in between

I haven’t done enough for art lately because we’ve been slowly moving to a new house. It has a lilac bush, a pomegranate tree, rosemary and roses. This means I won’t be staring up at breezy curtains while I write. I’ll have to make a new spot, a new routine.

We’re not there for good yet, but we’ve been planting lavender, making small repairs, and building a new chicken coop. Instead of the novel, I’ve been working on stuff that requires a shorter attention span. I may have finished revising a story that’s a few years old. I entered some contests and didn’t win. For a few more weeks I get to say “Presidents” is forthcoming in the Indiana Review.

I made lemon cookies, but the official dessert of spring was Gooey Butter Cake. I am already imagining how I will organize our first-ever pantry instead of writing, all the ways I will have to not-write in the new house.

I’ll get back to my writing and baking schedule; I’m not sure when—if I’m lucky, by the end of June. There’s all the news I have. Oh, and I’ll be teaching two creative writing classes at the Davis Art Center in the fall, one for teen girls, one for adults. There’s that to look forward to, that and pumpkin bread and apple crisp and better weather.

Gooey Butter Cake for the birthday boy. (The most progress I have to show for the week.) Wait until the powdered sugar rains down; that’s the best part.

alex epstein

My grandmother Rosa—I’ve changed a few details in this story—kissed Yuri Gagarin in 1961 in an elevator in Moscow. Which is to say, this wasn’t Gagarin, this wasn’t in an elevator, and above all in 1961 my grandmother was already living in St. Petersburg. More than once in my childhood, I saw my grandfather floating next to her in their apartment, a few centimeters above the parquet floor. I never saw a man float higher.

— “Gravity” by Alex Epstein

From a panel discussion Wednesday, Sherman Alexie’s recommended reading:

1. A basketball book I can’t remember

2. Chris Jones’ Esquire article on the Zanesvillle, Ohio zoo animal escape

3. Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, and Alex Epstein

I guess that shows where my priorities are.

(Photo: “Hovering” by Yinhai)

In Chinatown I liked the tea shops and candy shops, not to eat anything (my uncle enjoys the dried octopus snacks) so much as to wonder at. All those categories of things and I can’t remember any of the names just that there was a lot. My cousin bought a silk halter top, “for clubbing if he’ll let me out of the house” and I bought a cotton robe. She’s the blonde and I’m the brunette. Then we went to the aquarium.

— from “Star Chart” by Lucy Corin

Inspired by Lucy Corin’s apocalypses today. Here are some at the PEN American Center.

(Photo: SF Chinatown 3 / Flickr)

13. flour’s famous banana bread

I thought I was going to write about muffins, but I was wrong: it’s banana bread. So, so long ago I made banana bread. I think I made this recipe before the book was mine to accidentally deface with flour dust and drops of batter.

I wasn’t sorry to make it again. I love banana bread—warm out of the oven when you’re not supposed to cut it yet, cold after a night in the fridge.

I only forgot about making it (and eating it, the entire loaf) because it was sandwiched between our trip to the coast and a visit from my dad. One minute I was actually pulling myself out of bed early so I could write here—

looking out on llamas and, yes, an invisible ocean that looks in this picture like the sky but was really there, turning blue as the sun came up—and the next I was entertaining my father with a tour of all ice cream shops in a twenty-mile radius and driving north in order to cast falcons from our wrists, so it makes sense I almost forgot about the banana bread, right?

Elliott likes his banana bread studded with chocolate. I like mine plain. So I compromised by adding far less chocolate than he probably wanted. Sorry.