A Valentine Hiatus -- Love, Music, Poetry and 'Goong Kratiam'

Today is the day thoughts turn to love -- its many manifestations and how to celebrate and honour this . . . . . . what? -- this indefinable state -- quality? sense? feeling? need? ephemeral something we call love.

Never mind; today is not for definitions. It is a day for action.

I offer a suggestion: poetry, music and a delicious recipe (along with how to obtain the cookbook from which it came). The best of love, ranging from passionately sensual to idealistic or courtly love, may be celebrated over the dining table, while engaging as many senses as possible. I offer a few items for the setting; you do the rest.

The music is very personal; find your own or try:

Andre Rieu's Tour d'amour -- try Kleine cafe aan de haven -- Women love it and Rieu.

Cesaria Evora -- Cabo Verde -- Listen and you'll understand; for example, Tchinctchirote or Quem Bo E have a loping quality, an easy rhythm or a nostalgic note.

Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker -- old, but if you can find it, The Best of Ian and Sylvia -- Listen to Spanish is a Loving Tongue

Edith Piaf -- Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien -- To regret nothing - That is the point.

Classical Vivaldi -- Concerto in A for Guitar, Violin, Viola, Cello

Mozart -- Andres Segovia -- Classical Flamenco Guitar

Dvorak in Prague -- try Humoresque -- Boston Symphony -- very personal -- the first piece of music ever recorded for me

Verdi -- Chorus of Hebrew Slaves -- Va, Pensiero--from Nabucco, Act 111

Yo-Yo Ma -- Flight of the Bumblebee or any of the Appalachian CD -- or is it Yo-Yo Ma in Appalachia?

Nana Mouskouri -- The British Concert -- or try The Humming Chorus from Madame Butterfly -- or -- Habanera from Carmen

Mikis Theodorakis or various artists on The Story of Greece CD -- Dance of Zorba or the soundtrack from Zorba, the Greek -- You might just get up and dance.

Grateful Dead -- Friend of the Devil

Johnny Cash -- Ring of Fire

From the film, Deliverance -- Duelling Banjos

Hot Hot Hot! -- (by ? -- momentarily forgotten and no time to check)

I was getting carried away with the planning; see, it works. Enough.

After the music is on, it is time for poetry -- whether you create your own, read someone else's -- or simply skip the poetry and talk about what your love means -- why you celebrate it.

Just in case, two poems follow, one from Swinburne and one fromSpenser.

THE TRIUMPH OF TIME

Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,
Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.
The singing seasons divide and depart,
Winter and summer depart in twain.
It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,
The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;
Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,
With sullen savour of poisonous pain.

[. . . . ] Come life, come death, not a word be said;
Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?
I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,
If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?

You will have to link for what has been omitted.

Poems and Ballads, First Series

Source text: Swinburne, Algernon. Poems and Ballads, First Series. The Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne. 6 vols. London: Chatto, 1904. 1: xxxi-296

The Swinburne Project

Nearly all Swinburne's major poems reveal the courtly influence through their radical emphasis on the interrelatedness not only of passion and politics but also of all actions, all ideals, all life. Ultimately, for him a great poem must not work to exclude any sphere of human perception or activity. The experience it describes must be amenable to extension. As Thomas Connolly explains, for Swinburne the greatest poetry always expresses a "moral passion" which "fills verse 'with divine force of meaning' . . . [and] enable[sl the poet to [12/13] transcend the material world to commune with the spiritual."

COURTLY LOVE Michael Delahoyde, Washington State University

Chivalry and Courtly Love -- What is Courtly Love?

One more:

One day I wrote her name upon the strand

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay
A mortal thing so to immortalize!
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eek my name be wiped out likewise.
Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name;
Where, when as death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Edmund Spenser

Light the candles and bring your loved one nibblies on toothpicks -- or on your favourite toast or crackers. You might try this.

Goong Kratiam: Garlic Shrimp -- Thai

24 medium shrimp peeled -- Sometimes the smaller ones are tastier. You might even want to double the amount of the marinade/sauce in case you want more.
Cover with a mixture of the following and marinate 1 hour or more.

1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons soya sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon oil

1/2 teaspoon cilantro -- My variation: if you do not have fresh leaves, use dried cilantro. I cook on the assumption that ingredients are always replaceable -- like people. Most of us do not keep everything we need on hand all the time. Perhaps I am simply a slapdash cook.

Heat a cast iron fry pan over very high heat first.

Note: Use a spatter net cover for the oil -- to keep the sputtering oil in the pan.
Have a cover handy to cover the pan and get it off the heat -- only if necessary. Have good oven mittens handy, just in case.
Do not leave this dish while it is cooking because of the oil and high heat.

Add 3 tablespoons oil; it will spatter, so add the shrimp with the marinade and top it with the spatter net cover.

Toss with a slotted spoon occasionally while cooking for 3 minutes. Another addition to the recipe: remove the shrimp and toss into the frypan a tablespoon or two of sherry (cheap sherry works fine though no good chef would tell you that) Serve.

My apologies to the authors for playing fast and loose with their recipe.

Their recipe and the source follows: it works with fewer shrimp--tried with 16--so you might want to prepare a bit more sauce. At Amazon, the book rates 4.5 stars out of 5.

Simply Thai Cooking Wandee Young and Byron Ayanoglu. There are second-hand copies, too. For reviews of this book, link.

Don't forget the wine -- perhaps an Argentine, a Chileno or a Californian cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir or chardonnay -- and if money is tight, pour a glass of your homemade plonk, and enjoy.

Remember, it is the ceremony and the expression of love that matter, not the money spent.

For the rest of dinner and the evening, you're on your own.