When it comes to personality types, I once formally identified the most irritating as the I/Me and the But/Then/I - a sad duo - who believe that the world most certainly REVOLVES around them. Not worth a whole blog post. You can tell the subtle difference between the two by listening to the words they use in their everyday conversations - or better yet by following them on Twitter and reading their updates on other social media.

A Little Expressionism, Surrealistically Speaking.

Lucian Freud: Eyes Wide Open by Phoebe Hoban
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow.

I never respected the artist Lucian Freud nor his unsettling work.

Now, at least, I understand how the man was driven by his deep-seated, personal need to dominate - to command obedience even from the very colors going down onto the canvas. He mixed specific paint for every individual brush stroke. He persevered in his life's work until the very light, itself, at last seemed subservient to him as he worked his will on the surfaces of the paintings.

Of course, we knew that the works of Lucian Freud, themselves, were nothing like any before or since. They stand alone as one man's expressionistic/surrealistic vision of the world as only he saw it;  his own lusts, fears, doubts, inability to accept less than absolute control, were all reflected in the eyes of his subjects who sat for hours, weeks, months for him to complete one portrait.

Working document retrieved from Bacon's studio showing Lucian Freud photographed by Daniel Earson.

That he could compel everyone he knew, both men and women - beautiful and not - to throw off their clothing and assume unfavorable positions (to the viewer) for him is, itself, a sign of how Freud surreptitiously  commanded complete obedience from his family and friends.

I won't go into all of that now. The grandson of Sigmund Freud - compulsive gambler, risk taker, filling London from corner to corner with his illegitimate children and cast-off lovers, painting all night and most of the day, using his own unclothed adult children in his paintings is simply not my favorite personality in the art world, but I think I've come to grips with the work itself. That is an accomplishment for me, personally, albeit the paintings of Lucian Freud have commanded some of the highest prices in modern art history.

The book is heavily annotated but somehow doesn't read like a research paper. Many of the insights are actually author Phoebe Hoban's and she gives other thinkers and analysts credits when credits are due. When I went back to look at the paintings again, I noticed many of her personal explanations and descriptions and could finally see something amazing, if not "beautiful," in the startling and disconcerting paintings.


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Cecilia Dominic; Holding Her Own In the Midst of Good Company

Long Shadows by Cecilia Dominic
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I went back and gave The Mountain's Shadow, the first novel by Cecilia Dominic,  a four star rating after comparing it to several works of much the the same ilk written by two (highly lauded and many times awarded) American literary giants.

Now, I'm giving Long Shadows four stars as well. I enjoyed it even more than the first one!

Look at this young woman! She will soon be the darling of the genre authors. More than one genre, if you ask me! Cecilia Dominic!

 Cecilia Dominic

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"...Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." John 20:29

Curry? The Answer is Reangthai.

I'll publish a pictorial next week of the modernized dining room.

The rains came down, but we three friends would not give up our planned lunch at Reangthai. In truth, curry is good for everyone, especially during the "monsoon" season. Even when no one joins me there, I try not to miss my usual Friday treat.

We took our time, enjoying our Thai tea from long-stemmed glasses, sipping our soup, spooning out our dishes carefully over the fluffy rice. I almost never order anything other than curry. The taste is sublime.

You can tell three things about the restaurant from the food itself: the produce is fresh, the knives are sharp and the kitchen is clean.

Chef Donna has been cooking authentic family recipes in the same location for twenty years. We were lucky, yesterday, that she had the time to come out of the kitchen for a few minutes and greet the patrons personally. I usually simply send "compliments" back via waitstaff.

I discovered Reangthai and Chef Donna years ago, when I attended numerous meetings in Tallahassee. The food never wavers - it is remarkable and beautifully plated.

My favorite dish is available seasonally and only at the dinner service. The snapper. To die for. The older we friends get, the less we drive at night. As the days get longer, and the twilight begins to linger into late evening, my number one priority becomes whole Florida snapper a la Reangthai.

Meanwhile, I'll keep my Friday lunches going. The waitstaff is enthusiastic and diner-oriented. One young gentleman met me at the door yesterday to remind me of a dish that I said I was going to try this week. You see, I'm hatching a plan to eat my way through the lunch menu, even if I have to sandwich in a curry dish every other week!

(I apologize for using internet images of Reangthai in this review. Stay tuned for new pictures, as the decor has just changed.)

Good Friday Breakfast

Slice enough sourdough bread to make an egg sandwich and slip it into the toaster oven for a light, crisp texture.

Heat a small pan, lightly coated with your favorite olive oil, enough to cook the egg.

While waiting, chop an assortment of fresh kitchen or garden herbs, anything you like - just enough to cover the area in the pan where the egg will land.

When the pan is sizzling, drop half the herbs in. Crack the egg on top of the herbs; salt, pepper, and season the top, and sprinkle the remainder of the herbs over all that.

Start the toast, pour your coffee, sip a little orange juice.

When the egg is ready to turn, herbs and seasonings will be cohering to the bottom. Turn herbed egg top-down, reduce heat, season bottom side with salt and pepper, and finish to your preference for an egg over easy.

Toast will be ready. Spread with mayo or butter or nothing. Add the savory egg. Voila! Better than any McMuffin and remarkably good for your insides.

Good Friday is the most contemplative day of my year. The Herbal Egg helps a somber morning get off to a tranquil and healthy start.

Now, if it would just stop raining.

"Then he came to his disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, 'What? Could you not watch with me one hour?' " Matthew 26: 40

A Honey of a Shopping Trip

Picture from www.honeypax.com. Hive FL18

I dropped a fortune at Fresh Market yesterday, simply picking up some sushi for lunch.  I've been eating their sushi for so long that I recognize each Itamae by face and certainly by sushi style. Sometimes, I can tell if a sushi chef is having a bad personal morning by the way he is stacking and preparing his delicacies.

Yesterday, chef was not there; his cooler, disheveled and unorganized. The packages were almost bought out. He had been away from his board for a while, the equipment neatly stowed. Even so, I found what I was after. Spicy crawfish. Yum. My mistake was that I didn't pick it up right away, pay the bill, and leave the store.

No. I walked around first. Looking.

There were Fresh from Florida shrimp in the Seafood Department. I don't usually get the shrimp already prepared - except when I (rarely) put in for Publix to steam half a pound for me, double Old Bay, while I shop. These Fresh Market offerings are prepared as "cocktail" shrimp. When I can get "Florida" on the label, I usually opt for some to make a light, tasty, spring or summer shrimp salad. They are too bland otherwise. They have been cleaned and sanitized to death.  In need of sauces or dressings.

No. I still was not buying, as I always pick up the cold things last.

Then, there it was. The honey that I love best in the world! Tupelo, packaged by Honey Pax. Tupelo honey is quite rare and the hives are only found in the Apalachicola River Basin of Florida. I also buy Tupelo honey shipped in and packaged locally, but Honey Pax is the best. Tupelo, you see, never crystalizes in the container. Each bottle of Honey Pax is marked with a hive number, even the single-serve-take-on-your-picnic pouches.

To my mind, the only honey that I tasted this year to come close to trumping Tupelo was a small jar I was given this fall by a member of my Supper Club. Local, mixed honey - hives less than ten miles from my house - great for allergies.

Excited, I finally raced about the store gathering my planned purchases and bumped into a fresh shipment of EVO just then being unpacked. The olive oil was actually on my grocery list!

And so it was, that I spent a good bit of money on four grocery items. Came away happy. It felt vaguely like winning the lottery, somehow. I stopped in the tiny lunch area near the door and mixed my ginger/soy sauce/ wasabi concoction. I've told you that sushi is my fast food, haven't I? I eat it on the run. Better tasting than a Big Mac and so good for the insides!

This morning, as I'm sipping my Oolong and honey, I went to the hive codes page to look up my beehive. FYI my honey purchase came from Hive Location - FL18, the first hive listed at www.honeypax.com.

Speaking of Loving Life

The morning has dawned bright and sunny. Cold, but it will warm up later. I awoke loving life. Not just my life, although I do, but life in general. The resilience of it. The wonder that a person could wake feeling so good and refreshed after a night like that.

I didn't cook a fresh dinner, but relied on Sonny's left-over ribs, slaw, and mac 'n' cheese. That was my first mistake. My second was that I was multitasking and didn't eat mindfully. Seniors need to chew.

I was working in my exercise notebook, organizing the sets, and adding a few new exercises from physical therapy. Almost none of you realize when I go there (I don't announce it on Foursquare) but it seems like a constant outing. Needed. It really helps.

I felt a bit pushed for time, the rain was coming down, and I decided against the cantata. I admit it. I have been spoiled by Fred's chancel choir and, if I lived in Wilmington, I would attend his church. A lot. I finished the dishes and my project, watched some television, crawled into my covers.

From midnight until 2AM, I stayed awake within the fresh white bedclothes. If I kept very still,  I felt as if I was riding on a billowing wave in an ocean at the ends of the earth. As long as I did not move, I seemed fine - so I begin to plan my Easter weekend menu, then recite a few Psalms, then count breaths, then relax my limbs through concentration, finally empty my mind and allow myself to feel the physical turmoil inside. Any motion at all brought a seasick feeling of not only falling off the edge of the earth but also of throwing up while I fell.

The sneezing attack pushed me over the edge. I must have sneezed fifty times. Every one of them wracked my injured neck, pulled my weak adductor muscle, and sent a pain through my back itself.

Get up! You are going to be sick! And sick I was!

If I had known at eight o' clock that I would regurgitate from two am until four, I would have fortified myself with a half-dozen gin and tonics! Doubles. Given myself something to be sick about.

Between bouts, I sipped a little ginger ale and ate a few saltines which were, mercifully , already stale. I moaned. I whined to the cat whom I had wakened. I mentally tore up all the Easter weekend menus that I had planned. I disinfected. And finally, the cuckoo chirping four am,  I slept.

Isn't life itself resilient? I woke with Belle's face in mine. "Not dead, are you?" " Can fix breakfast, can't you?' "You see me looking, don't you?" Outside, on the perch, Squirrel sat wringing her hands and peeping through the blinds into the house.

Why is everyone so worried? So? I am only running an hour late. Give me a smile, because I feel wonderful! No worse for wear.

As I write,  pets are resting apres breakfast! I'm having coffee and getting ready to clean out the refrigerator! Plan a new menu for today through Sunday. Go to the grocer. The nursery. The cleaners. Did I make myself perfectly clear?  I love my life, this morning,  and I love life in general!

The Rainy Day

The rains came down in buckets. I went from shorts to jeans and from short-sleeves to long. Nothing to do but wait it out.

So. I spent some time doing something that I almost never do. I fretted. 

I wondered why it had to be me that the dog knocked over at the ballpark. Can't walk, can't bend my neck, can't sit comfortably - I'm a mess again - and after spending weeks on my physical therapy exercises, money on better vitamins, great care to prepare arthritis-friendly foods. 

I wondered who (of course I knew who) would bring a half-trained dog into a crowd of people and then not watch him - just let him jump! 

I wondered why a dear one would sweep the fact that I could very well be hurt under the rug and forget it, act defensive when I mentioned it later, and give me that you-are-a-pain-in-the-ass look. 

I wondered at the one person who later asked if I was OK and I wondered at the two who didn't. I wondered a whole lot of other things before I stopped. 

No use to fret. 

It doesn't change anything, I told myself, to realize that people don't think. Or that almost everyone is so self-absorbed they may not be paying attention. Or that they simply do not notice the things and people around them.

So you see the place I was in earlier. 

They say that nobody can hurt you unless you let them (mentally, not physically), so about mid-morning I gave up feeling sorry for myself, forgave the guilty parties for moving on with their lives without another thought, and I put the affair behind me. Why should I let the behavior of others cause me grief? I have enough to do to get back in shape, physically, one more time

A Week of Sundays

Holy Week. More religious activities than time, in a chruch full of cooks all stirring the pot. I suppose with Chef's blessing.

Here at home, there is the rain which prevented me from viewing the blood moon. The rain and the pollen. Even while the yellow stuff is being washed mercifully into the ground, more tree pollen is falling. I vacuum the porch every morning. What I need is a stiff wind to blow everything out, but more would settle.  I could do that of course. Wear my dust mask. The thing about a nice hearty breeze is that I wouldn't have to be out there with it. Have you seen my swollen eyes and lips? Heard my wheeze? Allergies. 

My personal Holy Week is a mixture of activities. There is a cantata tonight (unless it rains or I get too comfortable with myself), but I'm skipping the Seder meal this year in favor of going to the church late to pray for an hour "with" my Father - whose apostles fell asleep on him. Every year as I ache and stretch on the hard wooden pew, I wonder if I, also, would have succumbed. But of course the answer is yes. They were predestined to slumber away. Those clueless men would never be the same again - after that night's sleep. 

One fun part of this week will be t-ball. Games Thursday and Saturday. More important to me to watch little boys play and grow than any number of Seder meals and Food Pantry duties. There will be plenty of time for that, if I stay healthy. God smiles on me.

Tom and Jack trump everything else. The world changes. I live in the present moment, day, and week. When change comes, I won't look back, wistfully. The only benefits of the past are the good memories. Everything else, I ditch. Much too late to worry about should-have, would-have, could-have. 

Yesterday was our Family Night. We had a "tax day" picnic catered by Sonny's. I have enough "planned overs" for several meals and we each found something to love about the menu. There isn't anything exactly like Sonny's BBQ. Then we played our new version of Uno. What a hoot! Lots of laughing and hatching plots. Most of us hitting the "Easter" assortment of goodies in our excitement. Kitty watching quietly from the scratching post. Corey winning both games! Just wait until next week...muttering. 

And so, the week will go nicely. Taxes done, Wayne remembered fondly on the 13th (as he is every day). Family night enjoyed, church and baseball yet to come. Do I need to say I love my life, or can you tell?