BLACKBIRD PICKING & THE MERCILESS EDITOR; 4 & 20 TART

In the language of our people, this will be a quickie.

I just finished picking a gallon of what I am almost certain are blackberries from my back field this morning, in a still-warm, too loose camisole and my dirty slogging boots. The boots are a pale robin’s egg blue, the berries black, the sun coming up, the straps slipping down.
You can see dichotomies are only slightly lower on my personal food chain of loves than ironies.

I’ve been picking berries for several weeks now, a task to which I am well-suited and with which I have a long history. There is a lineage to which I belong: of berry-pickers, Scrabble players, note-pluckers, painters. Compulsive all of us, in issues of small gestures of placement, the scrutiny and one-at a-timeness, whether additive or reductive.

I like to think my compulsive nature serves me at these times.

There has been some question of what to call them—are they black raspberries? Are they blackberries? Are they, in masterful, uncoy three-year-old summation, “backberries?”

Oh, I know myself--and if I am not careful, I confuse myself with my words. Still, I tend to know better what I am doing, gain confidence once I pluck a name for it.

Let's scrap certainty for anything literal and call them “Blackbirds,” then. I like everything about this word; it multi-tasks; it has inherent forward flight and references some past (I once sang Sing a Song of Sixpence badly but honestly and I believed upon request, 200 times in a row).

I suppose it is a risk to give something a name and especially wings when you’re unsure of your audience. “They” also say it’s a great risk to think we can pluck words for our own or keep them for pets, furthering the case for a bird name—you can’t get to them so easily, to own them.

But I'm no risk-taker, merely a picker; a plucker and namer.

I am very conscious that each berry is an action, a choice, has an entirely different flavor, depending on the chosen and the chooser. There I go confusing myself with my words again. We all need to believe that the component of choice goes both ways.

All I can say with certainty is that what I choose becomes a handful of words crushed to my mouth, a pie, a post. And what I take, I hope, gives some kind of life back to the bushes.

This year has been different, with new insights. I have always picked what I’ve seen at the sides of roads or conversations, simply blazed or backed into, protecting my eyes. Though there is meditation and contemplation in berry-picking, it’s funny that up until now, I always believed that what I was doing was random. Somehow, I had it worked out that the entire act was random, based only on the fact that I had not planted any of these bushes—that they were in existence before and outside my control. Maybe I did stumble on the bushes, but I selected carefully, painfully what I took.

I did it: I picked the glittering, wobbly, dark ones that suited my vision of what a berry should be and that I believed sang only to me. I have always been especially fond of those berries with their backs to me, as if I will not see them, and perhaps unduly fond of the scratches incurred while seeking those.

These bushes at the back, from this morning, are wild, and difficult to get to in ways that are maddening and possibly dangerous. This entire flank of bushes in the lower field backs up to someplace rough and a drop off you can’t see, but you can hear is there, if you are listening. It was there I recently discovered an old well. Unplacably familiar noises come from back there, songs and words I can’t decipher but must assume are some kind of benevolent encouragement meant only for me, else never come back. Of course, being compulsive, who am I kidding.

Then, also, there is the whole copse of berries in the barnyard. I have lived here for years, and till this year let it be overgrown. Berries I either never knew were there until now, or which have sprung up spontaneously, from the sun-warmed skull of Athena—from my own wishing them into existence now.

Which is more likely?

And I know that I am reckless, even in my order. I know, without looking, that by 10 am I will ditch the boots or anything which keeps me from feeling the unevenness of the ground beneath my feet, that I will look like the victor in a hillbilly barfight after a lost weekend in Ocean City: gasp-trashy bra-strap sunburn, scratches and track-marks up and down my forearms, my feet inconsolably black despite an hour’s soaking. Hands, like Lady Macbeth’s, stained red with ghosts.

“Oh,” gasped 5 year-old Sylph, running across the field to me this morning, small, confident and reverent-hungry fingers reaching past thorns, finding, plucking--me watching her train her eye on a single berry and pulling just that one, not minding the soft tear-scratch of the thorns and actually smiling just a little:

“they’re jewels.”

I fear she has the gene.

Damn words: potholes, portholes, birdholes, keyholes.

Sigh. When I want to get closer to my thoughts, I cook. So here’s the Blackbird Pie; The 4 & 20 Tart, on a nest of kitchen twine & lemon peel. It wasn't quite what I envisioned, but it is good.

BLACKBIRD PIE, OR 4 & 20 TART RECIPE:
[Wasn’t that a funny thing to set before the King? ]

CRUST:

1.5 C unbleached flour

1.5 cups toasted sunflower seeds, almonds, hazelnuts (or other mix)

1/4 C. light brown sugar

sea salt

1.5 sticks chilled, cubed butter

2 egg yolks

Grind nuts in a food processor, add other ingredients, pulse and gather dough. Reserve 1/3 dough to make cookies and bird top to tart. Press into a 10" tart pan, prick.

FILLING:

4 tsps water

6 egg yolks

1/2 C light brown sugar

2 C half and half

vanilla bean, split length-wise

1 cup sour cream

Make a custard (sigh, again with the brooding custard), cook and stir everything but yolks; temper tolks and return to pan and stir until thick. Cool.

BERRIES: Blackbirds, about 4 cups

Assemble: crust, custard, top with berries and bird cut out from crust. Bake at 400 degrees about 35-40 minutes. Cover crust when it gets brown.

People always say, but why did you make that--why that recipe?
As if I had any choice at all in the matter. See, the recipe was already there--I just named it.

Though I wish I was special enough that it chose me, specifically, I know in my heart that if I have any choice at all in the matter, it was only whether or not to act.

To paraphrase Yoda: Do or Not Do, there is no Why.