the university redhead

I always find it hard to conceptualize years on the calendar cycle. No matter what, even though I’m no longer living according to an academic calendar, the year feels “over” in May and “new” in August, with the summer being a limbo of sorts, full of possibility.

May is approaching, and so, naturally, I’m feeling reflective. I’m more aware of the past year today than I was in January when 2014 ended. Since last April, so much has happened. It didn’t feel so at the time. Now, I’m overwhelmed thinking about it:

I finished my thesis, unsatisfied with it though I was.

I graduated. I was in total denial the whole ceremony, stubbornly pretending that after the ceremony, we’d all go back to our favorite corners of campus and town, that evening congregating in the library for coffee before meandering the quad or girl gabbing in the art building, as always. That life would continue normally. Life would (and did) continue, but to this day my stomach still lurches when I remember sitting on the sticky metal chair in the heat on the football field, and realizing how uncertain the next day, week, month, and year looked.

I returned to Kirksville only once, in June. It felt simultaneously like breathing again (a grasp at “normalcy”) and like a heartachey end of an era. They say you can never go home again.

The year since last May has seen four jobs, and a professional progression I never could have expected. I went from 10 hours a week at my beloved university’s special collections library, where I mended 100 year old posters and documented small town ephemera. Upon graduating, I lurched first into 17 hours a week at the museum info desk, followed by 40+ hours a week in a cube outside the offices of the curators I’ve idolized for years, to now: a full time, permanent job that involves a desk and an office of my own with a door that closes and a library and a lot of paintings on the walls, propped against shelves, and in the back of my van. How did this happen? It bewilders me to this day.

There was a long, serious relationship, the overall emotional climate of which was sadness. There was a short, less-serious relationship, which was incredibly fun though lacked the roots to develop into what either of us were seeking. I braved the wild west of online dating (#yolo) which yielded minimal romantic results and a bevy of quirky stories. This is something I never would have imagined trying, but I’m glad I did. I doubt I’ll be trying this again in the future, but I’m glad for the memories it contributed to the last “year.”

I lived at home with my parents. I got an apartment of my own. As we speak, a lease sits on my realator’s desk, ready for me to sign, and an extra set of couches sits awkwardly in my parent’s living room until I find a truck to put them in and send across town.

I rediscovered my hometown. I saw some live shows, dancing with Sylvan Esso and weeping with Sufjan. I began curating a small local gallery and stumbled down rabbit holes in my local art world I didn’t know existed. I learned to cook. I started running. I started to address my fear of church.

I started a book vlog, forgot about it, remembered it, and read insanely all the while.

I think that about covers everything.

So in my grand quest to become a well rounded reader in 2015, I've picked up my first Vonnegut. I'm starting with Cat's Cradle simply because that's the ebook that was available when I perused my library's kindle site for Vonnegut. I'm on page one and the opening knocked me over the head. I'm excited to see where this goes.

"Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Jonah - John - if I had been Sam, I would have been a Jonah still - not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be at certain places at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second, at each appointed place this Jonah was there."

CN: Some critics have said that this series [the figural paintings completed after 1956] is the beginning of Lee Krasner as an independent painter. They feel that only after Pollock’s death were you able to be yourself.

LK: Where have I not been Lee Krasner prior to that? I don’t understand that point of view. It is an outside point of view andI am not in touch with it. 

CN: It implies that you couldn’t be free or yourself until you moved out from the orbit of Pollock’s influence. 

LK: Hogwash is my answer to that kind of thinking. Esthetically I am very much Lee Krasner. I am undergoing emotional, psychological, and artistic changes but I hold Lee Krasner right through. 

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Someone recently told me that if you can read, you can cook. Well, I love to read and I love to eat, so somewhere in the middle I'm finding myself cooking, and reading about it.

Here's what I've read so far in regards to learning about food and what to do with it:

Dana Goodyear's Anything That Moves was, while a wild ride, was maybe not the best place to start. This book certainly explores the realm of food, but as the full title indicates, it is a rather unconventional portrait of the wonderfully weird nature of food. Since I'm not looking to cook with bugs, black market truffles, or meat so raw it's bloody while shaking a fist at the FDA, I didn't get much practical info for use in my developing kitchen BUT, as a cultural study and theoretical/ideologically wiggle around the food industry, yes, this was worthwhile. 

Wanting something less extreme to balance out Dana Goodyear, I turned to Julia Child's My Life in France. This is a charming memoir and pleasantly long too. I'm bonding with this book, and Julia, because it is so encouraging to remember that she, at 36, couldn't tell you what a shallot was and thus the book is her retelling of a food journey that started out just like mine. From homestyle to haute cuisine with lots of memorable blunders, discoveries, and red headed sass along the way.

Subsequently, Julia Child's Kitchen Wisdom was a tasty treat. This is essentially her cooking-for-dummies book. I learned that endives are related to daisies and how to make the five basic sauces. For someone teaching herself how to cook, this little book came as quite a relief. Simple, introductory pieces of knowledge from intuiting good produce to mastering knife techniques.

As far as the actual recipes I've been trying, I've been hanging out with some food blogs. A friend shared Simple Bites with me, which not only has recipes and the like, but a "cooking school" section which I look forward to hunkering down with.