Alphabet meme

[resonant]

I know, I know, so two weeks ago, but I asked kassrachel for a letter and she gave me S. So here are ten things I love that start with S.

(If you want to do it too, ask me in the comments and I will give you a letter.)

1. Shapenote (Sacred Harp) singing.
   
   I think I was in junior high when I figured out that certain songs in the hymnal had a family similarity, and that I could find more by turning to the index of sources and looking up The Sacred Harp and The Southern Harmony. When I lived in the mountains, I used to see flyers for shapenote sings -- "All Day Singing And Dinner On The Ground" -- but I didn't stay long enough to go to one.
   
   Here, have some.
   
   Chanticleer, Jefferson (Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken) from Our American Journey
   Anonymous 4, Wondrous Love from American Angels
   Norumbega Harmony, Sacred Throne from Sing And Joyful Be
   
   
2. Smut
   
   Because it makes proud characters vulnerable and polite ones grabby and selfish and desperate. Because eyes and mouths can be naked, too. Because there's a soft melty center inside the hardest of shells. Because connection can conquer loneliness and love can be stronger than fear. Because of the knowledge of love in the body.
   
   
3. Strawberries.
   
   The country people say, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry than a strawberry, but doubtless He never did." The new supermarket breed is surprisingly good -- they don't feel or smell like the real thing, but they taste like it. But I still love the old-fashioned ones, so soft that if you pick your own you crush half of them and have to eat them right there in the row. I have surprisingly few strawberry recipes (except a very good Italian ice) because there's nothing a cook can do to improve a strawberry. My high school friend Red spent a summer in a cabin with a field of them just outside; she invited a bunch of us for dinner once and then for dessert she turned us out to graze.
   
   
4. Soup.
   
   Alchemy. Tough cuts of meat, plus vegetables too floppy to eat on their own, plus onions and garlic, and somehow the result is a meal so wholesome you can feel your immune system perking up. Even in hot weather I'll make corn soup (pure essence of summer) and Mexican lime soup (nothing much to the soup; the fun's in passing around bowls of tomato and avocado and cilantro and toasted tortillas to garnish it with). But now we're about to enter prime soup season. Minestrone with Italian sausage; chicken soup that's not much more than a frame for truly excellent homemade broth; cream of carrot with toasted pecans floating on it; cauliflower and cheese; beef-barley soup that can cure any cold; Cook's Illustrated's insanely complicated yet heavenly black bean. I can't wait.
   
   
5. Snakes.
   
   I don't think they enjoy being pets, or else I'd have one. I love their smooth shiny skin and their alien, graceful way of moving. I love the way they can swallow things bigger than they are. At the aquarium in San Francisco I saw whip-snakes, pale green, three feet long and thinner than pencils, all hanging from a branch over a stream in identical down-and-up curves that looked like something out of Arabic calligraphy. (Also, I love that in that previous sentence I originally typed "whip-snapes.")
   
   
6. Speculative fiction.
   
   Other worlds. The sociological-laboratory pleasure: If you change this one thing in human life, what happens? The pleasures of suddenly discovering you're taking the wrong things for granted: You mean these aren't all English-speaking white people? The pleasure of seeing the mythic enacted by (somewhat) ordinary people. The maps at the front of the book, the glossaries at the back. Consequences, thought through in meticulous detail: Where does the protein come from? Where does the garbage go? Who quarried the stone to build that castle?
   
   
7. Semicolons.
   
   It's one of the joys of writing Rodney McKay that you can plausibly put semicolons not only in his POV narrative but even in his dialog. ("Greetings, salutations; what's she done?") I love the delicate connection of two ideas, each of which needs a grammatically complete clause to express it, and yet which shouldn't be hastily severed with a period.
   
   
8. Sweaters.
   
   Already I've brought out a favorite light sweater: cotton fleece the color of the haze on a purple grape. Still to come: a tunic-length lambswool two shades darker than denim, a pale-green cashmere cardigan.
   
   
9. Seasons.
   
   I love the day in February when it's finally still light at five o'clock, and the night in August when the temperature falls below 70. The farmer's market procession: lettuce, spinach, and green onions giving way to strawberries, blackberries, the first little zucchini, early tomatoes, tomatoes up to your ears with eggplant on top, cherries and then peaches and then the first apples. The day I can take out the garbage without a coat, and the day the sweaters come out of storage. The return of the Christmas CDs, and the day I pack them away.
   
   
10. Slash.
    
    You knew I had a list, didn't you? Of course I have a list.
    
    
    
    
    1. Because men are sexy. Their bodies, of course. Their sexual response, so different from a woman's, with everything visible from the outside.
       
       
    2. Because men's tenderness is sexy. Of course men can be tender toward women, too, but men's tenderness toward women is so written over with both sexism and capitalism that it carries baggage with it.
       
       
    3. Because novelty is sexy. I've been married since 1989; the man-woman thing, while very nice, is pretty familiar to me by now. It's nice to read about body parts I don't have.
       
       
    4. Because sexual discovery is sexy. If your characters are grown-ups, slashing them is one of your few chances to make them feel a physical sensation they've literally never felt before.
       
       
    5. Because it's sexy when someone risks something for love.
       
       
    6. Because it's sexy that we're saying a big "Fuck you!" to the commodification of desire.
       
       
    7. Because it's sexy that we do this for each other.
       
    
    

Comments

[fer-de-lance.livejournal.com]

So help me, before the winter is over I will make this. I adore black bean soup.

(Dried beans, or tinned?)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Dried -- you don't even have to soak them. It sounds improbable, but I've done it and it works.