Gorgonbread

"I'm always down for a Spice Girls reunion.

I love the Scary hair and platforms."

-- Melanie "Scary Spice" Brown

Medusa gingerbread cookie 12-25-13 

"There's nothing sadder in this world

than to awake Christmas morning

and not be a child."

-- Erma Bombeck

My son Sam and I baked cutout gingerbread cookies together, for two very specific reasons:

1. Sam wanted to eat the dough. He's been overdosing on Starbucks gingerbread lattes and wanted a hit of the real thing.

2. I wanted to make a Medusa gingerbread "man."

Our cookbook that we got the recipe from didn't call them gingerbread men, though. It called them gingerbread "people."  So our cookies weren't just delicious, they were also PC. (Which, as you probably already know, stands for "pretty cute.")

Sam likes to bake. He makes really delicious biscuits and beautiful pumpkin pies. He started "baking" when he was steady enough to stand on a chair beside me at the kitchen counter. He was about 1 1/2. I'd fold down one of my aprons and sort of swaddle him in it, then give him a bowl, some spoons and measuring cups, jars of spices, and let him go at it. He could put whatever he wanted into his bowl, and mix and stir to his heart's delight while I made muffins, or pizza crust, or cookies. I'd let him dump pre-measured cups of sugar and flour into whatever I was making. Sometimes it hit the bowl. Sometimes it hit the counter. Sometimes it hit the floor. There was usually a big mess to clean up, but it didn't matter. Being side-by-side together in the kitchen -- that's what mattered.

It still is.

Sam is all grown up. But something about baking cookies together brought back his little kid days, and that warmed me more than the heat coming from the oven or the spices in the gingerbread. While he licked batter from a spoon and piped faces and buttons on the "men," I made my Medusa cookie and cleaned up the bowls, the counter and the floor.

Some things never change.

Of course, I played with my food before I ate it:

Man. Person. Whatever.

I think I'll just call her a "Spice Girl."

Merry Christmas!

Pieces on Earth

'"But I never looked like that!'

'How do you know? ...

You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image;

you never see your eyes unless they are dulled 

by the gaze that rests upon the mirror or the lens 

(I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you) ..."

-- Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes

Self portrait 12-24-13

"You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful,

and before you know it, it's neither of those things ..."

-- Clive Barker

I look at myself.

A lot.

Not so much in the mirror, but through the lens.

As a self-portrait photographer, it's kinda part of the job.

Maybe I look at myself too much. Maybe not enough.

I am not exactly sure what it is I'm searching for.

What it is I'm chasing.

What it is I'm trying to reveal to myself.

But still, I look. I search. I chase.

I dissect.

And so often, when I pull up the images on my computer, I think, "Is that really how I look?"

Sometimes it's pleasing. Sometimes it's startling. Sometimes it's disappointing.

Sometimes it makes me laugh. Sometimes it makes me think. Sometimes it makes me angry.

Sometimes it makes me wonder. Sometimes it makes me question. Sometimes it makes me sad.

Often, I alter the actual image, I vandalize it, until it feels right. Until it feels real. Until the picture hitting my eyes matches the one hidden in my head -- like two dissonant, agitating notes, one sharp, one flat, brought into tune little by little by little until there is peaceful harmony.

I suppose that when I find the whatever it is, I'll stop looking.

It's like that "hot and cold" game, where you're looking for a hidden something, and another person guides you towards it. When you're far away from it, they say "cold." "Colder." "Freezing." 

But when you home in, they say "warm." "Warmer." "Hot." "Hotter!" "Boiling!"

And often, you don't know what you're searching for until you find it.

Until you see it. Until it's right in front of your face, looking back at you.

Maybe when my eyes finally land on whatever I'm searching for, the dissonance will quiet down and I'll find that elusive harmony. 

I'll find that peace.

Maybe that's the "what."
Peace.

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a happy one.
If you don't, then I hope you have a really incredible Tuesday night.

Peace out.

All wound up and hopping happy

"To get the full value of joy 

you must have someone to divide it with."

-- Mark Twain

Wind-up hopping happy faces 12-23-13

"You've got to S-M-I-L-E to be H-A-Double-P-Y!"

-- Shirley Temple Black

"Find ecstasy in life;

the mere sense of living is joy enough."

-- Emily Dickinson

"Jump!"

-- Van Halen

I'm dreaming of a wet ... White. Wait. WHAT? Christmas.

"... only darkened trails of rain could paint your face upon a pane ..."

-- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

Self portrait 12-22-13

"The sun did not shine.

It was too wet to play.

So we sat in the house.

All that cold, cold wet day."

-- Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

"'I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.'

'I don't think I'd like that,' he said.

'You might if you tried.'

'I never have.'

She licked her lips. 'Rain even tastes good.'

'What do you do, go around trying everything once?' he asked.

'Sometimes twice.'"

-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I has been raining nonstop for days here in northern Ohio.

I went outside and played in it anyway.

I'd prefer snow. But sometimes you've gotta work with what you have.

If it was snowing, I'd be up to my eyeballs in it.

Oh, wait, I am up to my eyeballs in it.

Tangled up in b'loons

"We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them;

that all of life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.

But why should this make us unhappy?

Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice.

I don't believe in this world of sorrow."

-- E.M. Forster, A Room With a View

Smiley face balloon Medusa with smiley face balloon snakes hair 12-21-13

"Straightaway I was 'ware

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair,

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove ...

'Guess now who holds thee!' -- 'Death,' I said, but there,

The silver answer rang ... 'Not Death, but Love.'"

-- Elizabeth Barret Browing,  

Sonnets from the Portuguese 1: "I Thought how Theocritus" 

"Amarantha sweet and fair,

Ah, braid no more that shining hair!

As my curious hand or eye,

Hovering round thee let it fly."

-- Richard Lovelace, 

"Song to Amarantha, that she would Dishevel her Hair"

Happiest Medusa ever.

Waddaya think cookies grow on TREES?

"Sophie and I would use her Christmas break to make 

homemade treats from our very own kitchen.

I mean, if thousands of meth addicts can do it, why can't we?"

-- Celia Rivenbark, 

You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning

Self portrait 12-20-13

 "They were almond cookies,

although they could have been made of

spinach and shoes for all I cared.

I ate eleven of them, right in a row.

It is rude to take the last cookie."

-- Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be At This Hour?

"The measuring and mixing always smoothed out her thinking processes --

nothing was as calming as creaming butter --

and when the kitchen was warm from the oven overheating

and the smell of baking chocolate,

she took final stock of where she'd been and where she was going.

Everything was fine."

-- Jennifer Crusie, Maybe This Time

The holiday candy has really been piling up around here, and nobody was eating it.

And the pool where I swim is closed for re-painting, so I had the morning clear.

So I chopped up all of the candy into chunks -- chocolate bars, chocolate candies, six little chocolate Santas from last year, an entire Whitman's Sampler -- some filled with nuts, some filled with caramel, some filled with peanut butter, some filled with toffee. I chopped up two chocolate turkeys, a chocolate cornucopia, some chocolate covered Oreos, chocolate covered pretzels, and a little bit of leftover Halloween candy (i.e. one fun-size Nestle Crunch bar, and a mini $100 Grand Bar). If it had anything to do with chocolate, it went under the knife.

I had a pretty big bowlful of chunks.

Then I mixed up a double batch of my regular chocolate chip cookie recipe, but substituted the bowlful of chocolate-covered everything for the chocolate chips. So they were sort of like candy-bar cookies. Not quite chocolate chunk. More like chocolate junk.

And lemme tell ya, my house smelled pretty damn delicious.
(And baking is pretty effective therapy. Maybe that's why so many people bake during the holidays.)

Because people keep giving us plates and plates of cookies, and fudge, and bags of Chex Mix, and peanut brittle, and homemade candy, and ... well, you get the picture. It's the holidays, so people feel compelled to bake. And even though such gifts might appear to be gestures of kindness and generosity and good will, I'm starting to think these desperate folks are just trying to keep the crazy at bay.

(By the way, a note to anyone who has the urge to drop off any more sweets at our door: we'd rather have wine. Wine is also pretty effective therapy, with fewer calories and fewer dishes to wash. And just for the record, I am not leaving Santa Claus cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. I'm making him a Manhattan.)

Anyway, since we are all carbed-out around here, I popped my Chocolate Junk Cookies into the freezer for another day.

Costume? What costume?

Gummydusa

"I think Gummy Bears should be the universal symbol for peace,

because peace leads to prosperity,

prosperity leads to decadence,

and decadence leads to diabetes."

-- Jarod Kintz

Gummy bear Medusa with gummy worms hair 12-19-13

Homer:

"Ooh, Gummy bears! Gummy calves' heads! Gummy jaw breakers! 

(sees a Gummy figure rotating on a red pillow in a glass case.)  

(Lustily) 

"Ooh ... What's that?"

Man:

"That is the rarest Gummy of them all, the Gummy Venus de Milo, 

carved by Gummy artisans who work exclusively in the medium of Gummy."

Marge:

"Will you two stop saying 'Gummy' so much?"

-- The Simpsons, 

"Homer Badman," episode 112

I told you before.

The year's almost over.

I have to get them out of my system.