In the spirit of that, I’ll be transferring the BlogOfParadox to another undisclosed location. I’m in no rush to vacate my digital nest: I’m currently working on a few very cool projects while I’m between full-time employment, including

• unf&$%ing my life with Transmogrifier Rhiannon Llewellyn,
• editing a dear friend’s book,
• putting together a complete communications plan for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Jackson for a very interesting year,
• mulling over going back to school,
• mulling over whether the time is right to start working on a story I want to tell, and where I’d find an artist who could execute it,
• catching up on my comics,
• scheduling daily dance parties with thanks to this playlist based on a forthcoming comic book WHICH YOU SHOULD PRE-ORDER
• approaching food preparation as The Hot Makeout attack.

For midsummer last year, I had the intention of uprooting them forever. I had grand plans to weave the strands into a wreath—no matter the bloodshed and discomfort. I was beginning strong boundary work, and thought it would be an excellent talisman.

I thought back to a name I call myself , and could not bear to pull them. I wasn’t ready.

Last week, the time was right. I gathered utensils, and went to deal with them once and for all.

They were covered in flowers: given space, they were able to bear fruit.

It’s a metaphor for practice: everyone thinks that the work must be profound and moving, each time, or you aren’t doing it right. I have a long-standing friendship that mirrors this scenario: I can’t be mad at them for doing the same things they always do. The only thing I can do is decide how I want to deal with it. I’ve been an all-or-nothing girl for so long, a bridge burner. I realized that lately I have allowed fallow seasons for work, friends, and situations instead of scything them to the black earth. The best action can be a standstill or a pivot. I have begun my strong boundary work in earnest, and find inaction and observance as my unlikely talismans.

Sometimes, practice is about falling down on the job, too, and bearing witness to the snowy unfurling of unexpected sweetness.

Dear Mississippi, how should I begin?

Water: In heavy rain, cats yowling, the lightning in the sky giving me a glimpse of the Chunky River’s churning. A sudden doom fell upon my shoulders: I was moving somewhere they would name a river Chunky without a trace of irony. Hot on the heels of a life-altering breakup, storm season in Mississippi was the perfect accompaniment to my unraveling. I moved here for love, a love lost 19 days before my entry to the state. I would stand in the rain or at the edge of the Reservoir howling, crying big fat tears, not yet realizing that I had freed myself.

A year later, the rains rolled in, and I was a different person: worn like riverstone, I stood in the deluge, trading kisses. While we adamantly told everyone we weren’t dating, we were slowly building a marriage.

Fire: I lived in Miami, where I would burn through long sleeve tee-shirts, I lived in the Dutch Oven of pollution that encapsulates Atlanta. Nothing prepared me for Mississippi’s summer swelter. I suddenly understood the concept of braising on a whole new level. I was able to truly appreciate my newfound friends’ investments in deep, covered porches. Fire: do any mosquitos burn quite like Mississippi?

Mississippi is where I took my anger and turned it into passion. I have always been outspoken, but Mississippi helped me to hone my candor into a useful tool. I have always been opinionated, but Mississippi made an advocate out of me. I had aways written, but Mississippi made a writer out of me.

I had carried so much anger within me, that proverbial hot stone, and in Mississippi,  the hottest part of the forge for so very many social struggles, I shaped that anger into an instrument for activism and growth.

Air: As a child, I would spread my arms wide and let the wind catch my whole body like a sail. I still do this. Everyone notices the wind in Mississippi: I think everyone holds deep gratitude for the breeze that slices through soupy August, just as we steel ourselves for the icy barrage that whips through January.

The lightning in Mississippi is superior to any other place I have seen: the way it splits the sky, that primal beauty, laden with wonder, awe, and fear. Unburdened by decades of old habits and reputations, I let the lightning split me, let the air move me, spiraling me deeper into my own self. I came to an accord with my intellect, embraced my nerdiness, and allowed the air to bear away the tatters of an old life long outlived.

Earth: I had grown plants, but never had a garden. I am still in no hurry: the trees in Mississippi are incredible. Jackson is an anomaly: after years of asphalt, limestone and pure red clay, to be able to have wild animals afoot, and sensory reassurance of happenstance nature around me in the middle of a city was overwhelming. During a nasty storm, a wild goose took refuge on my apartment porch: we weathered the storm together, he on one side of the glass, me on the other. I sighted a deer across the street from the mall. I have seen a living armadillo trundling alongside Pear Orchard Road.  In Fondren, there is a tomato plant that crawls out of a crack in the sidewalk each year, bearing fruit against all odds. I have seen a red-tailed hawk snatch a jay out of the sky, and a community of bluejays rise up to exact vengeance. All my life, I would listen to Stevie Nicks and sway: she made me feel like a gypsy, a stray cat. I wanted to be untethered, easy to transplant. I put down wide but shallow roots.

Suddenly, I had a home. When my love and I bought a house, we knew it was ours because of the massive grove of trees… the trees that bent nearly to the ground, but did not break in Katrina… but played dervishes in a tornado and dropped most of their branches in a large, interlocking spiral. We thought we had lost them, but in the end, their deep roots saved them. They taught me that we must be willing to root deeply and reach out to one another to have security; that others will shelter your broken, tender body with their own limbs.

Mother Mississippi is no doting mother. She exacts a hefty toll from each of us. The rivers… they go where they want. Tornadoes rake our land like animal claws. The sun is brutal, and Yazoo clay is a trickster spirit of its own. Let’s say Mother Mississippi challenges the concept of your ownership.

I have an elevator speech for the many people who ask me, “WHY MISSISSIPPI?”

I tell them i live on a dead volcano beside a living serpent of a river. I stay because of the black earth streaked with red clay and the blood of civil rights heroes; the impossible green of sweet potato vine; the fossilized epic log jam just outside the city; and the Ragnarok-levels of lightning breaking through the storm outside. Jackson, my slice of earth, is an elemental convergence.

But there is more. Mississippi is a great teacher. I stay because the heat reminds me to kindle my own blazing courage; I stay because the air reminds me to use my breath as fuel for the body and lasting change; I stay because the water reminds me that we ourselves are ever-changing, capable of changing course; and I stay because the earth reminds me that we who choose to stay are interwoven, inextricable… sovereign unto ourselves, but supported by so many.

Today is not Earth Day, but we celebrate it anyway. We can choose to celebrate it daily, to remind us we can make tiny changes in our lives to live more gently; that we can revel in the beauty even as we mourn the injustices done to our habitat and the souls of our neighbors; and that we can fall in love with a place that is prickly, harsh, and perhaps difficult to love…

It is a complicated relationship, and I cherish it.

(originally published in the Jackson Free Press, December, 2009)

My mother spoiled me with books, and my prized possession was a gilded copy of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” which I pored over with all the twisted earnestness of Wednesday Addams. The details never lost their punch between readings: the revelation of the wolf’s fearsome maw beneath granny’s spectacles, the quiver of schadenfreude at Cinderella’s feathered friends blinding her bullying step sisters, and the unfettered glee when wicked tricksters fall to their ruin.

Most importantly, bad children might be rescued in some versions, but they were always punished. While Disney weather was in full effect in my childhood home in Miami, the treacherous forests of German fairy tales served as cautionary tales to a curious child tempted to stray from her path.

Hansel and Gretel is not my favorite fairy tale, but once upon a time, I was a hungry child lost in a gingerbread forest. My grandparents took me to a Christmas event at Walt Disney World, filled with extravagant Christmas decorations, parades, caroling and gorgeous exhibitions, including a wealth of gingerbread architecture covered in candies and delicately piped icing.

These houses and storybook castles were the epitome of my Grimm-fueled fantasies. Consequences were forgotten, and my hand shot forward and claimed a piece of siding. As my dismayed grandparents turned in horror, I jammed the contraband into my mouth. Bad children are always punished. The disappointment at the flavorless pressboard confection was far worse than my grandfather’s spanking.

Despite my initial letdown, I remained enchanted with gingerbread throughout my childhood. I chomped the heads of ginger men with gusto, leaving hundreds of little ginger widows in my wake. When I was deemed fit to partake in civilized functions again, my grandmother took me to high tea, where I had my first fat square of ginger tea bread. With the first bite, I finally understood why Hansel and Gretel were so sorely tempted. Chewy, dense and chocolate colored, this was closer to the fabled gingerbread of my imagination. As I began to bake for myself, I tried many gingerbread recipes, but none satisfied. No longer afraid of wolves and conniving fairies, I stepped off the path.

Beware, reader: There are always consequences, and this time, they’re delightful. This is no mild-mannered, blond ginger spice cake; this is dangerous, original Grimm’s gingerbread—fragrant, dark and fudgy. This is the sort of inescapable temptation that lures Hansel and his sister into harm’s way, the sort of treacle confection Monsieur Wolf scents as he lopes through a deeply greening wood. Do not be afraid of the half cup of spices involved in this recipe, because all wonderful adventures take a feat of daring.

GINGERBREAD FOR GRETEL

1 cup vegetable oil, plus extra for the pan
1 cup cane sugar
1 cup robust or blackstrap molasses
2-4 tablespoons crystallized ginger, minced
2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten with a fork
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 tablespoon fresh ginger root, peeled and grated
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 greedy pinch of freshly ground black pepper
1 cup water
1 tablespoon baking soda
Several handfuls of blanched almond slivers
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Even if you’re using silicone bakeware, generously oil your favorite bundt mold, muffin tins or brownie tin. This is perilously sticky batter. Sprinkle almonds into the bottom of the pan. You want a goodly amount, but not full coverage. Imagine fallen logs littering the Black Forest’s floor.

Set your water to boil in a small saucepan, so it’s ready to use when you need it.

Combine the oil, sugar, molasses and crystallized ginger. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.

Sift together the flour, spices and salt. Add wet mixture to the dry ingredients slowly until evenly combined.

Remove boiling water from heat and add baking soda. Brace for the foam. Rapidly incorporate this solution to the batter, and pour into pans.

Bake in the center of the oven until a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean; a full pan will bake for 30-40 minutes, while muffins will run you anywhere from 15-20 minutes. Almonds will be perfectly toasted inside your batter.

Some people choose to top their gingerbread with whipped cream, ice cream, more candied ginger, lemon curd or even marmalade, but this fairy tale gingerbread requires no embellishment.

My writing habit lies crumpled in the corner.  I need to find my way back to the place where I’m writing for craft, not writing to clean a wound.

There’s a creative non-fiction class beginning January 8th. It’s called Shut Up and Write! Classroom hours miraculously fit into our frenzied schedule, and I’m hoping to be able to make it happen.

Lately, I’ve realized that stuff means far less to me than experience. A writing seminar would rattle my cage and ruffle this bird’s feathers. If you were considering sending me a Holiday card, or any sort of Yuletide gesture, please consider placing a drop in my bucket instead. Folks who donate have the option of giving me a (non-fiction) writing prompt, which I will fulfill, even if I hate it.

How many times do you get to tell a hothead like me to shut up (and write!)?

• Anusara Immersion: Bhagavad Gita studies, plus Tattvas next time around.
• Square Foot Garden: commence! I have 21 plots of forthcoming tastiness, including lots of basil, tomatoes, and chili peppers. Basils, tomatoes and chili peppers rule my summery world. I recently purchased some lovely heirloom tomatoes for eating, and I hoarded the seeds. Since I don’t know the varieties, I named them for fun: Rhumba Panties! Tangerine Coinpurse! Sneaky Stoplight!! I have crazy happy Rainbow Lights Chard, spicy Mesclun mix and wintry squash seeds for later. Loving husband wandered endlessly around stores at my whim, and then braved the sun while using power tools. Yay, loving husband!!
• Friday was fixed on, er, Friday. She has been extraordinarily sweet-natured to us since.
• Teaching Yoga: I taught my first studio class in a million years last Thursday. I’ve been meaning to post about it thoroughly, but I’m facing the sudden and pressing reality that I am teaching THREE classes in the first week of June. If you were coming to my class, what would you want to do?
• My sister‘s tenth birthday is in a week. We’re trying to make it pretty special for her. She’ll be spending the summer in Florida, and I hope it’ll be completely awesome.

Bad Stuff

• Steroid shot for crazy flare. Steroid + weekly immune suppressants = double suck.
• The dogs fought last Saturday, and Matthew and I were caught in the crossfire. M. got bitten once, and I got two nasty puncture wounds. We went ballistic and tried to cleanse the wounds of the contagion. Matthew’s was great!
• My left hand swelled up like a balloon. No, seriously. It was so bad that when I was sitting in the doctor’s office, I was quietly chanting Don’t pop… Don’t pop… Don’t pop…
• Antibiotics that make me delirious and sweaty + Antibiotic Shot + steroid shot + weekly immune suppressants = Ridiculous crazy quadruple suck.
• Friday has Evil Tail Syndrome.  Seriously.  I wish I was kidding, but for the last few months, at least daily, she freaks out, attacks her tail viciously, screams in pain and does it again.  It’s very disturbing. Anyone else out there with a completely neurotic animal who thinks its tail is out to do them harm?
• Yoga really sucks when you are having to hold awesome ever-improving alignment without using the two outer left ball mounts/fingers.

Sleep now.

I’ll be taking a baker’s dozen to the Ink Spot this evening.  We’ll be working on the rose and the poppy this time, which will round out the largest components of the design.  The rose is a Handel, one of my mother’s favorite flowers.  She grew one next to our front door, untrellised, and the carnivorous beast used to demand blood toll from nearly every visitor.  I can’t tell you how many times that damned rose stabbed me in the left arm growing up, so this seems like fitting tribute.  I planted poppies in our garden when we were still considering a backyard wedding, hoping for a sea of orange and red.  They were a prominent motif on our wedblog (along with ginkgo), and I used them in my bouquet for our cheesy awesome Vegas wedding.

All of these pieces of my life are beautiful, especially together.

Here’s what happened in our neighborhood. Most of the trees around here start branching out well over the tops of our houses, so a lot of these pictures don’t accurately portray the soul-crippling magnitude of these downed limbs.

http://picasaweb.google.com/birdofparadox/TornadoApril42008