I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
~Sylvia Plath
I've not felt like writing much these days. Nor cooking. Nor eating. Though, of course, I have anyway. These compulsions of mine to record and catalogue every errant thought and Early Girl tomato-avocado-goat cheese sandwich I consume pay no heed to me. They exercise an adamantine-clad will of their own, making me their slave. Forcing me to further pollute the cybersewers I drown in with endless streams of fuzzy Mayfair-filtered Instagram-Layout pictures to what I (not so) cleverly call My Porn Addiction album on Facebook - all to the dismay and horror of those intrepid few who follow me in that social media war zone.
Exhibit A:
Frankly, I spend most of my time these days wondering when the next life-snuffing meteor is scheduled to hit this planet. They say three time's a charm. Surely earth will finally have something roaming its surface dominating the other species that is worthy of its beauty. Dinosaurs and humans have proved a bust. These are some of my lighter musings which I graciously share with all who are within a click of my claque.
The endless political memes polluting my cyberfeeds convincing no one of nothing force the pitch of my text to pole-vault from witty (if slightly sardonic) to banshee-shrill as I shriek "What do you think all these political posts are doing? Do you think you are informing people? Changing their minds? Making a difference? Do you NOT realize that politics is the new religion? It is POINTLESS to preach. People don't use logic. If they did, they wouldn't have nominated a crooked politician & a reality television star." to the guilty and innocent alike. I've morphed into some mad Disney villainess: Cruella De Vil cutting the heads off roses with Ursula's eels at Poison Ivy's garden party. It's not pretty.
Compounding matters is the fact that it is summer in the city which means long gloomy days chilled by relentlessly brutal fog & wind. While it's certainly not the coldest winter I've ever spent (sorry, all you misquoters of Mark Twain, but I'm from NYC try to spend any January day slipsliding in the midst of all the slice - slush and ice - and then talk to me about summer in San Francisco), it is definitely a mood deflating experience. When you add to this cheerless Wuthering Heights atmosphere the blowing out of your right knee for no good reason other than the slow insidious decrepitude of advancing middle age, you then have spectacular ingredients for the summertime blues.
Let's have a dash at the recipe, shall we?
Ingredients:
1) Badly injure some part of your knee joint by doing nothing more than reaching the culmination of many years of physical stress. Be sure to regret every leg press, squat, and pas de bourree you've ever inflicted on your anterior cruciate ligament.
2) Add insult to injury by always being unwilling to accept your physical limitations
3) Hobble around like an unusually large jackrabbit with a touch of polio
4) Be forced to spend most of the day in an ungainly, semi-reclined position with leg iced & elevated on poorly supported, unevenly balanced, improvised traction devices (chairs, books, ugly pillows that you have relegated to the basement closet after purchasing them online from Horchows )
5) Be desperately bored and self-hating to the point of watching torturous Paula Deen rerun after torturous Paula Deen rerun on Food Network for perverse entertainment value. (Be sure to liberally sprinkle your shouts at the television with the saltiest expletives in your spice rack).
6) Have knee continue swollen like a clown-faced water balloon at some hokey county fair shooting gallery for the better part of two weeks
7) Gain at least 5 lbs. because you are unable to exercise with anything more strenuous than a computer mouse and a t.v. remote. Embrace your inner zoftig babushka as she bloats readying herself for entry into the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
8) Gain the above 5 lbs. by eating nothing more decadent than plain nonfat yogurt with less than farm fresh produce & leftover frozen veggie ravioli
9) Make sure husband decides he has to spend the better part of the last month at the Mandarin Oriental in NY and then in some luxurious seaside resort in Monaco (without you & your gimpy leg, of course)
10) Have the notoriously frigid, gloomy San Francisco summer suddenly morph today into the warmest, sunniest, most glorious stretch of weather in the city's recorded history
11) Make sure you live in a home amply supplied with enormous bay windows that can beautifully showcase all that you are missing in ingredient #10
12) Make sure the above home is also perched 14 floors above ground level with an out-of-order elevator & liberally studded with other obstacles (rugs that slip, small easily upset occasional tables, large leafy plants, enormous immovable chairs & other potential booby traps) that you must deftly navigate around while delicately poised on one leg.
Instructions:
Now gently combine all the above ingredients with one moody temperamental latina. Allow it to marinate at room temperature for 2 or 3 weeks & voila...you have the perfect recipe for a miserable summer!!! Enjoy.
(Or Don't!)
Serves 1 moderately neurotic individual.
(P.S. The enchiladas really are delicious and easy to make , and that casual recipe I placed as a caption is all you need - be sure to drink liberal amounts of tequila, baptizing your lemonade with it whilst eating these.. that distilled agave nectar adds its own notes of sunshine into the greyest fugue)
