tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64875851684565159912024-03-18T23:03:06.094-05:00Oil Changes: the anti food blog food blogJono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.comBlogger495125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-42236848197152571572013-09-02T14:12:00.002-05:002013-09-02T14:12:35.467-05:00goodbye readers<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Well, everyone, this is the last post. Thanks for reading. Jono</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/73636847" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe> <a href="http://vimeo.com/73636847">goodbye</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/jonotosch">Jono Tosch</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />*<br />SAYONARA!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-52961042112567554222013-08-28T09:08:00.000-05:002013-08-28T09:08:07.357-05:00Wed Aug 28 2013<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yesterday the company who provided the
portable toilet to the house under construction across the street from
Caroline’s house came to empty it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
truck with a giant white tank on its bed pulled into the driveway, and shortly
the entire neighborhood smelled like shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I pulled my shirt up over my nose and finished my business on the
internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I went inside to tell
Caroline about the smell, but the smell had already entered the apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">My friend Andy has been living in Germany for
the last ten years.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">He calls me about
twice a month.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">This spring he called me
and told me about the “dirt menu” some chef in Japan created.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The menu is a $120 tasting menu, and each
item on the menu contains “dirt”—i.e. specialty compost made under very controlled
conditions.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I don’t know too much more
about the menu.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">My phone is ringing off
the hook—an expression that no longer makes sense—and I need my breakfast.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-72694832768197181152013-08-27T18:02:00.000-05:002013-08-27T18:02:04.525-05:00hangovers<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The other night I got drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zoe had come home from Brooklyn—she’d been
away all summer and we’d missed her—so me and Caroline and Zoe picked up a
pizza and a bottle of wine and took them back to their apartment to celebrate
her return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I disappeared between ten
and eleven PM to say goodbye to Emily who moved to Brooklyn the following
morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I returned, Caroline and
Zoe had not moved from their seats at the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I assumed that they had continued to drink
wine, but they had not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I alternated between
wine and beer and said a number of harmless but inane things, much to their
amusement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next morning, I woke up
to a terrible hangover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">In five years I have made five hundred posts
here, and I would be willing to bet that at least ten of those posts were
written under the influence of the anxiety ridden euphoria bad hangovers can
provide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, I know that at least
a few posts were written whilst totally drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is always the temptation to hit “publish” or, when writing e-mails,
“send,” when you are drunk, but I am here to tell you that you should not do
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>E-mails especially do not
disappear into memory the way inane conversations can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you say something dumb to your friends
when you are drunk, they can only rely upon their memories, but when you write
a drunken e-mail, a permanent record of your stupidity is created.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I ever deleted a post early on a Saturday
morning, it is because I was feeling shameful and wanted to retract it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have retracted many posts for many reasons
over the years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">This should come as no surprise to my loyal
readers, many of whom would probably readily admit to having done the same—or even
better, readily admit to reading a post written on a hangover whilst having a
hangover themselves.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Such was my station
in life for a period while creating this blog, suitable for poets I suppose.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">If you want to know why I chose to show a picture of a compost tumbler
on this second-to-last or third-to-last post, it is because compost symbolizes death and renewal—death to that which has come before and renewal for that
which has yet to come.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I must now make
my dinner: stir fried green beans and brown rice, a recipe I learned from my Chinese boss in Bloomington, Indiana, many millions of years ago.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-64626382388773185982013-08-23T08:52:00.001-05:002013-08-23T08:55:05.791-05:00tile saw<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Someone is running a tile saw next door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never mind. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not a tile saw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just some anonymous whirring noise, and
now it’s done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s Friday morning, the
twenty-third of August, 2013—i.e. approximately one week before the conclusion
of this blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am on Caroline’s side
porch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a slight breeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am in my pajamas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We shall swim today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkoKTIusiPlY1hf4pQakiIqrhVbK1mQ0JiJiMGvTVrY9Ea6EtiDGzXeC2nPj6StbTfBOQIZM2d6B8p5XXf00bMAAZhE6IpaZ4qzOzp5Gx6GaktHYQhFRTQbKfgoMrhGtnWaazq9c4T2VY/s1600/IMG_2327.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkoKTIusiPlY1hf4pQakiIqrhVbK1mQ0JiJiMGvTVrY9Ea6EtiDGzXeC2nPj6StbTfBOQIZM2d6B8p5XXf00bMAAZhE6IpaZ4qzOzp5Gx6GaktHYQhFRTQbKfgoMrhGtnWaazq9c4T2VY/s640/IMG_2327.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The saw noise has returned.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It is a tile saw.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I went onto the front porch and found
Caroline reading Al Jazeera because she could not access the New York
Times.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">The house across the street is
having its kitchen remodled.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">A team of
roofers was there yesterday, replacing some slates on the roof.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">One roofer attempted to emasculate the other
roofer by telling him that his saw was “short.”</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">He responded that he had been using his short saw for twenty-five
years.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I can now hear the distinct sound of a
garbage truck.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">There is a gas station
about one hundred yards from here.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I am
guessing that the garbage truck is emptying the dumpster there.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Sometimes I fetch Caroline chocolate bars
from that gas station.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Two houses and a
bunch of trees stand between me it.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I
don’t have much else to report this morning, except this: last night I dreamed
that Caroline was ordering hundreds of dollars worth of pizza and several
salads.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I was concerned about the number
of toppings.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It was going to be
expensive.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">For one salad, the “Delmarva
salad,” she ordered two separate dressings.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">That concerned me, too.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I am
going to miss writing this blog.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-34361849998033854862013-08-16T11:16:00.000-05:002013-08-16T11:16:09.899-05:00loose tomato video<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yesterday afternoon I ate some <i>pan con tomate</i> on my front porch. A bee landed on the tomato and began to eat. I observed the bee for several minutes and then took the sandwich for a trip around the house and garden. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72493350" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="640"></iframe> <a href="http://vimeo.com/72493350">bread and tomato</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/jonotosch">Jono Tosch</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">To make <i>pan con tomate</i>, toast some nice bread and then rub raw garlic onto the toasted bread. Drizzle the bread with olive oil and then put some slices of fresh tomato onto the bread. Sprinkle with salt and enjoy. </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-65159785084769156332013-08-15T09:49:00.003-05:002013-08-15T09:49:48.200-05:00a real book made of paper<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I am sitting comfortably on a wire chair with
my feet up, on this beautiful morning,
the fifteenth of August. It's
surprisingly cool, the morning, not the chair. A few puffy clouds
are in the sky. I am not sure
what I will do with the remainder of my life.
Will I get married? Will I have
children? Will I have a home in the
woods? From where I am sitting on this
porch, I can see a portable toilet. It's so blue. I has a white roof. It is parked in front of a one-car
garage. It has a little black
chimney. There is a tall, old oak tree
behind it, but I cannot tell you which specie of oak it is. Is it a pin oak? A white oak?
I don’t know my oaks. I don’t
know my pines either. Donald Rumsfeld
once said that there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. I wonder what the unknown unknowns of my life
are. It’s possible that I will become
enthralled by a hat this afternoon. It’s
possible that this will be another ordinary day, one that I will not remember.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Jacob wrote to me the other day and told me
that he wished he could have a collection of my essays, in book form, to have
and to hold, a real book made of paper.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I
would love that.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> I have dreamed about that for a long time. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">But will that book happen?</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Is there a publisher out there
who would want to publish a collection of lyrical essays about botany and the
life of the self?</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I have no idea.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I hardly know how I will spend the remainder
of the morning.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">This is only a note to
say hello to the world.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Hello world whose trees I cannot identify on this surprisingly cool morning.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Hello portable toilet.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Hello vacuum cleaner sounds arising from the
hospital.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">My next objective is to make
some toast and spread a bunch of peanut butter onto it.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Beyond that peanut butter toast, I have no idea. I hope I do become enthralled by a hat, and I hope the hat is huge.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-60993033119133856982013-08-13T17:18:00.000-05:002013-08-13T17:18:34.531-05:00sunflowers<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I am not sure how I feel about
sunflowers. Normally, I am against
them. When I see sunflowers as cut
flowers in restaurants and bars, I want to puke. They are such obvious flowers, so
common. You can find them in any
supermarket. They are too popular for
their beauty. They are easy to grow and
once cut they last for a long time. I
grew an enormous one as a child. There
is a picture of me standing under an enormous bloom that is bigger than my head. Their enormity is probably part of their
popularity. They are freaks of the
flower world. People probably pant
around enormous sunflowers. People
probably become drippily romantic around them.
It’s popular to ooh and ahh over their symmetries. The radial pattern of their centers has been
forcibly aligned with progressive political parties and multi-national oil
companies. There is a battle over what
they mean. They hold so much sway over
our imaginations, far too much if you ask me.
And yet I planted an abundance of them this year. I cut them and give them to Caroline. She likes them, and I like giving them to
her. They look good in her apartment,
much better than the terribly uniform sunflowers for sale at Stop n Shop.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6qFAG3CvTn72JI7DPiVxHGNZxQmwaNT0xFUeqqNswPxFR_jeGQuaejS0w1Ts8OMUzrL7m95UruTvooipj2UqiORtRHaAgKdnZmd7swee4UVPV5X8CqCghDi1KIbW5Q2cXFAF2DZX_qw/s1600/IMG_2309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju6qFAG3CvTn72JI7DPiVxHGNZxQmwaNT0xFUeqqNswPxFR_jeGQuaejS0w1Ts8OMUzrL7m95UruTvooipj2UqiORtRHaAgKdnZmd7swee4UVPV5X8CqCghDi1KIbW5Q2cXFAF2DZX_qw/s640/IMG_2309.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">But I did not plant them for cut
flowers.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I planted them because I
thought they would attract gold finches to my garden, as I've seen them do in Ed's garden for years.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">One gold finch did come to my garden about a
week ago, but it did not stop to eat sunflower seeds.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It perched for a moment on another, sunflower-like
flower in my garden.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Then it flew away,
just like me.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I probably finished up
whatever hurried business I was doing at home and straightaway drove across
town to Caroline’s house, quite possibly with a bouquet of flowers and some cut
herbs.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">If one hundred gold finches were
to come to feed on my sunflower seeds, I would probably not be around to see
them, so frequently am I gone.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">But I
don’t mind how gone I’ve been.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">When we
trade one pleasure for another, how can we complain?</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s like the Frank O’Hara poem that says,
“the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won/and in a sense we’re all
winning/we’re alive.”</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Sometimes I say
that I would rather not be alive, but I understand what the poet means.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Being alive is a kind of victory over death.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Have you heard?</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Death can overtake you at any moment.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Gather
ye rosebuds while ye may</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">, or, as it were, a bunch of sunflowers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I am home now and waiting on a friend.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I am on my porch.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">After a day of rain and heavy clouds, the sun
has finally come out.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">My sunflowers are
between me and the street, possibly atrocious symbols of something possibly profound,
possibly only vegetable matter screens. My upstairs neighbor is on the
driveway,</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">pacing, smoking, reading a
book.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> The air smells like vanilla. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">A moped just went by, putt putt
puttering, dumbly like a fart.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s a
completely ordinary August afternoon by all accounts.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Oilchanges</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> will be over in two
weeks.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-10165447895880535902013-08-09T22:35:00.000-05:002013-08-10T06:42:14.869-05:00AMERICA<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Our national politics are completely corrupt; </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">we spend billions upon billions of dollars annually on war machines (over 600 billion USD or 39% of the world's total expenditure); as consumers we are complicit in the manufacture and purchase of untold quantities of plastics that will not decompose but remain forever blights upon our shared earth; the plastics industry is a 400 billion dollar industry and the industry employs more than one million people in the United States alone; plastics have a place in this world and can play an important role in a healthy world, but we all know that a lot of the plastic we produce and consume is a worthless, throw-away commodity and does not contribute to a better world in any way; this means that the health, well-being, and livelihoods of many children in this world are dependent upon income that is drawn from parents who work in the plastics industry, producing worthless and even problematic plastic shit; and this is all very troubling; when innocent lives are yoked to a problematic and even destructive practice, you have systemic ill-health, and we have not even talked about the short-sighted, pesticide, herbicide, fungicide, and nitrogen-based fertilizer intensive agricultural practices employed on an epic scale in this and other countries whose end results are high fructose corn syrup and cheap beef, i.e foods that are making us sick, not to mention our ecosystems. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 15 million square kilometers of plastic debris that is choking marine life in the Pacific ocean, and British Petroleum has already employed a successful PR campaign and made most of the world forget that it was responsible for crippling the fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico and seriously endangering the wildlife of that ecosystem, while petty criminals such as marijuana dealers pay comparatively obscene and exorbitant prices; and we are supposed to think that our world is not fucked up and that capital will solve our problems? And we are supposed to think that rugged individualism and a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-boot-straps mentality will save us? Good Christ. Anyone who talks that way has obviously not done much thinking. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I do not purport to have all the answers, but sometimes I do get tired of living in a world (and especially in a country) that prioritizes work and industry over all else. It's not as if all the individuals in this country who work long hours actually want to be working those long hours, though I do understand that working long hours does appeal to some. The truth is that we are all born into a problematic world, and most of us fall in line. It is probably human nature to fall in line—human life is difficult and the day is only so long, and so falling in line is a natural response to being tired, to understanding that there actually are enormous problems that face our world but feeling too small to fix them, to not giving a shit, to being overwhelmed, to wanting only peace and happiness. But there are some people out there who cannot find peace and happiness no matter what they do, either because they are concerned about the world or because they are left behind by the peace and happiness machine. If you were to query every over-worked American and ask him or her if she or he would rather spend more leisure time at home with his or her family, my guess is that most of them would give a resounding, YES, YES, YES I WOULD; and yet this is obviously not what is happening. It is not happening because work is one of our topmost values in this country. Work—and by that I mean a certain, culturally agreed upon definition of work—</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">is such a deeply entrenched value in this culture that many of us cannot even entertain questions about its value, let alone imagine alternative worlds and alternative value systems. One time I questioned the value of work in front of my industrialist uncle, and he called me a socialist and told me that I should move to Serbia where there are three women for every man and where the government would float my basic needs. This was meant as an insult toward me (and as a response to something I said which he obviously took as an insult to his values), but my goal here is really only to talk about our values and our value system. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The poet Gary Snyder once argued that the trees, rivers, mountains, and air should have representation in congress, and I tend to agree with him. Why should only the voices of fallible human beings be represented by the world's governments? How come voice is usually only granted to those with the ability to shout? Why is there power, and why must we accept arguments that say one system is good because it works better than another system? The world is truly full of unthinking people who do not ask questions, and unthinking people who do not ask questions are like table grapes to be consumed by the rich. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I am clearly ranting here, but that's okay. I am about to put this blog to eternal rest, and I am having my fun; but when I say that I am having my fun, I am by no means retracting my rant. That being passionate and upset about political and philosophical ideas that do not conform to the mainstream ideology is considered ranting is just another piece of evidence that supports my position. Our values should be questioned. Here and there I like to question them and then go about my life. I am like most people. I understand that there is only so much I can do. Yes, I could move to another country where the values more closely match mine. Yes, I have indeed heard that argument before. When I hear that argument about moving to another country, I want to ask the people who ask me that question if they support repressive regimes such as the one under Sadam Hussein. Would they rather I be silent? Many people do not like difficult discussion about real problems. Many people do not like to hear that (a) they are not as free as they think they are, and (b) they are complicit in many problems. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I am complicit in many problems, and I know it. I just wish that there was a way to live a better life than the one I seem capable of living. This is probably a personal shortcoming of one sort or another. And yes, I do recognize what a privilege it is to be able to talk and write like this. I have leisure enough to complain and "freedom" enough to complain publicly. We can talk about what freedom means and what freedoms we truly have in another post. At this point I merely want to sit down and think about helping my girlfriend buy a used car. I want to think about how I can be a better person in this world and wake up tomorrow having learned at least some shred of a lesson, even if that lesson is to know when to hold my breath. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-82288503434174729612013-08-04T19:20:00.003-05:002013-08-04T19:20:57.364-05:00three green beans<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Picture one green bean. It's about six inches long. Follow the slender point on one end, up the length of the bean. Follow the dark seam </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">to the opposite end, where two sepals collar a short stem. The slender bean pod is the distended ovary, one of the plant's many ovaries, and the beans inside the pod are immature seeds. When we eat them green, we call them green beans. When human beings are immature, we call them green, we call them wet behind the ears. I cannot remember the last time I got wet behind the ears. Imagine a shower head, but issuing from each hole instead of a stream of water a green bean more slender than thread. Imagine how different the world could be. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I am a lapsed saint, a lapsed god, a lapsed perfect human being, and there are crickets in my garden. I walk around in the stone wildernesses, and rattlesnakes sing their mute lullabies. I walk around in the Stop n Shop. When my love wants only to be heard, when she wants only that I listen and understand, my blood sometimes presses through all of my veins and what comes from my mouth is exactly what I am not supposed to say. Have you ever done this? Bean with two sepals and a tail that ends in tip, where do you fall when no one is watching you? Stop n Shop becomes a premise for barbarism. I am loose and my thoughts are decaying. Have you ever been loose? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It is amazing how much we overlook food, even those of us who pay it so much mind. If we don't eat, how well do we do? Food is more primary than sex. You cannot have sex if you do not eat. Maybe you can have a few quick goes, hamburgers or nachos swirling around you uneaten, but tell me if you have ever sustained anything without stopping to eat here and there. Have you? When? How well did it go? I am actually thinking about grumpiness. When I go too long without food, my mood crashes. I'm a happy dope who loves the world, and then I'm a dumb asshole. Show me the man or woman who doesn't think the world is at least an okay place when he or she has been satiated. Even the plants follow this rule: they eat from the earth long before they seed. Fruit comes second. This is why it's always best to eat and then make love. And then nap.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Our world, of course, doesn't revolve around love making and eating. There is work to be done, and this is probably the way it needs to be. There was a time when I hated all wise men and all wise women, of whom we hear so much less about, and I wanted nothing more but to dream of a world where that which harms us heals us, or even better where nothing harms us at all. Why should anything harm us? Who would design a world with harm? Shouldn't there only be peace and ecstasy? How come there is balance? How come gravity? The sloppy and dangerous are only sloppy and dangerous when we call them sloppy and dangerous. The world is what we think it is, and it's so hard to imagine another, our ideas so old and firmly rooted in bull. Where is the free movement among nothingness? Where is the alligator with one ecstatic apple drilled onto his tooth? I must go away soon. When I find the dentures of greasy fire and flowers, I will write you and send you the address where they are. </span><br />
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<br />Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-12530785442560889202013-07-30T09:59:00.000-05:002013-07-30T09:59:08.435-05:00ethos, foodies, foodie-ism, prints<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There have been eras, and there have been table cloths. After about a year, the target—to write about food and cooking—of this straightforward enterprise shifted sideways or moved obliquely, and the recipes that accompanied the earliest posts dropped away, were discarded, were stripped off like a t-shirt that has become heavy, annoying, and clingy with sweat. Typing out recipes started to seem like an odious chore and one that had little bearing on what I wanted to do, which was to write, not so much about food but about an ethos that informed an approach to life with food at its center. Food is a problematic word nowadays, and uttering it cannot fail to evoke so many images of so many fancy plates in so many fancy restaurants: in short, foodies and foodie-ism. Many readers surely consider me a foodie, and I understand how such a mistake could be made, but the truth is that I am not a foodie, would never want to be a foodie, and dislike the term very much, especially where foodie-ism becomes little more than another way to demonstrate cultural participation, where said participation is so often dependent upon means to pay: to pay for the food and to pay for the phone that takes pictures of the food and posts them immediately to the internet like little pieces of sports car—flashy, edible hood ornaments that show the world the tables at which we have parked ourselves. Where food becomes another status symbol, I depart. <i>Oilchanges</i> has never dined out. It has never been about keeping abreast of the trends or being seen in fashionable places. It has been about respect and reverence for food, about the politics that surround our food. Where it has been about money, it has been about not having much money, about spending as little money as possible, and about diverting what money I have to producers whose values fall in line with my own. And of course, <i>Oilchanges</i> has been about my moods and telling stories.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I was 25 I got a job in a fancy kitchen, <a href="http://www.restauranttallent.com/" target="_blank">the fanciest kitchen I'd ever seen</a>, and the chef there introduced me to the Slow Food movement, to the importance of local and sustainable agriculture, and to a number of farmers who would bring their produce to the back door of our kitchen. Needless to say, I was shocked when my chef returned to the restaurant with a sack of hamburgers from Burger King and invited his cooks to eat lunch. Having listened to him speak in hushed and reverent tones about the chicken we sourced from an Amish poultry farmer and the <a href="http://www.capriolegoatcheese.com/" target="_blank">goat cheese we sourced from a farm in the hills</a>, I found it difficult, for a moment, to understand how he could eat and enjoy with equal but different relish, here a hamburger produced by a corporation with known, dubious practices, and there a glass of champagne, a sliver of Parmesan Reggiano, a dribble of sixty-year old balsamic vinegar, and a spear of locally grown and perfectly blanched asparagus. Dave quickly dispelled the cognitive dissonance and said, <i>John boy, hamburgers are good, too</i>, which of course is true and untrue. However sickly, there is grace in a sack of hamburgers, and we should not let our privilege blind us. Dave was not teaching me to turn my back on the problems that beset our food system, nor was he teaching me to shun the middle of the road. He was teaching me to take in the whole and to think about how the parts of the whole relate to one another. I ate that hamburger eleven or twelve years ago. I dipped my french fries into a wad of Heinz ketchup and went back to my station on the line, educated. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But of course I have turned my nose up here and there, and I have definitely become excited and ranted. I have put down corporate food and trumpeted the importance of D.I.Y. food culture, but when presented with a Costco burger and on the side a neon green pickle made by Vlasic, I have not turned to the person offering me the food and said, <i>Oh no, I will not eat those hideous foods. Don't you know who I am? Haven't you read my blog? </i>If there has been any misunderstanding, I hope this post has cleared it up. Additionally, over the month of August I also hope to display some of my favorite photographs that have appeared on this blog. I want to give my readers who have enjoyed these pictures (or any other pictures that have appeared here) a chance to order prints of them, about which I'll say more later. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Okay, thanks as always for reading. I'll be back again soon. There is more I want to say before me and <i>Oilchanges</i> say goodbye. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-52085602300715721972013-07-29T20:38:00.000-05:002013-07-30T07:54:58.863-05:00ends<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For all these years the cemetery has been in the background, a source of quiet behind the houses across the street from my house. It's been an obstacle, something between me and its other side. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I've jumped its fences and clipped pear branches from its perimeter by the school. I've watched my street become crowded with cars and mourners here and there when the funeral home down the street shows a body. The barbs on its fences have torn my trench coat, and more than once I shimmied through the narrow opening of its locked gate on Parson's street. The cemetery closes at dusk, but I've crossed it in the dark many times, sometimes crushing beneath my boots snow that has iced over and become treacherous, sometimes avoiding the deep puddles that accumulate in its low areas, sometimes rapidly and nervously of an anxious spring night. I've had my tarot read there and thought about my future there, but I have never written about it. It's close to home, but it's mostly been a small expanse of quiet to cross when I am impatient and headed somewhere else. Where else would I be heading? Where is anyone heading? These are pat and easy questions. Isn't it nice to be alive and glide so thoughtlessly over the dead?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I am writing about the cemetery by my house because I have decided to end this blog. I have enjoyed this blog and all that it and you have done for me. I started this blog on July 30th of two thousand and eight. Five years ago, I was sitting on my porch, signing up for the account that would become this blog. I did not have a name for it, nor did I know what it would become. My then-girlfriend, Wendy, came onto the porch with a coupon for an oil change and said, <i>Do you need a coupon for an oil change?</i> And I said, <i>That's it! I will call my blog Oilchanges. </i> I never once wrote about car mechanics, but many years ago, Sean Casey, the author, did write about Oilchanges and its relationship to food, not auto mechanics, on the Kenyon Review blog. Thanks, Sean, that was one of the first (and few) times that <i>Oilchanges</i> was mentioned on the literary circuits of the internet, which is something that I had hoped would happen more often than it actually did. Oh well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Anyway, I have thought about this for a long time, acutely for a couple months and vaguely for a couple years, and I have decided that the time has really come to end Oilchanges. There are some misunderstandings I want to clear up—like whether or not I'm a foodie—some closing remarks I want to make—like what <i>Oilchanges</i> is about—and other projects that I want to focus my energies upon—poetry and non-fiction that don't have the benefit of an immediate and diligent audience, such as you have all been for five good years. I will post through the month of August about these things, after which I will retire <i>Oilchanges</i>. </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-87153666690399875172013-07-20T16:23:00.000-05:002013-07-20T16:23:16.773-05:00heat wave<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It's four-thirty in the afternoon on what seems like the twentieth day of the heat wave. Earlier some clouds made some shade and promised some rain, but like promises made by liars, the promise of rain was snatched up and carried off, and I labored in the sun. Sweat pooled in the shallow divot of my sternum. The <i>boing </i>of my neighbor's kickstand wobbled through the stillness. I pulled some sorry dill and noted that the end of fresh dill season would soon be here. What doesn't end? In the distance, in the future, there is a funeral somewhere. There are mourners dressed in black, fanning themselves by the grave. </span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">We all gotta go sometime</i><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">, I say to myself, as I look out the window and across the street at my neighbor's bush as it sits there and does nothing. It's so still. The lawn of the funeral home down the street is defiantly green. August approaches with a drought in its stride. In this weather, hot coffee stays hot all day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It has been pointed out to me that I don't know much about the weather. I talk about the weather a lot, and I am an astute observer of the weather, but it's true that I understand little about the meteorological phenomena behind the weather. I just look at the clouds and listen to the birds. Are the clouds moving? Are the birds in a frenzy? Have the birds suddenly all shut up? I met a fellow in England years ago, and he claimed that he could predict the weather by observing the behavior of horses. Of course there were no horses on the campus of Kent, in Canterbury, England, and everyone laughed at him because he was odd. I, however, did not laugh at him because the people who laughed at him disgusted me, especially the rich and pompous, Greek exchange students who went about in Adidas track suits and looked down their noses at everyone as they slicked back their hair with combs made from poached ivory. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But it's true: I don't know much about the weather. I am a poet. Weather is never actual weather. There are feelings in every cloud. Sometimes those clouds burst. When there are no clouds in the sky, I feel nothing at all. I only scorch. </span><br />
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<br />Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-86317201976591020362013-07-13T12:49:00.001-05:002013-07-13T12:49:23.116-05:00stones<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My dad is down in the basement with the saws-all, trimming off the stubborn tail-end of a stud beneath the stairs to the basement so that we can hang one of the last, small sheets of drywall to finish our work in the basement, much of which we did back in February, before he had retired from 34 years with the same company, Diamond Tool & Abrasives, a small, family-owned company based in Elgin, Illinois. We are currently in Michigan, and I am currently on the porch that the nice guest bedroom on the second floor opens onto. Lake Michigan is about 80 yards off, about 80 yards west of this computer from which I am now about to upload some geological history. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These are the stairs that descend the bluff to the sandy and stony beach below. There are 87 stairs punctuated by several landings. I counted them this morning after stretching my hamstrings and calf muscles on the beach. Then I ran, not along the beach, but along the Blue Star highway that follows the lake shore, sometimes within an eye-shot of the lake and other times further east. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are many large, man-made aggregate boulders on the beach that have been put in place to slow the erosion of the bluff, and I used one of them as a table to sort the handfuls of stones I would scoop up from the line of stones that runs parallel to the water's edge. At first I was grabbing smaller stones, such as you can see above, but then I went for medium stones, though when speaking of the gauge of a stone, all things are naturally relative. Perhaps the same idea should be applied to our personal problems. One small stone can indeed seem like a medium-sized stone or even a large stone when put beside a grain of sand. Furthermore, if you wake up with a bad head, you should wait until you've cleared your bad head before you assess yourself and the day that lies before you. The stones in your path may indeed shrink as you take pleasure in the world and regain your sense of self.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sifting through stones is a very meditative practice, as is rinsing them in the cup of your hand while you stand, sometimes crotch deep in a very cold lake, and it is something I have done for all my life, each time I had the opportunity to stand in a body of water, be it stream or a lake, and look down at my feet, aqueous and white. Collecting stones as a meditative practice and a hobby, on the other hand, is something relatively new to me, and it's a very welcome newcomer. I don't know what I intend to do with the stones—collections and hobbies provide their own functions—so it's likely that I would have done just as well to leave these stones on the beach. Instead, I took them up to the house to photograph them. Were it not for the drywall that needs to be hung, I could have done this all afternoon: wading out, crouching, gathering, rinsing, sorting, selecting, admiring, brushing away the discards, then returning to the lake for another handful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It's hard to be anxious when there are so many beautiful stones. If I could be on permanent vacation, run each morning, cool off in the lake and then gather stones beneath a 100 foot bluff for an hour afterward, I could live a much healthier, saner life, one perhaps free of anxiety. Even sitting down with an iced coffee after lunch to reflect on all of this is making me a touch unsettled. It seems that this is pretty normal, that most of us do our best to bridge the distances between the moments of serenity that dot, like stones, the beaches of our lives. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-9107493151199211872013-07-07T14:34:00.005-05:002013-07-07T15:20:58.717-05:00lost in my dill world <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This summer my hair is the same as my garden: overgrown. My hair is overgrown because I kiss a mouth that is attached to two eyes that like how my overgrown hair softens my face, and my garden is overgrown because I have been kissing that mouth and looking into those eyes absorbedly; and I have been absorbedly traveling around Maryland with the face that those eyes make in tandem with that mouth. The hair that surrounds that face is curly and dark like mine; and the scent of dill is sometimes under our noses; and the word <i>dill </i>is often on our lips; and today hundreds of dill fronds fell under my knife. I banged loose dirt of dill roots; I sorted and bunched dill plants on the grass; I cinched our dill plants and hung them in the hot open air. But first I pulled the plants and laid them on the lawn; and I was oblivious to the sounds around me, and oblivious to the sun, and oblivious to the traffic on the street. It was the first time in weeks that I had a chance to tend to my overgrown garden; and sweat probably beaded on my brow that my hair softens; and I probably smelled dill as I yanked it out of its bed; but I was too deep in my work to notice any of this. If a small moon had fallen from the sky and crushed the white house across the street, I would not have noticed it. I would not have heard the sound of the roof beams crunching. I would not have heard the glass shatter in the attic windows. I was in my dill world, and when I'm in my dill world I am gone from this world. I am a warm, moving body with a floppy head of hair. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Making the dill bunches is easy enough to do, but it does require some attention to detail. When I pulled the plants and shook the dirt loose from their roots, I made sure that none of that dirt got onto the delicate leaves. I did not to wash them. I wanted no debris on them. I pulled them and tapped their roots systems gently on the ground. I kept their tops high and proud. I moved among the row, carefully and swiftly. I hauled the bunches to the lawn, arranged them with a modicum of care, and went to find my knife. Then I took the suckers to the shade of the backyard to clean them and tie them up. I made myself prone on the grass and it looked like this when I did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What beautiful, pale straws those are! Dill is essentially a reed. The reeds are not very turgid, but they are turgid enough to keep the dill erect. Dill plants don't make too many heavy leaves, and so the stalk does not need to be particularly strong. When the wind blows, the dill sways. When the plant becomes mature and top-heavy, it gently leans over and drops its seeds on the ground. It was years ago that I planted dill for the first time in this garden, and I have not planted a single dill seed since then. The dill does the work for me. It sows its own seeds. I merely thin out the seedlings and aid dill's natural wont. Much of gardening is like this. You don't resist a plant. You just help it do what it wants to do. I wish human life were this simple, but it's not. There is no relationship advice to be extracted from this snippet about dill physiology. There is no great life secret here. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Perhaps we don't need to uncover the great secrets of life! Perhaps it's fine that many of them lie hidden from us. Is it really necessary to know all the answers? In the tarot, 8 is the number of perfection (I think). 8 loops around and around and around, but in those eternal loops the risk of stasis, repetition, and sterility hide. There is little else to do after you do something perfectly. Put another way, perfection is a zenith from which we can only descend, but if we cast aside this vertical-topographical understanding of perfection, hell, if we cast the whole damn problem aside entirely and forget about peaks and golden chariots surrounded by brass roses and glittering coins of chlorophyll, we can enter a place where it's not problematic for a thing to be overgrown. We can enter a place where <i>overgrown </i>is a hollow word that flutters meaninglessly around an object that we once needed words to define; and when this happens, we can then enter a garden where life is visible to us without the clouds of words that sometimes gather and hover between us and our sensual experience of the world. I mean, so what if my garden is overgrown? Do I really care what the neighbors think? Do the neighbors even care? I have no idea. It's about to rain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-89845580126936353342013-06-27T08:28:00.001-05:002013-06-27T08:28:27.087-05:00damp fatigue<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Damp this morning. Damp yesterday morning. It'll probably be damp tomorrow morning too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The shallots in these pictures are sitting on the rocking chair on my porch. Their bulbs have since turned yellow, and their tops have wilted and become darker. If this damp weather persists, I will need to find another method of drying them out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Has anyone else noticed that Facebook has become incredibly boring? Has facebook become boring or is it me? I would like to coin a new phrase: "like fatigue." I suppose I am also feeling some "damp fatigue." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Sometimes I think about those sod homes pioneers built on the prairie in places like Kansas. It's probably a good thing that the prairie is not a damp place. Otherwise those homes could have turned into mud. Most of them, as it is, have returned to the earth. They were never built to last. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This morning I am aware of two contradictory things: [1] I am posting pictures of shallots resting on my thigh (playful) and [2] my tone is somewhat sedate (possibly sad). This means that I have options. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">How do you turn a mental corner and head into the day? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I suppose some days get on top of us and prevail on us. Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to have good days? Y</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">esterday morning I made about post in which I announced that I would retire this blog soon and start a new one somewhere else, which is something I am considering doing. I'll let you know when that happens. I still need to think about it. </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-70638755610598052013-06-22T14:42:00.000-05:002013-06-22T14:42:16.906-05:00westhampton, mass<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I talked to my mother on the phone today, and she pointed out that something must be happening in my life because I have been somewhat remiss from Oilchanges. My mother is very astute, and I told her that indeed I have been busy. The trouble with being someone who works part-time from home and cobbles together the other half of his livelihood with odd jobs is that it can sometimes be difficult to claim to be busy. To set the record straight, I have been incredibly busy with relaxation and unpaid work. It has taken much of my time. Only moments ago I ended a conversation with an old friend who lives in Germany. He has been hounding me about designing a cover for an on-demand book, "The Philosophical Golfer," that he co-wrote with a golf pro and which he will self-publish via Amazon. I'd been missing his phone calls for several weeks and dodging his e-mails. Today, as I was driving around Westhampton, my phone rung in my pocket. The number showed up as +49, the country code for Germany, and so I answered the phone, knowing that eventually I would have to bite the bullet, proffer up some kind of excuse, and talk business. We talked about our mutual friend who makes money by the truckload, and I was again reminded that I repair broken faucets (yesterday), climb on scaffolding (Thursday), mow lawns (Wednesday) and build homes (Tuesday) in order to make ends meet. My friend who earns money by the truckload can earn in fifteen minutes what it takes me an entire month to earn; and where he puts in long hours to build what will probably be a handsome retirement, should he ever retire, I juggle many dinky jobs, am in control of almost 100% of my time, and consider myself semi-retired already. Semi-retired and very likely S.O.L. were I to ask a bank to loan me a relatively piddly sum of money to buy some property in the hills, which is what I want to do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I drew this map of Westhampton and its main roads on a large sheet of graphic design paper before setting out in my car. I've been working, on and off, in Westhampton over the past month, cutting trim and installing new replacement windows in a home on Northwest Road. I am a helper and I get paid fifteen dollars an hour. One might call me a fool. I sometimes call myself a fool. On the other hand, I learn new skills all the time, and I keep my mind interested. Odd jobs also take me into new places, and were it not for this window installation job, I would probably not have fallen in love with Westhampton, Massachusetts. I want to move up there, build a home, clear some land, work that land, and move further into this life in which I balance my creative life against the practical world of necessity. Like everyone else, I have bills to pay and a mouth to feed. Add a couple more mouths to that, and then what happens? They say that a boy can dream, but so can a man. A man can dream about a life he may never attain, and he can take his lunch on the side of the road.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I got this tuna salad sandwich in Florence before heading up the hill into Westhampton. I got it at Cup and Top cafe. WARNING: they do not put any butter or mayo on the bread, so you should be prepared for a somewhat dry tuna sandwich if you choose to purchase one there. I often choose to purchase this sandwich, and I can tell you that it is usually very fresh-tasting and nice. The price is reasonable, and the sandwich comes with a bag of potato chips and a pickle spear. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I wanted to hop over that gate and eat my sandwich in the meadow, but I did not. Instead, I sat on the side of the road and ate half of my sandwich. I had stopped at this location because I wanted to take pictures of some land for sale on the opposite side of the road. This is the land:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don't know how many acres of land are for sale here, but it appears that the land is mostly wooded with a small (probably 2 acre) clearing. There is fallow land all over Westhampton, some of which is for sale and some of which is not for sale. Most of the land for sale in Westhampton is still wooded, which is to say it has not been cleared for agriculture. This spot, however, has some of each. I'm repeating myself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the southern-most part of Westhampton, where it abuts Southampton, there is a reservoir called White Reservoir, and this is it. One cannot trespass around this reservoir. There are discreet signs tacked to the trees that tell you not to disturb the reservoir. I looked both ways and decided that the signs were not applicable at the moment. I climbed over the guard rail, took a photograph, and then, as a kind of punishment for trespassing, albeit only a tiny bit, I bumped my knee against the guard rail when I hopped back over it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Okay, that's about all I have to say today. I'm really busy, and I need to get back to doing whatever it was that I stopped doing so that I could do this. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-84174027422904497982013-06-19T21:17:00.000-05:002013-06-20T08:07:27.729-05:00oh how my garden grows<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I spent eleven days on vacation in Maryland, drinking coffee and wine in a big green house on the Choptank river. I drank beer on the dock and watched the terns sweep over the brackish Choptank, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, and the grasses in my garden back home shot up and did their own sweeping. It rained heavily along the entire eastern seaboard while I was gone. On stormy days the wind whipped up the bay's waters and made the river choppy. At times, the water was smooth and glassy. Other times, the water looked like a soft slice of avocado that someone had dragged a fork over. The swallows with their scissor tails darted hectically above the water as the tornado force winds threatened to topple the USS Indian Outlaw while the osprey nest atop the post downstream swayed but stayed true. On clear days, vultures and hawks would ride on currents of warm air, hundreds of feet above the meaty pinheads of the diamond back terrapins that would surface for a moment of air and dive again to pry black clams loose from the muddy bottom. While I reveled in sea birds, romance, and wine, the weeds in my Massachusetts garden took cues from the thunder. While I snatched clam shells from beneath the frothy breakers of the Atlantic, the fern-like fronds of the dill in my garden glutted themselves on rain and sun. When a gardener turns his back, the eyes on his back grow strong. I returned home to find a bloated beast, a pretty bloated beast. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A picture never really captures a thing. Anyone who has ever attempted to freeze an adoring glance knows that the feelings that attach themselves to such glances in the moment do not attach themselves through the wiry spindles in the backs of the eyes. You can take a million photographs of the thing you love, but your eyes will never do more than trigger a memory, and memory itself is subject to so many wishful (or despondent) moods. The only answer is to be present and always present, to always have your nose deep in a flower, to suck in what good air there is around you and to know how good that air is whilst you suck. I am, of course, losing myself a bit here. I have come home from a long vacation, and I have weeded and tended my garden profusely today. Such is the pleasure of returning home to a garden. There is so much catch-up work to do. If my garden wasn't such a demanding animal, I would leave it more often, but one must always strike a balance between that which he loves and that which he loves even more. There are two sides to every scale, and he who balances them does best. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I must confess that I am slightly drunk, though I should say that I am primarily drunk on gardening and weather. There are seabirds in my memory and, more recently, fresh asphalt and raw pine timbers in the hills of western Massachusetts. I spent most of the day gathering plants by the fistful and slashing through those fistfuls with my knife. Piles and piles of weeds. Piles and piles of dill and chamomile. I had moved from the mid-Atlantic to the north-Atlantic. What had been the vapor of a thought behind a mallet and a pile of crab shells became a pile of greens that smelled like chlorophyll. I gathered up pounds of dill and cinched them with plastic twine. As the day progressed from 7:30 AM to noon, I watched my California poppies open. I pulled garlic and tied back plants. Ruthlessness has as much to do with gardening as does care. When there is work to be done, you just rip rip rip. It isn't about saving every precious green thing. It's about selecting which green things you want to thrive and which you want to die, but a dead plant is only more compost, and compost is god. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-83353702556426261772013-06-03T20:19:00.000-05:002013-06-03T20:19:00.054-05:00rabbit prophylactics <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I planted about ten squash plants this morning, did some chores, did some desk work, and then ran into town to eat a burrito (successful), shop for a present (unsuccessful), and fill out a bunch of paperwork at the clinic (also successful). The woman at the clinic made me hop onto the scale and took my blood pressure. My blood pressure was fine. I weigh one hundred and sixty-two pounds (also fine). I peed into a plastic cup with my initials on it, filling the cup one quarter of the way up as instructed. I screwed the lid on and returned the cup to the nurse. My nurse then had me insert a plastic swab into my mouth and swab both sets of my gums. I did it and handed her the swab. <i>Well, there it is</i>, I said. She stuck the swab into a swab receptacle and told me to return in 17 minutes for the results. I returned home elated and found that one of the squash plants I'd set out in the morning had already been nibbled by the rabbit. He obviously did not have a taste for delicata squash seedlings because the leaves he ate had been spit out, but I made some rabbit collars anyway. Rabbits are not that bright. I am confident that I can outsmart this one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">There are some problems with these rabbit collars. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. These collars will effectively reduce the amount of sunlight my seedlings receive each day. Fortunately, the collars are only temporary, and so the problem of light will not be a problem for long. The other problem is that any determined rabbit could easily put his head over the collar and nibble with little to no effort. My hope is that the rabbit will think the collars are bizzarre and leave my plants alone. It is also possible that the collars will obstruct the rabbit's view of the seedlings. If rabbits find their food by sight, these collars could very well be effective prophylactic measures. We shall see.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These rabbit prophylactics or "collars" are simply plastic pots with their bottoms cut off. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Because I hate plastic, because I don't throw shit away, and because I live in the era of plastic, I have dozens of these plastic pots in my garage, all of them neatly tucked into one another in a manner that befits a hyper-organized, curmudgeonly tight ass. What once was a pot is now a rabbit deterrent. You need only a pair of scissors to make them. By affixing some translucent gauze or similar light emitting material to the top of these collars with a rubber band, the collars could effectively become insect deterrents as well. I am considering doing that. There is a horrible pest called the squash vine borer who lays her eggs on the stems of squash plants, and the larvae bore into the vines and eat them from the inside. It's really gross. For the home gardener, such measures are do-able and worth the effort. For the farmer—fuck it. It's not worth the trouble. Just spray a bunch of gnarly insecticide everywhere and get drunk. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-78049318613330344902013-06-01T13:27:00.001-05:002013-06-01T13:34:00.032-05:00pull out early<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had to prematurely pull some shallots today to make room for the winter squash starts I will plant in a couple days. I planted the shallots in a rush last fall—in a rush and in the ground—and I wasn't thinking about the future when I did so. Or perhaps I was thinking about the future—I don't remember. I did plant the shallots in an out-of-the-way spot on the edge of the garden, but the spot was not out-of-the-way enough, and so today I pulled some of the shallots up. Some of them are still in the ground. It doesn't matter. What really matters when you are happy? I puttered around in the garden. I pulled some shit early. "And then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals played in my head. The weather was hot. It felt fucking good. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sometimes it's not so bad to pull out early. Other times I guess it is. Things apparently totally depend on the situation. Pulling some shallots out early was no big deal this year. Another year it could have broken my heart. A gardener can go mad planning for the future. A gardener can also go mad when life and the forces of nature have their way with his plans. We apparently can't control everything. It's apparently important to know what can and should be controlled, what's worth attempting to control, and what's totally pointless and dumb to bother attempting to control. Like, I wouldn't try to control all of China. Can you imagine how exasperating that would be? Gardening is good because it teaches you when to clutch and when to release, when to cling and when to say, <i>Bye baby</i>. It's also good because it brings new people into your life. A garden can be a nexus. A garden cannot be a cheap bottle of shampoo. It's good to know what a garden can and cannot be. It's good to be alive and know it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The shallots I pulled this afternoon were alive when I pulled them, and they are still alive now. I suppose they will be dead in a few days, and I suppose I too shall be dead eventually. We all gotta go sometime. In the meantime, though, it helps to think about what that word really means. In the vegetable world, the line between life and death is not so clearly drawn. Big agri-businesses do seek to draw it more clearly, and they should be ashamed of themselves for doing so, but on the whole it's harder to pronounce a mammal dead than it is, say, a shallot. Anyway, at the moment I am in love with this world and happy to be among the living. Humans are funny that way. Can a shallot happily muse about death when it is erect in the June sun? Probably not. But they are great on salads. I think I'll have a salad now. </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-26547185193092947422013-05-29T00:11:00.000-05:002013-05-29T00:12:22.471-05:00waiting <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This is purple vetch, a wildflower. It's on my parkway. It's related to clover and alfalfa. More distantly, it's related to sweet peas. I admired this plant a couple years ago. I watched it bloom and waited for the seeds in the pea-shaped pods to mature. This was near the railroad tracks behind the KFC. I collected the seeds and sowed them at home. When sowing the seeds of a wild plant, you should sow them around the time when the plant sows its own seeds. You simply back off and follow nature. If a wild plant grows alongside roads and curbs, you should plant its seeds alongside roads and curbs. Wild plants know what they are doing. Let them tell you what to do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Taking instructions from nature is an exercise in undoing habits. I don't know when humans started putting themselves at the center of everything. It's not necessary to know. I am not a historian. You don't need to be a historian either. You merely need to pay attention. I could compare this to my refusal to buy asparagus in December. Here in western Massachusetts the asparagus season runs from late April to early June. Then the asparagus are done. There are bunches of asparagus in the grocery stores all year round, but I don't buy them. I don't buy them for three reasons. I don't buy them because (1) they come from too far away and (2) because Dole sends them here. The third reason has to do with the real motivation to eat as seasonally as possible. I am not above eating food that has been shipped to me, nor do I look down my nose at those who do. Sometimes you want zucchini in December. It's perfectly normal. The reason to eat seasonally has more to do with waiting. I am an impatient person sometimes, and so following the seasons is an exercise in patience. It's a way to recognize that good things have their time and a way to appreciate what anticipation is worth. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's not to deny myself a pleasure. It's a way to add value to a pleasure by waiting for it. It's a way to approach the ephemeral. It's a kind of foreplay. It's a way to take a back seat to nature and time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Pretty soon this vetch will be gone. I'll mow it down and wait eleven months to see its flowers again. If you need further reason to wait for nature, think of all the love songs that have been written about waiting on a letter. Think of the love songs that are sung about sailors who are off to sea. We can now spend our lives having whatever we want whenever we want it. It's been this way for a long time and will probably continue to be this way. And truth be told, I don't really have a problem with our immediate gratification culture. There is nothing really wrong with it, but there is something to be said for tempering it, for thoughtfully putting some waiting back into our lives. </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-86819073560710788292013-05-26T16:46:00.003-05:002013-05-26T16:48:24.704-05:00rabbits & fences<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I saw a dead rabbit on the side of the road while walking into town with my companion today. The rabbit looked pretty stone dead. It was stretched out on its side. Front legs forward, rear legs backward, it looked like it was in mid-stride, and indeed it probably was in mid-stride when a car struck it and bloodied its blunt nose. I did not point out the rabbit to my companion, and if she saw it, she did not point it out to me. There have been times when I've thoughtlessly pointed out dead animals, but this time I thought better of it and counted my concealment as a personal victory. I didn't think more about the rabbit until I got home and noticed that somebody had been nibbling on the collards I transplanted the other day. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Rabbits are prey and as such they generally avoid vulnerable situations. Humans are not generally prey, but we also avoid vulnerable situations. Rabbits avoid being out in the open, and nervous people also avoid being out in the open. When a nervous person enters an open field, that nervous person looks around to make sure that the eyes upon them are not the eyes of hawks. We all know what hawks do to rabbits. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">If I write about this, it's not because I am particularly interested in rabbits but because my gut tells me that by understanding rabbit psychology I can build more effective rabbit deterrents. When a rabbit comes into my open garden, she is putting herself into an unsafe situation. The thought behind this rather minimal rabbit fence is to make a situation that is already unsafe appear to be a touch more unsafe. There are other sources of food nearby, namely alfalfa. The hope is that the rabbit will choose the safer option. I will know soon enough if I have outsmarted my rabbit with this fence. I am not holding my breath. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Speaking of fences, I helped build a fence behind <a href="http://www.flying-object.org/" target="_blank">Flying Object</a> this week. The purpose of that fence was to make the back patio more private. A computer nerd company moved into the adjacent building recently, and they brought a squadron of dorky, black Mini Coopers with them, all of them bespangled with the nerd squad's logo. So we erected a privacy fence. The privacy fence will not make the dork mobiles on the other side disappear. It will simply conceal them. My rabbit fence will not actually conceal my collards from the rabbits, but sometimes the gesture toward concealment is enough. How many times have you been walking and come to a fence and thought to yourself, "Well, I guess I'll turn around and head back now"? It is possible that I am overestimating my rabbit's capacity for thought. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-87332720839323366902013-05-22T12:51:00.000-05:002013-05-22T12:51:25.964-05:00transplanting collards<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Sometimes it's important to be factual and informative and to resist the pull toward lyricism, which is to say that lyricism sometimes pulls me away and causes me to write about the life of the mind, which is a fine thing, but the life of the mind doesn't teach anyone how to transplant a collard. The weather forecast shows cooling temperatures, clouds, and rain over the next few days, which are ideal conditions for transplanting. Earlier in the spring I planted collards from seed, but grubs that cruise the soil line sucked the stems of most of the seedlings dry, and so the collard seedlings that survived were not evenly spaced throughout the bed. I had planted the seeds more closely than is recommended, intending to thin the seedlings down to a spacing appropriate for mature plants, but the grubs, commonly known as "cut worms," did not heed my spacing plans, annoying me and leaving me with a problem, a problem that I could solve if suitable weather conditions came along, and come along they did. I spent part of my morning carefully moving collard seedlings around. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You can estimate the size of a plant's root mass by looking at the size of its leaves. Plants generally strike a balance: if the leaves form a rough sphere with an eight inch diameter, you can expect the roots beneath the surface to form a comparable rough sphere. There are no substitutes for familiarity and experience, but rules of thumb do help. Transplanting beneath clouds after a rain ensures two things: moist soil that will hold its shape when dug AND less stress in the form of evaporation and transpiration put onto the plant that has been dug. To dig a plant, picture the root mass beneath the surface, and then use your tool, here a trowel, to scoop the plant, roots and all, onto the tool. LEAVE THE PLANT ON THE TOOL. DO NOT PUT IT INTO YOUR HANDS. (For small seedlings you can use a spoon; you can use the blade of a knife for really small ones.) BEFORE YOU TRANSPLANT, be sure to ready the plant's new hole. Naturally, the new hole should be big enough to accommodate the root ball. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Plunk the transplant into its new location. It is better to plant it too low than too high. If you plant it too low, you can lift it up from beneath. Lifting a transplant from beneath actually helps any loose root tips to straighten out in the soil. Conversely, if the plant is too high, you may be tempted to tamp it down. Tamping a transplant is sure to stress it out more than lifting one, and minimizing stress is the name of the game when transplanting. Pampering is also the name of the game. Even though we are due for more rain tonight, tomorrow, and so forth, I watered in my collards after moving them. I will probably water them in again this afternoon. If you are not prepared to dote on a plant, don't transplant it. In this sense, plants are not unlike cats or humans. Moves are stressful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Here, the flopped over plants that are showing the undersides of their leaves are the transplants. With proper care, they will right themselves soon. To help these transplants along (and to amuse myself), I made some splints for them. Many would say that this is a totally unnecessary step, that the collards don't need temporary splints, and those people may be right, but I would offer that one who makes a splint for a collard transplant is one who will later eat collards. The splint is indicative of the amount of required care. So care. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-31481166771752423992013-05-19T15:43:00.001-05:002013-05-19T15:51:14.923-05:00greens thinnings<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Good weather for thinning. Cloudy. Cool. Soft. Like spring greens themselves. Tender, too. Helps to actually have greens to thin. Did so in a trance. Melodic, mellow. Partially related to not enough sleep. Partially related to other factors. New neighbors in white house across street or just visiting? Graduation party? Never seen them before. Damp air possibly related to muted sounds. Work I should be doing but not. Fuck work? Saw a child many years ago with a <i><b>Somebody in Texas Loves Me</b></i> t-shirt. Said, <i>Doubtful</i>. Was a child myself. Little asshole. Sometimes still asshole. Whoop-di-doo. God will forgive me? Bag it and tag it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Trim off root ends. Discard into compost. Stroke of blade through greens onto pad of thumb. Favorite stroke. Chef one time called said stroke "the mom technique." <i>John Boy, use the mom technique.</i> The mom technique? Then he showed me. Indeed had seen my own mother do it. Technique often used while standing over trash or sink. Plunk plunk plunk. Important technique. Must not forget to call mom tomorrow and wish her happy birthday. Not sure how old. Bad son? Better to forget age than forget birthday. Called sister before thinning greens and said, <i>When's mom's birthday?</i> Knew it was coming soon. Sister said, <i>Tomorrow</i>. <i>Justin's is on Wednesday.</i> Thanks, sis. What would I do without you? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Take greens inside and dunk in bowl of cold water. Jostle. Remove to drain. Rinse bowl of dirt and debris. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">(Sometimes little bits of dry grass. Sometimes little maple helicopters. Various stuff.) </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Refill bowl. Repeat process until greens are clean. Mr Clean Greens. Spin in roommate's salad spinner until dry. Don't have a salad spinner? Put greens into clean cloth, bundle up like hobo bag, take outside and spin around head. Water will come out. Centrifugal force. Learned about in school. School where can't smoke bathroom. Can drink Coke though. </span></div>
Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-61357177565799491912013-05-18T13:24:00.001-05:002013-05-18T13:24:10.115-05:00carrying<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What does it mean to carry something, to really carry something? To carry a glass of water from one room to another? To find a stone on the road and carry it home? To come to the front end of a difficult day, but to find strength somewhere and carry the day? How far can one day be carried? How much can we carry in our minds before the bottoms of our minds give out? When you are shopping for groceries, and you fill a bag with heavy items, the bagger will often tell you not to carry the bag by the handles but to carry it from the bottom, and so carrying is also supporting from beneath. And how recklessly can we support something from beneath? And how carefully can we transport something delicate? Carry is a word that we don't often stop to think about, but carrying is something we do all the time. And it's not just us, our hands and our machines that carry. Birds will find a bit of straw on the ground and carry that straw to their nests. One time I had a natural fiber doormat outside my back door, and a squirrel, strand by strand, chewed it up and carried it off until there was no more doormat. To carry something into the distance, to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. To cinch your books in a leather belt and carry them home from school. I could go on. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In the spring, when the trees are blooming, the wind carries their pollen around and gives us allergies, but can the wind really be said to carry anything? Does it take a mind to carry? Perhaps the wind has a mind of its own, and when it hoists a pollen grain into the air and carries it from tree to tree, perhaps the wind is doing something we cannot understand, and so we pin a label onto the wind. The natural world does not use our labels. It takes them, or so we think. We are pinners of labels, and we carry our labels with us as we carry our histories, and we pin our histories onto the new and foreign things we come across, in part to know these things and in part to shield ourselves from ever knowing them fully. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">One time I moved from Indiana to England, and I carried an odd selection of items with me, my pepper grinder among the oddest. My pepper grinder traveled the ocean among my clothes, my trivet among my pains. My friend laughed about my pepper grinder and could not understand, of all things, why I would pack and carry a device to grind dried berries. <i>Did you think there would be no pepper grinders in England? </i>I shot back, <i>Do you think that it took up that much space in my luggage?</i> </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">There were surely many pepper grinders in England, but none of them were mine. None of them had been in my hands when I stood in my difficult kitchen; and though I was leaving Indiana and would never return, I wanted to carry some of its difficult things with me. <i>And besides</i>, I said to my friend, <i>this is a nice pepper grinder. Why spend the money on a new one? </i>My friend took me out for a beer and listened to my stories, listened to me carrying on.<i> </i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"> </span>Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6487585168456515991.post-16356000770133970722013-05-07T09:09:00.000-05:002013-05-07T09:09:13.166-05:00two birds<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don't live alone, and that means that I share a kitchen and pantry, a living room, a dining room, and a bathroom. I share a porch and all the other little spaces, too. The cabinet under the sink where the dish towels are, where the plastic and paper bags from grocery outings are, where the cleaning products and the trash bags are; the drawer under the kitchen counter where the knives are; the cabinet in the back of the pantry where the bulky and seldom used kitchen items are; the two boxes under the pantry shelves where the tupperware containers and jar lids are; the drawers underneath the china cabinet where the sheets of floral patterned fabric and ceramic baking dishes are; the nook beside the plant table in the front room where our guitars are; the flat surfaces throughout the apartment where little piles of junk mail and books periodically build up and disperse. This is all normal household living. What I don't share is the attic studio where I am now. My roommate and his girlfriend were preparing to leave for New York when I woke up this morning. A pot of water was boiling on the stove, my roommate's new French press loaded and ready beside it. I put another pot of water on the stove, sang a few lines of <i>choo-choo cha-boogie</i>, and headed to the attic to pee. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The attic is very cool and quiet this morning. It's mostly uninsulated and mostly unfinished. Old sheets of fiberglass insulation sag from the roof rafters in some places. There are white dots of bird shit on all the windowsills. Birds nest under the eaves of the house and sometimes find their way inside. Twice last winter I came up here and found dead starlings on the unfinished floor by the front window. I took the first one to the back window and threw it onto the snow, three floors down in the back yard. The snow at the time had crusted over, and the dead starling spanked it without ceremony. It was dead; I hadn't killed it; but still I felt as if I had done the bird some cosmic disrespect by throwing it out the window. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I figured I would find it in the spring and deal with it then. I put the second bird into a plastic grocery bag and carried it downstairs and outside, where I dropped it in the garbage. Both birds were dead, stone dead. They had become objects for disposal. I would not throw an empty beer bottle out the window, but I threw that first bird out the window. It seemed like a small, savage act, and one that I needed to repair. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">When my landlords visited in the late winter, I told them about the birds, and we made another attempt to stuff the likely holes under the eaves to prevent future birds from becoming trapped up here. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's not that I mind dead bodies, nor do I mind the dots of bird shit. In fact, the live birds that sometimes inhabit this space feel like companions to me. What bothers me is the panic the birds feel as they repeatedly slam into the front window, looking for egress. They come in assuming that they can come out, but they cannot. I have shooed many trapped birds out. They are all nervous. They hop around, fly onto a rafter, perch momentarily, fly onto another rafter. I open all the windows, follow them around methodically and slowly with a broom, encouraging them toward an open window. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">This attic studio is a place of peace for me. When I come up here, my anxieties do not follow me. It's as if they are dumbbells or heavy pieces of furniture that cannot make it up the three flights of stairs between the apartment where I live, fret and love, and the attic where I look down on the neighborhood that embraces me. We like to think of birds as creatures that are free to soar over the world, creatures that are free of earthly troubles, but I would never want to be a terrified starling in a middling artist's studio. </span><br />
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<br />Jono Toschhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13724607914252908517noreply@blogger.com0