Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

~a crooked creek, Autumn, gardenias and Billie Holiday~

 

~Crooked Run Creek in Delaplane, Virginia~

~~~~~

What does a creek in late Autumn have to do with a poem about a flower that was immortalized in a jazz singer's hair?

Nothing, I suppose.

But then last week I posted a two year old photograph of gardenias from my garden - and that was pretty random too.  Plus, I haven't posted a poem in... like forever (or so it feels like - when really, it was only on 20 March 2011).

And I like crooked creeks, Autumn, gardenias and Billie Holiday.  Perhaps that is all that really matters here?  Perhaps liking these things is enough.

~~~~~

The Gardenia by Cornelius Eady

The trouble is, you can never take
That flower from Billie's hair.
She is always walking too fast
and try as we might,

there's no talking her into slowing.
Don't go down into that basement,
we'd like to scream. What will it take
to bargain her blues,

To retire that term when it comes
to her? But the grain and the cigarettes,
the narcs and the fancy-dressed boys,
the sediment in her throat.

That's the soil those petals spring from,
Like a fist, if a fist could sing.

 

"Does someone want to know the way to spring?"

Black Petal
by Li-Young Lee
I never claimed night fathered me. that was my dead brother talking in his sleep. I keep him under my pillow, a dear wish that colors my laughing and crying. I never said the wind, remembering nothing, leaves so many rooms unaccounted for, continual farewell must ransom the unmistakable fragrance our human days afford. It was my brother, little candle in the pulpit, reading out loud to all of earth from the book of night. He died too young to learn his name. Now he answers to Vacant Boat, Burning Wing, My Black Petal. Ask him who his mother is. He'll declare the birds have eaten the path home, but each of us joins night's ongoing story wherever night overtakes him, the heart astonished to find belonging and thanks answering thanks. Ask if he's hungry or thirsty, he'll say he's the bread come to pass and draw you a map to the twelve secret hips of honey. Does someone want to know the way to spring? He'll remind you the flower was never meant to survive the fruit's triumph. He says an apple's most secret cargo is the enduring odor of a human childhood, our mother's linen pressed and stored, our father's voice walking through the rooms. He says he's forgiven our sister for playing dead and making him cry those afternoons we were left alone in the house. And when clocks frighten me with their long hair, and when I spy the wind's numerous hands in the orchard unfastening first the petals from the buds, then the perfume from the flesh, my dead brother ministers to me. His voice weighs nothing but the far years between stars in their massive dying, and I grow quiet hearing how many of both of our tomorrows lie waiting inside it to be born.

"...delicious hoshigaki potential"

 
~Hanging Hachiya persimmons to become hoshigaki, image found here~

~~~~~

Peeled persimmons, hanging by string...beautiful, don't you think?

Last weekend I posted a poem titled "Six Persimmons" by the poet Shin Yu Pai - and she left a kind comment on the post, saying:  "..You are so lucky to have such delicious hoshigaki potential hanging from your tree branches."

I must confess - I had no idea what 'hoshigaki potential' referred to, much less 'delicious hoshigaki potential'...so of course I had to google it.

From the Slow Food USA website:

Hoshigaki are persimmons that are peeled and dried whole over a period of several weeks through a combination of hanging and delicate hand-massaging, until the sugars contained in the fruit form a delicate surface with a dusting that looks like frost. Unlike sliced dried fruit, which tend to be brittle and leathery, hoshigaki are succulently tender and moist, with concentrated persimmon flavor.  The hoshi gaki method is traditional to Japan, and came to America with Japanese American farmers.  Because they are so labor-intensive, hoshi gaki all but disappeared from commercial production.

To be eaten fresh, the Hachiya persimmon must be completely soft, otherwise it is unbearably astringent.  For drying, however, the fruits are perfect when they are still firm like apples, which generally happens from the end of September to the middle of October. The riper they are, the more delicately they must be handled.

Making hoshigaki requires patience, careful monitoring, and a fair amount of dexterity.  The process involves peeling the persimmon, and then hanging the fruit, several on a string or over a pole.  After hanging the fruit for 3 to 7 days, the persimmon will form a skin that needs to be massaged in order to break up the hard inner pulp.  The massage process goes on every 3 to 5 days for three to five weeks.  By the end of this lengthy process, the sugars will come to the surface of the fruits, leaving a white bloom. The hoshi gaki are fully done when the pulp sets and you can no longer roll it.

Take a look at the drying persimmons over at Slow Food USA.

There is also a fascinating series of images - taking the fruit from the tree through the drying process - on the Otow Orchard website.  Go to the bottom of the page, and you'll see the series of 25 images - it's a time-consuming and fascinating process.  Their orchard looks just magical - they have a blog that is very much worth a visit.   

~~~~~ 

 I must confess that I'm fascinated by the thought of drying my persimmons.  Next year, I think I'll definitely give it a try.  I think my persimmon is Diospyros virginiana - the American or common persimmon - it is astringent (due to the tannins).

~~~~~ 

 
~one of two remaining persimmons on my D. virginiana tree in mid-January~

~~~~~ 

From 'Desiring Happiness' by Daisaku Ikeda: 

Suppose there is a bitter persimmon. By soaking it in a solution of lime or buckwheat chaff, or by exposing it to sunlight, we can make the persimmon sweet. There are not two persimmons, one bitter and the other sweet -- there is only the one. The bitter persimmon has not been sweetened with sugar; rather, the inherent bitterness of the persimmon has been drawn out and its inherent sweetness allowed to emerge. The catalyst, the intermediary that assisted the transformation, was the solution or the sunlight. T'ien-t'ai likened earthly desires to the bitter persimmon, enlightenment to the sweet persimmon, and the process whereby the sweetness was brought out to Buddhist practice.

I love how persimmons are often used to represent transformation in Buddhism - again, the painting 'Six Persimmons' often pops us - with the six persimmons representing different stages of enlightment.

~~~~~

 

~Annabelle Lee, chowing down on a persimmon~

~~~~~

This year I hadn't harvested the persimmons from my tree, I just enjoyed seeing them there, they're quite beautiful.  I hadn't thought too much about eating them, or about making persimmon pudding or persimmon candy.  The persimmons had just hung there, on the branches, through our unusually cold December and early January with several periods of extreme cold (or at least what seemed like extreme cold to this coastal South Carolinian...).  They were frozen when I decided to try one last weekend - and I harvested the remaining two just in time, since a four-legged garden pest (the lovely and charming and fruit-loving Annabelle Lee) had already discovered that frozen persimmons were wonderfully sweet and had been harvesting them for the past week on her own (she's a very resourceful and determined English pointer).  I cut them in two, and at the last minute decided to share and I gave the resourceful garden pest her last persimmon of the season - while I ate the other one.  The flesh was beautiful, the sweetness amazing - and on a below-freezing morning, I feel in love with persimmons. 

I can't wait until next season - nor can Annabelle. 

~~~~~

 

~~~~~

Hoshigaki:  Preserving the art of Japanese hand-dried persimmons
    

"...passion... congealed into a stupendous calm"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~~~~~

Another poem about persimmons!  I've always loved Li-Young Lee's poem - and this one is wonderful too.  My persimmons are still hanging on the tree, even after a few freeze-thaw cycles - I haven't picked them yet, and honestly, I just enjoy seeing them on the tree.  I am surprised (and grateful) that a squirrel hasn't decided to harvest them yet.

~~~~~

Six Persimmons by Shin Yu Pai

          for Noko

after ruining another season's harvest—
over-baked in the kitchen oven then
rehydrated in her home sauna
Aunt Yuki calls upon her sister,

paper sacks stuffed full of orange
fruit, twig and stalk still intact
knows that my mother sprouts seedlings
from cast off avocado stones, revives

dead succulents, coaxes blooms out of orchids
a woman who has never spent a second
of her being on the world wide web,
passes her days painting the diversity of

marshland, woodland, & shoreline;
building her own dehydrator fashioned from
my father's work ladders, joined together
by discarded swimming pool pole perched

high to discourage the neighbor's cats
that invade the yard scavenging for koi
"Vitamin D" she says, as she harnesses
the sun, in the backyard the drying device

mutates into painting, slow dripped
sugar spilling out of one kaki fruit
empty space where my father untethers
another persimmon, he swallows whole

~~~~~

You can read more about the poet Shin Yu Pai at her website.

~~~~~

When I 'googled' the poem 'Six Persimmons', I came across a nice surprise - a 13th century painting of six persimmons.  From Wikipedia:

Six persimmons is a Chinese 13th century painting by the monk, Mu Qi (Mu Ch'i), the painter better known in China as Fa-Chang. It was painted during the Song dynasty. Mu Qi was one of the two great exponents of the spontaneous mode of chinese painting (the other being Liang Kai). It features six persimmons floating on an undefined, but skillfully mottled background. It is painted in blue-black ink on paper.

The painting became famous for the tremendous skill of the brushstrokes. Their subtlety of modeling is oft remarked upon. The thick and thin brushstrokes that model the lightest of the persimmons make it seem to float in contrast to the dark one next to it. The treatment of the stems and leaves recall Chinese characters, and reveal brush control at its highest level. 

~~~~~

Six Persimmons by Mu Qi (image found here).

Isn't this lovely?  What a treat it was, to come across this.  And to come across this quote by Arthur David Waley:

(Six Persimmons is) passion... congealed into a stupendous calm.

[Waley, Arthur (1923), An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting, Benn, London, page 231].

 

~crackling~

  

Last Monday evening in Virginia, the view of the sunset from my Father's backyard was spectacular:  streaks of pink raced across the sky, broken up by the blue sky of a cold winter's day.  Then on Tuesday morning I joined the masses on I-95, driving south to warming weather - today was in the 60s and tomorrow should top 70.  The warmth is nice.

The holiday was a challenging one.  Things I won't go into here; troubling family issues.  They mostly make me sad.  Returning to my little Airstream life seemed quite sane and manageable - as it is.  I applied for a job yesterday that I'm actually interested in, and that is actually interested in a more senior scientist.  That was optimistic.

I spent some of the day today putting together a mental 'wishlist' from Plant Delights Nursery and Select Seeds - only a mental list, mind you.  I picked up a scattering of small branches spread around the garden - looked to see how damaged the camellia buds are from the unusually cold December we've had.  I purchased a wedding gift (for a New Year's Day wedding that I am attending).  I laughed at the Pointer Sisters - running around like crazy things, digging their new sweaters (yes, for the first time in my life I have purchased clothing for dogs).  I examined the broccoli up-close - I'm not sure that it will do much.  December was just too cold. 

Yes, it's time to burn the old year - it's gone, up in flames, it's crackling.  I shouldn't be glad perhaps, but I am.

~~~~~~

Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye (from The Poetry Foundation)

 

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

 

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

 

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

 

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies. 

Persimmons

 

 

Persimmons by Li-Young Lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner   

for not knowing the difference   

between persimmon and precision.   

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.   

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down newspaper.   

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.   

Chew the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.   

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down.

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.   

Naked:   I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo:   you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,   

Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.   

Wrens are small, plain birds,   

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.   

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;   

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class   

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun   

inside, something golden, glowing,   

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,   

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,   

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding   

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night   

waiting for a song, a ghost.   

I gave him the persimmons,   

swelled, heavy as sadness,   

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking   

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,   

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.   

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,   

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,   

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times   

eyes closed. These I painted blind.   

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,   

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

Reine des Violettes (and a poem)

 
~Reine des Violettes (1860 Hybrid Perpetual)~

~~~~~

Last night I went to Michael McFee's poetry reading, sponsored by The Poetry Society of South Carolina.  It was held in the lovely Charleston Library Society building (164 King Street).  He read numerous poems - but not the one below, that I found online and enjoyed.  Hopefully you will too.  

Holding Hands by Michael McFee

After weeks of yearning
half-taps and near-grasps,
my sweaty palm found hers
and we made a leaky basket
of our interlaced fingers
and that was it, hallelujah,
finally we were holding hands
in public, we were shaking
sideways on a visual contract
everybody could understand,
I was hers and she was mine,
the two of us had begun
becoming one clasped flesh,
now we were happily coupled
from the supple wrists down,
we were carrying the pet
with two backs between us
as if we'd never before
squeezed another human
in such a meaningful way,
as if she had never seized
her tall anxious mother
when first learning to walk
or cross a lethal street,
that firm grip saving her,
as if I would never clutch
a dying father's calluses
in cardiac intensive care
and feel our shared pulse,
the mutual prayer of blood,
as if she and I would never
tire of each other's touch
and try to figure out how
to escape this embarrassing
collision of crinkled skin,
this padded cage of bones,
these too-long opened fists
before somebody passing by
mistook for love our resigned
inability to quite let go.

the names of trees

 
 ~live oaks, surrounding the Airstream~

~~~~~

When I was young, from about several months old to about age 12, my family lived in a neighborhood called Airport Acres.  Our brick ranch house was on two acres of land, and the expansive front yard was often the location of neighborhood football games, which usually consisted of my brother's older (and much bigger) friends and my two friends, Barbara and Glenn.  Barbara, Glenn and I are tiny in comparison to my brother's friends, but we held our own, even if it meant that on ocassion we were used as the football itself.  Our front yard was my 'school of hard knocks'.

There weren't many trees on the two acres.  In the front there were several dogwoods, including one gorgeous pink dogwood that was always my mother's favorite.  In second or third grade I remember getting a pine tree, I think it was an Eastern White Pine, on Arbor Day.  Each kid was given a tree, and instructed on how to plant and care for it.  I remember coming home and caring for that tree, and watering it for weeks afterward.

My parents sold that house when I was 12.  My Mom always would tell the story about how much I cried because I had to leave that tree.  I think now about ways that I've changed, but the thought of leaving trees behind still makes me sad.  However I'm grateful that of the things that I grow attached to, that trees are on the list.  I'm glad that I know their names.

I neglected, earlier in the summer, to mention that the U.S. has a new Poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin.  We all should know his name too.   

Native Trees by W. S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew   

the names of the trees   

where I was born

what is that

I asked and my

father and mother did not

hear they did not look where I pointed   

surfaces of furniture held   

the attention of their fingers   

and across the room they could watch

walls they had forgotten   

where there were no questions   

no voices and no shade

Were there trees

where they were children   

where I had not been   

I asked

were there trees in those places

where my father and my mother were born   

and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they   

but both my father and my mother

said they never knew

"It is here."

~Earlysville White Oak~

~~~~~

This morning I left Earlysville, having spent a long weekend in what could only be described as a crash course in dementia awareness.  Once again I stopped and quickly photographed the white oak I've photographed many times before - the morning sky was already washed out, the grass brown from unusually warm temperatures and a longtime without rain.

~~~~~ 

There was an acute event, a distinct episodic event - triggered by the dementia itself, possibly complications from a drug that my father was on (Aricept) and a horrific healthcare provider who exploited his fears and fed his paranoia.  It was confusing, hurtful, deeply sad, terrifying, crazy, compassionate - and at the heart of it was my kind, passive  father.  It was new territory.  I can't go into the details now, I am too drained, and probably won't share the events of the past week on these pages.

All I know is that at some point this weekend a light went off in my head and I thought "This is what dementia is.  It is here."

~~~~~

 While I was away, Katherine emailed me a poem, understanding just a bit the personal hell that dementia brings into a home and a family.  I watched my father, seeing in his eyes sometimes the inner battles he was having - his mind racing, his mind trying to grasp on to what was real - but being unable to.  Then moments of comforting clarity.

I now know the heartbreak of this illness.

 

Journey into the Interior by Theodore Roethke 

In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,

Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
---Or the path narrowing,

Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.

summer miracles

~asian pears, Pyrus pyrifolia~

~~~~~

This afternoon when I got back from a quick trip to the lab, I went out to harvest the asian pears on the lower branches - those still within reach of my garden's determined produce consumer, Annabelle Lee.  The fruits are small - but I have two dozen or more on the tree - so tonight I sliced up a few, and combined them with a mild gouda for a wonderful treat.

There's something intrinsically gratifying about a fresh harvest - about planting a tree, about watching it grow, about watching it survive seasons of drought and excess rainfall, even about watching a crazy old pointer girl covet the fruits.  It's the simplicity of it all, the lack of complication - that makes a bowl of pears seem perfect, perhaps even a miracle, on a humid summer evening.

~~~~~

SUMMER KITCHEN, by Donald Hall

In June's high light she stood at the sink
With a glass of wine
And listened for the bobolink
And crushed garlic in late sunshine.

I watched her cooking, from my chair.
She pressed her lips
Together, reached for kitchenware,
And tasted sauce from fingertips.

"It's ready now. Come on," she said.
"You light the candle."
We ate, and talked, and went to bed,
And slept. It was a miracle. 

~~~~~