Once again, the lethal cocktail of good intentions and obsessive compulsion has provided me with a hopper full of things to write about and a WordPad document full of unfinished, rambling essays. I like to fancy myself as Laurence Sterne, the author of the great nonlinear lunatic classic The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Since I was born on Sterne’s birthday, I tell myself that I am in good company, and that what looks like endless, incessant chatter actually has a purpose. Unfortunately, the older I get, the more I suspect that I am not Laurence Sterne, but rather an underachiever with undiagnosed adult-onset ADHD.
While I try to make some sense of this mess, I will take a cue from aethele and Mike, and submit for your consideration, Bakerina’s List of New Year’s Resolutions for 2004.
Before starting, though, an observation: It should be taken as boilerplate that every New Year’s resolution list includes a vow to get plenty of exercise. Until last year, the resolution to lose weight was on my boilerplate every year. I went on crazy-ass diets and was rewarded by gaining 50 pounds. So I shifted my priorities a bit, and said “eh, I’ll just go to the gym and see what happens,” and managed to take off 37 of them. So I started retooling my usual resolution list and replaced hoary old chestnuts with resolutions I know I can keep, sort of like the time I gave up the MX missile for Lent.
1. Eat more cashews, particularly the spicy cashews from Kalustyan’s. Unless you have fatal nut allergies, cashews are good for what ail you, and Kalustyan’s spicy cashews will take what ails you and peel the skin off of it.
2. Come to think of it, spend more time at Kalustyan’s. This year’s fruitcake would not have been possible without Kalustyan’s. There are plenty of shops in the city for buying spices, dried fruit, candy, nuts, sea salts, 12 kinds of sugar, 40 kinds of rice, 60 kinds of beans, cooking implements and homemade condiments. There may even be a few that make their own homemade lime pickle. But only Kalustyan’s sits next door to Curry in a Hurry, which means that I can go to Kalustyan’s, breathe in the marvelous scent of the store, load up on goodies, head next door to C in a H, order an aloo paratha or an uttapam, and eat it at the counter while I review my purchases.
3. Keep breathing those marvelous scents. Normally I am much too highly-strung to hold much truck with holistic therapies. I don’t doubt their efficacy for other, better, calmer, more mature people. I, on the other hand, was pumped full of Dexedrine in utero thanks to my mom’s obstetrician, who had a horror of women gaining more than 20 pounds during pregnancy and wrote her a script for diet speed, and I have been a slave to the the pharma ever since. I know it would be better for my migraines if I made some dietary changes, maybe get regular massages, but I’d much rather eat Excedrin like Pez. That said, my mother gave me a bag of Herbes de Provence that she brought back from Paris, and I spent all of Christmas morning inhaling through the burlap, feeling my crispy New York City features smooth out. (They tensed up a little when I caught a reflection of myself in a mirror and I realized how much I looked like Frank Booth.) A few days later we were shopping in Philadelphia. I ducked into an Aveda store to buy some shampoo and ended up with a little bottle of citrussy-something-or-other that made me smile. “You know,” said Lloyd, who noticed an instant change, “you just might benefit from a little aromatherapy.” My skeptic radar went right up, the urge to make a smartass comment was unmistakable, but I knew he was right. Today I went out for some retail therapy in lower Manhattan, and I decided to walk through Chinatown, where I picked up some lemongrass, makrut lime leaves, green mangoes, jicama, fresh coriander with the roots still attached—the roots smell divine—and young ginger, the kind with a translucent ivory skin and bright magenta tips. I cannot begin to encapsulate how wonderful all of this stuff smelled, and how I can just taste the weekend’s worth of Thai hot and sour soup I will be making.
4. Indulge in frequent pop-music love. This is something I actually do quite often, but I don’t give it the attention or respect it deserves, and that’s just wrong. On Monday I was in the locker room at the gym, listening to the hideous Beach Boys version of “Rock & Roll Music,” the kind that makes me mutter “fuckin’ Mike Love” under my breath, when the Beach Boys faded out and a vaguely familiar, hypnotic rhythm line took its place. I realized that it was the great 1976 single by War, “Summer,” and even though I was late for work and needed a shower, I stayed put, rooted to the spot, sweaty and naked, and listened to the whole thing. I’ve heard this song on the radio from time to time throughout my life, but I’d forgotten how warm and friendly and kind it was. Even though it’s been a warm end-of-December, it’s still the end of December, but when I hear “Summer” I feel surrounded by warm and gentle breezes, soaked by sunshine. Even the bits of the song that root it firmly in its time still feel timeless. “Rapping on the CB radio in your van/Give a big 10-4 to the truckin’ man,” they sing, and the friendliness inherent in the delivery is so palpable that I just feel inexplicably, goofily happy, glad to be part of the same species that could come up with such a fine and generous sentiment. Of course you know that I ran right to J&R Music World as soon as it opened, and snagged a copy of the War 2-disc set that Rhino released in July. You know that I have played “Summer” about 4 times today, and I know that I will probably listen to “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” 4 times tomorrow.
5. Write that culinary history of the use of eggs in baking that I know is in me. I know, I should probably start smaller, but I figure I need at least one oversized, crazy-ass resolution that I won’t be able to fulfill, but will produce interesting work in trying. If nothing else, I will have interesting new dessert recipes to show for it, and I’m not above sharing the recipes.
6. Be thankful for having so many interesting and beautiful friends, which I try to do every day, but this year my list has grown exponentially, and for that I am so grateful. To those of you who are reading this, old friends, new friends, fellow bloggers, lurkers, sweethearts and well-wishers, happy 2004 to each and every one of you. Knowing you all makes me want to buy a house, just so that I can get all of you in there, where we can keep the music playing all night long, where we can eat and drink ourselves into a state of bliss, drink a few cups of strong coffee and start all over again.