A WordPress Site

Category: Building Community

Five Things Friday

I weeded a section of flower bed yesterday and I planted 9 plants. I hoped to do more but rain and tiredness won. After today I will be able to lift 10 pounds again, or more, and that will make gardening easier as well. It sounds like such a little thing, but if I plant 9 things every day, and perhaps some seeds in the vegetable garden, everything will be planted and in before the chemo kicks in and steals my ambition. There will of course be days when it rains, or I have to many appointments, so a little fudge factor is included. It is a manageable goal, and manageable goals are good things right now.

Otherwise, it has been a long time since I have done a "five things" post, and it seems about time.

Gifts from friends:  I posted this photo on Instagram earlier this week. A few things that brightened my life following surgery. Each of these is perfect, kind, distracting, soothing — but more than the things itself it is the thoughts and kindnesses even the smallest kindnesses, that remind me of how fortunate I truly am.

Jar Weights: After my fermenting session with Owen, I was thinking about fermentation weights and the impracticality of the glass weights that came in the fermentation kit I gave Owen for Christmas. Or at least they seemed impractical to me. They fit in the jars, but as a single piece, nearly the width of the wide mouth jar, they seemed like they may be difficult to remove, at least to someone with arthritic hands like myself. I wondered if anyone made weights for mason jars that were like the weights that are made for crocks — in two pieces. Lo and behold there are such brilliant people in the world. I love these. I haven't used them yet, but garden season, and fermenting season will soon be upon us.

Yarn and Knitting: I now have two cardigans in process. Yes, I started something new and relatively mindless, something suitable for tired evenings and post-anesthesia mental fog. And even though I am supposed to be knitting down the stash, which I am, more yarn arrived. In the April box from L'Atelier were the yarns to finally start my blanket squares. Those are the yellow and green yarns at the top of the photo. More amazing to me were the yarns that came for a new sweater project, the variegated yarn and the three yarns right around it. Notice how perfectly they coordinate with the current stripe in the sweater I was knitting as I attended the zoom and opened the box, with the blue and wine yarns. Of course I will not be wearing these garments together, but they are my happy colors, the colors of this moment in my heart. I don't have a picture of the sweater, or I would show you, but for me, the idea for a garment always starts with the yarn, with the color, or with the fabric if I am sewing. I never start out thinking "I need this dress", I start out with "oooh isn't that lovely, what does it want to be?" Of course my wardrobe could use some specific item-oriented planning as well. But that is not today's topic.

Mirror Reflections:  I continue to be fascinated by reflections in this rolled glass mirror, which was admittedly placed in the hall to reflect the light, not for photography sessions. But still, but there is something specific about the lack of clarity, the breaking up of the image into separate panes, the reminder that everything we present to the world is exactly that, a shifting mask. Oh, I should stop philosophizing. Even though I need a mirror where I can take good photos, especially as I start sewing and fitting, I still think I prefer the vague. This mirror reminds me of fog, something else I love, and the way it shifts our perceptions of the world around us.

Friends, Flowers, Impromptu Moments: Flowers, dropped off by a talented friend. Wine and conversation with other friends. The impromptu note. A new favorite cracker. A prayer. A silly text GIF. It is our community that sustains us, soothes us, strengthens us, each according to his or her own gifts and focus. I am constantly surprised. I think that is what I wish for, to be constantly surprised by people, by life, by the good that surrounds us, often untapped.

April 30, 2021
The morning after…

I hosted book club last night on the patio with social distancing…

Eight chairs. I managed to scrounge up 8 small tables, although a few had to be dragged outside from the house — those have to go back inside at some point, preferably today, but at the moment I am stiff and my back is still a bit too sore to carry them up the stairs. Never mind. They can always reside in the garage a day or two if necessary.

This morning I am in no rush, instead settled into that contentedly contemplative zone, the morning-after-a-party zone, reflecting back on conversations and community. Every good party deserves a follow-up morning of happy repose. The furniture must be put back in place, the dishwashers emptied, the linens washed, but there is really no reason to rush. The morning after a party is almost as important as the party itself.

Not unusually, my back is a bit sore. Too much standing in the kitchen I suppose, plus carrying tables outside. Would I do anything differently? No. Not really. Cooking, even the simple preparation of salads, is both labor-intensive and meditative. And I seem to have needed this time to be reminded that the important things in life are not the fast things, not the busy things, but the slow and connected things, like sitting and talking for a few hours with friends, discussing a book, but also discussing the world and our lives and then coming back around to the book, the way reading is a conversation, and a conversation about reading also sparks other conversations, about the complicated web of human interaction.

Not a lot of dinner came from my garden. The fava beans that are in the rice salad. I pulled out the fava beans this week as the temperatures had gotten too hot and the plants were dying. Admittedly, I knew I had planted them a bit too late, but was happy to have about 2 cups of shelled and de-skinned beans, enough to share in a group of 8 only as part of a salad. Also an opportunity for contemplative anticipation as the beans were shelled, par-boiled, iced, skins removed, and only then allowed to finish cooking. This labor-intensive part of food preparation is something our ancestors knew as part of the inescapable rhythmic of life, not even that long ago even. I don’t expect the world to change, or anyone to agree with me even. But I wonder what we have lost and what we have sacrificed for convenience.

The herbs and micro greens were also from my garden. Chervil, oregano, parsley, cilantro, beet thinnings, fenugreek thinnings, mint. Well the mint was actually from a neighbor’s garden, but I dug some up to plant here as well. I’ve been using a lot of chervil this summer and wonder now how I lived without it. And the herb garden isn’t what I want it to be yet. The thyme is still too small; so too the sage. I haven’t even planted lovage yet: I intended to go to an herb nursery and buy plants, but I should have just bought seeds. Celery leaf would be good. So much potential. So much gratification to be found in pulling dinner out of the earth.

The fava beans were not the only plants pulled out of the garden this week. The sugar snaps as well. Hidden peas were harvested. I think I picked 2 cups or so of peas every day for 2 – 3 weeks, but I found another 6 or 8 cups of peas hiding in the vines, a few a little larger than ideal but still better than anything in any store. Peas were steamed and frozen. A dinner of stir-fried shrimp and peas materialized when I realized I had forgotten to pick bok choy before dark and was too tired to go back out in the garden.

The last peas became a salad with chervil, bok choy blossoms, and fennel pollen, shared with friends. You can see the yellow bok choy blossoms at the back of the photo of the herb and salad garden above. The scattered leaves of the bok choy are still edible, but those too will have to be pulled soon. In the meantime the sense of discovery remains. Before this year I never even thought about bok choy blossoms.

This morning I have been out in the garden watering. Three zones on the sprinkler system are not working so I must water by hand, which is not such a bad thing. I saw the first of the Costuloto Genovese tomatoes on the vine, a photo I also shared to Instagram. I admired the tuscan kale, which I have been eating two or three times a week for over a month now, and which looks almost like some kind of pre-historic artifact. It is all that remains in the bed that contained peas and faves, and will next hold cucumbers, bitter melon, and my first ever crop of belgian endive. I am wondering if I can plant endive beneath its tall structures, or if I should perhaps plant some other smaller, cutting green between its leaves. As usual there are no answers, only questions and opportunities for conversations and growth. This is as true with each other as it is with the earth. Life is an ongoing experiment its seems, here in the garden, with friends, in our societies and interactions. And there is no doubt that mine is a fortunate life, something not to be taken for granted.

June 13, 2020
Finding My Way Home

How does the world get away from me? I did in fact plan to write another blog post last week, and then, poof, like a puff of smoke, the opportunity was gone. Does it matter? Of that I am not yet certain. I know that my mind is still fragmented, working on little things, and even though those small details all add up to something cohesive, it often feels like cohesiveness itself eludes me.

And then without warning, something falls into place. In my life, realization seems to occur after the fact. I turn around and wonder how it happened that whatever unrest I was holding onto dissipated before I realized that my fists were tightly clenched on nothing but air.

Let’s look backward, just a little. The photo above was taken, and posted on Instagram, last Wednesday, the morning after the snow, and I was at the gym, suddenly fascinated by the small eddies of fog rolling across the water. The pattern of fog made me feel at home. In one sense then, I could say it reminded me of my time in New York State, of the fog on the Hudson, although the geology of the landscape, the rivers, and the fog itself are very different. But that is not it either. It wasn’t that long ago that I still felt like Hyde Park was still home, like I had left home, and not fully settled in this new place, even though I had been here a few years. The patterns of the fog in the trees one morning, a different morning, the patterns of the fog on the water, all of these helped to remind me that this is home now, that I am home, despite the fact that I still struggle on occasion.

But I also realize that we all struggle on occasion, struggle with wanting something we don’t quite have, or can’t quite put our finger on. Perhaps this sense of struggle is universal, part of the human struggle, the struggle between our dual needs for safety and creativity, the very thing that makes us human. Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The species that thinks and knows it thinks.

Perhaps this kind of struggle is endemic to people who move, who are willing to uproot themselves. I could argue that statistically this would apply to most of humanity. We were originally a migratory species. Even in recent history, specifically American history, the majority of Americans uprooted and moved during their lifetimes, separating themselves from friends and family in search of something better. It always strikes me as odd that, in this day and age when we can travel further, and more comfortably, when we have so much, that we are, in broad patterns again, living in the times of the least mobility, at least in terms of physical mobility. Let us not leap into excited discussion of interpretations and implication.

I do realize that no one really moves without a reason, sometimes overt, often covert. We are not particularly good at looking inward, we are not even certain, at least in any conscious way, of what we are looking for. Understanding often comes after the fact.

Moving is hard. Uprooting ourselves is hard. It is easier when you have a purpose that takes up your energy — a new job perhaps — but even then, I wonder if the focus on the job or the career can act as a pacifier as well, a way of distracting the mind so that one doesn’t really acclimate to one’s new environment. Is it possible to keep bouncing around, constantly looking for home, never realizing that what your are actually looking for has been there all along, elusively under the surface?

The roses above are from a floral arrangement, a centerpiece at a luncheon. I love the color, and also love that they reminded me that I need, when planning my garden, to not be singleminded and single-noted, to allow for complexity and surprise. All my cool greens and blues and violets, need a touch of orange or yellow to bring them to life. Perhaps this applies to my life as well, this need to be less single-minded.

Also, as I sit here, I realize that one does not actually have to leave a place to lose one’s home. It happens all the time. A loss, a betrayal, grand or small, it is no one else’s place to judge what hurts us, and what had previously felt like home can feel like a scam, a myth, itself a betrayal even though the betrayal had nothing to do with the place. Our immediate response is twofold — run and hide, or deny, sometimes both. But as soon as we do either, we have already built another wall. Sometimes, it seems, a big move can be emotional or psychological even though the place remains the same.

We humans are complex creatures. Things break. We glue them back together. We hold too tightly, not wanting things to change, forgetting that we change every day as easily as we slough off dead skin cells. That the only way for things to remain safe, to offer some semblance of continuity, is to allow, even embrace change, to adapt to the things we do not like and do not want, because they will always be with us anyway. If we run to avoid the unpleasant, we simply encounter a different unpleasantness.

We need boundaries of course, but how do we build boundaries without building walls? How do we learn to keep our fences low, to protect our own inner spaces while still allowing, ourselves to grow — not merely ourselves as individuals, but our worlds, our homes, as a symbiosis of which we are an integral part? Home can only be home when we engage with it. We can only be home when we allow the place to feed us as we feed the place.

November 18, 2019
Monday Miscellany

A few highlights, diversions and meandering thoughts from last week…

Radish Greens Soup

I had purchased radishes, as much for their beautiful greens as for the radishes themselves at the farmer's market the Saturday before I burned my hand, and since I did not want those gorgeous greens to go to waste I managed to make soup, despite the burn, although it was a more time-consuming process than I might usually expect. I was using Béatrice Peltre's recipe from My French Family Table, which I had used a year and half ago, before the book was packed away. That first time I had noted that the soup was too redolent of potato for me, and needed more onion and so this time I halved the potato and added a leek to the shallot that was called for in the recipe, mostly because I had a leek on hand. I also sweated the leek, shallot, and celery slowly over very low heat, rather than sautéing them over medium heat as directed. Although I probably did not need to, I used homemade chicken stock in the soup, and given that I tend to make a rich bone-broth-type of stock, my final soup is really more of a green chicken soup than was intended. I probably didn't need the chicken stock at all, of perhaps only one cup of stock and three cups of water. The soup was delicious though, and a good thing to have on hand.

Downton Abbey

It will come as no surprise that I loved Downton Abbey and am ready to see it again anytime. I loved the series after all. Perhaps my mom would like to go see it, although I've had difficulty getting her out to movies in the recent past. At the same time perhaps my affection is surprising given that, aside from British literature, I am not an anglophile and care not a flip for the hoopla over royal weddings and babies, but there you are. I am nothing if not inconsistent, and although I love the costumes, I also love the story lines, and the idea of fine acting around smaller themes, the idea that one can float ideas without blowing things up, that one can participate in a system even while knowing it is doomed. Perhaps I just grow tired of darkness and harshness. Perhaps I too just want to look at a pretty dress and smile, relish the witty asides and 15-second references to all too human foibles, perhaps even a hint of nostalgia for something I am well aware was never really the way we imagine it have been.

Garden

General planting and landscaping is delayed by the continued heat and drought, the good news being that although I am surrounded by clay and dirt, at least I am not surrounded by mud. Nonetheless I was thrilled to look outside and see the that the two remaining lace cap hydrangeas are showing signs of budding. I shall enjoy the flowers and hope that this is not an all-out last ditch attempt at replicating themselves before giving up the ghost. Perhaps it is part of my concerted effort to water the existing shrubs, running slow trickles around the few surviving specimens, for long hours, hoping that the water will be absorbed rather than running off. I wonder that even this may not be enough, wonder if my attempts at watering are actually helping or prolonging the agony, although I take comfort in the fact that the plants that once looked peaked and weary seem to have perked up a good bit. Perhaps this is all worth the call from KUB informing me that my water usage has been high… yes, I know. If I had to give up showering in order to water the plants I would do so. I am tired of losing things, not that my own feelings will affect the outcome in any way. I only hope it is enough to keep everything going while I run off to Texas. I will have contractors in the house, but I can't expect them to water the garden.

The Planets

The symphony season opened Thursday with a performance of Gustav Holst's The Planets, which was accompanied by a video presentation of images compiled and collated from NASA. Admittedly I had mixed feelings going in, but felt it worked beautifully, the powerful images mostly playing well with the music and riffing off cultural references (such as Star Wars) that probably 80% of the audience, if not more, was simultaneously running through their heads. The concert hall was almost full on Thursday, when I went, and apparently sold out on Friday, and the music was powerfully and beautifully performed.

And despite all that, perhaps as much because of the pictures as due to the fact that I know the music so well, my mind did wander a little bit. Mostly I was thinking of the music and it's cultural associations, and not just because of Star Wars, and other film and television references. Themes and ideas from the Planets show up in religious music, school songs, popular music, so many places. And of course this is not unique to Holst. I always think that there is a world of educational opportunity out there, that although we have lost a certain degree of musical literacy, much of this strong tradition exists in our cultural memory, although it may be hidden and not overtly recognized. Much the same can be said for Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, early polyphony…. but during the performance of the Holst, I was thrilling to the music and imagining the possibilities of uniting the world, the music of Holst, and Star Wars, Christian Hymns, Frank Zappa, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath all running through my head. The music has its own weight and presence, but all experience builds on previous experience, and a performance is never just itself, but always this fusion of all that has come before it with al that is happening in the present. A fine evening.

Science in Motion

The same evening that I attended the symphony I also went to an opening reception for a new exhibit at the McClung museum of photographs by Eadweard Muybridge, Berenice Abbot and Harold Edgerton. The exhibit was lovely and well worth attending. I was already familiar with most of the work by Muybridge and Abbot, less familiar with Edgerton, although some of the images are very well known. I found myself as fascinated by reading about the techniques and processes as in viewing the images themselves, thinking about the intersection of art and science, and the radical changes that the world has seen in the past 100 to 150 years. I was also taken with the camera cookies, even though I couldn't eat a one of them.

September 23, 2019
Break Time

The fountain by the small back patio is up and running, for the first time since I moved into this house. Already, I feel its calming vibes.

But you can expect a blog break, beginning today. Yesterday I burnt my right index finger, picking up a roasted eggplant by the stem. The eggplant itself had cooled; the stem had apparently been transformed into a still-burning piece of woody charcoal. I should have known better. Now I do.

Above is a picture of my index finger, all bandaged. Yes it is dirty. Friends drove me out to an Azalea nursery in Sevierville, where I purchased 17 azaleas, some of them good sized. I purchased 7 evergreens and 10 natives, 6 varieties in all. Despite the fact that I was trying to be careful, and I can't really do much with my right hand, certainly not with that index finger, the bandage did get dirty looking for tags on plants. It is OK, I was due for a cleaning and bandage change anyway, and my finger remained clean.

There are things one never things about until forced to do so, the importance of the index finger is one of those things. I can still walk and go to the gym. Salman Rushdie's new novel is waiting for me on the sofa. I may not manage to vacuum the floors.

And now that is all I can type for today. I won't tell you how long this brief post took. Have a good week and I will be back soon.

September 17, 2019
Settling In to Small Things

It is raining, albeit lightly, and that does not mean that the trades are not scattered across the place — working on the landscaping, hanging gutters, moving things out of the garage so it can be finished. Goodness knows what else. It also means I have towels by each door, towels for muddy shoes and to wipe muddy footprints, not that there have been clean feet around here for some time. When it wasn't raining, the air, and every surface, was covered with stone dust. You could not walk outside without tracking it in, could not open a door without trails of dust rushing to colonize new space. I have accommodated myself to the idea of dust, of footprints on the floor, both mine and the beasts'. Towels only go so far, and cats are not known for their patience with foot wiping.

The stone masons have laid out most of the back patio and walkway. This photo is from earlier in the week, incomplete, but the work has since been covered with tarps to protect it from boots and rain. Grouting will take place later in the week, weather permitting, although the masons worked through the rain last week, laying and cutting stone under tents. Despite the noise and the dust however, my house is an oasis of peace, if not order.

Everything was moved into the studio on Friday and I posted the photo above on Instagram that morning, happy to see how nicely my rug and the loom looked in the space, in a brief moment of peace before all the boxes appeared. While men moved heavy things, I unpacked fabric and started placing it on the shelves.

But this is not what the studio actually looks like. Below is a more accurate representation. There are a few things I need to do sooner as opposed to later, but I am not forcing myself into timelines and deadlines. I can do whatever I chose, whenever I chose to do it.

That idea, of accepting slowness, of patience, is easier stated than lived however, much as I have long paid lip service to the idea. I realize now that I was only flirting with patience, that I put too much stock in the doing and not enough in the being. Perhaps this is a lifelong journey, one with which we all struggle. After years of stating that it was the little things that actually matter, I realize that I always merely flirted with that belief — I always had a big project in the background, providing a comforting anchor. And now there is none — no project, just life. Or perhaps "just life" is actually the main project and the others have all been distractions. I don't know. I still tend to think a good day is a day I do a lot of things, but what if a good day is just a day I don't worry about what I have done?

I am sure that point will take a while to embed itself into my conscience, and by the time it is firmly established, I may not even remember that it was once a struggle. In the meantime, this morning I poured a perfect espresso, although it is technically somewhere between an espresso and a luongo, but it is my "perfect" and that is all that matters. I think I will putter about in the kitchen, figuring out some of the what and where that still plagues the space, at least until I am tired. I play bridge this afternoon. Perhaps I will run errands. Perhaps I will take a nap, or read, or knit, or all of the above.

July 22, 2019
A Nerd in the Kitchen

Last week I was in search of escarole. It was a commonly available ingredient when I lived in Hyde Park, available both in grocery stores and specialty markets. Not so much in Knoxville, which is a shame because I would purchase it regularly if available. I did not find any in the stores I normally frequent, and so I ventured further afield, actually finding it in a store where I once shopped regularly but had later abandoned due to increasing frustration over a steady drop in quality. I not only found the escarole, but I was pleasantly surprised that the store seemed to have turned around.

I decided it was time to reconsider my shopping trails, and so I turned to my pantry spreadsheet. Years ago, when I still lived in NY State, I would periodically do grocery store surveys, strictly for my own benefit. I would go, pantry list in hand, and compare prices, brands, and quality of the food items I routinely purchased. This was useful both from a budget perspective, and an organizational perspective, because I have apparently never been the kind of person who will buy everything in one store out of convenience, but I do need to know where to get the things I want, and how to balance price, convenience, and availability, given that time is also a commodity with its own costs.

I hadn't done a store comparison since I first moved to Knoxville, 7 years ago now. It seemed to be about time, especially since I have found myself more settled and am regularly cooking again both for others and myself. I simply took my existing spreadsheet and added a set of columns for the stores in the area, both specialty markets and grocery stores, and decided that over the next few weeks I would do a price and product comparison, thinking about where the best places are for me to shop based on availability and, yes, convenience simply because there is a cost to travel and to time, even as a retired person.

There are more stores on this list than on my first Knoxville comparison, mostly because more stores have moved to town, but also because I have moved and have grown more familiar with this area as well. Similarly, there is at least one store that may not make the list simply because the nearest branch is far enough outside my normal circle to make it uneconomical unless it has some prized ingredient that is otherwise difficult to source (doubtful).

Besides, I was already in another reorganization phase. Quite a few of the food storage containers I had purchased 5 years ago had lost their seals, and I was looking for something to replace them. I have long been a person who partially preps and repackages food into storage containers. And I have found that the effort pays in terms of both convenience and freshness, both because the repackaged items keep longer and because I am more likely to remember things I have actually worked with, as opposed to tossing them unheeded into the refrigerator. I also find I prefer to not be assaulted by branded packaging, at least for those items that can be easily repackaged.

Purchasing identical packaging is a luxury but one that brings me joy on a daily basis. Gradually, the contents of the refrigerator are being organized so that I can identify and find everything easily, although there are still a few jars on the side, awaiting an order of a specific size of storage canister/jar. This is important as I generally dislike the refrigerator in this apartment and find it difficult to use; anything that encourages me to open the refrigerator door and actually use something is a good thing.

I also started freezing extra portions of soup as I made it. This seems obvious, but I had not done it in years. I love soup, but I easily grow bored eating the same soup every day for a week. Rather than storing the soup in containers, I decided to try storing it in ziplock bags, each of which contains two servings of soup. This is also probably pretty obvious but I had never done it this way before, even thought I started packaging stock in Ziplock bags over a year ago.

The bags allow me to make a "soup file" in the freezer. The whole system makes it easier for me to see what stocks or soups I have on hand. Having soup in small quantities makes it easier to come up with a meal when I am tired and feeling uninspired. I am far more likely to use a 2-serving package of soup, than a big container of soup. And, since I love soup, and it is a convenient way to use up odd bits that would otherwise languish or go to waste, making soup is an easy feel-good activity.

I've also been engaged in a bit of a baking experiment. I made some shortbread for a friend, the traditional Scottish kind that consists of nothing but flour, butter and sugar. Although I used gluten-free flour because I won't have the other kind in my kitchen, I did use real butter even though I can't eat it. But as I worked I started to think about shortbread. Scottish shortbread is a really simple thing, simple and elegant. The recipe is a classic 321 ratio of ingredients, and the main trick is not to overwork the dough, and to cut it while warm but to wait until it fully cools before removing it from the pan.

My thoughts revolved around whether I could make a dairy-free version of shortbread using clarified butter rather than one of those dairy-free butter blends, which neither taste nor act like real butter. Hence the experiment. This last iteration was very close to perfection, but not quite. The photo above contains pieces from two batches of shortbread. Both are delicious, even if I think there is still room for improvement.

The first was using straight clarified butter, butter in which all the milk solids had been removed, and adjusting the proportions of the recipe to match the weight of the butter. It worked, but the resulting shortbread remains a little too tender and friable. It is difficult to eat without it falling into crumbs in one's fingers. Gluten-free flours do not absorb fat in the same way as wheat flour, meaning I may need to play with flour blends, or increase the protein solids which were lost in the clarification process.

In the second batch I added collagen protein to the clarified butter to replace the milk proteins that had been removed in the clarification process. This batch also tastes buttery and delicious, but it is a little too firm, and it got a little too dark. Of course collagen proteins and milk proteins are not identical, but I also realized that I made a basic miscalculation. I added protein to replace the entire weight that had been lost from the butter in the clarification process, forgetting that some of that weight loss had been due to the evaporation of water. Next time I will weigh the clarified butter and the remaining milk solids and adjust my proportions accordingly. I don't know if the water weight is important in this small of a quantity, or even if I can add water back into my clarified butter mix, to make a new emulsion, or even of that matters. It will be a couple of weeks before I can pick up this challenge again, but I am looking forward to the process.

February 4, 2019
The Week in Review

The first full week of 2019 has come to a close, and already I am not managing to maintain a schedule. But are schedules necessary? or are they artificial constructs?

Actually, if this first week is any indication, 2019 is off to a good start. A week ago Sunday I had a lovely lunch with my step-daughter, chatting and laughing, regaled with tales of her recent trip to California, and getting caught up on visits with her childhood and college friends. Lunch was at one of my favorite spots in Knoxville, a place I got to eat twice this week, and it was half-way from my house to the UT campus, where I had a concert on Sunday afternoon.

In fact, I was so enjoying our lunch and the conversations that I was late to the concert, late enough to miss the first piece, but I did make it in time to hear Mozart's Oboe Quartet in F Major (which was fabulous, by the way). This was followed by a Schubert Octet, also beautifully performed, but long. I must admit I grew restless and slipped out the door early. This had nothing to do with the concert and everything to do with me, a result of over scheduling and a yearning to be outside. Luckily, being late to begin with, I was near the door, making it easy to slip out again about 3/4 of the way through the piece. I spent the remainder of the afternoon planting bulbs, the 400 bulbs I reported planting previously, before impending darkness and the increasing cold drove me inside. Mozart was bouncing around my head the entire time I was planting, and afterwards, when I lay on the floor with my feet up on the sofa, allowing my back some time to recover.

There was more bulb planting over the next four days, another 350 bulbs or so, although planting smaller numbers per day was easier on my back. It all seems a little excessive, no? Well yes. I had ordered the bulbs early, almost as soon as the catalogs were available, because I knew some of the bulbs would sell out, ordered the bulbs when I still thought I would be living in my house, before I knew the yard would be torn up, before I knew so many things. Now the whole order seems excessive, and perhaps foolish, but it is too late for regrets. Sometimes all one can do is move forward; sometimes one must just plunge one's hands in the dirt and hope for the best.

Tuesday I went to Knoxville's new Change Center; a trip which filled me with inspiration and hope. And yet, at the same time, my head was also filled with questions. I am proud to be a member of a city that is putting such effort into helping at risk youth and yet I also wonder how I can do more, partly just in volunteering to help on an individual basis, but also what role I can play in bridging the divides in this city that also often seems like two cities, the more affluent, educated, western city, and the less affluent, at risk, eastern city. It is not a situation that is unique to this city; in many ways we are a microcosm of the country, but that does not make the divide any less shocking, or the need any less crucial. We inhabitants of the western city tell ourselves it is not about race, but of course it is and it isn't. Even more than about race it is about class, but class is the thing we hate talking about more than we hate talking about race. Yet neither of those words is enough to contain the problem, they each represent a narrowing and a labeling, and externalizing, if you will. And externalizing and labeling are both forms of avoidance. Avoidance is key. Increasingly I think the issue is one of the walls we build and the bubbles in which we enfold ourselves, ostensibly in the name of protection. We console ourselves with labels, just as we console ourselves with our complacency, with good intentions, by telling ourselves "it is not me". Like so many of the divides in our country, the obvious divisions are all too real, and yet are also a part of a greater and more complex interleaving of issues that play themselves out in our individual lives and in our society, on issues large and small.

And so it seems I have been spending much of this first week of 2019 thinking about bubbles, how we each live in our own little community bubbles, and whether our bubble is one of hope or one of despair, we are too often trapped within it, unaware that we are even encapsulated. Much as I want to help individuals transcend one kind of bubble, I am also torn and worried about all the other bubbles, the bubbles that keep people separate and in ignorance, the bubbles of complacency that, under the guise of security and protection, actually drive us apart. For as long as our lives are contained in our bubbles, and I live in as much of a bubble as anyone else I know, we are building walls that keep us apart and isolate us, many kinds of walls, and many kinds of isms. As long as we live in bubbles, I fear we cannot honestly live in harmony and humanity. I suppose what I am really wondering is how we stop being bubbles and return to be being water.

I don't know where I am going with any of this. I still need to figure it out, but it is good to start the year thinking of things that need figuring out, good to question my own assumptions and biases, even as I live within those biases: lunching with friends, planting bulbs, going to concerts, caught in the activities of my really pretty privileged life. There was another concert on Wednesday, a fabulous concert that stuck with me more than Sunday's concert, and for which I stayed until the end. A concert that had my head spinning, and thinking about harmony and dissonance, and the ways bubbles can be burst, yielding new harmony. There was an hour spent holding a baby on Friday. There was a christening on Saturday, and another few minutes holding that same baby. There is nothing like a baby to bring you to center of all things, the center of life, the center of potential, the center of what we call can be.

But these were all distractions in a life, and I am not even sure they were the essential elements. Or perhaps they are exactly the essential elements. A baby, seeds and bulbs, new life, music, these are all things that unite us and promise new growth, these are all the stuff of potential and promise, fully present before walls and conditions hem them in.

I was thinking about how young babies are just happy to be held, held by anyone who is warm and loving and willing. It is usually months before walls start to go up, before only parents and known people are wanted, before bubbles start forming. We don't tend to think about the artificially of what we impose and what is absorbed. What we think of as common knowledge is really just our own bubble, a reflection, something we've been taught. What we think of as truth is often also only a reflection of what we see inside our bubble. I am no different. I am a product of my environment, my head filled with assumptions and biases I am not even aware I harbor. I acknowledge that we need bubbles, we need filters and membranes, but there is a danger when those walls stop being permeable and become rigid.

I think we need weaker walls, softer walls, walls that are more fluid. How do we let the walls of our bubbles grow softer? How do we stop harming others by protecting ourselves? How do we let our bubbles live in harmony instead of disharmony? How do we become water?

For some odd reason I have been remembering John Lennon this week, remembering particularly the words to one of my favorite songs: Imagine. Only bits and pieces are here.

"Imagine all the people

Livin' life in peace.

Yoo hoo

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will be as one

….

No need for greed or hunger

The brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharin' all the world

…

Welcome to 2019.

Perhaps it is long past time we start to change the world. Perhaps I am still a dreamer. But if it weren't for the dreamers, I think we all would have destroyed each other long ago. Perhaps, as long as we are here, there is always hope.

January 14, 2019
Giving Thanks

It is the time in this country when we take a day to give thanks. And so we do. We go overboard preparing too much food, occasionally eat to excess, watch football and parades, spend time with family and friends. Some of us rise early the next morning and do battle seeking material excess at low prices.

Some of us, those whose hearts are perhaps too big, who take the worries of the world too greatly, secretly fret about whether or not we should really be celebrating excess when there is so much tragedy in the world: people who have lost loved ones, families displaced by fires in California, hurricanes on the gulf coast, towns devastated, people who have lost everything. The tragedies of the world seem unimaginable, our own comfort and security shallow.

But of course it is good to have a ritualized day of Thanks, a reminder that there is always something to be grateful for, although we may not always see it. Perhaps it is human nature to wish for whatever it is we do not have, what we do not see, as if wishing would make it better. But I'm not sure we wish for the right things. Yes, wishing for rain to put out fires may seem good. But what if it rains too much? Mudslides, flooding. The world rarely seems to work in the way we humans would imagine it to be.

I have been remembering a book I loved as a child, Half Magic by Edward Eager. Children find a coin or talisman that grants half a wish. Misadventures ensue. There are parts of the book that are difficult for today's readers, yes, but I am not certain the we should abandon that which is good because of that which makes us uncomfortable. Easy answers often ignore difficult questions, and life, human life, is nothing if not complex and often contradictory. And so it is good to be grateful. It is good to be reminded that the things we wish for often have unintended and unimagined consequences, and that true magic can happen in the most unexpected and unanticipated ways.

Be grateful. Be kind. Do something for someone else, no matter how small. Have a wonderful day, by which I also mean take time to breathe in the wonder. Give thanks. Then, having stored up all that goodness, share it with the world.

(the painting is by Joseph Delaney. I originally posted it, and wrote about it, last August, here.)

November 22, 2018
Wednesday Morning Thoughts

I love the way my phone turned the sunrise this morning into something almost abstract and painterly:

Otherwise I don't really have much to say. My silence isn't really due to the election results, although I have mixed feelings about them. I happy that voter turnout was high for a midterm, especially important here in East Tennessee where we tend to have low turnout. I am happy that some races were actually close. I choose to see hope. But at the same time I know that elections aren't won based on reason, they are won and lost based on emotion.

I'll share what I wrote in my journal this morning. I am transcribing it here but not editing. Expect no polish or expansion, just the beginnings of thoughts:

But again fear and division is winning and it makes me sad — all the hatred in the world. But the problem isn't really hatred, it is fear. Hatred is the symptom. The problem is fear, and people slowly absorbing the messages of division that surround us all. No matter how smart we are, no matter how well-intentioned, we are all like sponges, absorbing part of our being from our surroundings. We can't stop the anger and hatred until we can learn to to listen and attempt to understand, until we can share love and not dismay. We are all guilty of this, myself as much as anyone else. It is never them versus us, it is always all of us together. Until we try to understand each other, until we say no to those who spread the fear, until we open our arms to each other even in the midst of fear and disagreement, kindness can never prevail, humanity can never win over hatred. You can't say no to hatred, it begets more fear and hatred. We can only say yes to people, and hope that we can release the bias that enchains us all.

November 7, 2018