#i was trying to explain the three thousand year compression to a friend of mine from out of the fandom | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ladyiceflame-blog · 7 years ago

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An Inconvenient Wedding:

Chapter Fourteen: Hazardous Wagers

A celebratory roar of victory came to her moral rescue. Her father had just won an arm-wrestling match against Matsuko, who was widely believed to be the strongest man ever born in Shimogakure, and kept returning home stronger with every mission. “You came close, lad,” the Shimokhan congratulated his soundly defeated opponent, who lay slumped atop his enormous folded arms on the small table’s edge. “Your chakra reserve has expanded quite a bit from the last time, but its still not enough to get the best of my resources.” “I figured as much,” Matsuko admitted, sitting up, “But, I had to at least try.” Reveling in this latest victory, and perhaps the steady flow of ‘liquid courage’ that he’d been imbibing since arriving, the Shimokhan stood up, and regarded the room. “I believe I’ve beaten everyone at this point...” “Not everyone!” Miriyume corrected, taking the opportunity to remove herself from Kakashi’s scrutiny. She placed Pakkun on her vacated seat, and went to her father’s side as cheers erupted around her. “Oh, kami,” Renara swore under her breath, setting aside her sewing and grabbing Wakame’s arm, “Get the water-jutsu users ready, I don’t want them burning down the tent this time!” “This....time..?” Kakashi asked, concern clearly showing. Gekido draped a slightly inebriated arm around his shoulders, and explained a bit: “Fire and lightning jutsus have some intense consequences, when pitted against one another....” he smiled drunkenly. “They burned Shimogakure’s best inn down, a couple of years ago. Are you any good at water techniques....?” “When the situation calls for it, yes,” Kakashi replied. “It probably will,” the Inuzuka intoned. “Miriyume’s been looking forward to finally beating her Old Man at this game, once and for all.” They all watched as Wakame paused the match to switch out the basic wooden table for one of the iron chests, covered by some special cloth, and the audience was instructed to keep their distance. “I thought this was supposed to be a game about chakra and strength...” Kurenai openly wondered, as she and Kakashi both observed the scene in puzzlement. “Normally, yes,” Matsuko vouched, “But when two Yaseiarashi’s face off, the chakra-ante challenge doesn’t really matter much, being as how they have unlimited resources.” “...Like a couple of millionaires playing an endless penny-ante poker game,” Hiruzen supplied. “Rather boring to watch.” “So,” Matsuko resumed, “They added another level of challenge...” “...Much to my annoyance,” Renara capped, as the opponents sat down at the makeshift table. “Ready, Old Man?” Miriyume smirked wickedly at her father. “Always ready, Little Girl!” Ryuumaru taunted, grinning just as evilly back. So that’s where she got that crooked smile from, Kakashi realized, as the two locked hands and waited for the signal to start. “Are you shaking?” Miriyume continued to try and psyche-out her foe, as Nobu took position to judge. “Just idling,” her father riposted, making her laugh just before the elite shinobi guard yelled, “GO!” Ryuumaru silently marveled at his daughter’s improved arm strength. She had inherited his shorter, stocky frame, which included a broad set of shoulders that housed better-than-average upper body might. Her time spent gallivanting about the world at large had developed this slight edge even further. But it was still no match for his own muscles, which had spent decades pulling monstrous catches from the icy Northern Waters. The Shimokhan managed to push her arm to 45 degrees before she resorted to her favored Storm Gauntlet jutsu. Kakashi and Kurenai both jumped, as the dark, iridescent sparks engulfed her pale arm without any requisite hand jutsu. Her lightning affinity had such an unusual color spectrum... The Shimokhan growled through the slight pain, before countering with his own technique: “Fire style: Flame Gauntlet!” he announced, as amber-hued fire encased his arm. The mustered water-style users went to work, shielding the crowd with a transparent, heavy water barrier. Where the two energies met, the air was warped with a frightening amount of heat. It was clearly making Miriyume uncomfortable. “Ugh, you’re so predictable!” the kunoichi-priestess scolded, as she struggled to maintain leverage. “Can’t you use anything else other than fire jutsu?!?” Ryuumaru laughed, as he willed the fire even stronger, “I could. But I never had a need to against you, Miri-chan!” “You do now!” Miriyume matched her father’s stubborn refusal to submit, as the gold stars flashed in her eyes. With her off hand, she made the elemental signs for first wind, then water, then slapped the table to enact the fusion of the two natures: “Ice Release: Winter’s Breath!” Miriyume announced, as a stream of compressed frost erupted from the palm of her other hand, putting her father’s fire jutsu back in check. Ryuumaru responded with laughter born of paternal pride, as he began to show signs of losing ground. “She can use Ice Release?!” Kakashi openly gawked. “She can use anything she wants,” Matsuko smiled smugly, “So long as she knows how to blend the chakra correctly.” “Any chakra?” Kurenai pressed, as the crowd cheered Miriyume as she slowly gained the advantage with her combined technique. “Well....she’s not too savvy on Yin or Yang release. That was more her brother’s thing. And she’s kinda forbidden from using any Dark chakra...” Gekido admitted. Matsuko gave him an undisguised frown of disapproval. “What?” the Inuzuka defended. “We’re amongst friends, aren’t we? And its not like it’s a big secret...” “Neither is it a subject that I care to broadcast,” Renara concluded somberly. “Then I apologize, Priestess-sama,” Gekido atoned abruptly with a deep, sober bow. “I will never speak of such things again.” Renara nodded her gratitude, and returned her green and gold eyes to the arm-wrestling. The subtle power of this woman intrigued Kakashi. Her voice never carried much above a quiet conversational volume, but when she spoke, EVERYONE listened....and obeyed. The Elders of Konoha could only hope to achieve the influence of this Heron Sage Priestess. “Anyway,” Matsuko continued, after giving Gekido a slap to the back of his bowed head, “If it concerns Nature, or priestess chakra, Miri-chan has it covered. Her Renkingen allows her to blend endless possibilities.” “Which can make life rather exciting at times...” Gekido added, as the crowd’s cheering surged in response to Miriyume bringing the back of the Shimokhan’s hand a mere inch away from the tabletop. “Get him, Miriyume-sama!” bellowed a cooking-nin from Kumogakure. The fire and frost jutsus were creating sauna-like conditions in the yurt. “Much more of this, and I’ll send out for some cedar branches!” Nobu warned, waving steam from in front of his eyes. “Purification rituals are what they do in that Koryomizu place,” Gekido snapped. “Let’s steam some dumplings! “Make....mine....strawberry...” Miriyume grunted past the effort of keeping her father’s hand inches away from her victory. “Scupper your strawberry, Stormfly!” Ryuumaru growled, as he began to channel more chakra. “This isn’t a steam table....it’s a Shimogakuran camp grill! Fire Release: Emerald Furnace!” The golden amber of his fire became a brilliant jade green, burning so hot as to leech all the ambient moisture from the air, including the water barriers, making it as arid as the deserts of the Land of Air. Miriyume screamed in rage and intensified effort as she began to lose ground quickly to her father’s most powerful jutsu. “I’m impressed, Miri-chan,” Ryuumaru condescended, “You’ve never been able to push me to this jutsu before...” “Don’t....patronize me...” Miriyume grunted, as she furiously poured more chakra into her Winter’s Breath jutsu, earning her back a couple of agonizing inches. Ryuumaru wasn’t even struggling anymore. “You were always so damned adorable when you’re overwhelmed...” her father continued, shaking his head as he began to ease her arm backward in gentle mockery. “And you....must not have paid much attention....in your science classes...” Miriyume countered, as her roiling, opalescent Sage energy voided the iris and pupils of her eyes, making them orbs of shimmering liquid iridescence. Renara immediately sensed the energies that her daughter was summoning and shouted out: “Matsuko! Now! Sage Art: Thousand Crane Barrier!” and slammed both her hands on the ground, just before a loud crack, and a flash of lightning forced everyone’s eyes away from the competitors. A sound like massive wings, and a gentle draft of cool air buffeted the audience, as they had their gaze averted. When they turned back, a wall made of massive, silvery flight feathers had been erected around the combatants, and Matsuko was missing. “I’d forgotten how elegant your Sage art was, Renara-sama,” Hiruzen complimented, as he studied the platinum, nine-foot quills that sprouted from the ground, neatly hemming in her family’s reckless use of powerful ninjutsu. “Herons are elegant creatures,” Renara admitted. “Their disciples could hardly be otherwise.” She took a moment to place a hand against the barrier, and sense what was happening on the other side. “Have they calmed down now, Matsuko-kun?” she called out. “They have, Priestess-sama,” the absent shinobi reported from the other side. “Did you have to use your heritage technique?” “Maybe a little....” Matsuko sheepishly returned. “Any injuries?” the sage-priestess continued. “No, Mother!” Miriyume reported irritably. In a quieter voice, she added: “We might need a new iron chest, though...” Renara dismissed her barrier, and revealed the hidden trio. Matsuko was standing beside the other two, who were regarding the smoldering end of the iron chest. Scorched, slumped ore made it look like the used end of a stick of sealing wax. “Well?!?” the Inuzuka prompted, as the three kept the rest of the tent on the edge of their seats. “She got me,” Ryuumaru huffed, crossing his arms and smiling. A human tsunami rushed in on Miriyume, and bore her aloft in a celebratory roar, as the Shimokhan moved to take a seat beside his wife at the bar. “Our little kunoichi’s all grown up now,” Ryuumaru declared somberly to Renara. “Her power easily eclipses mine.” The Heron Priestess gave his strong shoulder a gentle squeeze, as she watched him wipe away a small tear from his eye. As proud as he was of Miriyume’s fierce autonomy, he had always been a little saddened it by it as well. He couldn’t bear the thought of his little girl never needing him to fight her battles. Ryuumaru’s eyes remained glassy as he watched the dauntless musicians catch her and nearly everyone else up in a frenzy of triumphant dancing and singing. This was the Yaseiarashi trait that had been fused into the soul of their homeland: Unity through comradery. As close to Ninshu as she’d ever found outside of Temples. Renara laced her fingers into her husband’s, and offered verbal comfort: “You raised her to be strong, anata. Just like you,” then kissed his stubbled cheek. “And you raised her well, Shimokhan,” Tosho rumbled from behind them, as he lay sprawled atop the counter. “Never have I encountered a more tenacious spirit than Miriyume’s. Her resolve can put some of the gods to shame. Raijin being among them...” “Are you two fighting again?” Ryuumaru asked, giving the tiger a concerned look. “Raijin-sama and I never fight. We merely...differ in practice,” his tail thumping against the bar. “You’re fighting...” the Shimokhan deducted with a laugh, scratching the great cat’s ear. Pakkun’s austere eyes were thoughtfully regarding Kakashi as he in turn watched Miriyume caper about the room with her countrymen. There was something very different in his aspect. A lightness of being that had eluded him for far too long. When Pakkun had first learned of this Miriyume, it had been en route to the distant and rarely acknowledged Land of Frost. Kakashi was an Anbu captain back then, and had for some reason demanded a week-long vacation to ‘get away from it all.’ Sarutobi had to have been all too happy to comply, he’d wagered. Halfway into the trek north, he’d been summoned to provide company, conversation, and the scant advise that a ninken could offer on finding a rapport with a foreign kunoichi! Pakkun had been stunned, to put it bluntly. Kakashi had never shown any interest in any girls before, although plenty had shown interest in him. Why did this Frost maiden have such an immediate pull on him? Regarding her now, he could easily understand at least some of the attraction. She was pretty. She was vivacious. And there was a strange, magnetic quality that she unconsciously exuded. Could it have something to do with her overflowing chakra....? What had happened all those years ago in Shimogakure? The entire way there, Kakashi had gushed about her hair, her smile, her eyes, her spirit... He’d even agonized and rehearsed what he would say when he found her again. And he’d brought her a gift: a small box of chocolates. The kind his mother used to love, and frequently receive from Sakumo. Kakashi had once loved those chocolates, too, before his father had committed seppuku. He’d sworn off sweets, and many other things on that day. Finally, Pakkun had thought happily, He’d found his way out of the darkness! With spirits high, and a bit of nervousness, they emerged through the border forest that Kakashi had lead Team Ro through a mere week before. He’d been told of this aurora borealis, but the sickly green glow in the skies above in no way resembled the ‘shining curtains of ethereal light’ that his master had described. There was no activity on the lake. No music in the air. The people they saw in town were quiet, somber, and avoiding all contact with them. Nothing remotely resembling the much lampooned Shimogakure of popular report. Pakkun’s keen nose could scent the pervasive sorrow. Something horrible had happened here. He had tried to voice this dread to the boy before he’d caught the eye of a haggard-looking local, who had given a slight double-take at the half-masked stranger in his midst. “Um, excuse me....” Kakashi had called out, as he motioned grandly for the man’s attention. “Where is the Yaseiarashi house?” The man’s eyes turned instantly glassy, and he shook his head and pressed his finger to his lips before turning away and continuing down the street. That wasn’t good enough for Kakashi. He bolted through the melting snow drifts to stand in front of the man: “What has happened here? Where is Miriyume?” His persistence earned him a sharp glare, and an angry pointing toward the north end of the village, far beyond the residential sectors. The direction of the Memorial Gate. The Shimogakuran cemetery. Pakkun clung desperately to the young ninja’s shoulder, as he launched himself through the eerily lit snow, down the path indicated. He heard the choke in Kakashi’s throat when he found the ash-charred plinth standing in mute testimony of the recent rites performed here. He heard the small sob as he read the wind-tattered funeral banner, snapping in the frigid, hilltop breeze: Yaseiarashi. “No.” Sinking to his knees in the frozen slush. “Not her! Not again...” Kakashi’s lament sent a painful tingling into Pakkun’s nasal cavities, causing a flood of warm tears through his thin fur. Was this poor boy born under a cruel star? They spent a painful, numbingly cold night in a lonely vigil over a stranger’s grave. When morning came, Kakashi set the box of chocolates, along with the metaphysical remnants of his heart, upon the soot-stained stone, and turned back for Konoha. That rare ember of true joy had been smothered, once again, killing the fledgling hope that had survived his many tragedies. Kakashi never spoke her name to him again, in keeping with her strange country’s custom. But, here she was, so many years later, easily reigniting that elusive spark. It was spring in Kakashi’s heart again, reclaimed from the long, cruel winter. Pakkun was deeply grateful, before an unnerving rumble made him jump. “Allow me to apologize for my prior behavior, admirable ninken,” Prince Tosho began, peering at him over the edge of the bartender’s side of the counter. “Do you like dried yak?” “I’ve....never had dried yak...” “Then you must try this....” the tiger disappeared for a moment, then leapt atop the bar with a large sack of heavy burlap in his mouth. He laid down, and used his enormous paw to pin it down, and tore it open with his fearsome teeth. A carnivore’s fortune of seasoned, dried meat came tumbling out between the tiger’s paws. Pakkun’s nose was enchanted. “This is an unofficial currency of Shimogakure,” Tosho explained, as he took a mouthful and began to eat. “They use it as their main shinobi protein ration.” Pakkun was transfixed, and moving closer, desperate for a bite. “It smells amazing....” licking drool as he watched more of the savory staple disappear in the tiger’s mouth. “Then why don’t you join me,” shoving a generous amount the pug’s way, “...and tell me more about your master?” Humans had their whiskey, but Tosho had always found the exotic taste of yak to be a better form of bribery among his bestial peers. As Gekido finished the final chorus of one of her favorite songs, Miriyume took a moment to survey the room: her homeland. Her allies. This was what this whole thing was ultimately for. Securities for the future. A step closer to realizing the dreams handed down by the Sage of the Six Paths. This treaty would happen, dammit, she vowed silently, as she quashed her insecurities deeper into the pit of her stomach. Shimogakure needed to light another candle against the encroaching darkness. Then a clumsy, strong hand took hold of her shoulder. Gekido, who was undeniably drunk. “You’ve been sampling from too many hip flasks again,” Miriyume chided, knowing her team-mate’s stubborn habit of mixing his alcohol. It never went well for him. “I’m blaming the wine that your Lord Creep-master brought to dinner,” Gekido reeled unsteadily. “Too damn sweet...threw me off my game! And speaking of games....” pointing in the direction of the freshly set arm-wrestling table, “I challenge you, Sparkler, to a match!” Miriyume allowed him to drag her to a seat, humoring her cherished companion. The Inuzuka did have a slight chance of success here. He had more upper body strength, and much faster reflexes that her, honed in tune with his bestial instincts. And being drunk had the interesting effect of speeding his already insane reaction time up. If he could manage to slam her hand against the table faster that she could properly phase her chakra, he’d win. “Are you sure about this, Gek-kun?” she asked, as she watched Aoseishin clamber up onto the chair behind him, and place his large front paws on his human’s shoulders. “Sure I’m sure!” Gekido replied breezily. “You just arm-wrestled the hardest match of your life, and I’m fresh out of the gate! And also, Ao and I have been working on a new technique, so prepare yourself, you...obnoxious oppai!” “Then let’s make this interesting....and play for the Stone,” Miriyume returned. “I want to wear it tomorrow, and its mine turn to have already, since the Iron Chest Grappling.” “...and the game of Kraken....” Matsuko added, looking on. Gekido reached into the small pouch located under his ninkin’s neck bandana, and produced the amber chrysanthemum trinket. He reverently laid it on the table between them. “I’ll let you hold onto it for luck, even though I’m about to HUMILIATE you!” Gekido offered, in his sweet-and-sour fashion. “We’ll see....drunkard!” she taunted back, as they waited for the referee.

“What is the significance of that stone?” Kakashi inquired, standing beside Matsuko among the small audience that was gathering. “It’s kind of our lucky charm,” the serene giant answered. “It was a gift from our first team sensei. Our best sensei.” “I heard that you had more than is customary,” Kakashi, before Matsuko cut him off with the information he was fishing for: “We had six. Not counting the independent tutors that Miri-chan had to suffer through.” “Six?!?” The Leaf jonin was truly astounded. “Can you imagine?” Matsuko continued, “Four grown adults, scared off by a passive brute, a feral smartass, and a hot-blooded ginger who had made friends with a storm kami? We weren’t the easiest genin trio to sponsor. We left our last sensei before he could abandon us, right after our chunin exams, to protect him, and chose to wander the world. But our original sensei...Hato-sensei,” he paused a little, out of obvious respect. “She left this world to protect us. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to forgive her for that.” His stark admission took Kakashi slightly aback, as the random fragments of Miriyume’s past were connected, bringing their strange story into sharper focus. They wandered the world because they wanted to avoid the pain of harming those they loved, and/or being hurt by those same people! He had adopted a similar mind set, long ago, before realizing the perpetual torment such a practice bestowed. But where he had adopted a cold, callous front as a barrier against others, these three zealously embraced the all the world had to offer, then slipped off into the distance before any harm was done. He wondered at who’s was the crueler method. “Such is the burden of teaching; the constant fear of disappointing your students,” Kakashi offered. “But you are hardly alone in that tragedy. I lost my team sensei as well.” Matsuko turned his full attention on the Leaf jonin, silently prompting him to continue. “And I never had another. But, my circumstances were very different...” “Are you ready, Ao?” Gekido asked. Aoseishin answered with an eager bark, and the referee called the start. As expected, Gekido’s arm worked like an ice-bear trap, moving so fast that Miriyume’s knuckles would have surly been bloodied were it not for her opening with a calculated burst of chakra when the ref first began to speak. “Heh, not so easy this time, eh, Sparkler....?” Gekido teased, using his greater strength to muscle her arm backward, as she internally wagered her next chakra surge. “So what’s this....new technique you’re bragging on....?” Miriyume grunted, as she regarded the snowy furred dog’s friendly face, as it rested atop Gekido’s Shimogakuran standard shepherd’s hat. “Distracting Hat Jutsu?” “Is it working?” the Inuzuka asked. “No!” she proved her claim with another surge of chakra that returned their clasped hands to the starting position. “Then I’d better try this then: Ao! Bellows on Drum Technique!” Miriyume watched as Aoseishin dismounted his owner’s shoulders, and padded over to stand beside her. He then stuck his cold, wet nose in her ear, and started snuffling. It was Gekido’s favorite way to wake her out of a dead sleep, because it always worked, and she could never vent her indignant rage upon the ninken. With a squeal, Miriyume slammed Gekido’s surprised hand to the table in a large burst of crackling energy that sent the dog leaping away. “I can’t believe that you call that a ‘technique’!” Miriyume half raged, half mocked, as she stood up and shoved her opponent out of his chair. “Was that even legal?” “Any collaborative method between an Inuzuka and their ninken is recognized as a legal technique,” Nobu cited. “All the good it did you!” Miriyume scolded, as she pounced upon Gekido and began to throttle him. “Hey! It was his idea!” the Inuzuka tried to shift the blame to his ninken, as he desperately tired to protect his painfully ticklish ribs. Aoseishin sat stoically watching the tussle, and grumbled audibly at the accusation. “Shame on you, blaming Aoseishin!” a Frost kunoichi decried from the sidelines. “Punish the transgressor of canine honor!” a grizzled old Inuzuka man bellowed as he scratched his equally grizzled wolf-hound ninken under his chin. “Hear that, Gek-kun?” Miriyume smiled, as she held her team-mate pinned firmly against the ground, straddling his abdomen in a rather unladylike way. “I am simply enforcing a clan dictate...” as she held her hands before her and arced a mild current between them menacingly. “No!” Gekido squirmed with renewed vigor, “Not the ‘ear-zaps’!” “Yes, the ‘ear-zaps’!” someone else in the laughing crowd countered. Miriyume’s face was pure sadistic glee, as she focused the iridescent sparks to her fingertips. “You know too well what breathing in my ear does to me, you shameless cur!” she hissed. “So...I accidently found one of your little kinks...” he whined, “There’s no need to abuse mine!” “....And that’s enough of tonight’s drunken confessions, guys,” Matsuko announced, as he lifted Miriyume off of her victim, and placed her back in the arm wrestling champion’s chair. “And it appears that you have another challenger, Miri-chan,” directing her attention to the man who sat opposite her. “Yo,” Kakashi acknowledged with a small wave. Like a charm, all of Miriyume’s indignant ire melted away as she focused on the man’s lone smiling eye. Matsuko filed that information away for future reference. After the initial, annoyingly recursive thrill his presence seemed to give her, Miriyume narrowed her eyes and made a rough quantification of his chakra. Not good. In gambling terms, he couldn’t even meet her usual opening ante. “You do know how to play this game, right?” she asked, smoothing her distressed kimono. “My ‘Eternal Rival’ at home is a big fan, and challenges me often,” Kakashi replied, as he flexed the artful fingers of his right hand. “So, yes....all too well.” “‘Eternal rival....?” she echoed curiously, offering her hand. “It’s a long story...” placing his leather-clad palm across her smaller, pale one, and curling the fingers against its nearly translucent skin. Her nails had been manicured and lacquered since the Kraken game, in a rather beguiling shade of red, “...for another time.” “I’ll hold you to that,” she winked, as the audience began to amass around them. “Now, prepare to lose!” she taunted, tightening her grip a second before Nobu said: “Begin!” The feel of her sinewy hand clutching his, combined with the playful, impish gleam in her eyes nearly had him defeated before they’d started. And she effortlessly countered his chakra bids, forcing him to rely his muscles. Her own surprised him with their unexpected strength. “Limitless chakra and brawn? Kakashi acknowledged, as she bested his frugal chakra expenditure yet again. He put more power into his arm, and briefly toyed with the idea of opening the First Gate. “Frail women don’t last long up in the North,” Miriyume riposted in a strained voice. Kakashi was easily as strong as Gekido, and nearly as fast-reflexed. Only her chakra would win her this battle, but it seemed so....unsporting. And thus engaged, she got to hold his hand.... He could smell the amber resin that she’d dusted across her collar, and down her sternum, brought into sharper scent by her warmer body temperature. His steadfast, constant pressure against her hand was causing her to bite her lower lip, and make the most distractingly seductive noises of strain as she held out. He could feel the building energy of her chakra reserves being channeled into another wave that would easily eclipse his own. Her priming growl of focus sent coppery tasting wetness leaking down behind his mask. Time to get serious... “Have you ever arm-wrestled an Uchiha?” Kakashi asked. “No, why–“ she managed to answer before her opponent raised his forehead protector, revealing the Sharingan. She watched spellbound and the three tomoe spun into mesmerizing rotation, as he casually stepped over the threshold of her mind. She could see him, like a visitor in her metaphysical library, casually perusing the haphazard scrolls of her mind. ***”So, this is him, huh...?*** —“Raijin-sama!”—Miriyume jumped in reaction to her kami’s sudden presence. His plasma-suffused eyes studied the latest trespasser into her mental palace with grudging curiosity. ***”The famous, or perhaps, infamous, Kakashi Hatake, sifting through your formative year memories... like a sushi chef at a bake sale....”*** —“What?!?”— Miriyume, taking insult at the strange metaphor. ***”Well, LOOK at him! He’s so...understandably confused and overwhelmed. I almost feel sorry for him.”*** The image of Kakashi jumped back as a shelf of manga-styled books fell in response to his browsing. He then moved to examine one of the many pillars of free-stacked hardbound tomes. —“How is he in here?”— Miriyume asked, watching him with a mixture of wonder and alarm. Yeah, Raijin rolled his stormy, pupil-less eyes in resignation. There was a strong attraction brewing here. Normally, such invasions of her privacy were met with....painful consequences. Usually a stinging mental blast of her plentiful chakra. Her subconscious-self seemed to have rolled out the red carpet for this one. ***“You are aware of what a Sharingan can do, aren’t you? Even if it is only a half-assed one...”*** Raijin returned petulantly. —“Can he...see us?”--- ***”No. He’s only focusing on your past at the moment,”*** as they watched him move closer to an old, hand-hewn wooden desk, covered in locked journals and years of emotive carvings onto its surface. A manifestation of an entire life’s worth of the most secret feelings of a highly emotional girl. ***”Do you really want him looking through all that?”*** he warned. —“It’s not like he can open any of them,”--- Miriyume scoffed, then shrieked in horror as the elaborate locking mechanism on her most recent journal sprang open in a small cloud of dust at his touch. Raijin laughed at her plight. ***“You were saying...?”*** ---“He....he can’t....”—stumbling weakly towards Kakashi. ***”I think he just proved otherwise...”*** —“He mustn’t!”— sinking to her trembling knees. —“He’ll find out!”--- Raijin arched an emerald eyebrow. ***”He has reduced you to a complete invertebrate!”*** he scolded in sadistic amusement, crouching beside her trembling, teary-eyed form. There was much more than just the Sharingan at work here. She was transfixed by some kind of emotional current; completely paralyzed from taking any action against the man. He stopped laughing. ***”In the Name of Me...”*** he swore, standing up over his lone, cherished priestess. He knew this day would happen. But why did it have to happen now? Raijin snapped her journal shut with a thought, and sent a ripple of static through the desk for good measure. To his surprise, Kakashi simply shook it off, reached for another of the journals. ***”Aren’t we the curious one!”*** he mocked, sending another jolt into the book, forcing him to drop it. Again, he persisted in his browsing. ***”Can I show this upstart the door already?”*** Raijin asked, cracking his knuckles menacingly as he looked back at his soul-stricken priestess, who nodded emphatically. The brief glimpse Kakashi caught of Miriyume’s mind only confirmed what he’d suspected all along: she was a bafflingly complex, emotionally driven creature. Usually, the Sharingan could skim a person’s thoughts, and gain a general understanding of intent or mind set, like the time he synced up with Zabuza’s violent thoughts. But this.... This was like trying to find his bearings in a raging hurricane of random events, punctuated by blinding bolts of psychological overload. And just when he thought he’d found some shelter from her mental tempest, it was lost in an explosion of chakra that sent him hurtling clear out of her mind. A second after Kakashi had used his Sharingan, Miriyume gasped and yanked her hand away, recoiling so far as to stand up and back into Matsuko’s surprised arms. “Miriyume-sama forfeits!” Nobu announced, drawing varied reactions from the crowd. “How DARE you sneak into my head!” Miriyume censured the winner angrily. “Yeah, Hata-ka-ta-ka-ke!” Gekido seconded drunkenly. “Have the courtesy to take her out for a nice dinner, first!” “I...meant no offense, Miriyume-sama,” Kakashi apologized, attempting to stand. He fell back into the chair with a groan. His sight began to warp the world around him like a fun-house mirror. Using the eye had been reckless. “It’s merely a tactic I employ in pressing circumstances...albeit an expensive one.” “Kakashi-kun?” Kurenai rushed over to assess her compatriot’s general health. “You look like you’re about to pass out!” “Lightweight!” Gekido mocked from the floor, as Aoseishin obliged him as a makeshift pillow. Hiruzen sighed. “Why do you always push yourself to this ridiculous extent of chakra exhaustion, Hatake-san? Even as a small child, before acquiring the Sharingan, you were constantly doing this!” Renara smiled wistfully, reminded of how she used to lecture another child prodigy with a very different dojutsu. Eyes that even confounded the owners most of the time. Ryuuyuki had been just as stubbornly driven, but he had a distinct advantage that everyone else lacked. The Heron Priestess gave her remaining child a pointed nudge toward the weakened victor. “Extend your hand,” Miriyume instructed Kakashi, as she reclaimed her seat across from his slumped form. Weakly, he slid a hand toward her. “Remove your glove,” she commanded testily, annoyed by the staggering amount of clothing layers this man had. Honestly, there were permanent residents of Shimogakure who bared more skin in the deepest part of winter! “Bedside manners, Stormfly-chan,” Renara reprimanded softly, as Kurenai assisted with removing Kakashi’s glove. “And don’t flood the poor man. Raise the tide gently....like a spring thaw...” Miriyume placed her palm flat against his bare one, aligning their most commonly used tenketsu, and began to gently transfer chakra. Kakashi’s blurred vision began to regain its sharp resolution, as a heady drought of Ninshu-distilled chakra was poured back into his being. The was different from the chakra infusions of the medical-nin, as it was laced with the spiritual training of a mystic. The peace it conferred upon his heart made the Sharingan begin to water up. “That replacement eye steals more than it should,” Miriyume remarked icily, as he used it to watch the opalescent stream of priestess chakra course its way up his arm, enveloping him in its aurora-like radiance. “Cover it.” Kakashi obliged her with a smile. “I was only enjoying the lights that time, I promise.” Miriyume bit her lip and turned away, cheeks blushing slightly at her paranoia being called out. “The Sharingan is the most useful give I’ve ever received, but the chakra tax is obscene,” Kakashi continued, finding the strength to sit up straighter. Gekido giggled like a small child from his spot on the floor. “Obscene things!” “Speaking thusly,” Prince Tosho grumbled, as he padded onto the scene with flattened ears, and a sour glance toward the bar. A great basso voice was singing a strange, choppy, tuneless song of nonsensical words, with the accompaniment of drunken drumming. “Oh, kami,” Renara sighed mightily with a face-palm, realizing at once who it was. “What on earth is that?” Kurenai openly asked, as she and Kakashi caught sight of a short, rotund man with his pants pulled up to his neck, rollicking about in rough time to the odd song, as the Shimokhan sang above the nearly breathless laughter of everyone in the tent. “The Yak Lullaby,” Matsuko proudly provided. “A song said to charm even the stampeding herds of musk ox,” the Hokage elaborated. “....and drive away any possessing a refined ear,” the tiger lord rumbled contemptuously, before turning to Miriyume. “I’ll be taking my leave now, Miriyume-san,” giving her shoulder an affectionate nudge with his nose before disappearing in a puff of icy vapor. “And I believe that this concludes this evening’s offering of epic revelry....” Renara declared, casting a weary eye on her husband and his capering jonin captain. Oetsu Tsuyoiude always encouraged Ryuumaru’s most idiotic stunts... “Is it that late already?” Miriyume asked, sounding a bit mournful, as she continued to channel chakra into Kakashi’s appreciative hand. He had the most elegant fingers. So long and dexterous... “Its past three in the morning, Miri-chan!” Matsuko chuckled. “Come on, little Stormfly,” the Heron Sage directed, patting her shoulder. “The bride needs to get her sleep. But first, help me reel-in your Father...” Miriyume gave Kakashi’s hand a brief squeeze, as she topped off his chakra reserve in a sudden rush, causing his senses to spin for a moment. As her hand slipped from his weak grasp, a profound fatigue fell in on him. Chakra replenishment couldn’t alleviate the utter torpor he’d achieved. “Can you make it back to your camp?” Matsuko asked Kakashi, recognizing the man’s lethargy. “If not, you can crash with Gek-kun and I....” “Only if I can cuddle with his dog!” Gekido demanded. “I believe we can manage to get him where he needs to go,” Hiruzen answered, as he and Kurenai assisted Kakashi’s stand. “And he’ll be fully recovered by morning. I know how to make an excellent restorative miso for the body.” “Add some eggplant, and I’ll take it,” Kakashi smiled, and he settled into the duel support of his fellow villager’s shoulders. “Where’s Pakkun?” “Right here, Boss,” the pug announced from the counter, still chewing a piece of dried yak. Kakashi’s eye flicked from him to the Lady Ice Flame, in silent reminder of his previous orders. “Got it, Boss,” acknowledged, and moved down the bar to keep vigilant watch over Miriyume, as she and her mother worked to corral the inebriated Shimokhan.

#kakashi

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arplis · 5 years ago

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Arplis - News: Cooking with Varlam Shalamov

In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers. The Kolyma Stories and my extended time indoors offered me the opportunity to use up some obscure items that have been languishing in my pantry. The complete stories of Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982), published by NYRB Classics in two newly translated volumes, contain some of the bleakest and most powerful writing we have about the Soviet gulag. They’re also terrifyingly and indelibly about food—that is, about starving to death. Shalamov was first arrested in the twenties, when he was a student at Moscow University, and then again in 1937 for Trotskyist activity. He spent the next seventeen years in labor camps, including on the far northern island of Kolyma, where he mined for gold in some of the most horrific conditions in all the gulag. He found no redemption in the camps, writing that they were “a negative school of life in every possible way. Nobody can get anything useful or necessary out of the camps … Every minute of camp life is poisoned.” Yet in the decades after his release, he boiled the horrors he’d seen down to their pure essentials and shared them via this extraordinary body of work. Shalamov is plainspoken—“he knew his material perfectly, and wrote in a way that everyone can understand,” notes the translator Donald Rayfield—but prolonged immersion in the work reveals him as a better Solzhenitsyn; the stories are compulsively readable despite their subject matter, as compressed and brilliant as the Arctic snow. The temptation would be to compare them to “metal number one,” as gold was called by the Soviet authorities—if Shalamov had not so loathed it. I was reading the first volume, Kolyma Stories, two weeks ago as New York City shut down due to the ongoing public health crisis. He was the only writer who didn’t feel frivolous—not because there can be any comparison between America’s sudden food insecurity and the Stalinist gulag’s conditions of prolonged starvation but because I have been depressed by the human behavior on display. To me, social distancing seemed to erupt spontaneously, and I found it heartbreaking. Even if it will later emerge as necessary and the best decision, I’m hopelessly stuck on the idea that distance is bad. I read a Leslie Jamison piece about being sick with the coronavirus and caring alone for her two-year-old, and on an emotional level, I’m outraged that I can’t bring her soup and human kindness. The recipe called for a Pullman loaf pan, but I had to make do with what was on hand and baked my bread in a Dutch oven. Proper Russian rye bread is not round. I don’t claim Shalamov’s moral authority for my opinions, but I think often of the first point on a list he wrote in Moscow in 1961, which Rayfield includes in his introduction to Kolyma Tales. The list is entitled “What I Saw and Understood in the Camps,” and the first point is: “The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger and beatings.” That’s too bleak for our times, but it bears keeping in mind. The third point is: “I realized that friendship, comradeship, would never arise in really difficult, life-threatening conditions. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not at the pit face.)” We have opportunities. I find Shalamov consoling for his gravity, his sorrow, and his moral purity. Our times are grave and sad, though unfortunately for those of us not deemed essential workers, feelings of moral purity are hard to come by. I decided to bake from him in order to encourage others to read his stories, not because I think that baking bread and sharing it on the internet does much for humanity; baking is fun, but as a cook and sensualist, I consider virtual intimacy no intimacy at all. I’ve also had a long-running, long-failing personal project to correctly bake Russian rye bread from homemade sourdough starter, and testimony by all the novice quarantine bakers currently struggling with this implies that my experiences may be of some use. Moreover, while any attempt to faithfully reproduce the staff of life from a concentration camp would be ghoulish, Shalamov specifies that the bread was rye, and I had the medium rye flour, coarse rye meal, and red rye malt necessary for such bread already in my pandemic pantry, waiting to be thriftily used up. Appropriately, it was snowing on Shalamov baking day. I weighed options for using this can of condensed milk. Shalamov writes that bread was the “basic food” in the camps, and it appears in nearly every story. “We got half our calories from bread,” he explains. “The cooked food was something hard to define, its nutritional value depended on thousands of different things.” It was bread that kept him alive, specifically the ratio between its quantity and his labor. Men in his stories scheme for bread, fight for it, weep when they don’t get “a crusty piece.” There are loving descriptions of allowing crumbs to dissolve on the tongue. In the story “The Typhus Quarantine,” in which the Shalamov proxy Andreyev wakes up in the hospital and realizes he’s going to survive, he observes that “as little as half a kilo of rye bread, three spoonfuls of porridge, and a bowl of thin gruel were enough to resurrect a man: as long as he didn’t have to work.” I considered making a second dish, oreshki, that I remember from my time living in Moscow: walnut-shaped cookies filled with a caramel made from condensed milk. The inspiration was “Condensed Milk,” a Shalamov story in which the narrator achieves one of his few victories over the forces trying to destroy him, tricking an enemy out of two cans of condensed milk. He consumes both instantly, after having “used the corner of an ax to pierce a hole” in the cans. I also had a can of condensed milk sitting in my pandemic pantry. Moreover, a Russian friend from Irkutsk—where the narrator arrives after his long exile, in the last story of the first volume—once told me that to make the caramel, you boil the sealed can for hours, stopping just before the point of explosion. This sounded like a cooking adventure of the type I am familiar with and enjoy, but for two factors: I’d have to order a cookie mold off the internet at a time when people need the transportation grid for more pressing matters, and it felt inappropriate to Shalamov and his work. Thus, I made bread. It’s the title of a story, and it’s the ultimate human comfort food. There are many styles of Russian rye, but the one I’ve been trying to reproduce has a chewy, spongy, sour interior and a leathery black crust dusted with coriander seeds. I found a recipe that seemed close in a book called The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg. The first step was to develop a starter. The recipe did not specify if I was supposed to grind the red rye malt, but it looked ground in the book’s photo, so I did. The starter method outlined in The Rye Baker is fairly similar to all the others on the internet: You combine flour and water in about equal weights (half a cup of flour to a quarter cup of water, roughly), cover, and leave in a room-temperature place for twenty-four hours. Then you scoop out half the mixture, add another round of flour and water, stir, and repeat. After forty-eight hours, you should see gas bubbles, but even if you don’t, step up the discard-and-feed cycle to every twelve hours. Allegedly, within seven days you will have a puffy, sour mixture that can rise bread. I wish I could report success with this, but instead I’ve had days and weeks of failure—and even, one night, tears, when my husband preheated the oven and accidentally cooked three carefully tended starters I’d placed there to soak up the warmth from the pilot light. Mishaps aside (oh, there were more), I suspect that my fundamental problem was the temperature: the Ginsberg book specifies that “room temperature” is between sixty-eight and seventy-two degrees. Up in Vermont, it’s been snowing, and starters left on my countertop have remained completely inert. Some sources suggest that a starter that looks flat might still be working, but I tried it and got a rocklike, unrisen loaf. Starters nourished in warmer places—the proofing drawer, the oven with the light on, the microwave with the light on—showed some growth and bubbling but either didn’t survive or did not raise bread. I suspect they may have been too warm, since too-warm conditions encourage bacteria (the sourness and bubbles) but not yeast (the growth). It’s also possible that wild yeast is a more mysterious beast than commonly admitted and that my starter just didn’t have enough of it. A last caveat: Ginsburg says the starter should be ready in five to seven days. I tried mine at day seven, and it did not work. However, other sources say you need up to twenty days to establish a culture powerful enough to bake with. There is also the possibility that my starter was okay and the failure was somewhere in the bread recipe or my technique. Ginsberg’s Borodinsky rye bread asks for “a scald” and “a sponge.” For the former, you pour boiling water over rye meal and rye malt and allow it to soften overnight. For the latter, you make a slurry of starter, water, and flour and allow it to rise overnight. In the morning, you combine the two and let them sit for three to four hours “until doubled in volume.” I did so, and the doubling did not happen. I thought my starter was at fault. But then I added a packet of instant yeast (proofed), and though it bubbled, it also did not increase the volume. I would have stopped there, having been down this inedible-brick, wasted-flour road before, but for the sake of this story, I added the rest of the ingredients and followed the rest of the instructions, producing a pasty, bitter, concrete-like sludge, nowhere near the color of the bread promised in the cookbook photo. I had no faith in it at all. When my starter did not raise the scald-sponge mixture, I added commercial yeast. Luckily, I had some on hand. But the sludge rose, and I baked it, and the texture and crustiness were perfect. If I hadn’t made other mistakes, it may have even been good bread. Warm, with butter and jam, it wasn’t so bad. I’d like to say that having to provide a recipe for this failed loaf is a caution to me and that I’m going to give up on starter and stop wasting flour, but the truth is that I plan to make another starter tomorrow. There will never be such a time again (I hope, fervently) for sticking around the house tending to multiple long rises and watching the yeast grow. And anyway, I’m sure they would have eaten my bread in Kolyma. Borodinsky Bread Adapted from The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg. whole wheat flour water To make a starter: Day 1: Using a quart-size mason jar or other roomy receptacle, combine half a cup of flour (I used King Arthur White Whole Wheat) with a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of water, and stir to make a starchy paste, making sure not to leave any pockets of flour sticking to the sides. Cover with saran wrap, and seal with a rubber band. If it’s hot where you are, you can probably leave the jar sitting out at room temperature. Otherwise, place it in an unheated oven with the door closed and the light on, and leave for twenty-four hours. Day 2: Scoop out a quarter cup of the mixture, and refresh with half a cup of flour and an additional quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir till completely combined, and let sit for another twenty-four hours. Days 3–5: Begin feeding the starter at twelve-hour intervals, with the following change from the above: Scoop out half a cup (rather than a quarter cup) of the mixture, and discard; refresh with half a cup of flour and a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir, cover, and keep in the oven with the light on. My recipe says you want five to seven days to build a powerful starter. I tried baking with mine on the seventh day, with inconclusive results. To make the bread: For the sponge: 2 cups medium rye flour 1 3/4 cups warm water 1/3 cup sourdough starter For the scald: 3/4 cup coarse rye meal 1/4 cup red rye malt, ground 1 1/4 cup boiling water For the final dough: scald-sponge (use all) 1 2/3 cups medium rye flour 1 cup bread flour 1 2/3 tsp salt 2 tbs dark molasses 1 tbs red rye malt, ground flavorless oil (for pan) 1–2 tbs coriander seeds Day 1: The evening before you bake, make the sponge and the scald. To make the sponge, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover with saran wrap, and leave overnight in your warm area of choice (“room temperature” if you’re someplace warm; the oven with the light on if you’re someplace cold, like a New York City apartment). Do the same for the scald in a separate bowl. Let rest for twelve hours. Day 2, morning: Using the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the scald with the sponge. It’s essential that you allow the scald-sponge to rise in the mixer bowl because on the next step, you’ll add the rest of the ingredients and knead the dough, and you want to keep as much air in as possible. Cover the mixer bowl with saran wrap, put it in your warm place, and allow it to rest and rise for an additional three to four hours, or until doubled in bulk. Day 2, afternoon: Add the flours, salt, molasses, and red rye malt to the risen mixture in the mixing bowl, then use the dough hook on low speed for eight to ten minutes to create a soft, smooth, deep-brown dough. Cover and ferment in your warm place until visibly expanded, sixty to seventy-five minutes. Day 2, afternoon: Grease a nine-by-four-by-four-inch Pullman loaf pan with butter or flavorless oil (I baked mine in a Dutch oven because I didn’t have a loaf pan). Carefully spoon in the risen dough. Use wet hands to distribute it evenly, and smooth the top. Spoon a tablespoon of water over the top to keep the dough moist, then cover and set in your warm place to rise until the top of the loaf shows broken bubbles, an hour and a half to two hours. Day 2, evening: Preheat the oven to 550, arranging one rack in the middle of the oven and one at the bottom. Place a shallow baking dish or roasting pan on the bottom shelf. Five minutes before you put the bread in, add two cups of boiling water to the pan. Bake with steam for ten minutes, then remove the pan, cover the loaf with aluminum foil, and reduce the temperature to 350. Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and return it to the oven to firm up the sides and bottom crust. Bake until the loaf thumps when tapped with a finger, ten to fifteen more minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool thoroughly before slicing. Valerie Stivers is a writer based in New York. Read earlier installments of Eat Your Words. #EatYourWords

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/cooking-with-varlam-shalamov-1

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nearanddeartothesoul · 8 years ago

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Is this the side you wanted to see? The worthless,weak, side that cannot look one in the eye? You wanted to see this sight. The sight of hopelessness at its finest. The darkness that both breaks and mends me? Have you ever experienced that feeling? That feeling of complete self hatred? That feeling that is just beyond empty. There is no coming back nor stopping it from consuming your entire being. I feel weak and sick to my stomach, thoughts transpiring and racing 100 miles a second. Ever failure, ever bad words, horrible action, or event flashing like a pictorama before my eyes. It hurts it all hurts. The hurricane swirling in my chest compression at its finest. There’s no end. There is no stopping this force and it breaks even more. The amount of time and effort I have put into fixing this; knowing there is no fix.

I am the hand on the clock that is broken, forever unchanging. Watching as the others tick forward as I’m paused. Drifting behind because time meant nothing to me. It’s been wasted, there was never a time when I saw the light at the end of the journey. At times there are glimpses but they always fade in the distance getting further and further. I never realized just how far away it is until I can no longer breathe. Until my chest is caving in and my eyes can no longer stay open. There is just no end to the brain damaging thoughts, the long nights of loneliness and anxiousness reliving all the mistakes you’ve made that day, yesterday, your whole life. And you almost want to laugh at yourself because you understand how pitiful you may look but these are the troubles you face.

What do you want me to say? That I am fine. That this is just a phase. You don’t want to hear the real words in my mind. You don’t want to hear how much I’ve thought about ending my life. How stressed it makes me when things change abruptly. How I wish I could just dig sharp objects into my skin when I’m having a hard time. How I coax myself to get out of bed everyday and want to cry that I actually woke up. Is that selfish of me? Probably. But the more I try to make myself happy and try to achieve this level that others already seem to be on. I find myself sinking more and more into my dark sanctuary. The feeling of failure and self doubt creeping in me. There are so many expectations but are they mine or just what I’ve been told what I should become? How did this become me? How did I become this trapped? When did my dreams become nightmares?

Time, Time ticks along. My chest is still heavy. My hands are itching for the blade. My friend, companion, clutch of many; I twist it around unaffected by the sharpness pricking my fingers. Smirking “Would understand if I said this is how I feel alive?” this is how I feel in touch with the space around me. Would you understand if you saw my scars and my shaky hands digging the blade into my skins? Would you be disgusted with me? I disgust myself. I am disgusted that people can hurt just as worse as this blade. Sting just as hard and burn a thousand times more; Would you look at me the same know this is how I cope? This is my vice. I wish I could explain how it fulfills me. How the euphoria builds from my toes and sways up to my chest opening all the airways. You wouldn't understand and I wouldn’t know how to explain it to begin with. There are just no words to say how all these emotions and thoughts occur within a three minute time span and yet I am crippled for a week and suffering daily.

I’m just a symptom. Just a symptom of everything wrong in the world. Placing all the blame on my shoulders. Letting it use and abuse me, rendering me an open target for the universe to push more at me until I no longer want to be seen. There’s no cure, no long term relief, no one to fix me, no one to save me from myself; what will I become when I no longer want to battle alone. A war can take years and in the end there is always a loser and a winner. What if I never win? Would you understand if I told you that is my number one fear. That I could lose this internal battle; that I could not save myself. What could you say to that? Would you understand? In my heart I honestly do not think you would or could. You may have surprised me and I do apologize for not having enough faith to hear your answers let alone ask you these questions before you read any of this.

It is almost comical how long someone can last with this alone. Constantly fighting, wanting to speak but not having the courage, and then just drowning from it all. The detail of the prior events leading to this, well there just is not enough time nor will of my own to go into them. Does it really matter anyway? Talking about it does not turn back the clock to change them. We can both agree with that. So do not blame yourself, I do not believe anyone could have stopped this, I could not stop it and I tried for years. If you read it all and you’re to this point now just know that the moments we had I did enjoy them to the fullest they were what I needed in the most to know they were possible but paradise is never forever. It was always me, never you. Ashamed I am but there was no changing this outcome. I do feel the need to apologize. I am sorry. I am sorry for the undecided smiles, hesitant words and pulling you into my hurricane. Mr. Emry Donivan Rotella I am sorry but I want you to know it was always me and never you.

The words jumble on the page. I could have saved you. I could have saved you. My hands red from squeezing them so hard. I was too late. I was not enough. I replay her words “I am sorry” I never knew. I never knew the severity of what was happening in that whirlwind of a mind. I’m glued to my chair. Left with only pages and memories I was alone. Left all alone, I was not enough to save her. I was not enough to keep her here. My eyes close back pressed against the recliner the fire giving me warmth; though I am stone cold. Letting the darkness take me. To the place I could see her, embrace her and give her answers, solutions whatever she needed to be able to keep fighting to breathe.

I sit visioning her highlighting the quote “You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.” from The Great Gatsby looking at me with a smile and full eyes. I drift further and further into the night until she is the only thing in my memory as the fire still gives warmth of comfort. The same comfort she needed but never seemed to get. The tears seem to appear again “ I could have saved her.”

#doublepost #self harm #suicide #suicidal #it's never too late #there is always help #depression #anxiety

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corona525 · 8 years ago

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I could have saved you

Is this the side you wanted to see? The worthless,weak, side that cannot look one in the eye? You wanted to see this sight. The sight of hopelessness at its finest. The darkness that both breaks and mends me? Have you ever experienced that feeling? That feeling of complete self hatred? That feeling that is just beyond empty. There is no coming back nor stopping it from consuming your entire being. I feel weak and sick to my stomach, thoughts transpiring and racing 100 miles a second. Ever failure, ever bad words, horrible action, or event flashing like a pictorial before my eyes. It hurts it all hurts. The hurricane swirling in my chest compression at its finest. There’s no end. There is no stopping this force and it breaks even more. The amount of time and effort I have put into fixing this; knowing there is no fix.

#writing #thoughts #Suicide #self harm #there is always help #its never too late #I'm feeling pretty sad

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arplis · 5 years ago

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Arplis - News: Cooking with Varlam Shalamov

In Valerie Stivers’s Eat Your Words series, she cooks up recipes drawn from the works of various writers.

The Kolyma Stories and my extended time indoors offered me the opportunity to use up some obscure items that have been languishing in my pantry.

The complete stories of Varlam Shalamov (1907–1982), published by NYRB Classics in two newly translated volumes, contain some of the bleakest and most powerful writing we have about the Soviet gulag. They’re also terrifyingly and indelibly about food—that is, about starving to death. Shalamov was first arrested in the twenties, when he was a student at Moscow University, and then again in 1937 for Trotskyist activity. He spent the next seventeen years in labor camps, including on the far northern island of Kolyma, where he mined for gold in some of the most horrific conditions in all the gulag. He found no redemption in the camps, writing that they were “a negative school of life in every possible way. Nobody can get anything useful or necessary out of the camps … Every minute of camp life is poisoned.” Yet in the decades after his release, he boiled the horrors he’d seen down to their pure essentials and shared them via this extraordinary body of work. Shalamov is plainspoken—“he knew his material perfectly, and wrote in a way that everyone can understand,” notes the translator Donald Rayfield—but prolonged immersion in the work reveals him as a better Solzhenitsyn; the stories are compulsively readable despite their subject matter, as compressed and brilliant as the Arctic snow. The temptation would be to compare them to “metal number one,” as gold was called by the Soviet authorities—if Shalamov had not so loathed it.

I was reading the first volume, Kolyma Stories, two weeks ago as New York City shut down due to the ongoing public health crisis. He was the only writer who didn’t feel frivolous—not because there can be any comparison between America’s sudden food insecurity and the Stalinist gulag’s conditions of prolonged starvation but because I have been depressed by the human behavior on display. To me, social distancing seemed to erupt spontaneously, and I found it heartbreaking. Even if it will later emerge as necessary and the best decision, I’m hopelessly stuck on the idea that distance is bad. I read a Leslie Jamison piece about being sick with the coronavirus and caring alone for her two-year-old, and on an emotional level, I’m outraged that I can’t bring her soup and human kindness.

The recipe called for a Pullman loaf pan, but I had to make do with what was on hand and baked my bread in a Dutch oven. Proper Russian rye bread is not round.

I don’t claim Shalamov’s moral authority for my opinions, but I think often of the first point on a list he wrote in Moscow in 1961, which Rayfield includes in his introduction to Kolyma Tales. The list is entitled “What I Saw and Understood in the Camps,” and the first point is: “The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger and beatings.” That’s too bleak for our times, but it bears keeping in mind. The third point is: “I realized that friendship, comradeship, would never arise in really difficult, life-threatening conditions. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not at the pit face.)” We have opportunities.

I find Shalamov consoling for his gravity, his sorrow, and his moral purity. Our times are grave and sad, though unfortunately for those of us not deemed essential workers, feelings of moral purity are hard to come by. I decided to bake from him in order to encourage others to read his stories, not because I think that baking bread and sharing it on the internet does much for humanity; baking is fun, but as a cook and sensualist, I consider virtual intimacy no intimacy at all. I’ve also had a long-running, long-failing personal project to correctly bake Russian rye bread from homemade sourdough starter, and testimony by all the novice quarantine bakers currently struggling with this implies that my experiences may be of some use. Moreover, while any attempt to faithfully reproduce the staff of life from a concentration camp would be ghoulish, Shalamov specifies that the bread was rye, and I had the medium rye flour, coarse rye meal, and red rye malt necessary for such bread already in my pandemic pantry, waiting to be thriftily used up.

Appropriately, it was snowing on Shalamov baking day. I weighed options for using this can of condensed milk.

Shalamov writes that bread was the “basic food” in the camps, and it appears in nearly every story. “We got half our calories from bread,” he explains. “The cooked food was something hard to define, its nutritional value depended on thousands of different things.” It was bread that kept him alive, specifically the ratio between its quantity and his labor. Men in his stories scheme for bread, fight for it, weep when they don’t get “a crusty piece.” There are loving descriptions of allowing crumbs to dissolve on the tongue. In the story “The Typhus Quarantine,” in which the Shalamov proxy Andreyev wakes up in the hospital and realizes he’s going to survive, he observes that “as little as half a kilo of rye bread, three spoonfuls of porridge, and a bowl of thin gruel were enough to resurrect a man: as long as he didn’t have to work.”

I considered making a second dish, oreshki, that I remember from my time living in Moscow: walnut-shaped cookies filled with a caramel made from condensed milk. The inspiration was “Condensed Milk,” a Shalamov story in which the narrator achieves one of his few victories over the forces trying to destroy him, tricking an enemy out of two cans of condensed milk. He consumes both instantly, after having “used the corner of an ax to pierce a hole” in the cans. I also had a can of condensed milk sitting in my pandemic pantry. Moreover, a Russian friend from Irkutsk—where the narrator arrives after his long exile, in the last story of the first volume—once told me that to make the caramel, you boil the sealed can for hours, stopping just before the point of explosion. This sounded like a cooking adventure of the type I am familiar with and enjoy, but for two factors: I’d have to order a cookie mold off the internet at a time when people need the transportation grid for more pressing matters, and it felt inappropriate to Shalamov and his work.

Thus, I made bread. It’s the title of a story, and it’s the ultimate human comfort food. There are many styles of Russian rye, but the one I’ve been trying to reproduce has a chewy, spongy, sour interior and a leathery black crust dusted with coriander seeds. I found a recipe that seemed close in a book called The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg. The first step was to develop a starter.

The recipe did not specify if I was supposed to grind the red rye malt, but it looked ground in the book’s photo, so I did.

The starter method outlined in The Rye Baker is fairly similar to all the others on the internet: You combine flour and water in about equal weights (half a cup of flour to a quarter cup of water, roughly), cover, and leave in a room-temperature place for twenty-four hours. Then you scoop out half the mixture, add another round of flour and water, stir, and repeat. After forty-eight hours, you should see gas bubbles, but even if you don’t, step up the discard-and-feed cycle to every twelve hours. Allegedly, within seven days you will have a puffy, sour mixture that can rise bread.

I wish I could report success with this, but instead I’ve had days and weeks of failure—and even, one night, tears, when my husband preheated the oven and accidentally cooked three carefully tended starters I’d placed there to soak up the warmth from the pilot light. Mishaps aside (oh, there were more), I suspect that my fundamental problem was the temperature: the Ginsberg book specifies that “room temperature” is between sixty-eight and seventy-two degrees. Up in Vermont, it’s been snowing, and starters left on my countertop have remained completely inert. Some sources suggest that a starter that looks flat might still be working, but I tried it and got a rocklike, unrisen loaf. Starters nourished in warmer places—the proofing drawer, the oven with the light on, the microwave with the light on—showed some growth and bubbling but either didn’t survive or did not raise bread. I suspect they may have been too warm, since too-warm conditions encourage bacteria (the sourness and bubbles) but not yeast (the growth). It’s also possible that wild yeast is a more mysterious beast than commonly admitted and that my starter just didn’t have enough of it. A last caveat: Ginsburg says the starter should be ready in five to seven days. I tried mine at day seven, and it did not work. However, other sources say you need up to twenty days to establish a culture powerful enough to bake with.

There is also the possibility that my starter was okay and the failure was somewhere in the bread recipe or my technique. Ginsberg’s Borodinsky rye bread asks for “a scald” and “a sponge.” For the former, you pour boiling water over rye meal and rye malt and allow it to soften overnight. For the latter, you make a slurry of starter, water, and flour and allow it to rise overnight. In the morning, you combine the two and let them sit for three to four hours “until doubled in volume.” I did so, and the doubling did not happen. I thought my starter was at fault. But then I added a packet of instant yeast (proofed), and though it bubbled, it also did not increase the volume. I would have stopped there, having been down this inedible-brick, wasted-flour road before, but for the sake of this story, I added the rest of the ingredients and followed the rest of the instructions, producing a pasty, bitter, concrete-like sludge, nowhere near the color of the bread promised in the cookbook photo. I had no faith in it at all.

When my starter did not raise the scald-sponge mixture, I added commercial yeast. Luckily, I had some on hand.

But the sludge rose, and I baked it, and the texture and crustiness were perfect. If I hadn’t made other mistakes, it may have even been good bread. Warm, with butter and jam, it wasn’t so bad. I’d like to say that having to provide a recipe for this failed loaf is a caution to me and that I’m going to give up on starter and stop wasting flour, but the truth is that I plan to make another starter tomorrow. There will never be such a time again (I hope, fervently) for sticking around the house tending to multiple long rises and watching the yeast grow.

And anyway, I’m sure they would have eaten my bread in Kolyma.

Borodinsky Bread

Adapted from The Rye Baker, by Stanley Ginsberg.

whole wheat flour water

To make a starter:

Day 1: Using a quart-size mason jar or other roomy receptacle, combine half a cup of flour (I used King Arthur White Whole Wheat) with a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of water, and stir to make a starchy paste, making sure not to leave any pockets of flour sticking to the sides. Cover with saran wrap, and seal with a rubber band. If it’s hot where you are, you can probably leave the jar sitting out at room temperature. Otherwise, place it in an unheated oven with the door closed and the light on, and leave for twenty-four hours.

Day 2: Scoop out a quarter cup of the mixture, and refresh with half a cup of flour and an additional quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir till completely combined, and let sit for another twenty-four hours.

Days 3–5: Begin feeding the starter at twelve-hour intervals, with the following change from the above: Scoop out half a cup (rather than a quarter cup) of the mixture, and discard; refresh with half a cup of flour and a quarter cup plus a tablespoon of lukewarm water. Stir, cover, and keep in the oven with the light on.

My recipe says you want five to seven days to build a powerful starter. I tried baking with mine on the seventh day, with inconclusive results.

To make the bread:

For the sponge:

2 cups medium rye flour 1 3/4 cups warm water 1/3 cup sourdough starter

For the scald:

3/4 cup coarse rye meal 1/4 cup red rye malt, ground 1 1/4 cup boiling water

For the final dough:

scald-sponge (use all) 1 2/3 cups medium rye flour 1 cup bread flour 1 2/3 tsp salt 2 tbs dark molasses 1 tbs red rye malt, ground flavorless oil (for pan) 1–2 tbs coriander seeds

Day 1: The evening before you bake, make the sponge and the scald. To make the sponge, combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, cover with saran wrap, and leave overnight in your warm area of choice (“room temperature” if you’re someplace warm; the oven with the light on if you’re someplace cold, like a New York City apartment). Do the same for the scald in a separate bowl. Let rest for twelve hours.

Day 2, morning: Using the bowl of your stand mixer, combine the scald with the sponge. It’s essential that you allow the scald-sponge to rise in the mixer bowl because on the next step, you’ll add the rest of the ingredients and knead the dough, and you want to keep as much air in as possible. Cover the mixer bowl with saran wrap, put it in your warm place, and allow it to rest and rise for an additional three to four hours, or until doubled in bulk.

Day 2, afternoon: Add the flours, salt, molasses, and red rye malt to the risen mixture in the mixing bowl, then use the dough hook on low speed for eight to ten minutes to create a soft, smooth, deep-brown dough. Cover and ferment in your warm place until visibly expanded, sixty to seventy-five minutes.

Day 2, afternoon: Grease a nine-by-four-by-four-inch Pullman loaf pan with butter or flavorless oil (I baked mine in a Dutch oven because I didn’t have a loaf pan). Carefully spoon in the risen dough. Use wet hands to distribute it evenly, and smooth the top. Spoon a tablespoon of water over the top to keep the dough moist, then cover and set in your warm place to rise until the top of the loaf shows broken bubbles, an hour and a half to two hours.

Day 2, evening: Preheat the oven to 550, arranging one rack in the middle of the oven and one at the bottom. Place a shallow baking dish or roasting pan on the bottom shelf. Five minutes before you put the bread in, add two cups of boiling water to the pan. Bake with steam for ten minutes, then remove the pan, cover the loaf with aluminum foil, and reduce the temperature to 350. Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes, then remove the loaf from the pan and return it to the oven to firm up the sides and bottom crust. Bake until the loaf thumps when tapped with a finger, ten to fifteen more minutes. Transfer to a rack and cool thoroughly before slicing.

Valerie Stivers is a writer based in New York. Read earlier installments of Eat Your Words.

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/cooking-with-varlam-shalamov

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