgotten Orlando. I know I haven't. Nor have I ever written a poem about either. It is just too much. There are some things you don't put in poems, some things you let live as they are, without the encumbered task of being weighted by metaphors. For sometimes, we are capable of being and living in uncertainties. Sometimes we don't have hindsight, so we can ignorantly appreciate what we have, today.

Enjoy the poem.

Sweat Pants

Seattle swallows rain for a month

straight. Gutters fill, water parts in alleys

where men wrestle with cardboard boxes

and disappointment. A man waits

by the bus stop without an umbrella, exposed

when a few of us hunch under a store front, slickered

in rain jackets, while this man stand reading

without a coat, just a grayed Henley and a pair

of sweat pants. The sweats are blue, flap

at his calves. His socks hiked up, once white. None of talk

to one another, sulked in silence.

The man in sweats turns his paper, reaches

under his belly to scratch himself. Not a hesitant itch

or rub. A dig. He reads the Times and I wait

for something. A slight twitch, a nervous cough,

or shrug. Instead, for the first time in thirty-six days

I forget it's raining. I want to forget about everything,

expect for this man in sandals, who stands back

when the bus arrives, letting a mother and her child,

who's dressed like a lady bug, board first.

The squelch of tires pushes water onto curbs,

trucks grind back up. The girl turns and waves

to the man. He tucks his paper and waves back

with both hands.

Blogging Bombs

Perhaps it sounds oh so aptly convenient of me to say, I learned to cook about the same time I learned to write poetry. But I did. Yet, what wasn't convenient by any means for either pursuits was the location: Kielce, Poland. During my last year as an undergraduate, I had taken a class by professor Thylias Moss, who boldly titled her workshop, "Poetry that Matters." We were a "selected" group of students huddled around a small table like some boat that was sure to sink, while at the helm was a four foot eleven African American woman who stared us all down over her glasses if anything we wrote was considered fluff. How could we not write fluff? We were coddled. White. Isolated. Naive. Young. What could we possibly offer to the world of poetry?

Yet during that semester we read a book titled, Contemporary Eastern European Poetry which focused mostly on Polish poets and I was hooked. I don't think I really understood half of what I read. No, I am sure I didn't. But what I did know was this was poetry that didn't need a lot of show, ego or even gold-leafed edges. If poetry could be compared to furniture, Polish Poetry is like a Swedish couch. Upon first glance, one might say simple, subtle and good design upon first glance, but upon further study or sitting one begins to understand a lot of attention has gone into making something so modestly aware. So after a post-graduate course in teaching English as a Second Language and a trip to Poland in the middle of winter, I landed a job just 120 miles north of Krakow in Kielce, the knife city.

There is nothing in Kielce that would cause anyone to want to visit. No monuments, no castles, not even a walled city section left. There are rolling hills that surround the concrete industrial blocked town, but mostly Kielce is grey all year long. However, I had landed a job at a small British school and found myself teaching six year olds English via cassette tapes of sing-alongs with such phrases as "I can jump. Can you? I can skip. Can you?" Yes, I thought this was truly the beginning of a life of a serious poet.

Sure, I took Polish lessons twice a week and found myself slow to learn and practice with the shop clerks who smoked over muted colored vegetables at the market and addressed me with comments such as, " Cwzego" which means," What?" No, this wasn't your American in bountiful Europe or Julia Child in the post war streets of Paris. This was Poland and oddly enough, I found myself at a loss at being able to buy even groceries as much as I was at a loss to write poetry.

Needless to say, I found myself drinking more than writing and one evening having found myself with a small crowd of English speaking Poles at a bar, I met a young man by the name of Tomas Bomba, laughing I said, "your name is Tom the Bomb? what kind of post-war kid are you?" Not exactly the kindest thing to come out of my mouth. Luckily, Tomas had taught himself English by reading Henry James novels so even his insults sounded faintly like compliments. Also, I had read a bit of Henry James so I could muddle my way through his early 19th century English diction and also fumble an apology despite the potent vodka on my breath.

Thankfully, Tomas and I became friends and we both had Wednesdays off and decided to spend our midweek day collecting food and then cooking it in my closet of a kitchen. Tomas had picked up a Penguin edition of French Cooking in England while on his visit to his British girlfriend and this was our guidebook through the markets of Kielce. We made souffles, ragouts, and we even found a coconut once and made a delicious dish of chicken curry for my British roommate who had sworn off meat, yet when she came home and found the smells of the whole apartment drowning out the hint of vinegar of our apartment complex, she couldn't refuse. We'd make crepes with nothing but two bowls and a pan Tomas would borrow from his mother. Slowly my Polish did improve, but more importantly, I learned to shout back to the ladies at the market if they tried to give me a wilted bunch of beets. I started to forage not just for survival, but for pleasure.

I cannot say the same happened for my writing. Sure I could say, like Hemingway, I wrote about Europe in Michigan and wrote about Michigan in Europe. But really. I just didn't write at all while living in Poland. Really. This was the mid-nineties, the Velvet Revolution was still a visual memory for most of my friends and Tomas himself told stories of rations. Poland was still arguing to find itself part of Europe and not just The East. Internet cafes weren't like ATMs and I still paid for groceries with zloty. My contact to the outside world was via a staticed phone line plugged into a wall. No Facebook to post my days of collecting root vegetables, no blogging to write about how much I had witnessed now as an enlightened American abroad, no cellphone to text or send images quickly home.

And I'm glad. I'm glad I was forced to be present. Ironically enough as I write this on my blog now, I recall how before all this business of being connected, to text, to blog, to tweet, we had just one verb, to be. We had to just commit to be where we were. Regardless if you wanted to or not. Sometimes you had to just stand next to men who stunk of canned meat on a crowded bus, or to learn how to strike up conversations with others waiting to catch a train that might or might not arrive, to cook from a borrowed copy of French Cooking and to navigate yourself through an ugly city with nothing but your token ability to talk to strangers.

Neko Case states, "the most tender place in my heart is for strangers" in her song, Hold On, Hold On. And this is true for me too. It was true while I was living in Poland and even now as I am in Montana sending out these words read by friends, family and hopefully strangers, I believe in the importance of being present. Certainly this sounds vague and full of fluff and if Thylias Moss were to read this, I am sure she'd be looking at me over her glasses. But the simple act of being where you are and not trying to connect to someplace else is hard. It was hard for me and still is, but it is worth it. It is worth sometimes just sitting with what and who are really in front of you. Sure it sounds silly, but it is true. Being present is a simple and yet essential quality for writing poetry, for cooking and for being a good friend even to someone whom you might at first off have offended. And frankly, no matter where you live in the world, you still have to practice it.

This poem I share with you came from an evening of being stuck in a train station in the middle of winter in a town I don't even remember where, but I do recall stepping out to catch some air and from Yugoslavian smoke from the waiting room, to watch a woman repeatedly sweep iced sidewalks with a broom. I felt so alien and lost, but I had no cellphone, no one else to talk with and oddly enough I am grateful I had to be where I was. Hell, now I get to blog about it. Enjoy.

Stop Request

You wouldn't mistake your mother

for a woman who walks through glass

and sits beside your book.

So you pass the time and frame

the woman's face, the one who

isn't your mother. She's like a Budapest tram

ticket you carry in your wallet

next to the taste of oranges

shared by a boy whose name

you don't remember. You watch her hands

brush a bit of hair away from her brow while she opens

a can of beer. Not cheap beer either

and rinses her teeth. The warm yeast fills

the room like the smell of sex on cotton. She spits

on the floor. In that moment you love her

more than your own mother, who would never spit.

When you leave the room, she shouts

Happy New Year in German. And you believe her.

WWJD or What Would Julia Do?

I'm not certain that WWJD ( What would Julia (Child) Do) would be as popular as the other acronym by the same name. Despite the fact that I claim Julia Child to be my personal saint in and out of the kitchen, I don't see France creating any sainted sculptures of her six foot frame with pearls around her neck by a fountain in Pairs; nor would we, in the US, start handing out plastic wristbands with WWJCD as reminders for patience with plucking, cleaning and preparing an entire chicken in less than twenty minutes. Probably not. As a poet, it's easy to over inflate the importance of another person, especially when they are dead and then played by Meryl Streep. Seriously, I could also include Meryl Steep to my personal muse list for who else can make Robert Redford swoon with a Danish accent, play a believable lesbian, sing ABBA in the Greek Isles and now take on the great cooking icon of Julia Child?

There are certain expected icons that you would expect a poet to hold with high regard such as John Keats, whose death mask still haunts me. Emily Dickinson, well, for obvious reasons, and of course my poet of highest regard, Jack Gilbert, the heartfelt recluse who seems to rise as some poetic phoenix genius with each book he publishes. But in regards to cooking, I have had few people affect me with the same sense of depth as Julia Child. Certainly, this is just as expected as me selecting Emily Dickinson; however, it wasn't until reading her book, My Life in France, did I have a new respect for her sense of humble curiosity and American determination to be more than just a housewife cook in post-war France. Yet she didn't start out wanting to be any sort of icon, all she wanted to do was feed her husband she loved so much while also learning to understand and appreciate the culture around her.

What struck me the most in the book came early on in a chapter titled, "Never Apologize." Again, growing up in the midwest, cooking and apologizing seem to go together as well as Campbell's mushroom soup and the word casserole. I cannot tell you how many houses I have been to when the person cooking placed a dish down and proceeded to tell everyone all that had gone wrong and then of course our response would usually began with, "It could be worse, we could not be eating... etc." But here's what Julia Child states in regard to this lack of cooking etiquette:

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When's ones hostess starts with self-deprecations such as, "Oh, I don't how to cook"....it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you are right, this really is an awful meal! ...Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile---and learn from her mistakes. (pg. 77)

This was so enlightening for me to read. Finally, I had a reason to understand why a litany of apologies is so gauche after you have served another even if it is your husband who you know would truly would be happy if you just served him toast. But there is more to this paragraph that spoke to me. The end of this passage speaks to the responsibility of the cook to learn from their mistakes and not accept others to cover them with inflated comments to cover up the fact even if the food is truly vile. For me, this passage states the importance of three things, be accountable for your actions, don't apologize for being human, and above all smile. As if we can understand that if something is truly bad that we've made, we can keep it to ourselves and learn from it and above all, keep smiling. In other words, we need to not only find our inner Julia Child but also inner Sisyphus in the kitchen, Camus' version that is.

For me, I feel I was born apologizing. No, my first word wasn't sorry or forgive me, but "hot". I cannot deconstruct any greater meaning than I am sensitive to temperatures. But as for the apologizing, I am guilty of wanting to learn sorry first in every language I have learned to speak to ensure the fact that in case I blundered, I could gracefully and correctly apologize. Frankly, sorry seems to be something I have trained myself to believe I almost always am, so reading this passage about one of my favorite passions, cooking, as well as one of my not so favorite habits, apologizing, I somehow felt absolved. Reading Julia Child's honest and ego-less diary of her own transformation helped me to start to rid myself of my midwest guilt in cooking but also just for sometimes, just being born. But more importantly, Child states the need to move on and correctly learn whatever you've blundered for next time.

This approach to life, not to apologize, choose to laugh and keep smiling wasn't first introduced via Julia Child, but from my aunt Carol. My aunt Carol could have been European or Europeanly influenced for she wasn't afraid to wear fur, have a year round sun tan and would at most family gatherings laugh in her tall slim frame drowning out the heaviness of our grandparents' expectations. My aunt Carol also did something that I would like to think Julia Child did well, listen intently. Each visit to our house in the North aunt Carol would bring each of us three kids a book always wrapped in purple paper from the bookstore where she worked. Also with each visit, Carol would sit with each of us, individually, and ask us about our lives, our thoughts and always what we were reading.

I loved it when it was my turn on the couch. Perhaps if you are born with an innate sense of being sorry, therapy comes easily. But Carol didn't analyze us or evaluate us, no, she just listened. Sure, she had traveled to distant cities and seemed more stylish and younger with each visit. But I don't think I could tell you all where she has been because she didn't waltz into our home listing all the fabulousness of her life. No, Carol wanted to know what I thought about the The Island of Blue Dolphins, asked me about my thoughts on Holden Caulfield and what I got out of Steinbeck at age 13. Sure, again, I can glorify someone in memory, but really for me, Carol was one of the first women I knew who decided to choose joy in the face of adversity, and also prefered to listen to children and think we had something worthy of saying. Also, I saw Carol as someone who regardless of mistakes or blunders, could chose joy. Carol, despite divorce and adversity, still chooses joy. And finally, I don't recall ever hearing her apologize either.

Besides being my aunt who really listened, she is also a very good cook. There are numerous recipes I could choose from to show my gratitude, but this berry bread recipe seems to say it all. It is comfort Carol food. It's bread that seems to listen to you and your stomach's need to be fed. It's bread you want to eat while you have your morning coffee or make it for a friend who you want to sit and chat with, take it to a book club or just make it for your husband and watch him eat the entire loaf with a whole stick of butter in one sitting. Again, I am lucky that my husband is happy even if I make him toast, but here's a type of toast you can make and never find yourself apologizing over. Ever. Enjoy.

Carol usually makes this with strawberries, but any berry at the moment would do such as huckleberries, thimbleberries or blueberries.

Carol Murray's Berry Bread

1 stick butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

2 eggs, separate yolks and whites

1 cup of berries, fresh

2 cups of flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Grease a 9" by 12" bread loaf pan.

3. Mix butter and sugar and blend until creamed.

4. Add almond extract and egg yolks, one at a time, blend.

5. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

6. Add half flour mixture and half of strawberries to cream mixture and mix well.

7. Add the rest of flour and then strawberries and mix well again.

8. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff and then blend in berry cream mixture.

9. Place in bread loaf pan and bake for one hour.