Not So Grounded

The Story of Stuff

As our President encourages us to improve our economy by spending more money, I'm thinkin' there's a better way ... The  Story of Stuff is a decent place to start the quest.

Jo Fleischhauer Again

My cousin Jo -- a very cool artist -- just unveiled her website.  I have always known her to be this magnificent, interesting, thoughtful, inspiring visual artist (see my 11/20/07 post).  But it's different when she's also one of my longest running favorite person on the whole planet.  When she visited, her family driving from their home in Buffalo to mine on Long Island, I would sit on the front stoop waiting.  All day.  With uncontrollable butterflies of excitement in my stomach.

I still feel that way. 

(ps -- Jo, I finally got your Christmas present in the mail yesterday ...xoxo, your cuz)    

Wild Honey

Just discovered Wild Honey blog, a fabulous site dedicated to slow foods & slow cooking.  It's done by Deborah, an accountant (and new daughter-in-law of a friend of mine) and she beautifully blends together [okay, couldn't resist ...] recipes, cooking hints, her own meal-in-progress photos, links to where you might find some of the ingredients, and some history.  It's very cool.

I may actually try some things (check out 12/9/07 mole -- I love mole, and the fact that it contains chocolate may encourage John & Darling Daughter to endure the chilis), even though I'm not really known for my culinary skill.  I can pull off a yummy 2-4 person meal, if I have lots & lots of uninterrupted time and some decent music or good company.  And I can whip together the stuff that thrills virtually all 10-year olds.  But that's about it.  I once turned on the wrong electric burner and seared a full set of black rings on the back cover of my Joy of Cooking. Kinda sums it up.  And still have the book to prove it.

But thanks, Deborah, for offering some new inspiration.

    

Juno

I've stumbled into a couple of interesting conversations  about the movie "Juno," so as I mull over my thoughts, possibly for my next column, thought I'd post today's NY Times Op-Ed piece about the film.  While I appreciate the author's fair assessment that adolescent girls still bear a heavier burden around sexuality than boys, I don't necessarily agree with her interpretation of the film.  She believed it to be a fairytale, that the characters traveled through the narrative unchanged, Juno picking up her post-partum life exactly where she left off in the opening credits.  My 15-year old & I saw it very differently -- everyone was changed by the experience, and everyone chose to become changed for the better, even though some things were really tough and the characters could have chosen to make other things even tougher. 

Anyway, John & I loved the film.  So did my daughter and all her friends.  She's taking her boyfriend to see it tonight.  And I'm gonna ponder it some more 'cause I think it offers a great example of plain ol' circumstances and how we choose to respond. 

Burtie Bragg, Musical Poet

I'm finishing up a piece for All About Women about the creative process for musicians.  Burtie Bragg's one of the women I interviewed, a budding guitarist, singer, songwriter ... just returned from a song-writer workshop in Michigan.  I sat in her living room, listening her song about the Iraq war, a haunting piece, different verses from different perspectives -- a soldier, a monk, an activist, an Iraqi ... another song, the gist of which "I can't think about you right now, I have troubles of my own ..."  She performed her own "Just Want To Know" at her first open mike at the workshop, amidst seasoned songwriters.  She described how she finds a song's seed and then nurtures it along, her frustration when lyrics momentarily elude her and how she moves through the blocks.  Her new song is about a woman fleeing an abusive relationship, the man chasing her asking her to love him, her reply, "I forgot how."  Intricate, textured, sophisticated stuff.

And she's 13. 

I've known Burtie a decade, yet clearly not really until I listened to her sing ...

Beauty of Aging

My Mom just sent me a link to Beauty of Aging, a documentary with inspiring women over age 80.  It's a great way to end the day & the week -- Thanks Mom!

Pakistan Journal

I lived in Pakistan in 1993, the beginning of Benazir Bhutto's 2nd term as Prime Minister, and I remember most her contradictions.  Harvard & Oxford educated, a strong woman leading an Islamic country, wildly popular across the West and  in her own streets ... yet she was a Feudal (a term actually used, despite that I mistakenly considered it a middle-ages concept).  Astronomically wealthy, her Pakistani laborers filling her Swiss bank accounts.  She was plagued with corruption charges, and as democratically elected prime minister, she rolled back some reforms of her military coup predecessor designed to improve life for the country's illiterate poor (approximately 85% of the population).  Here's her BBC obituary.

Her contradictions, of course, were merely grander versions of my own.  Living in Pakistan challenged all sorts of lofty beliefs I could safely harbor abstractly at home.  The value of cultural diversity.  Religious freedom.  Live & let live without judgment.  The nostalgic value of tight-knit families and clans.  Democracy vs military rule.  The contradictions I felt about Ms. Bhutto magnified across the my whole life. 

As with all travels, I met lovely people who share all the same human love, compassion, and warmth.  And as with most travel, I remembered how much more children are loved, valued (and just plain played with) elsewhere than in the U.S.  Consistent universals I find no matter where I go. 

But I also came away better understanding the 18th Century impulse for Enlightenment.  Religion, tight-knit families, strong cultures, social structures ... they can all be kinda oppressive.  Laced with a staggering number of Do's and Don'ts, particularly for women.  I couldn't get on a public bus if there were no other women riders; I couldn't go downtown alone without a cacophony of scary catcalls; in public I couldn't expose anything but my face.  Women were almost invisible:  I saw very few local women anywhere, unless amidst throngs of their children, husbands, and extended families.  Unless they were buying food at the markets.  Or begging on the sidewalk.

I left Pakistan grateful that I did not live there all the time, which felt weird & arrogant & wrong to me.  I've traveled to many continents -- rich & poor -- and everywhere else I genuinely appreciated why people called those places Home.  The unique beauty of each different place.  But this was a place that felt so heavy to me.  Lovely, good, warm people.  Absolutely magnificent landscapes that still inspire me.  Yet seemingly burdened by an ethereal weight that, admittedly, seemed crippling & old & no longer necessary.

My judgments sound horrible, I know.  I've wrestled with them ever since that journey 15 years ago.  Conflicted and unresolved.

So in the meantime, I genuinely mourn Ms. Bhutto and all the others who died in each attempt to kill her.  Genuinely mourn for Pakistan and Pakistanis, as more violence & instability & gut-wrenching trouble seethe.  No matter what, no person or place deserves this.            

Cleaning House

I spent the weekend cleaning house.  My family was away, and I had the place -- and my life -- to myself for 48 solid hours.

There were things that needed cleaning.  In the tv-screen glow of ASU's historic win (Marie always has the best photos), I sorted through the final mass of John's stuff that I shoved into the den back when the impending Wedding trumped any neat organization.  Then went through clothes, hung photos and paintings, reclaimed the guest room, chucked old junk ...

I didn't think much all weekend.  Instead got lost in the beauty of an immediate moment, the action at hand, clearing things clean, and finding lovely new space.  It felt like surprising excavation, not heavy catharsis -- exposing the old & buried to brand new light.  Which became magically re-ordered, things effortlessly flying to their proper place like Mary Poppins tidying up.  Finally.  It's what I always fail to remember:  actually cleaning all those boxes, whether stacked on a table or shelved in my heart, is so much easier & more fun than any dread I anticipate.

Then I put on some Modest Mouse:  "We've listened more to life's end gong than the sound of life's sweet bells."

What Did You Promise the Universe?

Last night John & I meandered to this excruciatingly simple question -- What did you promise the universe?

I found the question months ago, on Elizabeth Gilbert's website ("Some Thoughts About Writing").  In describing her own epiphany during those typical "This sucks!" writing moments, she realized, "I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write."  And so she finished Eat Pray Love. 

The question -- and her answer -- stopped me thunderbolt sudden right then & there.  At the time I was angsting a bit (okay, a lot) about whether or not I was a Writer.  And there it was, the perfect question to figure it out.  Normally I can exercise such existential barbells for days or months or years ... instead, took me about 3 minutes. 

I promised the universe I would help people think differently.  My methods don't much matter -- writing, my consulting day-job, innocuous conversations with friends & family ... whatever I happen to be doing at the moment.  The topic doesn't much matter either, just whatever anyone needs to be thinking differently about at the moment I happen to be shifting that thought.  And heaven knows it's got nothing to do with me giving the "right" new thought -- way beyond my skill set.  Just a different thought, a new way to ponder something sideways. 

Suddenly all my favorite moments aligned, I'd finally found a single thread woven into my seemingly odd & random patchwork of professions & passions.  And I have a prod to unstick indecisions:  does it really fit with my promise?  I go with a "yes," let go if it's "no." 

All with one exquisite little question.  (I'll let John share his answer when he sets up his own blog).

Barbara Kingsolver

I'm finally reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.   My nephew's just finishing a course at Appalachian State on food networking -- he loved the class & read all these cool books, two of which he's given me now that the semester's over.  It chronicles a year when the Kingsolver-Hopp family ate consciously, deliberately, locally ... everything found within 100 miles of their home, preferably where they knew who grew, slaughtered, or made it, or, better yet, did so themselves. 

I'm on page 19, stopped only 'cause I need to figure out dinner for my family.  I am aware -- feeling too tragic for irony -- that not an ounce of this meal meets the Kingsolver-Hopp criteria.  I don't even grow a garden beyond a collection of summer herbs, and while I buy organic and painstakingly read labels & places of origin I know my culinary carbon footprint remains astronomical.  I feel more depressed upon hearing Al Gore's speech today as he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their joint efforts on behalf of the world.  On behalf of me and my family.

Tragic, despondent, and an odd combination of agitated & hopeless are not wise places for me to rest.  So instead I'll push to feel it all differently.  Be grateful to the Nobel Committee for today's spotlight on the most deserving work & leadership.  And grateful to a magnificent writer I have voraciously read for over fifteen years, for her ability to model action that is both imperative and humbly doable.