In “Ode on Melancholy,” Keats basically starts out saying what not to do when overwhelmed in a melancholy moment: don’t kill yourself, don’t forget melancholy, don’t partner with it, etc. And then he goes on to offer a few things that a person can do when a “melancholy fit shall fall,” basically: glut your sorrows on thoughts of natural beauty. Morning roses, rainbows, waves, and peonies will do. Oh–and don’t let other angry people bring you down. Finally, Keats shows the brilliant interconnectedness of pleasure and pain, Beauty and Melancholy, joy and sadness. But instead of reading my very brief explication of the poem, I’d suggest reading the poem itself:

“Ode on Melancholy”

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

–John Keats (1795-1821)

The details:
Sullivan Street Bakery
533 W. 47th St.
New York, NY 10036
www.sullivanstreetbakery.com

John Keats “Ode on Melancholy” reproduced from:
Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir, ed. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1919, [c1901]; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/101/. [1.1.2012].

Shawna’s been known to concoct quite a tailgating spread, and from her previous Jets games, she’s earned a reputation for driving “The Jetmobile.” We arrived early (8:00 for a 1:00 kickoff) and planned multiple courses. It was very, very cold, however, so I spent the first few hours inside the VW, huddled in my down jacket and wrapped up in fleece blankets.

But then the sun finally started to warm things up, so I got outside to inspect the spread. My mom bought an array of Christmas cookies with her on the plane from Louisville, Kentucky, and Shawna mixed up some morning mimosas.

Other items in the spread included herbed potato and egg breakfast burritos, turkey burgers, corn salad, and a crunchy broccoli slaw.

We walked to the stadium with full bellies and took our seats. This being my first Jets game, I had many new cheers to learn. Luckily, they weren’t difficult. Announcer: “It’s a Jets…?” Crowd: “FIRST DOWN!!!!” Captain Ed (fan cheer leader): “J!” Crowd: “E-T-S…JETS, JETS, JETS!!”

The flight crew cheerleaders took center field during halftime in sexy Ms. Claus-like santa suits and performed a holiday dance routine. Then the Jets started losing, and the crowd began losing its good holiday cheer. I watched two little scuffles break out between mouthy Giants fans and Jets loyalists. Late into the drinking day, things began turning sour.

MetLife Stadium (capacity: 82,566) stood strong, holding us all together—Jets fans and Giants fans alike—until the late-day sun worked its way up the crowd and left us cold in its shadows. Final score? Giants: 29. Jets…14.

Driving through New York City at this time of the year is pretty exciting. In addition to the ever-present yellow cabs and throngs of people on the sidewalks, the buildings are all lit up with dazzling holiday décor.

Mom and I cozied up in the backseat and enjoyed the ride from Manhattan to Brooklyn, where we went to The Meat Hook (inside of The Brooklyn Kitchen) and got special sausages for tomorrow’s tailgater.

Dad sat in the front seat to navigate…and then helped us get installed for the eve at my sister’s apartment. Four of us in a studio with an office = holiday love!

Details:
The Meat Hook
100 Frost St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.349.5033
http://the-meathook.com/

The Brooklyn Kitchen
…same address as above…
718.389.2982
http://www.thebrooklynkitchen.com/

The ridge looks sort of daunting from this angle—you can see me just barely in the distance wearing an orange shirt. Rich and I met up with a group of people for an early morning hike in Denver and then decided to hike Torreys on our way back to Vail. Since we didn’t get a very early start here, we just decided that we’d motor up it from the Gray’s Peak summer trailhead at 11,280 feet.

Coming along the ridge was the most exciting part. The website 14ers.com lists this as Class 3, so there weren’t any moves were you felt like you needed a rope or anything. There were a few sections of upward climbing…and you probably wouldn’t want to fall, as there were a few places that wouldn’t leave you in a pretty place. But there were lots of good places for hands and feet scooting across the ridge.

An hour and forty-five minutes after we left our car, we were on the summit. We both wondered out loud how long it would have taken Ueli to make it up that. In case you don’t know who Ueli Steck is, check out this amazing five-minute YouTube video from his speed solo on the Eiger—it took him only 2 hours and 47 minutes! I think he could have made it up Kelso Ridge in about 20 minutes…or less?

Be on the lookout this month for Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, a sort of satirical novel that explores the startling question: What if millions of us disappeared in a split second? One moment, we’re there jogging on a treadmill at the gym. The next, we’re gone. And our families and friends are left behind to sift through the aftermath of our mass exodus. In The Leftovers, the residents of Mapleton are living through such a time, and Perrotta captures their story with a great deal of humor and wit.

This is a good book for those who enjoy religious humor—Perrotta makes light of a serious situation without being icky or disrespectful. Even though some of Perrotta’s characters believe that they’re living through the Rapture, most are instead calling it the Sudden Departure because no one knows exactly why so many people disappeared on October 14. Perrotta gives us a glimpse of the lives of the leftovers three years on, at a transition time when widowed spouses are dating again, people are joining cults to deal with global uncertainty, and teenagers are rebelling from their parents, as usual.

Perrotta does a great job creating and maintaining suspense through this novel. He leaves his readers in a cloud of unknowing, just as Mapleton residents were left by their friends, families, and neighbors after the Sudden Departure. In doing so, he puts us in a position to experience this strange life along with them, “as if the whole world had paused to take a deep breath and steel itself for whatever was going to happen next.”

To read my full review of The Leftovers on the About.com Contemporary Literature website, click here.

In case you were wondering what cheese heaven on this earth looks like…it looks like this:

Being a class, I thought that this would be a serious intellectual, but hands-on, pursuit. We’d learn the history of Mozzarella. We’d learn about its different types, textures. We’d learn about the essential ingredients, and we’d learn how to make Mozzarella ourselves. True—we did learn a bit about all of these things, but we also arrived at the Murray’s kitchen classroom to find that this was also a cheese tasting, complete with bottomless bottles of red wine, sparkly, and rosé. So, way more fun than expected.

After a bit of tasting, we all got our own stock of Mozzarella cheese curds, from which we fashioned the finished product.

My sister (pictured above) was really excited about this process, as you can see. We poured hot water over the square-shaped curds and then started pressing them together into a fist-sized cheese ball.

We added some salt and then started stretching the cheese so that the curds would become stitched together. Think of this as the String Cheese Incident portion of the class.

Finally, we rolled the cheese into a ball and tucked in the edges. Honestly? Making Mozzarella from the provided cheese curds was not a very difficult thing to do. You need the curds, for starters, and then you only need water, salt, and little bit of gumption to pull it off.

If you’re a cheese-lover, Murray’s Cheese Shop is definitely the place in NYC to fuel your passion. Murray’s offers an array of classes at their “Murray’s Cheese U” such as “Cheese 101” and “Off the Beaten Path: Pairing Kimchi and Cheese.” They also have a three-day “Boot Camp,” which involves all things cheese-related; participants can take a Boot Camp final exam to earn a Certificate of Achievement. The Boot Camp sounds more serious than the Mozzarella class we took, but I’m sure it’s just as much fun, too.

Check it out:
Murray’s Cheese Shop
www.murrayscheese.com

Martray’s exhibit is installed in DIA’s terminal A, so as you’re gliding by it on a moving sidewalk, the cranes cast shadows on the walls to which they’re pinned. They’ve been arranged in beautiful waves and flight patterns.

After Martray folded her abandoned book manuscript into the cranes, her computer and back up hard drive were stolen, so now all that exists of her novel is in these cranes, “the shadow of thousands of hours of work, the history of [her] creative journey, remnants of a former self.” Amazing, huh?

To see some gorgeous photos of this exhibit and more information about it on Brianna Martry’s website, click here.

Ann Patchett’s new novel, State of Wonder, has been #3 on The New York Times bestseller list for the past two weeks…and the NYT Book Review gave it some good buzz last weekend. I’d say that the attention is well deserved for this book and for Patchett, who has also written two books of nonfiction and five other novels, including Bel Canto, which won, basically, a bunch of big awards.

In State of Wonder, medical researcher Marina Singh gets sent into one of the most alive places on earth to uncover an unexplained death. The book opens with news of a death announcement that arrives in Minnesota by way of an Aerogram sent from Brazil. Such startling news immediately sets this book’s plot into motion and begs the question: what in the world happened to Anders Eckman?

Eckman—the deceased—had been sent deep into the Amazonian jungle by his employer, a Minnesota-based pharmaceutical company. But he doesn’t return. Marina Singh, Eckman’s loyal co-worker and friend, seems like the most logical person to uncover the truth about what exactly happened. So…off to the Amazon Marina goes, not knowing where exactly she’ll end up or what details she’ll bring home.

State of Wonder is lush with the details of its vibrant setting in the Amazonian jungle, a place that teems with life: rare birds, poisonous snakes, and a tree whose bark promises a revolutionary change for Western medicine. Bringing together elements of adventure, travel, and mystery, this story sustains itself with a compelling central character and takes an exciting turn at the end.

Click here to read a great interview I found on Amazon.com—author Elizabeth Gilbert (of the whole Eat, Pray, Love craze) chattily interviews Patchett, her “close personal friend.”

Click here to read my upcoming review of Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder on the About.com Contemporary Literature website.

Photo credit: Harper.