Blizzard Survival Kit

Jack Blizzard had his first major tantrum of the season yesterday. It hit South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. It’s a gen-you-whine snow-in on the Row, with an impossible 7’ drift running the length of our long driveway. While we’re waiting for a kind-hearted tractor neighbor and/or county road crew, I thought I’d offer my essential Blizzard Survival Kit…

1. Coffee. You’ll need a couple pounds stored in an opaque, airtight container in the fridge. Then you’ll need another couple pounds stored in airtight bags in the freezer. You might consider ½-decaf if you’ll be snowed in with another human; you wouldn’t want to be too jumpy. But even worse—for all concerned—would be running out.

2. A larder. Out here on the prairie, you want a fully-stocked pantry at all times. Some people, I won’t mention names, have a pantry full of rice noodles, canned oysters, maple syrup, palm fruit pulp, pad thai sauce, canned tomatoes, refried beans, six kinds of crackers, microwave popcorn, and enough pickled jalapenos to stock every Taco Bell in the U.S. So maybe they don’t think in practical, menu-driven terms, but don’t judge; have you ever tried rice noodles with maple syrup and jalapenos? Yeah, I didn’t think so. They might also have a roasting hen, 5 lbs of tilapia, two boxes of henna, a bazillion wonton skins, a dozen candles, half a carrot cake, 3 lbs of coffee (see #1), an old bag of tater tots, 25 lbs of parrot food, a pound of dried parsley and 25 lbs of venison in the freezer.

3. Woolies. You may think you’re too cool for long underwear, but when the snow blows horizontally in a 50 mph wind, you’ll think again. Without the woolies, pale pink prairie skin looks like red cellophane after a 3-minute walk to the loafing shed.

4. A loafing shed. This is for your peacocks. They’ll want somewhere to roost out of the wind, preferably with a snow-free dirt floor below, where you can leave them cat food and black oil sunflower seeds, daily, at 10 a.m. sharp. A flock of 18 hungry peacocks marching toward your back door at 10:05 is a scary sight. Imagine the Skeksies in Dark Crystal, only leaner & meaner.

5. Chocolate. Four kinds of dark chocolate – with ginger, panko breadcrumbs, sea salt, and cayenne. Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which causes the brain to release dopamine and oxytocin – chemicals involved in falling in love, relaxation, nurturing and orgasm. Avoid chocolate if you’re snowed in with relatives and/or ex’es.

6. Empty carbs. You’ll need Doritos, mashed potatoes, white bread with butter & sugar, and plenty of pasta with butter and parmie. These become especially important from Day 3 on in the event of a snow-in. The semi-comatose carb sedation will help prevent domestic unrest once the chocolate runs out.

7. Layered outerwear. You’ll want flannel-lined jeans and a sweatshirt, insulated coveralls, parka with a fur-lined hood, knee-high snow boots, a wool hat, insulated waterproof gloves, and a wool scarf to wrap around your face. You won’t be able to breathe, see or move, so you may as well stay inside…skip #7.

8. Dish TV. In the midst of a blizzard, all of your self-righteous pontificating about the evils of Bridezillas, Hell’s Kitchen, the golf channel and Nick Jr. goes out the window along with your heat. Trust me – you’ll be happy to stumble across that Petticoat Junction marathon.

9. Paper books and flashlights with fresh batteries. Your power WILL eventually go out. Books will help you survive the TV/Internet DT’s, which set in about 20 minutes after your power goes out.

10. Knitting. A good yarn stash and a 4-day snow-in could net you at least half a dozen adorable Christmas presents. Search the Web for fast, easy knitting patterns on Day 1, before you lose power. Remember, knitting needles are NOT weapons.

11. A wood stove. Have an ample supply of cut wood, dry and in the house. Have a folding Army cot or two near the stove. When the power goes out, pretend you’re camping in the Himalayas, on your way to meet the Dalai Lama. Chanting ohm nama shivaya ohm helps with the shivering.

12. Wine & Bailey’s. Ditto the importance of the semi-coma mentioned in #6.

13. Board/Bored games. On Days 1-2, these will help pass the time and create the illusion of an old-fashioned farm holiday season. On Days 3-4, they come in handy as non-lethal projectiles.

14. Binoculars. From Day 3 on, you’ll need these in order to stare longingly at the Interstate traffic ½-mile away. This will remind you to keep bathing, shaving your legs, and getting dressed in the morning—life is going on somewhere, and someday, you’ll be part of it again.

15. A comfy bed (if the heat is still on). If you’re not dug out by Day 4, take to your bed. Load up with carbs first for heavy, uninterrupted sleep. Pile on the down quilts. Know that when they dig you out, a kindly social worker will arrive to do a “well person” check called in by your mother. She will wake you to make sure you’re still breathing. Tell her you’ll get up as soon as the coffee’s ready.

Post-Snow Pea Census

After a couple days of bone-chilling cold and bitter northern winds, the temp climbed enough yesterday to result in hours of hypnotic snowfall. Jack Blizzard has cleaned up the dingy brown of prairie winter with a beautiful blanket of white. A good snow muffles sound, too, so the Row is exceptionally quiet today. I’ve got a batch of bison jerky in the dehydrator, a pot of vegetable soup cooked up, two hats and a pair of fingerless gloves to finish knitting, and—argh—a late faculty evaluation to get done.

Ray was out early with the snowblower, making peacock paths. We lost another of the ABBA boys sometime over the past two days. He’d been limping around on legs that looked broken or splayed, until finally, he wasn’t able to roost or make it to the food. Ray found him this morning, a peasicle tucked out of the wind behind the bird food can. He’ll go in the burning cage later today, ashes to ashes. So now we are 13.

I’m not pining, though. Mom reminds me that had the pea-boy lived, I would have done myself in trying to rig up some sort of pea-walker to help him get around. And when I run the numbers in my head—6 peacocks when we moved in, 13 now a year-and-a-half later—it’s scary. I have visions of myself wandering the acreage one day…I’ll be reading poetry, dressed only in peacock feathers, nibbling on gamebird pellets, with 2 panting dogs and 150 high-stepping peafowl in tow. I’ll lose my capacity for human vocalization. I’ll scratch up grass seed with my overgrown toenails. I’ll sleep at night perched on the footrail of our brass bed frame. Tourists will drive by slowly, hoping to catch a glimpse of the “crazy peacock lady.” Poor Ray will have to arm himself against the reporters crouching in the brush, their high-powered telephoto lenses perched on tree branches.

X-Treme nurturing seems hereditary in my family—my mom keeps her mail carrier supplied with Chex mix—and it could very well be my undoing if Jack Blizzard and Mother Nature, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t occasionally step in to even up the scales. But Ray carved out a beautiful path to the pyramid building, so I’ll ponder life’s amazing tendancy toward balance as I head out to feed the barn cats…

Truffle-Gathering

The county plow guy finally went down the road yesterday morning around 10. Ray had been shoveling and snow-blowing drifts in the driveway for a couple hours when, in an amazing gesture of holiday generosity, the plow guy came back and scooped all the way down the driveway. I felt like crying. But instead, I got out of here as fast as I could and went shopping. Civilization. Whew. Ray doesn’t know how close he came to being forced to make flour & salt dough ornamental knitting needle toppers...I was seriously stir-crazy.

So today, with my winter demons released, I’d like to get some writing done. I write mostly poetry because there’s still something mysterious and inexpressible and (because I share the masochism of the sporadically insecure) painful about the process of writing poems. And I can flog myself even more knowing that 9.9 people out of 10 (that poor .9 guy) won’t ever read a poem that isn’t funny, filthy, or rhymey. But I haven’t finished a poem since I published a book in November, and I’m feeling sluggish, bloated, lazy. I’d rather bake something.

I write other stuff, too. I thought in this season of overeating I’d use my favorite metaphor—food—to explain how I think about different kinds of writing.

Blogging is like a Butterfinger (chilled, not frozen). It’s pure pleasure, a secret indulgence you really shouldn’t overdo. It’s sweet, chocolaty & peanut-buttery, and has virtually no nutritional value except the gazillion calories that migrate instantly to your thighs.

Letter-writing is like penuche. Penuche-making is a dying art that was once practiced regularly, especially at holidays. It takes a little time, patience, and a Martha Stewart candy thermometer. Not much nutrition here either, but it doesn’t matter, since penuche is a labor of love meant to be given away.

Short story writing is like biscuits & gravy. Roll up your sleeves. You need some muscle to knead the dough, and the process can really mess up your kitchen. It isn’t complicated, but without the right ingredients in the proper proportions, you’ll have flat, rock-hard biscuits and lumpy gravy that no one will touch. There’s some nutritional value, maybe a few carbs for energy and some protein in the gravy to keep you digesting for a while.

Poetry is a delicacy, petit foie gras in saffron truffle sauce, made from the rarest, finest, freshest ingredients, rooted out by pigs named Sarah or Maude, and gathered by hand in the most unexpected and unadulterated places on earth (or elsewhere). These ingredients have little-known and poorly-understood nutritional, medicinal, maybe even metaphysical properties that somehow feed the body and support the spirit. But this stuff is labor-intensive. Boy howdy, you’d better have an apron on, and you can plan on spending many long hours tethered to the stove, sweating like a racehorse. And when, after starting, stirring, feeding the concoction to the dogs, then starting over again you finally get it right, you’re still not done. You have to make it LOOK good, perfectly elegant and effortless, a Monet en plat. This stuff can make you laugh & cry if it all comes together in the kitchen, and its serving presentation can make grown men run for the coat room to weep in secret.

Today we’re supposed to have a bonafide warmup, with temps in the 10-15 above range. The peacocks will come down from the rafters and forage in the snow, the dogs will want to stay out longer and play, and the barn cats will head to the grain shed for a hand or two of poker with the mice. Still, any delicacy worth gathering is buried deep under Jack Blizzard’s frozen feet, so I’ll whip up some cinnamon scones topped, of course, with crushed Butterfingers. I owe my Aunt Daisy a letter…

A Good Day for Snowetry

The first real, sticky snow is falling on Uncannery Row today. It looks like a Currier & Ives calendar. It makes me want to wrap presents. Mull cider. String cranberries. Sing carols. I can’t help it—I’m a hopeless, really hopeless, romantic.

We lost Snowflake, our wild barn kitty, last week after the first hard freeze. She’d always been a little wobbly, so I suspect a generally weak constitution. It’s sad, though, and I’ll admit I cried a little even though she’d never let me get closer than 5 feet to her. I haven’t seen much of her mom, Snowball, since, but she's eating the food I put out for her in the pyramid. There’s a black cat, too, we call him Spook, but I haven’t seen him for a while, either.

The flock is fine, though, still 15 strong, and this year’s babies are getting hard to pick out from the adults. They’re all roosting in the communal Tree in the yard at night, and there’s prolonged fussing & whining at night as they jockey for spots. Fifteen is a lot of big birds for one small ash tree.

I got to attend a reception in the Big City last weekend for poets and artists who collaborated on paired works of poems with paintings, drawings, or photos. The poem I selected for the exhibit is St. John of God, printed below. I wrote it when my friend Dave died alone and miserable after years of alcoholism. I wondered how the outcome might have changed—how everyone’s life would change— if we knew (& believed) how loved we’ve really been, all along.

Many good friends were at the reception, Ray, my daughter and her paramour, a friend who designed a poetry book I put together, my midlife lifelines, some of the Wild Women. These people are gifted poets themselves or amazingly talented artists in other mediums—words, counsel, hospitality, building materials & power tools, food, graphic deisgn, humor. So as this gorgeous snow drifts down, I’m grateful for every delicate flake, and for the beautiful, creative people around me. Told ya. Hopeless romantic.

ST. JOHN OF GOD
for the dead

What if there is no dreaming, no dancing,
no opalescent mist in which we float
suddenly weightless or winged,
what if trumpets don’t sound
and in no distant fog
do chords come clean from harps,
what if there never were seraphim
swallowed in flames of love
so radiant we turn our heads.

What if there is only a pause
a mirrored moment in which we see,
most of us for the first time,
our selves, and in that moment know
with certainty that we have been bathed
in love since the beginning
that all along while we wept and prayed
saved unanswered letters
left the receiver on the hook

we were pure love twisted into human shapes
so, like impulse and receptor cell
we fit, and could only spark together,
blood and bone going up in a flash of love
so radiant people turned their heads.
What if that moment is all we have,
one gauzy white curtain drawn quickly
over a small dim window
then out, out, into the long night.

St. John, was it looking out
too soon that drove you mad?
Or could you bless me with that moment now,
walk me past the mirror now,
with the window still wide open,
curtain billowing like a sail
until I know love, love, love,
that sea of flame and beautiful sorrow
so radiant I turn my head?

(Amen.)