Sisters of Perpetual Disorder: How to Make an Egg Roll

Put 16 women (and several bottles of plum wine) in one room, and a strange kind of music happens. It’s the sound of a half-dozen simultaneous conversations and a chorus of responsive interjections—Oh no…Really?...Oh my lord…You’ve GOT to be kidding—all punctuated with bursts of laughter, coughing jags, even snorts. Women drift easily, effortlessly between conversations, ducking out of one, joining another, returning to the first, adding a single note to a third. If you step back, close your eyes and just listen, you’ll hear a lilting, rolling song.

That’s what I noticed at a recent installment of the Sisters of Perpetual Disorder potluck movable feast. Sixteen of us (see totally candid shot of our feet) cooked up an oriental storm for the dinner’s Asian theme. The food, as usual, was incredible and included rice, spring rolls, bean curd, curried shrimp, two chicken dishes, Asian ribs, a tartlet tower, lemon tart, coconut pie and much more. No fortune cookies—we make our own fortunes, thank you very much. Potluck leftovers for all. But those songs, that music women make when they’re together, that’s the real sustenance of the Sisters dinners. SPD “greatest hits” moment: one woman, after finishing a bite-sized white chocolate tartlet, rolled her eyes, sat back, and said, “Mmm…I think I need a cigarette.” And she’s a non-smoker.

The dinners so far have been mostly women over 50, but we’re hoping some of our younger women friends will come next time. The Sisters could use a few young recruits to keep the Order going and to add some thrilling spiky crescendos to our song. The novices could learn a thing or two from our sage femme life experience. Plus, they could give us an elbow jab before we doze off face-first in our mu gu gai pan.

How to make an egg roll? Give it a little shove.

Octever

In South Dakota, there’s really no autumn. There’s only
W I N T E R, spring, summer, and a brief interim from the end of summer to the beginning of full-on winter that I call Octever, a combination of October and whatever. September is still mostly summer. We’re still harvesting, canning, cutting flowers. And we haven’t turned on the heat yet. But from October on, it’s a different story. (One Halloween—no kidding—most South Dakota towns postponed trick-or-treating for several days to wait out a blinding blizzard.) So from October until Jack Blizzard settles down over us for the long haul, it could be in the 70’s one day, in the 30’s that night, in the mid-40’s and snowing the next day, and a balmy 55 that night. It could be pouring rain, or we could have sustained winds that blow laundry off the line. Octever keeps plains people on their toes.

At Uncannery Row, we got the last of the tomatoes cooked up into pasta sauce, got the last of the cukes salted & dressed, and brought in the houseplants that summered in the yard. And, in homage to our Mother Earth News roots, we finally put in a wood stove. I can hear my grandma’s mumbled, under-her-breath comment in my ear: Why on earth would you WANT something we couldn’t wait to get rid of? But seriously, Grandma, there’s nothing as cozy as a warm wood fire, the smell of burning wood, and a mug of Sumatran coffee warming on the iron stovetop. In my 20’s—my previous wood-stove life—our safety precautions included love and idiot optimism. Now they include a firebrick surround, a regulation fire extinguisher, chimney brush extensions, and two smoke alarms. Funny how age can make one so cautious in some ways and absolutely reckless in others (like eating dark chocolate truffles for breakfast or spending perfectly good money on glass finials).

We had a brief snow about a week ago. Then we had a week of steady drizzle and cloudy skies. Oh, Octever. By the time the sun peeked out yesterday, Ray and I were about ready to climb up on the barn roof and jump—a person can only take so much gloom. On the other hand, it’s decent of Jack to give us a little pre-winter taste; it forced us to drag ourselves around in the sleyn (sleet + grey + rain) preparing for the inevitable—shovels out, parkas aired, down quilt at the ready, snow boots by the door. We’ve stocked the larder (does anybody say larder anymore?) with half a lamb and a deer our friend found already neatly packaged out in his field (I have to believe that to ward off bad Bambi flashbacks), and our summer’s garden bounty is put up in jars or in one of two freezers.

I’d put the spinning wheel by the wood stove, don my flannel cap, and work on my stash of merino and camel hair, but I’m afraid the whole prairie life scene would cause a rift in the fabric of time…

Road Trip Reverie Rewind

Whenever I take a road trip by myself I think, “Self, this would be a good chance to do some centering, to meditate, to reintegrate body, mind & spirit.” And this is always my intention. But Ram Das, 70’s guru of be-here-now-ness would be horrified at the way my mind skitters off and dances from one bizarrely random thought to another—little vignettes of mindlessness. So as the prairie rolls past and my mouth is chanting ohm nama shivaya ohm, here’s what’s going on in my brain…

Those sunflowers look like tired soldiers. Or dug-up Chinese imperial guards. Or puff pastries on sticks.

Mmmm…I’m hungry.

If Dave Matthews had come to dinner back when I invited him, we’d totally be best friends now, and he’d be stopping by once in a while for coffee and a game of cribbage. Bet he’s sorry.

Supermodels walk like Lipizzaner stallions.

I shoulda stopped to take a picture of that. I shoulda stopped to take a picture of that. I shoulda stopped to take a picture of that.

How did I miss Laura Nyro back in the 70’s? Donavan…hmm…I still don't know what to make of him.

I could live in Kennebec. Wait, no I couldn’t.

We should turn our place into a B & B. Every outbuilding could be a guest room, with names like “Barn Room,” “Grain Shed Room,” “Loafing Shed Room,” “Chicken House Room.” Ray would have to paint “don’t harass the peacocks” signs.

Deep-fried tofu: delicacy or oxymoron…

If I had it to do over again, I’d try out for Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. Or be a Shindig dancer. Or be “best grip” on the set of Man from U.N.C.L.E.

What’s a “best grip”?

Samsara. All life is suffering, leading to cycles of birth, death, rebirth. This is a day or a lifetime or a thousand lifetimes.

Who named Pukwana? Were they just goofing around but the name stuck?

Cool. If I tilt my head and squint, that foggy bean field looks like the ocean. I shouldn’t do this while I’m driving. Cool.

Prairie dogs have feelings, too.

Jesse Winchester sings like an angel-boy. Keb Mo is hot. Bonnie Raitt is hot. Mexico is hot. I'm hot. Those mudflaps are hot. 

I don’t care what she names the new baby. I’m calling him/her Viggo/Violet.

Are we there yet?

Cormac McCarthy isn’t writing books fast enough to suit me. I should email him.

In a truly just world, pear hips & big thighs would be en vogue.

Mmmm…I’m hungry.

Are we there yet?

West Meets Beach [Party]

I just got back from the Western Literature Association annual conference in Spearfish, SD. I was one of four women poets reading on a panel. Our friend, Kathleen Breem went too, to read an honest-to-gosh scholarly paper she’d written. You can see us in the pic, L to R: Lori Roarpaff, Linda Orbatch, Peg Pearlman, me (Marlene) and Kathleen.

We had an awesome time. For one thing, the Black Hills all dressed up in their autumn frills make me cry like a little girl. For another thing, the four-day combo of western literature and good friend silliness was delightfully surreal—imagine Willa Cather and Cormack McCarthy co-starring in Annette Funicello’s “Pajama Party,” where the crazy kids make a campfire, drink whiskey shots, and yak about western literary archetypes. And boys. And girls. AWE-some.

In addition to literary goodness, I got to meet up with friends Bob and Deardre, who live in the Hills. I got to cruise Spearfish Canyon, stick my head in Spearfish Creek at the traditional baptism rocks (Ray and I have been blessing ourselves in the creek for about 20 years now, whenever we’re in the Hills), buy truffles at Chubby Chipmunk in Deadwood (mmm…crème brule truffles), throw peanut shells on the floor at the Chop House, hear a great band & dance out a few kinks. If you wanna know what a room full of English majors (including me) looks like dancing, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8UI_X-Mk1M

As much as I love the Hills, I was glad to get back to the flatland. I’m strangely soothed being able to see to the horizon, under a sky dappled with clouds and so vast that I remember my smallness.

So now I’m back, further behind than ever, multitasking to the point of implosion, trying to freeze a mental picture of golden aspen in my mind’s icebox, and trying to figure out how I can make a living rambling around the country reading poems, laughing with friends, and working on my dance moves. There must be a government bailout program for that, right?

Gothic Peas

Flannery O’Connor, saint foncé of southern gothic fiction, wrote brilliant, often disturbing, and frequently comical stories that combine religious themes with violent imagery. She also tended peacocks. Peacocks. I’m certainly not a brilliant writer, but I do think I understand how life with peacocks might feed a gothic spirit.

Ray and I share the Row with a 14 adult and 13 baby peacocks. They all have names, though they could care less. And it seems we now have a permanent resident wild turkey hen, Hedda Gobbler, and her three healthy chicks, as well.

Like all good gothic characters, our peacocks live on the fringe. In spite of their affinity for handouts, they do not want to be touched by humans. And while they’re willing to roost in the rafters of an open-sided shed if it’s 30 below, they will not be rounded up, penned, caged, or chicken-housed. We live around them, not with them—we feed, water, and protect them, but they will never be ours.

The splendor of male peacocks belies their violence. During breeding season, adult males will face off and circle each other slowly. Then, in a sudden burst of flapping wings they’re up, diving at each other mid-air, slashing away with bony spurs on the backs of both legs. Down, circle, up, slash. Repeat to exhaustion.

Like the suddenness of O’Connor’s violent outbursts, peacock mating is violent in its explosive brevity. A male flutters his train full of eyes—spooky enough—thrums wing feathers, rattles tail feathers, and high-steps toward a hen. Then he’s suddenly on top of her, beating his wings and yelling triumphantly, for what seems like a split-second. Check out this video of the dance: http://ishare.rediff.com/video/nature-wildlife/peacock-mating/330416

We learn gothic lessons from our peas, too, lessons that are oddly beautiful and often terribly sad. Like this morning, when Ray found one of the quints, about a month old now, dead on the ground near the Roosting Tree. We knew something was wrong even before we found her, because the flock had been frantically calling since dawn.

So I sit sometimes in my greenhouse office, voyeur to pealife, weakly channeling Flannery. Is it any wonder that my poems are rife with tormented saints, unhappy coincidence, and the aloof or twisted faithful?

The Fruits of Our Labor

I need to re-read Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and the intro and cantos I-V of Dante’s Inferno, his happy treatise on the special levels of hell for various kinds of sinners, for class this coming week. So what have I spent my Labor Day weekend doing? Well...

1. On Friday, Mom and I went shopping in the Big City. Ray and I are upgrading from a full-sized mattress to a king, which should comfortably hold two adults and two dogs, though I’m not sure life will be the same without the occasional paw to the kidney and dog-sprawl suffocation. Mom and I comparison shopped, met Ray to seal the mattress deal, then ran around town looking for chair cushions and Indian curries.

2. On Saturday morning, I spent an hour on the back porch, watching a spider the size of a .50-cent piece repair a hole in her web.

3. On Saturday afternoon, Ray and I picked wild plums until he had to leave for a gig. Then a couple of friends and I spent the rest of the day (and half the night) processing the plums and a few wild grapes we found into 44 jars of gorgeous jam. Mom brought us a crockpot full of dinner, and by the time the jam was done and we sat down to eat, we had scraped and scrubbed plum jam from every corner, surface, and crevice of the kitchen and ourselves.

My canning method – Step 1: Drink lots of coffee. Sit on the patio and chat. Step 2: Turn up the stereo, 70’s hits. Step 3: Discover after an hour or more of steaming, stewing and cranking, that the little food mills you counted on are no match for wild plums. Step 4: Run to town for $50 worth of heavy-duty food mills. Step 4: Process plums, finally. Step 5: Drink more coffee. Step 5: Load up canners, set timer. Step 6: Switch to red wine and head for the patio. Step 7: Remove jars to counter and squeal with delight each time a jar lid pops. Step 8: Clean up. Maybe.

4. On Sunday, Ray and I made a run to town for groceries and more canning supplies. Then he picked apples, and I picked cucumbers and dill. In the evening, we headed to the Big City again, this time for the wedding of two women, poets & friends from school. Since same-sex marriage is still not legal in SD, they had a commitment ceremony. It was beautiful and quite moving, with a UCC pastor officiating, vows they wrote themselves, attendants, prayers of community support, and journals on every reception table in which guests were invited to write haiku in celebration of the couple’s happiness. The bride wore a gorgeous white satin dress, and the other bride wore a lovely white suit. Everything was trimmed in rose pink and brown. There was music, dancing, family & friends, and a whole lotta love.

I know gay marriage is still a hot-button issue for many folks, but really, when I pick up a newspaper or watch more than 5 minutes of CNN, I KNOW with certainty that love is an increasingly rare and amazing gift, and we should be thrilled for anyone lucky enough to find it. Period.

5. Today, Monday, I spent the morning making Sweet Dill Medley, a concoction I dreamed up that includes cukes, white radishes, green onions, red pepper, pineapple, garlic and ginger, all pickled together in a sweet dill brine. Ray’s been processing apples all day—freezing slices for pies and canning applesauce. And I finished another knit Lyra hat (copied from Lyra’s hat in The Golden Compass), which Jada “volunteered” to model for pics.

I could find plenty more to do, but I guess I’ve put off my schoolwork about as long as I dare. Time to settle in with an iced coffee and the Inferno. And is there a special place in Hell for procrastinators? I can’t remember. I’ll look it up sometime…later.

Then & Now: Teacher's Edition

I met with three new college undergrad classes yesterday for the first time; one more starts next week. Ah, a new fall semester at Little Town U! And because I tried to pay attention, I had some “aha” moments about the contrast between walking into class in 1991-ish when I first started teaching, and walking into class yesterday...

Then: The first day of class is a happy lawn party. You get to take the class outside, sit in the grass, and wax philosophical with inquiring, like-minded friends.

Now: Your anxiety is so high by the first day of class (everything depends on student-consumer evaluations) that it causes spontaneous muscle spasms, which students confuse with clumsiness and/or senility. Your class is in the basement of the physics building. You like the dark; it hides your trembling.

Then: Wearing a calf-length paisley peasant skirt with white ankle-length silk long john bottoms sticking out, duct-taped Birkies, and a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt for the first day of class helps students relax and see you as their groovy, non-threatening older sister.

Now: Your all-black skirted ensemble and sensible black pumps strike fear into new students and help them focus on the fact that learning is not for the queasy or faint of heart.

Then: You distribute your 2-page syllabus—sprinkled with hand-drawn yin/yangs, happy faces, and quotes from Jung, Adrienne Rich and Joni Mitchell—at the very end of class, telling students to call if they have questions.

Now: You distribute your 18-page syllabus—sprinkled with state-required disclaimers, learning goals & outcomes, rubrics for academic writing, student services information, and state/university/department/course policies—at the beginning of class, and you spend the entire class making sure students understand their rights and responsibilities. You have them sign a “contract” documenting the fact that they’ve read and understand the syllabus.

Then: You open class by reading a poem about doing your own laundry for the first time. You spend some time laughing and chatting about the students’ lives, Japanese studies tying jumping to bone growth, and why Howard Jones is the genius king of techno-pop. Then you let class out early.

Now: You open class with the Ram Das quote, “Be here now,” explaining that being present in every moment of “our collective learning process” is worth xx participation points, but only if one’s cell phone is turned off before entering class. Then you go over the syllabus. You don’t quite finish, although class runs 5 minutes long.

Then: You hope all 30 of your students will be exuberant English majors by the end of the semester.

Now: You hope you to learn all 65 students’ names by the end of the semester.

Then: I love teaching.

Now. I love teaching.

This was yesterday’s most profound revelation—I still love teaching. In spite of the anxiety, the ever-increasing bureaucracy, heavier teaching loads, and customer-service orientation of higher ed, the sleepless weekends and nights hunched over the dining room table, and the occasional frustrations I heap on my whipping-boy, Ray (his patience is all the evidence I need of true love), I’m grateful to be doing what I do.

I do it for the occasional spark I see in a student, knowing I can fan it into an all-out brushfire. I do it for the moment a student crosses from confusion to clarity. I do it for the ex-students who still call, email, and FB me, some of them now with their own ex-students. I do it because sometimes I hear, out of the blue and many years later, from a student who suddenly realized she/he got something out of my class. I do it to sneak my fascination with language under the skin of pliant young people, where it will worm its way into their psyches. If someone else would do the grading, the job would be near-perfect.

So let the leaves turn. Let the September rains fall. Shake out the jackets. Trade the sandals for shoes. Bring on the heating pad, the coffee, and the Doritos. Come on, Semester. Let’s see what you’ve got.