Things

...pile up. The cashmere sweaters that went to Vancouver need washing. I don't have Woolight. I think I have enough quarters. I do them on the gentle cycle in the laundry room and then haul them back up to spread out on towels, where they smell like wet sheep. And the dishwasher is out of cleaning liquid. And full. The apartment must be cleaned. And I brought a huge pot home to replant the New Dawn rose, which has bust out of the ex-clay, current-shard pot. That's tomorrow. It will be a prickly job, but one I look forward to.

There is a pot of borscht on the stove. And a potato gratin in the oven. The borscht will be for tomorrow and for lunch next week. The potatoes are for dinner, with a glass of red wine (Kanonkop Kadette - South African royalty available for a ridiculously low $10).

The beets and a lot of other vegetables were put proudly into my string bag. I never remember to bring it with me. Mr Lee looked at it in a perplexed way. The girl ahead of me in the queue had also eschewed his plastic bags. I think he took it personally. So, carrots, potatoes, celery, garlic, apples and beets later, I went to Sahadi and stocked up on anchovies, through which I have been hoovering.

So, my carbon footprint thus far:

Anchovies from Morocco

Apricot paste and wrapped sweets from Syria (Damsacus, to be exact. I want to go to Damascus)

Finn crisp crackers from...Finland

Fresh Goats' cheese from Wisconsin

Ahmad Tea (English Afternoon) from England (and where before that? India?)

Taramasalata from Sahadi's kitchen

Pancetta from California

Not a bad haul/hall. [Ed. 03/15/08 - thanks, Guy]

The apricot stuff is new, and not recommended for those friable of tooth. Delicious, if you don't mind pulling it from your teeth for the next ten minutes. The tarama' is wow. Just very good, and I shouldn't be eating it, because I don't know how to stop. The anchovies will go into bagna cauda.

I have just found out that Easter Sunday is next week and I am not pleased. My dining table has a crack in one of the supports for a leaf that folds out, and is not fit for friends. It must be fixed. And anyway, Eric and Mimi are in China
[03/16/08: oops, it was Brazil. Same difference] and Vince is in Vancouver.

I like Easter. It's the one time I like, maybe need, to have people around, lambs eaten, flowers everywhere, pretty little eggs tucked away in clever places. I like that it's in spring. I find Good Friday intrinsically sad and the Sunday a time for being with people I love. I grew up with Easter egg hunts and church, in the opposite order, and while I miss neither, I miss the men (there were only men, then: Aidan Cross, Ted King, Desmond Tutu) who spoke with intelligence, humanity, doubt, humility, inspiration and sometimes fire from the Sunday pulpits of Anglican cathedrals, men who quoted not just Scripture, but literature. Men whose lives reflected their convictions. And I find the music written for the time, like the St Matthew's Passion, beautiful, and terribly sad, and full of potential.

It's a time when I hope for the potential in people, too, as a species. You'd think all Christians would take the New Testament Gospels to heart, somehow. They - the Gospels - are radical in their embrace of the Other. In non-persecution. Jesus was a terrorist. He sure as hell wouldn't make it through immigration at JFK today.

Religion appals me.

Eliot Spitzer appals me. The media appals me. The sanctimonious letter-writers appal me. The national appetite for drek appals me.

So this is a time for cleaning, nay, scouring things, storing things, fixing things, celebrating things, planting things, burying things, healing things, growing things, sharing things.

There are so many things.