June 04, 2009
The Laughing High Priestess
Filed under: The Black Arts
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TIRED, CHARRED and ACHY; welcome to battered and burned world of Ms. Graveyard Dirt, nudist gardener in training and "the laughing high priestess" extraordinaire. (<- When I was worried that my LOLOLOLOLOL! view, take and communication with LIFE AND THE UNIVERSE shoved me under the "Trickster" category Italics saved me from the label and described me as "you're more like the laughing high priestess who sees the joke in everything." PHEW; STILL UNDEFINABLE BY CLICHED ARCHETYPES, YESSSS!)
(I see punch lines everyday, they're the undercurrent of life. If you look hard enough and discard your narrow view of what's significant (LOOK, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE LIGHTENING BOLTS EVERY SINGLE TIME, OKAY? THE BEAUTY OF THIS GAME IS THAT IT'S ALWAYS BEING PLAYED, YOU JUST NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE LITTLE THINGS THAT GET OVERLOOKED) you'll find all the validation and confirmation you'll need is already present, waiting for you to relax the stringent rules and checkboxes you created.)
(I like "the laughing high priestess." In my mind I see #2 sitting between her B and J (LOLOLOLOL! BJ! GET IT? GET IT?) pillars, partially obscured and veiled, the moon at her feet and head, her solemn expression betrayed by a single kink in the hard line of her lips as she attempts to BE SERIOUS and NOT RUIN THE PICTURE BY LAUGHING. Christ, if you can't snicker, can't giggle, can't laugh what sort've priestess are you? How are you connecting with the Divine? I mean, in the end, isn't this all really a joke worth laughing at?)
(But maybe that's just me; just me and my miswired, autistic brain. I laugh a lot, sometimes when I shouldn't - most times I don't know why, it just happens. Maybe on a subconscious level I understand the absurdity, the ridiculousness. Maybe on a subconscious level I represent Woman, laughing at Man and his eternal struggle with understanding Woman and what (and why) She is. Maybe on a subconscious level I accept that I'm Human and Monster, and pity the futility of the Hero slaying the Monster to save the Human because He doesn't see that We're one and the same. Or maybe I'm just retarded, and I'm reading too heavily into things, BUT THEY MAKE SENSE, DAMMIT, AND LIFE IS ABOUT MAKING SENSE OF THINGS.)
(You know all of those stories where a human man takes a supernatural wife? And their life is mostly perfect and wonderful, but she has a bad habit of reacting inappropriately during certain social situations? She laughs at funerals and cries at baptisms? More than ever I find myself remembering bits of folklore I read as a child, sifting through snippets of memories and text and finding parallels between old fairy tales and myself. I now wonder if the supernatural wife was autistic, if her charmed existence was just an innate understanding of the world and people through shards of her broken brain.)
(OH, WOW, THIS IS HELLA HEAVY AND THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF MY ORIGINAL INTENT. UH, WHOOPS?)
So I'm tired and fatigued and exhausted and burned and sore and achy and every other fucking adjective and adverb that falls in between. I haven't really mentioned it here because I prefer to JUST IGNORE THE PROBLEM (like, LOL, it's going to magically GO AWAY, or something) but...I'm sick. A stupid, infuriating chronic sort've sick. After several years of pretty extreme symptoms and a year of specialist consultations and a myriad of invasive testing the medical community's deemed me as being "atypical" and, also, A HUMAN COW.
DOCTOR: "You know how cows have multiple stomachs? Well, sure you do, you're a Midwest girl! And in order to move food from one stomach to the other they need to bring it up, and that's why their stomach valve has a hair trigger - to facilitate bringing food up and down."
YES, REALLY, THEY SAID I WAS A COW WOMAN. (AND, LOL, MY HATHOR COW STATUTE ARRIVED A DAY BEFORE I SAT DOWN WITH THE SPECIALIST TO GO OVER MY TEST RESULTS.) AND, ALSO, THAT I'M "ATYPICAL":
MS. GD: "WAIT, WAIT, LET ME GUESS...MY SYMPTOMS DON'T TICK ALL OF THE BOXES SO YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE TO TELL ME WHAT, EXACTLY, IS WRONG WITH ME."
DOCTOR: "OH GLORIOUS AND DIVINE MS. GRAVEYARD DIRT, HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT?"
MS. GD: "BECAUSE THE ONLY THING TYPICAL ABOUT ME IS THAT I'M ALWAYS ATYPICAL".
Rather than going into little details I'll just say - being sick affects every fucking awesome thing about being human (i.e., eating, having sex, taking drugs, enjoying a beer, exercising, sleeping and the list goes on and on and on...). Some days are good, some days are bad. Some days I can't leave the bed, or couch. (LOL, "SOME DAYS" - I SPENT ALL OF 2008 CURLED UP ON SOME SORT OF MATTRESS OR CUSHIONED SURFACE WHILE WAITING FOR APPOINTMENTS AND VARIOUS TESTS.) Some days I forget that I'm even sick.
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"Moderation" is one of my big problems (and not even in a dangerous or reckless or sexy way; I'm overly cautious about drugs, less concerned about food serving sizes, heh!). I have a hard time physically moderating myself when I'm feeling well; I always over do it, but don't know until the day after, and the day after that and, LOL, usually several more days after those days. I sometimes treat being sick as a DO OR FUCKING DIE battle; I throw myself in, teeth gnashing, screaming, swearing, brandishing bloodied weapons and fight against the constraint of my illness, but it's a monster that can't be vanquished. (OH, FUTILE HERO!)
So I overdid it a few days ago when engaging in HARDCORE EXTREME (PARTIALLY) NUDIST GARDENING and I'm currently paying the price. One of these days I'll finally learn YOU CAN'T FIGHT SOMETHING THAT CAN'T BE BEATEN. Until I wise up and accept that the only way to best my adversary is by employing a more cerebral approach I'll always be an ARIES WITH A LEO ASCENT racing into battle. (HEY, AT LEAST I'M READY AND WILLING, RIGHT? RAWRR!)
I wanted to take some time off of THINKING (LOL, THINKING? FUCK THINKING, GIVE ME EXPERIENCE(S)! I'LL THINK LATER, WHEN I'M OLD AND GREY AND REMINISCING; LET ME BE WISE AT THE END OF MY DAYS, BUT LET ME BE WISE FROM EXPERIENCE, RIGHT NOW I JUST WANT TO TAKE MUSHROOMS AND ROLL IN MUD WHILE COMMUNING WITH THE DIVINE, THANKS) but I was worried about damaging my writing momentum. Middle ground was originally intended to be the recipe for a rhubarb pie I've been flashing all over the internet but then I started talking - OH, LORD, THE TALKING - and, well, all I'll say is - LAUGHING HIGH PRIESTESS. (Ahem!)
The "cookbook" aspect of this diary is embarrassingly underdeveloped. It's hard, though, to keep so many balls juggling in the air - when I'm hardcore gardening I'm not hardcore cooking, and when I'm hardcore cooking I'm not hardcore writing. Something, inevitably, needs to be dropped from time to time in order for me to fit MOST of it. (I know I'm capable of balancing it and the lesson here is FINDING A WAY OF DOING IT.)
I REALLY, REALLY want to explain how significant cooking is to me, all magic-style, but I'm afraid it'll lead to an epic tangent which'll conclude with wild assertions ("HOLY SHIT, DOES SHE FUCKING SMOKE CRACK?" LOL, NO, I ONLY SNORT A SYNTHESIZED VERSION OF METH!) and no pie recipe. So, for now, let's just accept that fact that I cook (see my THE BLACK ARTS diary/journal category (YOU CAN LAUGH, IT'S MEANT TO BE FUNNY) and my FLICKR COOKING SET) and the motivation'n'drive to cook and provide for my husband falls between MAGIC and QUASI-SEXUAL FOREPLAY.
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This pie recipe has been adapted from the first cookbook I ever cracked open - my mom's red-covered Betty Crocker's Cookbook. (I think my first forary into the culinary world was BAKING POWDER BISCUITS, but that's a story for another day...)
8-INCH
* pastry for 8-inch two-crust pie
* 1 to 1 1/4 cups sugar
* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/4 tsp grated orange peel (optional)
* 3 cups cut-up rhubarb (1/2-inch pieces)
* 1 tbsp margarine or butter
9-INCH
* pastry for 9-inch two-crust pie
* 1 1/3 to 1 2/3 cups sugar
* 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 tsp grated orange peel (optional)
* 4 cups cut-up rhubarb (1/2-inch pieces)
* 2 tbsp margarine or butter
METHOD:
Heat oven to 425F. Prepare pastry. Mix sugar, flour and orange peel. Turn half of the rhubarb into a pastry-lined pie plate; sprinkle with half of the sugar mixture. Repeat with remaining rhubarb and sugar mixture; dot with margarine (or butter). Cover with top crust that has slits cut in it; seal and flute. Sprinkle with sugar if desired. Cover edge with 2- to 3-inch strip of aluminum foil to prevent excessive browning; remove foil during last 15 minutes of baking. Bake until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust, 40 to 50 minutes.
MS. GD NOTES:
I offroaded a bit by substituting two cups of frozen fruit (a "summer berries" selection with blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, black and red currants) for two of the four cups of cut-up rhubarb. (You can use two cups of anything, really, provided that it's an even ratio of rhubarb to other fruit.) I didn't have any oranges, so I tipped in some orange flower water but found that 1/4 tsp wasn't enough. The crust was sprinkled with a generous handful of vanilla sugar before being cooked. And, finally, a belated shoutout of props to Italics who actually put the pie together as I hovered behind his shoulder barking instructions.
Now, pies and cookies are two branches of the culinary world that Mademoiselle Graveyard Dirt rarely ventures in. Italics isn't too keen on fruit-based pies or desserts*, so it's a rare occurrence to find me paring with my paring knife. But once in blue moon I get an intense CRAZY AMOUNTS OF FRUCTOSE NESTLED IN A FLAKY, GOLDEN CARBOHYDRATE craving and when THAT happens things like castle pie (see below) and homemade rhubarb pie with summer fruits and orange flower water are the end results.
(WELL, USUALLY. THIS RHUBARB PIE IS SEVERAL MONTHS IN THE MAKING THANKS TO MY FATHER-IN-LAW AND A DAY OF AWESOME; NO, I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, THEY'RE COMING BACK HOME TONIGHT AND I DON'T WANT TO FIND MYSELF HIDING BEHIND A DOOR WITH A PARING KNIFE IN HAND.)
* Castle pie (I & II) was a V. rare exception, and Papa's sweet potato pie (I & II) doesn't count.
