blink my eyes and look around

today, again, i feel like praying.

i feel it in my feet that want to run from this place, and in my hands that freeze together pointed like a cathedral. i feel it in my head the most, my frontal lobe beating hard with impulse: get out of here while you still can. go, run, make tracks.

today my body wants to pray even if my mind says no and my lips are formless.

embarrassingly, i wish for comfort, to stave off the prayer: a cheap chocolate brownie at the coffeehouse down the street that pulses terrible techno, even at 8, 9, 10, 11 in the morning. all day it's a disco.

i rush for the cheap brownie and eat it in big bites even though my friend sent me a vegan white chocolate bar that rides in my shoulder bag, the color of angel wings. i have it with me, but it seems too good somehow for how bad i feel. i need something as shitty as i feel inside. the brownie fills the void, but it makes me ill.

today i want to pray because my job is hard.

it goes through these phases of being too hard for a living breathing person to stand, and then of being just so wondrous that i catch my breath and thank whatever gods exist that i get to do it at all. and then there are a few days that are just days. they go by. i live. that's it.

today i am trying my hardest to be a machine. to type, to read, to turn the page. to type, to read, to turn the page, to close. to dial, to call, to state my purpose. to know my purpose. whatever that might be. but today my job makes me run from my office and devour cheap chocolate against my better judgement, after eating a completely vegan lunch.

and now i want to pray. it's sunny out finally, for an hour, and the sun shines on everything, on the kids somewhere that i fear i can't do anything for, can't save, on the trapped cows that make the milk for this awful chocolate, on the church steeples of my childhood stinging the sky like dying honeybees.

we give of ourselves, the churches say, you can too.
i give of myself, here, i say.

i pray, right here in the coffeehouse-disco.

let my ears be enough today
let my voice be enough today
let my feet know where to take us all

i hope that the slight ripping i feel is awakening and not fear.
i hope that somewhere a cow is lazing underneath this late fall sunlight, free and easy.
i hope all those kids for the moment are safe.
and i say amen.

Vegan At Heart

Hi all -
Just a quick plug for a really awesome website that I heard about from the fabulous Jasmin Singer of Farm Sanctuary. I signed up for this right away:

Vegan at Heart is a free e-mail coaching program for people who are vegan at heart but not necessarily in practice. It’s for idealists and animal-lovers and treehuggers and health nuts and everybody in-between who wants to incorporate more compassionate, healthy, sustainable habits into their daily lives but who need a little more info, a little moral support, or just a little friendly kick in the pants.

http://www.kindgreenplanet.org/programs/veganatheart/welcome/

AWESOME, right?? Who doesn't need a little extra help sometimes? I know that I do, although lately I think I've been doing much better. Since my last hideous falling off the wagon cheese binge, which involved a plate of macaroni and cheese big enough for 3 people, a quesadilla, stomach pains that made me cry, and a little silent prayer of apologies to the cows, I think I am back on track.

So check out Vegan at Heart with me and let's do something for the world and for animals.

Love, Starling

hail, hail zoop.

me and zoop, friends forever
Originally uploaded by The Starling Tattoo

zoop is gone.

i am six months a veg*n today, thanks to john darnielle, this beautiful goat in the photo, and farm sanctuary.

i didn't know she was gone until someone posted it on the mountain goats forums. she is greatly missed.

i was just telling one of the kids i work with about her, a sad and damaged, silenced child who is caught in a custody battle and probably identifies greatly with caged and hurt animals, and i told her a story about zoop the three legged goat with a prosthetic who can pose and prance and make people love her.

my kiddo was wide eyed. her eyes sparkled for the first time since i've started meeting with her and she half whispered, "i'd sure like to see a goat like that someday."

i told her i'd bring in pictures for her sometime, of zoop.
she said, "really? you really have them? i sure want to see a goat like that."

hail, zoop, you brought light to the eyes of even children you never met.

so much love.
rest in peace, beautiful spirit.

plum jam

plum jam:

a pound and a half of plums (this is not for a very large amount, just a small tupperware for you and yours)

1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
4 tablespoons molasses
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
1/2 teaspoon cardomom
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon of cornstarch

- cut plums into small pieces

- stir molasses and all other ingredients together into a bowl until they are smooth and well-combined

- pour molasses mixture over plums and marinate overnight

- dissolve cornstarch in cold water

- start simmering the plums at medium heat and pour the dissolved cornstarch in, and stir, stir, stir. this i charge you: you must keep stirring.

- i cooked this for hours, probably 2-3. but you just want to watch the consistency and wait for it to become JAM! i used a spoon to take it out and test, cool it down and make sure it seems like the sort of jam you like to eat!

- eat that jam!

the first of my plum dishes - Stone Fox Compote

stone fox compote (for yourself and your attractive loved ones)

ingredients:
about 2 cups of plums (i made a very small pan of this, just enough for two people and a bit left over)
a peach
1/4 cup raw sugar
4 tablespoons earth balance
dash of vanilla
teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon coriander
3/4 cup plain rolled oats

- preheat oven to 325. use a little baking pan for this, you can even use a loaf pan or a cake pan, it doesn't even matter. flexible baking is the way to go.

- cut up yer fruit in small pieces and mix them together. dump them in your pan.

- melt the earth balance and the raw sugar together, stirring so that it forms a syrup. add yer spices and stir, stir, stir.

- pour the syrup over the rolled oats and mix it together with a fork until it's all sticky and pat it down over the cut up fruit.

- bake for about a half an hour so that it gets nice and hot and stewy and delicious. we served this over vegan pancakes with a side of hashbrowns made very hot with sriracha and red onion for a contrast to the sweetness.

plums

plums
Originally uploaded by The Starling Tattoo

coming up this weekend:
some sort of delicious plum dessert, made with these little babies.

on belmont street

on belmont street
Originally uploaded by The Starling Tattoo

sorry for the hiatus, folks.
soon to return with thoughts, a recipe perhaps, and some love.
- starling

smear the walls with coconut oil

even though i am sick with the oregon plague, or possibly because of it, i felt an urge to cook last night, so i tried my hand at chickpea cakes! this is also going to be used for our tMG cookzine, hence the odd title, those of you who aren't into tMG. :)

i wandered around the internet a bunch and basically don't have the exact ingredients for anything, so i made up my own recipe, based on a couple that i found.

if i was to be honest with you, i would say that perhaps i got sick because of the following reasons:

1. i have been awful at making sure that i get the right things in my diet
2. i have been even worse at remembering to take vitamins and other nutritional supplements

so this is perhaps all my own fault.

i am now re-resolved to get back on track and be smart about what i am eating.

therefore, i give you my recipe.

Something For the Idols to Eat

a healthy pinch of thyme
a pinch of celery seed
a bit of white pepper to yer taste
a pinch of cayenne pepper
a clove of garlic
2 1/2 tbsp siracha

1 can chickpeas
1 half green pepper
1 half red onion
1 jalapeno pepper
a bit of fresh parsley

1 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp flour

olive oil
veggie oil for the fryin'


1. open up yer chickpeas and dump them into a colander and rinse em for all they're worth. get all the little shells off them and throw those away.

2. cut up yer green pepper, red onion, jalapeno pepper, garlic clove, and parsley nice and small, little diced delicious squares.

3. saute the above squares, excluding the parsley, in a bit of olive oil. i like to saute things until the edges start to get the tiniest bit black. you may not want to do it this long.

4. now comes the fun! mash the chickpeas! if you want to have not as much fun, you can do it with a food processor. if you want to have infinitely MORE fun, you can just put them in a stainless steel bowl, wash your hands really good, and do it with your HANDS. it's like playing with play-dough all over again. at any rate, mash them. you don't have to make them into puree or anything, some of the pea pieces can be left.

5. put the spices and siracha in with the mashed chickpeas. mix it up!

6. mix your cornstarch into a tiny bit of water, let it dissolve and then mix that in to the mashed chickpeas, add the flour, and mix it up!

7. add the sauteed squares of goodness and MIX. IT. UP!

8. let it sit in the refrigerator for at least a half an hour or until you're ready to fry them up.

9. shape them into little cakes and fry them in oil. i only did them in about an inch of oil in a deep skillet, and flipped them after about two minutes on a side. they turned out great, a little crumbly, but then we got lots of delicious tiny crumbles that were very crispy.

10. set the table with three extra places. you know who they're for.

11. dust your idols off. give them something to eat.

just a quick midweek update

this lovely man, henry freedland, mentioned my "going to watkins glen" zine in his article for paste magazine, briefly but wonderfully in this fantastic article about the zoop II event at farm sanctuary.

it's a great article. it made me cry.
it made me miss zoop, and it definitely made me happy after a rough day at work and a screwed up print order for my new zines.

thanks, paste magazine, and thanks to henry.

did you know i'm perfervid?

it's the word of the day.

and my writing has now been compared to a mountain goats song, which is the part that made me cry, first, and then the memories of zoop, after that.

check it out here.

Vegan Baking Success Comes To Oregon Woman At Long Last

yes, that's right, friends, after several disastrous attempts at vegan baking, and yes, i do mean DISASTROUS, i have succeeded where i once failed in the grandest manner possible.

what was once deemed "The Baking Debacle of 2008" has been put to rest finally, with this recipe from the post-punk kitchen, and a few tips from the baking substitution queen, miss ~k~, to whom i give many thanks and a couple hail, hails, though she subscribes not to the cult of tMG. yet. :)

here's the recipe for those what want it, i highly recommend it. my changes are below.

http://www.theppk.com/recipes/dbrecipes/index.php?RecipeID=187

i subbed a bit less than 2/3 a cup of applesauce for the canola oil, to make the cookies less full of le fat, this is ~k~'s sub, and i testify to the fact that it worked out great.

i also added a bit of extra nutmeg (i like things to be more spicy than many)
and i added a tiny bit of coriander (i just really like coriander)

i plain forgot to buy nuts at the store, so uhhh, i just didn't put any in. i think it would be great with them, but they turned out great without them too.

i also subbed dried cherries for the raisins, since i'm not big on raisins and i love dried cherries in nearly anything.

SUCCESS. even m is gobbling them down, and states that they are good.

this does not diminish the fact that i am a rock star. a vegan baking rock star.

go forth and bake. if i can do it, so can you. trust me.

someone was changing from the inside out

so i fell off the no dairy wagon for a few days, i have to admit it.
writing about it here makes it easier to keep myself going.

i fell into a serious binge and it did not feel good, and i don't know if it's because of not eating any and then drastic cheese intake, but i have been feeling ill in my body, off kilter.

i went to a show, the big blues fest at the portland waterfront over the fourth weekend with m and his brother, and we had a really nice time, but something has been weighing on my mind since then that i haven't talked about at all, and since this is the place that i have for it, i will talk about it here.

the fest was sponsored by safeway, the grocery store chain. lately, i have noticed that safeway is really trying to push their meat sales, especially their "rancher's reserve" steaks; they have promotional "green" reusable bags with words like, PORTERHOUSE and TBONE and STEAK on them for sale at their registers, which is just a ridiculous contradiction in and of itself. i don't think, even if you love the meat, you can claim that the industry is green, and doing something like buying a damn $1 bag to carry 20 pounds of meat home from the safeway from is like sticking your thumb up your a--- in a dam to stem the tide. you know what i mean.

at any rate, i find this ridiculous. every time i see these bags, it annoys me. but i haven't said anything because i feel like i complain enough as it is to my partner and he really is trying to be as supportive of all my life changes as he can be, considering that he is not interested at this time at making the same changes. i understand this, because i believe a person comes to these things on their own. and so i have begun to try to keep my grousing to more of a minimum because i truly don't want him to think that i'm angry at him for still drinking milk, for example, when he's been eating so much less meat than i ever could have imagined when i first said "i'm going vegetarian." i also never want to get to the point where i become the sort of angry human being who scared me off of this movement years ago, when i was pre-contemplative about animal issues. i never want to be in that place. we haven't bought more than one or two new packages of meat in our home since i said i was going veg in april. comparatively, this is an enormous difference.

anyway. about safeway.

they sponsored the blues festival. and we sat on the grass by the river, and normally i love the waterfront by the willamette, it is beautiful. being beside the hawthorne bridge here in portland is one of my favorite places to be, it reminds me of so many things about my adopted home that i love, times that have been good here, and why i left the third coast to come here.

the blues festival. we saw a great show, and i do mean a great show. check out sharon jones and the dap-kings, if you haven't heard them by now, i'm not sure where you've been, heh, this woman is a tiny force of nature.

safeway had a booth set up to promote, of course, their "rancher's reserve" steaks. i guess this is rather a long post to get to the point of this, but oh god, the smell of it made me sick to my stomach. i didn't know it was going to, actually, i thought the opposite would happen, and that something in me, since i ate meat, and even beef and steak and hamburgers for a good twenty-six years, that i would relish the smell of it still, and that it would be nostalgic and even tempting.

oh but how i was wrong. it really made me ill. there were clouds of smoke coming up from the back of the booth and wafting over to where we were sitting, and since we were sitting for about forty minutes before sj even came on, by the time she entered to sing, i felt like i was going to puke. this both fascinates and thrills and disappoints me: i am intrigued that after only a few months of being vegetarian, this scent affects me bodily like this, i can understand being mentally revolted by it now that i know the inner workings of the meat industry, but i would expect a more pavlovian response to it. it thrills me that my pavlovian response is apparently shut off already, and that my mind has triumphed over it, and that i think more of animals than my own baseless want for meat. it disappoints me because i quite frankly am grossed out by the thought of going out places and wanting to leave because i feel unwell and can't stop thinking about the flesh of burning cows, after my time spent with beautiful, beautiful cows at farm sanctuary. it bothers me that i almost wish for a certain degree of desensitization, even just a few degrees to the colder temperature, because it was very difficult to sit there and keep my thoughts to myself. i wasn't with anyone who would be comfortable with chatting about this, and i truly love the people who i was with, and i'd like not to make every single social occasion an awkward one where i process my own stuff verbally and my friends sit there awkwardly wondering what to say.

i think possibly all people in their adolescent stages of life change have these trying times, and i remember at the let live conference jasmin singer saying something about "crying and crying and crying, and wondering why no one else was doing the same," at her first volunteer job. i remember something very similar when i decided that i was going to go into social work, and sitting at the blues fest with my stomach roiling, i hoped that i would not begin to cry and cry and cry.

sometimes you just don't want to cry in public.
hence, blogging.

in case i didn't mention it i'm running for first lady

http://kimyadawson.com/audio/02-parade.mp3

you have to write me in. thanks to beautiful kt for sending me this to make me smile today, i hope it does the same for you! take a listen to the lovely kimya dawson.

if you'd like to know an entertaining story about me, i sang the whitney houston song contained herein at a school assembly when i was perhaps eight or nine years old. my memory of it is rather dim, but it's stuck there, as something awesome that i once did, and i still love to sing this when i get worked up about something related to my work, or social justice, or some brilliant beautiful little child that i get a chance to work with in therapy and feel really strongly about. it just spills out of me. there, now you know something silly about me.

happy fourth of july, everyone. in the news today: i ate vegan.
i hope you all had a beautiful day and felt good and did something that made you feel like you had a place in the world, even if you feel a little out of place in the independence day crowds, as i usually do.

i am off to eat fried vegan pies at midnight.

i love this town.

be free, all, be free.
xo.

this one goes out to the ladies at the farm

k~ found this article tonight about how to stop eating cheese if you're trying to go vegan, and passed it on to me.

http://veganfreak.com/food/stop-eating-cheese-an-excerpt-from-version-20/

since this is a place to document my struggles as well as the happy things that inspire me and cause me joy, i must hereby admit to you all that my kneejerk was a long whine in my head that said, noooooo, vegan freaks, you do not know that of which you speak! weaning off the cheese is easier than going cold tofu!

WHINGE.

now, don't get me wrong, my head says to me that these people clearly know what's up and are likely very intelligent and that just dropping the bs and saying to myself:

now is the time

is going to be much easier than the constant bargaining that i've been struggling with, which has been going something like this: perhaps just this one thing, a little parm here, don't want to waste this because i've already got it, won't BUY anything else, but can't waste what i've got even though m. could just eat it himself, which he will, let's not concern ourselves with that, things won't go bad around here, not really, not if i'm honest. with. myself.

the fact is i. love. cheese. i love the taste of it, the texture of it.

but i don't love how it's made, or where it comes from, or the wasteful output of the dairy industry in the form of veal calves taken from their mamas and kept in tiny boxes for their entire little lives. i don't love that i know that for every hunk of cheese that i devour, there is a beautiful lady cow out there kept pregnant for her whole life, watching her babies get dragged away, a series of confusing, hellish nightmares that no one should ever have to live through. i think of the beautiful cows that i had the pleasure of hanging out with at farm sanctuary, and i don't love cheese quite as much when i think about those ladies.

i am not sure what i'm going to do yet. when i started writing this post, i was hoping that by the end i would be decisive, sure of myself, certain that i'd drop the cheese and dump dairy, cold tofu, as they say, but to be honest, i'm just not sure i'm ready to say that.

i would love to be certain.

I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
Gone healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
There are worries where I’ve been

- joanna newsom, "emily"

with a winged heart

today i am filled with meaning.

last night i had a brief lapse in my certainty that i am a person of meaning, who is doing good in the world, and i flagged in my resolve to be positive in my looking-ahead. i felt lowdown, knocked down, and stretched thin. i thought, maybe i can't do all of this. this morning started off a bit rough with an alarm that didn't hit me in the eardrum as planned and a late start, then a car parked partially in front of our driveway resulting in a banged in door on the van and a scrape of paint that looks like a smear of blood from a low budget zombie film. fingers, dragging down the side.

that said, i rewound.
called work, took a few minutes to start the morning over, picked up a soy mocha on the way to the couv and listened to tMG and john vanderslice on the way. looked at the sun on the columbia river and even if my mind was half asleep, i was taking it in.

checked my email today and got this lovely, unexpected note from a tMG forumite and zoop attendee who also got a couple copies of my "going to watkins glen" zine while at farm sanctuary, and is apparently putting her extra copy to good use.

so i left one of my two copies of your zine on the kitchen table downstairs with the hopes that my parents would look at it and i received this email this morning:

K---,

After reading Starling "zine" last night,
when I tried to eat my lite yogurt this AM,
I felt nauseous and decided to throw all those gelatin-filled yogurts out.
I don't like to "waste" money but I think I have been converted now.

Thank you.
Love, Mom
aww! thanks, starling.

no, dear, thank YOU for this incredibly well-timed and sweet reminder that i am doing this for a reason. i really needed that today. and thanks, kw's mom, for deciding to not just read my zine, but to take in the story and send it back out into the world in a new way. i love it, i appreciate it, and i am grateful for this moment.

filled with gratitude.

today i am going to walk through downtown on my lunch break and take time to find a place where i can get vegan lunch, all. i will be reporting back on what i find, and i hope that i can find something tasty.

for kw and her wonderful mom:

wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
-kahlil gibran

she gather my pieces

~k~: ps-- you will be pleased with me: i was completely veg today
starling: yay!
~k~: no dairy even :)
starling: i am!! good job! i did pretty good today too! high fives to us.
~k~: i am trying to support what you stand for, and think twice about stuff.
starling: you are so great, i love you too, too much.
~k~: i thought in light of the [unsupportive friends], i wanted to let you know i was supporting you, from here and doing my best :)
starling: thank you so much, that means so much to me, it really does.
it is so good to know that people are supportive.
~k~: no promises, but today was a good day.
starling: i get it, even one day a week is still meaningful.
~k~: so (((veg hug)))
starling: haaa, totes! veg hugs, i love em!

this woman is all the way in chicago and is one of my oldest friends. the first to start being really food conscious in my group and at the time i had the nerve to tease her and think she was freaking over nothing. HFCS? COME ON, we've all been drinkin' it, suckin' it down by the gallon for years and nothing happened to us, am i right? well, except for the weight that we've gained, and the untold effects it's had on our brains and veins and hearts and stomachs that we don't know about! but she planted a seed, whether she knew it or not, whether i knew it or not, and now years later, as john darnielle said at zoop, when i was ready to hear the message, oh, i heard. i can suddenly hear. when you are ready for the message, the message comes.

and i remembered ~k~'s words, years later, her gentle informations and passing alongs of the things that she was learning, bit by bit on the way to a healthier life.

thanks to ~k~, for her patience with me, and her unflagging love.

i listened to the new bob dylan, bowie's hunky-dory, and joni mitchell's mingus today and ate vegan lunch today that i made. it was fabulous.

go out and give yer friends a veg hug!

just to consider for today: what is it you plan to do, with your one wild and precious life?

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver

when i got up to the top, my head got light

welcome to my new online gathering place.
here, i will detail for you the love and the struggle of trying to become more compassionate and cruelty free in my daily life.

this will be a record of How We Lived Then, so that i can look back on it, and future me will say, oh, how hard it was, but how glad i am that i did it.

for those who don't know, i became vegetarian almost three months ago, and i wrote about that in a zine called "going to watkins glen," which was a limited edition print of 70 copies. i will not be reprinting this zine, for various reasons, the need in the world for some things to be fleeting, rarified, once in a lifetime, i suppose, some things you can never catch in your hand again. that said, i will be talking about some of the same themes from that zine here, as well as my reasons for going veg, the struggles that i'm having with trying to eat more vegan and kick that dairy habit, and the profound experience that i had visiting farm sanctuary in watkins glen, new york, a few weeks ago for an event called zoop.

i will also be experimenting with vegan cooking, and some friends and i will be putting out a vegan cookzine relatively soon. recipes will be posted and tested here!

this is a crossroads in my life - i plan on documenting it most carefully.

when I got up to the top, my head got light
for a minute everything in the world was alright
I saw the next tree just ten feet away
give or take a few feet I guess
then I pushed off into the air with all my might
headed out into the center of the morning light
I knew that I was gonna make it
the new tree hardly shook to acknowledge my arrival
I knew that I would be alright

"treetop song," - the mountain goats