#smallhabits2015

[robyncarliss]

Week 9: EAT RICE *** 3.2.15 Dolmas from the Mediterranean takeout joint on the bottom floor of my office building, at my desk, humid Monday but still no rain. Every December, my friend Michelle hosts a bountiful holiday party based on the recipes and Midwestern hospitality with which she grew up in Cincinnati.  A platter of dolmas draped in sliced lemons (harvested from a back yard tree) always inhabits the far right end of the buffet that I have helped set up many times over the years.  I agree to prep duty because I adore Michelle and get a kick out of her event logistics precision - but also because I get to scarf down a plate of dolmas in advance of the party.  They are often still warm when Michelle pulls the extra stash out of the fridge.  They are always brilliant with herbs and citrus, and deeply comforting.  We snack on them in between drinking beer, gossiping, slicing baguette on the bias, color-coding crudités, and wrapping shrimp in bacon. Michelle learned the recipe from her Ohioan mom, Ginny, who learned the recipe from her Egyptian sister- and mother-in-law.  The December celebration pays tribute to Ginny - the original Mansour hostess extraordinaire - who passed away several years ago.  I love this grand, annual memorial gesture, but also how Michelle inspires parental pride on a daily basis as a magnificent community organizer, artist, and friend. *** 3.3.15 Kimbap from John's Snack & Deli, at my desk, short exhale of Tuesday. Financial District lunch adventurers clog the sidewalk in front of John's, goading their co-workers into taking the Suicide Kimchi Burrito Challenge.  The micro bodega merges John's adaptable entrepreneurship with his mom's Korean home cooking.  John is nice-nice-nice to his customers and exacting with the women who prepare food in the cramped, makeshift kitchen behind the register.  In the summer, John occasionally leaves his post for Giants day games.  Decked out in orange and black, I'll see him walking hastily toward Market, ready to cheer on his team and forget about health inspectors for an afternoon. *** 3.4.15 Jerk chicken with red beans, rice, plantains, and salad from Caribbean Spices food truck, at a SoMA picnic table with Josh, in the late evening fog. Talking over dinner with my love is the best salve I know. *** 3.5.15 Oxtail stew and curry goat, both over rice, from Kingston 11 in Oakland, with Conrad and Willis. We drank rum punch as the band started up.  Groove locked, the music was loud enough to cut thinking and conversation by half - a welcome honing of activities.  Appetites piqued by salt fish fritters and string beans sautéed in the house habanero sauce, we moved on to bowls of rice heaped with fork-tender oxtail and goat.  Conrad's smile, warped by Novocaine for most of the evening, righted itself.  Everyone who stopped by our table to check in about how we liked the food or if we needed anything was genuinely inquisitive and kind.  They seemed to know we needed (I needed) extra care just then. *** 3.6.15 Midnight rice bowls at home. I arrived home around 10:00 p.m., after bidding farewell forever to the sweeping views and enigmatic stench of Sinbad's on Embarcadero, to three of my favorite men - my sweetheart, Mike visiting from Los Angeles, and Ian - laying down their predictions for the 2015 baseball season.  Mike, one of Josh's oldest friends, is beloved the world over for his warmth, wit, and loyalty.  Ian is our British brother.  I love these men both for the connections I have with them individually and for the straightforward, generous friendship they share with Josh. We discussed a few restaurant options for late-night dinner, but the Mission is a zoo on Friday nights.  I surveyed the fridge and got to work, cooking jasmine rice in homemade chicken stock, braising purple cabbage, zucchini, onions, and garlic in beer and yuzu vinegar, and frying eggs.  I layered bowls with rice, then vegetables, then olive oil-fried eggs and more yuzu vinegar.  We ate them with Sriracha, red wine, and Saturday's glorious, alarm clock-less dawn in mind. *** 3.7.15 Osha Thai green curry takeout with my love while he packed for New York. A few days later, we crossed flight paths in the sky. *** 3.8.15 Homemade rice pudding with whole milk, vanilla bean, and agave. A reminder of the normalizing power of cooking.

[robyncarliss]

Week 8: LIGHT INVISIBLE *** Look up.  Look to the sides. *** 2.23.15 Endives - pale, strange, bitter - finish growing in complete darkness.  Farmers check on them with flashlights in cold storage and forcing rooms, marking their shadowy progress toward market.  I wonder how their cells react when they are delivered into the light again, when sight registers and remembers them. - People have a difficult time placing me.  I have light brown hair that grows quickly in between diverse haircuts and colors, the perpetually red cheeks of a Viking, and a fairly androgynous wardrobe.  When my hair is short, DMV personnel, cashiers, and homeless men call me “sir.”  I loathe small talk, so I dig my way down to more meaningful dialogue through big questions that launch my new acquaintances into monologues - leaving, with those folks oblivious to in-kind inquiry, little room for my own information sharing. Once, a colleague of a dear friend, whom I had met several times, could not remember who I was until my husband - a visually distinct man with deep-set blue eyes, a red and white beard, and colorful tie collection - joined us later in the evening.  She could only make sense of me as connected to him - and voiced as much.  She is part of a life-long pattern.  My armor, or apology to self, has been to remember most everyone, to store their small anecdotes and big admissions, and surprise them with these memories upon encountering them again.  I see other people even if they don’t see me. I am accustomed to reminding people, sometimes over and over again, how they know me.  For years, I took offense to their dim recollections.  A few weeks ago, however, I finally registered the luxury of my chameleon properties while walking home at the end of the work day.  Up ahead on the sidewalk, I saw a woman I had met a couple times in the past.  I was not in the mood to stop and talk with her, so I pushed my sunglasses tight against my face, and strolled right past her.  I knew she wouldn’t recognize me, and rejoiced in my invisibility. - I know about endive from my dad, who sought out the oblong chicories for the first course of Christmas dinners.  For years, he chose the odd lettuce underdogs to star in a fussy holiday meal.  In the bleakest season, in the lowest light, he always saw them. *** 2.24.15 Not quite two hours into the day, my love turned 41.  We celebrated small this year with a late dinner at the counter of his favorite restaurant, a 90-minute break flanked by work and sleep.   Beforehand, I killed an hour in the copper bar glow at Absinthe.  It should have been raining.  It never is.  One barstool to my left, an intoxicated friend of the restaurant windmilled his arms to emphasize his point about a wicked ex-girlfriend.  Even during the drought, every night here is humid - stable menu, fogged windows.  It’s even cozier on a Monday night, with fewer of us sharing the secret.  I drank my wine and turned over my oyster shells - time enough to reflect etiquette back to myself. Eating alone is second only to eating with my favorite person. *** 2.25.15 At 6:07 p.m., sunset pinked the sky, but I was no longer riding home in the dark.  The light is coming back: I said out loud, twice, low, standing on my pedals. I’m far away, in the returning light of a perilously mild February.  I’m a distant satellite to my (blood) family - the only one in the dry Golden State while they hunker down to endure yet another blizzard, shovel great heaps of snow, and walk out onto improbably frozen seawater flats extending from the beaches edging Buzzards Bay. The water here lies in underground basins.  The water there is locked in ice. I picture my sister tucked between blanket drifts, feeding my infant niece. *** 2.26.15 I ate lunch in the rehabbed plaza by my office with Erik.  We covered the following subjects, rapid fire: Sweden, renting, fracking, birds of prey. Lengths of oil slick ribbon glinted in the branches of the trees overhead to thwart pigeons.  Erik said the bright flashes mimic the hungry, focused eyes of predators.  After the politics, I said we had to end on a better note and we traded stories of recent, favorite dishes (Erik: buttermilk biscuit with homemade butter; me: rice pudding with sour cherries). *** 2.27.15 This morning: keyhole fog bank smoldering at the end of Folsom on my ride downtown. This evening: mountainous, bruised clouds lining the Bay across Third St., on the T to Josh’s opening in the Dogpatch. We celebrated under the relentless white light of the gallery, then piled into cabs to devour delivered pizza back at our red-lit apartment.  Eyes and appetites equalized. I delivered drinks to Willis and Crystal on the couch in their socks.  Willis asked, “What have we done to deserve this?”  I told her, all I want is to feed you and make you comfortable. *** 2.28.15 We spent the day in bed.  I watched the cloud cover shift through bright and dark patches marching across our pillowcases.  The sun set underneath a mounting storm wall.  The city held its breath, but rain circumvented us. - Thunder, BLTs, and divorce live in Minnesota.  Last August, a lightning storm threw spindly punches from behind gathered cloud vestments in the Sunday flight path.  We sat out on the driveway pavement, adopted Californians pining for the alchemy of humidity and electricity from childhood summers in the Midwest and on the East Coast.  It was above and in front of us, but we missed it at the same time. A day earlier, Josh’s best friend had told us he and his wife were splitting up.  We spent our last night in town at the kitchen island, drinking down my in-laws’ beer fridge (Summit, Schell’s, Lift Bridge), and spooling out the details that needed attention: real estate, religion, bank accounts, sleeping arrangements, first days of kindergarten. On our visits, we rarely have enough time for the pull tabs and meat raffles, the hay rolled snuggly in damp fields, the corn parade interrupted by baseball diamonds, the main streets alternating churches and liquor stores.  Sometimes, we stop and get our fishing licenses at the big bait shop en route to a borrowed cabin.  We loll for a few morning hours on the launch with Greg - part-time fishing guide, part-time fireman - and, if we’re lucky, haul Northern pike out of Mille Lacs and up the dock to Cary, who excises the pesky y-bone and sends us home with coiled flesh in a cooler for a lunchtime fish fry that is at once immediate and nostalgic. *** 3.1.15 I could tell the empanada window on the corner was closed by the thrown shadows of its gate a half block prior.  I used to think flies congregated on this part of the street because of the dirty cafe that preceded the Chilean pastries - but Chile Lindo is immaculate and the flies still swarm.  I now know they’re seeking something in the bark, leaves, flowers, pollen, roots, or reliability of nearby trees. I tried out a new perspective: Sunday delight instead of Sunday melancholy.  People trailed their newly mobile granddaughters, carried laundry, sipped coffee, called their mothers, adjusted expectations, forgave one another.

[robyncarliss]

Week 7: GOLD STARS *** Certain strangers impress or charm during my weekday commute.  This week, I thought I would express my appreciation via passed notes (shipping tags, green pen, elementary school gold foil stars). The first recipient was wary and then grateful - a positive conversation overall - but the interaction diluted the pleasure of observing and co-existing quietly with these folks.  I neither wanted to give up my own anonymity, nor infringe upon others’ privacy - already a tenuous membrane in the public spaces of daily travel.  So, my gratitude lives here only. *** 2.16.15 Monday window washer, Peet’s, 22 Battery You choose elements of your uniform from the historical index of cool: black clothing, aviator sunglasses, silver pompadour.  I see you.  I see how you have and live a number of other stories beyond the morning glass ballet.  Thank you for your grace and intrigue. *** 2.17.15 Morning busker, 16th and Mission BART station You provide the opposite of fog: an ambient clarity we walk toward and through.  Thank you for serenading us.  Your music brings joy and focus to rushed pursuits. *** 2.18.15 Early evening traffic director, corner of Market and 1st/Pine [see scanned image above] *** 2.19.15 Morning crosswalk guard, Folsom and 7th You unfurrow the sourest of brows.  You know all the kids and their weary parents, high-fiving them as you shepherd small herds across the street in your knit cap and neon green safety vest.  Thank you for demonstrating the balm of familiarity. *** 2.20.15 Café owner, 16 California You are stern but true.  You are everywhere in your empire, working to feed people simply and honestly.  Thank you for sticking with the details. *** 2.21.15 Jewel-toned financial district worker, intersection of Battery and Bush You dress monochromatically in poppy, canary, bubblegum, amethyst.  Your are avian and bold. Thank you for your visual punctuation. *** 2.22.15 Leather-vested gent, on and above BART You bravely cut off your long, ginger-white ponytail. I bet that was tough.  You take care of your co-workers, ferrying coffee with a vaguely mischievous and yet wistful aura.  Once, I saw you in line to board a flight from Denver back to San Francisco. Eavesdropping, I learned you are Australian, and were traveling home from a tropical vacation. Thank you for bearing a life outside of work, for leading with fulfillment derived from activities outside of this patterned realm.

[robyncarliss]

Week 6: ROYGBIV *** 2.9.15  |  R Cristina flickers in the periphery in her tomato red cardigan with pearl buttons.  Her family lives on another continent and she wears her heart outside for the ailing lungs of her sister’s husband: organ for organ, visual solidarity. *** 2.10.15  |  O The orange of oranges is spectral: Valencia, Cara Cara, blood.  Winter citrus seeds intimacy with the spokes of the wheel.  How much pigment, hillock of grain or smudged media, topples recognition as another hue?  Shih Tzu: a dog breed or a censored syllable depending on the length of an on-air pause. *** 2.11.15  |  Y We’re down to the last preserved lemon, bobbing amniotically in its jar in the fridge.  Salt doesn’t cluster to rime here, instead undressing yellow cells: a condiment, but also a specimen. *** 2.12.15  |  G Brad is bottle green under the lapels.  Legally blind, but a seer (designer, magician), particularity marked by serif and gestural tact.  A person with whom to see, a directed light, an unrelated brother. *** 2.13.15  |  B I found a street sign downtown with your nickname - set against blue and building, and barely curved like the new brim of a fitted cap.  This morning, when you woke up, you looked over at me and whispered, “Baseball is coming.” *** 2.14.15  |  I In the week’s dull laundry, I imagine an opposite: my intake gown.  Indigo.  In jail, how often would I think of it, wait for it, dream of it, forget it?  On my release day, would it still fit, would the dye have rubbed off on the inside of a manila storage envelope? I fold everything, including myself.  In bed, my body fizzes, letting off light and acid, settling into the diurnal pattern of millennia. *** 2.14.15  |  V When Ursula and I fought as little girls, we would dig our nails into each other’s skin, leaving behind violet half-moon indentations.  A tracking list: Countryside, IL Mendon, MO Bovina, TX Needles, CA The small-name, never-heard places mark me as I read them, plain architecture pressing soil below the flight direction that would deliver me to my sisters and their keratin on the other coast.

[robyncarliss]

Week 5: RIGHT LEFT LEFT RIGHT

[robyncarliss]

Week 4: KITCHEN WITNESS *** Two large windows in clear and milk stripes open onto the Benu kitchen on Hawthorne Lane. Each day this week, I spent a few minutes on the opposite sidewalk, looking in before or during dinner service. Benu, helmed by Corey Lee, earned a third Michelin star in October 2014. (Line drawings for days 1-7, left to right above.) *** 1.26.15, 5:24 p.m. (row one, left) The left side of the kitchen is dark: a day of rest. On the right, a woman in a cargo jacket sits at a high counter. She glances at a laptop screen, pages through a book; research? A clock blinks digitally, green, near the ceiling. I had an old idea about this short street, which runs between Howard and Folsom. I remembered it as quiet, but the lane is busy during the post-work commute. Folks are ebullient as they steer toward Market’s many options for delivering them home. This is the hinge of the day. I remembered it as dark, but the light is returning, mounting slowly to its summer apex. Smokers and dog walkers patrol. Knowing is a half-lit enterprise, like Monday’s kitchen. *** 1.27.15, 5:28 p.m. (row one, right) At least a dozen figures weave in, out, and through the two frames. Hands move fiercely below impervious mantles of chefs’ whites: ducks gliding serenely across a pond while paddling vigorously beneath the surface. Service prep displays motions and gestures that resemble other motions and gestures. Professional kitchen activity building to public presentation reveals flourishes that are domestic and intimate. A man draws a length of plastic wrap from an industrial roll as if he is making a bed, casting a laundered top sheet across the mattress he and his sweetheart share. Food - cooking, eating, being fed - bundles together many, disparate expressions. A woman holds an ingredient aloft for inspection in an action that is both scientific (cells, slides) and photographic (negatives, light). *** 1.28.15, 5:31 p.m. (row two, left) One sits on the right, the rest stand. A man pulls apart tissue-thin slices of protein: counting cards to ensure the full deck is present before shuffling. A woman looks across the kitchen to communicate an order via glance, but then moves toward the other person anyway: the potential energy of waiting for a light to change, or to walk across a stage for a diploma. *** 1.29.15, 7:37 p.m. (row two, right) Food can be a remedy. All the kitchen staff wear white, all the service staff wear black. Both sides are disappeared (in the back) or disappearing (in shadow). Deep in a medical emergency, would someone rap on the kitchen windows for help, comforted by the posture and garb akin to an operating room? I have read you are some of the best people: last meal or heart procedure, perhaps you could perform either task on the broad plating table under retractable lighting. Like surgery, food can open you up. Last May in Olema, my father’s wife, dear Susan, cried while eating mulberries, remembering fruit-bearing branches rasping against the window of an upstairs bedroom at her grandparents’ house. Last August in San Diego, I wept while eating oysters that tasted like the undertow seawater I gulped around the edges of my childhood island back east. *** 1.30.15, 4:16 p.m. (row three, left) Carrying a tray through the kitchen with calculated speed: ferrying a box of letters out of a burning building, the one thing dexterously and purposefully retrieved. Hoisting a heavy measure of brine, quick-slow to minimally disturb the meniscus: lifting an elderly parent out of a wheelchair. Wiping down counters with strategic symmetry: polishing a family heirloom. Pouring liquid from a high spout into a low vessel: rinsing your lover’s hair. *** 1.31.15, 6:34 p.m. (row three, right) Pressing to check proofed dough or for the desired temperature of cooked meat: are you ok? A palm briefly pressed to a hurt or hurting someone gives permission to fall back, to give over some of the weight. Here, let me take that for you. *** 2.1.15, 5:51 p.m. (row four, left) Dark kitchen: dark bedroom. Sleep, satiety. Inactivity mirrors other inactivity. The windows reflect keen street lights and sullen parked cars. The windows are a stage, but also a wall. (No one noticed me noticing.)

[robyncarliss]

Week 3: LETTERS TO RUBY *** 1.19.15 Dearest Ruby, Today, you are two months + two days.  Josh and I are with you in Pocasset, Massachusetts, watching you watch the world.  Your are a busy girl!  We are so happy to know you. Your town is quiet, Eastern-chilled, sun-bright in the afternoons.  Your first home has cobalt blue doors and a ski chalet living room – which you dismiss for its high, dark ceilings, a space than engulfs your small being.  It smells good here.  You change every second – furrowed thespian, then languid sunbather, then pensive academic, then content drunk, then busy dreamer.  I try to imprint you, kissing your doll head and satin palms so you remember me.  I know you are still stringing together molecules and motes and that it will take years for you to recall who I am, but I’m starting early nonetheless. We keep saying to your mom and dad, “I don’t know which one of you she looks like.”  Ursula says, “I know!”  Then, one day, she says the best thing: “She looks like Ruby.”  You look like yourself, of course.  You have seeking blue eyes, a hairline that contours when you cry, a miniature nose that bridges into your cheeks, and a mouth that demonstrates the marvel of evolution. Your mom and dad waited for you.  You make me love my sisters even more than I already did – which was leagues and leagues.  You, our new focal point, melt the residual awkwardness of our blended family.  We love each other and that’s what matters.  You are a part of our tribe now, talisman and member alike. Love, Robyn *** 1.20.15 Dearest Ruby, Brief introductions to a few of the many folks who love you: Ursula.  Your mama is enormously brave.  She leaps with a calm heart, steers herself up chlorophyll-laden trails and down bright highways.  I have always looked up to her. Brendan.  Your papa is rich with knowledge and accomplishment and yet extremely humble.  I liked him immediately.  He and your mama are wonderful partners to one another – they listen closely, express gratitude regularly, and collaborate naturally. Kira.  Your aunt is the funniest person we all know.  Her wit will transform you into a quaking heap of breathless laughter.  Her commentary is one of my favorite things about this life, and I look forward to the addition of your voice to our strange, collective sense of humor. Josh.  Your uncle’s sunny resourcefulness is matched only by his glorious rapport with the absurd.  He radiates good will and will build you actual furniture. Nancy.  Your nana is singular.  She will teach you about the pitfalls of sameness and the joys of novelty.  Perhaps you too will be a lifelong learner and gatherer of uncommon experiences. Glen.  Your grandpa is a master storyteller through both voice and horn.  We are a nostalgic and affectionate bunch because of him. And I, your aunt, am a loyal protector.  Wherever we are – together, apart – I am always with you and you are always with me. Love, Robyn *** 1.21.15 Dearest Ruby, A good thing to remember: we all have loose ends. Love, Robyn *** 1.22.15 Dearest Ruby, You are in constant motion – reaching, craning, swiveling, refocusing.  With your tiny limbs, you’re saying, “Let me get a good look!”  Later, you’ll hear that staying still is the best strategy for gaining clarity, but you help me remember that moving and trying out different perspectives help a great deal as well.  Thank you. Love, Robyn *** 1.23.15 Dearest Ruby, Your teeth are distant, and I don’t want to hop ahead in time.  Stay small and gum-swell for now, my little beetle. Months and years from now, however, when you too are able to chew your meals, we might enjoy the following vegetables together.  We are lucky to have so many options that are as beautiful as they are edible. Castelfranco radicchio The pale green and yellow ruffled leaves of this member of the chicory family host burgundy freckles.  Chicories are bitter with a sweet heart – a good vegetable lesson that can also ring true for humans. Chioggia beets Concentric pink and white circles paint these roots behind their red skin.  You will exclaim in delight when you first cut into one. Padrón peppers Pepper Russian roulette! Occasionally, you’ll bite into one that deviates from the mild lot and stings your mouth with heat. Sauté a pile in a cast iron skillet with olive oil and sliced garlic until the skins blister, shower them with flaky salt, and get to gambling. Romanesco The growth of this lime-green brassica head approximates a fractal.  When you chop up the buds to roast them, you will be tempted to balance their miniature, repeating sections upright to create a gnome forest. Sunchokes These tubers look like ginger, taste like artichokes, and stem into small sunflowers.  Eat the delicious contradictions and ask questions later. Love, Robyn *** 1.24.15 Dearest Ruby, On to the fruit.  A few unique treats on the natural sugar front: Cara Cara oranges Citrus comes to us in the winter; when the sun visits us least in the sky, citrus visits us most frequently in groves and kitchens through vibrant orange and yellow orbs, mimicking solar hues.  The flesh of Cara Cara oranges falls closer to the sunset end of the spectrum, salmon-colored and happily finished with the day. Dry-farmed tomatoes Farmers cut off water once the plants are established to focus energy on fruit production.  The hydrological deprivation works in our taste favor, resulting in fruit that’s dense, red all the way through, and ultra sweet. Pink Pearl apples Gray-green skin belies bright pink flesh: the geode of the apple world. Quince Quince lives with apples and pears in its family, but stands alone in its genus – which makes sense because the fruit is indeed incomparable.  You cannot eat quince raw, and when you poach them, the flesh blushes.  Magic! Wild blueberries I’m talking about Blueberries for Sal blueberries.  Larger, cultivated blueberries are delicious in their own right but don’t match the perfectly sweet-tart flavor of the dusky, navy-purple morsels your mama and I used to pick from bushes lining homemade trails in the woods behind our early family home on Martha’s Vineyard. More soon on this topic, always. Love, Robyn *** 1.25.15 Dearest Ruby, I’m sorry we all keep staring at you and vying for your glances.  We can’t help it!  You are the most compelling. I personally detest the spotlight, and would love to know how you feel about being the center of attention so we can honor your stance on the matter. In the meantime, while we work on our mind reading and you work on your verbal communication, forgive us our beaming and swooning? Love, Robyn

[robyncarliss]

Week 2: MAKE A SNOWBALL *** 1.12.15, paper

1.13.15, cocktail

1.14.15, coconut

1.15.15, snow

1.16.15, snow

1.17.15, cookie

1.18.15, paint