There’s a sort of cliché that it’s boring to listen to someone describe their dreams. It seems strange that it should be so, considering dreams exist in a bright, perplexing, logic-defying world. A world where anything and everything is possible; where fears, desires, and memories mingle. A world where you can create anything you can imagine, you can create things you can’t even imagine. A world where you can fly!

I was thinking the other day that it’s a little like that with birdwatching. When you see a certain bird, it seems like the most important moment in the world, and something you should tell everyone about, but maybe nobody wants to hear about it.

So I won’t tell you how every morning in May we wake up early (I do not love waking up early) and we go to a different place so beautiful I feel lucky to live where I do. And we walk slowly, haltingly, stopping at every shifting leaf or burst of song, while the world and the field warm up, and the sun brings out the sharp sweet smells of grass and nettles, multiflora rose and honeysuckle. After so many years we know who to expect in each place, certain birds come back year after year. But in May–in May–the warblers pass through. Where are they coming from? Where are they going? They never tell us! Canada to Mexico? Farther? Some stay with us for the summer, but many only stop by for a day or two, so to see one is remarkable, a bit of grace. They’re small and bright and feisty and busy. They each have their own song, which we to learn again each year, which comes back like the memory of a dream. A yellow warbler sings Sweeta Sweeta Sweet Sweet Sweet from the treetops, a blue winged warbler hides in the dappled leaf-shade, and has a song like a sigh, inhale/exhale.

By mid-June it’s the old familiar birds, we hope to see them–we expect to see them. David loves to hear the wood thrush and the veery, who both have songs you almost feel more than hear. The sound is moving on a different level from any other bird song, from any other sound in the world. I love the indigo bunting. A top-of-the-tree singer. Dark and unremarkable in certain lights, but when the sun hits him just right he’s the most beautiful, glowing, singing blue–shifting cerulean, lapis, indigo. I love anything that changes depending on the way you look at it.

And of course it feels more valuable to see a rarer bird. A blue jay or a cardinal is as pretty as a tanager or an indigo bunting, but we see them all the time, so we’re not as grateful to see them. But maybe we should be. Every starling or pigeon or crow, all of the baby house sparrows using our yard as a playpen, they’re all remarkable creatures: each a perfect combination of feathers, soft warm perfectly-weighted body, and their very own song. They’re all from a bright perplexing world of their own, a world they see from above, a world where they can fly.

Here’s Patti Smith’s dreamy, otherworldly, strange and beautiful Birdland

Do you ever order takeout food, and then the condiments sit in your fridge in their tiny containers? Do you ever think, if there was just some way I could use up that condiment and get it out of my fridge, because I hate throwing away food? Well, here you go! This first installment is for the two condiments you get from an Indian restaurant in America. One is a cilantro-mint sauce, the other is a sweet tangy tamarind sauce. No real recipes here, just suggestions. And these are just to get you thinking about other ways you can use these condiments. Stay tuned for other takeouts, other condiments.

Sort of Guacamole. For the mint & coriander sauce, Smush up a ripe avocado and tip the whole container of sauce in. Mash up. You can add a squeeze of lime, a shake of chili powder, or whatever else you like, but it will be very flavorful as is!

Sort of Raita. Mix plain yogurt and grated cucumber, and tip in the coriander mint sauce. You can add a squeeze of lemon or lime and a dollop of tahini.

Sort of Humus. Blend chickpeas with the tamarind sauce, plus a little olive oil and a smushed clove of garlic. (This actually works for the mint sauce as well.) You can use any beans in your cupboard rather than chickpeas.

The tamarind sauce is delicious mixed in with any kind of vegetarian chili, it gives it a mysterious kick.

Tamarind sauce is good mixed with diced juicy tomatoes, parsley and/or basil, and lots of fresh pepper. Minced garlic, too, if you’re in the mood.

We’re going to start a restaurant called “The Affrontery.” It will be a place you can come to be mildly outraged at things you don’t really care about. A place you can loudly air your imaginary grievances. And you can share your outrage with other people who also pretend to be affronted by the same things, and you can build off each others’ offended sensibilities, until your anger starts to feel real to you. And you can all feel clever when you ALL use the exact same phrases, as devoid of meaning as your anger is devoid of feeling, until the words somehow become a homing signal to the outraged. You and your new friends can fuel the fire of your ire by telling each other shocking things you mis-read on social media or half-heard on Fox News, where feeding manufactured outrage is the only form of discourse, the lowest form of discourse. And what begins as mild irritation at people who frighten you because they’re slightly different from you in any way at all, will grow and build into a real terror that civilization as you know and define it, is at risk. Though, of course, you’ll know it’s not true, not nearly true. It’s just that the anger is so addictive, so infectious, the feeling of being included in this gang of self-righteous haters so delicious, that you’ll tell yourself you believe it.

And the waiters will run, screaming, to the exits.

Of course there’s no need to start such an establishment, because we already have the Internet. Maybe people have always been this way; but surely the ease of talking on the internet, the shallowness of connection, and the anonymity of the speaker contribute to the cruelty of the rhetoric. In my own town, people are unfailingly kind when they meet in person, but unnervingly abusive on the community Facebook page. Somehow, reasonable adults are turned into middle school bullies, or maybe it’s just that this sadly-human instinct is given room to grow. The sickening feeling of join-or-become-a-target is depressingly familiar.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that this false fury belittles actual anger. In a grotesque twist, this mock outrage is often directed at people who actually have something to be angry about. Because real anger is powerful, and that is frightening to people trying to cling onto whatever power they feel they are entitled to. Real anger is an agent for change, so they try to subvert it and represent it as hysteria or categorize it as nonsense. Women and other marginalized people recognize this treatment (Side note! “I’m not hysterical, I’m angry,” from the latest episode we’ve watched of my current favorite show. Call My Agent). The anger of the Black Lives Matter movement was seen as revolution or worse. But on January 6th an insurrection fueled by ignorance and affrontery–was described as a pleasant tour through the capitol building by very fine people. The entire history of our flawed nation, so grotesquely, predictably skewed; the false anger that has sustained us for as long as we’ve existed desperately trying to cover the devastating depths of justified anger we are terrified to acknowledge.

I love something I saw recently, a lot of people have seen it, but it’s so beautiful I will share it here. I saw an interview in which these beautiful girls described the incident that inspired them, and they said “We were really angry so we decided to write a song about it.” That’s what we need, really angry people who are angry about actual injustice, to write, sing, paint, and yell about it. Pure anger, pure, joyful, change-the-world anger. (Another side note: I know that anger doesn’t need to be this sweet and beautiful. I know that true righteous anger can be frightening and ugly and still valuable and still beautiful)

La Bienvenida by Fernando Eimbcke is a beautiful short film about commitment, hope, and a refusal to be disappointed. It tells the story of a band in a small town in Mexico. They are learning a piece by Mozart to welcome an unnamed dignitary to their town. The film focuses on the sousaphone player, who is having some trouble mastering his part. We follow him on the long walk home from practice, watch him sit outside his small house in the moonlight, playing his part. Watch him walk to two stores looking for milk for his crying baby, then feeding the baby, then practicing in the moonlight again, and waking the next day, still in the chair outside his house, slumped over his instrument. Then walking to the town to take his place with the band under banners and streamers. It’s a hot day, there’s a long wait, there’s a pale donkey. And I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s delightful, delightful.

Everything about this film is beautiful to me. It glows like it was filmed on the moon: shifting shadows and glowing lights. A crocheted blanket over a window, a convenience store in the middle of nowhere, the pale donkey, the sousaphone itself, the warm, kind face of the sousaphone player: everything is beautiful. I see echoes of Fellini in the town scenes, echoes of Kurosawa in the landscapes, echoes of Jarmusch and Ozu in the rhythm, pace, and stillness of the movement. But it has a language and aesthetic all its own. So much is left unexplained, and the dialogue is barely existent, but you feel real love for the man and his baby, and the white haired woman rocking the baby. Visually it’s got a remarkable cool-warmth, and the story itself also glows with a generosity and honesty and quiet humor. Take ten minutes and watch this remarkable film. Yes I used the word “glow” too often, but I love things that glow, I love the word “glow” and this film GLOWS.

The short is part of a collection of shorts by Mexican directors called Revolucion, and all of them are worth watching. Fernando Eimbcke also directed Temporada de Patos (Duck Season), one of my favorite films ever.

In a similar vein, we have a mixed CD of musicians from Lagos, which I’m slightly obsessed with at the moment. This morning I said, “I love this one.” and David said, “Oh yeah, that’s very Claire-y.” Turns out it’s by Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson. It’s not actually unlike La Bienvenida, with its cool melty warmth, its light and darkness, its slightly-out-of-tune horns. And here it is:

I was thinking of writing a cookbook of meals that you can turn into burgers or croquettes the next day if you have leftovers. It’s such a thrifty, depression-era way to cook, and I hate hate hate throwing food away. In my experience, anything you make with legumes and grains can easily be made into croquettes or burgers with a couple of additions. Generally if it’s saucy you want to add things to bulk it up and dry it out: bread or cracker crumbs, always, and lately I’ve been adding a small amount of chickpea flour and high gluten flour (which is what they make seitan from). This made a nice warm, smokey, brothy, substantial soup, and delicious burgers the next day.

On some days, at the change in seasons, you can walk into your own house and it feels strange to you. In the spring when you first open a window or a door–you might smell a spring rain or sunshine on dirt and grass. Or in the fall when you first turn the heat on, and the radiator kicks and hisses, and the smell is such a new but familiar comfort.

I walked into the house the other day, the back door was open and spring with all of its scents wafted in, and I was reminded of that moment when you come home after being away for a week or so, and can smell your house the way a stranger can–when something so close and so customary that your senses don’t register it becomes a step removed. And then as I passed through the house I imagined that all of it was new to me. The pictures of my beautiful adult or nearly-adult boys; the masses of stones and sticks and other odd treasures we’ve accrued over the years; pictures by David and the boys; all the beautiful nonsense we’ve collected–ticket stubs and feathers and corks and shells and hastily scrawled notes–most of which is only beautiful or valuable because of memories attached.

I imagined myself of 30? 40? years ago, walking through the house, never knowing this life was my life. It’s a strange house, and it’s a lovely life. After the long littleness of being stuck in the same few rooms for over a year, it’s good to float through your own life as in a dream, allowing everything to feel new and unexpected to you. Everyone should try it.

This time of year is all about nostalgia, April mixing memory and desire, as it does, stirring dull roots with spring rain. The cherry trees and Magnolia blossoms lining our streets don’t smell pretty or floral, but their scent will bludgeon you with the memory of playing with friends in backyards till the dusk fell all around you like flower petals, and you were called into the slumbering warm lights and smells of your familiar house, too close to notice.

Speaking of things that make me weepy (it doesn’t take much these days) here’s Johnny Flynn with The Water. I like all the versions, but especially the ones with his sister.

I like a Farro risotto. It’s not as soft and squish as a rice risotto, and I like the fact that it asserts itself in that way. I’m also a bit obsessed with fennel at the moment. And licorice all sorts, though those do not feature in this dish. It’s a bit of a joke in my family–you have the impossible burger, the Incredible burger, but we have the inevitable burger, because if I make something with grains and beans, as I so often do, I will turn the leftovers into burgers. This could be black rice, black bean and beet chili, or couscous and chickpeas, or this very dish. It works well, it’s economical and it’s delicious. Try it yourself! Recipe after the break