Finding Comfort in a Jenga World
Mushroom Soup, Bronte and Beethoven.
So, Shaun (the spouse if you haven’t met him) and I played Jenga last week, a game that we don’t play a lot because I don’t have any depth perception.
Seriously, if you want the comfort of winning at something, then you want to play Jenga who only uses one eye at a time.
It’s a knock-off version of the original, which makes it a tiny bit harder too.
It was ridiculous trying to find the piece that could slide out, to wiggle them, to deal with Pogie the Pup who wanted to play too, and Cloud the Cat, who apparently thinks that coffee tables holding Jenga games is a perfect place to trot.
It cracked us up.
We laughed so much at how ridiculous it was: me with no depth perception, Shaun with his monster hands, the Jenga that tottered, the dog, the cat.
It felt like an objective correlative for life right now. For those of you who are unfamiliar with that term …
It’s “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”
That’s according to Washington Allston, who along with T.S. Eliot gets most of the credit for the term. If you can somehow splice that into your conversation, you’ll get a lot of pretentious points, I kid you not.
So, the object or the event shows the characters’ feelings to the reader.
Jenga seems like a good objective correlative to me right now: ridiculous, tottering, but still trying to build up and up despite all the obstacles—just trying so hard to ascend, right?
I hope you find a good game to play this week—something that will make you laugh at the ridiculousness, to feel the comfort in that laugh, rather than the horror.
THE PHOTO
I shared this on social media this week, but this is one of the windows in my bedroom in the morning. There was something about it that made me feel comfort. There’s that beautiful crossing into another space that happens in windows. And there’s a reminder that you are inside, that there is an outside, that you can change where you are and explore if you want. Or, you can just stay under the covers a bit longer.
A POEM
To a Wreath of Snow
By Emily Brontë
O transient voyager of heaven!
O silent sign of winter skies!
What adverse wind thy sail has driven
To dungeons where a prisoner lies?
Methinks the hands that shut the sun
So sternly from this morning's brow
Might still their rebel task have done
And checked a thing so frail as thou.
They would have done it had they known
The talisman that dwelt in thee,
For all the suns that ever shone
Have never been so kind to me!
For many a week, and many a day
My heart was weighed with sinking gloom
When morning rose in mourning grey
And faintly lit my prison room
But angel like, when I awoke,
Thy silvery form, so soft and fair
Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke
Of cloudy skies and mountains bare;
The dearest to a mountaineer
Who, all life long has loved the snow
That crowned his native summits drear,
Better, than greenest plains below.
And voiceless, soulless, messenger
Thy presence waked a thrilling tone
That comforts me while thou art here
And will sustain when thou art gone
SOUP
HUNGARIAN MUSHROOM FROM MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK
This soup? This soup was THE soup I made all the time as a young adult. I felt like I was in the forest, hanging with talking wildlife creatures whenever I had it.
A lot of people say that you can substitute the flour and milk out with 8-oz of cream cheese.
ingredients
Units: United States
12 ounces mushrooms, sliced
2 cups onions, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons dill weed
1 tablespoon Hungarian paprika
1 tablespoon tamari soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups stock (you pick the kind)
2 teaspoons lemon juice,
1⁄4 cup parsley, chopped
fresh ground black pepper
1⁄2 cup sour cream
putting it together
Saute onions in 2 Tbsp butter (MELT THE BUTTER FIRST), salt it a tiny bit.
Add mushrooms, salt, dill, and paprika.
Stir it and cover it.
Cook it all for 10-15 minutes.
Stir it once in a while during those 10-15 minutes.
Put in the lemon juice.
Put in 1 tablespoon of flour. Then another. During this next five minutes (once the flour goes in) you want to stir, stir, stir. Do not stop stirring.
Do this stirring of the flour over medium-low heat.
Now add milk. Keep stirring slowly.
Taste it? Does it need salt? Does it need pepper? Give it to that beautiful soup.
Get that sour cream into that soup. Whisk it in and put the heat on super low.
Why? If your heat is not on super low, it will curdle. Curdling is usually not comforting.
Serve it warm though!
BONUS COOLNESS
As some of you might have noticed, I’m a bit all over the place when it comes to my musical taste. This is a song that my parents used to play a lot when I was little.
I’d flitter around the living room of our ranch-style house in New Hampshire and pretend to be a fairy flitting between trees.
This is the Berlin Philharmonic. Edvard Grieg is the composer. He is Norwegian and infused Norwegian folk music into his compositions. He is lovely. I hope you find comfort in it!
LINKS AND CITATIONS
Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, "Morning Mood" / Thomas Dausgaard & Seattle Symphony