as fate would have it

gentles

we earth-trodders should probably tremble when we see portents from the higher powers. i was reading on my balcony yesterday (nov 12) -- again in just boxers in the delicious sunlight -- and i see a cat crouched to spring on any one of the 7 or 8 serbian crows (not monochrome like ours but black then grey then black in three equal parts) bopping about within a few feet of it. i'm thinking, what are those birds doing there? don't they realize it's a cat?

so i watch, never having seen a tom ever catch a jerry (or the like), but when the cat finally pounces, the birds jump easily away. and then i see more: the birds are actually taunting the cat, prancing close to it but just out of reach, flying right over its head and landing just behind, hopping across its field of vision. and they seem to be working in concert.

after a few more attempts, the cat gives up and zips away. the birds then disperse.

when this Trauerspiel began, i assumed of course that fate was the cat and i one of the clearly doomed birds. but no! perhaps it's not so bleak; maybe all these chapters are going to turn out ok; just maybe...

another sign i wasn't sure how to interpret was my dishwashing liquid -- for the sensitive, such as myself! (also note how the ketchup label advertises hot peppers. hot peppers, however, are not among its ingred- ients...)

finally, the grilled lamb stand i intended to bring my main course for last night's dinner was closed, so instead i continued on and ate at a pretty fancy, old-school serbian restaurant, decked out gaudily like a love grotto Cupid would have shared with Bacchus. (oh my did the fountains spurt)

and reading the english menu, and noticing the prices being a little high, i was a little concerned. but how, my lovelies, knowing me as you do, could i resist Mountain Lamb in Self Milk? fear not! resist i didn't, and out comes a helmet-sized glass cauldron half filled with lamb chunks, potato, and veggies in a rich dairy "potage" -- clearly thickened with the feta-like kaymak and utterly stupendous. (picture to follow) i think i'll make this at home, only i'll cook down the liquid till it's an ultra-dense, lamb-infused ICBM of flavor. should be amazing.

also had an excellent day at the market, buying beets the shape of breasts in National Geographic from an old woman whose face said Eastern European Root Vegetable Farmer so loudly even had i not seen her wares i would have known she'd have tubers and rhizomes stashed away somewhere. even better, after i gave her a somewhat inappropriately large bank note, she kept saying in serbian, Grandma will change your bill for you, honey, Grandma will give it to you. ha!

by the by, my grandmother often refers to how her husband walter's family in austria-hungary -- now romania -- were "dirt farmers" only 2 generations before (not exactly sure what other type there are apart from the hydroponic geniuses in Marin county), and i've alluded here to the photo in which the alexandr karelin-faced women look like they could beat my brother at arm wrestling, so, yes, Grandma really wasn't far off the mark.

i then bought spinach from a man whose hands looked like size x-small medical gloves inflated to near rupture.

and -- PETA ALERT! PETA ALERT! -- i also bought 2 delightful bits of Barbaro, soon after the fall: horse steaks and dried horse sausage, the latter of which is complex and delicious in the extreme. i'll be cooking up the steaks tonight and will report back. but based on the color of the meat, they should be scrumptious.

back to the mill wheel, which, gods willing, will keep turning smoothly. the portents appear good.

xxx

supplanting

all -- a quickie (which, of course, will lead to all sorts of Gueller jokes...)

if you are reading this blog, please do not fail to click on the comments button beneath each post. apparently my skill in life is not so much prose as assembling friends with the gift of the blarney, for their responses are quite superior to my windbag exhalations.

in fact, in a kind of revisitation of the cain/abel myth, my semi-illiterate younger brother turns out not only to be a better writer than i, a better cook (by far), an almost equal scrabble player (and superior at catan), but also a dean!

he hoists me on my own petard! i'm slain by my kin! oh the injustice!

so, yes, read his comments and those of the rest of the sanctum sanctorum.

as to the picture, it is anatomically correct only in that he'd be the clothed and i'd be the naked one, as i spend most my life in the buff while apparently no mortal save himself and our rents has ever seen my brother naked.

it aint cold in serbia

my long-losts

an over-belated post (and a few more coming at some point about events from recent weeks); sorry for the lack of chrono- logical order, but wanted to give a general update on la vie en belgrade.

first off, i'm embarrassed to say that prior to coming here i didn't really process that this is the former capital of yugoslavia and, as such, was a pretty prosperous and cosmo- politan city. now a decade of war obviously changes things, but you can still go downtown and see all the same shops you see in new york, get all the same stuff, and pay all the same prices. after 7 weeks of the alterity and curiosity of southeast asia (my last getaway), this familiarity was a little disappointing. instead of being a place where i could bring marlboros and hand them out like gold coins, i could buy marlboros from any kiosk while listening to lady gaga and checking out the newest nikes in a store window. so much for me being the risk-taking traveler.

furthermore, i failed to realize that belgrade is as far south as milan. everyone had been asking me how cold it would be, and i suspect it was some combination of associating serbia with siberia, the balkans with the baltics, and thinking of eastern europe through a russian/polish optic that made everyone (including myself) not remember the actual place on the map. strange. as it turned out, i sunbathed on my balcony in just boxers the first three days i was here. (photos mercifully suppressed)

on the food front, however, it has been pretty much as expected: LARGE quantities of meat.(the photo to the right represents some leftovers from a dinner where a single order netted you either 5 of the 8-inch sausages to the left or 5 of the meat/cheese stuffed polpette on the right. egads)

i did finally make it the central market, however, where i was delighted by pickled cabbages and peasants who look like they know how to pickle a cabbage in equal abundance. as you can see from the pic, i had a pretty good haul (exquisite smoked meat on the left, some incredible funky sort of cheese stuff in the plastic container on the right, an whole cabbage head -- pickled entire, of course -- beets, carrots, parsley, spinach, fresh pasta, radishes, delicious red/brown potatoes, tomatoes, and a cornbread with spinach in it). yum!

and last but not least, i've been delighting in the local rakija -- various types of brandy, this one a sljivovica (slivovitz, in the lower east side). i'm quite taken by this character and his orchiditis. this label actually seems to have more "subliminal" genitalia than the camel cigarette pack or Family Guy, but maybe that's just me.

in any case, zhivite! work's going well. i'll write again soon.

all,

ah, life is using me like a speedbag. been too tired and too overwhelmed to check in here, and for that my apologies. like a child's balloon set free by the little hand, i rise and sink with each new prevailing force: the uplift of praise and attention for the book, the sinking dread of waiting (will the Times ever notice?). i feel alternately blessed in the extreme for being here and being this close to being able to share one of my great loves with a large number of people (yes, darlings, read good things!) but on the other shut out of the inner sanctum, shibboleth-less, not able to overcome nepotism and better networkers and all the rest. First i compare myself to my savvy New York friends and i think that of course i could never succeed; i bemoan my bucolic roots, my lack of this and that and the other. then i remember those roots and think how happy almost anyone from my highschool would be to be in my shoes, how surprised they'll be at the 25th reunion, and how fortunate i've obviously been to get this far. i said to a friend the other day that i should write the word "grateful" on post-its and put them all over my apartment, office desk, messenger bag, etc., just to remember where i am and what i've been able to do and how full the glass really is.

the stack there, of course, are the 50 books in B on the B. it was A.J. Jacobs' idea to stack them; he did it with his encyclopedias following his magisterial reading of them all for The Know-It-All. i had them like that in my apartment for a few weeks; they're almost as tall as i am, and it felt nice seeing them as a daunting tower, rendered entirely familiar.

was interviewed on NPR today for Weekend Edition. Leann Hanson asked me what i'm reading, and i answered Dickens' nonfiction (as i say on my new website, jackmurnighan.com), right now The Uncommercial Traveler. as i told her, he would read things in the news that interested him and travel out to those places just to poke his nose around, tell the story, document all the great stuff in life that interested him. as always, his incredible lust for life shines through, his ability to relate and appreciate all manner of (good) people, his inexhaustible wit, and the consummate charm of his perceptions and prose. in today's parlance, it's a little like a blog, and as the world's greatest serial writer ever, Dickens would have been the finest blogger of all time. i'll be typing up some of his quotes on Twitter (twitter.com/jackmurnighan), but maybe i'll collect them here soon.

ok, so tired i might collapse. woke up at 2:30 this morning from stress and went straight to work. will write again soon -- and will announce when the NPR piece will air. for now i don't know.

affection to all.

what flies, what dangles

The semester has ended; my students are hacking up their final papers like so many alleycat hairballs; spring is springing along the east coast, causing otherwise insightful people to tell each other how exquisite the palpably obviously exquisite days are; and I have been counting down these days, minutes, and moments of panic, waiting to see if my book sells or if I should roll myself in a rug on the Bowery. (on a sidenote, I take comfort that some years ago I figured out how to keep one’s self alive, food-wise, on $1.17 a week plus a lemon peel – details on request). The waiting game is not good for my psyche, and I haven’t had the focus I’d like to have, thus the infrequency of these posts. My apologies.

That said, no small number of curious life experiences have transpired since last we spoke. In the research for my forthcoming experience-daredevil Nerve column, I Did It for Science, I went to a hypnotist to try to relive the “primal scene” (the origin, says dr. Freud, of much neurosis, of which I have much). I won’t preempt the material I’m going to put in the piece, but I will say that the first question the receptionist asked, when I called and explained my agenda, was, “In this life or a previous one.” Right now, honey, it’s all about this one. If I can get it somewhat down, maybe I’ll go back a few.

A few days after doing the chicken dance in Mesmer’s office, I left early to go to DC to give a seminar en route to joining up with Dave (my best bud from high school) for a weeklong trip out to Carolina’s outer banks. En route, I repeatedly saw one of my favorite things, Truk Nutz , which some years ago I made the mistake of not buying for my brother. Life is full of regrets, not attaching a set to Hillary’s Subaru, not riding the mechanical bull in all my years at Duke, or not buying Foam the 8-lb can of gefilte fish or keeping my ultraskanky moustache for Jeremy’s bachelor weekend. Alas.

Dave had never seen the nutz, so I was happy to share my cultural expertise. And then we arrived at the beach house, tastefully appointed with a zebra-print sunken bar, redundant microwave, 4 dishwashers, and a screening room with leather armchairs, cup holders, and the complete 35 dvd “one-and-a-half-star collection” (“Hey, anyone for Hitch or National Treasure II?). I know I’ve been ranting ceaselessly about vulgar expenditure, but this house might take the Devil’s food. (I will confess to enjoying the pool table, however, and my game actually seems to be developing).

I also managed to save a fading dragonfly. It was indoors, clearly being undone by the décor and about to expire, so weakened that I was able to grab it by its body (thorax?) and take it outside, where, when released, it flew off happily, despite the lack of zebra-print. Maybe this will increase my multiple-decade dream of coming back as a dragonfly in a future life. Why that, you ask? Among animalia, they’re the most nimble fliers, and oft they do it one mounted on another. What better existence?

So I guess I’m not just focusing on this life, try as I may. Clearly I need to be back in Ms. Inimitables’ arms, where the here and now seems especially there and then, flightlessness notwithstanding.

Till next time, my lovelies.

the everything in anything

i often tell my students that, as Andrew Marvell expressed so nicely in his poem "on a drop of dew," the everything is contained in the anything. i also try to tell them that traveling is delightful in that it forces novelty and alterity on us, but one can find the infinite without ever leaving home -- if we look carefully enough.

that said, they might well rejoin that it's easier for me, for i do live in chinatown, after all. a trip to the market that my bro and i call the arcade (for it passes between mott to elizabeth streets just above hester) is an argument against flying anywhere for difference, revealing such culinary curios as pig uterus, pork bung (apparently foreskin -- or so i'm told), and this beauty, taken with my camera phone in a quick fly-by.
i sent it to bro, phil, andrew, and ron (all experts at the placing in the mouth of all and sundry), and there was various speculation as to whether this creature was dredged from the Mesozoic, the Pacific deeps, the isle of Komodo, or Loch Ness. all speculation welcome; i'll provide the answer in an upcoming post.

but the lesson, as always (and even if you live in Normal, Illinois), is to keep your eyes open. the everything teems; allness abounds.

on a personal/biz note, as those of you receiving my tweets and/or facebook updates will know, it looks like Naughty Bits might be relaunching. this is very exciting, and i'm open to suggestions of brand new or coming-down-the-pike books to cover (both fiction and non). i'll be alternating: classic one week, contemporary the next. stay tuned.

putting this up now, for, on bro's advice, going to try to keep posts at fewer than 8500 words. apparently my burmese days got a little taxing for the employed reader; my apologies -- truly.

love to all. xoxo

re-naissance indeed...

Blog

Lovelies,

I'm back, have been back, have fully reacclimated to the ways of white people, to undercrowding, social order, directional traffic, trash collection, gratuitous appliances, non-organ meats, factory-made whiskey and Blackberrys. My book is done. My teaching job dissolved. My lovelife's solid. And I'm just another blanquito in the crowd. In many ways, it's good to be back; in others, I feel what I'm going to start calling the alienation of familiarity.

Here were some of my observations upon returning home:

New York felt decidedly calm. I could cross the street with no fear of death – even at night (something I had not experienced in some time).

We have too little street food, by a margin of about 9,000 fold. And, please, the hot dog?

White girls are tall.

So-called Green Liberals don't give much thought to the ecology of air travel (and shipping – think imported beer. Buy local cans!).

Snow sucks, as do shoes (after 6 weeks of sandals only, what a falling off). Escaping winter is magnificent.

Work, at least as the editor-at-large of Nerve and the instructor of Writing for Magazines, is rather nice.

A dhoti is just as useful as advertised, and can even double as a shawl.

My son Lars took a while to reintegrate me; that was sad. But then he did, and I wish I could thank him in a way he'd understand.

Ms. Inimitables is a fount of joy.

The Internet – especially the Google machine – is decidedly pleasant, though one can get used to having no information really quickly.

Running water is decadent and should be appreciated as such.

Hot water is almost criminal.

My three-room apartment is a palace. There are plugs everywhere.

My lightbulb to human ratio is the inverse of everyone's in Laos.

It doesn't make sense to have a place where you work and a place where you live (Dave feels this will eventually change in America)

My brother and Hillary now have three children. They gave terzo my initials: Juliet Katherine Murnighan.

I'm itching to conduct another wedding – or at least to baptize Phil when spring comes.

Somehow this blog revolutionized my relationship with my Dad. And for the first time ever, I know he'll read this.


_______________________________


Now that I can't entertain you with the comestation of insect, arachnid, and rodent, I will have to provide other reasons for your visits; these will include a series of regular blog features, updating often (though selon l'humeur d'ecrivain) and all trademarked, including Life's Delightful Bargains, That Which Shouldn't Be Brooked, The Philosopher in the Kitchen, and Interminable Gratuitous Literary Citation (just kidding … I think). Expect at least one new installment of each every week, and I'll do my best to post on this autofellative thing every day the Muses deign to descend.

I also want to launch a little tie-in promo for my book http://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-Beach-What-Literatures-Greatest/dp/0307409570 (due out now May 19th, please review it ye media moguls), namely a kind of opt-in book club where I tell you which classic I'm reading and you read along or just take my word for it. First up will be Dostoevsky's The Idiot; after that probably Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (if I can stomach it) or Stendahl's Charterhouse of Parma, and then some Mark Twain (I've never read either Tom or Huck, only The Innocents Abroad and that 20 years ago) or Wilde (again but carefully). And an added bonus: if anyone can convince me that Fitzgerald is actually a great writer (not merely good), then I'll let she or he pick one of the next reads. Until then, FSF is officially overrated.

Nice to speak to you all again. As always, i love to hear from you. And if you want to review my book or give me work, my hat's in my hand.