The History of the Jam Doughnut, the Jam & Cream Doughnut, and the Jam & Cream & Custard Doughnut

I love the idea that at some point in history some guy was eating a doughnut and thought ‘I could make this better’. I can just imagine that he would have turned to his friend and said “You know what we should do, we should make a doughnut the size of a smallish bread roll!” at which point his friend would have said “Yeah, and we should punch a hole in the top and fill it with jam!” At this point, I’m sure each of the friends would have stopped to consider the deliciousness of this idea for a moment before one of them would have said “Yep, you’re right. But I think it would be even better if we covered the whole thing in sugar as well.” To which the other would have agreed.

Now I’m sure they would have taken to the kitchen to create this sensational new treat, which made them both very successful in the baking business. But later on another couple of friends would have been sitting about, eating jam doughnuts when one of them said to the other “You know what would make this better, it could be the shape of a long roll so its bigger.” To which the other friend would have replied “Yeah definitely, but we could cut it part way through length-wise instead of putting a hole in the top and put the jam in that way, so there’s more jam.” At which point the two friends would have paused a moment to consider the brilliance of this potential dessert until one of them would have said “Yeah, but we should also put sweetened cream in it, and it would basically be perfect.” At which point they would have taken to their kitchen to create this sensational sweet.

Some time later, I imagine, another duo of friends would be found leisurely consuming their cream jam doughnuts when one friend said to the other “You know what would make this even better, we could add custard in between the jam and the cream” To which the other friend would have replied “Yep, definitely, I have a feeling I’m going to die of heart failure anyway.”

And that is how we ended up with possibly the most lethal sweet treat in the world… possibly.

Night Owls and Nocturnal Humans

The hot bitter liquid slides down my throat, bitter and perfect. Coffee, reawakening my body as it moves. I can feel the sluggish red blood in my veins waking, the caffeine is setting it alight, jump starting it with a new form of lightening, pushing it through narrow channels, slow flowing life. Mornings have never been my living hours, I have more memories greeting them from the other side of dawn, I am a nighttime person, always have been. Even as a child I knew night better than morning. My father is a rock musician and as a child I would lay awake waiting for the noise of his car arriving home. I had a unique paranoia; I couldn’t sleep until I knew where all of my family were; safely at home, sleeping soundly, then rest for me.

My teenage years brought a new companion for insomnia: books. It was the same for my mother and my brothers. I shared a bedroom with one or both of my brothers for most of my childhood, so the practice of keeping torches under the pillow to be pulled out for under the doona, illicit nighttime reading was a silently acknowledged practice for all of us. Crawling into bed, Mum and Dad would come and tuck us in, say our prayers, off with the lights and goodnight. Then the doors would close and the torches would come out, doonas pulled up over heads and the nighttime adventures commenced. Mornings meant the arrival of our parents whipping doonas off sleeping children to coax us out. They could hardly blame us; it’s the price you pay for encouraging your kids to read.

My nighttime literary adventures morphed into various typical teenage pursuits, and eventually I began working in hospitality. Restaurant and bar work agreed with me in more ways than one. I was raised to appreciate food, and later I was taught to appreciate good wine and beer… thanks to my exceptional mother. Later, in my overseas life, my work in hospitality became my social network. My time working in bars in the U.K. led to the formation of my overseas family. I spent Christmas with my colleagues and bar mates, playing Trivial Pursuit through the night drinking Amaretto, fondest memories were often found in the grey lit hours. It wasn’t unusual for a group of us to finish work at three or four a.m. and then take to our social lives through the early morning hours. I knew London better in the pre-dawn hours than any other.

Upon my homecoming, my nighttime hours were spent in solitude until I began my university degree. Now my nighttime hours are my working hours, my closest friends at university are the people who can’t work in the hubbub of the daytime oriented students. This old building at night contains a special form of solace. Every now and then people will ask me if it’s creepy in this old fortress in the deep hours of the night; to me it isn’t. Convicts built this building; its history is as deep as that of any of Australia’s oldest buildings. Some people say ghosts roam about here, but I’ve never met one. It happens that some of my closest friendships were forged here in the middle hours and none of them were with ghosts.

 This place has been my home for three years; there’s nothing in this building that I could be afraid of, but then few people take so much note of the reality of a building as they do of the spooky stories of sensationalist ghost enthusiasts. While I have nothing against a good scary story, I don’t need people assuming I spend my nights surrounded by the dissatisfied dead.

I’ll be leaving this cranky-old-man building soon. No more sitting on the step outside reviving myself with hot coffee, no more late night pool tournaments and no more greeting the cleaner as she arrives at six-thirty in the morning. I’m afraid I will be finding a new nighttime abode, and I am concerned that it won’t be nearly as friendly as this one. But for now I will sit on the step and light my veins with caffeine. Soon enough the night will arrive and my blood will be suitably charged to move my brain again.

The Descent: Poems float hearts

Spadająca Gwiazda, "Falling Star" by Witold Pruszkowski, 1884

The Descent

She falls, twisting, dancing in air

Choreography all of her own

The wind moves her like a lover

The rain pressing in, caresses skin

Streaking pale white lily arms

Roses blooming in cold

The clouds, insistent, surrounding her

Cover her in tiny diamonds

She twists, dancing down

The mountain, silently judging

Watching her pass by, falling

In whistling melodies

The sky, splitting, steps aside

She falls, twisting, dancing down

Waltzing to the Valley

The trees, catching her hair

Pulling her costume, rescue

Her tumbling pirouette

The earth, softly embracing her

Her descent is finished

The dance is done, complete

The leaves holding her

Cushion her head, comforting

And filling her resting palm

The flowers adorning her hair

Crowning her queenly, singing

Her story, awaiting her waking 

The Anarchist Brain

Writer’s Block…

I don’t actually have writer’s block, in the traditional sense of the word, I know precisely what I need to write, in fact if you asked me what I am writing about I could verbally deliver my entire piece word for word. The only problem is that when I sit down to write the damn beast I simply can’t type out the words, they get jumbled and angry and flee altogether, so that I find myself staring at a word document dominate by a whole lot of white space and a few angry distracted sentences that seem to be avoiding inter-sentence communication.

My opinion on the matter is simple… in two weeks I finish my degree and my brain has just decided that three years of mental torture is quite enough and it deserves a bit of a break. So I am feeding it with opera music, hip-hop, pop art, red shoes and alluring poetry, so that I can trick it into thinking again and then when it is quietly pondering the shiny-ness of a pair of shoes I can abruptly sit down in front of my laptop and open a word document and force it to produce a piece of academic work. Obviously the difficulty with this is that my brain has access to these sneaky thoughts, because part of it is producing them… so my plan is foiled every time!

So here I am blogging, while simultaneously distracting my brain with ‘Brainwashing’ by Bob Marley, and I figure I can start a normal blog, and perhaps some sort of thesis will seep out of my sleepy, disgruntled brain. This isn’t working either, I can tell because this blog hasn’t even touched on the politics of representations of Aboriginal women in Australian films… and there I go, I mentioned the thing, and my brain has abandoned its post and scampered off into Gotye’s ‘Puzzle with a Piece Missing’. Coincidence? I doubt it.

In the spirit of 'full disclosure' I'd also like to point out that my music player (which is currently set to shuffle), has subsequently played 'Brianstorm' by Arctic Monkeys, followed by 'The Drugs Don't Work' by Ben Harper... I'm feeling that my music player and my brain are in cahoots. Let me elaborate: I selected 'brainwashing' which was followed by 'Puzzle with a Piece Missing' indicating I am trying to study without the assistance of my brain, which was followed by the conspicuously mispelled ' Brianstorm' indicating my brain's resistance to actual 'brainstorming', followed by 'The Drugs Don't Work' which in my head suggests that all that caffeine has started to wear off! I wouldn't be surprised at all if the next song is called 'Paranoia' or 'Need Some Sleep' (both of which are in my music player library).

Just two weeks longer...

                                              

Sylvia Plath: Spiralling and Pulling Out

This week I have had the great joy (?) of spending a few days preparing a class presentation on Sylvia Plath and her posthumously published collection of poems Ariel. It was the last class presentation of my undergraduate degree, and frankly I was determined to make it the very best. I got completely absorbed in Plath, and not just Plath but also Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton as well. A troubled bunch of poetic geniuses who were all somehow held prisoner in each of their own heads by mental illness.

Let me first say a few things on the reception of Plath. Not everyone likes her, not everyone likes her work, and that's okay, not everyone has to like her. In fact I won't ask you to, nor will I convince you that you should like her. However, one thing that every personality in my class today agreed on was that her place amongst the great poets is fully deserved. A sunny disposition she did not own, but she was certainly a creative genius. As it happens I love Plath's work, it crafts the miserable and horrific into something beautiful. If you have read my previous blogs, you'll know this is something I find particularly interesting. I was drawn into the spiral.

Having immersed myself in Ariel and selected works by Lowell and Sexton I ended up feeling drawn and heavy. I needed to pull out of the spiral in order to work on the presentation. I knew I needed to do something to catapult my mind back into the land of the living. So I wrote this poem.

Sylvia

Is there no justice for the lonely and forsaken?
Is there no dream for the broken and breaking?
Let us plunge

Headlong into the ether

We will mine the moon for the blue in its midnight
We will plumb from its depths the crystal of its cold

I will not give it back
Not anything that you have not already had
I will give you nothing but what you have given me

Keep your ice and water

I need none of those, I will give you ice
For you have given me the freeze of the lonely

Keep your blue and moons

Keep your violent tulips
Keep the stinging bees

Your insanity steels my spine

While your haunted embryos and dead babies
Eat at the edge of the fiery cavern in my chest

Keep your baldheads and black boots

My feet are bare and my hair flies behind
Your Lazarus eats mankind

I don’t need your hospitals

I learned from your insanity I won’t know it
Keep your lecherous doctors and frames of smiles

The carbon monoxide that choked you

Should have been swallowed by the trees you wrote
Oh shallow woman, you scorned the night

Fire? Fire!

I'm in the Blue box again. I need to work, the writing won't flow, but I know now that sometimes I need to wrestle the words out of my brain because they are shy these days.

The alarm begins.

"Is that the fire alarm?" S goes to the door, "No it's the door, it won't close." The students start filing out of the lab, it is the alarm. Not so familiar. It's only the second time I've heard the noise. The last time was a 2am wiring glitch. I have forgotten about it though, and now the noise is just the tickling feeling of a memory. I look questioningly at my laptop before I assure myself that this is just a drill. I grab my bag and cast a last glance toward my laptop as I join the slow, small exodus.

We're at the previously established gathering point, the admin staff are wearing red caps with 'Warden' blaring yellow from above the brow. I can only imagine that this would be of little comfort if the building was really going up in flames. I look up at the looming university building and my imagination superimposes great tongues or flame over its now calm exterior. The final scene of Hitchcock's Rebecca dances around my mind. The reality of this experience is somewhat anticlimactic; it is daytime now, sunny and far too glorious to lend any dramatic element to the situation.

I look about at the student body, there are so few people here. I'm sure most of the student cohort must be enjoying the final gasp of Summer weather at the beach or swanning about at some vineyard or engaged in some other equally leisurely activity.

My thoughts are muted, I should be working, but even if the alarm hadn't interupted me, I'm sure I'd be getting nothing done anyway. I'm losing the wrestling match today.

Another thought; I've been here for three years, and this is the first fire drill we've had in that time. Or maybe there were others and I was one of the beach-going cohort registering absence. Or maybe they just didn't happen, perhaps up until now the safety of the student body wasn't a concern. Everyone seems to be milling, discussing the assignments they are writing, or presentations to  be planned and practiced. Everyone is wrestling today.

It's over, we're back inside, everyone is settling down, preparing to continue the struggle. Brains don't like sunny weather. More students are arriving, I see B "You missed the fire drill!" her eyebrows shoot up "Really? I didn't know we had them." My thoughts exactly.

I'm going downstairs to the basement, N is on his phone discussing the virtues of the waves at Nanarup, the boys are downstairs, already halfway through a pool game, the kettle boils, more people on the couch reading. It is such a non-event.

I return to my laptop. I begin the wrestle again.

Brooklyn 5am

I love songs that move your imagination to different places. This poem wound its way out of an image that travels through my imagination from time to time. I was listening to Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love' the other day, and it sort of just arrived at my finger tips.

Brooklyn 5am

The Brooklyn streets are cold this morning

But the worst of winter has passed now

I miss you I miss the sun I miss home

But this morning Brooklyn is beautiful

The trees are starting to slowly turn green now

They’ve been bare for months

Tiny green garments have started to gather on their branches

And the snow blankets have melted

They turn into thousands of tiny lakes plaguing the city paths.

I miss you, but today Brooklyn is beautiful

I would have stayed but I need the chill

My blood hates to be too warm

And the sun used to burn my skin

But I was made to be here

My blood is like silk in my veins and roses on my cheeks

Fingers have begun to thaw

We only wear our gloves in the morning and at night.

The days have started to gain color again

I saw a painting you would like the other day

It was black and white, just like you

I see you in the windows sometimes

I walk past some of them twice to catch you

I saw you behind a tree in the park as well

But when I got there you were a bum

Brooklyn is beautiful this morning

I still miss you some days. Like today

The city only reminds me of you in the things you would hate

Yesterday I smashed the crystal glass you gave me

It rained and I bled

I stood on the sidewalk under my apartment

And let the silk dirty the pavement

It isn’t clean here I like that

It’s wet and Brooklyn is beautiful this morning.

There’s a banjo playing in the coffee shop below

You would hate that

I go to the shop every morning for coffee, it’s terrible but I like it

I like the morning hours, before the sun and after it

I stand on the pale streets at four

I watch the city heave its breath, I watch the sweepers

Brooklyn is beautiful now, before the world wakes up

Shopkeepers receive boxes from trucks

The windows are lit and soon the people will come

Soon there will be faces in the windows and feet on paths

There will be hands waving for yellow cabs

It isn’t home, but Brooklyn is beautiful this morning