APPLES

A bit late with this rumination, but – apples!

Stopped at Z’s Country Market today on my way back from Lebanon. It's a grocery owned by Mennonites, with bonneted girls in their homemade dresses and gym shoes working the registers. Local produce here, from local fruits and veggies to backyard honey and stone ground, non-GMO flours. 

Happiness—for me, anyhow—can be found hanging over a big wooden bin of apples. Different kinds, different bins, from the newish Crispin, Macoun  and Cameo, to the elder apple statesmen, Cortlands, Macintosh, Staymans, Ida Red, and Winesaps. (You will notice that I haven’t mentioned “Delicious.” Poor things, they’ve been bred to be perfect for shipping, which has made them bland and dry. They  have a bin, too, but I don’t bother.)

The fact that I’m leaning over the side and searching means that these apples have been off the trees for a few weeks now. Still, they are local, and haven’t traveled across the universe.  I’m trying hand to nose and gentle touch to discover how long they’ve been store-bound, and hoping I can find the tastiest ones.   

Every season I attempt to eat as many varieties of local apples as I can, hoping to refresh my personal sensory image of each kind. I’ve noticed that year to year, the taste changes a little. I’ll find some, miss others, depending on bloom time or if there was a killing late frost. This year, a freeze got the apricots and most peaches in our area, much to everyone’s sorrow.

I wish someone would plant Goldrush in this area, for this is my latest favorite. I’m told they are not new, but a recently revived heritage breed, one which doesn’t need a lot of pesticide to fight off the various plagues. I find I can keep Goldrush into March. Yes, they do wither, but they can still sock it to your taste buds and to their last moment make a spicy, tangy sauce.

~~Juliet Waldron

All historicals. All the time.

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~~~

Books We Love Authors for more Sunday Snippets:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

Cats Have Therapists, Too

“It’s all pretty far-out, Cat. You know what I mean?”

These are the kind of conversations you get around old people who have lived with a lot of cats.

The Cat stuck her face in the bowl and munched while I massaged her fluffy, thick back. Patting her was like patting a wide-beamed, long-haired Scottish sheep. The fur was sort of dry and oily at the same time. It left my hands smelling of the cast-off cellar rug, the one that my husband, as the one who promises Yes! Yes! I will vacuum it—but somehow never does—the rug that is an in-home super-fund site, redolent of fuel oil, cement dust, flea spray, cat hair and kitty litter, plus the assorted paints and chemicals which are stored down there. 

This icky basement is the place where our PTSD cat story began and is still the place to which it reboots whenever Kimi feels threatened. Even after six years of safety and kid gloves, she remains an anxious kitty. She’s blonde, and stuffed-toy-fluffy with a sweet doll’s face--but not the pushed in muzzle--of a Persian. She’s heavy and square, what, in the Cat Fancy is referred to as “cobby-bodied.”  She might be the offspring of some hobby breeder’s accident, a Ragdoll, or a Birman, and who knows what else, getting together. Anyhow, we’ve never had a cat like this one before, although, that’s what we say to all the special kitties who have come to live here over the years. She arrived through a friend, who found her, starving, tick infested, with a festering wound on one hip. She was terrified of human hands.

Kimi-Wah still has rules. There are rules about where she may be petted; rules about how she may be petted. Unlike most cats, she sometimes appreciates the sort of thumping you might bestow upon a small dog. She likes to have a blanket on the floor by the television. Here she sits and regards us from across the room as we couch-potato in the evening. Sometimes she calls to us with a plaintive little meow. Then one or the other of her people is supposed to get down on the floor with her and pat her—but only while she’s sitting on the fabric. You have to keep an eye on the tail. If that fluffy plume begins to flail, it’s time to stop.

Sometimes she calls for petting, but if she’s not on the rug, she’ll simply run away if you approach her. Sometimes she’ll run for her blanket and you will be allowed to pat her there, but, just as often as not, she’ll head to the cellar. Sometimes, I’ll follow her down there and hope to gather her up from the old flannel sheet that I’ve put down to keep her off that awful rug. I tell her “no one wants a basement cat.” I tell her that basement cats are almost as bad as ceiling cats, or under-the-couch cats—those top neurotics of the indoor cat world.

In six years, though, she has loosened up somewhat. She’s long-haired and needs daily grooming or she’ll mat and/or get sick from the hair-balls all that fur generates. I brush first and then gently comb. Initially, she had to be held down with all four hands available around here, even for the briefest beauty treatment. The whole time she’d snarl and growl and scream and try to slice us to ribbons with her needle claws.

These days, she’ll call to me while I’m at the computer—whiny meow after whiny meow—until I give up and fetch the brush and then head to the blanket. She’ll trot ahead of me, plumy tail waving and then lie down, all in anticipation of her beauty treatment. She’ll even let me hold her and trim her nails. Lately, she’s been getting up to couch-potato beside me in the evenings; she's even getting the hang of happy purrs.   

We didn't think she'd ever come round, but inch by inch, she has. It's been one of the longest lasting feline rehab projects we've ever undertaken, but in the end, her sweet sensitive self is beginning to reappear. 

A rare trip outside for the Wah

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com

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Books We Love Authors for more Sunday Snippets:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

Feast of the Dead

Last weekend I attended an Interfaith Sanctuary to attend the Feast of the Dead, held yearly to remember our ancestors, to pray with and for those who mourn, and to honor friends, mentors, and relatives who have passed beyond the veil.

Held in a campground, we are in touch with earth, air and water. We live close beside our planetary family, the plants and animals. We experience the autumn cold nights and the glowing leaf fall days. We hear the tree toads--the very last--singing after sundown. We watch birds, raptors, and the winged clean-up crew, the buzzards, soar on thermals.

This helps us to reconnect ourselves with feet-on-the-ground reality, to remember that all we truly have is the precious present. We hope to leave behind as much of the work-a-day, with so many pressures, so many daily frustrations, punishing schedules, and night-time's electronic opiate distractions. We step away from the terror and injustice, to escape a society drenched in money madness, where selfishness and greed are admired, as best we can, if only for a few days.

Here, we remember the past, back to the morning when we left our palm frond huts and began the long walk out of Africa. We honor those who came before us; we rededicate ourselves to those who will come after us.

One of the services was an interfaith Missa* with spoken prayers from many dove-tailed belief systems. I wanted to share some of these, to preserve a memory of a place beyond the endless noise machine of modernity. Although we prayed many  prayers familiar to Christians (notably Hail Mary and Psalm 23) but there were also many others of great spiritual power.

Hindu

Shanti - Shanti - Shanti

Om - Shanti

May there be peace in the higher realms;

May there be peace in the firmament;

May there be peace on earth.

May the water flow peacefully;

May the herbs and plants grow peacefully;

May all the divine powers bring us to peace

The Supreme Lord is peace

May we all be in peace, peace and only peace;

And May that peace come unto each of us.

~~ Hindu

Yoruban Ancestor Prayer

May those from under our feet

Breathe the warmth of community until us

So that the peace we seek mounts our bodies

And sits on the chairs of our heart,

Sprinkling love and joy around us all.

Excerpt from “Breaths”

Listen more often to things than to beings.

Listen more often to things than to beings.

‘Tis the ancestor’s breath when the fire’s voice is heard.

‘Tis the ancestor’s breath in the voice of the waters.

And to close:

May the blessing of the spirits be upon you.

May you be your best self. May you walk in beauty.

May your guides be with you at every crossroads.

May you be honorably greeted when you arrive.

Shared by Juliet Waldron, all prayers taken from the Interfaith Sanctuary Missa
All Saints/All Souls Spiritual Service

*Santeria

Black Magic ~~ Shapeshifter!

Goran uses shape-shifting to visit

the other 'powers' who dwell on his mountain

  

           Goran turned and found himself standing on a high rock shelf above a hollow filled with thorns. He saw the eyes, gazing out at him. Glowing, bright living eyes, green fire! He’d only thought of the Great Boar, the eyes in the thicket down in the oak woods—and suddenly, he was there.

            I thought you might be here.

            And so I am, Great One.

            What is it about that particular rock, Lord, that you like so much?

            Wanting to make some sort of an answer, Goran gazed down at his feet and then rather wished he hadn’t. It was shocking to see what they had become, his legs ending in the talons of a bird of prey. The rock below was ordinary granite, dotted with a few white flecks of marble. As he did this, a little puzzled, a buzzing rush of energy blasted into his feet.

     Aha! This rock is an excellent place, full of power!

                               

~ Juliet Waldron ~

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And, please, if you've got a moment, check out these talented

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http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines

Don Giovanni Weather with Ghosts

http://amzn.to/1TDh07s  My Mozart  ISBN:  1927476364

What we’ve had here today has been sun, clouds, and a sort of golden light falling through autumnal trees that I call Don Giovanni weather. And what, you ask, makes me call it that? Well, it’s the end of October now and we are approaching Halloween, the time of year, when, in 1787, to thunderous applause, this opera first debuted. The city was Prague, not Vienna, because, by that time the arbiters of taste in the latter city had decided that Mozart was NOT cool anymore. The infamous con man, Casanova, may have sat in with Lorenzo DaPonte, while the libretto was written. (Back then, the  guy who wrote the words was called “the poet.”) 

When I entered one of those demented OCD states of mind to which I am prone, in the mid-eighties, it was All Mozart All The Time at our house. I began to write two Mozart novels, “Mozart’s Wife” and “My Mozart.” Wouldn’t want anyone reading the titles to wonder what the subject was.

http://amzn.to/1Vy47lm  Mozart’s Wife  ISBN:  1461109612

It happened on a Saturday. Outside, it was doing the classic autumn change over. The silver maples were a staggering yellow that year. The azure sky ( I’m not exaggerating) had been clear all morning, but suddenly, the wind rose and a fleet of puffy, gray-bottomed clouds began to put  a lid on the clear as a bell part of the day. I was doing housework, still attempting the working woman’s bit where you try to do double time and do lots of housework and cooking over weekends. Of course, I was blasting Don Giovanni, absolutely saturating my cells with every note—just as I used to do all through the '60's and ‘70’s with rock’n’roll.     

Husband was off somewhere, and the house was empty of teenage sons, too, so the only nerves I was exercising were my own. In those days I had a fabulous pair of pink high top sneakers that looked killer good with jeans. Jeepers, this was a long time ago--back in the last century...

What happened in my kitchen that afternoon is the only supernatural encounter I’ve had in this house. I’d been making a stromboli for the family, starting with making dough.  I think there genuinely are no ghosts in the structure; this house was built in 1948. There has been anger and grief, but no death. So, in this case the "supernatural" experience focused on me.

To say plain, I'd overdosed on Mozart. And, on this day, too much Don Giovanni, too much dwelling in and on the stories of the past in which I had been immersed, imagining and then writing. This led the strong personality of that singular, charismatic personality, drawn by hero-worship as well as the sound of his music, to pass the gate.

I heard a loud creak, and spun around--dough laid out and ready to receive the layer of meat, cheese, tomato and sweet pepper. There he stood, standing on my 1948-era brick pattern linoleum. Needless to say, after all those long dead years he looked terrible—the “great nosed Mozart” as a contemporary called him. He was gaunt, frail, and his face was lined with suffering, but he was undeniably present.

.

From "The Mozart Brothers" 

Saw him clear as day, I did. He had been heralded by a loud creak followed by an unearthly groan, that old movie sound of the hinges of hell—or, of heaven--swinging wide. It was so loud it overcame the Don, pouring from the kitchen speakers. I jumped backwards, all the way across the kitchen in those pink high top sneakers. By the time the time my feet hit the vinyl once again, Mozart was gone.  

~~Juliet Waldron

And, please, if you've got a moment, check out these talented

Books We Love Authors:

http://triciamg.blogspot.com/ (Tricia McGill)

http://mizging.blogspot.com/ (Ginger Simpson)

http://connievines.blogspot.com.au/ Connie Vines