I was surprised when Carrie called. We hadn’t seen each other in years. We’d been high-school friends, sure — the kind you don’t expect to see again after you’ve been  pomp-and-circumstanced down the school stadium steps and the last D-Major chord has drifted out on the breeze. But I’d just had my first baby and she’d had her second, so she called for a mommy’s lunch.

At the upscale yuppy café (“my fave,” she gushed), I ordered a baked stuffed potato (the closest thing to real food on offer) while she drank protein-vitamin-water and pushed sprigs of delicately arranged arugula around her plate.

We caught up: the husband/house/job/childbirth list. She swooned about her offspring, who were home with the au pair, while mine nursed noisily in my lap.

I sought peace in my potato while she carried on about her dullard husband and her sterile McMansion. And her stupid onroad/offroad jogging stroller – the Landrover of strollers. “I prefer my 1970 Buick LeSabre model,” I offered, “which has seen my sisters through five kids. It’s named Blue Betty.” Carrie grimaced. My wee angel farted marvelously.

When she said she could not stay for dessert, I masked my elation as she air-kissed my cheeks goodbye. She sashayed out of the café just as my chocolate mint parfait arrived. I watched her go, musing on the contrast between her perfectly heart-shaped jogger’s ass and the green sprigs of lettuce stuck between her porcelain white teeth.

(originally written for the 52|250 challenge)

Blue Five Notebook

Also in Blue Five news:  Congratulations to our 2011 nominations!

Pushcart Prize 2011

Christopher Allen – “The Shoes, the Girl and the Waves that Washed Them Away” (Flash Special 2011)
Sheldon Lee Compton – “Coming By It Honest” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
Rupert Fike – “Prideful Buddhist” (Broadside #23, Summer 2011)
Julie Innis – “Fairground” (Glass Woman Special 2011)
Pamela Johnson Parker – “In Ictu Oculi” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
Bill Yarrow – “Son of Goya” (January 2011)

Best of the Net 2011 (Sundress Publications) nominations from October:

Poetry:
Ann Neuser Lederer – “Egg of Filaments” (April 2011)
Pamela Johnson Parker – “In Ictu Oculi” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
James Robison – “For the Film New Orleans Mon Amour” (Broadside 19, Summer 2010)
Marcus Speh – “Cahiers du Cinéma” (Fall 2010)
Christine Swint – “The Red Knitting Woman” (Spring Quarterly 2011)
Bill Yarrow – “Son of Goya” (January 2011)

Short Fictions:
Sheldon Lee Compton – “Coming By It Honest” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
Julie Innis – “Fairground” (Glass Woman Special 2011)

What a fine thing is it working with Sam Rasnake. Three more outstanding issues of Blue Five Notebook still to come this year. Stay tuned… .

Up Close and Personal with Mexican Chilis

In particular, I fell in love with the mild poblano that season, using it in everything from savory scones to rice pilaf to garlic-citrus mayo on baked fish. Roasted, stuffed, or made into a quick salsa, the flavorful poblano became a staple item in my repertoire. And you just can’t live in Mexico without discovering the mysteries of mole, and you can’t have mole without the poblano. But other sorts of peppers also caught my fancy back then: chipotle turned my chili con carne deep and smoky, jalapeno became a standard in my spicy tomato-corn salsa, and serranos were a must in any respectable salsa verde poured over fish tacos.

Each of these chilis possesses varying degrees of  bite, quantified by the Scoville scale, a system for measuring the piquant in pepper developed in 1912 by a chemist named Wilbur Scoville and popularized in recent years by the vast market of spicy BBQ and hot sauces, many of which boast about their Scoville score right on the bottle. Scoville developed a way to measure how many parts per million of capsaicin a pepper contains, and how much dilution is needed to drown out the heat. The pimento or pepperoncini is the mildest of all peppers, rating only 100 to 500. The poblano is also quite low, with a mere 1,000 to 1500. Next in my lineup of personal favorites comes the chipotle, which rates 2500 to 5000.  The jalapeno is a bit spicier, with 5000 to 8000 as its score. And the serrano is even stronger, with a rating of 10,000 to 23,000. To keep this in perspective, let me add a few more chilis in here: cayenne pepper, or tabasco pepper is rated 30,000 to 50,000; Thai pepper or Indian pepper, 50,000 to 100,000; scotch bonnet, 100,000 to 300,000; and the champion of all when it comes to piquant, the habanero, 350,000 to 580,000. At the very top of the scale is pepper spray, which is rated at 8,600,000 to 9,100,000. You see why it’s so effective

But back to peppers, and a particular story about the serrano. The serrano figured prominently in any salsas I made in Mexico; I like them spicy. Sometimes I’d use the serrano to heighten the flavor of my creamy cilantro sauce served over grilled chicken or fish. And I always used a serrano or jalapeno for ceviche, depending on which was available in my pepper basket on that particular day.

Ceviche deserves a discussion of its own, for it is nothing short of a delight. It is pleasing to the eye and palate, nutritious, and easy to make with whatever assortment of fresh items you have on hand. It’s the perfect meal in the tropics, because you don’t have to crank up the stove or oven. We used whatever fish we caught: grouper, mahi mahi, trigger fish, snapper. Even tuna will do (and is used in some South American cultures), but we prefer it with a firm white fish. Ceviche is made, quite simply, by marinating the fish in fresh lemon or lime juice — which breaks down the proteins and pickles or “cooks” it without heat. Once you get your cubes of fish marinating, you start chopping veggies, and by the time you’ve finished chopping, you can break open the crackers or tostadas or forks and dig in. I make my ceviche with a few standard items: lime or lemon, onion, tomato, bell pepper, and fish. If I have avocado or orange, I might add it. Anything crispy will do as well: cucumber, celery, jicama.  But mostly, ceviche just ain’t ceviche without the right amount of kick. The serrano delivers.

We ate our way through the Sea of Cortez that season nourished some days wholly on ceviche. I linger over my memories of those meals – fresh, colorful, crispy goodness. But let me offer a word of warning here, too. Serranos are actually quite hot. You’ve heard the stories of people rubbing their eyes after chopping jalapenos? Well, serranos are even hotter than that. And I had a very close encounter with a serrano one day.

I know what you’re thinking; using the Scoville scale, the serrano looks mild. You’re thinking that a rub with a serrano might not be such a big deal. And I agree, to some extent: while I would have preferred an intimate brush with a poblano, I am forever grateful that I was not chopping habaneros that day. But the serrano is sharp enough, and the effect is immediate. I felt the full power of those 30,000 Scoville units that day: they burned into my skin, and into my memory.

Which brings me to the central story, which I could label as Michelle’s Number One Tip for Sailing Women. Here it is, fellow travelers, in all its scorching bluntness:

Do not ever, ever chop chili peppers and then change your tampon. You do not know the meaning of HOT until you’ve done this. And I don’t mean HOT in a titillating manner. I mean HOT as in panic-producing, sweat-inducing, scream-generating spiciness. Forget that itchy-hot sensation you get when you you’ve just chopped chilis and you inadvertently scratch your nose. This ignites a sensation on a whole different scale. Unexpectedly intense heat of that sort in the nether-regions is, quite frankly, shocking. And embarrassing (especially if your mother-in-law is visiting).

After about an hour of rolling, clutching and hopping (one’s urge to blow is just not possible in this case), things settled down. Copious amounts of aloe gel and a couple cold beers later, we were all laughing and eating ceviche. You might think I had no appetite after the Great Serrano Incident, but I do not believe in holding grudges against something so lovely as the serrano, and even though the pain still lingered, I appreciated the humorous side of the this particular fire in my loins.

I still cook with chili peppers. I chopped some jalapenos just the other day (and, no, I don’t wear gloves, because I’m unteachable in that way). Burning fingers or no, I can’t help myself: despite my mishap with the serrano, I’m devoted to chilis.

Some call it love; I call it burning love.

First, I’m teaching a flash fiction workshop sponsored by the Kerikeri branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors on November 12. If you are in my neck of the woods and can make it to Kerkeri that day, sign up! It’s a whole day of writing workshops: Poetry, Non-fiction for children, Editing, and Publishing. More info here.

Second, my daughter Lola has written two essays about the Rena oil spill off of Tauranga which have gained the attention of her teachers and local community members, so much so that they are taking her essays to the New Zealand Herald and to the television stations for publication. If you haven’t heard about the oil spill, check it out: it’s a big deal here, and it even has a Wikipedia page.

On a personal note, Lola turns ten tomorrow (November 2). She’s taking the day off school — and journalism — to spend the day with her family.

A little further afield, New Zealand makes a mark (besides the unstoppable All Blacks hosting and winning the 2011 Rugby World Cup — yep, had to squeeze that in here too) at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair. If you’re not coming here, maybe you’re going there.

And online in November…

This month marks the one-year anniversary edition of the Language/Place Blog Carnival. Dorothee’s at the helm this month, taking us all over the world once more for an eclectic collection of Streets, Signs, Directions. My husband Bernard and I sent in a contribution from our Momo website: The (Road)way of the Orca.

Dorothee Lang began the Language/Place Blog Carnival around this time last year, with a guest editor each month (I edited the Carnival for Edition  # 6: Language and Place on the Edge; other editors this year were Nicolette Wong, Michael J. Solender, Jean Morris, Parmanu, Julia Davies, Walter Bjorkman, Brigita Orel, and Sheree Mack).

Also in the cyberworld, this month sees several wonderful pages at Blue Five Notebook, the online literary magazine I am privileged to edit with Sam Rasnake. Presently at our site is William C. Blome’s story “Horse“along with an author commentary. Upcoming issues include our November issue with flash fiction and poetry and our fourth quarterly, Black. Also at Blue Five Notebook, our next reading period begins now! Send us your flash and poetry for our 2012 issues, including the first of The Ekphrastic Quarterlies: Literature and Film. 

And finally…

My newest project is revving up starting November 1 (that’s today if you’re in New Zealand), when the first Call for Submissions for the new online journal A BAKER’S DOZEN: thirteen extraordinary Things goes out. This is a new journal launched along with my co-editors from 52|250: A Year of Flash, John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman. The site will be up and running in the coming month, and the first issue will appear in January.

Here’s the Call for Submissions; send us something extraordinary!

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

A BAKER’S DOZEN: thirteen extraordinary things is now accepting submissions for our inaugural quarterly issue, to be published in January 2012. We’re looking for fiction (flash, micro, traditional, etc), poetry, creative non-fiction, visual art, audio, video – whatever inspires you. Each issue, we put thirteen ingredients into our giant cyber-oven and see what happens.

General Submissions: We are open for general submissions starting November 1, 2011– if it’s extraordinary and digital, we want to see it.

The first 2012 Challenge: If you were a 52|250 contributor, send us something that begins with a piece published in 52|250: A Year of Flash. Take something that you started there and let it grow. Send us your submission along with the link to your original work at 52|250.

Send your best, most inspired work to: abdsubmissions@gmail.com. Your email subject line should say SUBMISSION. In the body of the email, provide a brief description of the work and a bio, approximately 60-80 words; if your submission is responding to one of our challenges, let us know. Include the work as an attachment rather than pasting it in the body of the email.

Feel free to post this call in other locations and please address any questions to the submission email address.

We look forward to your extraordinary work.

Michelle Elvy    John Wentworth Chapin   Walter Bjorkman

Editors, A BAKER’S DOZEN: thirteen extraordinary things

(website coming live to your neighborhood soon!)

Take a well known tale (fairy tale, mythical yarn, an urban legend, a proverb, a childhood story, etc) and give us a unique take on it. Modernize it, alter the characters, play with the setting, whatever: do what you want to create a flash story inspired (however loosely) by a commonly known tale in 250 or less. 

* * *

THREE HOUSES

The first house I built was in the early 1990s. Pre-internet software engineering firm. Boom! went our stocks. My father tsked his tongue, muttered things like house of cards and Icarus. But I was pigheaded, grew the company fast and furiously. Invested in shiny black NeXTcubes, played DOOM til 5am with Marty and Jeff. I secured bank loans and spoke at California conferences with Steve Jobs, got a sprawling cherry desk with a view of Boston’s harbor. Then a cold wind blew in, huffed and puffed and kaboom! went our stocks.

The next house I built was in 1999, a bonafide urban walk-up lovenest. Stan and I moved in together within three months of meeting. My mother tsked her tongue, called it a house of fire. But I was pigheaded and didn’t listen – and he was hot. Neighbors carrying groceries smiled at me in the stairwell. We drank wine and played chess at night, made love ’til dawn. Then a cold northerly blew in. Her name was Ilse. She huffed and puffed ’til he moved out. I licked my burnt ass and didn’t call my mother for a month.

Then I built my third house. Both parents tsked their tongues, but I knew they secretly like this one. It’s smaller than the others – more modest than the first, more secure than the second.  And it can stand up to the wind. So when the cold northerly huffed and puffed this time, I hoisted my sails and went with it.

Best of the Net 2011  (Sundress Publications):

Poetry:
Ann Neuser Lederer – “Egg of Filaments” (April 2011)
Pamela Johnson Parker – “In Ictu Oculi” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
James Robison – “For the Film New Orleans Mon Amour” (Broadside 19, Summer 2010)
Marcus Speh – “Cahiers du Cinéma” (Fall 2010)
Christine Swint – “The Red Knitting Woman” (Spring Quarterly 2011)
Bill Yarrow – “Son of Goya” (January 2011)

Short Fictions:
Sheldon Lee Compton – “Coming By It Honest” (Winter Quarterly 2011)
Julie Innis – “Fairground” (Glass Woman Special 2011)

Congratulations to these writers! 

* * *

You can see the latest issue of Blue Five Notebook here. It happens to be a flash special featuring Christopher Allen, Gill Hoffs, Nicolette Wong, Foster Trecost, and Martha Williams, with art by Dorothee Lang. A very special issue indeed.

* * *

And speaking of flash…

I’m also pleased to announce the last quarterly of 52|250 A Year of Flash is out. Our year of writing ended in May 2011 and we present you now with the best of the last thirteen weeks, plus some new features. This was a helluva project and a source of tremendous joy for me.  I am tickled to see our last quarterly review

fiftytwo

splash down here.

Writers and artists included in this marvelous collection:

Len Kuntz ~ Stephen Hastings-King ~ Susan Tepper ~ Matt Potter ~ Doug Bong ~ Catherine Russell ~ Susan Gibb ~ Linda Simoni-Wastila ~ Martin Brick ~ Guy Yasko ~ Kim Hutchinson ~ Robert Vaughan ~ Tayla Jankovitz ~ Marcus Speh ~ Chelsea Biondolilli ~ Melissa McEwen ~ Piet Nieuwland ~ Michelle McEwen ~ Randal Houle ~ Eryk Wenziak ~ Catherine Davis ~ Dorothee Lang ~ Darryl Price ~ Al McDermid ~ Helen Vitoria ~ Roberta Lawson ~ Mike DiChristina ~ Zoe Karakikla-Mitsakou ~ Georgina Kamsika ~ Stelle Pierides ~ Alexandra Pereira ~ Derek Ivan Webster ~ Michael Parker ~ Martin Porter ~ Kelly Grotke ~ Sam Rasnake ~ Michael Webb ~ Nathan Alling Long ~ Kevin Balance ~ Karla Valenti ~ Lou Freshwater ~ Meg Tuite ~ Michelle McEwen ~ Christina Murphy ~ Angelique Moselle Price ~ Peter Schwartz ~ Maude Larke ~ Jennifer Tomaloff ~ Aaron Robertson ~ Aljoscha Lahner ~ Abby Braman ~ Claire King ~ John Riley ~ Laurie Martin ~ Solveig Mardon ~ Grant Farley ~  Walter Bjorkman ~ John Wentworth Chapin ~  Michelle Elvy

* * *

And finally…

things are looking up in October because my work with Sam Rasnake over at Blue Five Notebook continues with a smashing line-up of poetry and flash for the rest of the year and also because I’m brewing up the Next Big Thing with 52|250 writing and editing pals John Wentworth Chapin and Walter Bjorkman.

More to come… !

Language and Place.

At the center of everything we touch, everything we do.

At the heart of who we are.

And yet, the edge is where the action is.

It’s at the edge where you’ll find movement and change, trial and challenge.

The edge of reality, the edge  of existence.

The leading edge of life, the trailing edge of memory.

The center is important, yes, but the edge is where we make discoveries.

And I’m not the only one who thinks so….

Visit this month’s Blog Carnival and see why thirty writers and artists linger on the edge. In stunning images and words, people in places as different as Baltimore and Hong Kong, Newport and London, New Zealand and Nepal, explore the edges of art, story, poetry, text, history, innocence, experience.

Excerpts from the edge:  

Close your eyes, and follow your breath… This isn’t going to be dangerous… A map puts a route into a somewhere… This half of me is desperate… I hurl heavenwards… now I grope for words… They’re just not like us, you know… fatefully we drove onward/ blindly you dove forward… I get a thrill in my guts and in my heart… She sailed away on strings of her own choosing… Modest visions of who I could be… A warning since before memory… From centre to circumference/we drift…

Welcome to Edition #6 of Language and Place Blog Carnival. Follow the links below and let this month’s participants take you to extraordinary places.

***

Poetry playing at the edge

Michael Solender melts back into the snows of his youth in “Northwoods” / Not from here, are you?

Linda Simoni-Wastila rides mania to its polar abyss in “when i refuse the lithium” / LeftBrainRight

Walter Bjorkman weaves images and words in two places at once in Desert Wine/Manhattan Sour / Qwik-Bake Synthetics

Sharon Cooper explores the space where nothingness resides in “A Deep Vault & Long Shadows” / scoop3sjc

Bill Yarrow moves from a Mumbai attack along a journey to many new places in “Word Salad” on his website Bill Yarrow

Whangarei poets including Aaron Robertson, Piet Niewland, Vaughan Gunson, and Martin Porter explore the edge, each in their own way, at Take Flight

***

Images dancing the edge

Jen Knox reflects on art and beauty (alongside her father) at Literary Exhibitionism

Place and time dance on the page in Jean Morris‘s “Flickering images” / tasting rhubarb

Sandra Davies winds her way through a history of hurt in “Curve of early learning” / lines of communication

See how trees and light come to life on Elizabeth Enslin‘s “Surprised by Light” / Yips and Howls

Steve Wing asks basic questions to get you thinking at fireflydomain

*** 

Meaning and memory on the edge

Dorothee Lang explores translation and synonyms in her essay “out of whack and out of step” / virtualnotes

Susan Gibb experiments with hypertext and searches for meaning in “Hiding Secrets” / Hypercompendia

Tim Murphy gives up certainty and control in his engineless sailboat at Artistry Unleashed

Nicolette Wong reflects on her grandmother looking back and floating forward in “The Lost Island” / Meditations in an Emergency

***

Fiction thriving at the edge

Stephen Hastings-King takes you on a journey with imaginary maps and more questions than answers but a whole lot of real in “Siren” / Adventures in Post-Reality

Marcus Speh spins a crystal ball of images and colors in “on the edge” / Nothing to Flawnt

Lou Freshwater longs for bellydancing and good company in “Curry” / Baby’s Black Balloon

Take a “Jump” and discover your inner superhero with Christian Bell at I’m not Emilio Estevez

Wander through an existential journey with Robert Vaughan‘s “Breath”/ One Writer’s Life

***

People exploring the edge

Len Kuntz is a man divided in “Torn” / People You Know By Heart

Parmanu puts an elusive Oslo down on paper in “If only I could write about Oslo” / Parmanu

Julia Davies feels the rhythms of water and sand in “the edge” / practice makes perfect

Bernard Heise reflects on being at sea and coming to terms with the importance of doing nothing at all in “Passage Making” / S/V Momo

Christopher Allen gives up the search for bras and hobbits and instead experiences New Zealand’s Fjordland in “Sacks, Boats, and Clots!” / I must be off…

Michelle Elvy visits a place as tenuous as they come when she sails to Palmerston Atoll in “Balancing between Yesterday and Tomorrow” / Glow Worm 

***

Announcements:

Thanks for visiting. If you are interested in Language and Place, you are invited to join Edition #7 of the Language/Place Blog Carnival. It will be hosted by Julia Davies,  a practised reader and practising writer who lives in Germany and blogs at practice makes perfect. The theme is “unwritten language/ unnamed places” and the edition is planned for end of June 2011. Submissions open June 1 – 20.  Details here. 

Call for submissions – BluePrintReview’s “Challenge issue”

Submissions are now open for the next issue of BluePrintReview. The theme is “Challenge” (with a focus on short stories, deadline: 26. june). Details, including a best-of-2010-challenge, here.

Also…

The Language/Place Blog Carnival now has a Facebook page. Join our conversation there about language and place:  post comments; add links; come and share.  

Which brings me to a wonderful project worth writing about: it’s Dorothee Lang’s Language/Place Blog Carnival

It’s now in its fifth rendition, hosted this time by Parmanu in a marvelously curated collection called a

MUSEUM OF LANGUAGE AND PLACE

You can get the flavor by reading the first few lines on his site:

A teacher finds how much he can learn about himself through lessons to a second-language English student.

A newcomer realizes that a place is not what it first seems to be.

A traveler learns that a city can break a friendship.

A group of marines discover a working telephone in the middle of a Central American jungle.

An outsider experiences the strangeness of discovering others like himself in a foreign land.

And you can enter the MUSEUM by visiting his site here and walking through the exhibit rooms, where you’ll find works by Jean Morris, Gwen Williams, Dave Bonta, Michael Dickel, Brigita Orel, David Backer, Michael Solender, Rose Hunter, Linda Hofke, Christopher Bowen, Dorothee Lang, Nicolette Wong, Julia K. Davies, Steve Wing, Laurie Kolp, and Elizabeth Adams.

If you are not familiar with the Language/Place Carnival, go take a stroll. Dorothee Lang knows how to bring people together in a meaningful way, and Parmanu’s edition is full of surprises.

Join the carnival!

Here’s my story; theme is “another language, another place, another self.”

Tell me what you think…

“Dites moi ce que vous en pensez,” said the old woman. “Tell me what you think.”

The girl had been gazing at the canvas, an astonishing explosion of color amidst a grey background of tattered cardboard and greasy clothing and tired plastic bags, and she now sensed the woman’s gaze on her. What could she say? That she wanted to press her cheek into the cool ocean purples, put her lips to the milky sky and drink? That the sweep of greens and browns rising up with the sun’s golden fingers parting the trees just so hinted at the home she’d left and nearly forgotten? That the feathery texture of the grasses down low reminded her of the brush of her lover’s hand on her neck, that she was sure that the depression in those tall wildflowers was made by him and her, right there. And that the line of black birds off in the distance placed a thin, cold emptiness in her chest which had nothing to do with the November Parisian morning?

For a moment, she wondered if she could take this woman around the corner and buy her a hot tea, sit with her and talk about the color of warmth and love and home, of sorrow and loneliness and fear. She wanted to know how an old woman could capture everything that was in a girl’s heart in such a small square. Instead, she tossed a coin into the woman’s worn grey cap and muttered: “Oui, c’est bon.”

This time, she has found a way to connect people from all over the globe in her new Blog Carnival. Here you will find stories about home and homelessness, longing and love and language, about places lost and found. Dorothee brings together bloggers from faraway places. Featured on her Blog Carnival of Language and Place, you’ll find writers and experiences as varied as

Steve Wing in Senegal

Karen Eisler in Vancouver

Michael Solender in India

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming in Hong Kong

Brigita Orel lives in Slovenia

Vivian Faith Prescott among the Alaskan Tlingits

Rose Hunter in Mexico

Parmanu in Germany

Daniela Elza in Canada, via Bulgaria and Nigeria

Sherry O’Keefe in Montana

Satu Kaikkonen in Finnland

Cathy Douglas in Wisconsin (and needing Spanish)

Jean Morris in London

Christopher Allen in Prague

Matt Potter somewhere between Berlin and Adelaide

Nicolette Wong in Hong Kong

Dorothee Lang in Germany

Tania Hershman about living in Israel and Britain

Petina Gappah in Switzerland

Jennifer Saunders in Switzerland

Kate Thorpe in Germany

Stella Pierides in Bavaria and London, originally from Greece

Vera Ulea in between Russian and English with some Ukrainian thrown in

Ankur Agarwal in Bangalore, on the beauty of French

Michelle Elvy, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean