GoGypsy

Farm your connections

2012-02-07T01:12:00.005-05:00

It started with the fiddle. My boot clad toes tapped the smooth wooden floor (perfect for sliding across once the boots come off).
The banjo joined in with the other strings and my hands couldn't keep still either.
Harmonizing voices filled the rafters.
The saltiness of the ocean mingled with the smell of wood fires and pines, the occasional whiff of cannabis hung in the air. The stars hung above the shores of Monterey as we danced into the night.

The (unofficial) dress code for the night:
Ladies in cowgirl-ish button ups (cleaned of dirt and chicken shit) and organic cotton layered tops, a few prairie/hippie girl skirts but mostly jeans with boots (with a little of that dirt and chicken shit clinging to the bottom perhaps).
Gents in jeans and t-shirts with eco-friendly logos ranging from farming to surfing to beer. Lots and lots of good local beer. And plenty of plaid flannels to go around. So many beards you would think some of the guys were transplanted straight from Williamsburg (some were) but these hipsters are actually working the land instead of workin their rugged good looks at the dog run in McCarren Park.

The participants at this ecological farming conference kicked up their heels for the final night of the yearly gathering. Music and chatter and stomping (those boots again) filled the high vaulted ceilings of the hall. Out into the chilly night we would run after a lively song full of swinging on arms and twirling and clapping and Yee-hawing and laughing.
Catching our breath we would launch into all the possibilities before us: education of new farmers and food justice activism and building backyard gardens and growing micro veggies for renowned eating establishments and teaching little kids where a carrot comes from and growing grain to sell to local brewers and crafting healing herbs to aid an ailing population and starting a worker owned rooftop garden restaurant.

Growing food.
Eating food.
Loving food.

Back into the "real world" I stumbled the next day. My first dose of the reality of the struggles and challenges we have before us: my family.
Fam: "Why would I pay $4 for a head of lettuce if I could get the same thing for $1?"
Me: "Even if you knew it was grown organically and sustainably by someone getting a fair living wage for their work?"
Fam: "Yah. Why would I pay more? It just doesn't make economic sense."
Me: "What if it tastes better?"
Fam: "OK, maybe if it tastes better."

So price first, taste second, human beings third.
Check.
(And this was coming from someone who can definitely afford the true cost of food.)

As hard as that was to hear after a four days of communing with like minded folks, in some ways the immediate disillusionment was good. Work needs to be done to expand the choir.
It's harder to instill compassion, but dammit, I'm an idealist, I will keep trying.

My solution for now? Dinners. Potlucks, sit-down four course meals, hands-only, veggie or meat based, whatever. Let us take a plate and a chair and talk.
And eat. Because I'm convinced once one has had lovingly raised vegetables full of actual nutrients, it's hard to go back and justify that tasteless nameless $1 head of lettuce. Better yet, meet your farmer. Look into the eyes that watched that vegetable grow from seed to soccer ball sized edible. Shake the hand that pulled that lettuce out of the ground.
Make the connection between food and people and earth.

Connections. That is all we have.
How beautiful, delicious, giving can you get?

Just a girl

2012-01-26T21:04:00.007-05:00

Her face wasn't necessarily totally forgotten, I just had no reason to remember it until tonight.

Her face (blue eyes, freckles, framed by short brown hair) was resurrected from the deep folds of my memory by a post on Facebook from a man (then boy, now out) with whom I went to middle school. Sometimes I think it's silly to be "friends" with people you haven't seen in 20 years and may not see for another 20 or ever, but tonight I was reminded how important it is to keep those connections.
Being kids together is a powerful thing. Witnessing death together is even more powerful.

Her name was Christy and she hung herself when she was 13 years old.

She had been increasingly acting out as her parents increasingly withdrew her from (boys) sports teams. She was taken out of school and institutionalized. She died on suicide watch in a building far away from family and friends.

She has been described as "tomboyish" but I think most of the kids in our class thought (knew) she was gay. It was at a time when the word fag was freely shouted across the lockerless (guns and knives and gangs, you know) hallways or we would say things like, "That's so gay!" when we thought something was stupid. But nobody really realized the connection. Damaging semantics aren't a thought when you are 12.
Maybe I'm suppressing it but I don't think that bullying was the cause of her depression. At least not from most of the kids. I'm sure she had a tougher time when all the girls (myself included) spent breaks fixing thick black eyeliner and spraying extra hold Aquanet onto impressively vertical bangs. Or standing in the corner at a school dance hoping tight black stirruped jeans and off the shoulder salmon pink sweater (my favorite outfit) would attract a skinny boy in the grade above to dance with to "Everything I do, I do it for you." I really don't remember her being teased or ostracized, but these are things I may not have remembered anyway since they didn't happen to me. (I got teased and ostracized for different things, tweens being the tender cruel things they are.) Was it worse for the gay boys? Male homophobia was definitely more outwardly prevalent but I have to imagine the (sometimes) quiet isolation of being a young lesbian is no less damaging.

I wasn't good friends with Christy. I don't remember if we ever hung out after school or ate lunch together. We had classes together, we talked, we laughed. She was a nice girl. Yet we all had a good idea of why she committed suicide, why she was unhappy with her strict religious upbringing, why she didn't feel she had an alternative. But that wasn't to be talked about, especially at the funeral. I vaguely remember the viewing, seeing her mom and dad in the pews, a girl from class reading a eulogy from a crumpled piece of wide ruled notebook paper. Crying.
It was all so surreal. Especially the body.

Christy was in a dress and makeup. Very un-Christy.

I think of the kids I've been touring around the farm these days. The ones who are a little different, who don't quite fit into the strict social hierarchy of middle school. I think of how stressful it was to be that age: always wondering what you were expected to be when you grew up, who you would marry (twist off the stem of an apple as you say the alphabet- whatever letter you land on is the first letter of the name of your future husband), who you should make out with at the next pool party, if you were skinny enough, why your parents fought so much, why your good friend was giving bj's at highschoolers' parties, how could you cross the courtyard without being called a freckle-faced white bitch and getting into a cat fight, how to avoid getting shot (unfortunately a reality at my school) on your way through the gravel parking lot.
Wondering how to please your parents and be a good daughter but also trying to discover the teenager you are becoming.

I remembered her face before I Googled it. We didn't have Google in middle school on our Apple 2GSs. Christy never knew what the internet was. But tonight in the electrical strands that connect us together I am brought back to the courtyard of Horace Mann, to apple pies and milkshakes for lunch and trash cans being thrown during the Rodney King riots. To overcrowded classrooms and all those kids just doing the best they could. To a girl named Christy.

13 is rough.
I'd like to think her 14th year would have been better.
And 15th.
And 16th.

What would she have been at 33 if those in her world (the world) had accepted who she was, who she was becoming, and not who they wanted her to be?

I guess that can be asked of many of us who are still alive...

Love thy strangers

2012-01-14T11:10:00.003-05:00

The pavement is wet and smells like elementary school heads up seven up at recess, umbrellas dripping in tall vases by bell rigged storefront doors, plump rivulets of water streaming down steamed up attic windows. It smells like concrete and car oil and eucalyptus. It smells like seedlings stretching out their leaves and sighing chlorophyll-ish breath.

It has not rained in a month and tonight the black street glistens with promising dampness. The misty droplets hang in the air and populate the pools of orange beneath the street lights.

I walk out of the house on the corner on the hill, windows lit up with scattered lamps and glowing faces.
It is Sunday and I am happily tired and a little buzzed on good beer and companionship.
It is January and I am in love with San Diego artists, activists, foodies, writers.

I walk out of the house and my mind is buzzing with gatherings and formulating organizations, ideas, and flying to Kenya and delving into storied folds within my own hooded head.

There are some days when you want to hug everyone (and sometimes you do) and proclaim,
You are my people!
and you want to continue to hold space and dance in thoughts and talk in rhythms. You want to fold everyone into you pocket and take the energy, the goodness, the warmth and smiles with you into the night. And you pack up your bag and wrap your coat a little tighter and stride out the door knowing that they'll miss you too.

I drive: wipers flopping to and fro, dotted lines on the road melting into the shiny slick blackness of the asphalt, BBC tones on the radio reminding me of being at sea in the middle of the night in the middle of lots of water and little land.
I am smiling because a jar of honey sits on the seat next to me and words off other writers' pages trip through my head. I helped organize, cook for, make a success this Honeyfest and our goodbyes were full of hope and a sweet sadness. Then up the hill I sat on the floor of a house I'd never seen with dozens of others and listened to stories from trembling hands and open hearts.

I don't know (many) most of them, but these, at least for this night, this moment, are my people. Just as the rain sinks into the soil and nourishes the seedlings, I can feel this community feeding my roots, allowing me to grow stronger and deeper every day.

Kitchen Aid

2012-01-09T22:56:00.005-05:00

This is something I never do: stand in the kitchen with a stick of half-melted butter on the counter, loaf of warm bread on the cooling rack with steam above and crumbs accumulating below, knife in hand balancing a big glob of yellowy fat on the tip then jettisoning it onto nearby slice of soft pillowy cooked grain that was a sticky mess an hour ago.
Sticky mess. That is probably my intestines after three rounds of dimly-lit-kitchen butter-spreading.
I never do that. But tonight, I did it. Because I made spelt bread from scratch.
Ground grain, yeast, honey, salt, and water.

This is something I do but don't like to admit to: I turn it on. I go in the other room, go about my business, and I listen to the whir.

I love the sound of a KitchenAid kneading dough.

I know, I know, it is therapeutic to hand knead your dough. Meditative even. It makes you strong. That's how the farmer's wives used to do it. That is the "way it should be done." I am usually all about getting my arms elbow deep into foodstuff, oil or kale or mashed avocados or sticky sweet spelt dough clinging to freckled wrists, but these wrists hurt from actual manual labor that occurs with growing things (aka farming).

So tonight, tonight we pull the shiny KitchenAid out from her corner, nestle the bowl onto metal nubs, gently push the spring loaded kneading attachment into place.
She is ready to make bread.
One by one ingredients slide down the side of the stainless steel and bubble and froth in all sorts of warm yeasty ways. Powder churns into honey colored liquid and a globular form dances with the swirly spinning attachment.
I come in every few minutes to check on her, check to see if more flour is needed or if that whapping sound means Too Fast!
Soon there is a stretchy little ball ready to be sequestered beneath a tea towel in an oily good loaf pan. Rise and rise and rise and into the oven only to be yanked back out (lovingly) 40 minutes later when the smell of fresh baked bread wafts from the kitchen.

This is something I do and wish I didn't: Go back for that fourth slice.

I may not have benefited from the theraputic value of kneading but there is nothing more simple and soothing than buttered bread on a cool winter night.

My kind of therapy: Butter, honey, eat.

Taking my words

2011-12-20T00:31:00.006-05:00

Just be.

Those were the words that were mumbled on murmuring lips when my thoughts raced and nothing seemed to make sense or everything was perfect and I wondered when it wouldn't be because it can't always be perfect like this right? That was 32 into 33.

Just be. Or as James said, we're all just beans just being. Because we all have minds that catapult thoughts from cortex to heart to fingertips, that send fragments of past and future reverberating through tense cellular walls. We all have perfect moments and then those moments when you can't even remember what perfect felt, tasted, shimmied like. We all wonder what 90 feels like but can never quite believe it will happen as we rush forward into our late 20s, early 30s, mid 30s. Because sometimes we all need to just float and see where life sends us.

But the words have shifted.

At the farm, Paul surveyed the sparsely onion-ed beds. "Replant." he said decisively. "It's better to take action and maybe be wrong than just to wait and wait and wait and not do anything." We pulled the failing onions, loosened the ground with digging forks, added compost, sprinkled organic fertilizer to nourish the ailing soil. We chose seeds and dropped them into furrows, covered them lightly, showered them in their new nests with water. We squatted on the dirt next to the bed and offered words of love and encouragement (yes, hippie dippie. but oh so effective). A month later a row of leafy chard smiles up from rich earth.

Take action:
My new mantra for this 35th year of life I'm striding into, pitchfork and To Do list in hand. Take action and surround yourself with people who take action. Care about something, get excited, get passionate, get ridiculous about it even. Take action and don't be afraid to take action again if things don't work out with the first decision. Be scared about something and decide to do it because that is what the little spot deep in your gut is radiating, imploring that heart that left brain to listen.

Be Atreyu, not Artax.

Take action. Move forward. Get happy.

And every once in a while on a sunny Sunday laying on the grass in the park watching the planes white against blue sky overhead or an early weekday when the sun shoots ripples of tangerine on the water and you're sipping tea and nibbling on butter cookies, just be. Because we're all just beans doing what we can.

Between the grays

2011-12-11T18:56:00.002-05:00

I am sleepy, sipping cinnamon tea, and slipping in and out of downy thoughts on this softly lit afternoon. The lamps in my two rooms take a cue from the sun and are subdued and edged in haze. An occasional thistle-y idea burrs itself into a fold in my brain and I stare out the window and work it free. But all you can see when you look at me looking out is a blank stare or the darting of eyes from internal cloud to sea or a vague smile at the memory of the scent of pine needles at Rock Creek or Mexican coffee brewed on a propane stove in the middle of a stormy afternoon.

The bay and sky are the same color. Only a thin strip of land separates them and reminds one of humanity between the shades of gray. A blue and white striped jib flutters before a sailboat and I imagine the passengers standing at the bow blowing with all their might into the canvas, willing wind to get them back to the dock, back home to a cup of steamy hot chocolate and a snickerdoodle beneath a quilt. They are wearing boxy orange life preservers and wondering why people think this sailing thing is fun. Or they are bundled in wool sweaters and watch caps and drinking Flor de Cana rum and laughing at dirty jokes as the main and jib inch them along back to land lives they are happily neglecting for the afternoon.

I think about getting up, I think about the morning spent stuffing straw and rye seed inoculated with Phoenix spores into thick plastic bags and wonder when the Phoenix will rise out of cellulose and starch, I think about when I last knitted a scarf.
Tufts of words and images tumble through fingers and past tea cups.
Slowly my eyes close and all thoughts melt into the reddish black of my eyelids.

It is December and it is cold and it is going to rain tomorrow and that Beach Boys song about dreaming of this place on a winter's day just doesn't apply when you actually live in California.

It is Sunday and it is the perfect day for sky and sea to merge, for cups of tea, for couches and imaginings, for pulling a blanket out of the dryer and wrapping it around your shoulders, for scented candles with goofy names like Sleigh Ride, for long novels you almost forgot you were reading, for popcorn with butter and salt and pepper.
Always for popcorn.

Shnugalicious Sunday, as they say.

And if they don't say, they should start.

Why they think its funny to call graduation commencement...

2011-11-30T02:09:00.006-05:00

This whole semester thing gives me anxiety.

Maybe it's all the stuff that's suddenly due (term papers, projects, presentations, my birthday).
Or maybe it's tension-headache muscle-memory from years of pulling all-nighters for finals. (none of which I have this year)
But most likely it's because come January the playing field is suddenly wide open and I don't know where the hell to throw the goddamn ball. Or what my ball even looks like.

Is it a cabbage? Or a sleeping bag in a stuff sack? Or a monkeys fist?
Where will the object land? Somewhere off the coast of Cuba or in a loamy field in New England or in a sandy patch in San Diego or back to my distant roots in Northern California/Oregon where I've felt the ancestral pull for years?

Or will the cabbage fit in a backpack and wander and WWOOF with me and bury its seeds in far off soil?
Will the monkey's fist stay in San Diego attached to a line attached to one of the many sailboats bobbing in the bay?
Will that sleeping bag keep me warm next to a campfire, next to my new friends sharing songs and stories and gluten-free vegan campfire brownies?

Or will the that ball be a flame and all I need to do is close my eyes and concentrate on the flickering outside my eyelids and breathe and know that wherever I throw my efforts and love, something,
perhaps the whole field,
perhaps the whole field and the surrounding fields and towns,
perhaps the whole field and the surrounding fields and towns and the whole world,

or perhaps just a splinter of myself
(they are all the same)

will be illuminated.

Or I'll light the goddamn park on fire.

Either way I'll learn something, now won't I?

Shanti.

In the Kitchen

2011-11-23T00:19:00.007-05:00

I am in my kitchen because at 4:30pm it is nearly dark outside.

I am in my kitchen because my classes have been canceled this week and I have time to tie an apron around my neck, sidle up to the stove, and start chopping.

I am in my kitchen because said chopping involves about a two week back log of CSA vegetables in various states of wiltedness, shrunkeness, flesh hardening ripeness.

I am in my kitchen because I need to work out some matters in my head that driving around San Diego belting out Les Mis or at home blasting music (dancing helps) or even a lovely evening out at a coffeehouse scribbling notes in my 50th or so journal can't seem to break through.

So I head to the kitchen and pick up a knife.
The eggplant makes sense to me. It is globular and wears a little green hat. It is striated purplish and the tiny dark seeds inside refuse to budge even with the nudge of a sharp blade. Into quarters it falls and I scoop up the tidy pieces of perfected life and throw them onto a baking sheet.
I move on to the beets.
The Chioggas surprise me. Halved they are tiny little (flattened) barbershop poles or flashy Christmas tree bulbs. They are pink and white and taste sweet and earthy. I pulled them out of my plot on Thursday and tonight I push them into my oven. The gold beets nestle next to their strip-ped counterparts and I lick my stained fingers of pink and gold goodness.
Purple and orange carrots don't make it to the sheet. A little wash, a little scrub, into my mouth they go as the oven heats.
Tiny onions that don't make me cry, little last-of-the-season zucchini, the ever-present-in-my-life pumpkin, a sprinkling of chopped rosemary, and a touch of Italian tarragon.
At the last moment I find fennel in the depths of the crisper and chop off fronds and outer stems, breathe in licorice and remember how in high school I used to think that anyone I was going to have a serious relationship with must like black licorice, particularly Good N Plentys. I wonder if I would have considered fennel to be in that category? At that point the only fennel I knew about grew on the side of the road and I would pick it on walks during the summer and put a sprig between my teeth.
I smile as I am glad that my priorities have changed but that I still put sprigs of weeds between my teeth on warm summer days. I douse my chopped-up bountifulness with olive oil, toss in the herbs and salt and pepper. I give it a final blessing between slippery hands and slide the concoction into the hot oven.

I am alone in my kitchen and wonder if I should turn the music back on. I wonder if I should cook up the dandelions and lamb's quarters and spinach waiting on the counter. I wonder if I should do a little ballet to rock music or if I should dive into "Gaia's Garden" again. I wonder what I'll be doing in six months. Or six weeks.
I wonder if this living alone thing is so great.
Then I realize I'm not alone.

I wipe down the counters and find a fellow vegetable lover poking about in the remnants. A baby snail. He is in my kitchen and not my garden and I can't seem to bring myself to squish him here in my home. In the garden? Done. No problemo. If I have to choose between him and me eating my veggies, guess who wins? But he looks so cute slithering around on my countertop, nibbling the last of the purslane, chomping (can snails chomp?) on carrot ends.

As I sweep him into my compost along with the rest of the vegetable scraps, along with some of this anxiety, along with a day on the freeway and trying to always "figure things out," I realize that a half hour has just gone by without thinking. Much.
It's just been doing. And loving that doing. And excited for the outcome of that doing. And it makes me want to do more instead of thinking of all the things I should be doing or could be doing or want to be doing and not... doing.

In the kitchen and out.

So for now, until I "figure things out" I plan on doing more cooking. Because I have a feeling that that is exactly what I ought to be doing.

And figuring is not one of the ingredients.

Hello (again) Hankerings

2011-11-13T20:45:00.006-05:00

The book is torn, taped, and yellowed.
There are phone numbers for Ally, Dorothy, and Le Blanc scribbled in blue inked cursive on the cover.
A brown water stain occupies all upper corners of the pages within. A coffee mishap? While at a cafe the owner hastily rising and knocking over a cup of coffee onto the book and journal strewn table? Or was the novel shoved into an overstuffed bookbag, a leaky thermos of tea slowly seeping into vulnerable pages in the confines of fabric? Or was it simply time and dampness, a drip from a roof onto the bookshelf, a spray of raindrops from a shaken umbrella?
There are dogeared pages and creases in the spine. Above "Other books by J.D. Salinger" on the first page a faint penciled "1.50" reveals its used-book-store past.

There is a bobbypin holding together pages 169 through 198. I didn't even notice it when I picked the book off the shelf in my old room or as I read the first chapter, "Franny." As I got to "Zooey" my fingers stumbled upon that remnant of my high school self. Had that bobbypin held my hair as I stood under lights ("Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself!"), or pirouetted within a knotted bun in a ballet class, or given me that 40s Swing Kids look I so strove for with my knee length wool skirts and cardigans?

On page 198 someone says:
"You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankering.' It's this business of desiring if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line- in one damn incarnation or another, if you like- you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings."

When I was 18 and went off to theater school, I knew my passion, my desire would take me places. I knew I had to go to New York, had to act. When I got there I dove into acting and voice and speech and movement classes and relished rehearsing in basement rooms with radiators like damp train whistles and having friends who got "Fosse Hands!" jokes.
I basked in the drama of it all.

When I dropped out of college with disillusionment and returned a year later with a more humble gratitude, I wasn't sure if theater was my path. I dove back in with an appreciation for the communication skills I was learning. I took as many non-theater and edgy experimental theater courses as I could. I started letting people read my writing.
At the end of college, I wanted to travel again. And I continued to fill journals with scribbled words.

In small painted letters the excerpt remained on the back of my door until my mom remodeled my old room. I considered keeping the door in the shed instead of letting her paint over the dozens of quotes and pictures defining my early adulthood.
I took a picture of flaking acrylic and ripped newspaper clippings and let her repaint.

To me, this whole "business of desiring" that led me into acting in effect led me to traveling, exploring, sailing, writing. Even farming. Desiring to feel the spectrum of emotions, to stave off boredom and stimulate those stagnating braincells, to experience the same adrenaline as walking onto stage but now walking onto a teak deck ready for passage or setting my fingers on the keyboard and wondering what will come out.

This excerpt is lower down on the page but I didn't include it on my door way back then:
"You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in the goddam phenomenal world."

I haven't finished the book yet. I have no recollection of how the story transpires. I remember connecting with it in high school as I dreamed about New York. I wonder if my mid-thirties self will have the same reaction. I mean, I still dream about New York but the yearnings are more for the memories than possibilities. The past instead of the future. For my friends who still live there. For the smell of the harbor (I know, gross, but powerfully nostalgic). For the taste of a proper Manhattan or a dumpling or a knish. For the feeling of impending Autumn on a September day. Memories, friends, feelings that I never knew I would make, meet, have when I first turned the yellowing pages of "Franny and Zooey" as a angsty dramatic 17 year old in San Diego.

The hankerings are there and more powerful than ever. To be an actor? No. But to express, feel, be before that sand runs out and I don't get a chance to sneeze- again and again and again!

Little Farm in Tilden Park, Berkeley

2011-11-13T03:37:00.003-05:00

Be food obsessive!

2011-11-01T21:59:00.008-04:00

Me: No mom, you don't need to come over, I'm just feeling blah. Crappy but not totally sick. This is like the 3rd time since I started school.
Mom: Maybe you should change your diet. Maybe you should try eating more junk food.
Me: (head cocked in confusion/disbelief) Are you being serious?
Mom: Well, yes Jenny. We think sometimes you eat too healthy...

So I get it. As in, I get what my mom was trying to say. It's typical mom stuff: Eat a well rounded meal with protein, carbs, a veggie or two. Don't worry about dessert every once in a while.

I started listing off what I ate today: tea, broccoli with organic mayo (an age old pairing), forkfuls of almond butter out of the jar, a whole small avocado with salt, more tea, a pear, a few corn chips, a few bites of spinach from thinning my garden, a sip of Kombucha, and finally dinner.
Instead of ordering pizza or stopping by KFC, I ate some of my leftovers from last night: A veggie melange of kale, onions, broccoli stalks, zucchini, spinach sauteed with some soyrizo (soy chorizo). I scooped this into a corn tortilla and topped it with my new favorite sauce: Purslane, spicy peppers, garlic, and blended cashews. I topped this all with a farm fresh egg over easy. I guess you could say the soyrizo brings in a slight junk food aspect but overall it was pretty healthy. And pretty balanced. Considering I felt sick today and didn't have much of an appetite overall, I'd say I did pretty well.

I know why she worries. I'm always talking about veggies. I refrain from eating bread (for gluten reasons). I'm not a huge meat person (but I do eat it on occasion). I urge her to eat fresh veggies instead of canned. To eat sauteed zucchini instead of zucchini bread (which I admit to eating oh about a half loaf of this weekend). To cut out nightshades like tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and potatoes to reduce inflammation. To try calendula salve to relieve pain.
I talk about food, the farms, herbs, remedies. A lot.

So yes, I can be a bit food obsessed.
And picky.
And bossy.

But I think being picky about food is a good thing. I don't want the chemicals and GMOs and antibiotics found in most conventional foods in my body. I've already had parasites and major bouts of dysentery and have worked un-gloved with boat chemicals far more than I should have and I simply don't need to do anymore damage to this relatively young body of mine.

And I like food that tastes good. And to see (be) the face that grows it.

Be picky and bossy and obsessive about how this food system works in our country! Be picky about where you buy your food and from whom you buy it. Talk to your family (I try not to sound bossy but well, sometimes it comes out, um, bossy) about information usually concealed from the general public (like upwards of 70% of antibiotics sold in this country are used in our conventionally raised livestock) or about beneficial "weeds" you can eat (purslane has more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy veggie) or about detrimental food for certain conditions (nightshades can exacerbate inflammation in those with auto-immune issues).

I can't say I don't crave and eat what I consider junk food: a burrito bursting with carne asada or beans and cheese and guac, Etna pizza, a big juicy hamburger with crispy fries (from a real restaurant- if I have a burger, I want it to be good!), a chocolate peanut butter milkshake from Corvette Diner. There's nothing wrong with a little extra fat and salt and sugar sometimes. Sometimes and as long as it is intentional. Unfortunately, or fortunately for my thighs, I can't eat like that all the time. I get sluggish, I break out in rashes, my body and brain shut down and scream for fresh veggies. So as much as I love french fries, I will skip my mom's suggestion and go for the greens. I have a feeling this sickness of mine is more from lack of sleep than lack of proper nutrients. Oh, and perhaps a bit of stress thrown in there (see "Three Feet" blog entry)?
I think lavender chamomile tea is good for that....

Here's the recipe for the spicy purslane cashew sauce if you want to pig out on deliciousness.

1 cup purslane, leaves and stems
1 cup cashews, soaked in water 30 minutes (reserve water)
1 hot pepper
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste

Blend it all together adding water as needed to desired consistency. Use it right away or let mellow for a day or two. Pour over salmon, veggies, or kale and soyrizo tacos.

Creating Chaos

2011-10-27T23:31:00.003-04:00

"We might be setting off a chain reaction of chaos," M. says with a definite sparkle in his eye, "but we're going to do it anyway."

I roll up my sleeves and set my gaze past the shade cloth cover, past the wood slatted fence laced with rusting wire, past the piles of pecked zucchini and sprouts. My opponents mill about in their pens unaware of the pending pandemonium.

"OK Chickens," I say with a smile as my fellow intern and I peel back the cloth entrance-way and step into the Saipans' domain, "here we come!"

A burst of emerald green and desert-clay-orange flashes across the pen as the roosters high tail it to the back area. The toddler chickens (not chicks anymore but not fully grown) follow the elders behind the roost. B. circles around the nailed-together pallets in an attempt to scare the flock into my path. All of the sudden six sets of wings and claws flap and squawk and fly towards me. What is my reaction? Flailing of my own arms and legs of course in an effort to grasp one of the feathery bodies now well beyond my reach. And laughing. Lots and lots of laughing.

Chickens are fast. Really fast.

By this time I am running down the length of the coop laughing and yelling and smiling as only chicken catching can make me smile. Here we are, a bunch of grown adults, chasing after birds, falling down after botched grabs, sneaking up like little kids to the Christmas tree thinking no one will notice. Only these winged colorfully wrapped little packages notice. And flee.

I am out of breath but I finally have a (very upset, very loud) chicken under my arm. I try that old trick of putting your hand over their eyes to calm them down but the hen is just not falling for it. Little does she know that, like the Jeffersons, she is moving on up. She is going to be free ranging in the planting beds full of wild arugula and mustard and purslane and lambs quarters. A feast! She comes around, gets excited even, when I place her inside the mesh fence and she realizes she is not bound for chicken nuggetdom today.

I brush off my shirt and head over to the duck pen where Intern M. has a flapping duck at arms length. It takes me a moment to figure out what is happening. He is cursing, the duck is cursing, and shit is coursing down the length of his jeans. Not poop in neat little blueberry-like goat packages, but stinky, runny, projectiled duck shit. All over.
I am doubled up laughing and don't stop until well after I am crying and gasping for air. Maybe it's because I'm hanging out with 6th graders on their fieldtrips to the farm and all we do is talk about poop and worms, but I think shit is funny. And I'm thankful for this youthful mentality.

When I'm on the farm I feel like a kid and I have the chickens and ducks and grubs and dirt and lettuce and lemon verbena to thank for it.

When is the last time you chased pigeons in the park? Or a squirrel up a tree? Or played in the dirt with grubs and earthworms and rolly polly bugs crawling around your palm? When did you last lie on your back in the grass and look up into the sky and make dragons out of puffed up ice crystals? When did you last take a leaf off something growing in the dirt and unhesitatingly pop it into your mouth, not worrying about pesticides or germs or pollutants or all that other stuff we're supposed to be worried about? When did you last just stop, breathe in, and laugh out as loud as you could?

Because here on the farm, there is no such thing as an "inside voice" unless you're talking about the one that whispers from the depths of your being, "This is exactly where you need to be right now. Laugh. Play in the dirt. Chase chickens. Create chaos. Enjoy."

Three feet

2011-10-21T17:29:00.003-04:00

"If that truck had hit three feet forward of where it did," the officer paused and tilted his head down towards the hospital gurney where my mom lay, "you and I would not be having this conversation."

My mom scratched her neck with a shaking hand. Her skin was red and chapped from the cervical collar she'd been wearing for the past three hours. After the x- rays ("you're not broken" the doctor said) she could drink water that didn't come from a swab and her head "felt like it was 25 lbs" as her muscles spasmed with soreness and new found freedom from plastic and velcro.

"Do you have anything else to add?" the officer asked.
You're asking my mom that question? She launches into a full recap of the story of "how the Cadi got totaled/how because of the strong bones of the Cadi my mom did not."

When she got to the part about walking over to the truck that hit her I started to giggle.
"I saw smoke coming out of the truck cab and thought it might catch on fire or explode," she started. "So I walked over to the truck and opened the driver's door. I said, 'Get out of the car now!' but he was dazed so I had to repeat it."
The officer stopped chewing his gum and said with a playful smirk, "This is just getting better and better..."
"So I got him out of the car and closed the door in case there was a fire. Then I told him to go sit on the curb."
Yes, my mom the flight attendant, mother of three, gets T-boned and then goes to save the kid who hit her.

So my sister and I are giggling, giving each other "that's our mom" looks, but a part of me thinks about the three feet thing. I was three feet from being an orphan yesterday. Maybe two feet away from being a permanent caregiver to a mangled parent. Maybe a foot away from shattered bones taking months to heal. A few inches away from more than the bruises and stiff neck and minor cut my mom walked away with.

She was basically parked at the time. She wasn't being absent minded on the freeway or crossing through an intersection vulnerable to a traffic light runner. She was on our street, the one I've driven up and down thousands of times, the one I fell asleep on driving home from theater rehearsal one night as a teenager and grazed the bushes, the one we Goff girls have had countless talks on while taking evening walks "to the [public] mailbox," the one my dad exercised our dogs on every day for my entire childhood.

She was waiting to make a turn. And she got hit. Hard. The car is crumpled in two feet on the drivers side. My mom's side. She said that when she saw the truck coming straight for her, getting bigger and bigger, everything slowed down and she had nano-second thoughts:

The first: It's all over.
The second: No! No, I'm not done! I've got a lot of things I need to do for the girls. (My sisters and I. She said she saw the three of us in front of her as the No I'm not done came up.)
The third: I need to get the hell out of the way. (That's when she leaned as far as she could from the soon-to-be crushed in door)

It makes me think of all the other close calls we have. Sometimes we know it (this one would be pretty freaking hard not to notice) and then there are all of those other moments that we might not even know about where timing is everything. Like crossing the street or flying in a plane or slipping in the bathtub or anything to do with driving. I guess timing is always everything, huh?

It makes me think that instead of living safer, being more careful, I want to live more dangerously, really take advantage of every opportunity for adventure I can. (I can hear my mom groaning at this point- she's had to deal with a few of my adventures. Whenever I bring up the current one she says, "I'm a mom. I worry. No matter how old you are. I worry." I love you too, Mom)
It makes me think that I don't say "I love you" or "I appreciate you" enough to those I love and appreciate. I am so thankful for what I have, for who I know, for opportunities I've been given (and taken). But this whole life thing doesn't last forever. And it can all change in a second.

The police officer walky talky-ed dispatch for the Incident Number. I scribble it down under Pick up prescription for pain meds and Call the insurance company and Get personal belongings from Cadi.

"Do you have any other questions?" he says.
"Should I have any other questions?" my mom retorts.
"Nope. That's it. Let your insurance company take care of it. And buy another nice heavy car."
"OK. Thank you Officer."

My mom reaches out her hand to shake the officers. He pulls back saying something like You don't know where this hand has been but I think I'd have the same policy of no handshakes with people in the hospital if I were a cop.
My mom, offering a closed fist, says, "How about a bump?"

Yup, that is how I know my mom is on the road to recovery: she fist bumped the officer on his way out of the ER, much to his delight.

She's at home now. Sore as hell. But at home.

Dear Mom, as much as I try to be OK with this everybody dies thing, I'm just not ready. I'm glad you weren't either. You are an amazing person and I still have a lot to learn from you.
So don't pull an adventure to the ER like this again anytime soon.
I'm a daughter. No matter how old you are, I worry.

The cat and the roses

2011-10-18T01:17:00.004-04:00

Forehead on the wooden floor. Legs limp, arms at my side palms towards the ceiling. Bodies all around me in the same position. By the end of the hour I will be howling in a corner or rolling across that girl's arched back or playing pattycakes with the guy near the window.

I am prone on the floor, still but fully aware. I hear the ticking of the clock and notice the grain of the wood beneath my eyes. I stretch and turn my head when I feel like it is time, my eyeballs rotating in their sockets in the search for images, details. My fingers move through the cool air as I flex and straighten, trace circles on the floor, feel the nubby fabric of my shirt between valleys of fingerprints. The scent of pizza wafts through the windows cracked open to let the radiator heat out, the city sounds smells in.

Slowly I try to feel every joint in my body, every point of contact of skin with the floor, air, other people. I go from prone to squatting, I do some vigorous predetermined movements, I start moving around the room stopping to examine a gray crack in the wall or a piece of hair clinging to a door knob or eventually I make eye contact and react act react to my fellow players.

I am in college and I am a theatre major and I am doing an exercise called the Cat and I am more alive than I have ever felt in a classroom and I am learning to observe and feel.

Sometimes I think of this scenario now and giggle. Yup, a theater school cliche. Yet I am so thankful for my rolling around on the ground hippie touchy feely training. I may not be in plays anymore, but all that quiet observance, that yelling into the corners on such an impulse, that improvisation, that interacting with others by reading body language, by making eye contact and holding it, by exchanging focused energies taught me more about the world and people than my economics course ever did.

Now I am in training again. This time for a rural stage where the main performers are the plants and animals. The farmers tell us to slow down, observe, walk through the fields and stare at the growing vegetables. See the bugs carving a path through the tender leaves. Feel the dirt between calloused fingers and smell the ripeness of the compost. Sit in a field and listen to the wind. Watch a spider wrapping a bee in sticky silky thread. Try that mustard leaf. Smile back at the baby goat with her goofy alfalfa laced grin.

The sunflowers are bowing in the late afternoon light. The air is cool and damp as a marine layer rolls dramatically towards the farm. A donkey brays in the distance and the chickens seem to respond on masse. I pick a leaf of lemon verbena and rub it between thumb and forefinger. I bring it up to my face, close my eyes. I breathe. Yes, I'm inhaling the scent of lemony sweetness, but I also just breathe, really breathe for the first time today. I feel that energy rising from my solar plexis and I can't help but smile and be thankful- for what I've learned, for what I'm learning, and for the simple skill of literally stopping to smell the roses.

A lesson in giving lessons

2011-10-10T23:59:00.004-04:00

"Alright, guys," my co-leader yelled. "You all are now on the animal tour!" Cheers erupted from the group of 14 preteens standing before us. The girls towered over the guys, the guys acted nonchalant when the girls brushed by with feathers in their hair and smirks on their young faces. We tramped over dirt and straw and circled up between the duck and chicken shade-cloth covered pens. "So, these are the chickens," I said, " and these are the ducks."
"Um, is that one dead?"
I turned to look into the end of the structure. A mass of gray downy feathers and two web footed legs lay still in the grass. Wings flopped open, beaked head turned towards the side it was pretty clear that the duck wasn't snoozing in the late morning sun. Dammit. On the first day? I looked at my colleague and motioned that I would go get the farm manager. "He knows," she mouthed back. Um, alright. What now?
There was no section on "death of an animal on fieldtrip day" in the leader's manual. How many of these kids have seen a dead animal before? How many can link that with a family member? Is it now my place to explain death to these 11 year olds? I mean, I think I have a fairly healthy relationship with the subject but I'm not sure if telling them we're all going to die one day, yes even your parents and your brothers and sisters and even that girl you like standing next to you. I'm just not sure if that would go over well with the teachers and parents.

"Yes, he's dead." I finally replied as the kids pressed against the shadecloth, pressed towards the tabooed subject inside.

"That's part of the farm, isn't it?" I say in my best teacherly voice. "We take care of the animals as best we can but some die and sometimes we don't know why." I don't tell them (in my best teacherly voice) about the duckling I found squashed under a plywood board that fell over during the night or about the chicks that didn't make it or about the rooster that disappeared from a hoophouse through a feather strewn hole in the shade cloth just that morning (fox?). I don't ask them why this seems sadder than a Turducken meal at Thanksgiving. I do ask them to step away from the shadecloth so we can go look at the Jungle fowl.

"I just saw him breathing!" one of the boys yelled.
A girl whipped her blond ponytail as she spun around and looked up at me. "You're not even going to try to save him?" She furrowed her brow and gave me the stinkeye.

I looked into the pen, breathed in deep when no other breathing was noticeable, and said, "No, it's too late for that. If he's not dead quite yet he's in the process of dying. Sometimes we can't save the animals. Sometimes they're sick or old and we can just make sure they die comfortably. It's all part of the natural progression, the circle of life, right?"
A boy with big brown eyes turns and looks up at me. "Like the Lion King?" he says seriously.
"Exactly. Like the Lion King."
I don't tell them that that should go for humans too: that people shouldn't waste away on cases of medicines and the pumping of ventilators. I don't tell them how people survive for years without brain function because families can't let go of the idea of what once resided in a now withered body or grasp the notion that everything must die.
I do tell them that we are moving on to the goats. The very alive, happy, alfalfa munching goats.

Two steps away and a switch is flipped. They are all talking with outside voices and pushing each other and picking up straw before tossing it on their neighbors. The dead duck seems to be forgotten as they pet Kaia the goat and Boots the chicken. We talk about poop and fertilizing the fields with the stuff. We talk about waddling tails and chicken tractors and Silkie babies.

They don't mention the death again but back between the duck and chicken pens on our way to the hand washing area they stare at the silenced duck and I know that that image will probably stay with them on the bus ride home. Maybe the week. Maybe longer.

Not that I wish for a dead duck on every field trip, not at all, but I actually feel pretty lucky to have been able to explain a little more than corn and beans and chickens to a mass of kids just starting to understand living.

It's all about receiving and giving lessons.

It's all about tramping through the straw while you can.

October at the farm

2011-10-07T19:09:00.001-04:00

Fall fell into the farm this week in large succulent drops dampening the earth and bathing our seedlings nestled in dry soil. Hoods covered smiling faces and farmers in mud streaked pants sat side by side under the eaves of concrete when the mist turned into droplets turned into nuggets of chilly wet.

The tomatoes are dwindling on shriveling vines, the butternut squash deepening their golden hues on beds of flaxen straw. Summer squash vines are cleared, tiny broccoli roots luxuriate in dark composted soil. Emerging peas send out their tender shoots searching for the remaining bits of spring season's twine trellising blowing like spiderwebs in the crisp autumnal breeze.

We dig up the withered and toss fibrous remains into the compost. Rustle around in the shed. Digging fork and rake in hand we return to empty beds. Edge, fork, fertilize, compost, fork, level.We stop and ponder the grey and white sphinx moth perched on a post where the tomatoes used to vine. We fluff the amended soil with the rake, remove rocks, break up unruly aggregates, smooth as best we can. The imprint of a dowel a tiny valley for minuscule carrot seeds to be lightly blanketed in a fog bank of compost. We look at the bed, look up into the sky, feel the dry soil between our fingers and wonder if it will rain.

Grow your bed.
Grow your zone.
Dig up old, plant anew, water, wait, grow, cheer.
Repeat.

Pull your hoodie tight around your body, savor the slanting goldenness of October light through the amaranth, plunge your hands into the dirt.
Repeat.

(originally posted at: seedsatcityurbanfarm.blogspot.com)

Autumnal hues

2011-10-05T03:33:00.003-04:00

The flowers and veggies know it's fall.

Curving while learning

2011-09-28T01:05:00.006-04:00

Five weeks ago I walked onto a farm. I stuck my dirt-free fingernails into the dirt and they haven't been clean since. I brushed against the overgrown lavender and picked a leaf of chocolate mint secreting it to my lips. I sat in a circle of smiling apprentices and attempted to explain that smile, that giddiness in the middle of my chest, that need to be in a circle in the middle of a farm in the middle of the city.

The first couple of weeks back at school, back in San Diego, were rough in an interesting way. I was smiling non-stop and throwing myself into every activity to come about but sometimes the smile faded as frustration set in. Like everyone else picking up digging forks to agitate dry earth and donning forks of the pitching variety to deal with compost, I wanted all the answers. I wanted the taproot of my brain to burrow down deep into all this accumulated knowledge and absorb it immediately. No gentle shower of information! No dirt/compost/mulch type layering of lessons! I walked around thinking that I didn't know what I was doing and getting angry instead of realizing I didn't know what I was doing and embracing that as a chance to learn.

Five weeks in I realize I know even less but I am so much the better for it. I can spout off more fun facts about emus and mushrooms than I could a month ago. I can describe how to fork a bed, how to use diatomaceous earth to internally pulverize pill bugs, why one should compress the soil before seeding.
I get excited about small stuff these days. Like baby radishes or the markings on spiders.
I am constantly learning new things and relearning old things.

Like:

Mushrooms should be eaten cooked because unlike vegetables they are made out of chiton. Like the exoskeleton of insects. And lobsters. Apparently we can't process the nutrients in them unless they are cooked or dried and pulverized. Amazing right? But that's not all about mushrooms- the largest living organism in the world (area) is a fungal colony of honey mushrooms in Oregon. I know. Wow!
Mushrooms have many other fascinating properties that I am currently learning about as I help spawn, inoculate, and pick flushes.
That's shroom talk for "grow mushrooms."

I pulled out my 20-year-old pink wheeled skates and somehow I still know how to rollerskate. I'm a bit rusty and won't be doing the fancy tricks I used to do at the roller rink this weekend on the boardwalk, but find me a smooth surface and I may be able to do the whole Funky Chicken dance without eating shit.

My plies may not be as graceful as they once were but I can still tombe-pas de bourree-glisade- grand jete across the ballet studio no problem. I may sound like a herd of elephants across a savannah but that lightness of step may take a whole semester.
I haven't taken a ballet class in about 10 years and the learning curve was steep. I knew what my body was supposed to be doing but these 33 year old hips, arms, toes don't always cooperate. Like any old skill that one had once excelled in, the disparity between used to be able and am able is frustrating during the initial attempts at mastery. A few huffy breaths and then a bit of laughter often follow and reality sets in. Now even as my body grows stronger and hey those plies are looking better every class I can still laugh at myself when I spin out of control during pirouettes or envy the girl with crazy extension down the barre.

Animals. Don't usually care for them. In any sense.
But you know what? Goats are awesome. And super cute when they need to be burped.
Chickens are funny too even with their tiny little brains.
Emus are just strange. Looking, acting. Or maybe just Brian Fairy, the emu at Wild Willow. I've never met another one before.
The great thing about learning about how to take care of animals is that even if I never own them myself in the future, I am learning to observe behaviors and nature in a way that is utterly fascinating and sometimes intensely brutal.
And did I mention the baby goats are adorable?
And the chicken eggs are delicious.
Maybe animal ownership isn't such a bad thing. Once I move out of this condo...

I canned for the first time last night. It's one of those things I've always wanted to do. I mean, I've made yogurt from scratch and baked my own bread but canning always intimidated me. We'll see how the first attempt turns out. If my face freezes due to a batch of cucumber botox (or botulism as they call it in the food safety world), I'll either give up canning or go into the cosmetic procedures business.

Weeds. Many of them are edible. And delicious. Take purslane for instance. It's a superfood with tons of antioxidants and the highest amount of Omega-3s of any vegetable. People yank it out of the gardens with abandon. Yank it from them and use it in salads or stirfrys. And it's great in dip. Here's my recipe:

Purslane cashew dip
(all measurements approximate/to taste/too bad I don't measure)

1 cup purslane, mostly leaves, some stems
1 cup raw cashews, soaked for 30 minutes
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper

Blend it all together adding water if needed. Eat with fresh veggies. Or chips if you must.

So now the question is, what am I going to (not) know in another month?
Bring it on.

A jar full of radical(s)

2011-09-17T01:25:00.007-04:00

Look around you. They may be old with slackening skin on their forearms or young with inky sleeves encircling broad biceps. They may be any gender, long haired and tan or pale face freckled. They may be on the chunky side or skin and bones. They may be from across the world or born and bred in San Diego.
They may be sitting next to you.

Take a look again. Is there dirt under their fingernails? Do they have tufts of greenery sprouting from canvas bags they say such things as "Grow your own?" Do they have a healthy sparkle in their eyes and perk up when one mentions kohlrabi? Or get upset at the concept of non-fruiting ornamental peach trees?

You probably never would have guessed it, but that person right there might just be a Grower.
Of vegetables.
Or fruits.
(Let us not discriminate now even though I am partial to the former.)

I am surrounded by people soaking up all the information they can about growing food.

The first week of class I was astounded at the diversity of this community college Agriculture program in the middle of downtown San Diego. The range of reasons for delving into the dirt on campus is as varied as the shapes, ages, cultures, politics. Some want to homestead, some open rooftop garden restaurants, some are anarchists, others want to farm family land in Mexico or El Cajon, start a container garden on the terrace, or be ready for Peak Oil.

There was a time when this knowledge wasn't considered part of a radical movement. When farming or gardening was what everyone knew. Was what everyone had to know and do to eat.

We learn about soil and compost and how to lay irrigation on dry sloping terraced beds. We learn about capillarity in the seed furrows and the different kinds of corn and giggle about plant sex (Carefully spread apart the flower petals in the middle of the night (say excuse me) and insert the male organ. Brush it around and then tape her up (say thank you) and go on to the next). When the instructor is late no one leaves the classroom or the farm. We cheer when he arrives because we want him to quiz us and draw seeds and birds and pipes on the chalkboard. We want him to make us turn stinking clamshell-laden compost and get dusty dirty forking and raking our beds. We ask questions and he answers even though the topic will be covered in Week 14 and it's only Week 3.

We want to know how to do it all. Now please.

But of course like a seed germinating, you can only absorb so much and grow at a certain rate. Then you put out your radicle and dig into the earth and are able to absorb even more as you grow and become stronger. Knowledge of how to live flows through your cells.

I need to trust this radical(radicle)ness.

Root.
Absorb.
Grow.

Sick day garlic

2011-09-07T17:53:00.004-04:00

I am standing in the kitchen squeezing mushy brown cloves of garlic from their papery caccoons into my mouth. Eyes heavily drooping, sinuses aching, I lean against the counter and decide to finish the whole bulb. Why not? What harm could it do.

I'm already sick.

At least the garlic is roasted- sweet and lightly pungent with a consistency of pureed parsnips doused in olive oil. When I'm well it is a taste I crave. Right now I can't taste much at all. I did the raw garlic thing last night and while I can down a half clove or two at a time (next time I'll remember to freeze them), I'm pretty sure that eating a whole head of roasted garlic has the same immune enhancing effect as one raw, stomach-clenching clove.

I make some tea. Green tea, cinnamon tea, lemon tea. I have several cups going at once because I feel like the more I drink the faster this- whatever it is- cold, allergy attack, sinus infection- will dissipate under the increased vapors.

Being sick sucks.

The idea of it seems great when I'm healthy: time to lay on the couch and drink tea and read and snooze. Like a perfect Sunday right? But with the added bonus of people feeling sorry for you and asking if they can bring you chicken soup or soda crackers or a towel for your forehead. And you can get away with acting like a five year old for the day (late in day two or early in three the gig is up and whining just gets a roll of the eyes and a damp cloth thrown at your head).

Reality: you wake up with a dry throat and swollen eyes and a body aching from temples to toes. There are classes to attend and chickens to feed and people to hang out with and very important emails to write and now you are not in the state to do anything. On the couch you stare up at the ceiling, out the window, you try to read but the words leap before fuzzy eyes and you doze for a few hours. You wake up sweaty and smelly late afternoon and you still feel like shit. You're not really hungry but your stomach is growling so you contemplate ordering pizza but that would make things worse so you cook up whatever half wilted veggies are in the fridge hoping their life-force will enliven yours and later deal with the ramifications of ill-digested cabbage under two sheets and a comforter.

Stare at the ceiling, try to read, email close friends nonsensical reports on your ill health, try to blog and give up, stare out the window. Now you're up at 2am because you slept all day and all you want to do is go to sleep and wake up well.

You promise god you will never wish to be sick and have the "day off" again.

I would tell you how it ends but I'm still swollen faced and achy hence the garlic slurping episode in the kitchen not too long ago.
At least I'm too the point where I am attempting to blog even if this too is nonsensical.

Oh virus/bacteria in my blood, begone! Let the couch be free of me! Garlic, go get em!

Roasted garlic recipe:
One head of garlic
Olive oil

Slice the pointy top off of the garlic. Douse with a glug of olive oil. Wrap in foil and bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes. You'll be able to smell the deliciousness and neighbors may come over to share but only let them in if you're no longer contagious or they offer to re-dampen your forehead cloth. Spread on crackers, toss cloves into stir frys or soups, or stand barefoot in your kitchen squishing the whole thing niblet by garlicky niblet into your mouth.

How farming is like sailing

2011-08-28T22:18:00.001-04:00

1. Farmer Tan: I'm not sure why we never called it Sailor Tan but man after wearing polo shirts and khaki shorts all summer on the deck of Wyntje Captain J and I looked like we were wearing t-shirts and shorts when we weren't wearing anything at all (which was the official uniform on our own sailboat Gitane when offshore and with little chance of being spotted through a periscope by men in a submarine (which actually happened. You're welcome boys.))

2. Knots: Very useful to know how to tie a real knot instead of just tie a lot, as they say. I got very excited the other day when our instructor at the farm used a trucker's hitch to tighten up a string marking a soon to be planted bed. I almost volunteered that I know that knot too if anyone wants to learn it, but I don't want to be the smarty-pants show-off. Just yet.

3. Fixing shit with your own flair (aka jury rigging): Yup, whether it is nailing together chicken roosts from used pallets and termite infested 1x2s or connecting a used baked beans can where an exhaust elbow should be on your diesel engine, farmers and sailors are a crafty (and cheap) lot. And I love love love it! Having to figure out how to fix a problem in the middle of a field or the middle of an ocean can be exhilarating. Usually annoying as all hell to begin with but then you figure things out and start tinkering and marvel at your genius when the engine starts up and doesn't bellow smoke into the cabin. Or the chickens love their new perching apparatus. Yes, eventually it's better to actually use quality materials and more sweat and tears but hey you made the magic happen at least for a little while.

4. Chasing birds: I spent my morning chasing after chickens. They are fast little suckers with sharp beaks and talons. Talons I tell you! But once those little guys are under your arm and you put them to sleep by covering their little eyes and their little brains say "It's night! Sleep" and they go limp, they're quite cute. Unfortunately blue footed boobies that land on the deck of boats and poop or perch on the top of the mast and disrupt wind readings (and then poop) do not know about the whole "It's night! Sleep!" thing. They don't care what time it is, they will sit and squawk and poop with no regard for the tired sailors yelling (cursing) up at them. But they're still kind of cute in their own blue footed way.

5. Water conservation: Water water everywhere but not a drop... to do your laundry. Or bathe. Or do dishes. Well at least not fresh water. You get used to being slightly salty on a small scrappy sailboat. All the time. That's why you go naked- it cuts down on laundry. You'd rather be able to drink water then do silly things like bathing or washing dishes.
Water conservation on a farm is a little different. Especially in San Diego. We can't really save water by going naked. Or at least we haven't tried. Yet. But using bio-dynamic farming methods saves on that precious resource that we funnel away from Northern Cali (a sheepish Thanks to y'all up yonder). We live in a desert. Water is scarce. Turn off the faucet. Army shower. Water plants deeply and as little as possible. Etc.

6. Mother Nature's capriciousness: I've encountered it at sea when the skies darken and wind bellows and my body tenses for impact with every steep white horsed wave. The next day is bluebird skies and glassy calm waters. Its hard to remember the former.
Farmers contend with the changing of the seasons and the unpredictability that current weather patterns are dishing out. So far my farming experience here is all sun (lots of it (hello freckles)) and butterflies. I heard last winter it rained and rained and rained which I imagine confused the arid soil immeasurably. No earthquakes and hurricanes on this side yet but that Mother Nature always has a trick or two up her sleeve that could mess with even the heartiest of pumpkins.

7. Getting creative with food:
At sea: wondering what the hell to do with the eight cabbage you picked up in Panama City knowing it's the only veg that will last three weeks in the heat without refrigeration.
On the farm: wondering what the hell to do with the eight million cucumbers you picked that are piled in baskets, on tables, in trunks of dusty cars. Pickling anyone?

8. Tools and procedures: You've got to have a lot of pointy and clampy and archaic looking tools on hand for various tasks and procedures. Both tools and the procedures have funny names that only you and your compatriots know and the layperson gets easily confused when you talk about splicing the bitter end or packing the stuffing box or pulling and composting bolting brassica. It's like pig latin but way way better. Because you sound like you actually know something.

9. I love sailing. I love farming. Kickstarter farm barge? Hmmm...

Zucchini = Magic

2011-08-25T01:09:00.009-04:00

"Check out those melons!"

He pointed his tattooed arm and stared, jaw dropped open.
He waded through the clumps of (mostly) women perched on mulch and hard San Diego dirt until he found them. Cantaloupe the size of softballs rested on overturned pots to keep their creamy white rinds dry. His smile was immense as he cradled one in his palm.
"Awesome!"

Other students of various ages and genders picked tiny gerkins off winding vines and popped them into their mouths. Some let lavender buds slip through fingers and sprinkle on the path. One peered up into the seedy pockmarked face of a giant sunflower.

This small farm is magical for the sheer volume it produces- not only in vegetables but in community interest.

I am now an intern at both Seeds at City Farm at San Diego City College and Wild Willow Farm in Imperial Beach. I get to play in the dirt and plant seeds and pick vegetables and bring them home to adorn my pans and plates. And I get to watch students and visitors (and feel myself very quickly) fall in love with the farms.

I'm going to be cooking a lot. I'm going to have boxes of vegetables piled on my counters.

Good thing I love vegetables. And cooking. And eating.

Here's what I made tonight:

Pan Fried Zucchini (from Wild Willow Farm)

3 medium zucchini, sliced crosswise
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4- 1/2 cup flax seed meal
dash garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup parsley, finely chopped (optional)

Toss zucchini in olive oil. Mix all other ingredients together in a large bowl, sprinkle over zucchini, then toss until zucchini is well coated. Heat oil in pan on medium high heat. Fry zucchini slices in batches until tender, flipping the little guys once. Eat.

I could give you a serving size but since I ate all three sliced up zucchini myself (mostly while standing in the kitchen frying the next batch) I would be lying about such things.

The first day

2011-08-22T23:16:00.004-04:00

It was a big cock.
Huge.
Right in front of me.
I wondered if I should avert my eyes.
Would that make him more aggressive?

He puffed out his chest and raised his black feathered wings to protect his brood. You do not mess with a rooster with egg-laying, chick-hatching, sleek feathered red headed hens clucking about in the pen behind him. Even if you're simply trying to get them fed and watered.
No sir, he doesn't care about that old "biting the hand that feeds you" maxim.

I picture drumsticks and scrambled eggs for a moment as I hand my fellow farmer a stick for defense and a bucket of grain for our assigned duty to nourish the chickens and ducks and goats scattered throughout pens and hoop houses around the farm.

I want to get back to the vegetables.
Not that I don't like animals. I don't love them as babies but I don't always picture them simply as decorations for my dinner plate. I just like vegetables better. I always think of them as edible decorations for my dinner (and lunch) plate and don't feel bad about it. Sure you have to feed and water and nourish them too, but the return is far greater than the input in my salad-obsessed opinion.

Down on my bare knees, boots filling with mulched hardwood, fingernails ragged and dirty. I drop two kernels of dried corn into chiseled holes (no really, we used a chisel). One white bean into parallel rows between the three rows of corn kernels. No squash in this bed to complete the companion planting trifecta, but there are blossoming zucchini nearby to cheer the seedlings on.

I snap prickly cucumbers off their stems and pile them high in the wheelbarrow then later stack a few of them with their squashy mates on the passenger seat of my car for the drive home. The freeways feel superfluous compared to the mulched rows, the parking lots much dirtier than the dust in the creases of my knuckles from the pens.

My first day of interning at an organic sustainable scrappy little start up farm in San Diego was full of sun, seeds, and the constant chatter of free range critters. Of cooling ocean breezes and the scent of wet mud and basil. Towering sunflowers bowing to dry earth and nightshade flowers trumpeting poisonous beauty from crawling vines.

My fingers aren't yet calloused and dirty enough.
My veggie basket not yet filled.
I want more.

Even if I do have to deal with cocks.

The scrapbook that is home

2011-08-19T03:36:00.003-04:00

Half a lifetime later I find mixed tapes in cupboards, hats in plastic boxes shelved high above reaching distance, rollerskates with pink wheels and white leather and reminisces of rinkside makeout sessions.
My life is woven into objects that photographs never could have entangled.

I put the tape in backwards. It has been so long that I forgot where the tapey side should go. There is a fast forward button on the stereo but no eject. No little icon to drag, no keyboard with which to contend. I cannot scratch the disc or erase the file, I can only jump rope with the innards of the cassette if feeling so inclined.

I am not.

Because this is a tape that I received in high school from someone who is now married with a child with a real adult life that we never could have imagined sitting under the stars on the hood of my car next to his elementary school on a hill talking passionately of Nirvana and Shakespeare.

Most of my teenage belongings consist of journals and documents, prom photographs and gossip laden folded up notes. The actual objects are few and far between. So when I find the tapes and hats and rollerskates and candlesticks and books I sit and I melt into childhood.

When feelings were everything and mixed tapes could say for you what was impossible to say yourself at 17.
So what has changed, right?

I found stash of blank tapes. If only I could find the record button.

Walking into the woods

2011-08-12T17:34:00.004-04:00

Grab and twist.
The shadows behind the trees deepen beneath the canopy.
Knee to the groin.
A rustling in the bushes up the hill make me turn and strain my eyes as I search for person or animal.
Fingers in the eyeballs.
The trail descends into the valley.
Make yourself look big and yell as loud as you can.
I stumble over a root and my heart starts racing.

Hiking by myself in the woods has always infused fear and joy, usually in that order, into every nerve of my boot clad body.

The fear: thieves, rapists, mountain lions, cliffs from which to tumble. I'm not sure if the fear is an ancient or modern one. I'm sure my cavewoman progenitors were wary of wandering through the forest full of saber tooth tigers and mastodons looking for a slightly less furbally meal than their caveman partners.
"I'm just going to take a break from inventing this wheel to get a breath of fresh air," she tells him. "OK my little drumstick," he replies, "just make sure you keep an eye out for our crazy neighbor with the club. He's been hiding behind rocks lately and doesn't care if he hits you or that sloth that's been hanging around. Actually, mind that sloth too- he's got some fierce claws!" And so the fear of men and animals in the deep dark woods commenced.

These days in the more urban hiking areas the animals take a backseat to the fear of loonies waiting to jump out of trees to do harm to solo hikers.
Yes, it happens.
Yes, it can be dangerous to be by yourself.
Yes, you're probably safer at home. Or not? The frequency of attacks by man or beast in the woods is probably far less than the chance of an incident in one's urban neighborhood. I've (unfortunately) been physically assaulted numerous times in cities around the world but have never had a close call in the woods (knock on (red)wood that trend continues but without further assaults please). Unless of course I count the time I almost fell off a glacier into an icy river while hiking by myself in Nepal. I guess that's the third type of fear that grabbing and twisting won't help- injuring yourself deep in the wilderness. Yet again I counter that it is far better to go out and explore and risk than to stay safe in one's comfort zone because:

a) you're going to die somehow somewhere at sometime
b) every day you're risking something so you might as well have fun
c) you could find absolute JOY!

Let's expand on answer c:
So the first few minutes I'm in the woods my thoughts are occupied with escape from man/beast tactics.
Then I start thinking of money (how will I get it?) and jobs (I don't have one!) and insecurities (these pants feel tight!) or my To Do list (make money, get a job, exercise) and my anxiety rises.

Then I notice the crunching of twigs under my feet and the sunlight-dappled path in front of me. I look up into the green leafed canopy, at the huge sequoias soaring through cool mountain air. Birds and squirrels play tag on red hued branches squiggly and slender against cloud speckled sky. I can feel a smile spiraling up through my body replacing the fear and anxiety with a tingling awareness of everything around me. Those thoughts I carried from the car from the city from that damn TV molt off like papery snakeskin and dissolve in the dirt beneath my feet. My mind clears and as anxious thoughts come up I am able to mentally toss them into the ravine.
I could walk for hours, days, months I think.
Today, though, I only have one hour.

So I take it in and breathe and walk in worn-heeled boots.

In the forest with its birds and beasts and crazy people and bikers and fellow walkers and cliffs aplenty, I (remember I) am brave and I am free.
We have choices and today I chose to ignore that nagging fear and park on the roadside and get out of the car and walk into the woods.

My car waits at the trail head and I take the whispering of the trees and whooshing of grass and the smell of pine with me down the hill and back to this life full of expectations and anxieties that I think are real.
How can an idea or fear be more real than a sequoia?
It depends on what you chose to see as real.

I'll take the trees.

Oregon

2011-08-05T00:31:00.003-04:00

My relationship with SD

2011-07-26T01:29:00.003-04:00

Going away and coming back, going away again and coming back again.

Repeat about three dozen times and that is my somewhat dysfunctional relationship with San Diego.

So while SD and I are still on good terms, let me count thy attributes whilst I still adore thee...

1. I absolutely despise it when people from away hear the words "San Diego" and immediately say, "Oh my god, you just have the perfect weather don't you?" But you know what, I have to agree. Yup, after spending the first part of the summer on the East Coast from (way too) sunny Florida to blistering New York, I have to say coming to San Diego was like stepping out of a sauna into a dry cool dream. So yes America, San Diego does have the perfect weather.
If you like 75 degrees and sunny.

Which I do right now.

2. Another thing I hate to admit to: There is a certain freedom that we normally carless or public transit types rarely experience (and which I will want to kill myself for in about a month)- driving alone, blasting the music on the freeway. Headed to the beach I feel like I'm 16 again but my old fiberglass surfboard is long gone and my skin is way too damaged now to lay on the sand. But I'm still headed to the beach and Blink 182 or Greenday are perfect to sing along to on my short ride to the shore. Windows down, hair tangling in the breeze.
Awe. Some.

3. Guys with shorts, a hoodie, a baseball cap, socks and Vans. And a soul patch. On anywhere from a skinny 20 year old to a 50 year old with little hoodie wearing kids. Nowhere else can this scream skater cool like it does in southern California. When I see this uniform I know I'm in the city where I grew up.

4. Mexican food.
yes its so cal mex. whatever. a bean and cheese burrito that would feed two families for three bucks. um, bring on the lard.

5. The Ocean.
sit stare breathe repeat.

6. Farms.
in San Diego. I've pulled shallots and admired kohlrabi. that's just so far.
pure freaking heaven.

&. Cool people whom I never really noticed before. (not counting my amazing friends here)
and I'm not talking frat boys on Garnet. I'm talking people my own age with sun stains and soul who choose to live the SoCa life I always thought was a waste of time. Whats wrong with enjoying the sun and sea and locally microbrewed IPAs huh? For so long I was running away from the chill of SD that's in my blood. Although I still have a lot of ambition and a lot on my "list," I've realized that "just being" is just as important as any "list." I look forward to meeting lots of you "just beings."

So that's my short list for now.
Cheers San Diego.
Glad to know ya.
Glad to be back.

Let's play nice now shall we?

Wanting more on the horizon

2011-07-06T10:33:00.009-04:00

I'm reading a book called "The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau. It is my second time reading it. I'm starting to wonder if I should try to find a book on conforming because given my track record I think I'm pretty well versed in the non-traditional life path thing. Yet I'm still buying books seeking THE path for me (occasionally enough not to be depressed or obsessive but frequently enough to be harboring nagging feelings of "is this enough?").
The reason I'm reading it for a second time is that in the interim I've been living a non-conformist life working when I want or feel I need to, taking off weeks at a time, traveling for no other reason than traveling (OK- and eating), visiting all the people I care about across the country whose first questions to me when I ring them up usually are, "Where are you?" then "Where have you been?" But I'm not really sure if I'm doing the non-conformist thing right. So I picked up the book again.

Chris says a lot of the things most success coaches say:

Be passionate about something.
OK, got it. I am. About a lot of things: sailing, cooking, eating, traveling, growing things, the health care system, nutrition, writing, photography, the ocean, hiking through trees with the smell of wet dirt wafting through dead leaves.
OK, wait a second. What's a passion and what's a "Like?" I'll have to construct a diagram or something with lots of concentric circles and lines to help me figure this one out. No, really, it's fun and it works.

It's better to work for yourself than the man.
You got that right. I think. But hey, don't we all work for the man? Who is this man anyway? Even if you "work for yourself" you are always depending on someone else to exchange something of yours whether it is time or a product or skill for their money. So whether its for a big corporation or running a B&B or freelance writing, you're always working for someone else. Yes, some conditions are better than others. Some hours are better than others. As someone who has basically avoided the cubicle I know that I prefer my office to be the cockpit of a sailboat or a coffeeshop with my laptop in front of me rather than a traditional space even if my income is less secure. But hey, I hear Apple has a pretty cool gym on campus. With yoga! I could get used to that.

Take responsibility and be willing to work hard.
I alternately see myself as a lazy piece of crap or an annoying busy body who can't even sit down to enjoy the chips and dip (homemade!) at her own birthday party. I know I can work hard. It's that taking responsibility for my actions that I've had trouble with. Flitting from job to job and project to project has kept things interesting but sometimes I feel like a under-cared-for tomato plant. You see, to make a tomato plant thrive and concentrate on bearing fruit you need to snap off the little branch offshoots that start to form in the crook of the main stem and branches. There are far fewer branches on the mature plant but the fruit has been the focus and is bigger and tastier. If you let the plant just do its thing it gets all bushy and full but the harvest is meager. I feel like I create those branchy sugar stealing diversions and have lots of branches to take care of and therefore lose sight of making sure the fruits I'm growing (this season at least) are the best they can be.
So I get it Chris. Maybe what you are saying is I need to work hard and take responsibility while focusing on that passionate goal. Sounds easy right? Because a lot of us work really hard. And are passionate. But we forget that we can mix the two because hey, that might actually bring us more happiness and what would we do then? Stop buying how to succeed books for starters. And have a job we like. But then what we would complain about over happy hours drinks?

Don't listen to naysayers- they just want to bring you down, man.
I do agree with this one but I don't think that it's always easy to differentiate the Debbie Downers from "those that really care about your happiness" from those who are actually giving you really good advice. But I do know that it is hard to live an unconventional life without people constantly asking, "So what are you going to do when you settle down?" Valid question for many people. It is good to have goals. I just don't seem to know what settling down means anymore. I tried it and wasn't very good at it for very long. Or at least the version of "what settling down means to me" that I created for myself. I was no more happy or secure than when I've lived out of a duffel bag. I might argue I was less secure in a house with a car in the driveway and oven mitts on my hands. Perhaps the timing was off or perhaps I was trying too hard to conform.
I guess I would just phrase this tip differently. Instead of "don't listen to naysayers" I would say "learn how to really listen to yourself- not the egotistical, needing-to-please-others self, but your Gut." It is harder than it sounds when we have so much chatter around about what life should be but I am learning (slowly) it is possible to shut that out and just listen.

Chris says some stuff that is different from the typical get rich quick gurus though (like the stuff above these are not quotes just my interpretation of what I read and what resonated with me):
Make a comfortable amount of money but don't have money be the goal.
Live with less attachments but don't forgo simple luxuries if you can afford them (like lattes).
Find a way to help other people.
Avoid sacrificing opportunities for adventure to "save up" in the traditional way to fund a retirement day 40 or 20 or even 2 years (get rich quick!!) from now. You don't know what the future holds so while you should still take responsibility for savings, live now.
He actually doesn't push for retirement at all, just having a secure independent income. Which I totally agree with. The happiest, healthiest old people I know never fully retired. Or if they did retire from their "career" they jumped into something else. Sitting on the couch eating crackers all day does not a happy person make.

So I'm done with the book. It was a quick read, I took notes. I'll try not to lose them in my wanderings. Is it going to radically change my life? Probably not, but there were some good reminders of why I do what I do even if I don't have the independent steady income thing down yet.

Why did I write about it? Maybe just to let all the people who think that they have "conformist" lives know that even us non-9 to 5ers want more too.
Or that we can all learn from each other even if we think we know what the message is before we start listening to what the other person has to say. Because I'm sure I could learn something about living fully even from one of my favorites like Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann. Maybe. (cringe)

Conformist or non, we're all just looking to be content. And if the Apple gym holds the key to contentedness please Mr. Jobs consider my non-conformist resume.

note: I'd actually love to hear about other people's experiences with this book. Does it seem radical or basic? Did it inspire you or make a non-conformist life seem more impossible? I obviously skipped over a lot of what he said in the book and I do think it is worth a read for anyone.Unless of course you're totally, 100%, undeniably content. Then I want to read your book.

Back to my (kelpy) roots

2011-06-27T16:41:00.007-04:00

Rays glide over smooth sand, zebra sharks with spots not stripes slowly shimmy past the thick glass, the smell of damp carpet and walls, the babbling of small children pointing tapping clawing at terrariums with poisonous dart frogs, a hammerhead shark finning through clear blue.

At the National Aquarium in Baltimore I had two successive thoughts. The first made me feel greedy, the second made me tear up:

1. Why did I pay $25 like the rest of these schmucks to see what I've seen in the wild?

then

2. OK, asshole, how lucky are you to have seen so many of these creatures in the wild while diving in Micronesia or the Caribbean, to have sailed alongside hammerheads and dolphins, to have walked through rainforests with brightly colored amphibians? Most of these adults haven't and many of these kids may never get the chance. Besides, what do you think got you excited about the ocean in the first place- hello Scripps Aquarium and San Diego tide pools! So stop complaining about the measly $25 and enjoy.
F-ing brat.

After this little conversation with my inner scrooge I let myself reminisce about that kid whose hands joyfully stunk of rotting fish long after feeding the dolphins at Sea World on hot summer days. I'd come home from our favorite amusement park and play in the pool with my sisters for hours maneuvering through weighted hula hoops and flipping my wrinkled toes out of the water just like Flipper. My mom would have a hard time getting us out even when the sun set over the palms and the pool light (warm under little feet, hands clinging to the stuccoed concrete lip of the crater) would have to be switched on.
A couple of months ago I worked on a sailboat in the Caribbean and the owner told me on a particularly glassy-watered evening , "You should go for a swim! It's the cleanest, nicest water yet! Unless of course the captain says no." She directed that last sentence towards the cappy. The reply from my colleague was something along the lines of, "You think I can stop her from swimming? Impossible!" I laughed, stripped off my uniform to reveal the bikini underneath, and jumped in as the sun turned the clouds on the horizon the color of ripe papaya. My daily swim made my 16 hour work days worth it.

As we (a couple of yacht crewmates and I) meandered past tanks of sand rays and colorful fairy basslets and huge hogfish we snapped pictures and ohhhed and awwwed like the rest of the crowd. We talked about our short lived marine biology studies, our love of diving, how to cook certain poisonous spine covered invasive species floating gracefully in the illuminated display in front of us.
On the windowed walkway from one aquarium building to another the boat that we work on came into view across the harbor.
A ferry blew its horn to signal leaving the dock sending vibrations through the glass and steel. Sailboats reached slowly through the gray wavelets.
Gulls swooped to pick out jumping fish in the water below.

Suddenly I had a craving for greasy fish and chips from Sea World in San Diego where my life in/on/with the sea began.
Instead, I walked back to the boat that in this moment I call home and had Queen Snapper fillet for dinner now that my adult stomach can't handle the food court grease.

But the wonder and excitement I take away from aquariums?
That is something that I hope I will never outgrow.

Baltimore

2011-06-23T13:48:00.006-04:00

Cobblestone and brick streets, split toed shoes. My rubber encased toe caught an edge and my hands shot forward to break my fall. Luckily the morning coffee I slurped shortly before heading out enhanced those sleepy reflexes and I kept moving forward instead of face planting on the bricks.
And face down is no way to enjoy Baltimore.

"Charm City" gets a bad rap in most conversations but detractors must have had experiences far from mine. Wandering through Fell's Point and Federal Hill neighborhoods makes the moniker come to life. Second-hand bookstores, bustling pubs and bistros using crab for specialties far exceeding the ubiquitous crabcakes, long market halls full of hotdogs and fried seafood and Utz potato chips, gaslamp lit row houses. Even the touristy harbor has it's own appeal.
Sure, I'm ignoring the sirens and dilapidated houses and "The Wire" references, but so far that has not been my experience here. I'm not necessarily ignoring the problems- I would like to know more about how Baltimore is changing for better and for worse.
You can feel the excitement, the art, the cultural convergences as well as the tough past.

I like the gritty beauty.

The brick walkway surrounding the harbor winds past marinas and new condo buildings and cafes. As the Domino sugar factory grows larger its dirty windows dark, smoke billowing from stacks into the still morning sky, the bricks disappear and a rough pavement leads me to a chainlink fence by the water.
I stop to catch my breath and remember that all cities are layered with history. Some prettily constructed, some pure raw material.
Attractive red bricks may cover
the rough pebbly pavement
the leveled dirt
the fragments of the past buried deep down
but the city is stronger with each layer it builds on as long as the builders don't forget what lies underneath.

Baltimore, I look forward to delving in deeper- jagged edges, charm, and all.

My Wild Horses

2011-06-15T21:37:00.005-04:00

I am looking for wild horses. They should be right there, just across the way.
The water is calm and steely gray with dashes of deep blue as the sun rises over the town of Beaufort, North Carolina. I am told that a pack of wild horses comes down to the water early in the morning, do their wild horse thing somewhere inland during the day, then return to the sandy edge of the bay for a sundowner slurp.
My eyes strain to catch a flash of a tail, a long muzzle parting the shrubs.

I am looking for wild horses. All day. Other people have seen them, I am told they exist.
The water is full of sailboats and kayakers and kids and dogs in bright yellow lifejackets and instead of appreciating the scene before me, I am wishing for wild horses to somehow make it better. To inspire me. To be the magic I feel I am lacking.

Dusk has nearly dissipated into darkness and the wild horses haven't appeared yet.
I let my eyes blur that distant shoreline into muted greens and sandy beiges flowing into that steely gray blue liquid and I focus on what is in front of me right now: the sunset bleeding reds and oranges into the still water, a gaggle of little boys giggling about a dog on a scooter, the blushing moon ascending over the four shop-lined blocks of this town, the soft vibrato of a guitar strumming singer echoing off the sportfishing boats from the deck of a waterfront bar, tanned sailboaters sitting in lawn chairs on the fingerpiers sipping cheap beer and smiling.

I forget about the wild horses for the time being and stop looking out the window, holding my breath and squinting. I am here, now, soaking in the soft southern evening knowing that in this moment there are too many other beautiful things to experience to be consumed with my search for wild horses. They will either show up or they won't, but staring out to a distant spit of land eyes unfocused and tired with strain will not make them appear any faster or even at all.

I still know (believe) they are there though and I am pretty sure that when I least expect them to whinny up a storm on that distant beach in a wild horse frenzy I'll see them and it will just be another moment, in the moment, of contented amazement.

2011-06-07T12:17:00.001-04:00

Hammaming

2011-06-07T12:09:00.002-04:00

Her boobs swung in my face as she debated in Arabic about who was going to scrub down this dirty and nearly naked American. At least that is what I thought she was saying as she yelled clipped phrases at her colleague. Both women were middle age-ish with black sagging underwear and flushed faces. At first I wasn't even sure if she was a masseuse or simply an overbearing patron. She spoke Arabic and French and I spoke in giggles mixed with "Uhh, you want me to lay down/turn over/put my face on your thigh?" type sounds. I didn't get her name. I will call her Fatima just to keep things straight.

When my friend Sarah and I signed up for massages at a hamam (a traditional bathhouse) behind the medina walls in Meknes, Morocco, I wasn't sure what to expect. I like baths, I thought. I like massages. What the hell? We might even get a bit of insight into the social lives of Moroccon women since interaction on the streets of Fez and Meknes had been nearly non-existent. What I didn't know at that point is how close I would be getting to the women. Or at least one woman- my very enthusiastic masseuse and scrubber Fatima.

I got the gist that it wasn't the Four Seasons when we asked for towels and after some rustling about were given two damp and obviously very used (unwashed. with hairs.) robes. The plastic shoes dropped in front of me also had a well loved vibe but were just used in transit from modest dressing room to the full on nakedness of the baths so I just went with it.
It is amazing how a simple cloth curtain between locker room and baths can be the determinate between embarrassed modesty and unabashed humanity. In a culture where women are traditionally dressed with all skin except hands and face under fabric, the locker room is a more drastic transition than say the Crunch gyms of New York where yoga instructors have 20 minute conversations in the buff.

Once in the baths, which is really just a series of big steamy shower rooms with spigots a couple of feet from the tiled floor, inhibitions cease and women spend much more time washing and shaving and exfoliating and luxuriating in the warm water than I ever have at home. Some are naked, some with provocatively lacy underwear, some fat, some model perfect. There is no judgment except for the askew glances at Sarah and myself that taper off as the novelty of foreigners dissipates.
The rooms are full of chatter and kids screaming and playing, kind of like an evening happy hour among girlfriends at the playground. Not that all the women are social. Some use their "spa" time to have a proper wash and reflection. Or just plain rest.

Once Fatima and her colleague were in agreement about duties for Sarah and I she donned a black mesh mitt began a series of aggressive scrubs to my arm. I hadn't signed up for a "gomage" (scrubdown) but the look on her face (obviously practiced to score another 50 diram- about eight bucks) had me caving instantly. Yes I could see the thin rolls of gray skin (mine) on her mitt. Yes I could see the look of disgust on her face. No the scrubbing actually didn't hurt that much. "OK, go for it" I motioned.
She smiled and took over my body.

The water was warm and pleasant as she doused my head, chest, arms, legs, sliding her hands over my now damp skin. I felt like a four year old in the bathtub. Only there was no bath tub just a slippery tiled floor and the lady scrubbing and dousing my body was doing so for 50 diram not for the sake of my hygiene.
She motioned for me to lay my cheek on her upper thigh. I giggled and schooched my mostly naked self down on the plastic mat pooling with warm soapy water. My blushing face on her damp skin she grabbed my arm and pulled it over my head. She yanked my underwear down past my hips so she could scrub from armpit to fading bikini tan lines. I looked around the steamy room wondering if anyone else thought the scene was as amusing as I did.

Embarrassment transformed into a relaxed hilarity. I actually wished someone was watching what I was going through because I thought it was open-mouthed gaffaw-worthy, the kind where you run out of breath and start crying. But Sarah was consciously staring straight at the wall pouring bucket after bucket over her shoulders. She knew she was next.

I sunk into the floor and let Fatima maneuver me. It was nice to be out of control, out of my comfort zone, submitting my body to steam and soapy hands. When I could I looked, listened, soaked in the importance of this private feminine space. Before I knew it I was being shampooed and rinsed and dried and robed and escorted back into the bashfulness of the dressing room. My skin was smooth and tingling, my smile wide and mischievous as Sarah and I bounded down the stairs to the cobble stoned street and recounted our experiences.

It was just a bath full of women. Yet from then on I saw women in the street differently. Instead of seeing the conservativeness of the culture, I thought of the lacy undies and loud passionate discussions and naked freedom of the Moroccan women.
We're all naked underneath whether we wear a burka or a bikini. We're all women who talk and bathe and giggle and glow.

Sweet defeat (or how I gained ten pounds in three weeks)

2011-05-26T19:31:00.002-04:00

If you go to France and don't gain weight you are simply not eating and drinking enough.

Yes, yes, I walked.
And biked.
And strolled by the Seine.

But the croissants and brie and bottles of Bordeaux won the battle.

Breakfast

These are the specialties at Angelina: thick hot chocolate with whipped cream and a Mont Blanc pastry- a chestnut and meringue concoction. and of course a glass of wine to wash it all down!

A croque madame and quiche and carafe of red. Parfait!

Throwing in the towel (blanket)

2011-05-23T07:52:00.006-04:00

–adjectiveull of,
rap·tur·ous (as defined by dictionary.com)

–adjective

full of, feeling, or manifesting ecstatic joy or delight.

characterized by, attended with, or expressive of such rapture: rapturous praise.

I'd like to think that after that whole "whisked away to Heaven" thing failed to happen that someone decided to clean out their doomsday paraphernalia-ed apartment (see picture of Messiah blanket above), brush off the worksuit they had recently neglected in favor of "5/21/11 What's your choice: Heaven or Earthquakes, Disease, & Terrible Death?" t-shirts, and got back to earning that 401K that is now depleted because god seemed to have a much better benefit plan than the local union but now that He decided not to show up, well, the company's paltry pension plan is looking mighty attractive.

I think the most burning question I have is for those believers I heard interviewed who were so entirely at peace with themselves and their lives (as one who is about to commit suicide purportedly is soon before the act) that the struggling economy and workplace worries and fears about retirement didn't faze them. The fact that they thought they were going to disappear on Saturday was a comfort. Yes, escapism lives especially for those who were down on their luck and the thought of no bills or mortgage or worrying about how to feed the baby was a huge relief, but I feel like it is more than that. For those leading a comfortable life with healthy and happy families the concept of death should have been terrifying right? Yet according to interviews I heard it was more exciting than frightening.

Now that the Rapture day has come and gone, one of the believers (or many a non) may get hit by a bus on Tuesday or have 50 glorious years ahead. Can someone who was so seemingly comfortable with 'passing on' manipulate his mind to find comfort in the inevitability of death without the specific date?

Isn't that what we're all striving for?

Throw your comfort blanket in the dumpster.
One day or 50,000 more days, let us strive to feel rapturous every one!

On the concrete dreaming

2011-05-21T17:09:00.003-04:00

Bodies are strewn across the floor.
Most stay motionless, knees bent, soles of the feet on the concrete. Their faces glow red with reflected light, reflected thoughts palpable and bouncing through the pressurized space.

When adults lay on trampled ground and whisper and dream together the artist is doing something right.

I saw the name Anish Kapoor on the banners in front of the Grand Palais in Paris and I knew I had heard of him, but what was the exhibit? There were no fliers or notes of explanation for "Leviathan," just a long line snaking towards the entrance and a sign that proclaimed:
"Warning: Pressurized room."
Sounds more than interesting. I'm in.

Through the revolving doors. Pop go the ears, dim goes the light. Immersed in a rosy bath of daylight shining through the plastic fabric small groups and artist-looking types en solo wander and snap photographs. Three large chambers open up in front and on either side of the central public area. Lines (seams) meet at angles on curved walls and in the center of each globular chamber like the inverse of the sun's bright rays. The inflated ceiling is hundreds of feet above the hundreds of eyeballs looking aloft at the changing images projected onto the fabric: the superstructure of the Grand Palais is visible when the sun emerges from the clouds and then slowly dissipates and leaves the crowd in a soft amber light.
Womb, cave, stomach of a whale: images in my head rise and fall away with the collective breath of the room.

After a while legs straighten and men and women in suits and dresses haul themselves into a sitting position, pull themselves reluctantly to their feet, small smiles traceable on shadowed lips. They (we) file out through the revolving doors (Pop go the ears pop go the senses as they are revolved back into reality) and we are directed into the space outside of the space.

The enormity of the work is visible under the glass and metal shell of the Grand Palais as people wander around the outside of the dark form as ants around a trio of basketballs.

It seems people are still smiling or dreaming or thinking about the silliness and grandness of it all. Meanwhile others are starving, wars are raging, violence is rampant in too many places and yet here is an artist spending/getting millions for creating a big blow up room.

What is the point?
The point is someone dreamed up a seemingly impossible structure and created his dream.
The point is that one does not expect an amber womb in the Grand Palais.
The point is that all those people milling about that big blow up room took time to think and dream and step out of "real" space for a few moments in the middle of Paris in the middle of a work day in the middle of what I'm sure is a very busy life (whose isn't?).

We need these moments, these beautiful distractions, to lay on the floor like a child, to look up at the false sky and forget the wars and violence for a few minutes and watch the colors and shadows mutate and dissipate or grow brighter as we hold our breath and remember that just about anything is possible.

"Just a cup of coffee" or "The demise of my social consciousness"

2011-04-26T17:08:00.003-04:00

"You shot my dog and then made him into meatloaf and made me eat it."
That's what the expression on my face seemed to say. She took my money, yelled out, "Grande latte," and said politely to my scowling face, "You have a great weekend!" She seemed to mean it. I wanted to cry. I tried to respond with a friendly, "You too" but I think she could tell that I really wanted to say, "I hate you Starbucks and all the friendly, benefit and health care bestowed baristas. I hate that you are the only real coffee place within walking distance of where I live. I hate that you have comfortable seats and pleasant music and people (artists even) having lively conversations or tapping away at computers or just enjoying a scone. I hate that you are my new favorite place to hang out in West Palm Beach."

Gasp. Kerthunk. Those are the sounds of everyone who knows me and my decade long anti-Starbucks stance fainting and hitting the ground. Hard. So basically everyone who is reading this. Brush yourself off, rub your eyes, close that gaping mouth of yours and read on.

So how could I walk into my least favorite corporate establishment of all time? I wanted to get out of the apartment, I was craving a latte (not grande, medium, dammit. Just say medium!), I didn't want to go to a restaurant and feel weird about pulling out my computer. There are kava shops around but I don't like sleep inducing medicinally tasting kava and since I live above one such shop I am sick of listening to the people who hang out at kava shops. There are bars that would gladly take my drink order at 3pm but do I really need to become one of those writers that is sloshed by 5pm just because she wants to get out of the apartment? (Hmm. Could be fun. For about a week before my body revolts and the diuretic properties of beer don't allow me out of the apartment for days)

So here I am sipping a latte. For those of you who don't know about my vitriolic relationship with the mermaid, let me just say it started with my intimate knowledge of half the coffeehouses in San Diego: Livingroom, Pannikin, 976, Zanzibar, Claire de Lune. The now defunct cafe Vienna, Cafe Bazaam, the Library (now all with a Starbucks within a block of those former great coffeehouses). I used to spend almost every night in high school studying on a shabby couch or at a mismatched slightly wobbly table, pencil threaded through my long brown hair.

Starbucks didn't get really big until I was in college and could stand on certain corners in New York City and see three of them. Three! I resisted and went to Alt.coffee and my friendly local corner coffee-cart ("Light and sweet, please"). I went to Reverend Billy shows and praised his anti-consumerism message with his 'church of stop shopping.' I refused free mermaid embossed gift cards for Christmas and always suggested alternatives to the chain when possible. I've only had Starbucks about a half dozen times in my life.

Now make that seven.

Will I come back to this Starbucks after this slight nausea wears off? Will the catchy music and air conditioning and smell of burnt coffee and free wifi lure me back? Or will I do as I have done before and trek the two miles in the summer heat to get to the closest indie coffeehouse? Have my morals completely collapsed? Am I becoming old and unopinionated/complacent? Are my feelings about Walmart massacring Main Streets in small towns in America going to go by the wayside next?

Or shall I choose to interpret what Reverend Billy used to say about clothes and shopping- you gotta have clothes. It is a necessity. You just don't need to have a lot or go to the mall everyday like the (former) president tells you. Shop responsibly.
So the question I now pose to myself is: how necessary is coffee? I guess the more appropriate question which I can easily answer with a 'Very' is: how necessary is getting out of the house, being around other people, doing something I can get lost in and forget the catchy music and burnt coffee aroma?

Damn you mermaid for running the other shops out of business I yell while shaking my fist in the ACed, vanilla scented air. I would shake the other fist too just to make a point but its holding my (now) lukewarm grande latte and at four bucks a pop, I don't want to lose a drop with all this agitation.

But I reckon my sanity is worth at least five bucks a pop.

Or for those of you who speak the language- a Venti's worth.

It's a Sign

2011-04-25T17:59:00.003-04:00

Anatomy of these Sea Legs

2011-04-19T16:45:00.003-04:00

Let us start at the top and work our way down.

It is actually for your benefit that the upper bits of my thighs are not shown in this picture. You would most likely be blinded by the pasty whiteness and not be able to read the rest of this post.

I roll up my shorts occasionally when I’m in the cockpit for long stretches but usually the pastiness is well hidden. No bikini uniform for me.

The mid-portion of my thigh is what we used to call in middle school “Ashy” The skin is dry and scaly. On the passage down I burnt myself royally after a winter devoid of exposure and so this tough old layer of skin is actually new old skin. But it too is being burnt to a crispy reddish brown with freckles dotting its reptilian surface.

So why don’t I use lotion you ask? Well, if you must know I was told that I stink. I was told that the lotion I was wearing was truly dreadful and that I needed to jump in the water and wash it off. Now.

Harumph. I never.

Since this was the owner speaking, I was in a quandary. Obviously in any other circumstance I would most likely try to mitigate my “What the f did you just say to me?” look and tell the person that it is so very unfortunate that their sniffer doesn’t appreciate my coconutty lotion but its scent would wear off after awhile. In this case I was facing the perhaps most direct insult about my olfactory and/or hygienic choices but well, it is her boat. I said I’d take care of it as she held her nose with a gauzy coverup and frowned. Now, any other time someone tells me to jump in the water for a little swim I am nearly always game. I love the water. Floating, splashing, gliding far below the surface- I feel at peace. But she told me to. Because she said I stink. I have that reaction that every employed person has at some point in their career and want to do anything but what she is telling me I must do. Rebellion. Or kind of because it is a small (ish) boat and there are still two weeks to go. I simply go into the head and scrub the offensive scent off with another lightly scented soap hoping that remedy wont become another problem. It doesn’t. But short story long now I am lotionless. So I am scaly. I’m ok with it because appearance wise, it gets worse.

Down to my knee. Scars and stubble. I’m not sure where the bright pink scar on my left knee cap is from. Probably running into something on deck or jumping onto a dock onshore. I have so many scabs and oozing-on-the-verge-of-infected wounds that it is hard to remember the sources.

Except for the beef jerky-ish striated one on my right shin. That has a story. The owners went off the boat to stay in the interior of Dominica (a place that I will not see on this trip. I am usually restricted to the peripheries as I neither have the time nor permissio to go further afield.) But I do have the dinghy for the afternoon and I am off to town to look for ripe papaya and pineapple and just to look around. Roseau is a cruise ship port of call and there are tons of pasty overfed tourists with floppy hats and Hawaiian shirts milling around the docks. It is also one of my favorite towns in the Caribbean, tourists aside. I motor up to a dock and am immediately cognizant of the amount of surge flinging the dinghys around in the L shaped basin but even more alarmingly, underneath the dock. Now in tying up a dinghy the last thing you want to happen god forbid and knock on wood, is for the dinghy to end up under the dock. All sorts of mayhem can ensue: popping the tubes on a rusty bolt or jagged plank, thrashing the outboard against pilings, getting the dinghy stuck under the dock itself when the tide rises or there is a surge, etc etc. not something you want to happen. So all this is on my mind as I am figuring out how to secure the dinghy when I go into town. I decide to tie it diagonally instead of putting out a stern anchor. So I tie up the painter to the cleat on the cement and wood dock which happens to be a good six feet above the water. There is another small platform only a foot off the water with a ladder to the cement dock, but I am young and agile (and tan and have cool sunglasses. I am a haughty boater dammit) and so therefore I am in no need of such things. Ha! The line is tied on and I am ready to pull myself up onto the dock but somehow my timing is a bit off with the swell bouncing the dinghy up and down and well, I almost eat shit. Literally, because that inner harbor water next to the cruise ship was nasty. I flail a little but luckily get a handhold on a plank and hoist myself onto the dock where a gaggle of French speaking (pasty white is pasty white no matter what language you speak) tourists are simply staring at me as if they’ve never seen a girl and an outboard engine. Or they realize that I almost just fell into the water and could have knocked myself out on the splintered metal- spiked pilings along the way. I clambered to safety nonetheless and tried to play it cool as I picked up my bag and ignored the sting of skin missing from my shin. I made it half way up the dock before I looked down to make sure I wasn’t gushing blood. Nope. Just an abrasion that would become a thick hairless scab.

Which brings us to the next point of interest.

My legs haven’t been shaved in about three weeks. In the Caribbean where one wears shorts and/or a bikini everyday that is a long time. Its not like I planned it this way. Just because I haven’t worn makeup in six weeks and soaping up in the shower isn’t an everyday ritual doesn’t mean I’ve gone totally granola and refuse to shave. It is just that I refuse to buy a 20 dollar razor. It’s my own fault: with all the choices we have these days I somehow have two completely different shaving “systems” and packed the wrong combination. And the disposable razors I have tried simply leave me with the same amount of leg hair but a gizzilion more cuts. So, fuck shaving.

Now we’re at my poor feet. I have multiple cuts and blood blisters from my flops. I otherwise love my way overpriced flops that I got in Key West- they float, they don’t get unwalkable in when they’re wet, they’re tough and slightly cushioned. They’ve lasted more than a year. But when I haven’t worn them in a while they give me nasty scar-inducing blisters. Maybe that’s because when I am onboard I am not wearing shoes so I’ve basically been barefoot for a month. Then a few days ago I took advantage of a morning without guests to take a three hour trek along the coastal road in Dominica. I started in Roseau and wandered through little villages with precariously nailed together wooden and tin houses. Music and religious sermons emanated from curtained doors, dogs pranced down the main road, chickens crowed and clucked in the long green grass scattered with discarded beer bottles and chip bags. I walked near the sea and then followed the road as it climbed into the forest on its way to Scotts Head on the southern tip of the island. By the time I returned to the boat I was parched (despite a stop at a place called Irie Safari for fresh guava juice) and highly blistered but invigorated physically and emotionally by my stroll. It’s amazing what a little time off the boat and to myself can do for flagging morale. The next day up in Portsmouth I was excited to do one of the local hikes I found in the cruisers guide. Forgetting my wounds I slipped those same flops into my bag. I walked for an hour or so up and up past vegetable gardens and banana and pineapple fields. Up through bright red mounds of dirt lining the gravelly road and down into a valley lush with palms and vines and a simple wooden planked shelter with a few ragged shirts hanging on a line. The rush of water over rocks and roots was audible in the bird-call inflected silence. I climbed down to the cascading falls and dipped my now bloody foot into the cool stream. I contemplated lowering myself into one of the shallow pools but instead splashed some water on my sweaty red face and started my trek back down to the beach. Whenever I could I took off my flops. But this hike is going to scar for sure.

Finally we get to the sole. In the anatomy book I am reading they site that calluses are made up of a keratin rich layer called stratum corneum also known as the horny layer. Boy are my feet horny! The hot teak deck is definitely a turn and my feet have become hornier by the day. OK, childish humor aside, I am pretty sure you could stick a pin in my heel and I wouldn’t feel it. Which comes in handy when you break a measuring glass in the galley after the galley has been on the diagonal for a four hour sail and everything in the lockers has shifted and comes tumbling out onto the floor when you reach the mooring. Then you can’t turn on the generator to power the vacuum because the owners don’t want it on during cocktails and you do your best to clean up the shards but well, one or two remnants are bound to escape the dustpan and wham- glass lodged in my heel. I find it as an annoying pressure as opposed to a stabbing pain and simply finagle the glass out of my horny layer.

So there it is. My legs from the pasty white to the horny layer.

Notice I said nothing about my incredible tan…

Befores and Afters

2011-04-18T22:41:00.002-04:00

Thwack. Thwack thwack thwack.

That is the sound of a winch handle coming down on a head.

Multiple times.

Hard.

The blood spurting out of the body doesn’t make a sound as it runs down the teak and sprinkles my arms my shirt my chin with vermilion drops.

The captain keeps up the rhythmic hammering and I am looking over my shoulder not sure how the owners will react to the gruesome scene.

But I can’t help but smile.

Dinner. Is. Served. Or will be when I cook it.

The shimmering golden scales of the dorado fade to gray with tiny iridescent blue specks as life leaves (OK is bludgeoned from) his twitching three foot body.

There is really nothing like catching your next meal. And shoot, a cow would put up more of a fight. Broccoli on the other hand is a freaking push over. Fight Broccoli fight? Learn from the creatures that us humans seem to like the game involved in capturing our nutrients and wresting them into compliance. Maybe those tough guys who think they are too macho to eat anything green would like you better if you just picked up your roots and ran as galosh clad feet tramped towards the garden. But since this is not possible unless perhaps you are indulging on what they call around Dominica HI-Rise rum (infused with local, um, botanical specialties), we’ll just be happy with this beautiful dorado and let the greens play second fiddle.

The gold and blue specks are gone, replaced by a crispy olive oiled brown and black peppered crust covered with spicy mango salsa.

Sea to plate in just a few hours.

And a little blood to remind us that yes, it is a living creature that we are catching, killing, and with which we are nourishing our own vibrant bodies.

Thanks Neptune for the tasty (and easily bludgeoned) gift!

(OK yes, that part about bludgeoning sounds awful but it is the truth. Acknowledge the source and the sacrifice. Look it in the eye even. Be thankful. Then enjoy!)

Not a bad place to die in your bikini

2011-04-11T16:34:00.006-04:00

“If I die tonight,” I tell the captain as I examine the black marks on my throbbing fingers, “here’s who you should call.”

“But who’s going to cook dinner?” he half-jokingly responds.

I jot down my mom’s cell phone number and hope that she won’t be getting a call later that night. “So um, Jennifer’s mom? Yeah, well, she was snorkeling with guests and now her hand is the size of a basketball and she’s speaking in tongues and we’re not sure if she’s gonna…” and that is when the satellite phone connection goes out and he doesn’t even have the chance to say to which remote Grenadine island I’ve been transported. Hopefully one without chickens running through the corridors (I’ve already been to that Caribbean hospital. Actually two. Don’t get me wrong, I love chickens but they are birds. Dirty, stinking birds.)

I flip through the cruising guide to find the “Dangers of the Sea” section. I scan for scorpion and rock fish and poisonous eels and other deadly creatures. The pain is now intense and I can’t bend my middle finger.

The guests were in the dinghy after a fairly unsuccessful late afternoon snorkeling session. The chop was well, choppy, the current sweeping around the rocky island was intense, the light that would have illuminated the mostly dead coral and small schools of fish was dipping towards the horizon. They persuaded me to jump in just for a looksee. I can never pass up a chance to jump in (that’s not true- only applied to clear, clean, warm water) so I did. Parrot fish and sergeant majors dipped and dived in front of my fogging half mask. The current wasn’t so bad with my big fins, but I knew I should get back to the boat with the guests before the sun set any more. I flipped myself up into the dinghy and we prepared to pull up the anchor. The anchor was not cooperating. The anchor is stuck in a coral head. Back into the water I go, breathing hard three times before diving down to the bottom pulling myself with the anchor line. That’s when my ears needed to be cleared and my mask started filling with water. Squeezy pop go my ears with a little nose holding maneuver and I just ignore the mask. I see that the chain has worked its way into a crevice where the anchor is now lodged. No prob. In goes my hand to pull down the anchor. Fuck. Electric points of pain shoot up my arm. This is not good I think but stick my hand back into the crevice anyway. Stupid but instinctual (in a weird way) as I am running out of breath and pulling the anchor out seems essential to my survival.

Free. I kick to the surface with the splayed anchor and hand it to one of the guests. We are now drifting in the current and I kick up into the dinghy to start the outboard. Blood is working its way into the salty crevices of my knuckles and I try not to look concerned as I try to bend my fingers and notice the black marks.

It is one of those moments that may not be as dramatic as, say, the moment after jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge or the moment before impact in a possibly fatal car crash (I’ve experienced the weird slow motion clicky filminess of the latter), but on that dinghy, I started wondering if I was going to die. There are things in the ocean that can kill you and I might have just stuck my hand into one of those thing’s home. Fuck.

I think of whom I should call if I start to go downhill.

I think of things I’ve done.

I wonder if this job was worth it.

I wonder if it’s such a bad way to go? Bathing suit on and smelling of the sea…

Sea Urchins hurt. In this case, it was not deadly, but it hurt for a few hours. Luckily I was cooking for guests and was too distracted to remember the pain or to return my hand to the vinegary solution that was supposed to help dissolve the miniscule spiky tips lodged in my knuckles.

The next day, the black marks were barely there. I was actually kind of hoping they would stay as a little tattoo reminder of my run in with a creature of the deep in the Tabago Cays, the deserted islands of the Grenadines, West Indies.

And a reminder that the next time, hey, it could be a man eating lobster lurking in a coral crevice. Or a bus on a Bequian street. Or fifty years from now as I’m single-handing around the world and I lower my wrinkled butt over the aft rail to pee and oops- shark food.

Point is, those little moments of Shit I could’ve died! are awesome as they give us the chance to re-evaluate ourselves, our relationships, our lives.

Truth is, I'm glad I'm still here and didn't die in my bikini that night.
The captain and guests are pretty glad too- I mean really, who would have cooked the pasta and baked cookies? (And made the beds and retrieved drinks and...)

Fresh. Market.

2011-04-08T07:33:00.000-04:00

"Hello my lovergirl, you want some thyme? How bout papaya? Pineapple? You got lettuce?"
I wander though aisles of wooden tables laden with fruits and green veggies, bottles of spiced rum and bags of sea moss. The ladies call to me and offer greetings of good morning how can I help. I smile and gently touch piles of mint and mangoes, a woman tears off a piece of spicy basil and brings it to my lips. I consider the pungency and buy two bunches, lay them in my shopping bag that I got in Martinique. Or was it St. Kitts? No it was the super marche in Forte de France. I think.
So many islands so quickly. Running into fresh markets and supermarkets and crappy markets with rotting cabbage and melting ice cream. Markets with French labels that intrigue me but take me twice the time to decipher and therefore instead of being the cultural learning and tasting experience I love it turns into a frustrating mad dash against the leisurely Sunday closing time of 1pm when we arrived at 12:30 and I have at least two shopping carts of provisioning to do. Merde!
But the fresh markets! I may be paying three times the normal price for a ruby papaya, but when she says it costs 40 dollars and you do the math in your head to convert it from eastern Caribbean dollars but its still $15 for a piece of fruit, well, you wonder. But then she smiles and says "thank you my lovergirl" and you smile too as you walk quickly back (or as quickly as you can with three overflowing shopping bags full of ripening fruits and savory vegetables and spices and coconut oil) to the taxi that will take you back to the dock, back to the dinghy that will take you back to the boat and back to the galley where the next meal is waiting to be prepared. Um, now (you're not busy right?) And then appetizers and then dinner. And then rounds of drinks and then goodnight and then up at six am to do it all again. The fridge empties, the nautical miles fly by, the next island appears on the horizon sometimes smoking with volcanic ash sometimes clear and green and lush and the most amazing thing you have ever seen.
Until you wake up the next morning and glide into st. Pierre, Martinique.
And then the Pitons towering magically, majestically on St. Lucia
And then? I may never know which harbor or market I will visit next, but as long as fruit platters are devoured for breakfast by sunburnt guests, I always have a good reason (excuse) to explore island towns, groceries, and fresh markets.
Isn't that right my lovergirl?

From the boat...

2011-04-03T18:11:00.016-04:00

the water in Barbuda was refreshing. I think it was Barbuda.

the ubiquitous sunset in the harbor photo. this happens to be St. Barts.

st. pierre, martinique. one of the most beautiful places I've been. Correction: seen from the water. And the site of a horrific 1902 volcanic eruption that wiped out the population with poisonous gases. They never knew what... well you get the picture.

Live for today people.

un piton

zoom in on the beer- its a Piton. Relished with sweaty joy in the shadow of both St.Lucia Pitons. (yes I'm sunburnt)

They say Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed here in St. Vincent. All I know that Garfield the fruit vendor who rowed up in a boat and offered guavas was lovely.

So even if I don't make it to land that often- its a hell of a view.

Island hopping

2011-04-01T09:56:00.001-04:00

St. Barts. Anchor down. I hand the captain the bags of trash and then flip my legs over the lifelines, purse and flops in hand, and swing myself into the dinghy.

“You behave yourself!” I tease the guests as we rev the outboard and make our way towards Gustavia. The rocky cliffs and scrubrush hills are dotted with red roofed villas and extravagant mansions overlooking miles of frothy Caribbean Sea. We curve around with the land and find ourselves in the unmarked anchorage. There is no rhyme or reason; it seems the boats simply throw down an anchor unwitting of swing room or scope. “Wow, they sure pack em in here!” I yell over the outboard roar to the captain. “Yup. The French don’t care- they just put out more fenders,” he answers. I am slightly horrified but moreso full of admiration. I mean, they’re just boats right? So what if they bump a little? OK. So I would not be fine with this mentality on my own boat when a gouge in the gelcoat can be an expensive and time consuming fix. Nor do I want some guy with 20 feet of line out in 10 feet of water dragging into me in the middle of the night. Yet somehow here in St. Barts it seems to work. Once again it’s a reminder to chill out, drink some burgundy, eat some nice food, sleep on deck under the stars (closer to the fenders when that other boat hits (old habits die hard)), and don’t worry. Life is too short. Boats bump, wine glasses break, bread crumbs fall into cracks in the floor. C’est la vie.

When we get into town all the shops are closed and shuttered. Practically the only businesses open at late afternoon are a smattering of restaurants (the rest will open later in the evening) and a pharmacy. I pay an ungodly amount of $9 for a tiny tube of what I think is Neosporin like (“Yes, zhat es wot yuu want” says the French cashier as I show him my strangely dual infected ears) and scurry back to the dinghy dock to meet the captain as he finishes checking us into the country. I pass boulangeries and patisseries I to which I want to return in the morning and all sorts of shmancy stores I will have to forgo.

I have my big sunglasses and my yachting burn/suntan look going. All I need is a caftan like the leopard gauzy one I spied in one of those schmancy stores. Ok, I also need a black credit card and I may be able to pass for someone on vacation.

I jump back into the dinghy with the captain and we motor out into the outer harbor and back to our guests. At least I got to step onto land, take a quick tour of the town. Which is more than I can say about yesterday’s anchorage in Barbuda.

The sand on shore looked nice from my swim around the boat. But hey, the water was warm and clear, the moon bright overhead. Not a bad breaktime activity. It beats talking about LOST over the water cooler.

My mind mimics the sea

2011-03-19T07:56:00.003-04:00

Day six.
The waves are less confused, the wind subsides to almost nothing. We drift and creak along below pinpricks of light, rocket launches, the waxing moon directly overhead as we silently scoop spoonfuls of wine drowned chicken pot pie with half baked biscuits past windburned lips. We signed up for the delivery knowing that the chop outside of Savannah harbor may not be forgiving, may toss and flounce us on shallow hips of waves, spray us with cold salty wind. Day one and two we wondered why we take pleasure in sailing. How is it possible when I have vomit in my eye-blinding strands of hair, on my woolen sleeve, in my nostrils trying to hold it as I ran up the companionway with a plate full of sausage spinach and pasta lunch (ambitious? Stupid!) for my crew-mate and a mouth full of bile. Over to the rail I don't quite make it but my companion consoles me with a Dramamine slur, "Aww its ok. The lines have seen much worse than that!" I apologize and promise to wash down the deck and running rigging I have fouled. In the meantime though I hang on to the lifelines, draped over the winch drum, my face pale, my freckles standing out in relief.

The thoughts in my head follow the same tumultuous trajectory and I long for them to spew into the deep blue froth instead of churning within. Days and casseroles later my thoughts my body even out with the following sea. The dolphins leaping and whales breaching and the sun on my face and the stars surrounding my watery environs and the amiable chatter about politics and careers and life and the wonder of being at sea claim my days and soft evenings. We are on a rhumb line for the islands and I imagine myself without thoughts, diving into the water. I want this thinking to disappear but with every nautical mile under the keel, with every sapphire wave pushing us towards land, my mind calms and I know that all I can do is Be. Thoughts and actions to take on land don't matter don't come into play when you are 500 miles from where you are destined to be and even further from whence you came.

I eat, I sleep, I stare at the sea.
I think of love and desire, goals and accomplishments. A tropical bird with a long tail appears overhead. Hundreds of miles out to sea he floats on the air currents above our sails.
All he has to make sure of is that he continues to fly.

I try to learn and do the same.

Living Diagonally

2011-03-17T11:55:00.000-04:00

Braced between the wall abutting the engine (room) and my propane stove I gently grasp the oven door and pull.
Not too hard as that would send the casserole inside hurtling towards my face peering into the blue flame lit darkness. I reach for the glass dish, my inadequate slightly damp towel as a makeshift mitt precariously close to the fire below. That would be it: I would be knocked in the head with the eggy french toast behind thick glass and then the slippery half cooked creamy mess would slide down my front onto my bare legs finally resting with a burning bang on my shoeless feet.

Pulling anything out of the oven requires a certain amount of skill and timing (patience) as the boat rocks back and forth or fish tails while maintaining a constant 20 degree angle.

Life on a diagonal makes baking, chopping, basically cooking in general pretty challenging. Yet when I come up the companionway with a steaming bowl of pasta and settle into a windward spot on the combing and see nothing but ocean 360 degrees, living on an angle for eight days is worth every burned finger and chopped vegetable sliding across the countertop.

My bulletin (board)

2011-03-04T00:38:00.000-05:00

I am one of those people.

I raise a glass and toast to the evening, admire the label on the bottle of wine you (I) picked out (for the label followed by the terroir. yes I am a victim of marketing). Then as you go to throw that cork out as we move to the next bottle or towards our homesteads, I eagerly grab for that little piece of floaty spongy wine stained goodness and proffer, "I'm saving them." You give me a quirky look but quickly hand me the cork, convinced (knowingly) that it will most likely end up in a Ziploc bag filled with vino conquests spanning the years. Or scared that I will hurt you for it.

Silver Oaks? Chateau Rothschild? La Fleur?
1989?
Got it.
OK. I confess that not all the corks come from bottles that I fully enjoyed by myself, my companions. I admit to pilfering corks from jobs where they would have ended up in the bin, pilfering not only corks but sips from decanters not quite empty. And what sips they were! Dregs from a bottle worth more than my monthly paycheck will not be swirled down the drain! Even if luxury goods are overpriced there is certainly something about a 30 year old bottle of wine heavy with sediment and- dare I say it- complexity. Not that I can tell notes of tobacco from notes of bourgeois hypocrisy. All I know is that it ain't Chuckie Shaw.

Most of the corks are my own. Enjoyed with friends on long evenings near the beach, in a crew mess, on a boat, with campfire ashes on our hands or the remnants of a fine French meal- snails and laughter and memories and all- lingering on our palates. It's not really about the names, it's about the experiences. The intimacy of finishing (or trying) a bottle over an evening of connection.

I have little trouble finishing a glass of wine, but many of my projects seem to go unfinished.
So what I am saying is that my corkboard, though minor, is a long sought after accomplishment. Sitting down to glue small pieces of tree to a larger piece of once cotton ball fluff stretched between more identifiable striated planks soft to staples and betraying every bruise to arching fiber is something. I sit and I glue I position I reminisce. And after staring at my pile (Ziploc) of corks for years, I am pleased with my progress. Soon I am able to hang my creation and post silly notes with slightly broken tacks. I create, I use, I go on to the next idea.

Which is huge. Usually I am stuck on ideas. They brew in my head for years, decades, clawing at my right hemisphere but stuck in my throat, my fingertips on keyboard clenching and resisting. How many ideas will go unbirthed, sequestered to corners, folds of cortex, memories of thoughts unrealized?

But the levy must burst someday and I am ready for the flood.
The corkboard (silly, insignificant, beautiful, practical) is a start. A bulletin (board) for renewed creativity, postings of feelings thoughts intentions.

Some ideas are better forgotten, for sure. But the question still lingers late into the night when I think of myself at 21 3am on a Tuesday New York morning pounding at keys unable (thankfully) to sandbag the stirrings...

At 33: What's next?

Emotional Triage

2011-02-24T11:29:00.001-05:00

Boca Raton.
Florida.
Hurricane central.
I'm sitting in a well equipped, comfortably furnished classroom. The instructor for the psychological first aid course for volunteers is in his 70s, has a gray beard and a pronounced New York accent. He was a college professor back up north before he succumbed to Florida's inevitable gravitational-like pull with the geriatric crowd.

He explains the gist of the class.
I can tell he is good at what he does, both as a clinical psychiatrist and a teacher.
I can tell he is passionate about his line of work even in his semi-retirement.
I can tell that he would take the time to share his knowledge with each of the six students in the room... if only he could get the computer to talk to the projector for his powerpoint slideshow.

Soon he abandons technology and we are talking disaster scenarios, we are visualizing houses simply gone. Gone after a tornado, a hurricane, a fire. Kids with tear streaked faces digging through the remains of the foundation. Adults staring at mailboxes in front of their home when their home is no longer there. We are talking about talking with people, comforting people (Rule: only give a hug if they ask for one. No initiating. (He said to ignore this rule, just ask them first)), getting their basic needs met as soon as possible.
The instructor talks about cultural sensitivity, personal boundaries, word choices (Rule: Do not say "I know how you feel" or "Well, you should just be thankful you got out alive!" or "God only gives folks challenges they can handle").

Then he said, "Never promise anything that you can't deliver." A new house, a filet mignon dinner in the chow tent, that their grandfather who suffered a heart attack in the storm will be alright. Promise them a blanket and then go get one, promise them a hot meal and check to make sure they are at the dining area when donated food supplies are piping hot, promise them that you will see what you can do to make them comfortable, then do it.

And I thought, shouldn't that just be true in every situation in everyday life? I mean, how often do we promise things that we know we can't or won't deliver on? Usually it is with the best intentions- to make whomever we are talking with feel better, keep up hope, feel safe. But when we promise to feel a certain way forever or say that we'll never let another be alone or scared or even that the pot roast will turn out perfectly (charred onions! disintegrated carrots! tasteless meat!), we are doing each other a disservice.

I want to feel safe, feel loved, feel like I will get a good meal, but I would rather be dealt with honestly. I would rather deal with the fact that nothing is certain. That we all feel and try and hope and believe and that no one can predict anything.

OK, so that might be a lie, the part about wanting everyone to be totally honest all the time. Sometimes little lies (wishes) may be good? But where is the point where comforting and hope collide with false promises and a denial of reality? When does it start to harm us instead of let us move forward in a positive way? When does it become a blinder to the inevitability of pain, loss, death? But maybe sometimes it sweetens a situation without misleading us, gets us through tough times.

You, me, hey, we'll figure it out.
I promise.

(OK, OK, I promise that we will look into it more deeply, try to talk more, be more aware, try to live as openly and honestly as possible. OK? OK.)

Now let's get on with living.

Challenges

2011-02-18T21:14:00.006-05:00

Sometimes being in over your head is the best place for one to be.

How else do you know how tall you can stand? Or how much you can grow. (OK, cheesy fifth grade teacher type talk, but those elementary school teachs know what they are talking about.)

All I've been asking for this year is to be challenged in some capacity. Of course when it really happens and I am crying that I can't handle this and everything seems to put me into a dizzying state it seems like the worst place ever. But without (re)learning about AC power systems and battery banks and blown fuses and creeping seeping invisible gas issues and which stitches are important, would I be as challenged doing anything else in this moment?

So I wipe my tears with grimy under the fingernail hands and set to pages of lists. To action. To more challenges. To looking up at the night sky through the companionway knowing how lucky I am to sleep in a small boat with clanging halyards and a soon to be waning gibbous moon overhead.

And like the successful stringing of messenger lines to replace running rigging, to more small triumphs and more perfect challenges.

What I do?

2011-02-06T09:38:00.003-05:00

I learned quickly by the blank stares or corner of the lips twitching that my question was poorly received. "So, what do you do?" I asked as I coiled up the docklines, the yacht I worked on in my mid-twenties slipping through Edgartown Harbor and out into Vineyard Sound. I was making small talk with our guests for the daysail and that 'what's your profession' question is usually the go-to phrase we all cling to. Sometimes guests would openly explain the trajectory of their careers, others would stammer on about what they used to do when they were younger. I soon found out that talking with much older or much wealthier people that sometimes that particular question does not apply in the way it does for those of us who need to think about our income.

After awhile I started asking the question, "So what keeps you busy?" I would hear stories about serious philanthropic work at cancer centers and managing of theater organizations, founding of non-profits and trips around the world and books that were being written about ancient societies. Even with people my own age whom I assumed had some sort of job I would ask my new go-to question and the answers always made me glad that I asked that instead of what someone's profession was. I found young moms responded especially well- surely they were sick of being asked what their job was and responding "mother" only to have people say, "Oh, so you don't work?"

Our perception of what constitutes work and our societal conceptions about how what one does to make money defines who we are can get quite frustrating.
Especially for those of us (the majority of us?) who work to make money to assure that we can meet our basic needs but manage to have a bit of fun along the way. Even if we enjoy our job we don't necessarily want to be pigeonholed into a label.

I was recently mixing up a batch of mojitos for a group of guys on a corporate yacht charter. They all worked hard together up north and made sure they played hard on the yacht in the islands. As I crushed the mint and splashed in the rum, a guest made a comment that I hear in some form almost every time I work on a boat. "So you work on boats, huh? Rough life!" (pause for sip of his gin and tonic) "What do you do on land? (or what are you going to do when you grow up? or when are you going to settle down?)" When I was in my twenties I laughed this off and quipped that maybe I would never settle- this life isn't so bad, hey? The guest would laugh and wander off to the bow.
Now that I'm reaching into my mid-thirties and I still have no set career path but I have a whole lot of adventures in my wake, I find I am much more sensitive to the question and its implications. Or rather my judgment of myself and the comparison to others my age who seem to have their shit together while I wander from job to job and country to country, clear path/career path unknown. Sometimes I wish I could say, "I am an accountant" or "I am a nurse" and feel proud of the schooling and order that come with such pronouncements.

Nowadays when people ask me what I do, I get flustered. What do I do? For work lately, I've been scrubbing toilets and making beds and serving cocktails as a stewardess, but I don't define myself as a yachtie stewardess. Its been fun to work with some great crews, see some amazing places, meet some interesting people, but it doesn't tell you much about me. What else do I do? I read, I write, I take photographs, I cook, I eat, I go out into the world and observe. I may clean toilets for money on occasion, but I don't think about toilets when I am out exploring and meeting people and living. I would love to make money doing something that I do think about when I am out exploring and meeting people and living, and sometimes that does happen on boats, but I am still waiting for the right mix.

So I've decided that when people ask me what I do, I can answer in a couple of ways that I feel will be more truthful than saying, Yachtie. I can say, "I live." Yup I know, sounds snarky, but hey, in the end all that we are really doing is living (dying).
Or I can tell you what I've done. I can list off countries I've been to, plays I've performed in, university degree and other certifications I have on crisp paper, stories about sailing from San Diego to New York on a 32' boat, yacht jobs I've had, my published articles, etc etc. It might take a while because it is varied and who I am and what I do is not easily corralled into a simple label, but what I've done tells more about me than what I do.

Or maybe I can just answer "What do you do?" with "Define do."

Service

2011-01-23T21:22:00.006-05:00

Just a guess that the Dalai Lama was never in the service industry.
I am pretty sure of this because:
a) His Holiness was sought out as a small child in the mountains of Tibet as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama and has been the spiritual leader of the Gelug Tibetan Buddhists ever since. Most likely, as a holy man of the highest order, he never had a summer job as a waiter serving lobster bisque to tourists or scrubbing toilets as folks in cocktail dresses and tails floated by. He's been busy enlightening the world and stuff.
b) He said this: "Think of other people. Serve other people sincerely. No cheating!"

He obviously never worked on a megayacht.

OK, OK. I assume that the Dalai Lama was referring to the type of service you don't get paid for- helping out your fellow human being without expectation of compensation.
The majority of my service background if we're talking in hours has been toiling for filthy green rectangles of made-up value. Yes, I did volunteer work in high school and college, yes I try to help people out where I can, yes I think of myself as a pretty compassionate person- but I never feel like I am ever doing enough.

Especially when I'm working for the wealthy.
I see true Dalai Lama-ish service as working with the economically or socially challenged. With the homeless or orphans or those close to death. With those who just encountered a tragedy or can't seem to find a break from misfortune.
Because when I work for those people, I feel like I am doing something good. Like I can give myself a little pat on the back for being a good person. No matter what the outcome, I tried to help. A little psychological balm for all the help I can't give.

But what if actually getting paid for service and following the Dalai Lama's advice, especially the last bit about not cheating, what if that is actually more virtuous in an emotional sense? It can be harder, that's for sure. (Stay with me- I'm not advocating chucking volunteerism)
For example, I find it easier to feel compassion towards someone who is "less fortunate" than myself if they get angry and start screaming bloody murder at me when I hand them a plate of food in a shelter. I reason that most likely they have psychological problems and are unhappy with their situation and hopefully, somehow, someone (else?) will take care of them. I try to fill my heart with love and compassion and move on.
On the other hand, getting called a servant and being ridiculed for some allegedly botched task (a stiff drink, let us say), even the tiniest sliver of compassion is thrown out the porthole and I am seething with resentment and ill will towards this someone whom is "more fortunate." (Drawing from past experience- the current guests are lovely. So far.)
Thus I reason it is more of a boddhisatva challenge for me to calm my brain and open my heart to those who seem to have more but may be as "poor" or "crazy" physically or emotionally as those I consider charity cases. Instead of being angry at an angry millionaire, why not pour even more kindness into my service with the same intention of making someone's life better. Not because of the eventual payment (money comes, money goes), but because like the women I served in the hospice in India, everyone needs to feel the warmth of a genuine smile, needs to feel the trickle down goodness of the lifeforce that is a clean/ice-cold glass of water, needs a willing hand to help them up the stairs. Even if I don't get a thank you or some other fuzzy approval or gratification for my actions.
So as I scurry around cleaning toilets and wiping down showers and mixing up vodka and sodas, I will be aware that these individuals, whatever their financial or social or emotional situations, need compassion too. Maybe more so.
I will listen and speak with empathy and compassion (even if it's a drink order), I will fold shirts with total willingness and love (stop laughing, I'm serious), I will welcome each person every time they step aboard with genuine warmth and an open hearted smile.

That could be a real service to someone. To everyone.

Even more than a killer bloody mary with extra olives and a twist.

Time to Dig In

2011-01-17T15:05:00.003-05:00

There seem to be so many excuses to procrastinate on following a dream.
I use them all:

It's too early in the morning.
I just flew in and I need time to rest.
What if a glass of wine turns into three and I'm feeling it?
I probably won't learn anything anyway.
It's taking up a whole Saturday!
They'll probably feed me a sandwich on whole wheat bread and I'm sensitive to wheat and will puff right up but I don't want to make a fuss and I don't want to eat a nutritional bar food supplement for lunch and what if I can't eat outside on the grass because its raining and if it rains the whole program will be a washout anyway and...

Instead of using a sly self-sabotaging phrase I set the alarm for 7:30am. And one for 8:30 too.
Pulling into the parking lot of the Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach at 9, dented stainless tea mug in hand, I stumble into the red roofed lecture room. Coffee and munchkin donuts meet me at the entrance. I bypass the sugar and additional caffeine for the check-in table staffed by chipper (coffee and munchkins) morning people handing out pamphlets.

"Farm Your Backyard Workshop" the spiral bound handout proclaims. The periphery of the room is lined with tables, the center with chairs. Various visual aids are scattered on the brown laminate folding tables: blown up pictures of horned tomato worms and green lacewings (detrimental and beneficial insects, respectively), a row of pesticides and herbicides in warning-laden bottles, (organic and not so much), leafy tomato plants in black plastic growing bags, a carpet of microgreens peeking out of long trays, tiny seedlings stretching out of their Styrofoam hatchery, a batch of books on plants and gardening.

The center of the room is not quite as diverse. A gardening workshop in sunny southern Florida? Who do you think is going to show up: a sea of gray and dyed brown hair, blue vein highwayed translucent skinned hands clutching paper cups and pamphlets, bifocals focused on the lectern. A few greenthumbs under fifty are peppered throughout the crowd. Even though the demographics are skewed towards the golden years, I am just ecstatic to be around others who love vegetables.

I find a seat, pull out my notebook, and wait for the dirt on organic gardening.

Our lecturers are the Odd Couple. One an Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator (read: huge commercial farms advocate) and the other a (mostly organic) master gardener. The bantering and polar opposite suggestions regarding farming techniques and products begin at 9am and don't finish until we leave later in the afternoon. Yet it works. I don't agree that commercial mono-cropping is the way to feed the world, but I do agree that we need to figure out more efficient ways of farming. Do I want to spray malathion in my garden? No, but our master gardener occasionally does is nothing else works. He argues for indeterminate tomatoes, the other for commercial determinate. There is no right way to garden.

Powerpoint slides lead us through soil preparation and seed germination, pest and fungus control. Hydroponics is covered, the best veggies for Florida suggested.
Tangents are taken, questions welcomed. The characters in the audience are sometimes more entertaining than our hosts with their Yonkers accents, big bellies under suspenders, waxed gray mustaches, and emphatic, usually inappropriate comments.

Finally it is time to head into the real live garden.

Cauliflower and mustard greens, turnips and ruby red lettuce climb from the dirt. We pick off bits of leaves and taste the sunshine and chilly rain. We wander through hoop houses broiling in the morning sun and dirty outside tables covered with trays of burgeoning vegetables. Heaven!

I eagerly point out cabbage and bok choy, curly leaf kale and rainbow chard. I want to pull pieces of grass out of the competition for soiled nutrients but figure the weekly volunteers should probably have something to do in the otherwise pristine garden.

After a baby carrot (not from the garden) and delicious roasted mushroom (on whole wheat-damn) sandwich lunch on the grass, we all gather back inside for a final Q&A. Our hosts cut it off when the questions start getting personal and ridiculous ("If I wanted to grow soybeans on my 1/2 acre backyard swampy land, can I get an Ag Exemption? Ok, well what about corn?") and we were freed into the sunshine.

I don't know how much I learned from the Farm Your Backyard workshop other than there is no one way to do anything- if vegetables come up and aren't ravaged by insects or heavy chemicals, you may be doing something right.
But going to a workshop, participating in a community activity instead of sitting at home at the computer googling community gardening is a step towards a simple plot of land, a shovel-full towards building community, a leap onto a welcoming vacant lot of ideas and dreams of change.

It's time to dig in to stuff I've been talking about for years.
It's time to stop talking (writing) and dig.

Veggies in the City

2011-01-08T21:25:00.003-05:00

i

I want to (a) garden...

Diving into 2011

2011-01-05T18:58:00.003-05:00

“Don’t fuck this up,” he smiles. I’m sitting on his lap, his lips are close to my ear, his breath the only warm thing in the small space. I can hear him smiling. I can’t help but smile too at my tattooed, dreadlocked partner even though he can’t see my face.

We head for the way out, the floor trembling beneath us.

My feet rock back and forth on the bottom edge of the cargo door. My mitten-covered hands (it’s cold up here!) grasp the thick nylon harness, my heart under the clip and strap intensive getup beat.beat.beating.

“One, two,…” the three is lost as we hurtle through the freezing air at 13,000 feet. We flip upside down and the plane doesn’t even register as an object in my brain at all as the only thing I want is to be facing the ground again. Strange for someone afraid of heights. Of course choosing to jump out of an airplane when even rock climbing produces massive panic attacks is pretty strange too. Even stranger? Doing it because you got a half off coupon on the internet. There are certain things you don’t want discounts for: plastic surgery or Lasik may be couple (I’ve received offers for both). Skydiving may be another. But somehow my desire to join the parachuting crowd won over my best judgment.

I found myself staring at the ground. The recent rains transformed the chaparral desert that is San Diego into a lush green landscape. Look up, look around! The mountains, the Pacific, downtown, the bay, Mexico swirled in my view as the air rushed past my goggled, watering eyes.

At one point I remember thinking, Pull the damn parachute already! But we still had a couple thousand feet to go.

In the waiting room a half an hour before, I initialed dozens of boxes that all basically said the same thing: If something happens and you die or are maimed, there is no way in hell that the skydiving company will be responsible. Don’t even try it buddy.

(Initial Initial Initial)

Oh, and your insurance will probably deny the claim.

Hmmm.

(Initial Initial)

The reassuring part of the paperwork? It said that the equipment had a self-activating emergency parachute that would be deployed at 1,000 feet. So hey, if the instructor is struck by my ponytail whipping about and he's blinded in pain and can't check his altimeter or the leg harnesses squeeze the vitals a little too roughly and he passes out with discomfort, the chute will still come out and we'll plummet to the ground a little less violently.

Of course, there is a disclaimer about equipment failure too. (Initial)

We are rushing to the ground. The airfield is getting closer. I see other jumpers floating under gray or yellow chutes.

Then boom. That feeling you get in the elevator. My stomach drops as we seems to fall more quickly for a second and then are jerked upwards.

The parachute has been deployed! About time!

I wait for him to say “Uh-oh” as the guy who did the safety briefing on the ground said the instructor might say if it all got fucked up and the emergency chute was needed. Instead he spun us around and pointed out all the sights.

I hadn’t screamed the entire freefall. I think that my mind was too busy processing what the hell was going on. Now that we were floating, however, my mouth took on its own life. Expletives and all. For me, the freefalling wasn’t as scary as the sensation of hanging from another person, clipped in by four measly metal clippies, the other person being the one actually wearing the parachute that will get us both safely to the ground (if the harness doesn’t fail).

“You can let go of your harness,” he said.

“Ha,” I gave a nervous little laugh. “It’s OK, I’m just…. Holy Shit!” I didn’t get to tell him of my fear of heights as we zoomed into a downward spiral. I started laughing and fighting the urge to tell him to take it easy on the tricks. I was skydiving for god’s sake. Make the most of this thrill! Be scared, deal with it. You’re not going to fall. I mean, you are falling. And you’re OK.

I once read something by a woman who had anxiety attacks (I’m not sure if from a fear of heights or a fear of crowded rooms or a fear of singing chipmunks, but the fear was there). The way she got through the attacks or at least lessened the magnitude was to say to herself, “In this moment, are you ok?” And she would answer herself, “Yes.” She would repeat this personal exchange until it clicked into her mind that "Yes, I am fine." Don’t think about the future and all the things that could go wrong (clips breaking, Alvin singing “Christmas don’t be late”), instead know that you are alive and well in this moment.

And this moment is all that matters.

So as I was drifting, spinning, racing towards the ground and the occasional panicky thought would arise, I’d tell myself in the best Jack Handy inner voice I could muster that I was OK.

And it worked.

The landing field rose to my feet and we took a couple of awkward four legged steps together, Tattoo Ron and I, before he unclipped and congratulated me.

“I’m afraid of heights, but man that was amazing!” I blurted out.

“Now you tell me!” he laughed.

We shook hands and I stumbled off the field, my legs rubbery, my heart still pounding, a huge smile on my face.

Do I need to skydive again? Not necessarily. It was the perfect way to start off an adventurous 2011 full of bold moves and intuitive forward movement and saying yes (and I’m OK) to (perceived) scary situations.

Hey, maybe I’ll even try rock climbing again.

Because you know what, in this very moment, I am OK.

Home in San Diego

2010-12-29T14:49:00.006-05:00

The van pulls into the carport and my sisters and I are woken up by the lack of noisy engine, the lack of Johnny Cash on the cassette player, the lack of cigarette smoke filtering into the backseats. We grab our blankets and pillows and stumble into the house in the middle of the night. Or we are fully awake when we get home in the late afternoon and we bound out of the yellow Vanagon and call dibs on the toilet. I'm seven years old and it smells like summer inside the closed up house. We've only been gone for a week, a week of fishing and hiking and oh boy burnt pancakes and greasy Bishop bacon and driving through the mountains of the High Sierras and the desert that is Southern California. We're home and the blinds are closed and the cats and dogs haven't been picked up from the animal hotel (fleas!) yet and the green shag carpet harbors the smell of small chlorinated feet and the damp towels laid out to watch movies- the smell of summer break.
Whenever I come home I expect that smell. Maybe remodeling and insulating and tile instead of shag changed the smell, but the feeling of walking in the door is nearly identical.
The feeling of coming home to the house you grew up in.
I get a glass of water, walk through the house to see what has changed, go into my old bedroom and fall into a deep sleep under the glow in the dark covered (still!) ceiling beams.
The yellow Vanagon is long gone but my dad's legacy of sturdy cars remains. On my first day out of the house I jump into the Chevy Blazer and bump onto the main road. This is what I do:

1) I get a burrito. Usually bean and cheese, maybe a little sour cream and guac thrown in. Any displaced southern Californian can tell you that there is nothing, nothing like a lard infused tortilla full of beans or carne asada, dripping with smoky hot sauce and fresh guacamole, wrapped in paper as an attempt to contain the tasty mess. And at one o' clock in the morning on a foggy San Diego night, even New York pizza can't compare.

2) I drive through my favorite neighborhoods: Kensington, North Park, South Park, Hillcrest and into downtown. Most of the neighborhoods have changed dramatically since my high school days. Hillcrest used to be filled with coffeeshops and used bookstores and sketchy kids asking for money on the street. I used to drink lots of coffee and buy far too many Beat poetry books and makeout with those kids between clove cigarettes. Now there are a few Starbucks and less bookstores and I don't smoke cloves anymore now that I'm in my 30s. I guess Hillcrest and I have grown out of our "pretending to be tough" phases. I keep driving. I mentally list the restaurants and bars I Need to visit. I probably won't but I like the myriad of possibilities.

3) I stop to get coffee, to write, to observe life at one of my favorite coffee shops. It's hard to believe, but San Diego has cooler cafes than New York City. The kind of places where you can sit all day with a mug (hot warm cold coffee) and a crumb of scone on your plate and write and read and just be. You get to know the people at the counter, the regulars. Soon you are a regular and start dating the cute guy with long dark hair who smiles when he serves you tea but he's not the cool intellectual you thought he must be working at a coffee shop full of people studying and you break it off before you go away to college and at college you miss all the neat coffee shops of your hometown and you boycott Starbucks (still do) but meet real intellectuals in sweaters and thick framed glasses. (this is what home does- nostalgia full force)

My favorites:

Claire de Lune in North Park http://www.clairedelune.com/

976 in Pacific Beach http://www.cafe976.com/

Living Room in the College Area (my second home during my teenage years) http://www.livingroomcafe.com/sdsu.php

Zanzibar in Pacific Beach http://www.zanzibarcafe.com/Pacific-Beach.html

There are so many more (and so many that closed down) but these are the must visits.

4)The beach. I head to Pacific Beach. The drive through the bay park area is always surprisingly exhilarating. The water (desert? water shortage?) is everywhere and there are always sailboats and kite surfers and fishing boats making fluffy white wakes in the inlets and under bridges and through sets of jetties. I park at the end of Grand Street where I used to skateboard or go up to Law Street where I used to surf and I walk along the concrete boardwalk and watch the waves.
And I finally breathe out for the first time since getting home.

5) I eat another burrito. I realize that eating burritos for 10 or 20 days in a row before I go back to wherever I may be living at the time is probably not a good idea for my thighs or heart. But I do it anyway because frozen burritos suck and Chipotle is not quite the same.

6) I take walks with my mom and sisters to the end of our street. We talk and we vent and we discuss and we let down guards and we breathe. And we dodge cars with ancient white haired people and surly teens clipping the gutters of the sidewalk-less neighborhood. We look for coyotes and mountain lions and comment on houses (one still looks like a Sizzler, one is painfully misguided Tuscan Villa) and we talk some more.

7) I hang out with friends who still live in San Diego (this isn't necessarily a hometown people are eager to leave) and they show me the new cool spots or we revisit old haunts. We drink beer and wine and eat sushi and sliders and catch up on life. That's what you do when you come home.

8) I go to a film or a play, usually by myself. When I was growing up I would take advantage of the numerous art house movie theaters (all but one or two gone now) and prestigious theaters and dream about acting. The velvet seats of the Old Globe theater, the edgy experimental pieces that La Jolla Playhouse would throw at its patrons (the fudgy brownies I would eat at intermission), the smaller theaters with a few seats but lots of heart. I was a part of that community and I happily did my duty several times a month supporting the local arts when I wasn't in a show myself.
These days when I come home its harder to time my visits with the live shows I really want to see, but there are enough films in non-stadium seating movie theaters to keep me satiated. Even if I am the only one in a theater at the 3:50 showing of a New York City based indie.

9) I go to the Red Fox Room with my family. My grandfather went there, my mom and dad went there when they were young and childless, we Goff girls go when we're all in town (cheers to Dad) and eat carrot sticks and olives dipped in ranch dressing and cold iceberg salad (blue cheese please) and petite filet of steak (medium rare) or halibut almondine (rice pilaf or baked potatoes or fries) and split the carrot cake. We sip small goblets of wine and always comment on how cool it is that the interior wood paneling used to be a bar in England and that the piano singer is really live, not a recording, singing out in the dim red light.

10) I go downtown and walk around and pine for the days of homeless and junkies and falling apart buildings and funky coffeshops and retro hotel lobbies. Yes, I know that San Diego is better off economically with a vibrant downtown, but the rough edged downtown I grew wandering around had more charm. At least to my 17 year old fishnet stocking wearing, Shakespeare tragedy reading, black and white photographing, oh so soulful self.

11) I sit in the backyard and look out at Mission Valley, listen to the cars speeding between the beach and snow covered mountains on the freeway, breathe in the blue sky and green lawn (desert! water shortage!) and slight smell of chlorinated water drifting from the pool I used to splash around in all summer long. I wonder if I could live in San Diego again. I wonder where I am flying off to next. I wonder when I will be back...

...To do my list all over again.

Letting it Soak

2010-12-26T16:45:00.003-05:00

The pile in the sink grows higher as the potatoes are mashed and the mushrooms sauteed. Bits of crispy pink ham cling to the sides of the roasting pan, juices swirling in fatty glory. Caramelized brown sugar solidifies into a sweet mortar on white ceramic, buttery crust crumbles into cinnamon covered apple slices.
We sit down to dinner and let the pots and pans and baking dishes sit on the counter in the kitchen. Cats wander in and out contemplating if they will be more successful in the abandoned kitchen or the noisy with silverware clanking wine glasses clinking mouths a-smacking dining room.
Pushing back from the table we sigh with satiety, eyelids grow heavy as we refill wine glasses and pull out board games and old stories over the remainder of the evening.
The dishes sit.
Guests leave, someone falls asleep on the couch.
The dishes sit.
Pots are filled with water and a squirt of soap.
"Let it soak," someone says. "We'll take care of it in the morning."
The house grows quiet save for the cats darting from bedroom to kitchen (maybe they'll lick the plates clean) to cleared dining room.

I wake up late but there are still snores emanating from the under the blankets on the couch in the living room. Dave Letterman interviews Ricky Gervais on low volume in the family room as my sister reads the paper and munches on a powder sugar covered cookie.
The dishes sit in the sink, the suds mere memories in the rainbowy grease.
"Let it soak some more," I tell myself as I silently cluck my tongue at my sister's obliviousness, then cluck at myself for clucking. Growing up in this house dishes were soaked, tongues bitten, frustration cultivated. If you ignore it long enough in the sink maybe the grime will dissolve on its own, maybe someone else will take care of the mess. There's always a better time to clean up, address the mess, mention the dilemma. Or you take it all on yourself and get to be the martyr.

I start to wash because in the years intervening I have changed. Or at least I recognize the problems with soaking. I don't want to let things macerate for days, staring at the grime, getting frustrated that no one else is taking care of it, or me taking care of it eventually with a tinge of resentment forming between soap bubbles.

Taking responsibility the sink empties, I speak my mind and defend my position, try to listen.
I get guilty praise and gilded glares, tension floods and ebbs and sometimes stagnates and sometimes I need to leave a few old dishes in the basin. At least for a little while.

Because with a little elbow grease and a deep breath or two, the sink doesn't have to fill up with dirty dishes no matter how long they've been soaking or how dirty they still may be.

Sugar and lights

2010-12-23T19:12:00.006-05:00

The powder fell onto my lap covering my jeans with snowy soon to be sticky sweetness. The beignet made it into my mouth though, hunks of greasy white fried dough shredded into bite sized bombs of wheat and oil.
At two o clock in the morning in mid-December the taillights of passing cars became Christmas lights, the tall pines on the side of the road X-mas trees. I turned the music down a little to let J sleep. Songs about chestnuts and snowmen filtered through the speakers and kept me company through the Alabama night as I fought to keep my eyes open and focused on the road ahead.
Hence the devouring of the cold slightly tough and far too powdery beignet from New Orleans. Cafe du Monde of course. We left the Big Easy at 11pm in our typical going on a journey fashion. Memories of throwing off docklines in midnight snowstorms and raising sails at sunrise and racing home on the New Englandy 95 in a battered station wagon for a surprise Christmas visit flashed through my head.
Late at night on passages- be it on land or at sea- the best line of defense against sleepiness is keeping my mouth moving either with talk or peanut m&ms.
J was asleep.
My baggie of m&ms woefully empty.
Gum can be a good diversion but with the quick loss of flavor and jaw fatigue, well, even my habit of chewing three pieces at once couldn't cut it.
Brushing the residue off my coat, my lips, my hands stuck to the steering wheel as I changed lanes, a few miles closer to New York, to friends and family and holidays and steaming cups of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. The sugar high lasts for a few minutes until the wheat low kicks in, but the overall result is a few more minutes of me coherent at the wheel, a few more minutes J gets to sleep, a few more minutes I get to think about this past year that has raced by, twisting and turning and swerving with no brakes or indicators.
I crumple the bag of crispy crumbs and clumped powdered sugar, throwing it onto the backseat. I reach over to tap J's hand.
"Wanna drive?"
I pull over, brush the seat clean, jump into the passenger side. I fall asleep to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and the sound of J popping open a bottle of Mountain Dew. As images flash past my eyelids and the stickiness of my fingers ceases to bother, I trust I will get to NYC in one piece just as I have arrived to islands and wooded destinations in years past.
Too bad there are no more beignets to keep J company.
I'm sure he (yawn) understands.

Boredom

2010-12-06T21:06:00.005-05:00

"If you're bored it means you're bored with yourself."

I'm not sure who first told me that but as I looked down at the nurse shark finning through rippling blue water I thought of the guests on board. On our passage from Nassau they started asking us what kind of shopping there would be, what kind of things there were to do. As we approached the island the bare green hills dispelled any notions of malls full of duty free brands or amusement parks with dolphin pools. We pulled up to the dock, past the fish cleaning station situated at the end of the wooden pier, close to the empty palm tree studded beach.

The guests nearly leaped onto to dock before we were tied up eager to DO something.
An half hour later some of them trudged back onto to boat, ordering stiff drinks as they crossed through the salon.
"How did the island adventure go?" I offered.
"Terrible! There's nowhere to go. They're doing construction on the dock and we had to walk over planks and then the path is awful and there's nothing here!"
They collapsed into the squishy leather chairs and sipped their cocktails.
"Hmmm. That's too bad." I said, staring out at the catamarans anchored off the pristine shoreline.
On my short break I walked to the end of the dock and peered over at the nurse and reef sharks milling about, waiting for a handful of fishguts, maybe an eyeball or two, to be thrown from the cleaning table above. I sat on the copper topped piling, gazing down into the water I so badly wanted to be swimming in too. How could someone be bored here? I could stare at the sharks for hours then move on to combing the white sand beach of seashells, perhaps wander over the shrub covered hill to find another beach to explore. Swim in the water, chat with the fishermen, chase after iguanas... the list goes on and on. Even plopping down on the end of the dock and reading a good book. Bored? I rarely use the word. I actually think I sometimes feel more bored when I'm connected with technology that is supposed to keep me distracted, keep me from getting bored. I whip out my IPhone if I'm waiting in line or (caught) stopped at a red light or think of something I just have to have the answer to as I stand on the curb waiting for the walk sign. Instead of just being with my mind and letting it wander- which I don't qualify as bored, I call it day dreaming, planning, noticing. Instead I think I need to check my email or stocks or temperature even though I'm standing outside wearing a hoodie while not expecting an important communication and I'm not selling my stock anyway so who cares? Grasping onto frivolous distractions breeds a sense of boredom far faster than staring at a sunset or watching dolphins play in bow waves or even sitting in silence with a good friend.

So sitting on a piling in the Bahamas without a technological gadget in my hand, I am happy. And not bored.

The next morning the group goes for a golf cart ride. At lunch they tell the captain they don't want to leave the little sparsely populated island.
"We could just sit here all day while the boat rocks us. Or go explore more. Did you see the bus stop with the skeleton? Or the spring? We don't want to go back to Nassau quite yet." After an evening of lounging, imbibing, eating, talking, and then a leisurely tour around a remote island, they had settled into the rhythm of boating. Of just being.
I hate to say it, but some of those Jimmy Buffet songs ring true.

They didn't talk of "nothing to do" again. They did more eating and drinking, laughing and talking, exploring and enjoying. Not being bored doesn't have to equal accomplishing something- shopping, seeing sights, checking something off that ever present list to tell your friends at home about.

When I get an inkling that a perceived bout of boredom is setting in, I know I either need to look up, look around, notice or look inside, look deeper, notice.

I bet the sharks are never bored. And they don't even have Iphones to tempt them or on which to look up the definition of "boredom." Lucky fish.

Getting (un)comfortable

2010-12-04T18:13:00.010-05:00

I saw the pizza boxes right away. Coffee, a banana, and a packet of jerky was breakfast as I shuffled then ran my way from friend's house to grove store (coffee, banana, jerky but no coconut water- the product we were missioning all the way past the Turnpike for) to airport check-in desk ("You are late, ma'am," he said in a Caribbean accent. "I will have to call to see if they will let you on the plane." My heart races) through the security (No feel ups. I mean pat downs. I kept running) to my gate.
So the pizza sitting on the table at the slightly past lunch time hour was a welcomed sight. Not that I'm the type of person that just walks into someones home, greets the family of strangers, and then asks for a slice.

That is unless I am working on a boat.
Then it is almost a sign that one is comfortable enough to jump right into the family that is the crew. (Besides, I'm pretty sure they offered first, but that's not important- the "Dig In" vibe was apparent from the moment I stepped inside)

I never used to be the kind of person to walk into someones home and grab a piece of fruit out of the fruit bowl or ask for a Coke. Even if I was hungry and a friend's grandma offered me a sandwich, I'd most likely politely decline. On land, that is still usually the case. But working on yachts the more comfortable you present yourself first off can determine how much interaction and comfort you will experience later on. It's not really an Alpha dog thing; as in asking for a piece of pizza is like pissing on the salon couch to establish territory (I am stew. This is my couch. Stay off with your engine dirty hands) or staring down your new pack (usually this results in no breaks, ironing duty, and dirty looks). Its more of a camaraderie thing: I am one of you. I may not sing "I like big butts" at karaoke or tell off color jokes at lunch time or be able to differentiate between a whale and reef shark, but I can roll with the punches guests may throw and watch bad TV in the crew mess with the best of them.

For me, it's not necessarily about fitting in. I mean of course I like to feel like part of the group, part of a larger community. Don't we all? And luckily (and sometimes frustratingly) this community is made up of a lot of individualists- so once you meet someone you can basically do your own thing and people get it. Yet what I like most about this type of job, especially this freelancing stuff, is that my "sit in the back of the room reading, shy, awkward 15 year old" self that often creeps back into my socialization patterns gets challenged. I get to throw myself into a new universe, a new family with different points of view and quirks, out of my comfort zone. I get to ask people what they've done, where they've come from, what their plans for the future may be.

I get to know more people.
Which can be hard in a land based life. Or at least more of an effort when sometimes your only human interactions all day involve a postal worker ("Stamps?" "No thanks.") and an overly chipper teenage cashier at Panera where you bought a cup of coffee to get out of the house and it feels good to be around people but you don't talk to any of them.

When you're thrown into a situation where you share a small space with five to thirteen other people 24/7, you're going to have to talk. And when you stay for a season or two, you join a family. An always transitioning mutating family, but in many senses a real family with love and hate and laughter and awkwardness and uncomfortable or hilarious dinner discussions.
When I leave some will be friends, others FB acquaintances, others someone I once worked with.

But in the present, it's all about the contact.
Contact with the water, with the salty air, with people, with emotions.

And with dusty Swiffers. It is a job after all.

The best part about Thanksgiving...

2010-11-29T14:35:00.001-05:00

...is leftovers.

For breakfast.

Down Hippy Road

2010-11-15T14:03:00.005-05:00

"I used to wear a hemp necklace. Like a choker, you know, with clay beads" I said, slowly sipping "The Love" pale ale from a recyclable but not necessarily compostable cup.
"Do you think I'm too old for a hemp necklace?" I posited.
We may have been drinking beer all day and inhaling blue tinged second hand smoke in the Purple Hat tent for a good part of the evening but there was no delayed reaction.

"Yes," he said. "Definitely."
A lovely little smirk playing on his lips reminded me that while I am often told how young I look for my (nearly) 33 years, I can't get away with everything someone in their early twenties could pull off. I get that. I swore off short shorts years ago. Lycra does not agree with me. But now there was more to add to the list under the "hippy" genre: I vowed never to wear my floor length patchwork skirt again, the skirt that covered my bare feet as I stumbled through the streets of Greenwich Village during my first weeks of college. My Birkenstocks were already long gone, my waist length hair a distant memory, my clove cigarettes snubbed out a decade prior. But I was holding onto my Bangkok skirts, dammit, my kerchiefs, my au natural (slightly weathered, laughlined, freckled) weekend face.

I may feel obligated to adhere to certain chronologically restrictive rules but it was clear that at this music festival others had no such boundaries. A middle aged man wearing a fuzzy purple hat and tie-dyed shirt walked by, whispering about chocolate and good times. A woman with pigtails and an ethereal golden shirt sauntered closer to the stage, grooving out as the music quickened and pounded through the amplifiers.
I wonder if they are stockbrokers and used car salesmen and bank tellers in their "real lives," pulling out the tattered shorts and tie dyed shirts, the dirt-grazing cotton skirts and backless tops for festivals only.
We all play a part. How many folks were putting on their festival faces for a weekend of revelry and tunes? And where do the rest of them, the dread-locked and dolphin tattooed, the girls with dirt smudged faces and shining eyes, where do they live?
Then I glanced at my dirty fingernails, tried to run my fingers through my ratty unbrushed hair, my campfire-dirty cotton dress hiding thrift store bought brand name jeans.
Who do they think I am?

Whoever we all are, I fell asleep each night in my little tent in the woods surrounded by hundreds of other little tents, family living roomed sized tents, RVs, campfires, the wafting smell of grilled food, laughing, amplified music reverberating through the trees and darkness.

I woke up each morning to more music, more yelling and giggling, an ash pile smoldering with a charred layer of campfire brownies stuck to a cheap metal mess kit bowl, the memory of their sticky gooeyness a sweet reminder of the camaraderie around the fire the night before.

It was my first music festival and I stayed down Hippy Road.
I got bracleted and stamped and beered and musiced and grilled fooded for a full three days and nights in the tall trees of northern Florida.

Groovy.

Burnt Eggrolls and Crunchy Noodles

2010-11-01T15:18:00.005-04:00

In what I like to think of as my cooking heyday on board SV Wyntje, I could whip up a dinner with dessert for six (with salad too if we actually had non-wilted or frozen-against-the-cold-plate greens) after a full day of sailing and dinghy-ing and cocktail hour. Cardamom-crusted lambchops with smashed sweet potatoes and a red wine reduction? Pineapple crumble with whipped cream? No problem. Although dinner was always unique, lunch would be a simple affair as we heeled down Sir Francis Drake Channel or Chesapeake Bay because running up and down the companionway to tack the sails or refill a ginger ale or find sunglasses did not accommodate the preparation of a three course lunch. I have to say rather proudly that whether it was soup and grilled sandwiches or an artful recycling (disguising) of leftovers, I could pull off (mostly) tasty concoctions for several weeks at a time. That was then (and perhaps a nostalgic view of then- ignoring memories such as the guffaws from guests about the pressure cooker risotto or running out of propane mid roast or heeling over so much that every baking attempt was so crooked that it made one seasick just looking at it).
Now, well, now its a different story.
I dropped the eggrolls into the sizzling oil, the electric burner set on High. Oil has to be hot right? So turn it right up, I thought. Not only do I not deep fry, not only do I hate electric stoves, but the fact that my body has only been poised in the galley to take warmed plates from the chef for the last eight months, well, I'm a little rusty as the basics. Like intuiting that oil heated too high will burn the poor little eggrolls to a crisp in less than 10 seconds, leaving the interior of shrimp, carmelized peanuts, and minced chicken a sickly gray. And instead of simply testing with one, I dunked all six into the popping greasiness, hoping somehow the rest wouldn't char as quickly.
Um, wrong. Luckily I had a toaster oven to finish them off in, although the crispy factor declined dramatically despite the deceiving crunchy-looking blackness.
The pad thai didn't fare well either. I was trying to follow the directions but somehow my noodles went from their soaking bath into the hot pan and became a nest of hard (not crispy) bland unruliness. I lacked most of the ingredients so I substituted and played with what I had. Veggie pad thai became crunchy (gross) noodles with sweet and sour sauced shrimp and chicken (leftovers from the eggroll filling). Forgot about the cashews and bean sprouts, didn't have soy sauce. So it turns out the only part of the meal I followed directions for was the most unsuccessful component. Of course that's because I didn't actually follow the directions. But the saucy chicken and shrimp sprinkled with scallions? Delish.

I vowed to go back to my boil-the-noodles ways, to follow directions and even read ahead to avoid those "Aw, shit!" moments, to buy a thermometer, and to remember that even though I once could throw together a meal with nary a cookbook or measuring cup in sight, relearning some skills can be as enjoyable or frustrating (tasty or inedible) as the first time around.

And the most important lesson I luckily haven't forgotten?

Presentation is everything- especially when the noodles are atrocious.

NYC-Florida

2010-10-30T21:12:00.004-04:00

Cooking class

2010-10-19T14:37:00.005-04:00

I was essentially the worst student in the class.
Because I thought I knew what I was doing.
Yet every day I had a "So that's how the hell that works!" moment as I emulsified mayonnaise or sprinkled a generous portion of salt into an overly spicy red sauce or gently added a raw egg to swirling water and came up with something poached and not egg-drop-souped.
Humility, especially in front of the stove, should never be forgotten.
Especially when dealing with souffles.
Or roasted chicken.
Or browning butter.
Or... life.

It's always in the kitchen

2010-10-19T14:31:00.003-04:00

A cup of tea sits on the richly stained wood. Ancient drips from thousands of cups of warm liquid in ceramic mugs and delicate porcelain cover the kitchen table with stories of decades of stories.
Faint memories of the hollow sound of silver spoons clank against fragile sides of teacups, long ago brushed away crumbs of biscuits and apple cake cling to tiny shadows of dark puddles in saucers.
The kitchen table is where it happens, where emotions run freely, whether it is as one flops into a chair and spills a torrent of feelings onto the pumpkin pine planks, or after a few mugs of steaming sweetness, small talking until the words turn serious or the eruption of joy can be contained no longer. The lamp is switched on, the kettle warmed, sweaters pulled over shoulders as the conversation continues in the steady, calming silence of the room. Or opera music trickles in from the living room while those in charge saute and steam and bake, glass of wine in hand, ear open to the cocktail talk rambling on, spilling into the dining room decorated with candles and china where the evening will continue.
Most kitchen tables are where life takes place. But for me, on a quiet island in Maine, that holds even more true. In the old sea captain's house brimming with antiques and art and animals, you knock once, maybe twice, then you let yourself in. You call for whomever you happen to be visiting, you pet the dog, you wait until the patter of steps grows near and you are offered a cup of tea, a coffee, a chunk of cheese or a gluten free (delicious!) brownie. Even if you just stopped by to drop off a note or pick up a book or let them know the car is fixed, you end up staying for awhile. This is how it is in most kitchens on the island, or so it seems. As one from away, you get over the mild anxiety of small talk and learn to enjoy the simple social interaction, the kindness, the occasional gossip (OK, not so much occasional, but how do you differentiate the constant "catching up with community news" from gossip?). You learn not to glance at your watch because really do you have much to do anyway? Unless of course you are one of those who have several jobs, reside on several community boards and fund-raising committees, are a volunteer fireman and EMT and perhaps a caterer on the side. Yet during the long off-season, you generally have time to talk. And you want to talk because this is your community and unlike some other places in the world where you don't know your neighbors, on a small island in a big bay at the tip of the country, you are part of a living organism that needs to communicate to survive.
And the kitchen table facilitates that.
Revolutions are planned from kitchen tables.
Romances hashed out, employment discovered or offered, life changes recorded during the interlude between tea and supper.
Maybe its because nobody locks their doors. You knock, you enter, you sit and wait knowing that eventually someone will appear. And will understand. And will give you a cup of tea and make you feel better. Or will disagree with you. Or will share a story or a tear or a smile.

I want to create my own kitchen table, stained with memories and joy and kindness.
Can I bring my kitchen table with me, pockets stuffed with sachets of tea, crumbling cookies?
As long as you're there and I'm there and we sit and talk and dream, I'd like to think the answer is yes.

See the yellow? or Runny goodness!

2010-10-05T21:02:00.005-04:00

I used to hate eggs. Not all eggs; if you mixed in enough cream and made them into pillowy pale Easter yellow morsels that could be wrapped inside a smoked and crispy piece of bacon, fat and crumbled charred bits clinging to my fingertips after inserting said packet of meaty perfection between my lips, well, I was OK with those eggs.
But fried eggs? Poached eggs? Sunny side up or soft boiled?
Gag.
Eggs over disgusting.
Runny yolks were a plate of raw puddled flesh oozing around infecting my whole wheat toast and (precious smoked in the High Sierras) bacon.

Then I grew older and more firm (in my opinions, my laughlines, not my belly) and more recently eggs grew to my liking in the softer form (but not younger- you can't get much youthful than eggs). I started to crave English muffins soaked in the gooey yellows of yolk and hollandaise. (Someone teach me to poach an egg without turning it to egg drop soup, please?)
To know the difference between Sunny Side Up and Over Easy.
To experiment with shirred and basted varieties nestled next to buttery toast and salty roasted fingerling potatoes.
To actually eat the yolk of hardboiled eggs instead of just the gelatinous white.

I was becoming adventurous and mopped up the mess diligently, but the true love of yolks really came to fruition when the chickens arrived. Brighter than dandelions and richer than clotted cream, the Maine ticks and grass tips and olive tree leaves transformed the Girls' almost daily delivery into tiny yet magnificent culinary enterprises to be cracked open in a pan of fresh local butter, sprinkled with a little sea salt, and savored bit by bit. My cholesterol sky rocketed that summer of cooking for eager guests and family: lobster quiche, garden vegetable fritatta, shirred eggs with local cream and herbs from my windowsill, rich custards and chard filled dinner omelets and eggy freshly-dug-potato salad.
I've been away from land and my garden and the Girls for awhile. To come back and crack their hard days work into a sizzling pan, sit on a Matelasse covered bed, looking out at treetops changing to oranges and reds against the graying October water...
The yellow melts into droplets on my tongue, coagulating slightly on my cooling plate, no need to sop up the goodness with bread when it can't get any better with the addition of an inferior medium. I am as happy as the chickens clucking and flapping down below.

With all the recent egg scares and sickness, grotesque photos of chickens in filth and pens so crowded there couldn't possibly be a plump tick or earthworm in sight, I'm not sure I can chow down on a standard diner omelet with the same gusto. It certainly wouldn't be able to compare in taste.
So my pledge, as I stare at a plate with sticky yellow yolk clinging to the lip, is that in my travels and for my own cooking, unless I know where the egg is from or know the restaurant is sourcing locally, it's best to go without.
Be it duck (quack), goose, or chicken, I'm going to find you my little spheres of nutrition, because you are just too good to forget (again)!
I mean really, did you check out that yellow?

Fill me up

2010-09-29T16:12:00.004-04:00

The bookshelf on the boat is my playground these days. I'm trying to shove as many words and images that I can't take with me physically into this slippery brain of mine. Slippery because so many ideas and options and emotions are bumping around in there, sliding off cell walls full of pasted up memories, snippets of conversations, 3am dreams that may have been real, red wine soaked red blood cells calling for more zinfandel, and an army of societal expectations sinking in the cerebrospinal muck.
So I am devouring and borrowing, the pile of pages in my cabin on my bed at my feet and my head almost toppling over, making sleep dangerous (book corner in the eye!) and uncomfortable (I can't stretch out my legs all the way! Cramp!!).

It's not just books. I sit in the crew mess absorbing words flung about, smiles across sushi and chicken wings, bickering tones turning to laughter, a tribe of strong willed individuals who have become a family. Today the topic of conversation at lunch was me.
I am being (voluntarily) flung from the nest on Friday, onto the road and sea, onto new projects and groups of smiling, strong willed persons. My current circle volleyed suggestions for work across the table, smirking with each outrageously (un)helpful but hilarious proposition. Propositioning indeed came into the forefront as our lunchtime discussions usually plummet into baseness; this was no different. I went along with the various ingenious forms of prostitution humorously thrown at me (in talk, not action. geesh) and relished the last days of inappropriate discussions involving sex or bodily functions as we chow down on the piles of food in front of us. But more than the words and jokes, I am going to miss the companionship, the loyalty, and the kindness of this transient family where I was fortunate enough to land. I'm actually going to miss sharing a room ("Nighty night" L says from the bunk under mine), sharing meals, sharing hysterical laughter during dinner service ("sssshhhh, they can (gasp) hear. Pffawww!!!") with the Galley Girls and M. Nights out, midnight swims, impromptu brunches, the appreciation of good wine. The eight months on board have buoyed me up and let me be free in a way that only (for me) a gypsy-appropriate job can. A sort of working meditation. Throughout the months the thoughts have led to action and now I know that a different sort of freedom is in order.

It's time to fill up the outline of me with new adventures, new words, new roads and stories and new views of the stars. Fill me up with tumbling emotions and escalating knowledge, perfect sunsets and breaths full of pine/salt/jungle scented air. Fill me up with fresh food and dirt on my hands, children's questions and old folks' wisdom. Fill this outline to the limits and more, spill me into the world and let me slip into others' lives and grow and be.

Shake me up, will you?

I'm ready to Get Drunk again

2010-09-17T22:34:00.006-04:00

"There will never be enough money," I said. "You just have to make the decision and do it."
We were talking about jobs and seasons abroad and going back to the "real world" off boats, off payroll, onto budgets and rent and depleted savings.
(and family and community and queen sized beds and real weekends off)

Some talked about "getting through" a year; I don't believe that setting yourself up to "get through" instead of enjoy a year is a positive way to live your life. Yes of course there are hardships to overcome and in those times "getting through" is more positive than "being so fucking miserable you cry yourself to sleep every night and can't see the end," but when you have the choice, when you can actually avoid just "getting through," how is it even an option?
And even when the "getting through" isn't so bad, why would you choose that over the possibility for change, growth, happiness, adventure?

That's when the engineer chimed in. "That's why you went cruising," he said to me. "There are some people who go and others who never leave the dock."
I told him about the "cruisers" J and I had met while we were fixing up our own little boat in Ensenada and San Diego. They had boats in far better condition than our simple Gitane yet they were spending years fixing and acquiring and breaking and fixing and improving and (procrastinating) planning instead of just going. We could have spent years fixing up Gitane to make her the "perfect" cruiser, but instead we left with ragged shorts and a paltry amount in the bank, SSB and solar panel stashed down below to be hooked up (eventually), varnish peeling but sails full of wind, hull solid and ready for six thousand miles at sea.

The engineer smiled his Renaissance man smile and asked if I had heard of "Get Drunk" by Baudelaire.

I may be bad at settling down, but I'm good at getting drunk in the way that Baudelaire wished. Sometimes it takes me awhile to realize that I'm sober, but eventually the reality sinks in and action soon follows:

Get Drunk
by Charles Baudelaire

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

(there are many translations from French of Monsieur Baudelaire's poem "Get Drunk," but I like the simplicity of this one. And I like the word 'fardel'.)

Cheers

September

2010-09-12T17:21:00.002-04:00

Acorns crunched under my feet as I ran up the tree veiled hillside.
My jacket felt heavy after a summer of tank tops and thin running shorts, sunglasses slipping down my nose in humid afternoon heat, air stale with the remnants of July then August.

The clouds are a shade of gray that remind me of my freshman year of college in New York City, my first year of seasons after a seasonless childhood in San Diego. They remind me of diamond on vinyl- Simon and Garfunkel spinning on the ancient ten dollar turntable in my dorm room, "I wish I wah-uh-uz ho-ome-ward bound..." staring out onto Tenth Street and wondering if the clouds would stay all winter (they wouldn't) and how many pounds I would gain during the autumnal pre-hibernation carbohydrate frenzy (fifteen) and what a San Diego burrito would cost to ship to New York (too much) and if I'd made the right choice to move across the country (yes).

As the leaves changed and crisped and fell, the mittens and coats emerged from tiny, over-packed dorm room closets, the young smokers started to shiver in t-shirts and slippers on the sidewalk, and the days ended before class let out at five, it was clear Fall was in full force.
October became my favorite month of the year.
And not just for the candy corns (once my favorite- eaten color by color white orange yellow) and pumpkins in the fields, on doorsteps, lining the shelves at delis where the dahlias and daffodils once sat. There is something about wrapping a scarf around your goosepimpled neck, pulling on wool socks and boots to wear with a skirt and coat, the orangy yellowy light filtering through increasingly naked branches of birches and maples- their summer adornments fluttering to the sidewalks and filling the gutters with dreams of spring.
The crisp air and waning light are full of change and hope and comfort.
A reminder that stripping yourself of what is not needed and retreating within can be a beautiful phenomenon to those witnessing and that being witnessed.

The trees are still green on Long Island, the water warm, the coats tucked away.
But acorns crunching on the streets don't lie.
The truth of October is right around the corner.

Waiting for a rush

2010-09-03T20:36:00.004-04:00

Waiting is the hardest part. The anticipation reverberates throughout the boat like a manically strummed song at too-high decibels. We can hear the whine of something in the air (the drop in barometric pressure, the eerie stillness of the water, the crystalline clouds far up in the sky giving way to puffy nimbus to horizon hiding downpour) but we continue with our day swatting at the expectations of the night circling like a gnat around our heads.
We were on hurricane watch, now tropical storm watch, now what?

We wait and read and eat chips and drink chocolate banana milkshakes and wait. The satellite is down so we depend on intermittent internet reports and Iphone apps to tell us where Earl has decided to go. We dropped 250 feet of chain in the lee of North Haven this afternoon, watching the white dacron of daysailors glide by in light winds and glassy seas.
We are in the lee for now.
The boat is starting to rock and the rain is audible through the thick portholes a few feet above the dappled water. On my anchor watch at midnight, the eye of the storm will be just about parallel with Long Island. I will check the GPS, check the radar, check the decks and the anchor. I will be in jeans and a tshirt.
I will think about heavy weather I've endured on other boats in full foulies and boots and a harness to keep me in the cockpit. And a huge smile on my face when I got into the rhythm of the waves, the yawing of the hull, the pounding of rain or seawater on the teak, of running to the bow pulpit to unhank a jib or bracing myself against the mainmast in the slamming pop of confused seas.
I'm reading WAR by Sebastian Junger. I'll probably finish it in the wheelhouse.
I find it somewhat ironic that his other best known book is about a traumatic battle of sorts at sea (The Perfect Storm). I was hesitent to read this book. I am basically a pacifist. I know that sometimes war is necessary but I don't really understand, at a gut level, why. I just cant imagine intentionally harming another human being.
I can't put this book down.
Granted he is an amazing writer and I have admired his various journalistic endeavors and remarkable talent for storytelling even before I borrowed this hardback. Maybe its the way he describes the adrenaline rush of a firefight or the isolation of being stationed at a remote outpost or the inability (or difficulty at least of) adjusting back to civilian life after being in a survival situation, but I get it. I've never been to war, never shot at anyone and certainly have never had anyone shoot at me (although there was a close call at my middle school one sunny afternoon when a fellow 7th grader pulled a handgun on another kid right in front of me. I didn't see the gun until my friend Joey intervened and told the kid to put it away, but if he had shot it the bullet may have made quick work of the guy in front of me and made a second home in my torso. So I guess, in a sense, I have been in an urban warzone.).
Yet having lived on boats, on the sea, at the mercy of Mother Nature (yes a cliche but yes true), I know what it is like to wonder if you will see the next sunrise, to be gripped with fear but then act anyway- throwing yourself into wind and waves and onto slippery decks and swinging booms. To be terrified one minute and exultant the next. To feel like you would do anything for your shipmates to make sure they are safe. I would much rather go balance on the bowspirit precariously unhanking the jib from the stay as whitewater slams through the teak at my feet. I'd rather be the one in "danger" rather than imagining someone else drenched and grasping at rusty clamps in the dark in fifteen foot seas.
I miss being on that bowspirit.
I miss that adrenaline rush.
I am glad I was not killing people but defending the life of my boat, my crew.
Was I ever in a truly life threatening situation? When are you not?

The storm is drawing closer, the decks are wet, the whitecaps are shortening their intervals past my porthole. It may not get above 40 knots tonight, but on a boat on anchor on the sea, anything can happen.
(Knock on wood and turn around twice while throwing salt, well, everywhere. We sailors (like soldiers) are a superstitious bunch and as much as I crave an adrenaline rush, wishing for problems is just plain stupid)

Eastern Long Island

2010-09-01T10:36:00.004-04:00

Airing our (clean) laundry

2010-08-12T16:21:00.013-04:00

One of the things I love and hate about yachting is the incessant lack of privacy.

Nine adults living in a fairly confined space, sometimes under passage or on anchor without the ability to step on land for days, sharing bathrooms and dinner utensils, hearing (or olfactorily experiencing) bodily functions of someone who is not your sibling or partner, tactfully choosing TV programs on the big screen in the common area, eating family style at least twice a day- reaching grabbing scooping big piles of gourmet food onto your plate from across the massive wooden table.
And sharing laundry bins.

When I first started back up on yachts this winter, I freelanced on a boat with 13 crew. Someone is constantly in the laundry room pulling out wet shirts and pants from one of the three washing machines and stuffing the damp load into an industrial sized dryer. The warm windowless room deep in the belly of the ship was impressive, but the machines were not what caught my attention. It was the underwear. Lacy undies and brightly colored bras hanging unapologetic above the length of the massive washing sink.
Right there in plain view of everyone who may wander in!
I also thought the food grabbing and swearing and loose cliques and playful gossip were novel.

Now I celebrate our rainbow of girly undies and bras strewn on hangers near the portholes that occasionally induce passersby to peer in, hoping to catch a glance of the lives of the rich and famous rather than the relatively young and poor (but with beautiful undergarments. At least the girls).
But we of the interior crew do the boys' underwear too. And while it may not be lacy or colorful and hanging in the common area, it is still an un-private thing to have someone else wash and fold your briefs.
The thing about giving up your privacy, letting your undies dry in public, getting used to thin bathroom walls and sharing the remote, talking about bodily functions and politics at lunch, is that after a while you go one of two ways: open and laid back, able to deal with practically any living situation, or you go misanthropic and learn how much personal space you actually need while dreaming of ways to go out in a flame of cussing glory. Of course, sometimes it goes in waves and you hopscotch back and forth between loving your fellow sailors, cheersing ciders at the local pub and sloppily slurring how lucky you are to have stumbled upon such a good group, to cursing the 6am door slamming and clankity oatmeal making, grumbling at the chip crumbs on the floor and the TV blasting incompatible-to-your-mood movies, knowing that you have to say something about that last comment so and so made about such and such that was way over the line.
On those days, when confrontation seems inevitable, you learn what kind of person you are. You can say something and air out the (sometimes filthy) laundry, you can truly let it slide off your back and off your mind, or simmer while secretly building up an arsenal of resentment to be used at a later date (see cussing flame of glory reference).
Because its not all lacy undies and late night ciders in this lifestyle. Sometimes it's dance parties on the bow and sometimes it's scrubbing toilets at 6am.
And sometimes it's like the first Real World house when the Real World was cool and dramatic.
Only this is real.
And we wash our own clothes and iron other people's sheets.
And our house floats.
And sometimes, just sometimes, with our sunnies and flops and windblown hair and heavily stamped passports, we yachties are reasonably cool, even if it is in an early 90s kind of way.

Easy Pass

2010-08-10T22:25:00.003-04:00

She stretched out her arm, resting her palm on the plastic armrest of the seat across the aisle. The train heaved into motion, lights flickering, air conditioning roaring into white noised life. The two toddlers giggled as they were gently thrown into her arm blocking their path, the smaller of the two toppling into the burbling blond one. "But I have an Easy Pass!" he squeals at his guardian/tollbooth attendant. He points to his little companion steadying himself arms outstretched, concentration in his dark eyes, in the vibrating, swaying Amtrak aisle.
"He has to pay cash." Three dollars to be exact.

She goes along with the game, raising her arm only when the little boys have signified whether or not they are EasyPassing or coming up with (pretend) scrounged change from (imaginary) soda-sticky drink holders, passenger side seat crevices, from under the (invisible) gravelly floor mat or perhaps in an unused ashtray filled with coins and chipped, stale Skittles.
The kids run down the aisle after passing through the (arm) gate until the weary-eyed minder calls them back only to repeat the tollbooth game for one or two stops down the line from Boston.
The little blond boy explains that sometimes he needs to use cash too when he's taken down and hidden the EasyPass but he definitely wants to use the device when there is a long wait of like 20 cars because in that instance he knows that Cash = Long Wait.

Probably in his car seat.

By the time we reach New York both boys are asleep, splayed out in laps or on teal green seats, covered with their tollbooth minder's sweater, her hand cupping a small dark knee here, brushing away a blond strand from fluttering eyes there.
Two little boys zooming through their dreams of the Triborough Bridge and Mass Pike while rocked to sleep on the rails of mass transit.

In a Florida library

2010-08-10T13:39:00.001-04:00

Textures of Nantucket

2010-08-04T13:39:00.004-04:00

Versus

2010-07-15T15:35:00.002-04:00

The trees visible through the porthole are seemingly traversing the length of the salty glass, but the slight rocking motion, felt in the pit of my stomach, a scribbled note in the back of my brain waiting for wakes and high wind, betrays the illusion.
My home is always in motion.
Yes, old houses creak and settle into their foundations, windows shake in thunderstorms, during wet damp summers the doors sway slowly on their hinges, frames swollen and uncompromising. But houses do not move like this, or if they do, there is more of a problem than humidity decoupling the otherwise content marriage of door and frame.

There are hundreds of funny things about living on a boat. When I was living on land I missed the hurried leaps up the companionway to check on lines during a storm and waking up to the pitch of the engine change as we motored our home from one port to the next. (OK, but I admit that it was also nice to sleep through the night without errant sounds rocketing me out of bed). You notice things you take for granted on land, like where your electricity comes from and where your waste (of all sorts) goes.

On this floating job of mine I'm not as connected to the sea as on sailboats of years past, but I still find a few things amusing, things that would be funny on land but are perfectly normal on board.

Like that every single cupboard has a latch that you either have to pop in and out or twist. There are no open shelves, no etageres, the bookshelves and most countertops have fiddles or raised edges to catch sliding novels, wine glasses, peanuts.
On land glass objects placed on open shelves high above the floor make me anxious in a totally laughable and ridiculous way. But maybe that also has something to do with growing up in earthquake-prone California. I was meant for latched cupboards!

We have a mug on board that is a replica of one found on the Titanic.
The superstitious sailor in me does not like this. The landlubber in me finds this hilarious.

We have a room (with a disco ball) dedicated to keeping the lights on, diesel flowing, fridges humming, propellers spinning, and toilets vacuuming poop.

We have a gourmet chef. I get to eat leftover creme brule. Funny? Not really. Tasty? Yes.

I have to work barefoot. The white carpet and teak dislike shoes. Unless they are cute little uniform shoes we only wear when the guests are onboard. And then we are the only ones wearing shoes because we make them take theirs off which of course makes many people uncomfortable. But being on a rocking boat is out of many peoples comfort zone anyway, so I see it as a chance for personal growth. Or a stubbed toe.

There are a lot of other things, like having to jump from the boat onto the dock or scaling up the side when the tide is high and the ice cream is melting in your canvas grocery bag and you can't wait the four hours for the boat to return to reasonable for stepping-onto-like-a-lady position. So I hurl my goods on the deck, grab at fiberglass and stainless steel, hoist my legs up a few feet and ignore the fact that my skort may or may not be covering what a stewardess on a big fancy boat should have covered.
But it is a boat, I am a sailor, and we do all find ourselves in funny situations in this funny situation of working on floating houses.
And I love (almost) every bizarre minute.

A reminder for love

2010-07-06T17:02:00.004-04:00

It is amazing that we as humans can love deeply or procreate knowing that who we love can disappear at any moment. That we are all destined for that disappearance.
We are in a constant suspension of disbelief. The fourth wall, the third, second, first, invisible as we continue to act as if we (you, I, alone) will not die.

The details are still unclear.
He received the phone call yesterday afternoon.
He spent all night at the hospital.
There is no good news.
His six month old son was at daycare and stopped breathing. At the hospital, on a respirator, his son was declared brain dead.
When word reached this boat where he has been working this summer, we collectively shuttered at the tragedy.
I am not a parent, I cannot even imagine the pain.

But I have been a daughter, a friend, a witness.

As far as I know, I have only had one near death experience: slipping, hanging from a glacier on the side of a mountain in Nepal with a rushing river beneath the snowpack deep in the valley below. As my fingers froze in the ice and my backpack grew heavier with each passing minute, all I could think of was my mom and how destroyed she would be when they found my body (maybe) when the snow melted later that summer. I was scared for myself and did everything I could to get off that goddamn glacier, but imagining how my mom would react when she found out she had lost me was more terrifying. That's when I realized the thought of the death of others is more paralyzing than the thought of one's own demise.

On scorching afternoons in Calcutta the Sisters of Charity scour the streets for men and women to bring back to the hospice at Kaligat, the cool stone floor lined with simple cots, metal trays waiting for rice and lentils to feed the starved, showers behind thick walls for the unwashed. For a time I helped scoop out meals, stirred huge vats of laundry to be rubbed clean on those same stone floors, delivered 'pani' to those who were thirsty, and just sat with women whose language I could barely understand but who didn't seem to care as they chattered on or screamed about malaria or laughed at my Bengali pronunciation, happy to to heard.
Someone noticed them. Someone took care of them.
They weren't invisible anymore, one of the multitudes dying in the fetid gutters, alone.
Some afternoons I would arrive to empty cots, the gentle face the day before already cast into the Ganges, the acrid smell of funeral pyres aflame wafting into the long hallways at teatime.

As I was learning about death, half way around the world my dad was being diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a form of dementia that would eventually take his life five years later with its cruel theft of words, emotions, functions.

As my dad wheezed and rattled into the grave, his gauntness unfamiliar, his face burning hot when my lips touched his forehead, I could only think (hope?) that the experience was far more difficult for me (watching, feeling, wanting to say...) than for him (transitioning).
How beautiful and frustrating!

But he was thought of when he died.
Those women and men at Kaligat were not invisible as they died.
That little boy in the hospital will be deeply missed.

being noticed is the best we can hope for in death
and loving as much as we can, honoring every connection we can no matter how much it may hurt whenever it may end- due to death or change- is all we (I) can strive for in life

Thankful for New York City

2010-06-29T16:51:00.004-04:00

There is something about sitting in a sweltering room with a hundred or so people, short shorted thighs sticking to torn vinyl chairs, photocopied programs fanning the air, taxis honking stories below, the sunlight shining then fading off the building across the concrete canyon. A hush settled over the fidgeting crowd, a baritone voice announced stage directions, piano keys came to life, voices rose and filled the studio. Voices rising, falling, resonating; vibrato making my ears hum. There is something about being in a (sweltering, vibrating, captivated) room full of people telling/listening to a story, singing/listening to music, creating a world with images and notes, held glances and the conductor's flick of a wrist. I remember why I love theater, love art, love artists, creators, dreamers, composers, love old buildings and studios and folding chairs in a bare room full of music and breath and energy.

There is something about walking down the street and seeing a piano on the street. Not tipped over with chipped paint and broken strings, missing keys and legs, a "FREE" sign where the music should be. This piano was multicolored and free for the playing. Lines form behind benches, kids with songbooks stare intently at the bars and plunk out a few notes before wowing the growing crowd with virtuoso intensity. But how wonderful is it that the city if filled with pianos, filled with fingers moving over keyboards, filled with Chopsticks and The Entertainer.

There is something about walking on the Highline, a park above the streets, pink echinacea and purple heather and pale green wild grasses curtsying in the breeze blowing off of the Hudson. Busy people stopping staring at buildings they otherwise never see, at water they otherwise can't hear or smell (like the Ganges at dawn- ablutions, incense, bloated flesh), at flowers and trees and open space that isn't street.

There is something about walking through the farmers market, but you know how I feel about that already. (beets! local cheese and wine! sprouts!)

There is something about New York City in the summertime, skin and sunglasses and ice cream trucks and picnics in the park and trumpets in the subway and old women in pale housedresses and elaborate makeup.
Thankful for being with friends on rooftops in the middle of the night, sipping in Central Park, sweating down the avenues, and looking up.
Thankful for sun and heat and emotions.

Thankful for feeling New York.

Around Nova Scotia

2010-06-24T13:03:00.003-04:00

Praises to Signal Hill in Halifax

2010-06-18T21:33:00.005-04:00

My evening started off at a brewpub on Halifax's waterfront. The rest of the crew was devouring oysters and mussels, nachos and calamari when I pulled up a stool and ordered a brew:
Rosemary's Baby.
I should have known the rest of the night was to be a head-spinning blur.
Despite our fatigue from being on passage for a couple of days (dolphins, whales, shooting stars, calm seas- it was ideal!), a bunch of us rallied and headed to the next venue for some more beer and live music.
N. grew up in Halifax, worked in Halifax, drank in Halifax. She knows where to go, who to see and was raring to go to her favorite old haunt, The Lower Deck. It's a bar in an historic old stone building, the kind with metal stars on the front holding up the wooden rafters inside, the kind that makes you think you are in 1856 and your whaling ship has just tied up to the wharf and you're looking for a glass full of whiskey and girls in tight bodices for a rollicking night out.

We were the girls in tight shirts that night and had a shot or two of hard liquor between mugfuls of beer, but as we know (are) sailors, we knew to stay away from such scallywags and just listen to the music.
The music!
Pounding glass mugs sloshing beer all over the long wooden table, crying "Sociable!!" with the rest of the drunken patrons, singing along to the Beatles and Journey, watching the lead singer captivate his audience with his animated expressions, pounding, singing, drinking, smiling.
Signal Hill made me grin like an idiot, straddling the front bench to watch every guitar strum, every wrist movement over keyboard, trying to decipher each voice in the incredible harmony. My current idea of heaven is acoustic music, beer, and friendly Canadians and I was in it. Until the beer and fatigue and lack of a substantial dinner caught up with me (salad? what was I thinking!)

As foretold, the night ended with a wobbly walk down the dock and a fistful of potato chips.
Where's a plate of Canadian poutine when you need it most?

Hello Halifax, glad to meet you.
If only I remembered more of you.

If Jesus had known me at 29 he'd have told me to chill the fuck out

2010-06-15T20:38:00.008-04:00

I stopped in the middle of the gum stained sidewalk, a girl in a flouncy black skirt and gladiator heels swerving, a pale old man in a thick checked coat and newsboy cap steering his two tiny dogs around us.
I looked at my friend and said, "What am I doing working on this boat?"
We both stood and laughed, big deep breathed laughs, took in the surrounding chaos of dogs and girls and taxis and trees compressed into a single city block in the neighborhood where we spent our early twenties stressing and screaming, laughing and walking arm in arm through coat-chilly fall evenings.

Ten years later the concrete is the same but our energy is different.
My verbal expulsion about my work was not in a "I want to quit my job" way or "I'm frustrated with my life" way or even a "cleaning toilets is so beneath me" way.

It was purely an acknowledgment of the future unknown, of the crooked sometimes painful path that has led me to this very moment of tapping away on a computer in the crew mess while the steel hull around me cuts through Long Island Sound, a chart of Nova Scotian waters in the wheelhouse, my eyes itchy with now I can see faraway contacts, my heart full of love, wonder, excitement for the people I have met and will meet, for the everyday adventure that I know not to look for because it will come anyway, that I don't have to "be" anything because trying to define oneself is a useless task.

As my friend so wonderfully pointed out as we sipped coffee in the park as a tiny, brightly painted old woman curiously poured the contents of a two liter bottle into a large plastic tumbler at the next chipped green metal table, ten or five or even more so two years ago I would not have been able to throw that phrase into the universe with the same lightness and joy and abandonment of expectation. It would have been a grasping cry for order, a mid-twenties crisis of where the hell is my life going and why can't I control it? A frustrated yelp about what I thought my life would be "by now," comparing myself to all those other "successful" people and groping for a way to find my path, not acknowledging that every step, barefoot or high heeled, creates what I am looking for.

But now 32, half way into 2010, letting go of (other)numbers, (pressured)professions, (my/your)expectations, letting time tick past and not trying to shove it in my pockets, saving bits and pieces for anxious midnight snacks and as superglue for lost memories, experiencing here and now-
Shooting stars!
Cold salty air on my bare legs!
My eyelids slowly descending and sending me to bed!
-I am happy with who where and what I am.

We continued walking through the village, through streets we used to know. We didn't plan where to go or what to do. We just happened upon experiences, on language, on music and french fries, and then hugged each other goodbye.

And it was all life.
And it was all perfect.
And all chill.

My job

2010-06-11T22:57:00.005-04:00

Sunset. Dinner on the aft deck. Clear plates and crumbs, martini glasses and crumpled linen.
Fall into bed.
Sunrise past the nautilus shell framed by a squeegeed window, past the sailboats in the harbor, reflecting off the red and white stacks defining the Port Jefferson skyline. Chambers infinite and dusty, a chambermaid this morning, eyes heavy with playlist-on-repeat induced sleep.

The smell of coffee wafts through doorways and down stairwells, past the drooping sunflowers in their vase and baskets of shoes waiting to be worn to work that morning.
Push buttons, steam fills the space in front of my blinking eyelids, I watch the brown liquid stream into a shiny metal pot. I watch when there is nothing to watch and I am jolted into the present by machines beeping, footsteps on the stairs.
I pour a cup for myself, not the usual, but it is 5:30am and this is not the usual.
Jittery and speaking in staccato bursts, I fluff pillows and serve omelettes.

I watch the morning float by on caffeine and the warmth of sunshine streaming into the salon.
And I watch the sunset through port holes when my day ends after smiling hellos and goodbyes, dusting chambers, taking time for naps and running.

Sunrise and sunset.
I feel lucky to have seen both today, even it was from behind a uniform and a swiffer.

Stop and smell the basil

2010-06-02T16:29:00.005-04:00

Vegetables make me happy.

Wandering by stands piled high with asparagus and green pea pods, colorful nasturtiums mixed with spicy arugula, delicate pea shoots purple and white.

Mottled pears and deep scarlet cherries representing the less prominent (hanging) fruit component of the Union Square farmers market. Fruit makes me smile, but it doesn't touch the same ecstatic nerve as their earthbound siblings. There is just something about planting a tiny seed in the earth every spring, covering it with springy brown soil flecked with twigs and ragged egg shards, an occasional unearthed powdery shell from the sea reminding me of our underwater past. Water the plainly adorned with Popsicle sticks rows of potential, scare off the birds, the beasts, the slugs (or squish them between your fingers. Very un-Buddhist, but very effective). Space them, watch them, weed them as they grow into recognizable patterned sprouts, then stalks and leaves, then oh my god they're beautiful (and edible!) real plants!

Tomatoes and pumpkins don't count in my pro-veggie favoritism. I love them both dearly, maybe the most I must say as long as we're being honest. It's the tree fruit that don't quite seem as miraculous in my estimation. I mean, you plant a tree and the fruit appears year after year, which, granted, is miraculous in its own right, but somehow I find the lack of challenge a letdown. I have to admit that I haven't grown much fruit and don't know much about pruning, and I have tasted some bitter, wormy apples in my lifetime, so I know I am not giving fruit growers/lovers enough credit, but I can't help my lack of enthusiasm for the act of growing the pears and apples and berries that I adore eating.
But back to the vegetables...

Wandering through the farmers market reminds me of my fingers in the soil, my toes brown with sun and dirt, the hours slipping by as I pop fresh peas into my mouth and pat marigolds into place along the grassy perimeter of my garden. I am reminded of hot August afternoons and standing with waterhose in hand, spraying down my leafy brood, cup of steaming coffee in hand on cool September mornings. When I would return to the kitchen with a basket full of varying shades of greens and reds, oranges and purples, smiling at the vegetables still speckled with dirt while figuring out their appropriate for that evening eventual demise and digestion.

This year, gardenless and yearning for chlorophyll, I pick through basil leaves and delicate rabe, radish tops and crinkly kale. I won't bring any home to the boat today as the galley is not my own, but I will breathe in deep the smell of the earth, the smell of sun and sweat and generations of turning soil, the smell of my own future contentedness.

Twizlers and Pink Floyd for Breakfast

2010-05-24T15:50:00.003-04:00

The sun was already streaming into the wheelhouse when I made my way up the plastic covered stairs.
Squeak
squeak
"Good mornings-" some bright with the burgeoning day, some beleaguered by lack of sleep- chimed all around. The sea had flattened out during the night, wind and waves receding as the sky grew pink purple blue then white behind the rising ball of fire on the horizon

Sunnies on, I yawn and plop into the captains chair, mug of tea waiting patiently on the varnished table next to a basket full of tempting sweets and savories. I had broken into the Fritos the night before, crispy fried corn deliciousness at that late hour crunching me awake. I do not normally eat chips or candy, but being on navigational watch bends all the rules. I eat handfuls of fritos or m&m's without guilt, propping my eyes open with sugar and salt. I pace the wheelhouse with mugfuls of strong tea or sweet twizzler vines gummy and artificial cherry making my lips sticky and pink. I've been known to eat a half jar of peanut butter on previous boats, previous watches where the arm motion of jar to lips seemed to keep me awake more than situps or playing with the GPS.

Pink Floyd accompanied us into mid-morning, gunshots and the wall somehow taking my mind back to land. But the water recaptured my attention with its swirling and fish jumping and glassy calmness stretching and pulling and rolling to the edge of the world.

Nine AM. I had slept eight hours before my watch and like the food thing, passages change normal habits. I crawled out of the captains chair, down the squeaky plastic stairs and back into my dark bunk where I would not remember my dreams for the next eight hours.
Repeat, only this time its Twizzlers for sundowners and the sun is on the other side of this big old ship plowing through the Gulf Stream, New York bound.

Trains, Tea, & Sleep Deprivation

2010-05-15T04:39:00.003-04:00

Platform 8 is my destination, tea in hand and eyes watering and red with cold and lack of sleep.
I am in love with London.
Of course I am. There are little tea sandwiches in the station, cursive lilting languages being tossed through the coffee stained air, small children wearing fashionable French clothing. There are scones for snacks and poundage for dinero, no euro, no giving in to those across the channel.
The trees in the parks outnumber the pale bankers in black pinstriped suits and dashing smiles. I have wandered through The City and Shepards Market and South Kensington in fading evening light, crowds with pint glasses raised and emptied through the lively rumble of afterwork banter.

In Belgium (Belgie Belgique) the gray stoned Gothic past permeates even the train stations and I step into the square searching for friendly blue eyes and a confident gait. Cleo! Fair trade coffee in converted open air living rooms, the last five years pouring from our mouths. Piles of organic quinoa and courgette sustain us into the evening as philosophy and love and heartbreak and travel and laughter tumble and bump over forkfuls of vegetables.
I am in love with Antwerp.
I want to learn Flemish and French and Spanish and have a small terrace garden in a row house.

A short 16 hours later I am back at the station searching for Platform 20 into Brussels, then Platform 9 to the airport, Gate A2 to Philadelphia, Gate B7 to West Palm Beach.

What did I do on my vacation? I didn't see many sights, didn't explore every corner of every cathedral.
Instead I talked, I listened.
I connected with discussions of politics and hobbies and of loving work, living.
I danced.
I saw theatre.
I ate chips and drank beer in dark paneled pubs.
I observed.
I spent time with people I love and discovered new friends.

The only thing my vacation lacked was sleeping in. But who can sleep when there are perfect egg benedicts and silky black cofffee at a french cafe around the corner and a whole city to explore?

I'll sleep when I go back to work.

Portland

2010-05-04T12:56:00.002-04:00

There is something about this town. Not just the cobblestone streets and copper encrusted tippy top windows of brick buildings, not just the cherry blossoms in cheery bloom and tulips poking their buttery yellow heads out of wispy green grass in the center divide, not just the hipsters in tight jeans and striped sailor shirts who actually smile back, not just the back bay with running paths and ducks in the briny gray water.
It is also the salty air and promise of artfully (heartfully) strummed acoustic music through large wooden doors, it is the sculptures and beer, the beards and handmade knitted scarves. It is the drifting scent of boiled hops from sturdy copper kettles and brick chimneys. It is walking into a coffee shop and ordering a medium or simply a ceramic mug full of strong black tea, sitting and sipping for hours, no skinnys or grandes or disgruntled baristas in sight.

It is food. Food! Local, green (and bright orange and deep red and pale cream), lovingly prepared and delicious. Wandering through Rosemont Market and Public Market and the farmers market not wanting to leave for wanting to cook. Instead I pick at Porter cheese and gluten free pumpkin muffins, eye local moo cow beef and sip raw milk.
I am stuffed.
I am happy stumbling down streets, full of Allagash White and dreams of the sea surrounding this city.

It is Portland, full of edgy optimism and silkscreened triumphs.

It's like coming home to a home I haven't yet fully embraced, an old life I haven't yet lived.

It is spring and it is beautiful and it is exactly where I need to be in this moment.

But when am I not?

Night passage

2010-04-25T23:22:00.002-04:00

The yellow VW van sat in the driveway, side door open so that my dad could take out the brown vinyl middle seats. Into the vacancy would go sleeping bags and a cooler, snacks and clothes and a huge Folgers coffee can to pee in on the eight hour trip through the cities of southern California, through the desert full of joshua trees and trailer parks, truck stops and tumble weeds, to the mountains where Bigfoot and horses and trout fishing lived.

When I was little I loved the drive up to the Sierra Nevadas not because we would see all these sights, but because I would fall asleep next to my sisters in sleeping bags on the floor, the motion of the van and the songs of Johnny Cash at San Quintin on the cassette player, the air vents recirculating my dad's cigarette smoke at 3am. It was exciting and comforting to be carried out to the packed up car, bundled in pajamas and heavy with child-deep sleep, knowing that the next day we would be breathing in pine scented air and throwing neon pink bait after rainbow trout in the tarn.

Tonight I helped pack up the boat (or pack away- remove movable things from tables, stow crystal glasses and heavy sculptures, tape down cupboards) and pull up the docklines, carry fenders to the bow.

Night passage.

I am going to fall asleep to the hum of the engines, the splashing of water on the bow, the rocking of my home in the Gulf Stream. I am comforted by these noises, these movements, excited to wake up to a new liquid -dotted -with -scrubby -Florida -pines (or palms) landscape. My sunrise navigation watch will steer us closer to Miami, closer to a nice dinner out, closer to the end of this charter season.

But for tonight, I will dream of dolphins and foamy waves and a bright yellow van with "A Boy Named Sue" drifting with wisps of blue smoke into the early morning night.

Comments, etc.

2010-04-20T22:47:00.001-04:00

I just stepped out of an old tiny screen, $3 for fresh popcorn, ticket vendor is the concessions stand vendor, crane your neck from springy red velvet seats movie theater. The sun has not yet set and I can see thunderheads over the tin roofs of the funky Key West houses. Bars are cranking up their sound systems (a guy on a stool strumming chords and stumbling through Dave Matthews covers), floors still sticky and smelling of thousands of spilled beers. I have dazedly made my way next door to Sippin Cafe where I sit on a loosely covered couch surrounded by ketchup bottles of paint on tables, tin cans full of pens and paintbrushes, canvases on every conceivable surface. I feel at home in such places, even though my art has never been painted, penciled, except in the loops and squiggles of my supposedly accepted mother tongue recorded across blank pages of endless journals, now generic characters on a screen.

I sit in a coffee shop sipping lukewarm decaf (with a splash of regular, please! When I was young I could drink espresso late into the night and fall into bed without a problem. A big mug of coffee after dark reminds me of high school calculus finals and listening to jazz and smoking cigarettes outside coffeehouses by the beach and writing furiously, passionately, feverish with thoughts into the early New York frosty mornings. Now with a touch of caffeine I toss and turn and etch To Do lists onto the gelatinous backside of my forehead).
Diversions aside, I still sit with a mug of decaf and contemplate the inspiring forms of media to which I have recently come into contact.

The movie I just saw? "Creation" with Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany. What a call to arms to create, believe, follow through! To confront and take responsibility for the past, to move forward. And that is just my interpretation of the content. The quality of the film is another show of beauty, although I have to admit I am a sucker for that darkly shot overlay with splashes of specified color to amplify (gently, gently) foreshadowing. The most striking images for me (I have picked up my camera again recently and am seeing things a frame differently): maggots devouring a baby bird (the munching, crunching of delicious buttered popcorn suddenly ceased) and Connelly in a red velvet coat among blood red stalky flowers against a deep green lawn.
Images, ideas, creation of life, creation of art, creation of science.
Lo mismo.

On passage from Grand Cayman to Isla Mujeres, journeying across the sea, I finished reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. Everyone knows the story right? Young man starves in the Alaskan wilderness after giving away all his money and living as a vagabond across the West. The West! When I was in college my first roommate was from Buffalo and spoke constantly of going 'out west.' I was from California and had no concept of "out west." She wore cowboy boots and tromped through northeastern forests and dreamt of Oregon. I fled the west, fled my family's Oregon trail covered wagon, Strawberry Hill naming history, ignored the majesty of the Grand Canyon, of the glacial lakes of the Sierras of my childhood. For awhile at least.
I admire, identify with, feel like I know several Chris McCandless'. I myself was not so bold and brave, idealistic and intellectual, reckless and fickle in my early twenties. Or maybe I was but in a different way. Regardless of any comparison, I find the story fascinating and inspiring. We all gotta die somehow. Some of us die young, some old, some exactly when they are supposed to. Supposed to? We all die, we might as well be as bold and honest and wonderful to each other as we can be.
And Krakauer's writing vacillates between a neutral, soothing cadence and a breath-stealing gallop, especially when he speaks of his own adventures.

In Isla Mujeres I began "Half the Sky" by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.
It is taking me to Africa and Asia and welcomingly shaping my future. To say it is about oppressed women is inaccurate, even though the majority of the text addresses social injustices that target women around the world. The intensely propagated message of the book, however, is that the smallest of efforts made by anyone, in developing or developed countries alike, can tackle enormously daunting quandaries worldwide.
It's slightly disconcerting while I turn over in my air conditioned bunk on a multi million dollar mega yacht after getting tumbled on margaritas to read how a few dollars a year spent on school uniforms can keep girls in school longer thus decreasing unwanted pregnancies thus decreasing abortions or obstructed labor injuries or death.
And that I can help by becoming aware.
Just reading and refusing to ignore, to end the message when I end the book, is a beginning.
I am now creating my sequel.

I am surrounded by artists, by wordsmiths, by generous, bold people.
I am surrounded by inspiring films and books and art.
I am surrounded by multitudes with a chance.
I am recharging and dreaming and connecting. My plans are vast and jumbled and endless.

I am thankful to have visions for the future. They may be constantly changing, but at least I have them.

Because in the end, we all need to create, we all need to empathize and act, and we all need to die living the life we believe in.

Isla Mujeres

2010-04-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

Raindrops on Canvas

2010-04-14T19:26:00.000-04:00

Through the small canal into the watery heart of Isla Mujeres the smell of charred meat entangles itself with the scent of beans stirred over slow fires. The fishermen along the shore wave as we glide past, only a foot of water under our heavy keel, a boat but not a boat in comparison to the brightly colored pangas and steel fishing boats lining the shore. "Buenos dias!" they yell, tending to the meat on the oil drum grill.
I breathe in the scents of Mexico as the sky begins to weep- large cold drops falling into the murky water as we throw lines over wooden pilings and the bowthruster growls and shakes the hull.
For a moment I recede into the past and my muscle memory flinches and jumps as the rain begins to wash away the salt of the passage. Run outside and catch it! it calls. Let the salt run through the scuppers then set up your rain catchers and fill the water tank! it continues. But of course I am not on Gitane, I am not on my sailboat with a 40 gallon water tank and no water maker, I am not rationing that 40 gallons for three weeks taking salt water baths and spraying precious fresh water from a pesticide aerator jug wrapped with a black trash bag to warm it with the sun, I am not washing my clothes in a tupperware bucket or thinking of creative ways to preserve cheese and fish without a reefer. But this is what my body remembers, this is what my body wants. The self sufficiency, the simplicity and joy of catching water with canvas, watching it swirl down into a reclaimed plastic jug, dripping inside and out with liquid that followed us in clouds from California.

I want to be that free, that simple, that pure, as the water that now drips from my face as I run along the flooded sidewalk, eager to be out in the elements, in the cold wet, in the life sustaining force that rules my life.

Water.

A good old fashioned dance party

2010-04-13T10:56:00.001-04:00

It started on the bow. Actually, it started on the stern, bobbing in life jackets in the current running along the hull, struggling to keep the frosty pina coladas well above the salt water splashes as we paddled one handed and giggling back to the boat.

Every crew needs a ritual and most, I believe, involve copious amounts of frosty beverages upon the guests' departure. Instead of going out on the town, we were having a quiet evening in. Or that's what we planned.
We migrated to the bow in bikinis and damp towels to join the guys watching the sun sink towards the aqua abyss, sipping from condensation flecked bottles.
That's when the music started.

A bright yellow boom box of the industrial waterproof sort sat on the forecastle, showering us with classic rock or pop or indie, depending on whose turn it was to play DJ. The volume was cranked up at a rate inversely proportional to the darkening horizon. Orion and Venus made themselves known overhead and the dance party began.
I have never been able to sit still when there's good music blaring and a lively crowd. My foot starts tapping sending energy upwards and soon I can't stand it any longer.

I have to dance.

I sipped my cider between frantic bouts of swing dancing or attempting childhood fad dances like the Running Man (ouch- some dance moves should not be attempted by someone in their 30s after a 20 year hiatus of trying to jump through the loop made by an arm and leg. Luckily I realized this particular move was a bad idea before I face planted on the anchor windlass) or good old grooving out, arms flailing, legs kicking, hair flying in the warm breeze.

The toilet scrubbing and dish washing and Can I Get You Another Drink job irritations melted away. I mean, how many people can jump off the top of their office into tepid sapphire water then dance in dripping shorts until the wee hours with an amazing group of co-workers aka second family aka friends?

There's even a disco ball in the engine room but the view is not quite the same...

what you miss when not running

2010-04-06T20:56:00.000-04:00

The thing I love about running is the perspective. Sure you see the cows munching and mawing on the side of the road as you rumble past in a car, but you don't notice the cute little black spot below the calf's eye or the swiftness in which the bunch gracefully lumber-leap to their hooves and dash-amble across the paddock as you approach the rough wooden fence.

Nor would you notice the crunchy gray skin of a decapitated and wholly flattened iguana, perfectly outlined in the dusty dirt of the coral-ly Cayman road.
It caught my eye (luckily not my foot) and I backtracked in the sweat inducing afternoon blaze to confirm my suspicions. He was probably just trying to get a touch of warmth into his scaly skin on the asphalt when wham...or perhaps he caught a ride on a cruise ship over from Belize where they drive on the right hand side of the road and he was simply confused and glanced to the left but not the right... regardless there he was. Is. An amazingly animated shell of what once had claws and blood and life.

The thing I love about running is that I can see my surroundings in manageable glances and feel my breath and slow my thoughts and hear my feet pounding on the sand or pavement or grass, a downbeat to the traffic or cows smelling of hay and earth or tiny blackbirds or waves crashing on the razor sharp rocks. The sweat drips off my reddening forehead and my arms pump higher the more tired I become. But I am moving and aching and feeling and happy.

Thankful for my legs and mind and the sun and iguanas and mewling cows and holes in the sidewalk that keep me vigilantly present.

Like the curry dripping from my fingertips this evening, savoring the spices speckled red on my knuckles, memories of the Ganges and deep pots of simmering vegetables, bidhi smoking Sadhus and rooftop restaurants. The flavors hot and biting linger on my tongue, on my fingers, tempting my eyes to shut and water, but every bite is an experience, every soft grain of rice appreciated. I am here.

Touch, listen, see, feel.

I am present.

Just like our iguana friend as he was...

OK, bad example.