Artifacts of Adolescence

My parents moved in March. They’re in the same awesome neighborhood in Philly so my trips home haven’t lost the geography of their nostalgia. But the boxes they’re storing for me have moved, so this afternoon I found myself sitting in a warehouse styled hallway, complete with flickering lights, surrounded by boxes and artifacts of my adolescence.

I was looking for letters from my friend M. who died in December 2005. Each trip back home since then I have ventured to find more memorabilia of her and our relationship. Pictures, then clothes, and now on to letters.

…
In the past few days I have seen some friends that I haven’t seen in a very long time…since before I last moved, or even since before I started college. There we were, drinking good beer after good beer moving back and forth through shared memories, politics, lovers, aspirations and work. Time seemed to pass on its on accord, and I was (am) filled with nostalgia for some part of myself that perhaps is only a memory and perhaps has yet to manifest.

…
I have made piles of letters. Some from M. yes, and my grandparents, but others are from old friends with whom I used to write regularly. I notice phases of stationary and stickers, recognize familiar addresses and handwriting, absent minded doodles and exciting stamps from summer travels and semesters abroad. Some letters have no dates and I read them again and again searching for clues. When did this happen? Did I know then how much it might all later matter? Was I awake? Was I alive? Did I appreciate?

As I write this I am greeted with the familiar composition of my parent’s late night arguing. Earlier in the week they graced me with a soundscape of spoons hitting dessert bowls, a sacred time of ice cream and quiet conversation.

In their old house I used to have a palpable, visceral experience of memory whenever I came home after a long absence. I think it started in college but maybe it started earlier, after summers away forming friendships fueled by the intensity of late night adolescent conversation. Walking through the front door, guarded by a lace curtain, I would feel a stifling sort of remembrance of family holidays spent battling alcoholism and mental illness. A walking tour through the corners of my room, where I cultivated a talent for addictive and secretive behaviors, would lead to a sick twist of energy racing up my spine. And glancing out the window I’d be covered with nostalgia for hours spent out on the roof late at night chain smoking and talking to friends, trying to articulate my sense of self, sense of place, sense of time, sense of relationship.

There is a feeling of love in all these places.

…
We’re older now and nicer to our bodies. We kayak and bike, wear sunscreen and motorcycle helmets, discuss socially responsible investing and plans for our futures (we plan to have futures). The hugs are familiar in spite of the time, the goodbyes take forever, and I get home very late.

I don’t know where this narrative is going; perhaps to a place of gratitude. These relationships continue. These artifacts of paper and prose, manifestos of hope and memoirs of disappointment continue. I have so much. Thank you.

A Return to Veganism (Take Two)

So I sat down to write a post that rapidly was becoming an autobiography of eating. A few paragraphs in I was starting to bore the hell out of myself. The whole epic was really meant as a contextualized introduction to the announcement, that in April I returned to veganism.

The long and short of it is that I go in and out of phases of thinking about what I eat. After managing to stay vegan in college, in Australia, and on a 10 week road trip around these grand ‘ol omnivorous United States, I went back to just being just vegetarian shortly after we moved to Tucson. The truth is I got kinda lazy. I ate cheese, I watched TV, I drove a car to work, I wasted time. And perhaps I needed these years of fallow time to just rest up and eventually bore myself back into thinking about the choices I make.

A few months ago I read this article in the UU World. It more or less reminded me of all my reasons for going vegetarian when I was 12 and vegan when I was 19. I decided it was time for me to take a bit of a challenge back into my everyday life, and change how I eat.

This past week I have of course also been quitting smoking. It has been interesting (to say the least) to watch my desires for old comforts to emerge. Those of you who know me know that I bite my nails. I started biting my bails when I was six years old and my parents wanted me to stop sucking my thumb. So clearly I have a long history of replacing one comfort habit with another.

I’ve been kinda silent on this blog the last couple months. One excuse is of course being a puppy mom. Beyond that I think I’ve been in some sort of passively introspective cloud that had me worried about blogging. What is my own voice, I wondered. Why am I still so stuck in my own head when there are real things happening in the world? And why would I want to share my own revelations about mediocrity and depression on the web?

And eventually I realized that the real issue is that there are still huge conversations I’m not ready to have with myself. And that is the fear that has been keeping me dormant.

Towards the end of college I decided I wanted to be a minister when I grew up. By the summer after college I had made a short list of perspective seminaries (the same list I am still working with today). Yet I knew I wasn’t ready to pursue seminary yet, I didn’t feel together enough to embark on such an intense journey.

It might be time.

It might be time for me to care about what I eat and how it impacts my body and this world. It might be time for me to care about how I spend my time, how present I can be in relationships, at work, in joy and sorrow. It might be time for me to stop waiting for the perfect time and just forge ahead – raising my voice, even as I am learning to use it.

For Real

Today my friend Princess graduated from college. She made her grandma a promise that she would quit smoking when she graduated.

Princess brought her grandma to my church on Christmas Eve and she loved the service so much she cried. Tonight, at a graduation dinner this same grandma was doing sake bombs (amazing!). So, it is safe to say that I love this grandma.

Which is to say, that tomorrow, I too am going to quit smoking. For real. You are all welcome to hold me to this commitment.

I started smoking in eighth grade. I remember thinking I would hate the taste, and therefore it wouldn’t become habit. Opps. Then I thought I would smoke, but only outside, or only for a year, or only…. So, here I am 12 or 13 years later, quitting a habit I initially thought I wouldn’t ever have.

J. doesn’t think I will really do it, but I think I will.

So there.

Puppy Blogging

Today J. and I became puppy parents!

 

We adopted 3 month old Emmett from Pima Animal Control, which was a less than happy place – very minimal, fairly crowded – and you know that some of the dogs aren’t going to get adopted, and then it is pretty much the end for them.   Our Emmett is a pit bull / boxer, so we have our work cut out for us helping him to be a fun and friendly dog, but also helping other people overcome their assumptions and fears about pit bulls. 

 

We have been thinking in broad hypotheticals about getting a dog.  We had been thinking about adopting a pup at some vague point in the future – somewhere between learning how to regularly water our rosemary bush and having kids.  We had also been talking some about our (my?) tendency to over plan major life decisions.

 

For instance we have no interest in having kids right now.  And yet for a whiel we had been measuring out how long to stay in Tucson since we know that graduate school will take ever so many years (and who wants to  have kids when they are in school), and then it takes a few years to start a career (cause who wants to have kids when you are makinhg your grand grown up debut in the world), and then weow, we would need to have kids cause one’s we’d be in our mid 30’s (and who wants to have kids too old).  We found ourselves somehow making life choices for the here and know based around having kids, even though the whoel point of not having kids right now was to not have to make decisions based around kids right now.

 

Deep breath.

 

We’ve come to realize that the honest truth is that we have no idea when we will have kids, cause really there is never an ideal time.  All we know is that we are not having them now.

 

And it turns out that maybe the timing for pets isn’t something we can map out years ahead of time either.  Cause as I’m writing this a furry little creature is napping on my lap.  

And since he is so freakin cute, I’m gonna end this post and go hang out with him.                                                                                    

A Poetry Saturday

I like to write poetry posts on Saturday mornings while drinking coffee. There is a part of me that wants, that needs, Saturdays to be that day of rest. But for me, in my rhythm of the week it just doesn’t work out that way. So I post poetry, and salute these Saturday mornings (and then I often go to work).

I accidentally took the graceful little volume The Far Mosque by Kazim Ali home with me from Hawaii and having been reading it all week (thank you Petitpoussin).

Y’all should also totally check out the first installment of the Creative Writing Carnival which Sylvia is hosting. It comes in yes, one, two, and three installments.

Dear Rumi

-By Kazim Ali

You’ve forgotten he other life in which
Shams-e- Tabriz threw your books into the fountain.

The ink, finally unrecognizable,
Reached for you in dissipating life.

Once I went up the mountain at daybreak, and still met pilgrims
coming down who had woken for the journey earlier.

In the tomb on not-Shams I prayed and prayed to be found.
Am I the sun inside me?

Shams will walk out the back door and never return.
You will go mad—spend years looking for him.

One day in the marketplace, estranged and weeping,
You will understand the farthest mosque is the one within,

and that the sun in the sky is not the one you orbit around,
nor the one who went out the back door and never returned.

Somewhere in the world now, every minute,
A sun is dropping over the horizon into yesterday.

At the fountain in the village square,
The books are still sinking, bereft of your hands.

Even the mountains are bending down to try and save them.
Dear Shams-e- Tabriz, Ido not mourn.

You spindle me, sun-thorn, to the sky.

Soundscapes

For Liz and for petitpoussin.

Thursday. Coffee grinding, music playing, conversations to my left and right, keys clicking. Change being counted, newspaper unfolding, coffee grinding ceases, and rain. I could be anywhere.

How often do we stop and listen?

Wednesday night, awake with eyes closed, just before dawn. Rain, the chirping of the coqui, the rustle of sheets, and, in the morning, what is this, a rooster? Yes, a rooster, then later a siren, and more rain.

I first heard the term “soundscape” when I was in college. The concept is exactly what you are thinking – the sounds that form a place. Like a landscape, soundscapes start as compositions of the “natural” world and are layered with the auditory impacts of human presence. Your beautiful view of the beach is intruded upon both by the industry blurring the coastline and the really loud tourist that you somehow hope you are not becoming.

I have been visiting a friend in Hawaii for the last few days, so I am a bit behind on blogging. Last week the NY Times magazine ran a piece on the auditory loss of biodiversity and a man has devoted his life to recording so many “places” that we are in danger of never hearing again.

I read this piece on one of the three planes that it took to get me from the desert to the tropics, and the story stayed with me as I encountered places that were new to me, and yet reminiscent of other places, by not just sight, but sound. And not just sounds I had heard before, but sounds I had heard of, sounds I had expected to hear, and others that came as a surprise.

Saturday, the crunch of glass like rocks, beginning their slow path to soil, beneath three sets of hiking boots. Waves pounding against rocks. A helicopter. The hiss of lava falling into the ocean. Excited gasps and the click of cameras.

Friday. So many birds, waterfalls, more waves still – the Tropical Botanical Gardens. And then Karaoke with old and new friends.

Sunday night, we stop to look at the stars. A silence of sorts, my own exclamations, and the hum of the car’s motor. Sunday afternoon, snorkeling, hearing my own breathing, the movement of water, my muted “ohs” which vibrate through the tide pools as I float only feet away from a sea turtle, living reef, schools of fish.

A couple speaking in Spanish, a blender, a child’s footsteps running, keys clicking, classical music playing, loud announcements, planes landing, the beep of an EZ-Go, and the crunch of fast food filled paper bags opening and closing. Where am I now as I write this?

And tomorrow, what sounds does tomorrow bring?  What sounds now mean home?

Poetry Rejoicing / Poetry Ranting

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

- By Rumi
- Translated by Coleman Barks

Excerpt from ii. Improvisation

there is something caught in my throat
it is this place
my baby is sleeping
i check to see if she is alive
she does not know about gagging
she does not have this place / in her throat
she doesn’t know where we are
how it sears the membranes
eats the words right outta your mouth
leaves you suckin’ pollutants impotence
& failure/

- By Ntozake Shange

pressing

This has been a week full of work, meetings, good conversations, visiting friends who are sick, and wonderful weather.

I woke up this morning an hour before my alarm clock, with my To Do list pressing onto my chest, my neck, my forehead.

Thoughts on lamentations, on exile, on remembrance, on Sabbath, have been beginning to form in my moments of reflection this week past. While great writing may eventually flow from these thoughts, for now, I have found a new aspiration of sorts: to live my life in such a way that my souls is happy.

Yes this seems like a terrible cliché.

But I know people, and perhaps you do too, who very simply glow. The ways they have found and chosen to work, to rest, to challenge themselves and engage in the world, are true. They are alive.

I am not there yet. To wake up with anxiety. To feel overwhelmed by the trivialities of the day. To want to apologize for all that is wrong in the world, without being ready to take action to change it. To see the beauty of the sunrise, and yet still spend the day inside. To want so much and yet still feel so stuck. This is where I still am.

Last week I started my Saturday with a poetry post. It felt good, true, alive. And so this week I present you with two of my favorites.

Neruda’s “Keeping Quiet”

This past week there has been some a stream of Pablo Neruda poetry posts. I first read about this wonderful phenomenon over at Truly Outrageous. And Sylvia at the Anti-Essentialist Conundrum, who posted the first Neruda poem, has been tracking the Neruda craze.

I first discovered Neruda the summer I was 16, and am pleased to join in the Neruda blogging with:

A callarse / Keeping Quiet

Ahora contaremos doce
y nos quedamos todos quietos.

Por una vez sobre la tierra
no hablemos en ningún idioma,
por un segundo detengámonos,
no movamos tanto los brazos.

Sería un minuto fragante,
sin prisa, sin locomotoras,
todos estaríamos juntos
en una inquietud instantánea.

Los pescadores del mar frió
no harían daño a las ballenas
y el trabajador de la sal
miraría sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes,
guerras de gas, guerras de fuego,
victorias sin sobrevivientes,
se pondrían un traje puro
y andarían son sus hermanos
por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo quiero
con la inacción definitiva:
la vida es solo lo que se hace,
no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unánimes
moviendo tanto nuestras vidas
tal vez no hacer nada una vez,
tal vez un gran silencio pueda
interrumpir esta tristeza,
este no entendernos jamás
y amenazarnos con la muerte,
tal vez la tierra nos enseñe
cuando todo parece muerto
y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce
y tú te callas y me voy.

Keeping Quiet / A callarse

Now we will all count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.

The fisherman in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could perhaps do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and everything is alive.

Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

-By Pablo Neruda
-Englsih translation by Stephen Mitchell

Vegan cupcakes take over my world

If you have been in communication with me over the last month you have probably noticed that I have been distracted by vegan cupcakes – making cupcakes, icing cupcakes, eating cupcakes, preparing ingredient shopping lists for cupcakes, and reading aloud from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

J. and I were given this wonderful book on New Years by friends in Philadelphia. That very night we discovered that cupcakes go very well with champagne. Since then I have made cupcakes for my youth group at church, cupcakes for friends and coworkers, and cupcakes for coffee hour. We’ve had dulce sin leche cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes with cookies and cream frosting, and vanilla cupcakes with lemon butter cream icing. Neighbors borrowed our new book and made chocolate stout cupcake, and I borrowed their pastry bag to have a go at the art of frosting cupcakes.

Joy was spread around the world.

This morning I was pleased to read an email from a friend with a link to the article Strict Vegan Ethics, Frosted With Hedonism, a delightful NY Times piece on Moskowitz and Romero and their forays into a world of vegan baking that is both pretty and punk.

A quick internet search shows that we are indeed in the midst of a cupcake movement. There are gourmet cupcake bakeries and cafes opening from New York and Beverly Hills to Chicago, Pittsburgh and Sydney. There are sophisticated cupcakes, arty cupcakes, wedding cupcakes and even cupcake lawsuits. And of course, there are cupcake blogs, including vegancupcakes.wordpress.com, which means that my new favorite book has a companion narrative unfolding online.

Now what does the current cupcake craze look like? Magnolia Bakery in NYC, which opened over 10 years ago, markets the old fashioned cupcake. Yet this dessert venue stays open late into the night and weekend customers often wait in a line wrapping around the block. Citizen Cupcake in San Francisco pairs their desserts with cocktails. Cupcakes are clearly no longer a mere birthday ritual confined to the assigned seating of elementary school.

In a 2004 interview, James Gray, a cupcake baker from Dozen Cupcakes in Pittsburgh stated, “A cupcake becomes a blank canvas and it can be anything you want it to be.”

So, how do you like your cupcakes? I, like the authors of Vegan Cupcakes like my single serving desserts to be vegan and delicious. While some of the cupcake bakeries, such as Dozen Cupcakes, do feature a few vegan options much of the current cupcake craze still seems to center around butter, cream and eggs (sometimes organic). With so much energy currently being put into cupcake choice as a statement of identity, and so much flavor, creativity and style available in vegan cupcakes, why not have more on the menu?

And now, I think there might be one more cupcake waiting for me in the kitchen.