Covid Comebacks

When the New York Times features the University Hospital in my German city--as it did today, and as it's done several times--I feel epi-centerish. We're not Berlin, we're not New York, we're not the misguided denizens of mask-free Trump rallies. But people in my city go to bars and restaurants with their masks guarding their chins, or below sneeze level. They go to doctors who write them excuses, claiming asthma precludes the wearing of masks.

I don't go to bars or restaurants. I don't miss them--for the twenty years of my marriage, my husband and I usually preferred to stay home. When we dined out, we chose a Japanese restaurant that, during the week, boasted fewer than two or three patrons. We used to joke that maybe the place was a front for the mafia or something--how else would they stay open?

It's getting so that the hot spots are no longer hot spots, because they can't be distinguished from the places that are warm, and getting hot. 

I still figure I'm okay on the tram with my surgical mask and plastic face shield. I want one of those fishbowl style head coverings , the isphere, from Plastique Fantastique, the Berlin-based art studio that seems only to be hawking prototypes on eBay. The gym might close in two days; I still have my creaky cross-trainer, but no leg press. As the rain splashes the windows, as we all huddle through the last days before the election, I wonder if that rarest of sensibilities, common sense, will ever descend upon us again.

The Writer's Pandemic Dream or the Writer's Pandemic Nightmare

 A large part of me loves isolation. I don't have to see a soul--I can just play with my imaginary friends. No interruptions. That's when fiction-writing seems to be going well, in the sense that I've produced my daily quota of words. 

But when my imaginary friends aren't speaking to me--when I don't know exactly what they want--that's when the distractions I think I don't want tug at my heart. Why did I just spill 50,000 words on a heroine who doesn't, now that I've invented her, know what she wants? My heroine has to know exactly what she wants. In this way she'll be conveniently, satisfyingly, much more self-aware than I am. Sometimes she does know, sometimes not. Then there's the cast of thousands surrounding her. What am I to do with them? They can't just waltz around on their own, or if they do, my readers will be bored. They have to dance to her tunes, or in relation to her tunes, or in conflict with her tunes. Maybe even the ugly green building out the window is too much of a distraction. Maybe if I followed Thomas Mann's alleged practice of draping the windows with a dull gray cloth so that absolutely nothing could distract him would work. There's the problem that I am not Thomas Mann. But I do have a mightily interesting heroine and would so much like to see how she solves her problems. 

Hoping answers will come to me in a dream--or a nightmare.

And Another One Leaves the Nest

In a famous German song, little Hans ("Hänschen klein") a sturdy child typically pictured with a big hat and a walking stick twice his size is cheerfully marching away from home. In the background his mother,  the family pets, even a bird and a rabbit are looking anxious, but Hänschen pays them no mind--he's on his way. Although I keep trying to cheer myself up with the thought of how much less time I'll be spending on laundry and cooking, I'm exactly in the position of the mother in this video. Barely visible in the background, leaning over her Bavarian balcony, the mom dabs at her eyes. I know just what she's feeling. She's feeling what the Steve Martin dad in Father of the Bride feels when his twenty-year-old daughter is telling him she's fallen in love. He blinks and sees an adorable child in braids tied with ribbons lisping, "Dad! I met a wonderful man and we're getting married."

My child and I are in the same position. He's walking down that road all by himself, except when he needs advice on laundry or cooking, and except when I offer unasked for advice about staying clear of COVID in a dorm. Of all this charming folksong's many incarnations, the scariest is perhaps the one in Sam Peckinpah's 1977 film, Cross of Iron, about a platoon of German soldiers in 1943 on the Eastern Front. The ironies of men and boys marching off to this tune in a doomed war are the stuff of maternal nightmare. Of course the kid is eighteen and just like his brother, who also went off right on schedule at eighteen, perfectly able to make his way in the world. I can't help still being the hen hunting around for the eggs that were right underneath me, safe and sound, two minutes ago, even as I salute my grown-up boys and look forward, but with an aching heart, to the baby's departure in a few years.

Lord of the Flies

 If I were a religious person, I might wonder about that fly landing on Mike Pence's head. "That's no ordinary fly!" I'd say to myself. "That's Beelzebub!" Yes, that demonic fly landing on his head was there to show support. Attracted by the evil embodied in his support of Donald Trump--you lie down with devils and you get up with flies--that whopper of an insect settled comfortably on his snowy pate, rubbed its little forefeet, and smiled for the cameras. 

Beelzebub has a long and honored literary and cultural history. He's best supporting devil, second only to Satan, in Milton's Paradise Lost--"next himself in power, and next in crime"--that's Milton's Beelzebub. Also, "Long after known in Palestine"(where the VP was burned in effigy a few years ago.) Beelzebub's the right hand man. In Milton's words: 

He's the one

than whom,

Satan except, none higher sat, with grave

Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed

A pillar of state.

Vegan Feijoada with a Secret Ingredient

Before we start, here's another secret: I prefer the stuff with sausages cozying up to the beans. But I'm cooking for vegans. This, my friends, is what you need:

But I'm getting ahead of myself. This ingredient goes in last. In the order in which you need them, here are the main ingredients:

Black beans

Water

Bay leaves--two or three. Dry is fine.

Chopped red onions and garlic to taste--lots. 

Olive oil in which to sauté the onions and garlic 

Cumin--preferably seeds. Again, lots. A tablespoon, at least.

Salt or a vegan veggie broth including salt

Rice--best made in a rice cooker. I recommend a mix of broken jasmine and sticky rice.

Smoked paprika

Cayenne pepper

Washed, drained fresh spinach

Manioc (Yucca) flour

Cubed sweet potatoes

Sliced oranges 

Chopped fresh cilantro and scallions

Last--but not least--the item pictured above: Laoganma black beans in chili oil. There are a number of Laoganma products--the word means "Old Godmother" in Mandarin Chinese.

Soak your beans, preferably overnight. They should be covered with water--two inches more water than beans, and might as well put a sheet of aluminum foil over them.

In the morning, or three hours before you want to eat, drain the beans, rinse them, and add almost twice as much water. Put in your bay leaves and allow the mix to boil, stirring fairly often. Turn down the heat shortly after the beans boil and cover.  Meanwhile put about a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan and add your chopped onions. When they start to get transparent, put in the garlic and then the cumin. Stir and sautée; then add the mix to the beans. Cover the beans and let them simmer on low to medium heat. Put your cubed sweet potatoes in a baking dish and add salt, pepper, a little olive oil--make sure the olive oil is evenly distributed. Put in oven at about 200 for about an hour. Get your manioc flour into a frying pan with olive oil and a little garlic salt. Sauté and stir.

Keep checking your beans and stirring; when they get a little softer, leave the lid off so that some of the water can boil off. Add your salt, paprika, cayenne pepper. Stir and let simmer. Then add a large dollop of Laoganma black beans in chili oil and stir. Allow the mixture to simmer while you get your spinach into the wok--I'm assuming you've washed and drained it. Add sliced garlic to the olive oil in the wok. Stir. Somewhere in here you've made your rice. Garnish all with chopped cilantro and scallions.

Result are great with a glass of red wine: