Seasons Change And…

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

Autumn is here. It’s funny how it hits so differently depending on where you live in the country and how it affects you differently than someone else. I was talking to Nathan the other day and it isn’t even ‘fall’ where he’s at, yet here leaves are changing and the colors are happening and it is clearly autumn, in that glorious setting of warm days, brisk mornings, and chill nights. The smells are out of this world. I LOVE autumn. Always have. I love the seasonal shift much more these days than before when I was this total Autumn girl. Now, give me summer, give me spring. Even winter has a part of my body enclosed around it now. But still, Autumn holds her hand on me the most.

I haven’t gotten around to writing about it much, being that I get super distracted on my days off, and on my days at work, I have time in the morning but I feel very zombie-ish. Today was one of the first off days when I don’t feel totally wiped for a change. It’s rather nice. But I still haven’t written that much. So much to write about. Wilson and his girl Friday are galavanting off on walkabouts throughout the area. Hands shoved into back pockets, her in riding boots, him in tennis shoes, hoodie? Maybe tweed, sorry, too much Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar magazines showcasing tweed in the fall, have gotten to me.  But they are tramping about the countryside as I am indoors. Good for them, the louses. I jest. It’s so much fun to mock your characters. To poke fun at them. To injure them with a well placed criticism. It doesn’t do any harm.

So there they are, off tramping up one hill and down another,
fingers shoved into back pockets as icy needles fly from the north wind
a shock line up the scalp as radiant heat burnishes from the front,
the sun tilted down at lower planes and angles,
and they climb up over barbed wire, snag on berry bushes
fingers stained purple as plump ripeness bursts into mouths,
grinning, garish smiles of dripping sweetness,
then off-ward again, they climb up steep hills, to sit on a outcropping
granite boulders warmed in the afternoon light,
watching the golden disk slip down behind the mountains, a linger of
golden lines from each segment it sinks down
a line of trees far away, still you can see the toothed branches
you could nearly count the pine cones, maybe
and an unkindness of ravens caw their way overhead
while a wake of buzzards drift upwards then down in spirals,
updrafts, downdrafts, the shifting warmth of the day
now brisk and biting in like little nails, curved thorns of the blackberry,
and twilight sets in so much faster, and faster, and faster,
as they stumble their way down the hill, the warm piney scent of the coniferous gasses
chasing them homeward in the lingering light……

Whoa, where did that come from? No seriously, I just started puttering with a thought I had in my journal and suddenly I have a scene for Wilson and whatever her name is, the muse. I gotta write this down. Cool.

It’s exciting when I write something that is just spitting out from my head. I haven’t had a lot of that lately. I’m distracted by too much phone usage, and well, actually, I’m reading this and that and getting caught in books. Then mentally drifting off.

Well, patting myself on the back, now I have other things to get done. Enjoy that bit of poetry that just slipped out. And honestly, the title of the post came from a new Post Malone song, “Circles”, but I never got around to my music tastes right now. Another day….

Kate

It’s A Little Bit Greek To Me

A sudden rainstorm over a two day period came and blew out the heat and summer dust. In a few days the summer smell went to autumn, or early autumn, in a flash.  Step outside to gorgeousness and sweet air.  It’s been a minor perfection.

Work has kept me at a constant spiral of in, out, split shifts, late nights, huge workloads, and a constant ever present desire to write when I can. Even a few words. An older gentleman who has heard my work asked me the other day if I was still writing. He’s so sweet. Yes, I am still writing. A lot more than I thought I could while being this busy, but also a lot less than I would like. Time is much more precious. Reading too. I read this amazing retelling of the Hades and Persephone story. Very adult. Very good. I love Greek myths, always have, and retellings are fun. I found Lore Olympus on Webtoon, which I had seen some of the art on Pinterest, and it has been another delightful retelling. Modernized. I would love to read more retellings.

Lore Olympus. Persephone and Hades…. yum!

A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair

Lore Olympus  

I’m on the hunt for more fun retellings of other Greek or Mythology  stories.

Wilson Tennu has gotten a few more words out recently, which as been nice. I like how I’m able to step into another frame and write about him. I had to get over some road blocks with him.

Just like I recently picked up a novel about the Sierra Nevadas I started a couple years ago. I finally knuckled down and came to a point where I have been trying to get to, and now have some basis, and plot points. It is a huge event for me because I write by the seat of my pants. Though at least with this novel, I’m taking a novel I already love and have read multiple times and rewriting it to be like what I want as I always found some fault. I’ve changed the setting and the theme some. Instead of a harmless mistake of scheduling, this is an actual setup of two people by the sister of the girl and her husband who met the guy and is a friends. Guy and Gal hate each other from a work standpoint, but well, things change. Surprisingly, Instagram is what helped take this novel off because I could find pictures of the place I was writing about, since I live 8 hours away these days. I grew up there, but haven’t been back in a 20 years. So I needed a bit of help.

I’m going to include a few lines of a Wilson Tennu poem I’m working on. It’s nearly finished, but not quite. I was inspired by Greek Muses, muses in my life, and tarot or oracle cards. It’s from Wilson’s POV

I watch her shuffle the large deck of cards
cutting, rotating, shuffling again.
She has four decks, one classic,
the other three are one’s she lovingly stroked
then tapped rhythmically with her pearl varnished nails.
It’s a height of summertime kind of day, and she,
she’s an oracle, Delphi would admit her in an instant.
A grass heated breeze blows in through wire screens,
wild florals and sweet wild oat turning tan and gold
as July slowly bakes on, lazily spinning the ceiling fan,
around and around, and she sits in the middle of my bed,
her legs crossed under her white skirt spread out ,
her blonde hair snapping out impatient like;
Electricity flows through her veins and lightning
flashes in her ever changing sea and sky blue eyes.
“Y know I’m no good at this,” she sing-songs her words,
shaking her head bemused, flipping a card over with a small frown,
two little indents forming between her brows.
She and I had joked about a reading, answering existential questions
as we sang our way through the breakdown and mopping
when she’s as put together as any chef should be.
As unlike she is now, all Greek muse like,
humming her approval of one card I pick
consulting her books at another,
and our glasses sit, sweating pools of water rings
on the wooden table, forgotten in the moment.

By Katie Lyn Branson copywrite 2019

Isn’t that fun? Summer ish?

Kate

The Scales Tilt

Photo by Leio McLaren (@leiomclaren) on Unsplash

“Hey Chef, can I talk to you before you go?”

The question is posed after another long Saturday with the exhaustion of Thursday and Friday getting to me. I can see he’s dreading the ‘Talk’ that I have coming, because I have had serious talks at the end of his shift, not always good.

“How do you balance home life and chef/restaurant life? Like how do you get your family to understand the lack of balance?”  The question gets a chuckle, rueful at best from Coffeeman as he flips a milk crate over and sits down on our back dock and I plop myself on the stairs. I’m way past tired, ready to cry, per usual, and that’s not having been working over 40 hours; I still have another two to three before I hit that mark. It’s just the overwhelming feeling of all my focus on work. Picking up after people, stressing over prep not getting done, sugar lows that make me hurl dough at a table and stomp off nearly ready to melt into a puddle of tears and snarling. I could be a puddle of vampire teeth. I know, weird analogy. But I’m a weepy, bitey puddle.

I never balance things well. Relationships, work, poetry, writing. I go all in. I thrust myself into the fray and sink my heels in; grasp with sharp talons. Moderation isn’t my best suit. I have a lot of flaws. I cultivate bad habits…. Okay, not totally, but I’m far from the person I present myself at work. I think everyone there thinks I am a certain way, and I’m betting they wouldn’t quite recognize me on my off days or at home or when I’m in a comfortable setting. I’m me at work, but not. Which is why I cultivate the name ‘K’ at work (psst. people, it’s not Kay. It’s just the letter…. lol) K is a focused individual, a little messy, but put together, dedicated to the point of ocd-ness, passionate about her work, what her guests think, what her coworkers think, etc. It can be exhausting. I’m nice to a fault. I’m not as assertive as I need to be, yet. Much more passive.

But at home I am cluttered, distracted, emotional, snarky, tired, always tired, prone to starting too many projects and not finishing them, a reader, a dreamer, a writer. Writer me is rarely visiting work, and when she does, it’s while making a pizza on a slow day when the clouds are forming to the south and I stare out at the fields, meadows, and mountains, writing about Wilson Tennu, or what he should be writing about…

I guess in that way I’m balanced. A balanced wreck, but balanced nonetheless.

“Twenty plus years in the industry, and I still haven’t got it all balanced,” says Coffeeman.

“How do you unwind? I find myself getting off at 11 and awake till three in the morning,” I say.

“I still do that.” His replies help (and don’t help) because I don’t feel like I’m the only one dealing with it. I know he gets it. He has it seven days a week with ordering or being at the restaurant, family life, a wife, kids, a long commute. I have at least the two days off, which he says to be thankful of.

“Don’t drive past this place, (course you get your mail at the post office behind…), don’t think about work. Don’t plan recipes or menus or specials. Do it at the last minute. Do it on the fly. Don’t talk about work. Let it go for the two full days you are off and the morning before you come to work.”

It’s all easier said than done. Coffeeman… I failed this week, as I sat there discussing work and thinking about hand pies and do we have puff pastry in the freezers still? Do I want to run a special this week?

It’s currently Tuesday evening, my Sunday night, and yeah, I’m thinking about work. It’s one of those bad habits.  But I don’t feel as stressed other than I wish I would have had more time to watch a few things filling up the dvr. I wish I could sleep more. I feel like I don’t get enough sleep. This balance thing is hard.

But again, balance isn’t my strong suit. Nor is patience. I want it to happen now. Drama queen that I am.

I like to think that maybe the scales are shifting a bit though. I took a long walk and hike yesterday by water, which I love. Saw plants and wildlife and just got away from the house. And not just to town, or to the city. Just away from the generals of life. It was nice. Summer is rapidly progressing and I feel like it’s going to be all over before it even began!

I found myself feeling kind of weird about how much of a struggle last summer was, but right now it feels very far away. Some things are not far away, having animosity towards people still, months from when it happened, but it seems ages ago. This year is a struggle as well, but in a different way. Other problems creep in, others fade. I’m still too emotional about things. I don’t think that will ever change, but each day might bring something new and a new perspective.

Coffeeman left me with a hug of serious proportions. The kind that says, “I get you” which I needed because I was so tired and need to find balance. “Just be thankful you don’t have kids,” he says on a final note. And to that, I am fortunate. My immediate family wears me out. I’d hate to think of kids in the picture. And that’s the rueful me talking there.

Kate

Bobby Pins, Typewriters, and Morels… Or, Just Another Spring Week

The funniest things catch and hold my fancy. For days and days a thought can bounce back into my brain. Current thoughts are: I keep finding bobby pins in random spots and it’s so exciting because I need all of them. Listening to dough and how it works because it’s a living breathing thing, though it might seem to be inanimate. The Lumineers and the Pandora station. Ada Limon poetry. Spring thunderstorms. Spring flowers. Using older things for writing, I.E. typewriters, journals, notebooks, fountain pens, etc. the 1930s…. Oh, lastly, morels. It’s morel season.

All random thoughts. All unique and almost all applying to writing. Except for the bobby pins. That applies to just my life. I got so excited when I reached down into the pocket of my slacks last night and pulled out three bobby pins and a barrette. I need all of those. I had wondered where all my bobby pins were disappearing to. Now I know. Thank gosh because I used 20 the other day to keep my hair back in place. I thought I was using a lot before. Nope. I have it down to a lot more now. I wrote a Facebook update that was, “Found more bobby pins in my slacks pocket last night. I love this!” A friend thought that made for a marvelous prompt. From a man’s perspective. I think so too.

I was mentally writing about listening to dough, after reading Thomas Keller’s Bouchon Bakery book. Dough, you think of as inanimate, but in all actuality, because of the yeast, it is alive. It may be an organism, but it’s alive nonetheless. So you have to listen to the dough when you work with it. You can’t just force it to mold to your will. Ok, you can, but it might not be that happy. And in turn, neither will you. So the dough I have been working with has been kind of warm and lazy. It just stretches just so, like a person in the morning that yawns and stretches their arms above their head then falls back into the pillows all soft and sleepy…… Then there is the dough that my coworker made. It’s cold, lumpy, and very very grumpy. It’s like Walter from Jeff Dunham. Arms crossed, uncompromising…. a pain in the ass. You nearly have to beat the stuff into submission. Or in my case, I let it be alone for a while to sit and pout. It warmed up enough to be flexible so I could roll it into a ball, in which case, it got all grumpy again and was stubborn. Making into a pizza crust was a challenge later. It kept tearing and not stretching. Gads, it was a pain.

I have been stressed and mental lately. I have been thinking about Wilson Tennu and his issues. Spring storms seem to be so him. I think I had a dream about him recently and I was just a little bit more in love with this broken person. It’s terrible. He’s been in my head, choosing to listen to serious music. Not jazz, per se, though he does love it, but things like the Lumineers and folk music. Or indie music. Young the Giant is one of his new favorite bands. (Me, myself, I’m enthralled with the lead singer of that band. Yum) But he’s been so moody. I pulled out Ada Limon, Kim Addonizio, and Anne Sexton to try and alleviate some of his issues. But I think I need to read some Seamus Heany and Galway Kinnell. They are a nice balance of both of us. Him and I. We are both moody people. Gee, I wonder why. Insert sarcasm.

My father recently had his Remington typewriter fixed and made all shiny and pretty and smooth typing. I now need to have my Royal fixed up so I don’t feel like I’m clumping along with it as it sticks on key b, or bounces out a double space so I have to back up and use white out. Or a red X. But it’s going to be a bit before I can get to that. I have Wilson wanting to type and I have been kind of shoving him off and not letting him. See, I’m too connected to this person. I really should tell him to get a hold of himself, but I also don’t want him to leave. He lets me look at things from a different perspective.

Morel mushroom KLB

He’d have luck morel hunting. Not me. No, I flopped with finding only 6. Phooey!

Now that it’s nearly the end of my “Saturday”, I should go take a look at the three large books that came in for me at the library, and maybe let Wilson write a little.

Kate

It’s A Sign Of Behind The Times

I’m actually having trouble naming blog posts these days. I was thinking in the terms of song lyrics. “It’s a sign of the times….”, it’s a Harry Styles song… bear with me.

Today I finished Paradise Lost by Milton…. Caveat being that I didn’t read chapters 1-11; only chapter 12. I was a little late to the game with the local ‘Salon’ one of the ladies from the writing group hosts. It was rather lovely to be in a literary setting which has been far from my realm for months. My writing group has gone to the wayside because my Friday nights are so late that I can’t force myself to get up at 9am to write. Bleh.

Or Nathan Englander. Look at that hair. He has to be tall, right?

But I am still writing. Not as frequently as I would like, because while inspiration is there, and pops into my head all the time, it’s rather hard to write while pulling pizzas from a 700 degree oven in the middle of a rush. Whew!

Farley Granger. Good, American stock.

I wrote two poems back in 2017 that were from the standpoint of this heteronym Wilson Philips Tennu, a writer living in New Orleans. Tall, thin, similar to Farley Granger (or Nathan Englander), but more floppy hair, he’s in this physical relationship with a Mrs. Robinson-esque woman, although I don’t see her as quite as old, nor is she married. Just she has this way about her. He’s fed up with her, so off to France he goes, which is in poem number two.  Well, these two poems lead to a three month writing spree of various points where he’s trying to find himself, he’s left France, gone to the west coast, lives in a small, rural area, in this mountain cabin that’s very, um, rustic.  For those not knowing what a heteronym is : via Wikipedia 

The literary concept of the heteronym refers to one or more imaginary character(s) created by a writer to write in different styles. Heteronyms differ from pen names (or pseudonyms, from the Greek words for “false” and “name”) in that the latter are just false names, while the former are characters that have their own supposed physiques, biographies, and writing styles.

Wilson writes very long poems with no breaks. Semi rambling on…. Okay, I’m a little like that, but not quite as bad…. making conditions, because like, yeah, I am the one actually writing it… gads that’s confusing.

Anyways, here he is, in the west, and I am working on his journal and poetry. The poor man is rather lost, confused, disgusted with himself. He needs a change. He’s decided to get a job in a restaurant as a dishwasher….. irony……. working the night shift, and he smokes cigarettes like a fiend, courtesy of the Mrs. R. He drives a 1973 sky blue Capri, has two typewriters, one is a travel one, an Olivetti Lettera 22, light blue….  “but I still took my typewriter with me,
the travel one, sky blue, sleek, like a convertible
with its top down, zippy, light on its keys”   (I always say this in my head like Linguini from Ratatouille when he’s explaining about Anton Ego, the critic, coming to dinner)

Olivettie Lettera 22

I’d actually rather like to meet this guy. He’s so not my type, but well, any guy that likes his typewriters and is a bit edgy, sounds interesting at least. Writing from his standpoint is interesting. Sometimes I get lost as to whom is writing, and then I start getting really depressed and wanting a cigarette…. I don’t smoke. Sometimes Wilson can be a bit of a bad influence on me. He stays up late, having dark circles under his eyes. He probably drinks a bit too much, obviously smokes too much. Sometimes I want to shake him for being so dramatic at times. Everything is always so over the top with him. A real drama queen….

So bits of my life make for a perfect inspiration for his life. I kind of feel sorry he’s a dishwasher, but since he’s a writer that sends off work as his bread and butter, I’m okay with him having a lower tier job.  The dishwashing is his jam, though he would much rather have the writing be bread, butter, and JAM.  Fickle man.  Someone should give him a good ‘Snap out of it!’ slap, a la Moonstruck.

Just the other day, the swoop and curls are even better as I work on them, this was only day two of testing.

I realized I hadn’t blogged in quite a while, but then a new spring menu dropped at the restaurant, I was sick again, and just this week finished a 6 day work week with a couple of extra overtime days. Days where I didn’t clock off till well after midnight.  I am seriously tired and two days off isn’t enough. I need one extra at least, but such is life. I am excited about the new menu and one of my ideas made it to dessert menu. Pots de creme. I had done spiced ones a month ago that were not super popular, but these new ones are plain, rich chocolate.  I am excited about a few new dessert ideas I have playing around in my head. I have been killing it on being lead pizza chef. I mean, I am rocking it, even with a Rosie the Riveter look. I have the headband and have been swooping my hair a la 1940s.

That doesn’t mean work has been easy. I love my job but there are aspects that make me want to slam my head into a wall… Or more like coworkers heads, but that’s way too psychopathic, which I am not…. insert evil grin, like the Grinch….. I jest. Really, I do. I joke that I always have my knives with me, but if I actually stab someone it will be because I forgot to walk with the point down and I went around a corner. Yes, I can hear Chef in my head…. ‘Point down!’

Yes, Chef.

I’m not sure how to end this post, other than to say, I need to now read Paradise Lost, especially chapters/books 7 and 9 per Mads suggestion. I am actually going to read the whole thing as I rather like blank verse. Enjoy this Harry Styles song, because I rather like it, and need to listen to it again.

Kate

Midsummer Thunderstorms

Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash

Midsummer and the thunderstorms pile up….thick, beautiful whiteness, greyness, and stagnant air gets thick with moisture…. silence reigns as things too quiet to hear, suddenly are as loud as a cricket in your ear…. slips of blue blue blue fill up pockets of where the white and grey have spread just a little to reveal the serenity above the pounding drums and flashes of quicksilver violin spats…. swirling, whirling way up high, twisting around the needle branches of the pines, swallows spin and dance in the warm air, spinning up up up, to plummet down again….. and every hue of every summer flower is as vibrant as the paint in an artists paintbox, swirled out in extravagant splashes of orange, purple, red, pink, magenta, blue, yellow….. Greeness and yellowness, the grasses waving on the hills and meadows, the spires of seed heads bobbing in the waving winds that have been stirred up by the unsettled air, cut grasses, hay, laying in rows, billowing green rippling like the sea in shades of mint, olive, asparagus green, oh every shade known to man, rippling onward, stopping only by the stalwart blockades of the hills, filled with the resinous perfumes of pine, juniper, cedar, sweet maple of the sugarpines,….. the cicadas have stopped their humming and murmuring, now the raspy grasshoppers take the tune, and the buzz and hum, a perpetual hum of a white noise as bees move throughout collecting nectar….. only a splatter of rain may fall, the drops splatting in the dry dry dirt, kicking up little powderpuffs of dust then filling the air with wet dust dampness dirt….. before the asphalt gets its spicy sweet wet smell, and the grasses and hay are dampened… oh summer thunderstorms are the magic of the year….more magic than the first snowfall, this unstable sweltering explosion of fire and water and wind and earth… all the elements have come out to play……

Photo by John Westrock on Unsplash

So, I’m in bed, but I was out watching some of the thunderstorms pile up. Can you tell I love summer thunderstorms?  I’ve been writing about them in various stages for the past ten plus years. Always different, never capturing what I want to say. I love living where they happen. When I lived in Colorado, they happened almost every day, but they lacked the heat buildup that we get here in northern CA. They didn’t have the sweet hot smell of a burnt out summer and dried grasses.

Last year I had created a character a la B.H. Fairchild’s way of a heteronym, (see Wikipedia’s description) a Wilson Tennu, who comes to CA after a breakup of a love affair and experiences the summer thunderstorms as these giant wars between the gods of mythology. This Wilson guy ‘wrote’ some of my massive and narrative poems that went into the rejected manuscript, and he has become my inspiration for looking at things differently. I am also quite attached to his poetry. He’s rather remarkable in my opinion.

Anyways, viewing thunderstorms from someone that lives in New Orleans (which is where he lives, in an apartment above Bourbon Street) would be an interesting take on how they come about here in NorCal. They seem to just explode out of nowhere. Maybe all thunderstorms are the same way. I want to be on the prairie sometime and watch them form. Far enough away from a tornado, but still see them form. Let’s just say I respect and admire and adore summer thunderstorms.

So enjoy my little rambling description. If you live here, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, well I hope you can picture the magic.

Kate