The Point Of This Being

A Christmas "Gift"

2010-12-31T11:46:00.000Z

Over the past seven and a half months, I have fretted over almost everything.

Am I feeding her too much? ("God, does your baby ever stop eating?" an acquaintance remarked)
Will my milk dry up? (Every so often, when she would fret or not feed properly, I would squeeze my nipples just to make sure there was still enough)

Was I dressing her warmly enough for the air conditioning? Too warmly for the blazing hot sun? Was I playing with her enough? Were the games appropriate? Was she learning all she should? Was I spending too much time talking to others instead of with her? Was she bored? Was she overtired? Was I devoting enough attention to her? Too much maybe? Most importantly: was I a good mother? Was I giving her the security, support and love that my baby girl needs to grow up with a strong sense of self and confidence, compassion, intelligence and the knowledge that she can do and be anyone she wants to be.

If she cried when I went for a shower, I agonised about whether she would grow into an adult with abandonment issues...

But on Christmas Day, none of that mattered.

In the week leading up to Christmas, DW had gotten ill and then better. I was so focused on his health and would we make it to our family Christmas lunch that it didn't occur to me that anyone else might get sick.

At about 2:30 in the morning, she woke with a start and burst into tears. A first in seven and a half months. I reached over to calm her and found her skin burning to the touch. Ridiculously, I hadn't figured out how to use the thermometer, so was forced to wake DW. (Stupid, I know)

She was running a highish fever but, more importantly, she seemed incredibly uncomfortable and upset. Every so often, her entire body would jolt, sending her into frightened fits of hysterical crying.

We were terrified and suddenly acutely aware of how ignorant we are about these things.

And, of course, it was 2:30 on the night of Christmas. Even on the easiest of nights, the emergency room is not a place for a baby, and there was no way were were going anywhere near that germ-infested mosh pit!

For the next day or so, we did all we knew: we took off all her clothing, dosed her up with homeopathics, sponge-bathed her, sang to her, and tried to make her comfortable without letting our panic be too noticeable. It was like a pre-choreographed dance -- the parents dance -- that
neither of us were aware we knew the steps to until we were forced into it.

And dance we did, handing one another wet sponge after wet sponge, changing the water when it got too cold, taking her temperature a million times.

This was all complicated by the fact that DW could not touch her because of his own illness that he was still recovering from.

DW, in his infinite patience, has the ability to make a book sound interesting even after he's read it four thousand times. Honestly, I don't give a crap where the damn fish is. It's still in the same damn place it was last time we read the book -- 30 seconds ago! DW loves doing the same thing over and over again. I'm not so good at it even though I know that's what she loved... Little baby girl, at seven months, is perfectly happy with the familiar, and repetition -- Where's That Fish, Berries for Jam. I know, I get it... But she's still tiny and learning.

So there we were, Christmas Day, as far from the fairy tale of Santa as is humanly possible. Being raised Jewish, I don't really care about Christmas, except that it offers the same thing as any Jewish Holiday worth its salt: an excuse to gather with family and loved ones.

At some point, I did realise the obvious: even though it wasn't all reindeer and jingle bells, we were all together. Baby girl, DW and I. Working together, being there for and with one another.

Vida was grizzling away, not able to find a comfortable position. She cried out, and arched her back. And forgetting about all the fretting and hesitating, all my guilt and self-doubt, I scooped her into my arms and held her tight. She instantly relaxed and fell asleep a few moments later.

Since then, though neither of us is prone to superstition, we've knocked on so much wood, I'm starting to see grooves in the furniture.

Thankfully she's better today (knock on wood).

And as I said to DW late Saturday night as we watched her breathing, with everything, there really is no other place I would rather be.

The Green Smoothie

2010-12-20T13:34:00.000Z

I got two hours today. Two whole hours to myself.

Elation! Excitement! Happiness! Joy! Guilt! Fear! Doubt!

Eesh!

But I'm not here to talk about me -- I'd like to talk abut a certain baby and a certain green smoothie.

Green isn't a colour often associated with things babies or children like. Broccoli is green, as are Brussels sprouts. Spinach is green. But smoothies? Aren't they meant to be full of blueberries and bananas and lovely stuff?

If you know me, chances are I've mentioned my green smoothies before. DW is willing to sacrifice work time in order to get his morning smoothie in. In fairness, his aren't green -- they have raw cacao added.

But what to make for baby?

When I was pregnant and as I've been breastfeeding, I've eating as many greens as possible, drank as many green smoothies as I can. I'm hoping she will get a taste for them, maybe already in the womb or through my milk. Who knows? All I can say is she liked this one!

It was simple, none of the superfoods I add for us adults. Just fruit and veg. Banana, apple, spinach. The colour was beautiful -- like a baby version of mine. My Green smoothies look like something I dredged up from a swamp: deep, mossy, fecund. Vida's was a light, happy green, eighties in hue.

I dunked her favorite spoon in it and let her guide it into her mouth. The expressions on her face were wondrous: an eyebrow lifted, her nose curled, her lips opened and shut in surprise.

Then she dove in for more.

I have to admit, it wasn't a proper BLW meal as I did help her get more onto the spoon than the floor. But she loved it, loved it, loved it. She sucked that spoon and sucked and sucked, a smile in her little eyes.

"Mba ba!" she said, waving it around.
"Mba ba," I responded.

She laughed loudly at my joke and threw the whole thing on the floor.

Love is in the creases

2010-12-16T10:54:00.000Z

Never have I been so interested in the details of another being -- not my loved ones', not my own. And yet, I know her mouth so well. It can shrink to the size of a kernel of corn, a scornful dot in the middle of her face. Like when she doesn't want to be in the pram. She doesn't even look at me, and her mouth scrunches up as if she's withholding something very dear -- as far as I'm concerned, she is.

Other times, like when I put an orange in front of her, or she needs to get her mouth around it, her lips stretch almost from one ear to the other.

She has a beautiful mouth, this baby girl. It's a kind mouth, a happy mouth, one that is ready to engage at any time, to take a chunk out of life or that piece of pear.

Though she doesn't use it to talk -- not yet anyway, not the way we know -- this mouth expresses plenty of thoughts, emotions, desires and dislikes.

We went to the Sunday farmer's market the other day. Just she and I. She was snuggled against me in her carrier and fast asleep for the walk there. But once we arrived, she was wide awake, ready for the next adventure.

Now that she is eating, she is more active in asking for food. It's only been two-three weeks and yet, she's gotten the point already. So when I tasted some bits of apples on display, she opened her mouth wide and moved her head towards my hand.

I asked her if she wanted a piece. She applauded and giggled -- a definite yes. We found a bench and ate our apple together. One bite for me, one bite for her. It was an absolute delight.

I couldn't wait to share food with my baby girl and now the day has come and she loves it every bit as much as I hoped she would.

Last week, she loved broccoli, yesterday, she couldn't be bothered with the flowery florets. Cucumbers have come, gone and come back again. Banana has found no favour at all -- not juicy enough. But apples? Apples are by far and away her favourite, maybe because like her Mama she loves the fact that we can eat them together -- one bite for me, one bite for her.

A Tale of Plums, Spoons and Oranges

2010-12-11T09:00:00.000Z

My daughter loves plums.

And oranges.

And big, metal spoons.

I think she loves them for different reasons though when they are cold, they all serve the same purpose.

At first, when a piece of food would inadvertently land in her mouth as a result of her razor-sharp gums, she would blow and blow and drool and drool and drool until whatever it was flopped back out.

Now, she knows what to expect. In fact, she welcomes it. Especially the juicy bits.

I gave her a plum yesterday. Long gone are the days of tentative sucking. She grabbed that poor piece of fruit like it deserved what it had coming and stuck it in her mouth. Or rather, she stuck it on her mouth and her nose, and part of her cheek, her jaw working its way towards the edges like a bulldozer through wet sand.

By the time she was done with it, this plum was halfway to being a puree.

She loves plums. She told me so by clapping excitedly when I put it in front of her.
When she brings those little hands together, sometimes they are full of things -- a book in one hand, a teething ring in the other. Sometimes her sleeves cover her palms and fingers. Not that she cares, it's the movement of clapping that gives her pleasure; the gesture is unmistakable, her smile ecstatic with achievement.

Before the plum, there was the orange. Soft and juicy, it made an indelible mark on her and provided a real turning point. Unlike everything that came before it, I think parts of that orange actually reached her tummy, teaching her that what she was holding in her hand was more than just another thing to put in her mouth and then discard.

I realised the importance of feeding her healthy food. Not only for her but also for me: when she was done sucking it dry, I ate the rest of that orange. It was too delicious to bin. And better citrus than biscuits.

Lastly, Madame Spoon. We bought her cute little bamboo ones. Pretty, inoffensive, eco-and child friendly. But now that she's eating like we are, and with us, she wants what we have. The lot of the bamboo has been sealed: it goes on the floor immediately, without even a glance. The large, cold metal spoon, on the other hand, goes straight in the mouth -- with or without apple sauce, bean soup or dahl.

For my part, I've already started to mourn the lessening of her dependence of me. I won't lie: it's hard. I didn't expect it to last forever but maybe I hoped it would go on for longer than this. At night, when she turns over and reaches for me, it makes me smile with a little relief as I know we still have a little ways to go -- less than I thought, but still something. I inch towards her, happy to provide the comfort, the milk, the connection that will help my daughter sleep soundly and feel safe.

And in the morning, I happily make us all breakfast: one for Ima, one for Pappa, one for Vida. She claps with delight.

The Beginning of Baby Led Weaning

2010-12-09T13:27:00.000Z

It's been three years since I first started blogging here. I remember wondering who on earth would do such a thing -- expose themselves in such a way to anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection. But it's addictive. In a world where we spend less and less time face to face, other modes of communication have become a necessity, if only to feel connected in some way.

So while I take a break from one blog, I find myself needing to do it, to get my fix, to reach out in some way.

You see, there is news. Big news.

I couldn't wait for this day and now that it's here, I'm wishing it hadn't arrived so quickly. I'm not ready yet. Can't she stay small for just a little while longer? Instead, she does new things every day that make it so blatantly clear that it's only a matter of time before she's rolling her eyes at me and telling me not to be so clingy.

My baby girl has started eating.

It has made me want to document it, write about every movement her little mouth makes, every time she claps with glee -- also a new feature in our lives.

And as she discovers food, so do we.

So far, we have experimented with cucumber, apple sauce, apples, carrots, bananas, yellow pepper, kale, broccoli, chicken bones, barlotti and vegetable soup. It's been two weeks, but even in this short space of time, the changes have been immense.

We are trying baby led weaning, so no purees (except apple sauce and the soup so far although we let her feed herself those as well). She copies us, her eyes fixated on our every move. This is how she learns to put the spoon in her mouth -- because we do it too. Then, when she discovers that there is something ON that spoon, her face changes a hundred times: from shock and horror to pleasure and adventure.

Everything is an adventure.

She's enjoying getting dirty, enjoying textures and tastes. And spitting it all out.

It's all so new.

Makes everything pretty new for us as well. A cucumber is easy to gum, though only the middle and only the ends. Carrots -- oh baby, she looked at me, don't waste your time. Oranges. Now there's something to squeak about! But don't make me mush up another banana!

Ba Ba Ba she mouths silently.
Mba Mba we keep thinking she's said something. And she does, constantly. With her actions, her smiles, her little satisfied sighs.

Then she drops another piece of food on the floor and the fun can start all over again.

Oh bliss.

A Year Ago Today...

2010-05-19T17:58:00.003+01:00

I've spent most of this year so far thinking "a year ago today..." and while it might not be exactly a year to the day -- it has been five months of looking back at last year when I was in NYC.
A year ago today, I started school was the first, and possibly most innocent thought that kicked it all off in January.

And a year later, here I am, days away from giving birth to my child whom I have carried since last year, whom I have watched grow inside me, as I too grew with him / her.

A year ago today, my brother and sister-in-law got married
A year ago today, I decided to stop drinking alcohol for a while
A year ago today, I started working with my very first proper client. No more "a little here, a little there."
A year ago today, I got another tattoo

So much can happen in a year. Funnily enough, this has turned out to be the first year we didn't move continents. It is the first year we're not on a plane every month, the first year we're just in one place -- even though it's London...

And bizarrely, though it's London I find myself in, I am quite enjoying being here. You miss so much when you're always moving. Like the characters that decorate your neighborhood, the acquaintances who become friends, the nuances of everyday life that the constant traveler has no time to pick up -- favorite places, people, rituals, habits that can only form in a specific place and time.

Who knows what I'll say a year from now as I look back on these days of waiting for my life to change. But in the mean time, I'm glad for the opportunity to take a moment and just be; for the first time in years, just live like most people do -- without a plane to catch and another life to chase.

Sitting at home

2010-05-17T16:10:00.003+01:00

I'm supposed to be on maternity leave, supposed to be meditating and thinking of new ways in which I can warmly, lovingly, wonderfully welcome my child into this world. And yet all I want to do is ... well, something else. I want to keep living my life as I have been, make use of this time to go to museums and the theatre, to the movies, on a run. But when you're this pregnant, even putting on your shoes can be a bit of a challenge.

So here I am, writing in this blog again, revisiting the journey that I thought had moved on from.

Do we ever? Move on, that is.

Of course we change and grow and find new interests and forget about old ones, but deep down, are we not the same person we were at age ten?

I think the jury is still undecided on that.

I read this morning that in order to be interesting, you need to be interested. As a ten-year-old, I remember being very specific about the things I wanted to know more about. That's pretty much still valid.

And what's incredibly exciting and scary is to think that this child I am getting ready to give birth to will be, to a certain extent, someone who has absolutely nothing to do with me. Maybe they'll love geography (shiver), or math (shudder), or economics (shock / horror).

Maybe they'll love hamburgers.

I used to love hamburgers. So people do change, you see?
Whose benefit I am stating this for, I'm not sure...

The funny thing isn't that I'm going crazy on day 2 of sitting at home; the funny thing is that I'm not doing anything all that different from what I normally do: spending my day at the computer, writing, while something is cooking away in the oven. The main change is that I'm not working on work, and I feel that this is not my choice.

Choice. It gives us the illusion that we are in control. It makes us feel that we are making the decisions while really, it is life that steers us, and the only choice we have is whether we will listen.

Am I ranting yet?
The sun is finally out in London and I'm rearing to go... somewhere... anywhere... Watch me waddle away, people.

Ok, I guess this will be my outlet for the next while, so I guess I'm back -- but isn't that The Point of This Being?

This Blog Has Been Revived... Because Why Not?

2009-10-05T13:29:00.002+01:00

Inspiration

2009-03-29T02:30:00.009+01:00

It’s Earth Hour and I’m writing this by Candle Light. How appropriately romantic for a post titled “Inspiration.”

When I tell people I’m writing a novel, the conversation can go one of three ways. Some people just kind of go “oh wow” and then walk away, others tell me about their own projects. The third -- and my favorite possibility by far -- is when a really interesting conversation naturally grows out of my admission and the fact that I have, in reality, been wrestling with the damn thing for a good long while.

The most common question by far is about inspiration. People are always interested in where I get mine -- like my gogi berries or my raw cacao powder. The truth is that, unlike my food, which I am very careful about sourcing, I have no idea where ideas come from... Sometimes they find me, and others, I have to hunt them down.

D says the difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay is like easing yourself into a hot bath versus taking a shower. I’ve been in this bath tub for so long now that my fingers and toes have become wrinkled like raisins, but I can’t say I don’t love every second.

And as for inspiration…

For days, I had been looking for New York moments. Not that I don't have many of them banked already, but memories get old they get stale after being retold hundreds of times. The context of this particular quest is that one of my characters, in order to avoid her own set of issues, makes up stories about the people she sees around her. Rather than dredge up things I saw five years ago, I decided I wanted to go looking for new tidbits, see what came my way. I had been wandering around in search of “them”, but hadn’t really found anything beyond the usual array of kooks, drunks and fashionistas that are no longer interesting to me. Then, the other night, walking towards the subway in Greenwich Village after a very special evening with a classmate and new friend, they all came to find me, to let me know that they weren’t going to let me down – the colorful persons that dot and decorate the City, the moments that make this place what it is.

Thankfully, my Blackberry was working that night, and I typed up what was going on around me in real time, as it unfolded with the kind of perfection that can only come when one is looking for it:

(Note: I have minimally edited the text, corrected typos, etc. but, for the rest, this is what happened, as it took place around me and in my head on the night between Friday March 20th and Saturday, March 21st)

NYC 1 a.m.
I make my way from University Place to the subway. It's the middle of the night by all accounts. The transsexual asks me what time it is and whether she'll make it to Brooklyn in time.
"I hope so" I tell her honestly. It's 1 a.m. And if you’re on the subway, you're either sadly ending your evening like me, or just beginning, like her, in her bright yellow tank top, slugging her Redbull as she hums to herself.

I’d walked the three blocks to the train in a trance. It had been a lovely evening the way only NY nights can be. My new friend was charming, great company, and our "night cap" had turned into revelations so personal that had she not been as wonderful as she is, I would have been embarrassed. But this is not the UK, and definitely not LA, and she had been as open as I could have asked for, as kind and giving as one would hope for from a new friend. (And I don't use that term lightly)

We called the elevator from the hallway of the flat - it was that kind of place, the kind of place where the ceilings are exposed brick and the lift opens up into the living room - and as we waited, she showed me where she does her morning exercises: looking uptown at the Manhattan skyline. I had to laugh. Only in NYC. This is the NYC of my dreams, the one I aspire to, the easy nonchalance afforded by artistic endeavors gone right. D talks about LA that way, about the horizon that stretches on ad infinitum from the bird's eye view of his convertible B-mer that I'd affectionately dubbed "Henry" in tribute to my husband's background. For me it's about the landscaped pent-terrace on the 27th floor of a 10th street apartment, it's about the Wednesday Farmer's Market at Union Square, the religiously raw, vegan beauty of a menu that nonetheless offers the best Mojitos in town.

As I walked towards the subway, the sleeve of my raincoat slid against parallel worlds.

"Walk the fuck in there" a seventeen-year-old tells his terrified girlfriend, "act as if you've been there before, like you know everyone."
"But they kicked me out already" she pleads, her mascara forming a clumpy scar along the bridge of her nose.

A few doors down, a skinny-looking bitch cuts a rich-looking birthday cake as other cadavers look on, including one happy shmuck who is clearly going to be the only one actually getting some.

Two teenagers sneak out for a fag, "dude, I copped this shit for like five Euros. I'd like kill your family for this thing." The sweatshirt he’s referring to is black, hooded and that’s all there is to it.

I wonder which doorman will be working when I get back to the flat, the Jamaican man who loves to tease D about his terrible taste in British football teams, or the shorter, quieter man who takes his job so seriously that he once knocked on my door at ten minutes to midnight to make sure he delivered a package.

The transsexual keeps staring back at me as if I know when she'll get there. I want to tell her I don't know, so I half smile and shrug. "This is the way to Brooklyn?" She asks, twiddling her hair like I often do. I nod. Brooklyn, that bastard that I swore off so many years ago, that I have nevertheless been unable to forget. Though the changes have been inevitable, Brooklyn is still recognizable, just a more mature version of what it used to be. Like me, setting up shop in London, Brooklyn is different and the same, a four-bedroom house, still near enough as filled as a two-bedroom apartment, the student turned adjunct, the adjunct turned professor. We recognize each other, respect that certain something that will remain in the past.

Down between the tracks, large rats are taking advantage of the lull in subway traffic to scurry from one side to the other. One is fine - normal - but by the time I count five, and then six, it's become a little worrisome. What if they decided to make their way up to the platform? These rodents are enormous, like ardvarks or bears. Would us humans even stand a chance? Another one scurries boldly along the damn electrified bit. It seems in a hurry - I wish the trains were a little more so: in that way we can all learns from each other.

The other day I ran into an ex-boyfriend - a typical specimen of those strange old days: very cute, attractive, with an interesting job. But what a creature. Back then, he said that because we were together it was OK for him to read my mail. Even before anything had happened between us, he didn't close the door when he peed (forget putting the seat down). I'd told him it wasn't going to work. He'd called me a whore. Sore fucking loser. And then he did it again just the other day, after I told him I was married. Ha!

The past has a funny, tearjerking way of pulling you through that eye of the fucking needle. But only if you want it to.
"That was ---" I pointed out an old restaurant to D last time he was here. Now it's a store.

A woman sitting a few people down gets up to cross the platform. She's wearing beaten-up Adidas sneakers, simple jeans and a red sweatshirt. Her hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail as if she just woke up. She hauls a seemingly heavy purse over her shoulder. It's as shiny as the rest of her is plain: silvery flecks machine-woven in with black shimmer. Though she's going nowhere, apparently her bag has plans.

1:17 a.m. My friend, the transsexual won't make her plans. I hopped into a different carriage just in case.

My coconut water is getting warm in my eco-friendly bag that I carry around with me everywhere. By this point it's easier to daydream about tomorrow already, but first tonight has to come to an end. The train conductor gets on the loudspeaker to announce that "makshduevd-pleez-buduevfknxtehjlk-thank you". None of us -and the carriage is full - get a word, but it was so garbled that we don't bother to ask one another.

A second conductor, one who apparently speaks English, hurls "Hey! Listen up!| He demands that we switch trains. It's now half past, but for all the people getting on, grumbling and swearing, it may as well be rush hour. This is New York after all, and everyone has somewhere they need to be NOW, well past midnight, including my fresh Thai Coconut water that’s supposed to last me well into next week.

Really?

There's no train to switch to and nobody seems to give a damn, except for the guy with the remarkably long goatee who's looking around for a female consort to share in the community grief.

New York, where you recognize the tourists because they are the only people looking up. Even at 1:30 a.m. I love it. Even when the bitch in the Manolos clips in front of me as if she's late for fashion week (in Brooklyn?!?!), even when I freeze my ass off because nobody said it would snow on the first day of Spring, even when the train conductor tells us all to get onto the next train that is going in a whole other direction, even with bad wine at $18 a glass, it's New York, and like a younger sibling who can get away with murder, I forgive, forget, move on, masochistically loving, lovingly adoring, accepting, because that's just how it is in NYC.

The wrong train arrives and I ask the conductor whether it will be stopping at my stop. My words are slurred, not because I'm drunk but I'm so tired and my contacts seem to want to abort their visionary mission all of a sudden. Behind me, a British man who looks like everyone I've ever met in London - good-guy, brown hair, glasses - asks the same question as I just did and gets the same answer: "hrghuh". I step in just as the doors are closing. No need to sit down. It's just one - oh, two stops (really? Where the fuck am I?). And then, finally, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn’s Arc de Triomphe (if only because we're both celebrating the triumph of my arrival) is lit blue. The two blocks from the subway stop to the apartment seem exceptionally long. It’s 2 a.m. There are about thirty of us walking in roughly the same direction – more people than I saw in the street when I left the neighborhood twelve hours ago. A woman is talking to her dog, explaining why it should hurry up and go. The dog is looking at the blue mailbox with much more interest than should be legal. There is no doorman waiting for me, they’ve all gone home.

Some part of this will end up in my novel in one form or another. This is the rough material, which I will then mold into new bits and pieces, stories, characters, events that take place for my protagonist, a wide-eyed young woman living in -- duh! -- New York City. It will remain fiction, or rather, reality will percolate through the filter that takes fact and turns it into fiction.

One day I will be asked whether the story is based on my life, whether any of the characters are me, whether anyone in the novel is based on a person I have known. The answers to all of the above will be yes and no, definitely and not at all, completely and no way.

In the mean time, I slug away, hitting twenty thousand words, and then fifty, only to go back down to thirty, and so on. I believe it was Stephen King who said that the reason he sits at his desk at the exact same time every morning is so that if the muse decides to pay him a visit she’ll know where to find him.

I wish I had his discipline, but lacking that, I’m just grateful that when those golden moments present themselves, I’m hopefully awake enough, able to recognize them and get them down as fast as they happen.

---

The same goes for food. When an idea hits, it just does. It can come as a result of a conversation, from seeing a photograph or a painting, or in a dream. I no longer ask why some part of me needs to go buy fresh cranberries and mint; I just do it.

Inspiration is a the ornamental, beautiful part of intuition.

Below is a photograph of last week’s brainstorm: bean patties with blood orange salsa.

The recipe will follow as soon as it is share-worthy – because like with writing, it can sometimes take a few drafts...

2009-03-16T02:00:00.006Z

Dear Friends, Family and other beautiful souls I’ve encountered along the way –

As many of you know, earlier this year, I embarked on a career change. The study of Holistic Health Counselling is a lifelong pursuit, much like any other joys and passions in life. However, I am now ready to start seeing clients and so have decided to reach out to you all in the hopes of finding people who are interested in engaging my services.

What does a holistic health counsellor do?
Nourishment and health aren’t just about what you eat. A healthy person is a happy person, living a fulfilled life in their career, their relationships, their spiritual and physical practice. So while nutrition might be a starting point, it is by no means the only avenue tackled in the field of holistic nutrition. You can eat perfectly, but if you hate your job, chances are, you’re probably not the healthiest person around.

How is Holistic nutrition different from working with a dietician or a nutritionist?
Completely. Many people leave their dietician or nutritionist’s office more confused than they arrived. Though they get tons of advice, more often than not, people are unaware of what to do, and how to go about making the changes recommended. That is where I come in: by translating theory into practice with simple, easily implemented tips, I help make the transition to healthier choices empowering instead of terrifying.

Who do I work with?
I am focusing on individuals who, due to dietary, medical or personal reasons have had to remove certain foods from their diet and need help and support in figuring out how to successfully implement these changes. Life doesn’t have to end because you can no longer eat bread! As you know, I have been through this myself and am excited to share what I have learned -- we are so lucky in that these days, there are so many options available to us!

How does it work?
We start off with a free hour-long evaluation, after which I offer a six-month program for those interested in pursuing a deeper exploration into health, empowerment and wellbeing. Neither the initial consultation nor the program itself have to be done in person: I will be available over the phone as well as on Skype, so we don’t even need to be in the same country to conduct our sessions.

If you or anyone you know is interested in finding out more, please contact me at thepickyfoodie@me.com.
To celebrate the start of this wonderful endeavour, I will be offering a 10% discount to anyone who signs up for my six-month program before April 1st – just put “get the ball rolling” in the subject of your email.

Thank you for your friendship and love during this time and throughout this process.

In gratitude,
Gabriela

PS I am also in the process of creating a website – coming soon to a virtual world near you! I’ll keep you posted. In the mean time, however, if you’re interested in finding out how I’m doing, keep checking www.thepointofthisbeing.blogspot.com
I’d love to hear from you!

2009-03-02T16:08:00.002Z

8 a.m. March 2nd, 2009

Three days earlier....
The apartment looked like I’d turned my brain inside out and had emptied its full contents into an adorable one-bedroom in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. There were magazines and articles on food, health, healing and ethical business practices strewn everywhere. D was scheduled to arrive in an hour and I had no idea where to start.

His voice kept echoing in my head, something he’d said long ago, at the beginning of our relationship: “You don’t know what it’s like to be messy.”
Part of me wanted to leave the place exactly as it was, just to prove him wrong. But I couldn’t, I was physically unable to welcome him into such a mess.

I am working on my company launch, the novel – that old tortoise of a thing -- my counselling practice, and a sweet mystery product. Life is going fast, whizzing by quicker than a month did in my darkest depths of depression. Exciting opportunities keep tickling my feet; and the best ones smack me in the face around just about every corner (in a good way – I am constantly scribbling ideas and epiphanies down on random torn bits of paper, my hand, or fervently typing them into my blackberry).

And as I move forward, I find myself sated in a way that I haven’t been – possibly ever before. Whereas for years, I’ve been roaming around the kitchen aimlessly searching for something to satisfy my vague, indeterminate cravings, these days, a rich bowl of salad, topped with all kinds of goodies – nuts, beans, sprouts, herbs – will keep me going.

Of course some things are deeply ingrained – chocolate, for example, is neither about hunger, nor is it in any way removable from my daily routine. I crave chocolate at any time of the day -- it will pop into my head like a cartoon bubble…. fluffy dots leading to fluffy cloud, pop up picture of chocolate… But so what? These days, instead of admonishing myself for being weak, I allow myself the abandon of indulging in a square or two. Homemade, dark, raw, delicious, if I eat it after five or so, I’m up half the night. The power of goodness.

Remember those ads in the US in the late eighties / early nineties – the ones with the hot pan and the egg: this is your brain (cut to whole egg), this is your brain on drugs (splat, and the egg becomes somebody’s soft-boiled breakfast, glistening with fat and spattering on the high heat of the knob/heroin)? That’s kind of how I feel, sans drugs. I feel whole and healthy and the forward momentum is filling, gratifying, exciting.

And now D’s here. The morning he arrived, I was so nervous, I must have tried on every piece of clothing I brought with me to New York. He’s come for four days. And suddenly I’m not writing 1000 words on the novel, nor have I studied. As if D’s presence should be enough for me while the rest of my life is mere filler. I’m ecstatic and repressed, enjoying his presence and missing my headspace, fulfilled and frustrated at the same time. Walking around Brooklyn with him is exciting and inspiring and yet I’m also very aware that the next draft of my article is due in class Wednesday night, that I have another school weekend coming up and homework due, that four days away from the novel equals five thousand words at least…

Last year, I had these same thoughts when, after 10 weeks apart, D came to Bangkok. Suddenly, it wasn’t just me and a far-off, disconnected voice on the other end of the line. There was someone else to take into account. Granted, D is probably the most easy-going person in the world: as long as I let him voice his old-lady-like worries, he’s up for almost anything – still…

I remember that I wasn’t as excited at our reunion as he seemed to be. For the first few hours, he stared at me in what can only be described as adoring disbelief while I
wanted to run away.

D arrived Thursday night to a moderately tidy flat. Still, there ain’t a spy-thriller to be found. This is Brooklyn. It’s my turf, my interests, the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market on Saturday morning instead of hungover baked beans and rashers, the socialist food coop, not the socialites’ Fromagerie. And it’s the subway, not the tube that we take into The City, not Town.

I was pretty nervous. He’s loving it.

I pulled back. He pulled me close.

I made dinner. He devoured it.

And then it all fell back into place.

He decided to come to Brooklyn for four days, after we’d had the same fight for five days in a row. Not one long, ongoing argument. No, we had the same exact argument five days running. So D thought it might be a good idea to reconnect face to face.

There is something different about the person I decided to marry. It’s almost impossible to put into words. I mean, seriously, it’s not like he’s the only man I’ve ever dated, but with D, there is something that none of the others had. When I peel off our layers of baggage, family, career, fears, hurts, pain, issues, childhoods, etc, when it’s purely him in his rawest state and me in mine – naked as the day our souls came to be – we fit. Part of me wishes I could put it in more flowery terms, describe, embellish, but I don’t know how else to put it. It really is that simple.

So here he is, reading my Body + Soul magazine in the loo, drinking my dandelion shake in the morning and enjoying rice milk and agave in his rooibos tea. Tasting delicious life in Brooklyn together makes me think about when we met – going on five years ago now. I had left Brooklyn by then, and was living in a grotty studio in Midtown East, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. Once I’d moved away from Brooklyn, I had fallen out of love with The City, but at the time, I couldn’t afford the rents, so instead I was looking for an out. When I met D, the timing couldn’t have been better and since neither of us was in the market for a long-distance relationship, it made sense for me to stay on the West Coast with him. Anything seemed better than Midtown East.

Thinking about the last five years, as D and I wander past Fifth and Carroll in Park Slope, how every decision I made got me right here, right now. In five years, I wonder where I’ll be standing as I reflect on this same exact thought, and how logical it will all seem then. Fifth Avenue and Carroll Street was where my first apartment was when I arrived in New York City in 1999.
Last week, with D a million miles away, I kept having to remind myself that I did leave Prospect Heights, that I wrote a novel in France, that I moved to Los Angeles, that we bought a house in West Hampstead, that D actually exists as a real person, not just an imaginary creation. I shop at the same places I did when I lived here almost a decade ago. La Taqueria, with its submarine torpedoes for Burritos, is still there as are a bunch of the coffee shops like the insufferable Ozzie’s and the overpriced bean-grinding place on 7th Avenue. The level of unhelpful attitude at the Coop is unchanged, and the Saturday flea market at PS321 still doesn’t have anything I could ever imagine wanting. But I am different. My life has little in common with the one I lived back then. I give D’s hand a little squeeze as we make our way to Bergen Bagels for the greatest hangover cure in history – that’s one thing that’s as relevant in 2009 as it was in 1999.

(though yes, it’s true, I can no longer take advantage of it)

Happy Monster Vanquishing Day or is Lola secretly a spy?

2009-02-14T15:07:00.002Z

Some people might think of today as Valentine’s Day, but seeing as I believe in celebrating my partner every day, I consider today a day to celebrate the monsters in my closet – one of which I set out to vanquish today.

So Happy Monster Vanquishing Day!

The monsters we create are everywhere – in the things we somehow convince ourselves we can’t do, in the phone calls we’re afraid to make, in the ways we stop ourselves from moving forward.

How many of those monsters are rooted in childhood, back when we were powerless to change our situation? How many of those monsters could be banished by simply facing them as adults?

When I decided to sublet the apartment I’m staying in, the lovely owner even took photographs of the laundry room for me. Then I saw where it was located… the basement is an industrial-looking utilitarian space with long, echoing hallways and identical-looking doors on all sides. There was no way I was going anywhere near the place. But I loved the apartment and there was a laundry drop-off just up the road.

I have a mild phobia of basements. It’s mild because I can actually go down there in a pinch without hyperventilating or passing out. In fact, most people probably wouldn’t be able to tell that my heart is pounding and that I am – for lack of a more elegant term – very very very afraid. I fear being stuck down there, that I won’t find my way out, that a monster will jump out from behind a corner with a machete.

Basements have all kinds of nooks and shady corners to them – they are where we hide our mess, where we put things we don’t often use, where the administrative bits of the house, meters and such, are usually located. The pipes are hidden down there, with spiders skating across their webs from room to room, and rats nesting, sovereigns of their subterranean kingdoms. The sounds are all clanky and creaky and eerie; in my opinion, every basement is haunted.

Having now spent a couple of weeks in this leech of a Big Apple, and seeing as how I am at least $20 poorer every time I leave the house -- How?! It’s one of those eternally unsolved mysteries -- making use of the laundry room has become a necessity rather than a question of appeal.

A few days ago, I woke up to the realization that I was out of clean knickers. I had procrastinated descending into the dark depths of the building for so long that I no longer had a choice… So down I trudged, commando.

Like that thank you note you know you have to write and yet it sits on the corner of your desk for a few days and then a week, month, before it’s simply way too late to send the damn thing – it’s become an insult rather than the grateful acknowledgement you intended it to be. Until you get the courage to hide the happy “Thank You!” under some books, or full-on throw it out (in the recycling bin, of course – it’s the least you can do!), it stares at you, wagging its finger in pregnant recrimination. You should have, you could have… And then one morning you’re clear out of underwear and socks and you have a meeting with a potential client or an old high school friend.

Gezundheit.

No, I don’t like basements.

But the real reason lies somewhere between imagination and perception.

Were there monsters? Of course not.

Was there anything to be afraid of? No, not really.

Not in my privileged middle-class life.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is no logic involved, though there is definitely rhyme as well as reason behind my childish fear: when I was little, and I mean tiny, we lived in a suburb of Chicago Illinois. I was probably around four years old. My father was not only in the closet at the time, he also spent most of his time at home locked away in the basement (and you wonder about my initial anxiety re: marriage…).

Down there, with the rats, he would indulge his love of DIY for days on end -- hammering, sawing and drilling away at God knows what. Every so often, he would call me down to his lair. I would hear his powerful voice wafting up through the floorboards in the dreaded summons. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with my father – on the contrary, I adored every single rare minute I got to spend with him – but descending those steps into the darkness of the basement was a waking nightmare in my little world.

Of course all these images might be the distorted memories of a child barely past toddler age, but as I remember it, the basement was a long, dark corridor that started at the top of the stairs and continued with garbage bags that made funny noises and shone as random rays of light hit them at odd angles, old suitcases filled with God knows what, and monsters on all sides. The walk from the entrance of the basement to the light at the end of the tunnel – literally – where my father was, seemed endless. Once I’d made it, a heart-thumping little bag of nerves, my father, standing by his workstation, screwdriver in hand, would have a go at me: “You do take your time! Next time, hurry up! I don’t have all day!”

The situation worsened when he took to hiding behind things and jumping out at me, grabbing me so hard that the few shallow breaths I had left would be forced out of my lungs like when a cat jumps on a balloon – “Boo!” He’d yell. Bam! I’d feel his hands clamp around my waist, encircling me so I had no way to escape. I remember wanting to scream but not being able to. It used to amuse my father no end, to hide in the darkness and see how many times in a row he could scare me. “Aw,” he’d chide when I’d start crying. Then he’d get mad; “she can’t take a joke,” he’d tell my mother, casting me off like a shirt he no longer had any use for.

The anticipation was the worst part. I walked towards the elevator in slo-mo, pressed the capital B button, with my elbow as my arms were full of almost every piece of clothing I own in this country. It took a few minutes to arrive but in my mind, I was already getting stuck down there, alone, lost, with no recourse and no one to save me from the monster/rapist who was waiting for his next innocent prey. I saw his eyes – crazy and piercing, animal-like, having long ago lost the capacity to see women like me as human.

When the elevator door opened, as I took those first few steps towards the laundry room, I felt my father hovering nearby, ready to jump out at me. I was transformed back into the terrified, shaking four-year old as I waited for a pipe to start making some kind of strange, scary noise, for something to loudly and suddenly clatter to the floor, for someone to grab me from behind. When nothing happened, I ventured further down the hallway with my heart on standby.

Between a lack of sufficient quarters which necessitated an extra trip, and the complicated transfer from washer to dryer, by the time I’d finished folding my last pair of clean socks and had stuffed them into the top drawer of the bedroom dresser, I had returned to my thirty-something self. The basement, a symbol of my four-year-old’s terror only hours before, had become … a basement.

---

There is little that compares to the joy I get from eating something prepared especially for me by someone I love. The few times D has cooked for me have – without exception – been some of my favourite meals ever. It is also a little known ancient remedy for combating monsters: nothing is stronger than feeling loved.

Whenever we go to my uncle and aunt’s house in Haifa, they make an incredible effort to prepare not only amazing mains that I can enjoy, but also sweet treats.

When my uncle made these brownies for the first time, I calmly ate one piece with everyone else and then later polished off the entire Tupperware he’d sent me home with in one sitting. Lola, my mother’s cat, sat next to me, watching, her blue-green eyes wide and accusing like a Weight Watchers' spy (hmmm....), as I calmly chewed each bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite after bite.

And lest anyone think these incredible brownies are only for those who eat like me; my happily omnivorous cousin (he doesn’t like raisins, but that’s about it) special-requested them for his birthday. What can I say? People can’t believe these brownies aren’t “real” – whatever that means.

Thank you Eric!

For so many things.

Including these brownies.

And for helping me battle those damn monsters!

(and thank you for letting me post your recipe!)

Uncle Eric’s Brownies a la GG

Ingredients:
1/2 cup pure cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups rice flakes*
1 cup agave
1 bag baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
1 cup canola oil
4 eggs

mix the dry ingredients well.
beat the eggs and oil well.
add the dry ingredients gradually until an even batter is achieved.

oil a medium-sized baking pan and spread the batter evenly

bake at 170 degrees for not more than 30 minutes (25 for a more fudgy result)

*I soak them for about half an hour in some water to soften them up

New York...

2009-02-04T02:01:00.009Z

My friend's living room where I stayed for a few days before my sublet kicked in -- I love it, I love her, I love New York

Bukowski, the cat

Thank God Bu's team won the Superbowl -- he had the sweater and everything!

Grammercy Park in the snow

(didn't stop Manhattan for a second!)

Be careful what you wish for…

2009-02-04T01:55:00.002Z

It keeps going round in my head, like unwanted advice from a tribal elder. But in typical twenty-first century fashion, this is not coming from my grandmother or my mother, or even a magazine. This one’s all in my head.

For the past five years, I’ve wanted nothing more than to spend some serious time in New York City again. Ever since I left I’ve been talking about going back. In fact, before I met D, I had already attempted the move once: in late 2003, I piled most of my belongings onto the stoop in front of the brownstone I’d been living in since 2000, and sold almost everything -- including silverware and even used art supplies. Two weeks later, I boarded a flight to London where I was finally going to get down to writing. However, within two months, I was back in New York, with a bad novel under my belt and a hunger for downtown growling in my stomach.
“It wasn’t for me,” I told people at the time, “I’ve never liked London”.

Neither of these statements turned out to be true, ultimately, but then again, every place pleasantly morphs when you’re living there with a lovely, kind, caring husband, rather than at your psychotic father’s house being bossed around twenty-four-seven.

But I digress…

Cut to January 2009. I’m writing this on the plane from Heathrow to JFK. I believe we are currently over Iceland, or somewhere like that. My three bags are crammed so full of clothing and books (including my own novel) that my closet in London is virtually empty. I am on my way to spend six months in New York – not just New York, Prospect Heights, my old neighbourhood where I spent the better part of my five years in The City.

I’m going to be two blocks from Prospect Park, I know the stores, the coffee shops, the subway lines, the yoga studios (I took my very first class there, actually. I hated it – the women were all super slim, fit and everyone seemed to know one another. This was before the term “yummy mummy” was coined but let me state for the record that Park Slope could give Primrose Hill quite a run for its money!). My friends – the people I knew before D and I got together – are sprinkled throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, like sweet sweet toppings on an already delicious dessert.

I couldn’t wish for more…

Yes, I could: D won’t be there with me.

I’m going all this way, starting down a path I’ve desired for so long, living in the place I’ve coveted since I left … I wished for New York … but this isn’t the way I would have chosen to go back.

When we originally conceived the idea, he was going to come spend good chunks of time with me: a week here, two weeks there, maybe even a month at some point.

Everything changed when another one of my wishes was granted – one that D very much shares with me.

As a Wandering Jew, as a woman who claims to have moved more times than years I’ve been alive (this is true, by the way), the one thing I have always wanted has been to set down roots, find a little house with a garden, make it mine to work in, to plant herbs and vegetables in the back, to throw dinner parties on a long table … a home in which to raise children.

And now, as I plan my departure, there’s some kind of weird, manic genie granting me wishes with a grand old sense of humour -- I have my wish.

Ten days ago, the house became ours.

It wasn’t meant to happen like that.

D engages in what I refer to as real-estate porn. He’s constantly looking at houses – sometimes in London, sometimes in the Maldives; always with a view to settle down. After all, he too has wandered, and he too would like nothing more than to find that one place he can call home, start a family, have an office where he can hide out when deadlines come crashing down, or we’re having an argument.

In an attempt to curb the more unrealistic side of my husband’s house fetish, I requested that he only show me truly feasible houses. No castles in the Cotswolds or villas in Spain. London, New York, Ojai (on my more forgiving days), affordable, accessible – nothing else.

We’d been looking here and there, but hadn’t pursued anything actively; so when he showed me the specs for the four-bedroom house in our area, I said what I always say when I’m trying to gage his level of seriousness: “should we go see it?”

My challenge with these things is not to get excited – real estate is supposed to be an unemotional affair, after all. By the time we got to the first sand-blasted radiator, I was a goner.

It was perfect.

Except that it was the third of December and on January 15th, I was leaving for six months in New York.

But how could I put the rest of my life on hold while I went to reinvent myself a million miles away? And was I really going to come back from six months on my own to our shared two-by-four-sized office?

We decided to go for it.

As a result, last week I moved twice: once up the road in London and once halfway around the world to New York.

This morning, when I made breakfast in our gorgeous new kitchen, D and I sat at the table instead of at our desks. We each have our own offices now, and the television is in a whole other room, separate from the dining area. For his fortieth, D’s getting a piano, because he can – we have the space. We’re going to have a proper cabinet built for our clothing, so we can actually fit it all into one place and, best of all, my grandmother’s bed – the largest in the world – will be reassembled. No more mattress on the floor, it’s going to be a “proper timber” (as the carpenter said yesterday) place to lay our heads.

At some point, we’ll get rid of the trois-couleurs-lilac in the bedroom, the headache-orange accent-wall in the kitchen, the pastel blue hallways, the fire-engine red corner of the living room. The house felt ours within a matter of minutes, now we just need to paint it to match.

I never thought…

I didn’t know…

There are so many things to be grateful for, so many wonderful changes in our lives, and it’s all happening now, simultaneously. It’s been stressful, tiring, I even found myself grumbling about it all. Then I caught myself: how can I complain about getting what I wished for?

---

The reason for my trip to New York is that I am studying to be a Holistic Health Counsellor. The studies themselves are fascinating and I can’t wait to get started down this new road. What has me in (private, silent) peals of laughter, surprisingly, is kale. Kale, that leafy green vegetable people either love to hate or loudly, resolutely, passionately embrace.

It turns out that Kale is to nutrition what the hammer and sickle are to communism. Every speaker so far has mentioned kale – either as proof of health or proof that they have not lost touch with the masses. Kale is the ultimate symbol of health or the rejection thereof. Kale says “I’m healthy, because I want to be” and it says, “fuck this, I want to enjoy life before I die.” Kale is a kind of (green) red flag -- as if once it’s been consumed for pleasure, you can never go back.

“I don’t just eat kale” a woman speaker said this weekend, “but I do make a point of including it as often as I possibly can.”

“Of course I love kale, but I also love pizza,” was a motivational speaker’s admission that though he doesn’t look it, he is, in fact, imperfect.

“Don’t go out there and try to get everyone to eat kale overnight,” was the marketing lecturer’s advice.

Kale.

I was at the Santa Monica farmer’s market once, grabbing, as fate may have it, a bunch of kale. A woman leaned towards me:
“I know I should eat kale,” she said, “but I have no idea what to do with it.”
When I looked up to answer her, I realized it was one of the doctors from ER – the one who limps and walks with a cane. Though she obviously only plays one on TV, it was still a great rush – LA is fabulous for those kinds of moments.

In reality it’s not all that bad. It’s just green and leafy but these days kale is almost a political statement.

The irony is that kale is so simple, so easy to prepare, it’s less of a hassle than most any other food.

Pizza, for example, the poster child for junk food, takes layers of work – from the crust to the toppings, there’s so much prep involved that most everyone gets it delivered rather than futsing around for hours in the kitchen.

It’s miles away from kale. Good old, simple, kale, where less is more and ruffles are always in.

My current favourite way to make kale is to simply chop it roughly, add some crushed garlic, a pinch of salt and then boil it for a few moments in an inch or so of water using a wide, shallow pan, until the leaves start to wilt. To serve, I merely drain the excess water (which I sometimes drink as it is chock-full of nutrients – though that is by no means a must).
Kale is a wonderful accompaniment to roast chicken, grilled fish, or our winter favourite: roasted sweet potato wedges and hummus.

Simply Simple

2009-01-08T23:47:00.008Z

A new year has started.

We’re back from a thirty-five-man strong New Year’s celebration in freezing, boozy Devon.

I have the flu.

In Israel, they’re playing yet another round of mine’s bigger than yours. Though I don’t hear the missiles or physically feel the attacks, they resonate within me. I can not believe the level barbarism. Why can’t these two warm, kind, giving peoples who share such a tiny piece of land learn from previous mistakes? Israel strives to be perceived as a first world country, and yet its tactics towards the Palestinians are primitive and tribal. My heart goes out to those in Sderot and Ashkelon, those whose homes have been destroyed, those who have been injured, those who have lost loved ones. But how can anybody believe that the aggression currently going on will achieve anything over the long-term other than a deepening of existing wounds?

In America, they are preparing to oust the clown of all clowns and hail a new era, a new chief, a new hope. Finally. I can’t believe I’ll be there on inauguration day or that I won’t live there to experience the changes first-hand. Still, I’m amazed at how much hope I garner from afar. I guess us mutts have more faith in one another than in those spawned from the clear-cut, vanilla majority that makes up the western world.

Back in London, on day-to-day earth, we’re in the process of buying a house and selling a flat. My flight to New York departs in (according to Virgin Atlantic) 6 days, 17 hours and 26 minutes. In that time, I need to pack up all our stuff – all of it – except what D will need for the five days until I return to London next week to move us in to the new house after which I do another 180 and head back to New York until April.

A year ends, a new one begins, and we find ourselves falling into the same pattern as we have so many times before: first there’s the round-up of best ofs, biggest, most, followed by another blitz of will-bes and look-out-fors. There’s the slew of articles about making resolutions; and then another round about how soon we will break them -- and by the very same people. The papers need to write about it, the news need to report about it, and we, addicted, need to keep watching -- because honey, let’s face it, you’ll never have those damn abs.

We live our lives in defiance of its natural cycles -- winter to summer, day to night, childhood to old-age – and we wonder why we can’t seem to weigh what we should, sleep as much as we need to, fit in everything on our to-do list before…

Before what?

It’s mass hysteria. Now that the Christmas decorations are coming down, it’s time to ring in the Easter Bunny!

For my part, after the madness, I’m trying to focus on the little things, pair down, simplify.

What a year it was -- definitely.

And what a year it will surely be.

I won’t forget the huge times – the travels, the wedding. Those are easy to remember. But what about the tiny changes, the little things learned, found, discovered?

My first taste of fresh coconut water.

The Diva Moon Cup.

Learning how to chop an onion into smaller pieces than I ever thought possible.

Watching a thunderstorm above Bangkok from our hotel room, D’s arms around me after ten weeks spent apart.

Handing SB a tub of the best hummus in the world in the old city of Jerusalem; walking up the snake path to Massada at sunrise with AN.

Watching my friend’s seven-year-old stumble out of their tent in the morning and thinking of the first time I held her when she was two days old.

Sitting at my mother’s, drinking a cup of tea at seven in the morning or two in the afternoon, or whenever we felt like it.

My first bite of bread in four years.

Looking around the table on a Friday night in Haifa, and enjoying the laughter.

Cashmere leggings.

My grandmother’s face when she saw me in my wedding dress.

Driving around Koh Pan Ngan on my little pink scooter, the stars bright above me, wanting to scream with delight.

Taking a yoga class with a view of the jungle.

My mother opening her "big sock" on Christmas Day

Roasting my first chicken.

Watching a wonderful, special, great friend I thought I had lost forever stride towards me in her black and silver trucker cap and enjoying the feeling of reconnecting again -- totally, completely, immediately.

Finding a wine I’d been looking for since I first tasted it six years ago at a bar in New York that was so small the address was only half a number.

It’s easy to concentrate on the life-changing events, the **TA-DA!** moments. The trick, for me, is to remember not to brush past the little things. At the wedding, my mother spoke about the rocks we will find on our way. And that is exactly it: it is only by going from pebble to pebble that I can make my way from one big rock to the next. And my challenge is to engage, to appreciate each pebble instead of focusing solely on the boulders.

2009 has technically started. Every day, another day in January passes, but still, I find myself in a holding pattern. For the house. For the flat. For the New York portion of this year. For the warmer weather. For my brother’s wedding. For the insanity to stop in the Middle East. For D’s fortieth birthday.

It would be so easy to keep waiting for the big changes, the things I won’t forget, no matter what. As I prepare to leave again, I am more aware than ever, of sharing dinner with D, clinking our plates together as others do their wine glasses, of the few rays of sun shining today through the dark, heavy sky, of the never-ending stream of newborns at our local coffee shop, of the pictures of our wedding that we’ve stuck in every corner imaginable, of how much I enjoy our kitchen in this little flat, with the one blue wall, that will soon be someone else’s.

Happy New Year, Loved Ones. May the coming months bring joy and health, and inspiration and so much fun!

I leave for New York in 6 days, 14 hours and 54 minutes….

---

Like with everything else, in my cooking, I am trying to simplify. I’ve put on just over a stone, sixteen pounds, almost seven-and-a-half kilos. The time has come to stop drinking and start assessing. This time, however, with my upcoming holistic nutrition course in mind, and without the luxury of California living, I plan to manage my weight the healthy way.

Snacks, always a challenge, are first on that list. When you’re me, you can’t just waft into the nearest kiosk and pick up a candy or granola bar when the fancy strikes. I have to make my own and am forever searching for tasty, handy little tide-me-overs.

I’ll start with the sweet:

After baking truckloads of pumpkin breads, brownies and chocolate cakes over the holiday season, I need to wean myself off sugar again as candida has, once again, reared its nasty little ball-of-wax-head. However, I don’t yet want to say goodbye altogether and so I’ve put together an easy recipe for healthier but still sweet energy bars.
(note: they earned a full-mouthed “OHMYGAWD” from D. We ate three each while they were still-warm – I have no idea how I’ve gained all these extra pounds…)

Gluten-Free Energy Bars

Ingredients:
1C brown rice flakes
1 ½ C water
½ C coconut flour
1/3 C whole flax seeds (ground)
7 prunes soaked and pureed
½ C each: sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, pecans, raisins
½ t cinnamon
¼ C molasses
coconut butter for oiling the pan

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Centigrade (about 350 Fahrenheit)

Add the water to the brown rice flakes and let sit for about half an hour, until most of the water has been soaked up. Then add the coconut flour. Mix well.
Pour the molasses in bit by bit, making sure it is dispersed throughout the mixture.
Then add the prunes, cinnamon and the flax seeds, mixing well.
Once the “dough” is even, add the seeds, nuts and raisins. Once again, make sure they are uniformly distributed within the mass.

Spread evenly in a pre-oiled pan

Bake for about thirty-five minutes.

Once they’d cooled down, I cut the bars into squares and packed them individually so D and I can slip one into our bags on our way out the door in the mornings.

--
And now the savoury. This is the tricky one. As snacks, savoury things are usually greasy, heavy, overly salted, dehydrated, dehydrating or all of the above. My sweet tooth being the size that it is, it’s usually with the in-betweens that I find the most satisfaction – a piece of fruit, an energy bar, etc. But things being what they are right now, and what with aspiring to fit into my trousers at some point in the near future, I’ve been hard-pressed to come up with something…
Here’s my first shot.
It’s decent but not superb:

Yellow Split-Pea Nori Rolls

For the split-pea dahl --

Ingredients:
2 cups dried yellow split-peas
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 T coconut butter
1 T garam masala
a pinch of cayenne (to taste)
¼ - ½ t turmeric (to taste)
salt
tons of water

In a pot, melt the coconut butter. Add the garam masala and allow the spices to rise in the oil. Then, add the onion and sauté for a few moments. The garlic should go into the pot once the onions are starting to become translucent (the spices might make this more of a guessing exercise than scientifically precise).
Allow the mixture to cook for a few minutes.
Add the split-peas and mix with the onions and the garlic until they are well-coated with the spices. Cover with four cups of water.
Raise the flame and bring to a boil.
Once the water is properly bubbling, lower the flame. Allow to simmer until all the water is soaked up. Then add more water, enough to cover and go through the process again. Do this until the split-peas are broken down and soft. This can take a couple of hours. Check often, stir, add as much water as necessary.

Note: Do not add salt until the very end. At this point, also add the cayenne and turmeric to taste.

This mixture is wonderful to add to rice, eat with green vegetables or avocado. I divided the portion into two: one we had for dinner with salmon, the I used to make the nori rolls.

Once the dahl has cooled, in order to reheat, water will need to be added.

To make the Nori Rolls --
Ingredients:
5 sheets of nori seaweed. Both toasted and non-toasted are available. I prefer the non-toasted kind, purely because of my appreciation of raw food, but this is not necessary. I look for the kind with no salt added as there is enough in the nori as is.
A portion of yellow split-pea dahl
A small container of drinkable water

Cut the nori sheets into portion sizes. In my case, each sheet was divided into four more or less equal parts.

Spoon a Tablespoon or so onto each nori square.

Fashion in a log-like shape. Roll the nori loosely around the dahl. To close the roll, dip a finger into the water and run along the edge of the nori. Press together.

I dehydrated the nori rolls for about a hour to dry out the wet parts, but this can also be done in the oven on a very low heat. (this is comparable to blow-drying a wet patch on a shirt)

When I take it with me, because the seaweed can become sort of chewy when wet, and the dahl can dry up a little, I like to bring a carrot with me as a water-filled accompaniment, or add a side-salad if I’m in a place where that is an option.

I am, however, still on the look out for any other snack ideas….

the comfort of curry and other reasons it's all in your head

2008-12-23T22:57:00.008Z

As the holidays crash down on us with the same force as the economy, I have decided to declare December National Hangover Month in the UK. It seems everywhere people are complaining about the day-after-blues before heading out to their next “do” where they lusciously intend to partake in another lovely round of more of the same.

In my kitchen, there’s a lot going on: a lot of brainstorming, preparation, much chopping, a taste here, a spoonful there. I’m so full and Christmas is still a couple of days away…

Somehow, in my mini microcosm, there is a myth that I don’t indulge or succumb to the same weaknesses as others... People are forever telling me that they feel bad, that their bodies must be intolerant to some food or another, but that they can’t be bothered to figure it out.
“I don’t have your willpower” is what I hear most often.

I disagree. Mostly because when it comes to willpower, almost anything can make me lose control -- from roast chicken to chocolate cake – I’ve been known to eat myself silly on foods that are considered good, safe, allowed, like hummus or almonds or raspberries. Because as I have too often been reminded from personal experience:even so-called healthy foods transform into damaging ones when overeaten.

In the end it’s about what makes us feel good. And if something makes you feel bad enough, you’ll stop loving it as much. Do I miss bread? Oh God yes. Do I yearn for cheese? Mmmm -- the stinkier, the better. Am I willing to put up with being in bed for three days afterwards, my eyes swollen to the size of golf balls, my stomach cramping and unbearably hard, my head throbbing like a never-ending whiskey hangover?

Nothing is worth losing that much time over, not even the greatest of Stinking Bishops.

A few days ago, we went round to friends for tea. They had baked sweet, gorgeous walnut banana bread – a beautiful blond loaf of goodness that smelled divine and, judging from D’s three slices, tasted even better. (As I eat vicariously through him at times like these, three slices sound about right). Even though our friends apologized for not having baked something I could eat, and even though I honestly assured them that I expected nothing of the sort and that it was fine – which it really and truly was – by the time we got home, I was in the mood to indulge.

So we ordered curry.

I love curry.

Honestly, London has many faults, but it almost makes up for them with its curries. This specific place is South Indian, so most cooking is done with coconut rather than Ghee*. In my opinion, there’s nothing like the creamy, pungent spice of a great curry on a cold, dark night. I usually get mine with a paper dosha, a very thin, flat, savoury pancake made of rice flour. It sops up the curry sauce like paper towel does spilled milk. Though I haven’t yet perfected the left-handed mop as is customary in Kerala, with the help of a spoon, the combination of spicy coconut chutney and sambar, a lentil and vegetable side masala, are divine.

Since we returned from the wedding, I have put on one stone. A whole stone, fourteen pounds, almost six-and-a-half kilograms. Sure, there’s the fact that I ate a cupcake a day in New York, and then there’s the whole hypothyroid thing. But come on, a couple of weeks of baked goods and a little T4 slo-mo can’t possibly be that bad, can it? Still, it seems those extra bulges want to stay put. As the holidays approach, I have gone from acceptance to desperation and back again; with the hiccups of the purchase and sale of abodes kicking my comfort-eating mechanisms into high gear.

I have never dieted in my life. I have spent my entire life on a diet.

Both of those sentences are completely correct. In translation: while I have never followed any of the fads – Atkins, The Zone, etc – I don’t think I have ever put a bite of food in my mouth without attempting to calculate the calories and / or effect said morsel would have on the scales.

So what to do?

Last week, I figured out that the only ingredient I have added back since the wedding has been flour. Not the usual whole wheat versus white flour. In my life, it’s brown rice flour, chickpea flour, sometimes (rarely) corn flour – which is why I had been eating it every single day: since it wasn’t wheat, I had somehow decided that it didn’t count.

But I have discovered this week that flour is flour is flour. The way I did it was to remove it from my diet. Not forever, not even for a week. I did not eat flour for five days. Tuesday to Saturday. Just to see what would happen.

The change was remarkable.

I should be used to this by now, having banished and reinstated so many foods over the years. But I’m not, and I don’t think I’ll ever be. Doing such a simple test is like taking a black pen to a clear, white board, and drawing an endless loop right smack in the middle, starting small and going bigger and bigger – the repercussions of one small decision reverberating into so many others -- or the opposite, going from large, loopy lines and ending up in a single, simple point.

Which is what this is: a single, very simple point.

Within about forty-eight hours of removing flour, I felt as if someone had stuck a pin in me, let out the bloat, like air from a balloon. The doughy feeling was gone, as was the sag in my face. I woke up in the morning with enough energy to do the basic yoga stretches that I had become too lazy to do over the past couple of months.

Again, I’m surprised at how surprised I am. But mostly, I’m surprised at how quickly I forgot.

In the past, this would have been cause to strictly remove all flour, dough, batter from my life forever. But not this time.

Last night, nothing could have warmed my belly, or comforted my aching soul as much as that curry. This morning, I’m feeling the weight of the paper dosha, heavy with aromatic herbs and coconut milk. The stretches didn’t happen when I woke up around eleven – an inconceivable hour when I’m at my usual energy levels.

I feel it in every part of me, from my fingers, which are bloated and stiff (of course the salt-content didn’t do me any favours), to my distended belly, to my cheeks and neck, slackened like my brain.

Does this mean I’ll never eat curry again, that the paper dosha will be relegated to my already overextended list of foods I don’t eat in an attempt to feel, look and live better?

No.

Even with all the after-effects, it was still a wonderful meal. I felt happy and sated afterwards, and I enjoyed watching a movie with my wonderful husband. The truth is that although it didn’t help in the long run, the curry didn’t hurt so much either. I’m up and about today, and almost, if not fully functioning. And it served a whole other purpose, nourished many different parts of my being, parts that aren’t any less important than my grumbling belly.

Next time, however, I’ll go into it with more information, open eyes, ready to complain the next day even before I place my order.

How I love a good curry.

* Ghee is clarified butter so out of bounds.

Chicken Masala:
(serves 2 good eaters with leftovers)
Ingredients:
* 1 T chicken masala (this is a mixture of herbs including chili, turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, clove, mace and fenugreek. I brought half a kilo back with me from India)
* 1 T coconut butter
* coconut milk
* 3 small onions or 1 -2 large ones chopped coarsely
* 2 T sugar-free tomato sauce (preferably one that is comprised of just tomatoes)
* 1 t orange blossom water
* Small handful of raisins
* 3 tomatoes
* 2 chicken breasts, cut into roughly even chunks

Instructions:
In a pot, melt the coconut butter.
Once it is melted, add 1 T chicken masala mix (add more or less, depending on level of spice desired - this mixture is quite spicy)
When the spices start to rise to the surface of the hot oil, add the onions.
Lower the heat and allow to simmer for a few minutes (add a little coconut milk if needed). Then add the tomato sauce, the rest of the coconut milk and then the orange blossom water.
Raise the flame and bring to a boil.
Lower the flame to a simmer.
As the mixture is simmering, add the tomatoes and the raisins -- this is to taste: tomatoes help make the dish less spicy and raisins add a touch of sweetness.
Throw the chicken pieces in. Stir them in well and raise the heat a touch if necessary so the mixture is properly boiling again. The chicken should be ready within 10-12 minutes.
(would probably be great with a little chive yoghurt to counter the spice, but very much optional)

Something For Everyone

2008-12-14T12:01:00.008Z

I love Christmas, mostly, I think, because I didn’t grow up with it. I have no bad memories, no traumas of tedious neighbours with terrible carolling voices or trees catching fire. Christmas, for me, has no traditions that require upholding, no Things We Do despite the fact that everyone has outgrown them.

No, all of those sentiments in my life are reserved for the customs practiced by the “Chosen People,” of which I am one. The Jewish Holidays are numerous and filled to bursting with generations of baggage strapped to my back like the memory-mule I sometimes feel I am.

Passover, with the endless wait to eat cardboard-like “bread” (Matzo) and then, finally, the gritty dumplings in tasteless broth; Rosh Hashana with its fish-head staring at you to remind you to start the year at the front, not the back (as if we need reminding to start at the beginning!); Yom Kippur, the day we supposedly atone for our sins but which we instead spend dreaming of food.

For me, Christmas has none of that.

Though I did grow up in a Catholic country (Belgium), I was for the most part unaware of St Nick et al, other than the very basics that is - the white beard, etc. - which are hard to miss. I have no recollection of any of the things I have come to look forward to as a newly minted, Christmas-celebrating adult. Our little ten-block Jewish microcosm was instead inundated with potato pancakes, dreidels and songs about another miracle for the Jews (Superpower, 0, Poor Little Minority, 1 more). Hanukkah was better than Christmas, we were told each December, because at Hanukkah children received one present every night for eight days, while Christmas was only one.

Now that I have had a couple of decades to reflect on this, it has become apparent that, environmental and waste issues aside, while it is factually true that Hanukkah lasts longer, often one well-considered prezzie is so much more enjoyable than eight throwaway trinkets. D and I have been breaking our heads for weeks now about what to buy for our loved ones. The goal is quite straightforward: budget, appropriate, something they wouldn’t necessarily get for themselves but would like to if they had extra cash lying around. Because what’s the point of purchasing unwanted, superfluous crap? I have to admit, the whole process can a bit nerve-wracking.

A year ago, at the penultimate minute, it was decided that we would be hosting Christmas. The only thing we had done in advance was put up fairy lights (the English and their sparkly little bulbs - D goes mad for them). We ordered the very last goose the farmer had in stock, and bought our tree when there were only a few left. The ornaments came from the final reductions bowl at the tree place, fifty-cent snowmen scavenged and saved in the moments before Christmas truly descended and the country shut down.

D’s parents flew down to London. We cooked (of course), we stuffed stockings, we ate too much and drank great wine. We went to a musical on Boxing Day and made plans for how wonderful the coming year was going to be, how often we would be getting together - last year, a lot of our conversations were also focused on the wedding... At that point it still seemed miles away.

Now here we are again, the wedding has passed and we’re back to where we were at this time twelve months ago: preparing to stuff – birds, oversized socks, and ourselves – tear open gifts, profusely thank one another and revel in options like midnight mass and mulled wine.

For me, it’s all fun. None of it means much, no matter how hard I try to attach some kind of symbolism to it. It’s merely another excuse to all get together, whomever all is that day, week, occasion. But there are no potato latkes, no candles in our window – unless you count those horrible bloody fairy-lights. I am unfamiliar with the songs people sing, and, unlike in my heritage, there is no chocolate money to be made from spinning a four-sided-spinning-top. Christmas is completely void of history for me. Still, I go along with it; I allow myself to get swept up in the frenzy and the plans, the must-dos, must-haves, the must-remembers. It is all part of my life now; and what I have been too lazy to do in terms of my own heritage – celebrate the Jewish Holidays -- I instead do for my husband’s (how I love saying that word and mentally superimposing D’s head above it!).

Once upon a time, traditions, rituals, celebrations held much more meaning. Winter solstice marked the true beginning of hibernation season, while summer solstice indicated the time for crops and coming out of our caves had arrived. We lived by the seasons, and cornerstone moments were observed – the ascent into adulthood, the naming of newborns – by well-known, well-worn traditions, celebrations and rituals that marked a next phase or a big change. What have, too often, become little more than another excuse to spend money, were once filled with meanings that we have, by now, long-since forgotten.

While organizing the wedding, I came across so many of those: for example, the question of whether to splash out on a traditional wedding cake, is one that has caused many a tense moment between couples. Let’s, for now, forget that the mere mention of the word wedding is enough to add at least one zero to any price tag; how many of us actually know why a “REAL” wedding cake is tiered? Costing hundreds if not thousands, the difference between a regular cake and a wedding cake is usually little more than height-related. The reason, I discovered, is that way back when, the layering symbolized the happy couple’s wealth. Rich people would often have to climb ladders to get to the top of their cake, proof that they (or whomever had paid for the do) had no money concerns. A few years ago, a friend of mine on an extremely tight budget actually calculated that it would be at least one-third cheaper to purchase different sized cakes and stack them herself (not to mention that if you are the one making the icing, you’ll also be the one who gets to lick the bowl!). Relatively speaking, the wedding cake is often one of the major expenses. Still, so many couples go for it so they can be photographed slicing that first piece together, both newlywed hands on the same knife, feeding one another a misaimed glob, the icing deposited on their noses. While money may be a factor in the decision about whether the cake should have three tiers or seventeen, I’m pretty sure nobody thinks about it as an indication of prosperity anymore.

For the past four years, every September, I have announced that next year I will celebrate Rosh Hashana, I will fast for Yom Kippur. Every spring, I have regretted not having attended a Seder, dull as they can be. Hanukkah I can take or leave; it’s a children’s holiday and we don’t have any yet. Still, I remember the candles in the windowsills fondly, and hope to one day light my own, adding one every night, singing about the “big miracle that took place over there”, in Israel.

Instead, for the past four years, we have celebrated Christmas, and it has been a big deal. Every year has been different – we have been in Canada and Bristol, amidst snow-covered valleys and under pouring rain -- with a few, recurring threads reminding us that it’s Christmas again: a tree, lights, sales, presents, food, complaints about the cold, non-sarcastic mentions of Santa. Throughout December, we have agonized over what to get each member of the family, and which friends we should include on that list. We have sat in a hotel room watching D’s niece tearing open her two suitcases of prezzies, and woken up in my brother’s home to exchange gifts in our pyjamas. Last year, when I decided to start taking this crazy blogging adventure seriously, it was with a post about our first Christmas held at home.

But how do you create, recreate, instigate traditions?

D and I went through those questions before the wedding, and we continue to do so. There’s the Jewish customs versus the Scottish ones, the Latin and the English, the Shabbat dinners and the baptisms, the Hebrew songs and the eighties ballads. When discussing our options, we do our best to avoid the dramatic declarations -- “no child of mine…” or “not in my house!” D is better at holding back than I am. I blame the fear mentality of being born into a minority (and a historically persecuted one at that).

How do you create your own traditions when there are so many in existence already – some that you would like to incorporate, others that you would prefer to ignore? How do you decide which to keep and which to skip? How do you choose? How do you separate those you feel guilted into from those you actually desire?

D and I have learned that with us, it’s better to start small. He doesn’t like new things, and I’m obsessed with not getting stuck in old ones just because they’re old.

Food is a good middle ground for us: I cook, he critiques, I wash up, he dries. We take comfort in dishes that start out as meals and become symbols; new parts of the unspoken language two people create when they choose to mesh their lives; something for the two of us, and the new family we are creating. Sometimes it’s about giving in, other times we accept and support – with a look, an inside joke, dinner prepared just so.

Last Wednesday afternoon, the sound of his voice tipped me off about what I would be making that night.
“Sweet potato fries,” he sighed, when I handed him the plate, “I can’t think of anything I would rather put in my body right now.”
It had been a rough day amidst a cluster of especially taxing ones. The personal was heaped on to the professional, which was trying its damndest to stifle the inspirational. My baked sweet potato wedges, slow-roasted with fresh herbs offer more comfort than chocolate cake in these dark, wet months, and I have found myself making them more often than my ever-conscious calorie-counting self would normally permit. But right now, their benefits outweigh their status as high-starch - read: fattening and therefore better to avoid - vegetables. As roots, sweet potatoes ground us; their sweetness satisfies our cravings, and the warm, baked slices, are perfect to make us feel just a bit naughty, like children allowed French fries.
Sometimes there is nothing I can say to make things better. But it’s great to discover small gestures that can make a big difference, if only for the duration of dinner.

And then there are the accidental traditions, created like a great piece of improvisational theatre. A couple of Fridays ago, we were having some friends over for Shabbat dinner and I wanted them to get a proper taste of my food -- the kind that I eat -- which is so far removed from their customary fare. I made chickpea flatbreads. They came out wonderfully crunchy on the outside, warm and chewy in the centre, infused with rich, black olives, peppery fresh sage and pungent garlic. D pronounced them “Oh My God” delicious and I made sure there would be enough of them left over to really pamper him. Because he rarely indulges in pizza, I decided to recreate this favourite of his in my own, gluten-free way.

The thing about inventing new versions of beloved staples is that we have to accept that they will never be the same: different ingredients produce different results. With enough of an open mind, however, chickpea pizza night can be as delicious and feel as decadent as the versions we all grew up with.

OK, so it wasn’t exactly “Check the door, it’s dominoes!”, but judging from the silent man chewing next to me, shaking his head with his eyes closed, I think I did a decent job. I had mine, he had his – each pizza topped with ingredients as close to the ones we would have ordered. I would have wanted cheese and tomato; he loves pepperoni and cheese. Instead, he got Spanish chorizo and Camembert, I heaped thick fresh tomato with cashew "cheese" dill and lemon juice on one half, and chunky avocado on the other.

And so pizza night was born. For those days when we wish we didn’t have so many responsibilities on our shoulders, when we want to be more silly than adult, when things would be so much easier if they were about getting a bike for Christmas rather than mortgage payments.

Chickpea Flatbreads:

4 Finely chopped fresh sage leaves
10 Chilli black olives chopped into small pieces
+ 10 more olives, kept separate, chopped.
4 Cloves of fresh garlic minced

olive oil (1 – 2 tablespoons)

1 ½ cup chickpea flour
½ cup brown rice flour
salt to taste
water

The night before (if possible. This can also be done the same day, if time is short):
Mix the sage, olives and garlic. Immerse in barely enough olive oil to cover. Store overnight in a glass jar with a lid.

On the day itself:
Mix the flour in a large bowl.
Add salt to taste and enough water to start mixing it all together. Blend the olive, garlic, and sage into a paste and add to the flour along with the rest of the olives, chopped into little pieces. Keep adding water and kneading until you have a dough that doesn’t run or stick to your fingers.

Heat a pan until water spatters off the surface. (do not use oil)

I would recommend using a soup ladle to create more or less even shapes and sizes (I would like to stress the more or less part here).
After scooping one ladleful into the hot pan, flatten the batter to create even and thin bread.
Allow to cook until the mixture starts to dry up and the edges start to brown slightly (you can also test this by very carefully inserting a spatula underneath – it is starting to be ready once the bread does not fall apart and is easily flippable as one entity).
Flip the bread and cook on the other side. You will have to do this a few times until the outside is crunchy and lightly brown.

These breads become doughy and less pleasant when cold, so make sure to keep them warm in the oven until ready to serve.

Will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

To make pizza with leftovers, layer the flatbreads with your choice of topping, and heat up in the oven as you would a pizza.

Blink

2008-12-02T14:51:00.003Z

I have written two posts since my last one. Somehow, however, by the time I get round to posting them, they feel soooo last week.

By now, Obama has gone from “Yes We Can!” to “can he really?” though most everyone I speak to is still excited that – criticism and cynicism aside -- he will have a chance to give it a shot anyway.

Life is finally returning to some sort of normalcy. After the wedding had become a sort of catch-all, and by the time we came home in October, there was container parked out front with a long long long list of everything we could no longer put off.

But we did it. The end of the year was back to feeling relatively simple: finish up, polish up, get ready for 2009. Then we bought a house.

Wait, WHAT?

Well, we’re trying to. Nothing has been finalized yet so I won’t go into too many details, but yes, we took the leap into serious, four-bedroom (“for the kids”) homeownership.

Our last foray into the world of real estate ended with a woman who had voluntarily changed her human name to that of a reptile screaming down the phone that she was a “fucking peace-loving Buddhist who didn’t fucking judge anyone!”

(While hindsight has gifted me with a sense of humour about it all, I’m going to let dead lizards lie and focus on the present.)

Our current situation unfolded as follows: last week, D was engaged in his favourite form of procrastination, a little hobby I like to call real estate porn. I was sitting over at my desk rewriting a short story when he asked me to come look at a house. As he tends to engage in this perfectly harmless though potentially expensive pastime quite regularly, I have requested that he only show me homes he truly considers an option for us. (In my defence, I sometimes remind him of the time we went to see a house with an asking price about double what we could afford. D then spent the rest of the afternoon calculating how we could scrape the money together for a deposit. It went something like “if we sell our first three children and then you harvest all of your remaining eggs; if I ghost-write a few autobiographies by extremely rich, really dumb people…” While I really loved the house, I prefer a sane husband as well as intact ovaries.)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with our wonderful flat, but we’re busting out of it. Both D and I are also very much looking forward to the day we each have our own office, space, privacy -- at the moment, we share a tiny room behind the refrigerator.

Anyway… I was rewriting my short story when D called me over to look at a charming little house. We both liked the look of the place and it fell somewhat within our price-range. It did tick every box we had decided on in terms of what our deal-breakers were: there was outside space, an eat-in kitchen and enough bedrooms to fit us all (separate offices and future projected offspring included). Best of all, it was only three streets away and almost directly en route to our favourite neighbourhood hangout. D emailed the real estate agent and the next day, as the sun set behind the eternally grey London sky, we sauntered over …

Three days later our offer was accepted.

Now we’re dealing with mortgage brokers, real estate lawyers, selling and letting agents (for our flat), roofers, plumbers, electricians, etc. I think I’ve heard the phrase “the current market being what it is…” more often this week than “hello”.

Until this decision to consciously buy into our next step, D and I have calmly been assessing this past year and everything that has happened. I suspect that, like every year since we’ve been together, on December 31st we’ll look at each other and say “It’s been a year!”

Every year since we’ve been together (this year will make five), D and I have taken an afternoon to sit down and go over the coming year. We’ll talk about plans and agree on dates for holidays. We’ll decide where we want to go, professionally, individually, as a couple. It’s quite a fun way to pass an afternoon, all tangled up in projections and fantasies but once it’s done, we’ve forgotten about it and have gotten on with our lives.

Last Christmas, we shared our little tradition with a friend who, it turns out, does exactly the same. His reaction was way more enthusiastic than we had intended: “Isn’t it great,” he said, “when you set yourself a goal and then actually achieve it? I love that feeling of ticking things off my list.”
D and I looked at one another. We burst out laughing. Neither of us had thought of following through enough to tick anything off anywhere. They were ideas, things we bantered back and forth and then actually wrote or didn’t. Never had it occurred to us to actually keep track.

By August our friend had accomplished every goal he’d set for himself in 2008. My goal is ultimately still the same: make a living as a writer, be a great partner, don’t let life get too depressing. Other than that, in my life everything changes by the hour.

I truly wish I could dwell on this past year, and as this month progresses, I probably will. However, before I give myself over to reminiscing, there’s Christmas. For the first time, my mother will be with us as well as D’s parents. During the wedding, they referred to themselves as “the three bears.” I’m way too obsessed with the pressure of all of these firsts being memorable -- making sure our shared meals aren’t too hot or too cold; I need everything to be just right. Does that make me Goldilocks?

“What do you think?” I’ll ask D at any time of the day or night, “Should we have curry roast pumpkin or garlic kale?”
“I’m in the loo, sweetheart,” he’ll say from behind the closed door. “Can we talk about this later?”
I’ll count my in-breaths, turn on the television only to turn it back off again, I’ll type random ingredients like pomegranate molasses and mace into search engines, but soon enough I’ll be back at it with a hesitant “sweetheart…?”

Me (stirring a pot that I’ve been standing over for some indeterminate length of time):
“Sweetheart, can you try this?”

D (happily popping his head round the doorframe that separates our shared office from the kitchen): “SURE!”

I spoon a taste out of the pot, blow on it some: “careful, it’s hot.”

D (blowing a few times): “mmmm”

Me: “You haven’t tried it yet!”

D: “But it smells good”

Me (still holding the spoon): “are you gonna?”

D: “what?”

Me: “taste it!”

D opens his mouth and closes his eyes. He pulls back involuntarily when the spoon touches his lips.

D (breathing hard, his hand waving in front of his face): “Hoh-Hoh”

Me: “I told you it was hot.”

Then there is a whole rating system, another spider’s web of pitfalls and sticky bits. At fist I thought D was being dishonest, that he didn’t want to tell me how he really felt. Then I realized that he wasn’t being insincere, he was being British.

I find nuance impossible to read. I don’t do between the lines very well. Unfortunately for me, inflection is what this country was built on, and how it continues to thrive (although with the recession and all, maybe they’ll get the hint?)

In our house, food critique goes something like this:

D’s Determination: It’s good, sweetheart.
My Translation: could be much better, there’s something in there that doesn’t quite work for me.
Example: haphazard attempts at breads and baked sweets of various descriptions that, being gluten, dairy, yeast and sugar-free sometimes taste like the prototypical health food – the kind that gives good, healthy food a bad name.

D’s Determination: mmm, I like it!
My Translation: It’s fine, not spectacular. I probably wouldn’t finish an entire meal of this, but it’ll do.
Example: various kitchen sink soups where I used what I had, but what was available didn’t necessarily mesh.

D’s Determination: Sweetheart!
My Translation: I was expecting something different. This is much better than what I expected. It doesn’t look as good as it tastes which is a bit of a put-off and why I tried this slightly under duress.
Example: a sweet potato, kale and wakame mush that looked like green baby food but was, in fact, delicious.

D’s Determination: This is Great!
My Translation: I really like it, but people who don’t usually eat your kind of food, sweetheart, might not be so into this.
Example: raw chocolate balls – very chocolaty.

D’s Determination: “Oh My God!”
My Translation: This is great.
Example: the dough of last weeks’ chocolate-banana protein balls, Sunday night’s chicken curry.

Two exclamations to God in the space of one week… I should have known something was up.

It seems every time I blink, a whole part of my life has gone by. (Sidney Sheldon was definitely on to something!)

Blink – I’m in Thailand – Blink – I’ve gotten married – Blink – we’ve bought a house…

The house was one of those “Oh My God” moments – across the board, no translation necessary.

Blink –

---

Oh My God Chocolate Banana Globes
(I would call them "balls" although men, no matter what their age, giggle by which point the delectable aspect is all but lost)

-- 1 cup brown rice flakes
- Around 1 cup of almond or Brazil nut meal (I used the pulp leftover from making nut milk and it worked great)
-- 1/2 cup unsweetened grated coconut / coconut flakes chopped
-- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
-- 100 grams chocolate (I chopped up a bar of 100% cacao -- the original recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate)
-- 2 - 4 bananas to taste (I like things a little less sweet so I used 2)
-- 1/2 t vanilla extract
-- 1/4 cup hemp butter (almond butter can also be used)
-- 1/4 cup melted coconut butter
(I also added about 1/2 cup of ground gogi berries to the second batch, but that's definitely optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F

Use a dabble of the melted coconut oil to grease a pan

Mash all the ingredients together very very well with your hands (it's a really fun sensation. Children would enjoy participating as well, especially with the gloopiness of the bananas) -- have fun creating the dough.

Roll into little globes and set gently on the tray.

Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes (depending on the oven)

(Note: I think they would make excellent cookies as well. Just flatten -- shape and texture are a matter of taste)

Adapted from a recipe found on chocolate and zucchini by Clotilde Dusoulier.

Yeah, But Does It Do What It Says On The Tin?

2008-11-03T23:05:00.002Z

Tomorrow is Election Day in Uncle Sam’s Land. Almost everyone I know has participated in Obama’s campaign in one way or another. People who had never voted before have worked the phones, they have committed to helping out on Election Day, they have emailed, blogged, spammed.

What is impressive to me is that someone has finally campaigned at US: the not-young-not-old, not-rich-not-poor, the educated-but-not-elitist, the aware-but-not-obsessed. Obama has woken us out of the long political naps we take because nobody cares about us anyway; he has reminded us of why we came, did, studied, of what we once wanted to achieve – whether we’re still there or whether we’ve moved on.

On a personal level, I am so happy that someone who, like me, was born in one place, raised in a couple of others, and has moved around a fair amount, can use that to his advantage in a country where they sometimes seem to scorn anyone who is “other”.

As we near the end of the campaign however, he has started lowering expectations, admitting in speeches that things won’t be easy. The “Yes We Can” has been turned into “we can, but give us time”.

It makes sense. This man is 100% human, and so his achievements will be as well. Unlike so many others in his business, he does not claim to be superhuman. He has not tried to position himself as a kind of modern-day king, privy to God’s ear and information in a way that common folks are not. Obama has admitted to flaws and accepted mistakes. He isn’t Louis XIV. He eats cake as well as dry bread. What a relief.

It’s been quite entertaining, in a vindictive kind of way, to see the other side’s ugly tactics ricocheting back in their faces. Nothing has stuck for long. None of their attempts to link Obama to Osama have worked, and The Weathermen story has made them look even more ridiculous.

Do I know a hell of a lot about American politics? Probably not as much as I should.
Would I be able to win a debate about it all? I wouldn’t put money on myself.

When it comes to the issues, I feel quite ignorant. I am a pretty broad-strokes voter in that I base my decision on things like abortion rights, gay marriage, health care and invasions of foreign countries on the basis of misinformation. In that sense, I’m as ignorant as any Republican: I don’t keep track of what congress is working on on a weekly or even yearly basis, I don’t even know the political intricacies of the very issues that I myself am interested in. I’m as much of a target for big PR campaigns as anyone. I want to be able to choose whether to give birth or not, I want a gay couple’s “I do” to legally mean as much as mine, I think we should all have access to a great education and be able to get sick without going broke. For me, that’s about as deep as it goes.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m voting from the gut; voting for someone whom I have been convinced can bring change in the few areas that will most immediately (and superficially) affect me – just like they want us to believe…

Does that mean I would be less likely to vote for a politician with less charisma?

In Israel, the very existence of the country is supposedly at stake, and so elections are usually much more dramatic, the views taken much more extreme: settle on other people’s land, or not; apartheid as a policy or not, etc.
Over there, “Who are you going to vote for?” is apparently a trick question. It is not as much a request for information as much as an opener for the imposition of the other person’s opinions. And, rest assured, in Israel everyone really does have a very strong opinion.
“You’re voting for Obama!?” a friend of my grandmother’s exclaimed in disgust, “that’s terrible.”
This was last year, during the primaries.
She shook her head, “no, you have to vote for Hillary. She’s a woman!”

To me, voting for a candidate because she’s a woman (or a democrat or a black man) is like marrying a man because he’s Jewish. It doesn’t work for me on any count.

In college, I campaigned for so many people… Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak (by accident), Yosi Beilin, Uzi Even (the first openly gay MK), and a smattering of other centrist and left-wing politicians. I was also very active in the left-wing student group at my university. I even ran as a representative of the English department – twice.

When I think about it, however, unlike my friends who found candidates that they could blindly follow, I never believed in one person – not on a student-level and definitely not on a national level (although at one given point, Peres did come relatively close). Still I campaigned for this cardboard cut-out, or that, handing out stickers, urging people to use our democratic rights, attending rallies, making phone calls, and even physically accompanying people to the voting booths.

Politicians are like philosophies or diets: I admire anyone who finds one specific one to believe in. My comfort zone lies somewhere in the middle, taking a little bit from many different ideas, research, promises.

The main reason I campaigned wasn’t for the greater good, or because I thought the person whose picture was on my badge would really make that much of an impact… In all honesty, there is little in my life that has come remotely close to the rush I got when I was actively participating in political campaigns.

The feeling of power between your fingers as you pore over the names and personal information of thousands of strangers, the manic months and weeks of planning, the tingling energy that is almost visible as the election nears, the hundreds of people you get to meet and chat to; and then finally that last push, the actual election day that goes by in a blur of emergencies, live-or-die moments, hours of feeling like the fate of the world is in your hands. It is easy to give up personal space, time, interests for the sake of the bigger picture, especially when you feel there isn’t all that much to give up in the first place.

I campaigned because I was lonely, because I was lost and scared and needed recognition and attention but had no idea how to go about getting any. I supported candidates and their agendas because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my own life. I gave myself fully to getting others elected so I would have to figure out where I was going, who I was, what was important to me.

Being part of something bigger than oneself is a great feeling.

And that is where I think Obama has done such a great job: instead of capitalizing on the usual “us versus them”, he has made it about giving power back to the individual. Obama has made his supporters feel that we actually have some modicum of control over our destiny. He has made it seem as if his campaign isn’t about him but rather each one of us. For the first time in a long time – for some of us, possibly in our lives – we feel heard, or at least as if someone would listen if we needed them.

Elections are a two-way street, a ready-made community that accepts all applicants, as long as they can pay their dues and vote. Campaigners need attention, as do the people they court. When I was politically active, I had a full-time group of friends, people with common interests, who were available to me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We lamented the fate of our doomed ideals together and cried on each other’s shoulders when our civilian, uninterested boyfriends dumped us for girls who cared more about rubbing their shoulders than the important stuff.

But our egos didn’t ever suffer for long. We knocked on hundreds of doors; and for every one slammed in our faces, we met two or three who invited us in, who wanted to be our friend – because we were important people fulfilling an important task.

For someone like me who is naturally friendly, it was doubly satisfying as I quickly figured out my recipe for swaying people. Mix a dollop of goodwill with equal amounts of charm and true belief in one issue or another, serve in people’s faces with self-confidence and a smile. People want to believe that change is possible, and even the biggest cynic wants to be liked.

Some people love to be courted, while others prefer to be left alone. There are those who vote on big issues and those who are just happy to get out of the house.

People use elections for all sorts of reasons.

With regards to tomorrow… My fingers are crossed, my breath is bated.

My only hope is that we get what we’re voting for…

---

Too often, especially in vegan and raw food restaurants, dishes like “pasta” and “cheese” are in fact very different from what one would normally expect. I can only assume that this is done in order to put non-converts at ease.
However, if I’m expecting little pockets of cooked flour when I order the ravioli and what I receive is thinly sliced squash pockets filled with nut paste instead, there’s a good chance I may be slightly disappointed.

Having said that, what do you call something that looks like cheese, tastes cheese-like, but isn’t cheese? “Goop” doesn’t quite wet the palate.

This past Saturday was World Vegan Day. To celebrate, I made a vegan dinner. It didn’t turn out fabulous, for a myriad of reasons, but one standout little side was the cashew “cheese”. It was flavourful, creamy, pronounced delicious even by those who eat the real thing.

Unfortunately, I cannot take credit for the recipe. There are so many different versions of it online but I decided to keep it simple and based myself on the recipe I found at maybevegan.blogspot.com

4-5 cloves of garlic
juice of 1 lemon
2 t sea salt
1 C water (I added a smidgen more)
3 C raw cashew (pieces)

Mince the garlic or crush in a press
Add the remaining ingredients in the order listed and blend until smooth
(You want the mixture to be thick and creamy)

I’m not sure what to call the result, except absolutely delicious.

What's Next?

2008-10-29T00:27:00.005Z

It’s snowing in London. We heard shrieks from the street and when I turned my head, I couldn’t believe the white flurries right outside the window. Real snow, like in the movies, or Connecticut. Not London. London is grey and damp and … well, not as pretty as snow. But there it is, like a fat girl on her wedding day.

I’m in a daze and funk of feeling like a big old tub of lard, but somehow this time I seem to have retained a sense of humour – more or less – with uber-drama kind of kept as the sidedish that it was meant to be. Besides, you can’t exactly eat ice cream, cupcakes and bacon for a month and expect to look like you did on your wedding day, can you? Oh, and did I mention the bottles of deliciously yummy wine?

There is one in particular that has captured my heart these days. D and I would share a bottle of it from time to time in the final months of planning. I hadn’t realized just how many until we walked into the restaurant a couple of weeks ago and the manager jumped at me with an enthusiastic “so how did it go???”

It is called The White, made by The John Forrest Collection. Simple, Elegant, Kiwi, a perfect blend of eight or nine different grapes that fit together like Tetris blocks in the early nineties. Viognier, Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chardonnay,
Gewurztraminer, Chenin Blanc – like children, the grapes exuberantly wait until the teacher – in this case the palate – calls on them. Each will get their turn.

The planning is now over and although we refuse to stop celebrating, the party’s officially done. It’s time to return to normal life, whatever that is, was, has been, will be. What that means for a surprising amount of people around us is that they now feel it is appropriate to ask about the next stage: children. The more direct questions are are often less inquisitive and more demanding.
“Why are you writing to me?” one guy’s email bounced back at me within four minutes of my having hit send, “you should be busy making babies with your husband!”
Mostly, however, people just want to know whether we want a family, the “when” remaining between us, unspoken but no less present.

A few months before the wedding, we had a couple of friends over for Shabbath dinner. The wife, already showing, asked me whether I was ever planning to “do” anything. I was insulted by her question for a few reasons: First and foremost because I resent the assumption that I sit and watch sitcoms all day just because I don’t have a “proper” job (another charmer), and secondly, because although she is very much in a similar situation to mine – career-wise at least – she seemed to have, from her perspective, finally found, in her impending motherhood, what she was doing to “do”.

When you’re single, they want to know why you haven’t found someone – as if there is no way to be happy on your own. When you meet someone nice, they start clucking about rings and The One. Then, you get engaged and everyone just keeps offering their “help” by asking whether you’re nervous yet, or worse, telling you that you should be. Then – finally – comes the wedding. Beautiful, blissful, you wish you could float on that cloud for the rest of your life. You make a mental note to do so putting as much intention as possible into that thought. Sadly, the bubble must burst. Within seconds of breaking the glass, the same people who shouted “Mazzel Tov” at the top of their lungs, who twirled you around and lifted you in the air to celebrate your union, throw you back to earth with a sweet, inquiring “so… when’s the children?”

If it would only stop there…

But no…

Once there’s one in the works, they want to know when the next one’s coming, and then the next and so on. “What, only one / two / six?” they ask, as if there is something wrong with the decision, or the accident. Suddenly it’s not only OK to admit you’re having sex, people actually want to know about it.

Does it ever stop?

We talk about being in the now, but nobody, it seems, wants us to be. They’re too busy looking for the next celebration or piece of gossip.

---

In the spirit of staying ahead of the game, here’s a two-fer:

Sweet potato (a current favorite: it is not only balancing to women’s hormones and warming in the cold season, it is also a sweet vegetable that helps curb cravings as well as a good source of fibre and vitamin C) and kale, boiled, make a wonderful, flavorful, incredibly healthy broth.

That broth can then be used for a multitude of purposes (unless you drink most of it straight, like I usually do). Yesterday, I also used it as a base for a carrot and onion soup – slow roasted, caramelized, rich, deep, warming (there’s a theme these days and it’s very different from the one in the Middle East where it was thirty degrees)

I also used it to make sweet potato, kale and chickpea muffins (they ain’t pretty, but there are no eyes in your stomach anyway)

Boil two sweet potatoes and half a bunch or so of kale until soft.
At the same time, boil a tin of chickpeas with cumin powder (you can use dried ones, but for the sake of time, I used canned – just make sure to rinse well before using).

While boiling the vegetables and chickpeas, sautee fresh ginger, garlic, cilantro leaves and chili for as long as possible on as low a flame as possible.

In the food processor or blender, shred / blend the kale and the sweet potato (depending on the texture you’re going for) with a bit of the broth (have I mentioned how nourishing this broth is?)

Mash the soft chickpeas with a fork

Mix the chickpeas and sweet potato/kale mush together with the sautéed herbs and spices.

Add:
¾ cups of chickpea flour
¾ cups brown rice flour
salt to taste
½ t baking powder
1 egg (optional – I use it as a binder)
½ cup liquid / milk – fresh Brazil nut milk worked for me but I’m sure oat, almond, soya or regular would do the job just as well.

(I would have added green onion had I had any on hand, but seeing as this was more of a fridge-clearing, whatever I could find muffin (and it was seven in the morning), I didn’t bother trying to find any.)

Knead the concoction with your hands until the dough is thick and comforting but gloopy nonetheless.
If necessary, dilute with some more broth.

Spoon into a greased muffin pan (I use coconut oil) and bake at 170 degrees until muffinney

They do look like they would have special needs if they were human, but they are sweet and savoury and comforting and nutritious and they work perfectly as a snack or with soup, salad or steamed vegetables.

Now what’s next?

The Wedding Dress Dilemma or How The Garnish Can Make the Soup

2008-10-24T10:59:00.008+01:00

When D and I got engaged, I became all about the eco-chic. After reading the hundredth article about it, my main question was how green was my wedding going to be? Our invitations would be small because we were going to use a website to disperse the information. There would be minimal flowers and decorations and the food would be local, if not organic. My dress wasn’t going to be one of those lavish gowns worn once and then locked up in a closet until a future daughter might hopefully not sneer at Mom’s terrible taste and want to wear it at her own wedding. I was going to wear something practical, dyeable, and preferably made of organic cotton, hemp or bamboo.

I contacted a young (affordable) designer whose knitted beige dress I have often worn to other people’s weddings. Her choices of organic fabrics are urban, fun and feminine, and I loved the enthusiasm in her voice when she responded to my description of what I was looking for. We fixed an appointment and indeed met in person to discuss options. She gave me a few fantastic suggestions and requested a couple of months to come up with sketches.

Unfortunately, that was the last I heard from her. After three or four attempts on my part to get in touch, I gave up trying. Organic or not, Mohammed and the Mountain had bigger fish to fry.

In New York, I researched wedding dress thrift shops. I even tried to find “the dress” at a wonderful not-for-profit that receives all its merchandise from designers and wealthy women. The proceeds go to help inner-city children. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t stained, ripped or below size 16.

Then, despite my best intentions, I found the dress. It was everything I didn’t want it to be except puffy and lacy. It was luxurious, extravagant, a “real” wedding dress, non-transferable, non-dyable, impractical and so beautiful I couldn’t believe it was me I was looking at in the mirror.

If one is truly hell-bent on the organic, practical option, my advice is DON’T even try on those classical, ex-bloody-pensive, “real” wedding dresses. Stay away from Vera Wang, avoid entering wedding shops altogether.
That’s how they get you.

“Oh no, I’m not going to spent THAT kind of money on a dress. How dare they! IT’S ONE DAY!” you think, sensibly, following that up with a condescending “Ridiculous! I’d rather send my children to college.”

That is before you’ve tried any of them on; before you’ve felt the slinky, white fabric on your skin as you swish sexily around on your tiptoes, your former lumps now transformed into curves; before you’ve looked in the mirror and have been forced to admit that, despite the terrible hat-hair, you look better than you ever have, prettier, more feminine.

Your resolve starts to waver as you keep staring at the new you, all woman, all bride, all wife-to-be. It becomes political, philosophical, a priority – anything to make the amount you are about to spend justifiable … You think to yourself how unfair society has been to women, how far this era of combat boots and corduroy pants has driven us from our inherent femininity. But no more! The time has come to reclaim what has been squashed out of you by generations of oppression! You have to hold yourself back from raising an angry fist in the name of all the women of the world, your sisters in wardrobe, stuck in masculine suits and this close to wearing a balled-up pair of socks stuffed down their pants and a necktie to work.

So you do what anyone in your situation would: you turn to the saleslady who has waited on you hand and foot. She smiles, seemingly demure although you know she is secretly ecstatic in the knowledge that she has thwarted another bunch of good intentions, broken another girl, ripped her from the bosom of mother earth and forced her out into the open as the Carrie-wanna-be every woman really is.

“Do you take credit cards?” you ask, feeling the guilt climbing up your back and knocking on your skull as the words come out of your mouth. You pray that there is enough in the bank account to cover it, and you pray that there isn’t. You hope this won’t be what makes it blatantly clear and establishes you forever more as everything you’ve been trying to avoid: a Bridezilla in disguise.

…

As the jeep made its way up the mountain, I was aware of the dress draping softly over my legs. The feel of the fabric caused excitement to ripple through my skin. I shivered. Every part of me was now aware that this day was unlike any other (and not because I was going to be eating unleavened bread). My hair was done-up in beautiful curls, my makeup was as good as professional. When the jeep dropped me off, there would be a crowd of people waiting to see me. I looked out the window, inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly.

Beside me, my T and my friend DKB were silent but I could feel them as if they were clasping my hands even though in reality my fingers were curled tightly around my bouquet of flowers.

When I had put my dress on that morning, for the first time, I had felt that it was mine; that I had become the bride. Until then, it had been like putting on a costume, a costly white testament to the power of make-believe; so convinced was I that it wasn’t going to happen, that some catastrophe would bar my day from being as joyful as everyone said it was supposed to be. With the last push of the zipper, I had been transformed.

After dinner, I changed out of the dress, already regretting it as I stepped a bare foot into my jeans. I would no longer be the bride. Instead, I would be the person throwing the all-night dance party, the dress’ spell having worn off from the first tug downward of that same zipper.

When I was a child, I was afraid of monsters attacking me during the night. I slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed, and my biggest fear was that they would grab my feet in my sleep. To combat this, I convinced myself that as long as the duvet was folded over, as long as I was well-wrapped into it, I would be all right. I would tuck the covers around my feet like a cocoon, making sure there were no holes, no corners sticking out. On the worst nights, I left only the tiniest of breathing holes from where I could breathe. Tucked under pillows, folded-in like a newborn, I was safe.

The wedding dress served roughly the same purpose, except translated into adult terms. It wasn’t that monsters wouldn’t eat my feet without it, but rather that nothing bad would happen, that I didn’t need to take responsibility or make important decisions or even get involved in the petty dramas of the everyday – as long as I was wearing the dress.
“Talk to my aunt,” I had answered the restaurant manager when she had come to ask whether we should start dinner after the first round of celebratory dancing. I was the bride; it wasn’t my problem.

In my dress, the food contained no calories, even the most irritating of questions, remarks, judgments, the most rigid of expectations mattered little. In my dress, I didn’t have to worry about whether we would be able to conceive, who was thinking what, and who hadn’t heard the ceremony properly. I didn’t even have to consider how long the speeches were dragging on. Because I was the bride; and, as the bride, there was no anger, no fear, no frustration, no future, no past. Even five minutes in the future was of no consequence. As the bride, armed with my perfect white dress as weapon and shield, only that very second mattered – and then it passed. And I was back to being like everyone else, a woman celebrating an amazing event in her life, dancing, laughing, enjoying a glass of wine.

I will never know how I would have felt had I found a more eco-friendly dress for my wedding day.

Maybe none of it had anything to do with the dress. Possibly. But it will take someone else to garner those emotions without the smoothe ribbing, the flowing train (though mine was pinned up), the moulded breast cups, the hand-beaded décolletage, the fitted bodice.

In every other way, we managed to stick to our original goals. It was only the dress, the garnish if you will, that was my sweet indulgence as well as my downfall. The dress made me a bride and a hypocrite, it took me from down-to-earth to high-maintenance. The dress intoxicated me, blinding me with its beauty and how I looked wearing it. The stakes were immediately raised way beyond what I thought myself capable of delivering and yet with the dress, anything was possible.

The dress gave me the right to demand nothing less than perfection. In the dress, I could dream of a wedding beyond belief. In the dress, that wedding would become a reality.

Ironically, on the day itself, when things went differently from what I had so carefully planned, when shit actually happened, it was the fact that I was wearing the most exquisite gown that gave me the courage to laugh; and D’s tears when he saw me walking towards him, his choked whisper, “you look so beautiful”, when I finally reached him that made me feel confident enough to keep laughing. In the dress, I was invincible, and in D’s eyes, I saw clearly the main reason why buying it had been the right thing to do.

Back on earth… We returned to the blustery, grey British weather with a thankless thud after eating our way through New York, and wandering the autumn streets of Manhattan gazing at the turning leaves through our sunglasses. The damp cold was an unwelcome welcome, a sign that nothing had changed – possibly, though we felt very different, not even us.

The bills hadn’t decided to give us a break because we were newlyweds, and neither had the weather. How I wished I could wear the dress coming off the plane, arriving back in our empty home, to London, so far from so many with whom I had danced under the stars just minutes before.

On our first Friday night back, I decided to make soup. Though this sounds relatively simple and is, in theory (as well as in my regular practice), I failed miserably. There are a few reasons for this, in my opinion: first of all, I put too much pressure on myself. This was to be our first Shabbat dinner in the flat as husband and wife and I wanted it to be perfect, a meal to remember. I didn’t want Shabbat dinner to be spectacular only when we had guests over. And finally, there were two heads of cauliflower that needed to be eaten.

There are very few foods that I don’t like. In fact, other than Marmite, there is not one thing that I actively dislike. Cauliflower, however, comes damn close.

So between the self-imposed pressure and my inherent dislike of the main ingredient of my soup, it was no wonder that our first Shabbat dinner was, in fact, quite the opposite of ‘spectacular’; unless one chooses to follow that up with ‘catastrophe’.

What saved me was the garnish I improvised as a spicy counter-taste to the blandness of the veloute.

Though I ended up chucking the leftover soup – a much detested action I reserve only for truly bad food – I was able to recycle the garnish the next day by mixing it with tahini and lemon juice and reinvent it as a lush dressing for a comforting rainy-day salad.

The First Incarnation: Garnish

1 decent-sized hot chilli pepper, finely chopped
2 -3 garlic cloves, pressed
a good portion of a bunch of fresh cilantro, finely chopped
a handful of chopped pistachio nuts
a dollop of pistachio oil
salt to taste

Combine all the ingredients in the food processor or mortar and pestle until you have a smoothish paste

The Second Incarnation: Dressing

Add tahini paste, the juice of one lemon and water to already made garnish (I added more garlic, but it’s definitely a personal taste thing)

The Salad

Slow roast 2 sweet potatoes with olive oil, sage, rosemary, salt and whole peppercorns at 150 degrees Centigrade for about an hour and a quarter (or until soft and slightly caramelized).

Lightly steam a bunch of spinach until slightly wilted. Chop up roughly

Mix the salad with the Dressing
Serve with chickpea flatbread or as a side dish.

The Wedding -- Part 2 of ???

2008-10-14T13:50:00.001+01:00

How innocent we were back then, last month, before the day arrived. We were full of perfect plans and plans for the perfect day, full of visions of everything going perfectly and plans to remind ourselves and each other to breathe when it didn’t.

Somebody told me that at some point I’d stop hoping nothing would go wrong… that there would come a moment when I would start to enjoy…

“But I’m enjoying already!” I said, through clenched teeth.

I didn’t sleep much before the wedding. In that way, I take after my grandmother. There we were, roaming the halls, the Jewish Queen and Princess of the night, the gears in our minds clicking with what ifs and need tos and how abouts. By the time D woke up every morning, my To Do list had usually grown, not shrunk. Still, I maintained, it was all good, all fun, all for the best day of my life.

At 6 a.m. on the morning of September 15th, six days before my wedding, I quietly unlocked the door to my mother’s apartment. She too was up, sipping her instant coffee, reading the paper, stroking the cat. Lola, my mother’s sinewy, grey cat must have known that D’s parents needed to sleep as, for once, she was quiet.

They had arrived in the middle of the night at Ben Gurion airport and had come straight to Haifa, to my mother’s apartment where we were to spend the next couple of days together.

“I’m going to the beach,” I whispered, “would you like to come?”
My mother shook her head, “No, I should be here when The Parents wake up.”

She had been fretting over their arrival for days. What did The Parents like for breakfast? What would The Parents think of Lola? Which part of Haifa would be best to show The Parents?

The Parents had finally arrived and were sleeping just on the other side of the bedroom door. I knew S, The Mother, would probably be up momentarily and could understand why my mother wanted to hang around.

I drove down to the beach enjoying the pre-rush-hour serenity, a rarity in Israel. The waves were quite high that day, the sky white as the sun was still busy setting somewhere else. Along the water, people were jogging, walking their dogs, talking loudly down their cellphones.
“Motti! I told you!” one large woman hollered, her bulges rolling around as she strode purposefully along, “I can’t right now, I’m relaxing!” She was dressed for the gym, walking as if on Wall Street, her voice at the same pitch and tone as someone watching the markets crash from the floor of the stock exchange.
I smiled: Israel.

Three hours later, I returned home smelling of seaweed and carrying one hundred and ten stones on which we would write our guests’ names later on that day – me, my Mum and my future sister-in-law, Silv, who is mad-talented at the arts and crafts thing.

My mother opened the door and burst out laughing. Behind her, D’s mother looked worried. I was covered in a layer of sand, my shorts were falling down, my t-shirt was drooping off one shoulder as I dragged one of those huge blue IKEA bags – the ones with the lifetime guarantee, mostly because they are so toxic that they will probably outlast humankind – filled with the rocks I had scrounged at the beach.

In addition, I was also carrying a large, rotting oar. Under a layer of seawater and algae, the rusting screws and attachments sticking out, it was a beautiful find that would, in my opinion, fit perfectly on my mother’s terrace, next to her plants and copper pots.

We are foragers, my family and I, and everything from our friends – picked up in restaurants or airplanes -- to our homes reflect this. My mother’s coffee table is a huge slab of tree trunk found by my grandfather years ago; ours – D’s and mine – is an old trunk a friend pulled out of a landfill in New Jersey. The artwork on our walls is a mixture of gifts and treasures acquired when others no longer saw a need for them. I remember my first bicycle: it was an olive green banana-seated rusty old thing bought for a quarter at a garage sale in a suburb of Chicago. Talk about aspirational – I was still riding a tricycle at the time! I remember the day that I was finally able to touch the pedals with my feet. What a day that was… And now here I was, getting ready to be a bride.

First I would need a shower.

I had had to make two trips for the stones and though I had barely slowed my pace walking by the oar the first time around, I hadn’t been able to resist twice. As I dragged the bag of rocks with one hand, the oar with the other, my cellphone had started to vibrate in the back pocket. I can never resist my cellphone – or any other phone really: what if it’s something important? Even in other people’s houses, I have to remind myself that no matter what, agents and publishers and even my family do not have the number, that they can call me on my mobile if they want to offer me a book deal. Which is why when my back pocket vibrated that morning, I dropped the oar and wrangled the receiver to my ear as quickly as possible.

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

“Hello?”

I recognized PB of PB&J fame (well, really, it’s PB&SB, but I prefer J as they are as mythical a couple as my favourite childhood breakfast).

“PB!” I laughed at the timing of his phone call.

“It’s PB,” he said at the same time, “greetings from Ojai!”

“What time is it there?”

“Oh, I don’t know, the middle of the night … We’re leaving in the morning and hadn’t heard from you. We wanted to find out how to get to Jerusalem from the airport.”

My cousin had arrived from Canada a couple of days before. I would be seeing D’s parents in a few minutes. I had spoken to other friends who were already in Jerusalem. Still, hearing PB’s chipper charms oozing from California to Haifa made it suddenly real. They were wondering how they were going to get to Jerusalem, where they were going to sleep… because they were on their way to our wedding…

“I was going to surprise you,” I admitted, feeling stupid for having forgotten to email them some false information to throw them off the trail or at least put their minds at ease, “I’ll be at the airport.”

Half an hour later, I walked into my mother’s flat carrying the rotting oar and one-hundred-and-ten stones but unlike when I had left at 6:15 that morning, I was excited rather than stressed, filled with exuberance not anxiety for the days to come.

We were so innocent back then, a month ago, when I still thought it was “just a piece of paper.”

We wrote vows to each other and fretted over our speeches.

We walked people around the Old City of Jerusalem and climbed Massada at sunrise. We spread mud on each other’s faces at the Dead Sea, and listened to the chanting of the Muezzin. We huddled with the rest of the masses making their way out of the Damascus Gate, and sipped fresh mint tea in the garden of the American Colony Hotel. We welcomed friends and family from the UK, from the US, from Canada, from Belgium, from Modi’in and Tel Aviv, from Switzerland. We answered questions about the history of Jerusalem and our history as a couple, we introduced people whom we would have wanted to have in the same room on many occasions and watched them click into easy conversations as if they had known each other for as long as we had known them – years or generations.

And D and I stood back every few hours, holding hands and watching it all unfold without really realizing what was happening, what was about to happen, what had been set in motion.

Then, suddenly, there was no time… for anything.

From the back of the minibus, my eyes filled with tears when the first sign appeared: “To David and Gabriela’s wedding”. My aunt had promised to put them up a few days earlier upon hearing what they meant to me. Still, seeing “To Michal and Jonathan’s wedding” is very different from seeing my own name in the bride’s slot. For the first time, I understood why magazines pushed so vehemently for waterproof mascara.

Throughout Israel poles and trees bear signs to people’s weddings. They hang there, weeks after the event, fading in the sun, dripping with rain, until they fall off, making way for new signs, new celebrations. In a country so filled with sadness, the signs to people’s weddings are a testimony to the human desire for happiness, under any circumstance.

“May we meet on happy occasions” people say, “Nitrae Besmachot”

The reality of seeing those signs pointing to MY wedding, in English, in Hebrew, with my Tia from Canada and my mother and my friend DBK from London sitting next to me – was starting to sink in when I sat upright so quickly I hit my head knocking my perfectly-done hair loose: with all of the preparations, the photographs, the laughter, the mediation, the emotions of that morning… I had forgotten my vows.

I looked up at the roof of the car and shook my head. Oh the irony… I knew D would love it, savour it, like a bite of chocolate ice cream that lasts for months instead of seconds, or the perfect espresso, imbibed at a hole-in-the-wall in Italy but superb enough to recall to one’s fiancée years later.

Fresh from a week of ups, downs and many, many sideways, I had finished my vows that morning having added a final message to my soon-to-be husband:
After an emotionally raw but honest admission that “I love the way you look at me sometimes, with more love than I thought existed. Even when my heart feels cold and closed off, there is always a sliver of love, like the crack of light seeping out from under a tightly shut door. I am reminded that there is someone there behind the pain and sadness, that I am capable of feeling the way I do for you. You have taught me to love imperfection, because you love me despite all of mine.”
I had deliberately followed it up with “You’ll probably forget all of this as you forget most things, but if there is one thing that I would like you to remember, it is that I promise to work every day of our life together to accept you like you accept me, to forgive your foibles and idiosyncracies like you forgive mine, to forgive both of us, to love you as best I can and to make you feel loved.”

I did not expect so many tears – his – or so many things forgotten – mine. Who knew that we would be exchanging roles that day, showing each other our most vulnerable sides – in public! – and that those little things would make the larger reality of our marriage mean so much more.

When we were theorizing about how we wanted our ceremony to play out, sitting on the couch in our living room in London, the heating blasting, the rain pelting down in the middle of summer, we considered everything from the poles that would hold up the huppah to the music our friend ITB would play. We talked about stones for place-holders and dessert. We wondered whether the jeep would get people up in time, whether everyone would be able to walk to the ceremony all right, and when it all needed to happen in order for us to make sunset.

Never, not once, did we consider what we would do if I forgot anything.

Because I don’t forget things.

Ever.

In the well-oiled mechanism of our partnership, that’s D’s job.

My job is then to sigh as if he has just deposited the entire scope of mother-earth on my shoulders, which I predictably follow-up with a shaking of the head in an “I-Knew-It” fashion. Depending on my mood, I either let him have it or I laugh it off, which is when D picks up the ball and looks either relieved or afraid, frustrated or defensive or glad.

Those are our jobs; mine and his. And that was what I was signing up for, wasn’t it?

If there was ever a moment to realize that partnership, marriage, love is about change and growth, about accepting that we will never know the other person fully, and about enjoying those new nooks and crannies – that was it.

I don’t think I would have been as ready to commit myself to D at any other point in time as I was that afternoon. I have never loved him as much as I did then, nor have I been able to laugh at myself as easily as I did realizing how many things I was supposed to do that I hadn’t. Because I forgot. And it didn’t matter. It didn’t make me any of the things I would usually have called myself -- stupid, useless, etc. -- because those are the little things that will make our chuppah memorable – for us and everyone else. I forgot my vows, I said “shit” under the chuppah – twice.

And still, it was the best day of my life… for so many reasons…. When do you stop talking about something that didn’t feel real and was so incredible that people are still discussing it almost a month later?

All I can say is I don’t know but I’m not done yet…

The Wedding – Part 1 of ???

2008-10-13T12:21:00.003+01:00

This is part 1 of I don’t know how many. Because when do you stop talking about something that didn’t feel real and was so incredible that people are still discussing it almost a month later?

Everyone had said it would be the best day of my life. Then again, “everyone” say a lot of things… I don’t necessarily believe “everyone” anymore. Not usually anyway… What do they know about me?

But once in a while an event or a moment comes along that stretches across the divide of age, of time, of location, of pronouncements and predicaments. I guess wedding days, for the most part, fall into that category. At least that’s what everyone says.

It was, far, far beyond any runner-up, the best day of my life. And looking at the pictures, I have to remind myself that that beautiful girl in the white dress, the gorgeous woman glowing, beaming, overflowing with confidence and joy – is the same person who usually focuses on her double chin and the protruding belly -- me.

There were no spilt ends that day, no bloat, no wrong foods. From the hair that wouldn’t stay up, to the bus that got lost, to the forgotten vows – it was all perfect.

And now comes the tricky task of talking about it, of putting it down in words that are only mine, without the backup of others’ experiences, which is why I have found it so difficult to get anything down at all…

Did it happen? Really?

Why did it end?

What now?

I want to call everyone who was there and get each and every person to talk me through it minute by minute, in slo-mo so I can relive the whole thing again

and again

and again

Ninety-nine times over…

D and I knew, from when we first started planning the wedding, that we didn’t want our night to have a set end-time. We wanted it to be a night unlike any other – Passover on crack, a night that would go on, with no rules, no “right” no “wrong”, only us and the one word that we kept bringing up throughout the planning: fun.

We didn’t want to get stuck fiddling with room keys at two a.m., or waking up in the same bed we had that morning. So we didn’t.

At nine the next morning, we said goodbye to the last guests.

But I’m getting ahead of myself… Because there are so many strands to this wedding, so many details to mention, to paint into the bigger picture, that it is easy to forget the bottom line: we are now married, D and I, and rather happily at that.

We keep staring at each other and sappily slurring “we’re married” – not because we’re drunk, but the words feel sticky, unused, as if they were just taken out of the box, or there is caramel in our mouths, or peanut butter. It doesn’t feel natural yet. Nor does “my husband” that I find myself saying as often as I possibly can. I still can’t say it without laughing. Only recently did I get over the hysterics involved in “my fiancé”.

So here’s part 1 of many, or few, part 1 of the best day of my life, part 1 of whatever I can remember of that day, that week, that never-ending stream of people I love appearing and hugging me and wishing me well.

Much of the ceremony is a blur, but D staring into my eyes and urging me to remember that moment, remains clear. Because now that we’re back in the greyness of London, now that everyone has returned to their lives, I want it all back, and so I close my eyes and breathe in the air of the Judean Hills, the sun setting, and a friend’s perfume that reminds me that people have come from far away to celebrate with us.

What a day. What a week. What a life. I’m a wife.

((sorry… :-))

http://www.documentographer.com/GabrielaDavid

The Final Countdown

2008-09-13T19:07:00.002+01:00

The guests have started trickling in; refreshing like raindrops after a hot, humid summer. Planning the wedding had taken over every corner of my life. At first it was just a few little things here and there: a question about time of day – did we want the ceremony at sunset or afterwards, a question about alcohol – only wine or full bar, what kind of music we would play, etc. But soon enough, it took over, seeping into even my most private corners, the place from where I write, my sleep. I have been dreaming of labyrinths. At times, the hedges are beautiful, in full bloom, with brightly coloured flowers imparting their comforting scent. Other nights are filled with long corridors, cold stone hallways that lead nowhere.

I arrived a few days early to be with my mother, my grandmother, my family. We have talked until I feel my head has been turned upside down and emptied of thoughts. Still, the dreams come.
I am ready now to get married.

People want to know why it took so long, why we planned it for close to a year-and-a-half. Besides the obvious logistical reasons such as our difficulty deciding the location of the wedding, I have realized in all of this that it is so much more.
I couldn’t have committed myself to D a year ago, or even six months ago the way I feel ready to today. We have gone through a process, him and I, separately and together, of becoming ready for this next step.

While I questioned and doubted, people kept telling me that it shouldn’t be such a big deal, that in the worst case we could get a divorce. And while that is true, that is not the way I want to enter a marriage – thinking of my out. Of course I am lucky to be taking this step when I am. Unlike in the past, I am no longer seen as “belonging” to my husband, I don’t have to give up anything to be with D, nor am I expected to be a glorified servant. I am lucky in that sense, and yet for the past few months, I wrestled with a feeling of being trapped. Why could I not get away from that feeling of the noose tightening around my neck when I thought about the wedding?

I wanted to be in Israel, in Thailand, in India, in New York. Anywhere but sitting at the dining table, across from my future husband talking about names of tables and who we would ask to make a speech.

I ran away a few times… all the way to Queen’s Park… and back … the sweat trickling down my back both from stress as well as the physical effort of running for an hour. The doctor told me not to, that the pounding on the pavement was not the right thing for me to do. I didn’t stop. The same person also told me to stick to hot foods, that I needed nourishment because of the cold weather in London as well as my stress levels that were depleting me of nutrients. So I ate berries and fresh coconut, cold nut milk and salads.

It was almost as if I wanted to sabotage it all – my body, my relationship, my wedding, my life.

“I just want to write,” I told D, as if he could make me sit down and do it. “What are we doing?” I asked him. He didn’t know either. All he could tell me was that to him it felt right.

I talked to whomever would listen, asking for answers that nobody could give me. I stayed up all night a few times, and couldn’t sleep all day. I felt like a zombie, the cotton candy in my head making the questions even more difficult to tackle. And D, as always, held my hand, kissed my cheek, my lips, and told me he loved me. At three o’clock in the morning, at five in the evening.

He was waiting until the storm passed. Unlike me, he knew it would.

There is nothing quite like the clarity I get after one of those dark periods. After a day, a week, a month of life being too much, of the questions and the doubts, the reproach, the self-criticism taking over like a black magic cloak that covers my entire life; arriving into the light at the end of the tunnel is pure bliss.

Gratitude is a word used so often these days in the New-Age saturated world. What I’ve realized is that there’s a reason for this because without gratitude, we just keep moving, slowly losing our ability to feel as we make our way from one thing to the next like robots.

The guests have started arriving and I look at D with new eyes every day as we take a moment every evening to light a candle and remember that this time isn’t about chicken or fish, it isn’t about who’s coming and who can’t make it. This time is about that moment, the one that has taken the least planning in comparison to everything surrounding it, the moment that belongs to just him and me. When I can say to him that I choose to be with him. Because after all that, after the questions, the travel, the runs around the block and half-way around the world, that is my conclusion – not out of fear or because it’s easier, not because it’s what other people think should be done, but rather because it is what I want.

The guests are arriving to see a moment of honesty between two people, to get a small window into our days when nobody else is around, when I might get annoyed that he hasn’t washed up, and he might get frustrated that I haven’t left the house in a week and look like it. It is a private moment that we have chosen to share, and now that I have faced my stage fright and remembered what the actual point of all of this is… I can’t wait!!!

Many demons have bitten the dust in the past few months, after they rose up to haunt me one more time. Many dreams have been let go of, altered, mourned as I chose the path that I have decided to travel. Many others have appeared and been resurrected as the reality of saying “I do” (or whatever words we choose to use) has taken on all sorts of shapes and perspectives.

A week from today, D and I will get married on top of a mountain, at sunset. It seems like such a grown-up thing to do; and I guess I had to grow up in order to be able to really grasp what it means to me.

People have emailed and called to tell me they love the invites, the program, the opportunity to come to Israel. Friends have sent their regrets, menus have been changed, my dress has made me feel more wonderful and feminine than ever before, and then more naked and awkward that I thought was possible. D and I have rowed and made up, and then rowed again. We found a happy medium by watching as many West Wing episodes as possible to distract ourselves in the past couple of months and we have regretted having to turn the television off one more than one occasion when returning to the reality of our lives was not our first choice. We have lost weight, gained weight, lifted more seventeenth-century Russian strength training apparatuses than I knew existed. We have drank ourselves into oblivion and we have danced around with excitement. One time, we even broke up. Then we went for a long walk, picked blackberries and continued to plan the wedding. D got pneumonia and some weird thing on his eyelid. I got rashes, cold feet and went on food binges. We’ve spent a good few hours on the phone, or texting one another our deepest doubts, fears and dreams… and now here we are…

D arrived yesterday.

It was like a homecoming or sorts.

In some ways, the wedding feels further away now that we’re in Israel than it did from London. In other ways, it feels closer.

I’m no longer scared.

I don’t sleep. Last night, I watched D’s chest, his closed eyes, as he lay next to me. Technically he’s my future husband although in our hearts and minds, having made the trajectory we have in the past few months, in many ways I feel we’re already married. The day, a week from today, is going to be the public declaration, the culmination of what we have lived through in private for weeks and months as we prepared and questioned, compared and decided.

The guests are trickling in, as diverse and amazing as the pieces of material they sent to create the chuppah we will marry under. I couldn’t cry when I saw it, I was too overwhelmed. Other people overwhelm me, D reminds me to breathe. Other people are happy to see me laughing, D is happy to see me regardless of how I’m feeling.

I have found gratitude. And after four years of saying it, of living it, I have found love. It is the simplest of words. It has been bastardized and overused, like the word “peace” in the Middle East. I have said it so many times before, but I never really knew what it meant. I do now… and I’m ready… Regardless of what happens if, when and how… I’m ready now… finally.

So here I go, stumbling and mumbling, and hopefully with some grace… See you on the other side…

Sorry it's been a while... I'm working on it...

2008-08-28T00:53:00.002+01:00

Sweet and Sour Nostalgia

2008-08-09T12:22:00.004+01:00

Jerusalem, May 2008, 10:45 p.m.

My good friend from childhood and I were walking around the deserted Mahane Yehuda market in search of cashews – what I usually crave when I have too much alcohol and not enough sustenance in my system.
“By the way,” he said a propos of nothing, “I’ve been reading your blog. It’s not bad. Then again, you’ve always been pretty good with the prose.”
He paused for a few steps as I drunkenly interrogated a shopkeeper about the pretty sad-looking nuts we’d found.
“They’re the best!” the man assured me, his voice echoing off the empty stalls, “I take them home to my own family! It’s because they use so much salt!” He licked his lips.
I thanked him and we continued our search.

“This is just my opinion, but what’s with the recipes?” my friend continued as if he hadn’t stopped talking (he does that – sometimes with years in between sentences).
He is the first person to whom I ever admitted my secret dream to become a writer. He used to be the only person I would show my sad love poems to (sad in many more senses than the obvious emotional one), my half-finished short stories. My childhood friend and I, we would share ideas, joints, hallucinations and dreams of seeing our names on the spines of our future novels, volumes of poetry, gallery exhibits.

Throughout high school, I called him my brother, and we saw each other naked way beyond the age when it would have been acceptable (I feel the need to point out that this has always remained a platonic friendship). Now here he was, age thirty-two, not understanding the superlative importance of the recipes in my blog -- technically the original point of The Point of This Being.

What did that mean in terms of our friendship?

That night, I got pretty drunk – a combination of disappointment and the absence of palatable cashew nuts; but the next morning, my disappointment had little to do with the throbbing in head.

It’s true: our lives had diverged. We’d moved away, from the place we grew up in, from each other. Over the years, the words, “you haven’t changed” became a bridge between us, a way of hoping to recuperate some of our old friendship, reconnect as we did as children, smoking on the roof of his garage or watching Fawlty Towers giddy with munchies, yelling “Fire! Fire!” with John Cleese like a sing-along.

As idealistic adolescents, we’d lament our fate, my friend and I. We didn’t want to be asking all those questions, probe so deeply into our souls or each other’s.

These days, we talk about pills – vitamins, supplements – books we still haven’t written. We discuss “Options” and “Possibilities”, the grown-up replacements for what we once called dreams.

Thankfully some things really haven’t changed: my friend still doggedly pursues me with “have you read my poems?” And I, still lazy, disorganized, overwhelmed by my To Do list, I still honestly admit that no, I have not.

However, those long-standing consistencies are few.

Time seems to elapse quicker than it did when my days were divided into those sleep-inducing fifty-minute blocks of English, Math, Geography, etc. In high school, every class felt like a lifetime wasted. I could have been learning guitar instead of square roots (that’s what calculators are for), and when would I EVER need to recite Shakespeare’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” again?! (bizarrely often, as it turns out)

Last week, it took me an hour and a half to call the plumber.

I used to think I’d raise my kids with my closest friends around. I imagined children as comfortable in their own parents’ houses as with their aunties and uncles. I wonder now who those surrogates would be?

“You’re wrong! I HAVE changed!” I want to yell it, prove it in ways that nobody will be able to argue with. I’m a different person from that pudgy, insecure teenager who wore tents for t-shirts and almost had to have her Doc Martins surgically removed.

I sit across from my old friends, and some newer ones, watching our conversations drift off into the uncomfortable silences that inevitably quell the fire of our original excitement at seeing one another again. I watch us try to restart them, one by one – conversations, connections, commonalities – like an old car that makes a hill look like a mountain, and I wonder when those damning words will pop up.

“You haven’t changed.”

Four words. They sound so innocent and yet they have the power to pull me backwards against my will. It’s much worse than a memory. Memories are in the past. These words are very much in the present: as if all those questions I found more questions to, as if all that soul searching, all those journals filled and love stories lived had never taken place; as if every good time, every bad surprise has failed to leave even the faintest of marks.

It’s true: the oversized t-shirts have shrunk to better-fitting outfits, and these days I’ll even wear heels from time to time. I mostly feel like I’m a different person although I must admit that from time to time I do revert to being that aggressive, irreverent teenager. But besides the wrapping, what has changed inside?

“Look!” I want to open up my brain, my heart cavity, my lungs, my belly, show them the images I carry around with me, all the events that have helped shape who I have become since our last real conversation.

I’ll point to that place at the back of my liver, the spot reserved for the learning experiences -- the bad ones -- “This is the first job I had after college.”
“And over here” I’ll say “right under my throat, here’s the first guy I slept with who really believed in me.” He’s the one who told me I should only marry someone who will appreciate me.

The emails and cards keep pouring in with friends excitedly planning their trip to Israel to be with us on September twentieth while others apologetically decline. Everyone keeps saying that we shouldn’t forget what it’s really about: him and I. And in that sense, D and I are really working our way to new levels of intimacy and loving as we work together to put together our wedding.

I have to admit though, that while we have had some incredible surprises – people who have gone to extreme lengths to be able to celebrate with us in person – others have been nothing short of complete disappointments.

Some people should have, in my mind, responded differently. These are the friends whose title in my life may have become vague with time, like an old, yellowed letter from a past relationship, friends who may have a different view of our friendship than I do, friends who may not be friends other than because we were, once upon a time. Though the markings of their presence may not be as instantly visible on the map of my being, selfishly, a part of me feels they should be the first ones there, at this next rite of passage, their soft, familiar touch guiding me to this next stage I am choosing to enter.

But maybe they’re more correct than I would like to admit, those cursed words. Maybe I am the one who has closed my eyes to the inevitable evolution – mine, my friends’. While I claim so proudly to have moved on, maybe I am the one who is stuck in the desire to claim that nothing has changed between us when so much clearly has.

By sending their regrets, those people are telling me that they have changed, that our friendship is no longer what it used to be, that maybe I need to open my eyes to the divergence of our paths.

In some cases, it doesn’t matter. Some friends remain, sinking into sporadic afternoons drinking tea, or evenings sharing a bottle of wine – because we find a new common language or because we both enjoy that jaunt into our common history.

They could still call me in the middle of the night if they had an emergency, those friends, whether they are coming to my wedding or not. And I guess, in a way, that’s what makes us friends – even if we don’t have much to say to one another, even if we more often than not find excuses not to get together, even if they sent an apologetic email when I was expecting a delirious congratulatory one. We are friends, no commitment ceremony necessary.

“I love to cook,” I told my friend, “in fact I’m working on a cookbook.”
“Really,” he said, shrugging, “cool…”
The conversation about food was obviously over.
We had started walking towards the bar where D and some others were waiting.
“Hey,” my friend glanced over at me. I knew what was coming… “Have you read my poems?”

---

Sometimes a first impression of someone says nothing about who they are, or what role they end up playing in your life. Sometimes people you think are friends turn out not to be while sometimes people we distrust end up being the most loyal.

Sometimes ingredients one wouldn’t naturally pair work perfectly together. Who would have thought peanut butter and jelly would work? Or chocolate and mint?

Twice in the past month, I have randomly thought up a combination of ingredients that sounded incredibly far-fetched; and both times I have decided to follow my instincts and see where they lead. The results have been tremendous.

The first was a blueberry and green onion sauce which D and I drizzled over tuna tataki. The story is quite sweet: I was on the bus on my way home when D called.
“Where are you?” he demanded in very uncharacteristic shortness.
“I’m on the bus.” I retorted snarkily.
“Come home quickly, sweetheart, I’ve chopped off the tip of my finger.”
The bus inched its way through London’s rush hour.
Finally, I arrived home to what looked like a murder scene. There was blood everywhere, even in my stash of tampons where D had apparently been looking for a plaster. The poor man had bled his way through the kitchen and the bathroom looking and by the time I came home he was trying to cut strips of tape left-handed. He had been mandolining courgettes (zucchini) and apparently his writer’s mind had wandered off to some far-off place until he’d felt his pointer-finger connect with the blade. Now that I knew he was no longer in mortal danger, I had to laugh: every day, I prepare two to three meals and the one time D decides to cook, he lobs off his finger. I took over, bandaged him up, cleaned up the puddles and set out to make the dinner he had originally planned. As he sat holding his finger in the air, annoyingly and lovingly instructing me on how to pestle the spices and the oven temperature, I added my own ideas and ingredients.

The tuna was quickly covered in well-pounded cumin and fennel seeds, what was left of the mandolined courgettes were baking away. Somehow, we thought up a blueberry and green onion sauce. Slightly tart, a little sweet and a wonderful counterbalance to the saltiness of the tuna, this sauce is quick, easy and absolutely delicious.

Blueberries (about one punnet)
Two or three green onions the green bit chopped fine
Cumin seeds, just a pinch
A dash of cayenne
A spoonful of date syrup (to taste)
Grated ginger

Mix the ingredients in a pot
Add enough water that it will all melt into a nice saucy-like consistency.

Bring to a boil. Once boiling, turn down the heat to as low as possible and allow to cook until the blueberries are soft and the green onion all but disappears. I left it on there for about twenty minutes if not a little more). By the time the tuna is done, the sauce should be warm and ready.

D pronounced it my best meal ever.

Until last Thursday…

I must admit that I was very proud of myself for having come up with such an astonishing idea – and one that worked! I kept bringing it up to D, who rolled his eyes appreciatively and, I’m sure, hoped I would “outdo myself” soon just so I would stop talking about the damned blueberries.

Then, last Thursday, I woke up in the morning with a very specific craving: I wanted shrimp with fresh basil and grilled peaches.

So that night, we grilled shrimp with fresh basil and peaches. Try it, it’ll blow you away!

Ingredients:
Fresh shrimp, peeled and veins removed
Fresh basil, finely chopped.
peaches, sliced
olive oil
salt to taste

mix the ingredients together and let marinate for a little while.

In the mean time, prepare the rest of the meal. We had a leafy green salad and mint guacamole.

Mint Guacamole:
Avocado
Salt and pepper
Fresh mint
Garlic
Lemon juice

Mash up the avocados
Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste, mix very very well.
Add the garlic, minced or chopped as fine as humanly possible.
Chop the mint as finely as the garlic and mix and mash until your hand feels it’s about to fall off.

Once the rest is ready, grill the shrimp and peaches. We don’t have an outdoor grill, so we use a Le Creuset pan grill, which worked brilliantly.

The result was sweet, savoury, crunchy, nourishing, refreshing and, more than anything, just a lot of fun. It’s a dish that tastes like laughter, and with it’s vibrant greens and oranges, it looks like it too.

The Weight of Memory

2008-07-27T23:26:00.004+01:00

I was born into a tiny Jewish community of less than one hundred families who all made their way from Europe to El Salvador in the first half of the twentieth century. My actual blood ties are few, but so many people have known me since I was born, have known my grandmother since she arrived in El Salvador from England in 1946, that blood ties have little, if anything, to do with my concept of family.

They tell me I was the first grandchild. Of course that is my grandmother’s generation. There were plenty of children born into the Jewish community before me, even as little as a couple of years, whose parents were the “middle-generation” – the ones born after the war whose ages cut right between my parents’ and grandparents’. But apparently I was the first of the second generation to be born in El Salvador, the first grandchild born into the group who had met in the thirties and forties.

There were those who spent World War II in El Salvador. Having attempted to get whomever they could out of Europe, they lived in the tropical sunshine, working hard and yet still hungry for news of their families “back home.” Then there was the wave that came after the war: when the Salvadoran, Jewish bachelors scoured Europe and Palestine for Jewish wives whom they then brought back from the ruins of war to a life with chauffeurs and maids and strange foods that sounded a lot like bodily functions.

When my grandfather arrived, young and ambitious, the group of Jewish people his age told him he was lacking one very important skill: he didn’t know how to dance. Though he had been a cook in the US army, though he spoke German, Czech and English and was learning Spanish, though he had gainful employment and buckets of determination, it would not be enough to find a suitable bride. So DS, a famously curvaceous woman who remained a friend until she died, taught my grandfather how to dance.

Years later, my grandparents needed little more than the first few notes of a good song -- light-footed and elegant, they enjoyed all kinds of music. My grandfather was a natural. He loved to dance and had found an enthusiastic partner in his young bride. It was in these little things that they recaptured all the fun they had missed during the war years. My grandfather’s hand strongly cupping my grandmother’s back, my grandmother tenderly holding on to his shoulder; they moved as if they had always known each other and the steps they would take as they drifted and twirled together, in tune with the music.

They would go to the movies back then. The lucky ones got to sit up top, on the balcony. If you got stuck down below, you would be pelted with garbage from above – shells of seeds, cigarette ash and candy wrappers rained down like thick drops, hindering the view of the film as you picked it out of your hair and shook yourself clean every few minutes.

After they married, my grandmother decided she would learn how to drive. Clinging to her shiny new licence, she told my great-grandmother that she was going to drive her home. They trooped into the garage, my grandmother turned the key in the ignition and promptly drove into the wall. The next day, my grandfather hired a chauffeur.

A few years ago, I had lunch at the house of one of my grandmothers’ best friends in Haifa. She had cooked something delicious, rich and very Ashkenazi tasting. Though I can’t remember what it was, I do recall the familiar taste, the comfort that I felt. When I complimented the chef, her response was “yes, it is wonderful isn’t it?”
Accustomed to more modesty, I replied “if you do say so yourself.”
My grandmother’s friend laughed and told me that she had learned to compliment her own cooking from my grandmother: “your grandmother is right,” she said, “What’s wrong with saying I like something if I do. Even if I made it! Who will compliment my cooking if I don’t?”

It is the generation that was forced to grow up in unimaginable situations, the generation that were adults before they had time to grasp that they were children. Nothing was explained, my grandmother has said on more than one occasion, things just were what they were. One moment you had a mother and a father, you had school and friends. The next your parents had been taken away and you were on a train heading somewhere unknown.

In my grandmother’s case, it was England. Many others were not so lucky.

About ten years ago, with friends of my grandparents, I watched Spielberg’s “The Last Days”, a documentary about the Jews of Hungary. This couple are part of my extended family even though they didn’t end up in El Salvador. They lived in Nicaragua. Over the years, I have noticed the tattoos on their arms, the row of numbers, the unforgettable mark of Auschwitz. Today, they live in Miami Beach. At 80+, he still plays tennis; she and I love to kibbitz about the hosts of The View, a women’s morning talk show. As the documentary skipped between interviews and footage of concentration camps, my grandparents - who had been spared those horrors as both had escaped Europe in time - wept. Their friends, on the other hand, sat rigidly watching the images.
“That was my job”, the wife, my grandmother’s friend, one of my favourite people in the world, said as they showed an inmate pulling the corpses out of the gas chambers and stacking them on a wheelbarrow, “I took them away.”

In the grey luxury of the mundane, it is difficult to picture suffering, even when the victim is describing it themselves, in person, sitting half a meter away. They say we have been desensitized by violence on television and in video games, but is it possible to even grasp such a concept as torture, as starvation, as hell in London, in Miami Beach, in New York City, when it is only that: a concept?

A few weeks ago, my mother and grandmother spent ten days here in the UK. We ate lunch and then dinner in that way that sometimes tourism feels, when everything becomes a stop-gap between meals. We got drenched and enjoyed a good few days of beautiful sun. I took them around my neighbourhood and the restaurants where the manager knows my name (and dietary restrictions). They came to the first fitting of my wedding dress.

My grandmother walked up to our fifth floor apartment and then all the way back down – four times!

We took the train to Gloucestershire where we enjoyed dinner and then lunch with D’s parents, aunt and uncle and his ninety-six-year-old great aunt. It was the first meeting between our families and it went rather well.

At the lunch, a couple of friends of my grandmother’s joined us: L had come to Britain as a refugee during the war with her mother, and had become friends with my grandmother because, as my grandmother put it, “we were both poor refugee girls.” L had met and married J, an Englishman, and they still live in the same town over sixty years on. Armed with hearing aids and old notions of one another, the three talked and laughed.
“Your grandmother had all the boys after her!” L told me.
“I wasn’t such a sex-pot!” my grandmother retorted in self-defense.

She always had admirers though, I know that. That morning at breakfast, she had confessed that one of her former boyfriends had been from the town where we were staying. “I’ve forgotten his last name,” she lamented. I think part of her would have wanted to look him up, if only she could remember his name…

The night before, with mischievously upturned lips, she had declared that I should write about an old woman who comes to the Cotswolds to find her old lovers.
“Who would that be?” I asked her
“I don’t know…” she grinned, looking like she must have when the boyfriend she now couldn’t remember had given her flowers all those years before.

She confessed that L’s husband, J, had originally taken a shine to her.
“But since L was so crazy for him, naturally, I resigned,” she told us, proudly.

I take after her in so many ways. I can see my face in hers, my body has the same curves, the same penchant for amplitude that my mother’s tiny, more delicate frame does not. And we are both moody people, with an inner pendulum that swings from joy to doomsday with little rhyme, reason or warning.

Good days are great: happy, grateful, productive. On the bad days, I am alone in this cold, cruel world, just like my grandmother.

At age fourteen, I used to walk the kilometre to my private Jewish school in my grey and blue uniform. I usually lived at my mother’s and had lunch at my father’s. My biggest problems were that I felt I deserved a later curfew and that the guy I had a crush on didn’t know I existed. When she was fourteen, my grandmother arrived in the tiny English village of Sheepscombe to stay with a Quaker family who had agreed to take in a Jewish refugee from mainland Europe. She would often walk the three miles to the next village in the pitch dark of the Black-Out.

Throughout my adolescence, I lobbied to be sent away to boarding school. My grandmother was left behind in Vienna when her mother was able to obtain a visa for herself and my great-grandfather to leave the country. It was a one-way ticket out of Europe, and the only way to get her husband out of Dachau, where he had been taken after Kristalnacht.

As a result of my childhood, I spent years in therapy, talking about “what I went through.” My grandmother, on the other hand, spent years in silence. To this day, the abandoned child rears her head from time to time, in those bad moments when she is alone in the world, left behind by parents who couldn’t afford to take her with them. Though I wasn’t there with her, I carry her sadness in my DNA, in my love for her, in the way I feel some days when nothing can cheer me up. I too am the abandoned child, though I was surrounded by luxury and parents who, if anything, were too protective, too controlling -- to the point of suffocation.

The scope of destruction of the Nazis reached so much further than the concentration camps and the millions murdered. There are generations of Jews still recovering from years of persecution, from being stripped of even the most basic human rights, from property and education, from being separated from friends and loved ones, parents and siblings without a chance to say goodbye, from spending formative years in unimaginable situations – in the woods, in strange countries forced to call strangers auntie and uncle, in cellars and attics, in underground holes. The list goes on and on, each example uniquely devastating in its own way. And to think that that generation did not have Freud who himself fled Vienna under the threat of deportation.

My grandmother and her contemporaries had their childhoods cut short. They were never given the proper tools to cope with adulthood. The question of why has been asked so many times but no one has been able to come up with a satisfying answer. My generation has been oversaturated with memories and emotions kept safely pent up that are now coming to light. “Never again” they say to us, as if we would have any more control over it than they did back then.

When the head of the Jewish community of El Salvador was kidnapped and murdered in the late nineteen seventies, the Jews fled, many of them for the second and third time in their lives.

My parents ended up in Belgium. When I was in high school, one of our teachers organized an afternoon at a Flemish (state) school. They had never met Jews and we, in our microcosm, had little, if any interaction with local kids our age. It was the first time I experienced prejudice, but it wasn’t anti-Semitism. Those kids associated Jews with money, because all they knew about us was that we were diamond dealers and drove Mercedes and Porsches. And for the most part, though it was a gross generalization and stigmatization, they weren’t wrong.

Historically Jews have dealt with easily moveable goods like diamonds or money mainly because they weren’t allowed to own property or land and because they were often persecuted and forced out of their homes with no prior warning. So what came first, the stereotype or the reality of the situation?

These days, I make a joke out of it: when asked where I’m from I call myself the Wandering Jew. But really, when I’m honest, it’s not as funny as it is true. Fleeing is in my genes. It is in my DNA, it is the first thing I think of in almost any situation. I have no roots, no one place to claim as mine, and I know that deeds and contracts can become worthless in less time than it takes to sign them.

Walking with my grandmother around the picturesque English village where she came on the Kindertransport in 1939 was an incredible experience. She showed me where she’d lived, the garden with the ping pong table that still exists (though the table itself has probably been replaced many times), the shortcuts she used to take through the school that still functions as one, the way to the forest where she rode horses. In a way, even this is home to her.

When she moved to Israel last year, my grandmother was often homesick for Sheepscombe. She would dream that she was there and wake up very disappointed. Upon waking, she would keep her eyes closed for a long time, yearning to stay there for as long as possible before returning to the new insecurity of life in Israel. Israel may be the home of the Jews, but it took a while for it to become my grandmother’s.

When she lived in Sheepscombe, my grandmother was free, probably freer than she has ever been in her life. She was not yet a wife or a mother, and there was no Jewish community to dictate the correct way of doing things. She was a very conscientious young woman, with strong values and a deep moral sense of right and wrong. At that time, though she was on her own, she was rarely alone. Constantly surrounded by friends and young men, my grandmother may have had to become independent through necessity but she was definitely elegant in her strength and way of coping with the situation.

When the war ended, with the help of generous contributions from the Jewish community, she made her way to El Salvador to be reunited with her parents. But the young adolescent who had been left in Vienna had become a young woman and my grandmother refused her mother’s insistence that she be chaperoned. After all, she had survived alone for years and was old enough to take care of herself.

Later on, when the political situation became too precarious, my grandfather announced without prior warning that they were moving to the United States. My grandmother did not want to leave, but she was not given a choice. As a good wife, she was to follow her husband’s wishes.
“I don’t want to leave El Salvador with only a little suitcase like I left Czechoslovakia,” was my grandfather’s explanation.

When they arrived in Miami, my grandmother confessed that she still felt like a refugee, regardless of how much they had brought with them.
“Once a refugee, always a refugee,” she says when she tells the story.
When she arrived in Israel last year, she felt the same. Even though there had been no political turmoil, no external pressures forcing her to move, even though the decision had – for the first time in her life – been entirely hers.

As she sat, eating her fish and chips in Sheepscombe, at the same pub where she had sat so many times as a girl, my grandmother pointed to her friend L, and told me how L and her mother had fed her.
“L’s mother worked in a nursing home. She would always have food for me. It was war time. I wasn’t starving, but you were always hungry.”

My grandmother almost always eats whatever is on her plate. She will wrap up leftover cookies and pieces of cake “for later.” She is always afraid that people will give her too much and even the oldest articles of clothing in her closet are in better shape than mine after a couple of washes. These days, my grandmother no longer wears cast-offs from her wealthy cousin like she was forced to as a child. She prides herself on her Missoni tops and her Ferragamo shoes.

But even back then, L’s husband, J, remarked that he remembers my grandmother as being the best dressed of the lot. And he is not the only one.
At the orphanage where she lived before she left Vienna on the Kindertransport, she befriended Y, a girl her age who was trying to make her way to Palestine. A few months later, Y wrote to my grandmother to say that her plans had fallen through and asked whether there was anyone else in Sheepscombe who would want to take in a Jewish refugee girl. My grandmother was able to find a place for her friend. Y, who had been sleeping in abandoned train carriages and under bridges, never forgot how beautiful my grandmother looked when they met at the station.

As she sat beaming at her friends from across the table, and as she got to know D’s parents a little, I saw her, not as my grandmother or as my mother’s mother, not as a wife or a woman of a certain age; but as the girl who wasn’t afraid to walk three miles through the countryside in the pitch black, the children’s nurse whose boyfriend was shot down over Germany, the young woman who, as she pedalled through the village, probably had crazy dreams of all she was going to do in her life. She laughed with abandon and blushed with glee at the compliments and the memories. Her flirty charm came back as she entertained all of us at the table, without a thought about her usual reticence.

Before the weekend, I had entertained a somewhat romantic notion of our trip to Sheepscombe. In my head it was a symbolic gathering of the generations, as if by being there my grandmother would somehow pass me along to D in one way or another. What actually took place was, in many ways, the exact opposite. I was able to glimpse the young girl who had once lived a day-to-day existence in those very streets, unaware of the years to come, the moves, the children, the grandchildren -- because at that age, who thinks of growing older. Watching my grandmother as a young woman, I felt myself start to age in anticipation of what is to come, what I am looking forward to in my own life – children, grandchildren, moves.

Often, when my grandmother speaks about the past, she is unable to fall asleep and so I am careful about asking too much. That day, however, questions were unnecessary: it was all there on her face. The day, the sun was shining. Though we were all wearing jackets, it was mostly out of habit. We were surrounded by the lush, green English countryside and it was difficult to imagine blackouts and wartime rations. Not much has changed in the village in the past sixty plus years and for that hour and a half, my grandmother was back to being the young girl who skipped and ran along the lanes, who rented a room above the post office and bought a bicycle after she’d missed the bus to work a few times too many.

The next morning, when I asked her how she had slept, she looked at me with a wistful expression and told me she had dreamt she was walking without her cane: “I was walking so easily,” she said, “walking along without a care in the world. My legs didn’t hurt, my hip was fine, and I was just walking along so beautifully, so happily. Then suddenly I remembered my cane. I had forgotten it somewhere, and I had to get it. But I was walking so beautifully.”

It’s true, many of my memories aren’t only mine. They belong to the world around me, to my history, my community, the places I have lived; but that doesn’t mean I don’t carry them around in some way: in my love for my grandmother, my wedding invitee list that is made up of many members of the Salvadoran community, in the subjects I choose to write about, in my dreams and fears and decisions.

I guess, in the end, it’s not the memory that counts as much as what we choose to do with it.

This one's all about the food

2008-07-20T14:54:00.004+01:00

As someone who deals with dietary issues constantly and loves food passionately, I spent years planning my breakfast, lunch and dinner a day in advance. This was partly a neurotic control thing and partly because I enjoy standing in front of the refrigerator taking in the sight of what I can eat, as opposed to all that I can’t.

In the past few months, however, things have begun to change. Mostly, I've started to reeducate myself to listen to my body rather than base decisions on what I’ve read or been told is the healthy option.

Now, there are more days when the afternoon rolls around and I have to come up with something on the spur of the moment -- a whole new creative challenge, and one that hasn’t always been an easy transition. The first few weeks, I would stand in front of the open refrigerator and eat anything and everything I could. Starting with a finger of almond butter, I would then cut up half an apple and follow that up with a sip of rice milk. Then I might have a cracker or a swig of something else. Savory bites would be offset by sweet ones, and by the time I closed the refrigerator, I would feel ill, not sated. It was mindless eating, guided by my eyes rather than my body.

Due to diet, weight and digestive issues, I hadn’t taken my body into account for so long that I had forgotten how to do so.

The transitions have been… well, interesting. Some days, I feel like I live from meal to meal. I spend those days looking for the magic food that will make me feel satisfied only to later admit to myself that it is not about what I ingest. I get hungry, but often it isn’t for food. The trick is to spot the difference.

This morning, D and I were so busy dealing with wedding stuff that by the time we remembered we were hungry, it was almost three and we were ravenous – a tricky one for me as that is when I tend to stand in front of the refrigerator and shove anything and everything down my throat.

Today, however, is two months exactly until we get married. Two months, or nine weeks, or sixty-two days is all we’ve got. I no longer have the luxury of being able to stuff my face and decide I’ll have a better food day tomorrow.

It’s time to get creative.

I sent D down to the store with two simple directives: find a protein of your choice and pick up whatever fresh herbs are in stock.

In the mean time, I set about putting together a salad.

When I was first dealing with all of my digestive issues, one health care person told me to eat only raw food. A few months later, someone else suggested I stick to cooked food. Salads, they said, were too much for my sensitive system.

Salad, raw foods were taken off the ever-shrinking list of allowed foods and added those I was supposed to stay away from. The NO list, at one point, included fruit, gluten, dairy, sugar, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines), funghi, nuts, vinegar – it seemed to be getting longer every day.

Some people talk about illness as being a gift, the reason they started down a new path in life. As the number of foods that I was avoiding grew, it became more and more difficult for me to see my paltry diet as anything other than punishment. Then there were the questions and the constant comments ("Oh, you poor thing!" well-meaning friends would say, "Must be hard to watch others enjoying their food," a waiter in LA told me once). To add geographical injury to national insult, in the UK there is less food available to me, my American accent usually makes things worse as restaurants often take my questions as cultural insults. LA may not be my favorite place on earth, but it is a haven for anyone with culinary challenges. When you’re used to catering to anorexic starlets, I’m sure people like me are a piece of gluten-free, agave-sweetened cake.

Back in Albion, however, I have been, more often than not, one grumpy, picky foodie.

Funnily, as any New Age sage will tell you, my savior finally arrived in the form of … well, me. The cycle of life keeps turning and as I've started to learn more about food and nutrition (remember that whole first step in a new direction thing?), I’ve also gained more confidence in my own instincts. As a result, I have started reintroducing foods as well as making my own versions of things I really miss. Berries and other lovely fruits, cookies (gluten free), milk (made out of nuts or seeds), ice cream, bread. I've started enjoying wine again. Even the odd French-fry (or two, or three, or ... yeah, it's hard to stop when it's been a while) has recently been known to pass my lips.

Yesterday I was talking to a new friend who also loves to cook. She was sharing with me her sadness at not being able to ever know the tastes of certain things due to her own set of dietary restrictions.
“I will never know what a real steak-au-poivre is,” she told me.
I did my best to convince her with the same arguments I use to make myself feel better, but I know what she’s talking about. Yes, my meat is always more tender because chefs can’t hide it under a layer of sauce, and yes, I can make my own versions of almost anything. But can rice bread and almond butter really replace fresh, crusty bread and perfectly aged blue cheese drizzled with wine reduction and lightly roasted walnuts? Can gram flour muffins dipped in the loveliest of soups make up for the lack of grated parmesan?

D and I returned last night from celebrating his birthday in Paris. The Eurostar is by far my favorite part of being back in Europe. In less than three hours, you can be sipping un petit Pinot on the Rive Gauche, nibbling on foie gras and other perfectly acceptable, terribly un-PC French delicacies.

Somehow, in France it's easier to avoid feeling deprived. They are so proud of their food that if they are willing to help a girl out, they do so with the same elegance and grace that they bestow on everything gastronomic. Rather than taking pity on me (and rubbing my face in it, no matter how well they mean), the French go out of their way to make my meal greater than great. In Paris, instead of feeling left out, I feel special.

But Paris is a long weekend, a breath of fresh air, a change of scenery. It’s not our life. Our life is computer screens and tube-stop snackbars, a gym with a swimming pool in the basement and evenings spent in front of the telly instead of a good bottle of wine.

Today, however, with yesterday’s “gaspacho au tomates suivi d’un steak thon avec une frisee” still fresh in my mind, I’m convinced that it is in my power to bring that little piece of Paris back with us.

I try to be as careful and conscientious about what I put into my body, but also about how I eat. And nowhere is this culturally more apparent than in Paris. People linger over their meals. Women truly enjoy desert. Each bite is chewed as if it were the first and the last. The clean-plate club only exists in France when good food is at stake.

I'm sitting in my tiny office watching D scour the Internet for what he's going to wear at our wedding. The dehydrator is whirring away, cooking Brazil-nut chocolate cookies that smell like someone's great-aunt's house. The heavy, dark clouds are hanging low in the sky. It looks and feels like rain though the pavement is dry.

There is too much on my to-do list to wallow, however. I’m hungry for food and millimeters away from going back to bed. Lunch is going to need to be more than a meal. It’s going to have to be a preemptive pick-me-up: a refreshing smack of good cheer combined with a healthy dose of motivational nutrition.

In this spirit, I put together our lunch.

The Salad:
* Fresh greens
* 1 raw zucchini (courgette) cut very fine (with a mandolin, if available)
* one yellow onion, chopped
* one can of chickpeas, rinsed
* fresh mint leaves chopped very fine
* half a pink grapefruit cut into small squares.
* cumin powder (to taste)
* salt (to taste)

Toss the fresh greens along with the courgette and the fresh mint leaves. Put aside.
In a pan, saute the onion on a low flame until very brown and soft (almost burned, but not). Once the onion is ready, add the chickpeas, grapefruit, cumin to taste and salt to taste and allow to heat on a very low flame. (Note: you are heating rather than cooking the chickpeas and grapefruit)

For the dressing blend:
* argan oil(this can be replaced by any nutty oil -- pumpkin, walnut, pistachio, etc)
* the juice of two lemons
* dill
* salt and pepper
* the other half of the grapefruit
* a dash of apple cider vinegar

Optionally, you can add home made croutons. These are made by cubing fresh bread and dry roasting the bits in a pan for a few minutes, stirring every once in a while so they get toasted on all sides.

It was absolutely delicious.

2008-07-13T11:23:00.002+01:00

What do you say in a wedding vow? That you’re theirs forever? That your futures are assured with one another? That you’re guaranteed happiness as long as you remain together? What do you promise the other person that they can believe, not only at the emotion-filled moment in which you speak the words but for every day of your lives as husband and wife, when one of you has their head in the toilet, or has done something terribly wrong, when you feel like you’re looking at a total stranger? What can I say to D that I haven’t already said? How often can I say I love you? And how come, on that one day, in that moment, when I’m supposed to be telling him how I feel about him, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough? As I contemplate my wedding vows, I find myself, for once, at a loss for words.

I’m not usually a fan of Paulo Coelho, but this little tale seemed incredibly relevant:
For days a man and a woman travelled almost without speaking. Finally the couple arrived in the middle of the forest and
found a wise man.
“My companion said almost nothing to me during the whole journey,” said the man.
“A love without silence is a love without depth,” answered the wise man.
“But she didn’t even say she loved me!”
“Said the sage: “Some people always claim that. And we end up wondering if their words are true.”
The three of them sat on a rock. The wise man pointed to the field of flowers all around them. “Nature isn’t always
repeating that God loves us. We only realize that through His flowers.”

Sometimes I think the less there is to say, the more I speak. Often I say words, cobbling together sentences, paragraphs, making points, pointing out evidences, so that I won’t need to hear what the silence beneath my constant babble is trying to communicate instead.

It’s easier to keep talking, to cover up, hide behind statements, opinions, the clarity of verbalization rather than having to decipher facial expressions, hand gestures, body language that may be speaking a whole other truth.

And yet, when I think about the most powerful moments in my life, they rarely involved words; and if they did, the actual words spoken were secondary.

When I was eleven years old, my parents had their last fight as a married couple. It was a lock-down, drag out-saga that stretched across a good few hours and several floors of the house. My father had relegated my mother to the fifth floor while he roamed the first four. I don’t know how it started, but by the end of it, I knew they weren’t getting back together. My brother and I ran after my crazed, impassioned parents as they ascended and descended the myriad of staircases, insulting each other, calling each other by all sorts of names in all sorts of languages, grabbing hold of one another or both of us.

We finally found ourselves on the fifth floor looking out at the building across the street. The room where it all ended was so large that a few years later it was converted into an apartment for my grandfather.

I remember standing with my brother. At ages nine and eleven, it was probably the closest we’d ever stood to one another without attempting to bash the other’s skull in, but we were shell-shocked and, I think, already aware that we were it: he and I would need each other when it came to prying through the he-said-she-said between my parents.

My father knelt in front of us and told us he loved us.
“No matter what happens,” he said, “remember that I love you.”
It is probably the only time he has ever said he loved me like that. But the words aren’t what stick in my mind. What I remember most was what made me feel like he actually meant it. He had tears in his eyes. He had taken my hand into his and was holding it tightly, as if it would be the last time he would grip it (sadly, it was not, but that’s a whole other story). His face was completely void of his usual tense cynicism. It was soft and loving – for the first and last time in our relationship history, my father was allowing his love to flow without shame.

Those few seconds cost me years of therapy and self-deceit. It took me years to admit that he wasn’t that caring, emotional man. It took me even longer to face that underneath the cruelty, the constant criticism and denigration, there was, in fact, no loving father to be found.

Over the years, he would mumble, or spit “I love you” at me as one does during an argument when anything is fair game. But never again did I see that body language, feelings as raw as they were true, from the man who raised me with “emotions are a four-letter word.”

Silence is louder than words; even actions speak louder than the simple, easy sentences we are so used to deploying -- to get what we want, to appease others, to steer situations in our favour. There is nothing sacred about words. They are large cardboard cut-outs, clunky, clumsily painted blocks behind which we can easily hide – all it takes is a bit of imagination. We write them, say them, hear them, read them constantly. And as with anything else, the overexposure has made them worthless.

I like to think that I’m a woman of my word, that my word is worth something. But really, when my words keep changing, how can I remain loyal to only one?

I remember the moment I fell in love with India.

There is not much silence in India. In fact, I think that one moment is the closest I got. Maybe that is why it happened when it did, why I fell in love precisely then; when all the noise subsided, when the chaos got stripped away, the beauty was so magnificent; it was suddenly easy to become intoxicated by the magic of the country’s simple, regal splendour.

It had been a long day. I had spent most of it slowly meandering along the backwaters of Alleppey with a couple of very hungover Irish ladies, and later an American and a Finnish woman. The five of us had talked and laughed all day, as the boat had made its way through lakes and canals, winding through thick greenery, passing the locals as they washed themselves, their clothes and their animals along the banks, or waved at us – another over-enthusiastic, photo-hungry lot of tourists to pose for -- from their porches.

Amma’s ashram had been visible from far away as its pink towers were by far the tallest buildings in the area. The women from Ireland were going to keep making their way South to the beach, but the three of us had decided to disembark at the ashram. Unlike the other two, however, I would not be staying the night. My young travel companion, H, had stayed back at the hostel with food poisoning, so I was planning to head back to Alleppy. By boat, the trip had taken eight hours, but I had been told that the bus ride would be only two, which would allow me a little time to explore the ashram and experience the supposedly incredible energy of the Hugging Saint.

As we made our way to the main meditation hall, signs in all languages indicated all sorts of rules: where to put your shoes, where to go to the toilet, where to buy memorabilia, where to make phone calls. There was even a tourist center.

There were Westerners everywhere, dressed in venerating white, looking straight ahead with a mixture of purpose and New Age apathy. I felt I had landed in the centre of a flock of sheep that, by some miracle, had been transformed into human beings for a day or two. People roamed more than walked, drifting around with little direction. Many sentences around me started with, ended on, or had as their main function to praise Amma.

I had to admit that there was a strong energy coming from the large photograph at the end of the meditation hall. Even in 2D, she is powerful. But the love and kindness I saw in her eyes was a good few solar systems away from the machine that is the ashram.

When I bumped into the American woman and her Finish friend a few minutes later, I had to laugh at the expressions on their faces. Their horror was only slightly appeased when an electronic gong sounded, calling all guests to the main meditation hall. Amma was not there that day, but that didn’t alter the worship schedule.

Fighting against the stream of people I made my way back towards the river. By the time I had crossed the bridge, I was breathing normally again and no longer afraid of hyperventilating. I had been hoping to find some kind of spiritually enlightened community, inspiration, possibly something I could take home with me, an addition to my own journey, maybe even some sensible answers. Instead I had found shameless commercialism capitalising on people’s weakness, their search for meaning and direction. I knew where I was heading: as far away as possible, as quickly as my muddy flip-flops would take me.

“How do I get to the nearest town?”
The group of rickshaw drivers looked at each other. I could tell they were sizing me up both in terms of means as well as desperation. I won’t lie: I’m sure I looked like a chicken with a broken leg to a hungry fox.
“Seventy roupees, madam.”
He was the youngest of the lot, the boldest, the most arrogant. An earring dangled from his left ear like Captain Jack Sparrow of India minus the eyeliner. He raised one eyebrow, daring me to negotiate.
I was too tired, too spent, too saddened by how I had become a cash cow – even to the devoted, let alone those who made a living driving people like me around.
“Fine.” I sighed and wearily pulled myself in. It had been raining on-and-off throughout the day, and I didn’t like the look of the dark grey cloud that had draped itself over most of the sky.
The driver hopped behind his little steering wheel with glee and proceeded to zig zag happily for the next twenty minutes, between cattle, children, old women and other rickshaws, all the way to the next town.
He dropped me off at what he claimed was the bus station, although all I could see was a fire pit, a group of people standing around watching the blaze, and an elephant with a very thin man on its back and shackles around its four enormous legs.

I’ll skip the details of the other two buses other than to point out that, like the third one I took, the first two were rickety, loud and overcrowded. Unlike the last bus I took that night, however, the first and second ones were also quite abrupt, unfriendly, stuffy and generally unpleasant.

Maybe by the third one, I’d gotten used to feeling like a sardine and smelling foul body odour around me. Maybe it had stopped bothering me that there was little, if any, regard for what I would term my private space in any other part of the world. Or maybe the world had shifted ever so slightly by the time I sat down for the final part of my journey back to Alleppy, where I hoped young H had recovered from her bout of food poisoning and had not made off with my belongings.

Whatever it was, as I hoisted myself into the last remaining seat on the old blue bus, I found myself hoping that it would clear out so that I could sit by the window and zone out for a few moments. In India, there are people everywhere, and they are always talking – either at you, over you or through you. I was exhausted, and would have probably given my vocal chords for a few hours alone to sit on my couch watching Sex And The City reruns.

At the next stop, almost everyone got off. Though the bus filled up quickly, I was able to slide to the far end of three-person seat where I could look out the glass-less window, and breathe deeply, enjoying the wind in my hair. As we continued along the unpaved roads, and the sun started to set, it was as if all of India was starting to prepare for the fall of night.

The sky turned a darker hue, the people on the streets started to slow down. Inside houses and stores, the bustle was replaced with a hush. Fires were being lit and the scent of food, the warm spices that make up the local cuisine, was everywhere.

Next to me, a young Hindu woman struggled to keep hold of her daughter. The little girl couldn’t have been more than five or six, but she was so exhausted that she kept falling asleep and hitting her head against the seat in front of us as her mother, too tired herself, kept losing her grip.

“She can lie on me if you like” I told the mother.
I’d gotten so used to the constant cacophony of sounds that I hadn’t noticed that nobody on the bus was talking. When I spoke, everyone around me turned to stare. The mother obviously didn’t understand English as she too was simply looking back at me.
“Here” I patted the bag in my lap.
Before I’d finished gesturing, the mother had already dropped her daughter’s head on me. A few seconds later, they were both sound asleep, the mother’s head lolling towards my shoulder, the daughter’s cupped in my lap. What could they have gone through to be that tired?

As the bus drove along, the sun setting outside, past the loud motors and the roar of generators, a silence fell. Though technically it was noise – constant hums, yells, coughing of faulty mechanics, animals belching, men grunting – it was silence. India was heaving a sigh of relief as yet another day had ended in relative peace. Inside the houses we passed, families had arrived home and were sitting around tables, the children playing together, the women stirring pots, and kneading dough. The people on the bus held on to the railings and bobbed back and forth with the rhythm of the squeaky springs, calm in the knowledge that they too would soon be home. All of a sudden, there was no need to rush. And in my lap, a beautiful little girl moved her lips as if she was saying something very important in her dreamless sleep.

That was the moment I fell in love with India. Silently, completely, fully. It was the moment I understood why people go back over and over again, even though they are robbed and prodded, even though they return to the West with worms and parasites, even though there are so many other places in the world that they would love to see. For just a moment, I felt the existence of God.

---

One of the things I love most about cooking is its meditative quality. Some dishes require speed and constant attention while others allow long, lingering thoughts to swirl around my head as I tend to the minutiae of preparation.

Last week, I found myself with three bags of broad beans. D and I receive a box of organic vegetables every week from one of those farm-box schemes that supports small, local businesses and delivers seasonal produce to your door.

For two weeks in a row, I had unpacked the box, sighing at the damn broad beans. What was I going to do with them? I had been scared away by the supposed high-maintenance food that people say they are. This stems from the double work required when cooking them. First they have to be removed from their shells. Then they are boiled in order to be able to get rid of the outer coating on the actual bean, which also has to be removed. It sounded terribly dull and time consuming. Still, I hate throwing away food, so I was going to have to do something… and soon… rather than letting them rot.

As my family were visiting, I decided it would be a good opportunity to try something new. My grandmother calls my cooking “interesting” (sometimes this is meant in the good sense, though not always. But at least she is polite about it)

My mother and I peeled the first layer off the beans. Though we can talk for Britain, we quickly lapsed into silence, both enjoying each other’s company as well as the soothing feeling of doing the mindless, repetitive work. For a few minutes we talked about how calming it was, but we soon returned to concentrating on our fingers and letting our minds wander.

I had explained to my grandmother that it wasn’t a big deal or a big mess, that I was using her presence as an excuse for the “patchkerei”, as she put it (loosely translated, this means “a lot of work”)

A quick search on the Internet brought up a Moroccan soup called bissara. It sounded delicious – perfect for a rainy, cold summer evening in London.

This is my adaptation of a few recipes I found on various sites on the Internet.

A large bowl or plate of broad bean, shelled and peeled*
Water or broth**
4 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
3 T olive oil (I would have used argan oil had I thought of it then)
1 t cumin
½ t sweet paprika
½ t hot paprika
Juice of half a small lemon.
Dash of cayenne
fresh mint leaves finely chopped to use as garnish
salt and pepper to taste

Once the beans are shelled, peeled, etc., return them to the water or broth they originally boiled in and bring it to a boil once again. There should be enough water to cover them and then some.
As it boils, add the garlic cloves, salt and pepper and turn the heat to low low low.
(a froth will start form at the top of the mixture. This can be skimmed off with a spoon)

In a separate bowl, mix the olive oil, cumin, both paprikas, cayenne and the lemon juice. Allow the mixture to sit for a while so the flavours have a chance to hang out and get to know each other a little bit.

When the beans have simmered for about ten to fifteen minutes and are soft, blend the mixture together so it becomes a proper soup or puree (depending on the bean to water ratio) – no chunks should remain.

Serve the soup in small bowls and spoon the oil mixture on top. Garnish with a dash of fresh mint leaves.

* As previously mentioned, the first stage is to remove the large green peel so that you remain with only the beans. These are then put in boiling water or broth (not too much water as you want to use that same water to make the soup and it’s important to retain as much flavour as possible) for about five minutes. Once boiled, remove the beans and blanch them in a bowl of ice to stop the cooking process so you can remove the outside layer of the bean. What remains is a bright green bean.

** I would use vegetable or chicken broth but I’m sure beef would complement this dish very nicely as well

Laila Tov, he said...

2008-07-01T22:36:00.000+01:00

Hello from Fat and Bloated. Does everyone feel this way half the time, or is this my own special gift -- to be a Petri-dish, a pawn with no control over when I will be thrown down the white-waters of my digestive system’s moody delights and surprises? Maybe it’s the weekend of Cotswold food – duck baked to within an inch of its long-lost life, vegetables boiled to distraction, freshly fried chips as thick as a baby couch potato’s arm. Maybe it’s the anti-biotics, or the week of running around without time to consider myself. Whatever it is, mama ain’t likin’ the gut, or the feeling of wearing a blubber suit.

It’s [ONLY] on days like today that I miss [ONLY ONE ASPECT] of my old job in television production: the hours of being on my feet, running around, trying to locate a battery in a desert, or a ham sandwich in a dairy farm. Typing doesn’t do much for the cardiovascular. And the London summer doesn’t lend itself too well to outdoor exercise.

But enough with the self-pity. As my friend V says, “put the bat down…”

…

But…

But…

Oh all right… Fine…

The other day I was talking to someone about the upheaval involved in travelling as much as I do. We were talking about the rituals of life, and she asked what mine were.

I tend to think of rituals as big, orchestrated events created to mark a new stage in life -- weddings, bar-mitzvahs, funerals – days weighed down by traditions and a list of boxes to tick off, dictating what should happen when. The seven days of prayers before a couple gets married, the seven days of mourning after the death of a close family member, the intonation in a young boy’s voice as he reads the chapter of the Torah he has been rehearsing months – all of these constitute rituals for me.

I remember the shock that rippled through my grandmother’s building when people found out that there would be no formal shiva for my grandfather. That meant that for the seven days of mourning, there would be no formal prayers every day and so no excuse to go stock up on the cold cuts, pastries and breads that are traditionally laid out for the mourners and the waves of neighbours and friends who come to pay their respects.

After the funeral, as the car made its way back to my grandmother’s apartment, we talked about the rabbi whose heavy New York accent had given his speech a bit of a farcical undertone.
“Your grandfather never liked that man,” my grandmother told me matter-of-factly, “he would have hated to have him there.”
“Why did you get him to lead the service then?” I asked, shocked.
“There was nobody else,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter anyway, it won’t bring him back.”

As I plan my wedding, I find myself looking for meaning in even the smallest of decisions, those that I rationally know will make very little if any difference at all. I have read many articles asserting that I am not alone, that the cost of weddings has nearly quadrupled as couples, striving to make their wedding “unique,” drape everything in so much symbolism that there is often little wiggle room left for enjoyment of the actual moment that is at the core of the event. It becomes more important to have shoes in the exact shade of white, the right flowers, the perfect everything, than to enjoy the day – a sad but telling segue into what is to come. Apparently, as we become more immune to the D-bomb, as divorce becomes a way of solving marital spats, as sticking with one another through thick and thin becomes less about a couple and more about a pre-nup, weddings have been transformed into an insurance policy of sorts, as if an expensive wedding could ensure a long-lasting marriage. These same articles, go on to gloatingly point out that none of this -- not cost, not symbolism, not neurotic micro-planning -- matters in the end.

D and I have an interesting dilemma in terms of how we would like to honour our respective traditions – or not. In the end, it is relatively simple to go down the list of our dos and don’ts and decide that yes, we will break a glass and no, I won’t wear a veil, yes there will be Jewish dancing, no there won’t be any hula. These definites are easy: there’s an accepted way in which these things are done, and it is our choice whether we follow these simple guidelines and remain traditional, or whether we off-road and do our own thing.

All adventures aside, however, we’ve been spending a lot of time examining parts of our separate cultures and reshaping them into a shared creation. We are appropriating, modifying, rearranging traditions like one would when transforming a new house into a home. “Mine” becomes “ours” as we morph historical customs into new, modern innovation with a wink and a nod to our histories:

We are getting married under a chuppah, me in a traditional Western wedding dress, D in a kilt. As a result, I keep having to explain to people in Israel what a kilt is.
“Oh, the Scottish skirt!” is the usual response.
On the other hand, I have had to look up the exact symbolism of a chuppah to explain to our many friends who had never before heard of it.

And once you start going down the road of meaning, it becomes a question of where you decide to stop. A chuppah is historically constructed using a prayer shawl that is held up by four poles. Traditionally it symbolised the future home of the couple; and at the ceremony itself, the man would be waiting under it for the woman to join him. This parallels the way the marriage would, more often than not, affect each of them individually: the woman would move from her home and into her husband’s; she would be the one leaving her own life behind and integrate -- preferably as seamlessly as possible -- into his. Though that is not the case with D and I, something about perpetuating that small gesture irks me. It is an unimportant detail, but will I be able to let it go – another one of the seemingly endless questions, options, minutiae -- in order to focus on other elements of this day?

It’s almost like a recipe for some strange, multi-ethnic dish that nobody quite knows how to make and which can go totally wrong or come out absolutely divine. Add a splash of “forever” to a mixture of “us” and “loved ones”, along with a good dollop of “you’ll never forget” and a healthy dose of “best day of your life” – it’s enough to rattle even the most adventurous gluttons. And I’m leaving out vanity!

When you add vanity to the mix, the rules of the game change completely. When do I want D to first see me in my dress? Does he see me first and do we enter together? Do I want him to catch his first glimpse of the vision I will obviously have to be at the same time as everyone else, or should I be the one waiting for the guests?

Though D has been intimately involved in every part of planning the wedding, when it comes to how we will join one another under the chuppah, his response has been “whatever you’d like, sweetheart.”
Not to downplay how fabulous D is and has been at every stage so far, but he obviously isn’t as affected by the symbolism.

In my head, it’s become a well-greased slope as one thought leads to the next: is anyone surprised that women have been known to lose all control when it comes to getting married? Back then, they were planning their own demise, orchestrating their last meal, setting the music to their walk off the plank. If I was going to become my husband’s property after marriage, I would also be planning it as “my day” – as the more traditional people around me keep insisting it is – my last day of relative freedom instead of a celebration of the union between myself and my partner.

I’m so glad times have changed… sort of

D and I have been planning this as “our day”. We have made every decision together and have deferred to one another at every stage of the process. Still, many people insist on telling me that it’s MY day to shine.
“It’s your day to be a princess,” they tell me as if this will lessen the stress, make things easier in one way or another.
“You can do whatever you want,” they tell me, “it’s all about you.”
Now we all know that this is not true. Everybody comes with expectations, and if they don’t make them clear beforehand, they will most probably take advantage of the years to come in order to do so.

I can already hear it:
April 17th, 2015
#1: “that was a great wedding last night. My chicken was delicious!”
#2: “yes, I loved the dancing. So wonderful, these youngsters. And the decorations! I felt like I was in a different country.”
#1: “Do you remember that other wedding? Terrible.”
#2: “How could I forget? I was so disappointed. She looked like a slob. And the food…”
#1: “You would think they would have planned it better.”
#2: “I always say, learn from other people’s mistakes.”
#1: (laughs) “and there was a lot to learn. Such a shame…”

I know, I know: who cares? why listen? etc. etc. etc.

I’ve never had so many voices, opinions, advice buzzing around my head at the same time. They’re like insects – or onion rings: impossible to ignore.

For example, it is very much frowned upon for anybody but the bride to wear white. The custom is based on the idea that on her wedding day, no one should outshine her. But what if white doesn’t suit her? What if she wants to get married in red? And what about not outshining the groom who probably is more difficult to pick out of the mass of other men in suits?

Where does ritual end and bullshit start?

As I walk around London still in a state somewhat resembling culture shock, I see women everywhere wearing that rock on their left ring fingers and somehow feel a kinship with them. Like when I’m in the middle of nowhere and someone toasts with L’chaim, or their star of David becomes visible under their sweater. These things don’t mean that I’ll have more in common with that person, but in the eternal quest for connection, even something as superficial as being engaged at the same time can create a sense of intimacy. If they see mine, we might exchange a small smile. I wonder where they are in the planning stages, how they are feeling about it. At the pharmacy, the woman tells me she hasn’t had the courage to even start to figure things out. The girl behind the counter at the health food store has left it all up to her mother. A woman I’ve seen on and off on Marylebone High street – she sells me my loose-leaf tea – breaks the news to me that she’s called it off. “More fish in the sea,” she tells me. Speaking of fish, I think, should we include it in the menu, or will chicken and lamb be enough.

In Bangkok, after a particularly intense yoga class, I got to talking with a woman in the locker room. She had been teaching English in Bangkok for the past year, she told me, and was returning to the UK in July to get married.
“My fiancé has done all the planning,” she told me, “it’s been hard.”
If the roles were reversed, I’m sure her future husband wouldn’t have described the difficulties, but this woman was obviously feeling the stress of having to give up control of “her day.”

Some days I can’t wait for my wedding; others I feel I need to prove something although I’m not sure to whom. People ask what a Jewish wedding is, they ask about my dress or the food, the location and the invitee list. I don’t quite know how to explain that I would prefer to say nothing as everyone has their way of visualising descriptions, every imagination builds things up in a different way, and the last thing I want to do is disappoint. But I can’t not say anything – this is my wedding we’re talking about after all and I’ve never been very good at keeping my own secrets!

We wanted to get married in London, in LA, in New York. We thought about castles and friends’ homes and the desert. In the end when we finally found “our spot” – or when it found us – as we stood there holding hands, listening to the silence around us, finally, finally nothing mattered but D and I. For that one moment, it all came together and our two visions merged into one. We saw our wedding, not the symbolism of it, not the price tag, not the expectations; we were able to envision the practical execution of the day itself, the actual marriage, the party, the joy, the rite of passage. We saw our friends dancing, we saw our eyes locking as the sun set and we spoke our vows, we saw the food laid out along the tables. For a second, it had already happened, everything, exactly the way it should. When I get too nervous now, when everything feels overwhelming and every vendor seems blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, with every question and challenge that creeps up, I recall that vision and remind myself that it will all, in the end, be perfect, no matter what.

There is a beautiful theory in Judaism stating that although Moses died before entering the Land of Israel, before his passing, God allowed him to see all of what would happen to the Jewish people. In the same fashion, when a parent holds their child for the first time, for the briefest instant, they get a glimpse of the entire life that awaits the newborn in their arms. At that moment is when that child receives their name.

Rituals, my friend pointed out, are not just those that mark milestones. They can be smallest things: brushing one’s teeth in a certain way, breakfast, where you hang your coat when you walk in the door. Rituals are what tell me I’m home; they also create a comfort zone when I am in new surroundings.

As a child, I moved often. But every night, no matter where we were, my mother would kiss my ear loud enough for it to ring for the few minutes afterwards (this later become a running joke), and whisper a short prayer. That was when I knew was safe to go to sleep.

These days, though I crave some kind of permanence, I fear it almost as much as I fear the unfamiliar. Sometimes I think that D and I have developed more rituals in airports and airplanes than we have at home. I know where I’m going to sit in Heathrow or JFK or Ben Gurion. I know which magazines I’m going to buy – the really bad celebrity rags that I only allow myself when travelling – and that D is going to open his computer at the terminal and zone out with a coffee for as long as he can, especially if we are travelling economy, because he doesn’t fit into the regular seats and can barely sit comfortably, let alone open his laptop. Once in the air, D will work, his yellow pad cutting into his midriff, while I catch up on all the movies I’ve missed at home where we struggle to create some semblance of a day-to-day routine.

Travelling, I gain perspective; I see the chaos that is my day-to-day back home and decide to change it. I make plans to work every morning and deal with the administration of our lives in the afternoon. From a distance, it looks simple, straightforward, uncomplicated.

Then I get home.

In London, my return to the stability that I crave when I’m away is more often than not accompanied by melancholy. Ironically, it is the routine that I will have planned from afar that gets me down. Looking out at the rooftops from our fourth-floor apartment that I have redecorated and redesigned to be our home, I tell myself that it is in the small things that I will find profound meaning. I latch on to the smell of my gluten-free bread baking, D’s breathing as he sleeps next to me, having to wear a scarf even though it’s technically summer – something, anything that I will be able to draw out long enough to sustain an interesting next paragraph – for use in conversation, in my writing, in this blog, in my life. Because don’t they say that it is the little details that make all the difference? Yet I can find nothing suitable or exciting enough – no universal messages wait for me under any of the symbolic rocks of my life that I turn over in the dullness of the day-to-day.

Reunions with friends pacify me like local anaesthetic as we catch up on what they’ve been up to in my absence. There is a wedding to plan and I am more grateful than not for the obligatory portions of my day it greedily swallows up. The less time I have, the more I try to get accomplished.

Time, that ominous rogue, inches along at its pace, though when I look back I know it will have flown by.
“Already?” I’ll ask D, as we lie in bed in our hotel room in Jerusalem having just pledged our selves to each other.
He will laugh his warm, kind, loving laugh: “I know!”

Every night, D fills my water glass and puts it by my bed. Every morning, I make him breakfast. He makes the bed, I make tea. I do the dishes, he dries them. Many times I have filled my own water glass and brought it to bed only to find that there is one there already, waiting sweetly for me. D has asked me on more than one occasion what he can make me for breakfast. “Don’t bother,” is my response, I’ll do it. Because as we get to know each other better, we create these little routines, these silly little rituals that are the outline of our couple. They define us as home for one another though I don’t notice them until they’re gone.

When I was a child, my mother would say “it’s not about whether the man you are with is well-read or an intellectual, but whether he pushes the toothpaste out of the tube from the end or the middle.” I am lucky to have found somebody who satisfies my emotional and intellectual needs as well as does his share in the house. And with regards to the toothpaste issue, we use separate tubes as he prefers the commercial, fluoride kind while I use a natural alternative.

Even though I am now an adult, planning my wedding, building my life with my future husband; when we stay over at my mothers and she kisses my ear to say good night, for that one instant, I am once again cradled in the safety of childhood as I was back then, in my messy room that she wanted me to clean up and that I refused to. As my eardrum quivers, for a moment I don’t have all those decisions to make and all that responsibility because I am home, with my mother talking to the cat in the next room. Then D will silently grab my hand, remind me of where we are, who we are now. He will kiss my lips and mumble “laila tov” (goodnight in Hebrew) in our own little ritual before sleep.

“Laila Tov” he would whisper to me over the phone when I was in Thailand, and I would almost feel him kissing me, his hand in mine.
“Laila Tov” he said on the night we reunited after two months apart. It had been a strange day and we had spent a good portion of it looking at each other like teenagers with a crush on one another – wanting to be more emotional but holding back a little bashfully. That night, when he lightly touched my lips with his and said goodnight in Hebrew, I remembered him, our life, and everything I loved about us. Those two words, the invocation of our ritual brought it all back in a way that mere physical proximity to one another hadn’t.

---

I was born in El Salvador, but I was not raised there. My mother, however, was, and though she grew up often eating dishes prepared from recipes her own parents had brought with them from Europe, she also loves the native Salvadoran food. Taste, like smell, is a powerful emotional tool. My mother is an adventurous eater but still, there is nothing like the dishes she grew up with, the rich corn tamales with cream, the beans and rice, the stuffed pupusas. She has, in turn, passed that love on to my brother and I.

Recently, I was craving some comfort food and decided to try and make my own version of tortillas and frijoles.

One of my favorite kitchen tools is our electric slow cooker. London is quite cold and grey a lot of the time. Stews and roasts are a perfect match for that kind of weather and with a slow cooker, they are the easiest thing in the world. You simply dump everything into the pot and let it sit for a bunch of hours after which the food is ready. It is a great trick for busy people as you can let it sit overnight, or get it started before work and come home to a fully cooked, delicious meal. Vegetables come out buttery and soft (even without butter) and chicken and lamb melt of the bones. The most important thing to remember with a slow cooker is not to over-season: with all those hours of sitting, herbs and spices take on extra strong qualities so a little goes a long way. Our simple, no frills model cost us 20£ or $40. After a few false starts, I can say with certainty that it was definitely worth the investment! And I can see how it will be even more of a lifesaver once D and I start a family.

Extra slow cooked aduki* bean frijoles:
1 package of dried aduki beans. Rinse the beans well and soak them overnight or for at least 8 hours in water with a few drops of fresh lemon juice. (some people say that since I will be cooking the beans for so long, there is no need to soak them. I do anyway)
Throw away the water and rinse the beans well.
Roughly chop a couple of yellow onions (I like a lot of onions, so I use two large or three smaller ones) and a couple of strips of kombu**
Layer the bottom of the slow-cooker with the onions and the kombu.
Pour the beans over the onion and kombu
Add enough water to almost cover the beans and set the cooker on high.
Leave the mixture to cook for three to four hours.
(I usually soak the beans throughout the day and then start cooking around six in the evening or so.)
After three to four hours, add enough water to just about cover the beans, switch the cooker settings to low and let it continue cooking for 8 to10 hours or so.
By the morning, the mixture should be wonderfully thick and stew-like. If too much water remains, the soup can be transferred to the stove and reduced by cooking it on a low flame until enough of the water evaporates.

Corn and brown rice tortillas***
Mix two parts corn flour with one part brown rice flour. Add a pinch of salt and water and knead with your hands. The batter should become slightly thick but quite still watery.
Use a non-stick pan or rub a little oil in a small frying pan. Heat on a low to medium flame. Once the pan is hot, use a ladle to make the tortillas which should be about ten cm / 4 inches in diameter and thick like American pancakes. Flip them every few minutes until cooked through.
Preheat the oven on low to keep the finished tortillas warm (cold tortillas can taste like cardboard)

*aduki beans are a red bean. They help with controlling damp bodily conditions that many people are prone to in the British climate, and are easier to digest than many of their compadres.
** kombu is a type of seaweed. Only very little is needed – a strip or two for an entire package of beans, but it adds wonderful flavor to soups and stews as well as many vitamins and minerals. Kombu is usually hard and tough when purchased, but it softens with cooking. It can be removed once the dish is cooked, or can be eaten.
*** Though beans are a staple of many vegetarian diets, they do not provide a full protein on their own. This is why, nutritionally, rice is a natural complement.

2008-06-24T14:27:00.000+01:00

OK, so I've been suffering from an unhealthy mixture of jetlag, my return to the everyday from the bliss of being away away, far far away; and good old-fashioned writer's block... which is why there haven't been any updates recently... BUT I'm committed to keeping up this blog. So keep checking!

In the mean time, for all those who have been asking for a sample of my fiction, here's a short story I wrote a couple of years ago

I also have to include this recent favorite meal. (For those of you who don't speak food, in English it translates to: I'm really wanting comfort food right now)

Gram flour, also known as chickpea flour, is versatile, delicious and a secret weapon for the gluten intolerant -- at least as far as I'm concerned. Brown rice flour may be more popular, but brown rice is already so prevalent in the healthy food world, that there is a danger of overdosing on the stuff -- especially for people who try to rotate their foods so as not to aggravate already sensitive digestive systems.

After three years of not eating bread, I have started baking thanks to this wonderful discovery. All I can say is: there is a God.

Gram flour mixed with water and salt makes a great savoury pancake and can be used to dip in curries like they do in India.

Babycakes, a magical, wonderful bakery in New York City uses it to make, amongst other things amazing chocolate cupcakes and scones.

When I'm not sure whether I'm in the mood for sweet or savoury (no I'm not pregnant), or when I crave something deliciously doughy, I mix up enough batter for a single pancake (a quarter cup of gram flour with warm (important) water and a pinch of salt) spoon it into a non-stick pan and allow to set as I would a regular pancake. As this is cooking, I thinly slice a raw beet which I then place on top of the warm pancake with a drizzle of olive oil and fresh basil. If I ate dairy, I would add goat's cheese.

Sometimes, I use dates, apple sauce and almond butter instead. Bananas would be good with this mixture as well.

Short Story: The Swimming Pool

2008-06-24T14:23:00.000+01:00

I was in the pool when my father came home. It was a day of firsts. It was my first time in the pool, and my father’s first time hearing about it; my first day after my first time doing it with Euge (some of the guys called him “Huge” although I had found out his nickname was quite baseless the night before), and the first time I finished an entire chocolate cake. It was also my last day being fourteen. The next day, I would turn fifteen, the magical basically-an-adult-already number I had been waiting for since being tucked into bed the night after my tenth birthday party; I would finally be allowed to get my ears pierced.
I was in the pool when my father came home all dressed up from work and smelling of the cologne he doused himself in at least three times a day. He walked through the back door and went
“What the…?”
And then
“Rainee!” he yelled, “what the hell?”
I didn’t know where my mother was, only that she had told me that the tiles were dry and the chemicals were working and I could swim until dinnertime.
“Someone should enjoy this,” she’d told me. I thought that meant that she would not be getting into the pool but she’d shaken her head, “I’ll come in a little while.”
That had been seventeen laps ago.

He had been away for a few weeks. My mother had discovered his affair with Pamela the day after his departure. She had used their entire savings account, set aside over their sixteen years of marriage, to have the pool built.
“I need it done by the 23rd” had been her only stipulation to the contractor. Still, she was shocked when he’d kept to the deadline. The contractor, Paul, was an old boyfriend of my Mom’s. She’d told me she’d broken up with him to be with my Dad. I understood: Sam had stopped talking to me since I’d admitted that I preferred Euge. It had been two weeks already and I had started to lose hope that we would ever be friends again. After hearing why she was having him build it, Paul had brought in extra workmen. I was glad.
My mother had told everyone and anyone. Everyone, that is, except my father. And Pamela. We saw her a few times in those weeks. It wasn’t hard since there was only the one small supermarket back then, and everybody was always running into everyone else. Pamela seemed to make an extra effort to speak to my mother.
“Rainee,” she would say staring into her eyes, “How are you?”
Pamela liked to stare. My mother said it made her feel empathetic, or sympathetic – I can never remember the difference. Talkative as she usually was, my mother had not said a word. It had made Pamela more nervous. I could tell because her eyebrows had slanted together, making her look sad.

The bottom of the pool was not painted grayish white like all the other pools I had been to. Our pool had a tiled mosaic of a beautiful mermaid. She floated down there surrounded by plants and fish and coral, waving up at me as I swam lap after lap trying not to listen to my parents fighting. Her long blond hair swayed in the water, tickling an orange fish. In her other hand she held a staff for good luck. Paul, the contractor, had called her Miranda, but I knew that wasn’t her name. In my mind, she was The Beautiful Cordelia, Queen of the Pool, imprisoned forever in the tiny rectangle in my back yard by a curse put upon her for having fallen in love with a Brazilian sailor named Ystarro. I reached out to her as I swam, keeping my head under water for as long as I could, but I couldn’t swim deep enough to actually touch her. Still, it was like she knew what was going on up there and wanted to comfort me.
For a few seconds, immersed at the deep end of the pool, I couldn’t hear my parents at all. Then, after holding my breath for as long as I could, I shot up towards the surface. Their voices became louder and louder until I recognized full words as I gasped for air. “Bastard!” I heard, and then “shit” and then “understand” and then “fuck” – all the words I was not supposed to hear, as if they had waited for me to reappear before yelling them.
I was afraid to stop my laps, afraid that they would start yelling at me if I got out. Not that there was any reason to. But sometimes it just happened, like when my mother had dropped her grandmother’s vase. So I went from one end of the pool to the other and they forgot about me and I could pretend nothing was wrong. I went back and forth one hundred and three times. It took only nine breaststrokes to get from one end of the pool to the other, five crawl. I was a good swimmer. My father had taught me. He loved telling people how I could swim before I could walk. Big deal, I think now, it was swim or drown with him. But that day I didn’t yet know better. I thought all fathers threw their infant children into the deep end their first time in the water. If they loved them. “Babies have an innate instinct,” he had explained, “they know how to swim from birth. It’s only later that we develop fear and all that crap. Society makes us forget how to swim, but we all know when we’re born.” The story brings tears to my mother’s eyes to this day. She couldn’t jump in after me because of her stitches from the C-section.
As I swam back and forth in the new pool, looking down at Queen Cordelia, I replayed the night before in my head. Stroke, picture Euge, breathe, listen to the curses and try not to, stroke, remember what it felt like when he first put his finger inside me, breathe, the sound of glass breaking, stroke, his penis, small and smooth, almost completely devoid of the thick pubic hair I have seen on my father’s, breathe, “maybe if you…”, stroke, his hands grabbing my breasts, pressing them too hard, breathe, “How can you…?”, stroke, he parts my legs a bit more and pushes himself inside me, breathe, “She’s a fucking cunt!”, stroke, his penis looked much smaller than it felt between my legs even though I couldn’t touch it with my hand. Was he circumcised? How different did a circumcised penis look to one that wasn’t?, breathe, “Do you really think…?”, stroke, he grunts and moves a little faster and it hurts a little, stroke, a door slams, breathe, he collapses on top of me and I can’t stop laughing and crying and he tells me to be quiet, that someone will hear, breathe, "…", stroke, … silence.
I stopped and looked up. Through the back door I could see my father sitting with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. I got out of the pool. My limbs would be sore the next day. My knees felt like they were about to buckle with every step although it may not have been from the exercise.

I sat down at the table across from my father. It would be the last time we’d sit across from each other at that table in that kitchen in our house but I didn’t know that.
“Do you know what a divorce is, Chunky?” he asked me without looking up from the spot between his feet on the floor.
Of course I knew what it was. I was almost fifteen after all, and no longer a virgin. I knew about the world and how it worked. I knew about good and evil and right and wrong and I knew what he’d done to be sitting staring at the ground like that. But I didn’t tell him that because I didn’t want to make him feel worse. So I nodded and just said “yes, Daddy, I do.” He told me they were going to get one and even though I knew everything I did, I hadn’t known that and I was sad and embarrassed to tell anyone at school. Everyone knew Pamela because she’d used to be married to the principal. The only way to change the situation was to eat something.

My parents called me Tournesol because it was the name of the hotel they stayed at in the South of France on their honeymoon where I was conceived. They sent me to France every summer after I turned nine so I could learn French, even though neither of them spoke a word of it. Languages were important, they told me; they themselves didn’t know any other than English. It was like how my mother would tell me to finish everything on my plate and then throw out half her own.
After that first summer in Lyons, I had returned horrified that they had called me Sunflower. “I’m not a hippie!” I’d yelled at them. I was a precocious child and had picked up on my father’s favorite insult at a very young age: “hippie crook” was what he’d called the plumber who hadn’t really fixed the sink, the bank teller who wouldn’t cash a check, the bus driver who’d watched us run to catch him but who’d closed his doors and pulled away. Hippies were people who talked funny and smoked smelly cigarettes. The men had long hair and they named their children Rainbow or Moonshadow or … Sunflower, as I’d discovered. My father had always laughed at people like that but here he was calling his own daughter by one of their names only in a different language. He had reassured me of their innocence: “we don’t speak French. We didn’t know.”
After that, they’d started calling me Chunky. At least they knew what it meant, they told me. As did I. I preferred Tournesol, but I’d asked for it, my father said, and now it was too late to change my mind. My mother tried to remember to call me Tournesol, but “Chunky is much easier to pronounce,” she’d explained.

As he sat across from me at the kitchen table holding his head in his hands, I imagined him begging innocence to my mother. But how could you not know that you were having an affair and with whom?
I got up and walked to the fridge where my mother had stored the chocolate cake for my birthday party the next day. My mother had, like ever year, hidden it under tin foil and behind a row of jam jars. She said it was because she didn’t want to spoil the surprise but I’d figured out that she was trying to make sure that I didn’t get to it before the guests arrived. The cake was always the same – her favorite -- Black Vanilla Forest. “You never know,” she’d hint a few days before the celebration, “maybe this year I’ve bought a different one…” But she couldn’t resist the gooey marshmallow filling. We had it for birthdays, on anniversaries; she ordered the Black Vanilla Forest from Rounders’ on every special occasion. In fact, I’ve still not tasted anything like Mrs. Rounders’ icing since. The cake was “big enough to feed an army”, my father would surely complain as he did every time. I also knew that my mother would eat the leftovers within a day or two, skip dinner for a week and add an extra five miles to her morning run.
I had only invited my one friend from school. The other guests were my mother’s sister and a couple of cousins my parents’ age. My birthdays were rarely for me. I was too embarrassed to have people come to my house. They already made fun of my nickname and the fact that it fit me. What else would they find if I gave them the chance?

I pulled the aluminum foil off the box, opened it and liberated the cake from its translucent plastic cover. Then I went to the dining room to get a fork out of the top drawer, one of the good ones, made out of real silver.
“Want one?” I asked my father.
“What?” He still hadn’t moved.
“A fork.”
“No thank you, Chunky,” he said sadly, not even bothering to find out what it was that I was eating.
My parents were forever sitting me down for talks. But the way I saw it, the only time they agreed was when they were telling me how fat I was. I was doing them a favor by staying, as the doctor had put it, “a little too high on the higher side of average.”
That day I tried again and again to get my parents to warn me about eating the chocolate cake. I slurped loudly and scraped the bottom of the patterned plastic tray it sat on. I yelled “anyone want any cake?” and “Mom, I’m eating the whole thing!” But neither came and sat down to give me the usual lecture about food and health and pounds and BMI and body fat and heart attacks and diabetes. None of it. My father who would only have had to look up, stayed silent until he bolted out of the kitchen very suddenly and ran upstairs.
Both of my parents are very athletic so by the time I had reached their bedroom, he had already pulled out his suitcase and had started throwing his clothing inside.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “so sorry.” He kneeled beside me and took my hand. I remember the tears in his eyes.
“I will see you a lot, I promise,” he told me. “We’ll do fun things. I’ll buy you presents. I love you, Chunky.”
I thought of how Euge had caressed my face after collapsing on top of me. Soon afterwards, maybe seven or eight minutes, he’d told me I should go because he would have to go down to dinner pretty soon, but he hadn’t invited me to stay, nor had he walked me down past his parents in the living room. He’d stayed under the covers, embarrassed, I’ll bet, to show me that he wasn’t so huge. But I had seen it already, I knew. Like I knew that my father would not keep any of those promises and that he didn’t love me anymore because he hadn’t said anything about the chocolate cake, or the noises I had made eating it, or the fact that I had done more than fifteen minutes of exercise like he was always telling me to. Euge called me Tutu but only when it was the two of us. He didn’t speak to me in school, or in front of other people. My father was packing a suitcase and my mother had disappeared. I couldn’t be bothered about Euge or the rest of them.

Back downstairs I got out the whipped cream. At least it loved me. My mother was sitting in the same seat where my father had been a few minutes before pushing large bites into her mouth with my fork. She didn’t say anything about the good silver. Instead she asked me if I remembered the name of the store where she had bought the cake.
“The same place you buy it every year.”
“I know,” she said, “but I can’t remember what it’s called right now. It’s on the tip of my tongue. I hate when that happens.”
“Don’t think about it, it’ll come back to you.” It was what she always said when I forgot something. I didn’t want to tell her that it was Rounders’. It made me feel I knew one thing she didn’t, as if that evened out the divorce thing they’d sprung on me.
She stared at the cake in the same way my father had stared at the floor.
“We should always have this cake in the house” she told me.
That was when I knew everything was over. The marriage, the nights of playing Rummikub after dinner, my parents as I had known them, my relationship with Euge; it was all over, nobody really cared about me.
By then more than half the cake had been eaten, mostly by me. I remember concentrating hard on squirting the whipped cream, a large windy mountain of it, on a tiny corner of the cake, and forking off the largest bite I could. The white sugary cream ended up on my nose and all around my face. Some of it dropped down my shirt and into my lap. I felt like a child and waited for my mother to wipe it off me, or to say something at least. But she herself had a dark ring of chocolate icing painted around her lips like badly applied lipstick.
The cake had started tasting funny but I didn’t stop eating it. Cut, bite, chew, chew, chew, swallow.
Doing the same thing over and over felt good, familiar. As everything changed over the next few months, I held on to the things I knew. Stroke, breathe, stroke; cut, bite, chew, chew, chew, swallow. Push off from ankle, lift leg, angle forward, place on ground; pick up receiver, talk, put down receiver; hit red button, lean back in sofa, watch moving screen. I held on to the things I knew, because it suddenly didn’t feel like I knew much anymore. In the end, it was a day of lasts, a day of irretrievable change, the day when I lost more of my innocence than I thought I had left to begin with.
Later that night, after my father had left and my mother had gone to bed where she was to remain for the next few weeks, I walked back out to the pool. Queen Cordelia hadn’t tried the cake. I rolled up my pants and dipped my feet into the deep end. Then I carefully floated the last bits of my Black Vanilla Forest birthday cake down to her on the plastic plate. She cheered up immediately, I could tell. There’s nothing like chocolate cake.

Les Retrouvailles

2008-05-07T09:18:00.000+01:00

11 a.m. Wednesday May 7th, 2008

The siren starts up simultaneously on the screen of my grandmother's over-stretched widescreen television and outside. The entire country is standing still for one minute in commemoration of the fallen soldiers and terrorist attack victims since 1948 -- people stop their cars, stop work, stop whatever it is that they are doing to stand in silence, their hands clasped by their sides. There are twenty-two thousand three-hundred and forty seven dead to be remembered but one minute feels like so much longer as I contemplate the meaning of what I am doing. My mother's hand is on my shoulder, my grandmother is holding my elbow. Our three generations standing together. We share drooping eyelids when we're tired and a similar smile. I wonder how many families are gathered at that moment with a specific loved one in mind?

Unfortunately, Israel does sad very well. The amount of songs written by and about the dead is overwhelming. For the past 16 hours, it has been all about visiting graves, offering support to parents and siblings of the dead, about realizing how the rest of us move on with our lives, how we leave the grieving families to cope with their losses on their own.

I remember the moment I decided to move to Israel. At age seventeen, a couple of months before graduation, I went on the March of the Living with high school. We had spent six days in Poland traveling from concentration camp to concentration camp and had arrived in Israel for ten days in order to celebrate Remembrance Day and Independence Day.

Every year, as the siren of remembrance winds down, the day transitions into Independence Day, the celebration of the creation of the state of Israel. We go from sad to happy, from introspective to celebratory.

If it sounds a bit confusing (read: schizophrenic), it feels it.

Back in high school, in the front of the seniors' bus, I had never experienced it before. During Remembrance day, I cried a few times. The songs on the radio were so heartfelt so different from the commercial, melancholic ballads I was used to singing along to as I lamented my lonely or broken heart. Unlike the love songs I played back home, these were songs about brothers losing brothers, about women waiting for soldiers to return, about men writing home from wars asking about their children and their mothers, about sons assuring their parents that nothing would happen to them on the battlefield and apologizing in advance if anything did.

A song came on about a man who goes back to his kibbutz after having been away for twenty years. At first glance, nothing has changed. He sees the faded, hand-written cardboard signs pointing visotors to a wedding that took place recently, two horses are standing by the fig tree ... "But where are the children I played with?" he asks, "who took them away from me?"

The song described my feelings about Israel so perfectly -- not politically, but rather the feeling of being in Israel, the scents, the ambiance. It was not about Israel in the same way as the old Zionist ballads that I grew up with were: this was not an idealistic song but rather a song about going home. In the simplest, most concrete way in which we come and knock on the door that was once so familiar but is no longer because we grown up, we are no longer the innocent children we once were.

As with all big moments, details come back when I think of the song. I remember looking out the window of the bus; we were coming down a hill and the pine trees around us were thick, green, lush. Behind me, my classmates were giggling about something. The air was heavy in that enclosed, recycled way. Next to me, the cute security guard with the bottle-cork curly hair was trying to tell me about the writer of the song.

Before the trip to Poland, I had been told by my father that the only way I would be able to go to college was if I lived at his house -- a nightmare scenario at best.

I had been trying to figure out what my best option would be, how I could go to university without needing to stay with my dad.

By the time the song ended, I had made up my mind: I was going to study in Israel.

I had never been especially interested in the State of Israel. My school was blindly Zionist in the way that many diaspora Jews are -- if you're not pro-Israel, if you dare to question or criticise, you're obviously an anti-semite. After moving to Jerusalem in nineteen ninety-four, however, I quickly discovered how large the gap is between the idealised Holy Land and the reality of the State of Israel.

As the siren winds down to mark the end of the Day of Remembrance, the radio to which many Israelis (and especially my mother) are glued goes from tragic to giddy with excitement; the media's tone changes and so should our mood.

Now that we have paid our respects to the dead, suddenly, it's about celebrating the miracle of the existence of Israel, the State of the Jews that so many prayed for for centuries and generations. "If I forget thee Jerusalem, it will be like forgetting my right hand," my ancestors prayed. "Next year in Jerusalem," we say.

Though I now live in the diaspora, as I sat next to my mother watching hour after hour of interviews with grieving families -- dating all the way back to the 1948 War of Independence -- I felt that familiar pressurized melancholy pour into me like hot wine after skiing. It's not exactly like suffocating, but it's close. Oxygen becomes less available as I come face to face with the unavoidable reality here: I could go buy a phone card or a bottle of water, I could go to my favorite restaurant, or go sit on the beach in Tel Aviv -- and explode...

When you live here, you learn to live with it. Only since I moved away have I become more aware of the undercurrent that never quite disappears, like a tickle in my throat or a nagging feeling that I've forgotten something important. You internalize it, because thinking about death twenty-four-seven can drive a person mad.

As a tourist, I am hyper-aware that in Israel, the only way to visit a friendly country is by getting on a plane. People are more aggressive, sharper, as if they want to make the best use of every single second; people get shot over beach chairs (no joke, this actually happened) and road rage may as well be the national sport. On the flip side, however, is the wonderful Middle Eastern warmth. If you sneeze in the street, strangers will say "Bless you," market vendors will give you extra produce and if you haggle respectfully, the transaction will end with a handshake even if you are the winner.

When D and I moved to London, I was delighted to discover the Lebanese Deli on the corner of our street. The guys at David's Deli are exactly the kinds of people that I miss: warm, welcoming, full of humour and compassion -- not to mention their fabulous hummus and other Middle Eastern deliciousness. One day, not too long after we'd arrived, D had gone out to buy some groceries. We were on the phone when he mentioned that although he was out of cash, he really wanted a cup of coffee. I told him to go to David's.
"But I don't have any money," D said.
"Tell them you'll pay later. They're from the Middle East, it'll be no problem." I assured him.

I was right. D came home happy, his caffeine fix satisfied, and ecstatic that we were already part of the neighborhood. It's the Middle Eastern way -- on all sides of this horrendous conflict.

Independence Day is problematic for people like me. As the granddaughter of the Holocaust generation, "Never Forget" has been imprinted in my brain with the same vigour as the need for a Jewish State.

Separate from my grandparents, however, I can not believe how we, the Jews, as victims of generations of persecution, after everything our people has gone through, can oppress another people. Like the transition from remembrance to celebrating independence, we have gone from victim to perpetrators, from attacked to aggressors.

And yet, because army service is mandatory, I have cousins whom I wouldn't imagine hurting a fly who elect to do their three-year army service in elite fighting units; left-wing, progressive friends who serve their obligatory month of reserve duty in Gaza or Hebron. When it comes to the existence of the State of Israel, the general consensus is that it's a miracle that the country has survived as long as it has, that it only takes one moment of taking our eye off the ball for Israel to be wiped off the map by one or many of our neighbours who would like nothing more.

This is a country built on fear. There is no grey here. It is all black and white.

I wasn't supposed to be here right now. I was supposed to be in Laos, wandering around waterfalls and canals, looking at dolphins and enjoying long, leisurely, catch-up lunches made up of strange foods and great stories with my lovely friend, J from Koh Pan Ngan.

Instead, here I am, in Haifa, ostensibly to plan my wedding. The real reason I came early was because I wanted to be with my mother who, after sixteen years, has separated from her boyfriend. I came to offer her my love and support. But that is only part of it, I now realize: after sixteen years, I have come to find my mother again, to meet the woman I remember who disappeared so long ago, to get to know who she is, who she has become, and introduce myself to her with a new level of honesty, who I am and have become.

Relationships are tricky, and as I plan my wedding, the yin and yang of this is not lost on me.

I never got along with my mother's boyfriend. We didn't like each other much, and he made very clear that I was not welcome in his house, regardless of the fact that it was my mother's as well. As a result, I moved away from Israel, possibly earlier than I would have wanted to. Living in New York, I worked many jobs I detested, in part because I needed to succeed -- there would be nowhere to go if I didn't. When I met D, I was often gripped by fear: what would I do if he and I broke up?

Ironically, traveling around Southeast Asia, as I met more and more wonderful single women, beautiful female souls who were free to do what they liked, go where they liked when they liked, I started questioning my decision to get married. I had always been so mistrusting of marriage, what had changed? Was I marrying him out of fear? If we weren't together, what would I be doing?

I went through a rough, emotionally exhausting yet necessary period of questioning. What was it that I wanted?

My mother's decision to separate from her boyfriend at exactly the same time added to the intensity of my questions. One of the first things she said to me was that now that she was on her own, she wanted me and my brother to have a home. It became clear that for the first time in sixteen years, I would have a place to go. If D and I ever did break up, for the first time in my adult life, I would have a place to go.

D and I had decided before I left for Thailand that we would meet in Bangkok. He had told me a lot about his trips there years back, and had even set the beginning of his second novel in one of the city's many markets. As the date of his arrival approached, my confusion rose. This was my journey, and though I was excited to see him and had missed him terribly, I wasn't completely ready to share it with him just yet.

When he walked out of the arrivals hall in Suvarnabhumi airport, my heart did a little jump and twirl. D and I had talked and talked, I had cried rivers and lakes, but seeing him, coming face to face again was very different from the disconnected voice on the other side of my cellphone telling me he loved me.

I had arrived from Chiang Mai about three hours earlier and had had enough time to position myself strategically in front of the exit so that I could look backpacker-chic and gorgeous when D walked out. In my mind, I would catch his eye immediately and he would make his way towards me, pushing his trolley a la Hollywood at its worst. All the torturous questioniong of the previous days and weeks would be forgotten as I would throw my arms around him and he would hold me tight. I had even warned him to brush his teeth!

What actually happened was that D marched out seeing nothing and nobody, wearing his LA look -- sunglasses and beads of sweat. He didn't even turn his head and instead made his way in the opposite direction of where I was perfectly positioned, as if he knew where he was going. I hesitated for a few seconds: should I let him keep going until he turned around? I had, after all, taken much care, to look as good as I possibly could, sitting cross-legged and barefoot in true traveler fashion, with my loose-fitting, low-cut tank top draped just so. There was no way, however, sexy perfection be damned. I jumped up and rushed after him.

D's self-assurance ran out relatively quickly and I was able to catch up with him easily. We laughed at his "astronaut moment" before he took me into his arms. Our meeting was anything but what I had imagined. Was I surprised? Of course not. Amused would be a better way of putting it -- it was D and I in a nutshell: my planning of every stupid, unimportant detail expunged by D's oblivion.

When we first got engaged, I told D that I wanted to get married in Israel. In addition to being generally uncomfortable with the idea, especially as he had never visited the country, D was worried that none of our friends would come. After waffling between the UK and the US, for weeks and months, I agreed that New York would be the best compromise. We booked the venue, I bought my FAB-U-LOUS dress, we started talking to prospective caterers, etc. As far as we were concerned, everything was falling into place.

Then, last November, D and I spent a few weeks in Israel. In Jerusalem, I took him to meet G, one of my favorite people from the Jewish community of El Salvador. G and my grandmother have been friends since the nineteen-forties.

I showed D the lovely garden at the back of G's house.
"This is where I always dreamt of getting married," I told him.
He nodded as he does when he's not sure what to say.
"Now that you've been to Israel," I couldn't restrain myself, "would you have considered having our wedding here?"
"Yes," he said.

Later that day, as we drove towards the Dead Sea, we talked about it more at length. By the time we watched the desert turn pink at sunset, we had decided to tie that damned confusing knot exactly where we were when something had started to finally make sense...

I have to admit that I showed D the best parts of Israel: the people I love, the beautiful hills of the Judean desert, the sunsets over the ocean. We didn't go to Bethlehem or the refugee camp where I used to work, or Ramallah. Though he did glimpse the horrendous segragation wall (by accident) and the difference between East and West Jerusalem which is impossible to miss, it is not the same as going through check points and experiencing life in Deheisheh or Hebron first-hand.

As long as you restrict yourself to Israeli areas, it is relatively easy to ignore the conflict much in the same was that many people visit exotic countries and spend their time in luxury resorts without venturing out to see how the locals live.

There are small reminders here and there: guards who check your purse at the entrance to supermarkets and restaurants, commemoration plaques in places where buses have been blown up, adolescent soldiers with huge machine guns strapped to their backs. This is nothing compared to what Palestinians face on a daily basis. On the other side of that terrible wall, it is impossible to forget what is actually going on.

D and I had a wonderful week together in Bangkok. We talked, we reconnected, we starting planning our wedding in earnest with the clarity that comes after so much questioning. He is arriving in Israel this week for meetings with event producers, tastings with possible caterers, and general ironing out of wedding details.

My mother and I are enjoying long walks, longer talks and spending time together in a way that we haven't for the past sixteen years.

Throughout the years, she told me her ex-boyfriend made her happy. I always used to ask her why her happiness had to mean my unhappiness, why he couldn't make the effort for us all to be happy together. I had always wanted her to find someone with whom to share her life and was devastated when that person turned out to be divisive rather than inclusive, jealous and possessive instead of the family-oriented. She could never answer me. Now, as I get to know her as an adult for the first time, things are clearer to me, the difference between the woman and the mother are easier to understand.

Every year on Bastille day, I call to wish my mother a happy birthday. Every year, her answer is the same:
"Thank you," she says, softly, "but every day is my birthday. Every day that I have my health, that you and your brother have your health is my birthday."
These days, that sentence is ringing truer than it ever has. I watch my mother get stronger by the day, even as she struggles with conflicting emotions and moments of deep sadness. I am inspired and excited to watch her grow as if every day she is being reborn, grateful that I can be here to share these precious moments with her and hoping that I am, in one way or another, helping her through it all.
"What a gift" she says about things big and small. And now, finally, I agree with her.

At this point in time, however, I can't help but see the parallel with this country and have faith that if the unfathomable, the unbelievable, the last thing I expected would ever happen can taken place in my tiny microcosm, it is possible on a larger scale: why can't we work towards cooperation instead of segregation, why does our safety have to come at such a high price for others?

These days I do, I really have hope...

---

The Middle East and Jewish History, both, are a bittersweet mixture of sadness and joy, sweet and savoury, tears and laughter. And so it goes with food as well. Spices like sumac and cinnamon add sweetnes to meat and other usually salty dishes.

One of my favorite Arab dishes is chicken stuffed with cinnamon rice. I remember enjoying it once in Bethlehem with my friend, Ziad. We had to sit in a specific part of the restaurant where women and men could eat together as it was a religious (Muslim), Hamas-owned place, a simple hole in the wall where the woman who cooked also served up the meal. That was more than ten years ago. Thinking of that rice, of the juicy chicken, I immediately conjure up the small, rotund woman under the white headscarf who brought out the silver plate, the darkness of the room contrasted by the brightness of the sun shining outside, and the sweet taste of the rice, the almonds, the cinnamon mixed in with the slightly dried-out chicken.

Since arriving, I haven't stopped cooking. Making up for the months away, I have baked gluten free bread and brownies, experimented with the red rice I enjoyed so much in Thailand, added newly discovered herbs and spices, like galangal root, to old favorites, invented salads...

My mother is my best customer! I love watching her face as she closes her eyes and raises her hand to her heart when she likes the taste of something. It's wonderful to see someone you love enjoying to such an extent.

Red rice with black currants was inspired by my surroundings, the home I lost and have found again, the warm safety of my family's embrace. Like this country, like my life, and because I don't follow recipes but rather make things up as I go along, there are no exact measurements.

1 part red rice to 2 parts water
black currants (dried)
zuchini (courgette), chopped very small
carrot, chopped very small
olive oil
cinnamon
sweet paprika
sumac
fresh cilantro
(optional: chilli powder)

Soak the currants in water for at least an hour.
Drain the currants but retain the water (it's wonderfully sweet and delicious, try it but be careful not to drink it all!)
In a pot, mix the currants in with the rice (I also soak the rice for a couple of hours beforehand, but I throw away that water), add a pinch of salt and the water. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, lower the heat. Allow to simmer until all the water has been absorbed (about 45 minutes, like regular brown rice).
In a separate pan, saute the zuchini and carrots in the olive oil on a very very low flame for about as long as it takes until the rice is ready. This allows the vegetables to cook very slowly and still retain a bit of crunch.
When the rice is ready, add cinnamon, sumac and sweet paprika to taste as well as additional salt, if desired.
Combine the rice and vegetables. Mix well. Add the currant water, raise the heat to medium and allow it all to cook together until the water has been absorbed. Stir often.
Garnish with fresh cilantro.

Because this dish is sweet, it pairs very well with roasted vegetables or greens sauteed with garlic. Pine nuts or almonds are also a good addition.

Soakedalicious

2008-04-16T09:44:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year! Happy Song Kran!

There's something indescribably fun about wishing someone well as you pour water over their head, especially in forty degree weather, even when the ice cubes melted hours ago.

For the past week to ten days, I've been pretty down. As I kept telling D: my head is doing me head in. Questions have been swirling around like bats in a cave, about the past, the future, what I want, who I am, who I want to be when I grow up. Do I even want to grow up? Have I ever been allowed to not be a grownup?

I've been going from place to place -- from the beach to yoga, from my room to dinner, from the South to the North -- and the thoughts have joined me, happy to immerse themselves in the new surroundings along with their old rants and raves.

I get to Chiang Mai and spend a couple of days under a dark cloud, unable to shake off the sadness, the anger, the confusion I have been feeling since Koh Pan Ngan.

Then Song Kran,Thai New Year, explodes at me, at everyone and everything. Thousands of people line the streets armed with buckets, water guns, garbage cans all filled with water. The traffic is bumper to bumper and we are sitting ducks, asking to get soaked with an easy pull of the trigger a light flick of the wrist.

"We" is me and my Chiang Mai buddy and yoga teacher, JP. JP is originally from Canada but has been living in Southeast Asia for a few years. She is a talented and giving yoga teacher who is also a former pro mountainbiker and criminologist. Even on my worst days, her energy is infectious enough to pull me out of my room on more than one occasion (not an easy thing to do).

I hop on the back of her bright pink moped holding a giant torpedo water gun and am instantly transformed from self-pitying blob to Terminatrix. We make our way around the moat by the old city. Within four minutes of heading into the main street, we look as if we forgot to undress before taking a shower.

Two squealing women on a hot pink motorbike is the equivalent of a "Kick Me" sign taped to a nerd's back. It's wonderful to get goose bumps in the hot sun.

What a party!

Chiang Mai has been amazing. I'm sad to leave tomorrow, although D will be waiting on the other side!!!! Excited doesn't begin to describe how I feel.

I arrived in Chiang Mai in the middle of my crisis to open arms, warm-hearted souls and many a place where I felt comfortable enough to let my guard down. A couple of good chats, a herbal steam, a night of dancing at the Thai reggae bar and I've tured a corner. I find myself ploughing into Song Kran with a vengeance. What a place!

For the past two and a half months,I have been looking for a place where I could feel comfortable, put my bag down, unpack my things, rest; a place where I could experience new things, get to know Thailand a bit better, meet people I have things in common with. I almost skipped Chiang Mai -- like all my other decisions about where to go next, I bought my train ticket on a whim, without thinking it through or planning anything. I wanted to see J again, my friend from Koh Pan Ngan, and was hoping to catch her in Chiang Mai. When I emailed her the good news, however, it turned out that she was leaving for Laos the day before I arrived; we were going to miss each other by twenty-four hours.

Though J isn't here, part of her beautiful spirit has remained long enough to settle me into the guest house where she stayed, a homey place with a full kitchen; and hook me into the wonderful community she became a part of during her time here. From my first moments in Chiang Mai, I have felt safe and supported, almost as if I've been here before. In the end, J and I are meeting up in Laos on April 25th.

I almost didn't come to Chiang Mai, the place I've been trying to find since I flew out of Heathrow in February. I wish I was staying longer, that I had time to experience it on regular days when there are no celebrations going on, but I'm grateful to have made it for these ten days. On second thought, maybe this is exactly the time I needed to be here, to pull myself out of my navel-gazing rut and into the soaking wet celebration of renewal. Isn't there a saying about not knowing what you're looking for until you find it?

Next time you feel sad, consider turning on "No Woman No Cry" in Thai and jumping in the shower with your clothes on. Believe me, it does wonders.

Manna for the Desperate Writer

2008-04-14T04:41:00.000+01:00

Day 57 and I finally caved. Only after I get back to the guest house do I realize that I'm pretty much exactly at the midpoint of my trip. By the time I'd counted the days, the deed has been done. Am I proud that I made it this far, or am I disappointed that I wasn't able to hold out for longer? Ask me again in a minute...

I'd wondered who it would be. In the end, I remained loyal, even a million miles away, to the first man who tempted me down this writing path.

At age fourteen, adrift in hormones, others' decisions about my life, and general feelings of inadequacy, I had read Paul Auster's Leviathan and had immediately followed it up with Moon Palace. For three days, I had pretended to be sick so I could stay home, finish them in one go. When I'd come to the end, I had read them again -- this time with breaks in between for school, friends and other distractions -- excited and terrified by the ideas and emotions the books had sparked in me.

I wanted to write, to see my name on spines of my own, to make people feel the way I had making my way as quickly and as slowly as I possibly could through those two novels.

Auster was the first. Few followed, but those who did -- Romain Gary, Milan Kundera, Oscar Wilde, Jorge Amado -- became my touchstones: books and authors that I returned to for advice, courage, comfort. I wanted to write, but had no idea where to start. Who was I to think I could accomplish anything even close to what these masters seemed to do with such ease? My few attempts seemed so desperate, so over-the-top and amateurish that I preferred to dream rather than put any creation of my own out there. Instead, I read. Only when I had no choice, when the words I was trying so hard to keep inside, poured out of me despite my best intentions, did I do any actual writing.

I remember the first time I showed a friend of mine a short story I had written. He is a really good friend and a "real writer": someone who gets paid to see his name in print.
"You should see my first stories," was his feedback, "they're even worse than yours!"
It wasn't exactly the response I'd been looking for. Then again, I can easily admit now that what I'd shown him was a first draft. At the time, I felt that to be able to make it as a writer, my stories would have to come out perfectly formed from the first words I threw down on paper -- or not at all. After my friend's reaction, I didn't write another short story for a good few years.

Since then, my writing has evolved as have I. I may or may not be able to call myself a writer, but I do write. Along the way, I have picked up all sorts of interesting advice and tidbits, my favorites being:
- first drafts are supposed to be shit
- we treat our writing the way we were treated as children.
- it's not the world's fault you want to be an artist, now get back to work! Get back to work!

I keep my favorite books by my bed and though I rarely pick them up anymore, I do look to them often, like a wink to an old friend who is about to sing a bad karaoke song. Auster has pushed me to keep moving when I have felt paralyzed and stuck, Amado has cheered me up, reminded me not to take it too seriously, Gary has grounded me in the reality of what writing means, how it fits into my life.

When I was packing for my trip, the stack of books I planned to bring along included more than one of my well-read old friends. I was planning to bring them along as toddler would a security blanket or a teddy bear. Unfortunately, my backpack was already too unbearably heavy to include any lightness of being; and the only moonrise I would be enjoying would not be in print but rather in person.

In the end, I took only one book with me: a non-fiction, badly written manifesto about embracing the wild woman each one of us supposedly carries inside. By week three, I'd left it behind, tucked into a shelf, between Robert Ludlum and Ekhart Tolle, for the next self-seeking Farang to endure. I was starving for fictional characters whose lives I could immerse myself in when I needed a break from the alien reality around me. I drifted between the occasional outdated Western magazine, my own writing and a fantastically enlightening but not very entertaining book entitled "Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom." The goal had been to read as many of the literary classic as I could while away. But instead of reading for pleasure, I busied myself with the pursuit of heart openers in yoga, meeting all kinds of wonderful strangers, and much much much soul-searching.

Over the past three years, I have gone back and forth about reading fiction as I write my own. At times, it has been impossible to imagine reading someone else's work as I struggled with my novel and then there have been moments when reading a piece that somebody actually finished has spurred me on. As my novel makes this trip with me, it's been growing, expanding, changing yet remaining the same - much like its author. It too has had its ups and downs as well as suffered and reveled in new cultures; and it too has yearned for a good dose of the familiar authors who have lent it so much encouragement and inspiration.

I made my way around Thailand and Kerala, trying to keep as much valuable space in my backpack for local treasures: spices, bracelets, and other souvenirs that I wouldn't be able to pick up as easily as I would books back home. From time to time, however, I would allow myself to browse one of the many second-hand English bookshops that are everywhere. The shelves overflow with everything from Shakespeare to New Age, thrillers to Danielle Steele, catering to the backpackers and tourists who, in turn, keep the inventory well-stocked. I would browse the racks sometimes for the better part of an afternoon, forgoing temples and other sites in order to read a chapter or paragraph of anything I thought might help combat the homesickness, the fear, the loneliness. I would pick up whatever book called to me at that moment, let it fall open to whatever random page. I looked for messages, clues as to what to do, feel, where to go next. It's like tarot for the desperate writer.

Second-hand bookstores have always been a passion of mine -- the smell of old paper, the overlooked gems. Usually I have trouble holding back. Not on this trip. I wanted to touch the covers, flip through the pages, but I had no problem walking out empty-handed: with so many options, who could I choose as my temporary companion -- the question felt too large for a concrete decision.

In every shop, I encountered copies of my beloved favorites but I resisted, feeling it would be silly to buy an overpriced version of something I have not only read a few times but, more than likely, own more than one copy of already.

But by the time I returned to Thailand from India, I was ready to pick up a few novels I was supposedly interested in. What did I have to lose? In theory, this was a great step forward, but in reality none were meant to be: each book I bought was resold at half price, unread, as I prepared to move on to my next destination.

Before heading off to stay with my Thai friends, however, I lucked out: after thoroughly enjoying "A Tale of Two Lives" by Vikram Seth, I had become curious about him. "A Suitable Boy" was too thick, too heavy to drag along, so I settled on "An Equal Music". And as is the case with all literature that transcends its author's experience, the book could not have been more appropriate for me at that exact moment in time.

"An Equal Music" is about music and love. It is about what our senses remember when everything else feels strange. And that is exactly what I experienced living with my Thai friends.

Have I mentioned that I reek these days? After five days of ingesting everything from pigs' ears to gecko (or more likely lizard), MSG to fish sauce to every color in the curry rainbow (not to mention more sugar than I have consumed in the last five years), my digestive system has officially gone on strike. I don't recognize the scent of my body. If I was stuck in a dark room, I wouldn't be able to pick myself out. For five days, I ate what they ate, slept how they slept, bathed how they bathed. And I loved every second of it though none of it -- except for the constant blasting of the television which reminds me of Israel -- felt in any way related to my day-to day.

We spent five days journeying from Jim's family to Auon's family, from the city to the country. I slept on the floor under an old lady's feet, and shared a bed with an infant. I watched my dinner get slaughtered, and made incense-infused wishes for the dead.

For five days, I was pointed at, laughed at, I committed faux-pas after faux pas, and tasted everything they handed me. Though they warned me that the food was "Pet Pet", spicy, I ate what they ate, with only a few more used tissues to distinguish between us.

The only thing I did not compromise on was that, unlike the Thais who use a small shower hose to wash after using the loo, I carried a roll of toilet paper with me wherever we went -- and I used it!

Jim, Bom, Auon and their friends are roughly the same age as me. But they have families to support -- two or three generations: from their children to their grandparents. The day after we arrived at Jim's mother's, she pulled out three large bags of cash, the past three months of wages from the restaurant. They dumped the bags all over the floor and started to count, making piles of one hundred Baht, groups of one thousand Baht. Ten minutes later, I was the only one still at it as everyone else had found better things to do.

That night, Jim's entire family arrived -- brothers, half-brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces with boyfriends, and countless "cousins". The Celebration of the Dead was the next day and in preparation, we crammed into the house, most sleeping on the floor in any corner where there was space.

We got to the cemetery by eight the next morning. Days start early in Thailand, and by ten, I usually felt the sun should be setting. There were about twenty of us but hundreds of people crowded around the other graves. A few had plaques, but most were simply large mounds of sand that people were decorating with streamers, flags and confetti for the celebration.

Every family had brought along a feast. In our case, Jim's mother and aunts were laying out fresh crab, king prawns, whole chickens and ducks with heads still attached, mountains of fresh fruit, rice, a multitude of sauces, drinks, a single beer, and a pig's head. It seemed strange to me to offer up such a vast quantity of food while there were so many of us that needing to be fed.

Breakfast was as much of a production as lunch and dinner: spicy catfish, boiled fillets in a vinegar sauce, crab, shrimp in sweet ginger sauce and, of course, the mandatory bowls of kaw -- the never-ending supply of white rice that is spooned out of one of the three immense rice makers. Rice is cooling and balances out the spicy, hot properties of the spices used in Thai cooking.

I wondered what was going to happen to all of the food they had laid out, but everyone seemed busy and I was offered no explanation.

Throughout the five days, we were either driving for hours on end or thrown on someone's floor, hanging out, chatting, doing not much of anything. This was also the case at the cemetery where we stood around for a few hours after everything had been set up. There were no prayers or chants, or ceremonies. Suddenly someone lit up the fire crackers Bom had strung from one of the trees, and we were off! People hurled themselves at the food and shoved it in the back of the pickup truck that had been waiting, its hatch wide open in anticipation. They grabbed what food they could off the trays shoving half-peeled prawns into their mouths, noodles, oranges, whatever was closest. And there was always a hand holding something to eat stretched at me.

The crazy aunt whose feet I'd slept under the night before was downing the by then surely flat, warm beer with relish. She let out a loud burp and followed it up with a sliver of jack fruit.

Jim's mother who speaks not a word of English climbed into the back of the truck, put her hand around my waist and pulled me onto the back of the pickup truck as it started moving away. I handed her half an orange as a thank you.

After lunch, I stretched out on the floor with my book assuming they'd probably want some time to be with the family without having to answer my hundreds of questions. I'd started to nod off, contented by the feeling of melancholic London that Seth describes so beautifully when Jim burst into the room.
"You ready?"
"Ready for what?"
"We go!"
"Where?"
"We go to Auon family"
"When?"
"Five Minute!"
My bag was stacked high with everything I'd pulled out in search of a scarf to cover my shoulders at the cemetery. Five minutes??? I shoved everything in as quickly as I could, and rushed to brush my teeth in the gutter. Within about four and a half minutes, I was ready and waiting.
Five minutes turned out to be quite a fluid concept.
Two hours later, I was still waiting. Thank God for my book.

After a couple of detours to Big C and Makro -- huge Western warehouses that sell everything from pens to apples wholesale -- we arrived at Auon's parents'. They live far outside the city, and the house couldn't be more different from Jim's mother's. There are no window panes, only wooden shutters, and creepy crawlies of every shape and form wind their way around many of the surfaces in greetimg.

Auon's father has built the house and everything in it. He obviously doesn't sew: every surface, including where we sit, is either cement or wood. It is beautiful and rustic but very uncomfortable. The guys retire to the tool area and crack open their first beers of the day.

Auon's sisters speak a little English -- they are both school teachers -- I sit next to them to watch as they make dinner on the kitchen floor. One of them is pounding spices for a curry paste, the other is chopping up half of the pig's head that Jim has brought as a gift from her family. Children run in and out. Men appear from time to time to grab rice and a snack.

Outside, Auon catches one of the chickens and slits its throat. It will be our Tom Ka soup. they will use every part of the bird, discarding only the feathers. His father jumps on an old moped and returns fifteen minutes later with wild honey that he has just climbed a tree to collect.

I am chopping pig's ear.

Never in my life have I wanted to be a vegetarian as much as I do that night. I would have gone hungry, however.

During those five days, I reach for my writing whenever I can. It's more like a way of staying in touch with what I know, with my own life, like the comfort of coffee and a cigarette at breakfast, than because I have anything specific to jot down. I try to note all the details of what's going on around me and even though the content is, for the most part, totally new, the familiar action of writing itself is what I'm grabbing hold of.

The group of kids squashing cockroaches with rotten planks of wood. Auon's mother who blushes and runs away every time our eyes meet. The two sisters who seem to forget and remember their English depending on who is in the room with us. That night, I sleep between one-year-old Pow and drunken Bom on the living room floor, staring up at some sort of reptilian worm that has attached itself to the ceiling directly above me as I listen to Auon slurp slugs out of their shells at two in the morning.

"If I can, I change with you," Jim says to me more than once. "You can go everywhere, I have to work to get money for my family."
Jim's children will grow up living with her mother because they work too hard to take them to school. There is no time in their lives for the hours of questioning. What would they do with doubt? How could their lives be different if their answers changed? It doesn't matter; they don't have that luxury.

It's about keeping your feet clean and enjoying a good laugh, about tasting the sweetness of the cherries you find on the tree under which you share your lunch, about keeping the baby happy by bouncing him up and down rather than parking him in front of the television, I think to myself rather condescendingly on the first day.

Throughout the five days, there are times when I admire how they live, and times when I would give a good big wad of Western cash for bits of Western luxury. The bathroom, for example, is located right next to the kitchen and though there is a door, it is not sealed up to the ceiling, so everything is audible. While I've become quite astute at squatting and aiming into the small hole in the ground, I am unable to reconcile the privacy I am used to with doing my business within such clear earshot of so many others (not to mention having to walk out into the crowd immediately following my performance). I don't mind having to wash in my sarong, or the lack of hot (running) water, but I could do without the dead bugs in my bucket and along the walls at night when I try to sneak in a private loo run.

I take every opportunity to return to my book, delve away from the heat and humidity, back to the rain that seems to always be falling in London -- at least in this book. The grey skies, I remember those. I look up at the jackfruit tree above me. There are huge green sacks of ripe fruit hanging down ready to be cut. Stray dogs roll around in the sand. The children have found an old jute bag that they are using to pull each other around with. In the book, the string quartet has finished a performance and the protagonist is wandering through the drizzle thinking about his long lost love. Once in a while, I'll look up and have to remind myself of where I am, the worlds being so different from each other. I wonder how I will combine everything I have seen and done, everything I have become with who I was three months ago, who I am in London. Will there be a noticeable difference, or will it remain inside me like a memory?

There it was, symbolically sandwiched between Leviatan and Moon Palace: Auster's recounting of his struggle to make it as a writer. I had already bought one book by an Indian first-time novelist. Still, I had to have it. I needed suddenly to read his particular voice: that emotionally charged, stunted reporting of "fact" that, even in his fiction, makes me wonder how much is real; the feeling of destiny being followed and inevitably fulfilled in each paragraph; the way he recounts misfortunes and joy in his same detached tone. At least I hadn't read it before, I justified it to myself. It didn't matter, it doesn't matter. Auster is Auster -- in his worst novels (of which I'm sad to say there are quite a few) he can spiral into taking himself too seriously while his best work uses that intensity to create tension and weave his unique point of view into fantastic yet painfully realistic journeys. I feared for the first book I'd purchased and considered reselling it within ten minutes of having paid for it. Instead, I made a deal with myself that I would read that one first, leave Auster for afterwards, knowing as I decided it that that would be impossible.

Between starting this post and publishing it, I have devoured Paul Auster's book. The other is patiently waiting until I get on the train to Bangkok tomorrow, where I will be meeting up with D after having been apart for 68 days. Though I had every intention of holding off, after five days with my Thai friends followed by the twenty-five hour train ride to Chiang Mai, I had earned a few hours with an old friend.

Breaking Through Cultural Barriers (finally!)

2008-03-30T11:30:00.000+01:00

My first month in Southeast Asia was spent pretty much in a daze of "what am I doing?" I wondered on probably an hourly basis why I had chosen to come so far from those I love, from my cushy life, from everything familiar. Nothing felt safe, nowhere felt comfortable.

I once read that the reason time feels like it passes so much slower when we go away is because everything around us is new. When everything is unknown, there is so much more to see, hear, smell, touch, grasp, learn. We become like children, taking everything in with curiosity and often a much more open mind than we might normally have at home. Traveling, I suffer from a term I learned yesterday: FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out. With so much to explore, to experience, there is always more -- a museum you don't have time for, a restaurant you couldn't to, a yoga teacher who was off the week you happened to be in town -- and I tend to focus on what I haven't managed to pack in rather than what I have. I'm working on it...

When I first arrived on Koh Pan Ngan, I felt trapped in a tourist vortex. Of course it didn't help that that week happened to be the Full Moon Party, which truly brings out some nasty specimens, but regardless, what I really wanted was contact with the locals, to find out how the Thais live, eat, sleep, relate to each other. I blamed language barriers, I blamed tourists, I blamed my attitude, I blamed the Thais. But there was no one to blame and nothing to be done; I wasn't able to break through those invisible walls between us.

My desire to eat healthy and the attention I pay to what I put in my body add an extra challenge when I travel. As a result, I usually find one, maybe two restaurants that serve local, healthy food, places I feel I can trust where I then have most of my meals. Though I probably end up missing out on all sorts of culinary adventures, the benefits of frequenting one place regularly offers other benefits. For one, I am able to establish enough of a rapport that I can safely ask for "no dairy, no wheat, no sugar" (etc). Secondly, instead of trying only one or two things on the menu before moving on to the next place, I can instead explore a wider variety of options in that one place.

Three days ago, I discovered yet another upside, a most wonderful, unexpected bonus, one that I wouldn't have dared hope for. I have written about Big Mountain restaurant before. It is the where J, K and I spent many a meal, if you recall, talking, laughing, crying, eating. From the post-yoga breakfast -- brown rice pudding (cooked in fresh coconut milk) -- to the green curry or the magical galangal root soup dinners, I have made my way up and down their menu much like I have made my way up and down the mountain on my little scooter to reach them.

Jim only starts preparing a dish after it's been ordered; everything is made from scratch. What this means in practice is that on busy nights, you can wait an hour for your meal, longer if it's busy. Sometimes, one person will have finished their food before their diner companions receive theirs. Add to that the sixteen-year-old waiters' teenage hormonal 'tude, the fact that they are often "finish" of some of the most popular items on the menu for days at a time, as well as their constantly changing business hours; and you've got one hell of an eccentric way to run a restaurant. I find it mostly charming although the time we arrived to find them all napping in the middle of the floor was a bit strange.
"Close. Open sik o-kok" one of them said to me as if he'd never met me before.

By now, I know to arrive an hour before I get hungry, and they know "no sugar, no honey, no milk." (although last night, I had to explain to Don, one of the sixteen-years olds, that yoghurt is like milk. He blamed me, giggling like a girl at my insanity.)

Jim and Baum are siblings. Baum manages the restaurant. He also likes to make up stories to see how much people will believe. Jim has shared some of her top secret recipes with me; she has let me into her kitchen to see how she and her helpers prepare everything from chilli paste (by hand, with a mortar and pestle) to the amazing rice pudding, to her famous vegan tofu burgers. From time to time, she will send me out a sample of whatever it is she's preparing -- bean patties, pumpkin soup, vegan taro root ice cream. When she has time, which is rare, she will stop by my table and sit down for a chat.

When I returned to Koh Pan Ngan last week after having been away for three weeks, Big Mountain was my first stop. Jim let out a shriek when she saw me and we hugged like old friends.

From the day I came back, I have pretty much fallen into the same routine I had when I was here with J: yoga, breakfast and writing at Big Mountain, followed by a quick dip in the ocean or any errands that need running. If there is time, I'll usually take in another yoga class after which I make my way back to Big Mountain for dinner. Usually I meet people there whom I have gotten to know -- the yoga community is pretty small and most people are extremely friendly and outgoing.

"See you tonight," they say to me at Big Mountain when I settle my breakfast bill.
"See you in morning," is their way of saying good night.

When I came back, I had asked Jim if I could go with her to the market. I was curious to see what she buys and where. But we hadn't mentioned it again, and I wanted to make sure she hadn't forgotten about it.

"When is good for me to come to the market with you?" I asked, trying not to sound pushy.
"I go to Surat Thani (the town on the mainland where she and Baum are from) for few days," she told me, "my family all come together."
"Wow," I said, selfishly dreading her absence and my lack of food. "How long?"
"I go maybe second until six. Maybe five day or four day. Holiday." Her face brightened at the thought of being out of the kitchen for more than the hour or two she usually spends at the market picking up groceries.

The restaurant overlooks the main road by the beach on the Western part of Koh Pan Ngan. It is built high enough up the mountain, however, that the views reach over the road, past the treetops and out into the expanse of the ocean. The roof is made of bamboo, and like most places, it is completely open to the elements: there are no walls, windows or doors other than the one on the small room by the loos that Jim, her husband and their one-year-old son, Pow, share. (of course the loo has a door as well, but the ceiling opens up to the kitchen so there isn't much privacy to be had there regardless.)
"You come with me," Jim said suddenly, "you come to my family."
And in the best accidental imitation of my grandmother I have ever done, I pulled back, put my hands on my heart and responded with a very nervous "NO!"
"I can't." I told her
"Why? You come second to six. We go to beautiful house of my friend, waterfall. You sit, eat with my family."
"I write my book. I can't leave for five days." I was already smacking myself for chickening out.

I started working on my novel around one thousand two hundred and twenty-seven days ago. In all of that time, I have used it as an excuse to get out of many an obligation -- commitments I have made and later regretted, activities I've feared partaking in, acquaintances I can't be bothered to deepen my friendship with. Often, as I see it, the options have been between being able to partake in "life" or "hiding behind my novel" and usually I have either chosen to partake in life and then spent my time feeling guilty about not writing, or I have decided it best to stay home and write, regretting the opportunity I have passed up on. Sometimes it feels like there is no way to win; other times, I love what I'm working on so much that I can't imagine ever wanting to do anything else. On Koh Pan Ngan, on this journey, I am trying to focus on what it is that I truly want, to ask myself what I want to be doing at all times and to do it.

As I have started to ease into my travels and gain more of a sense of humour and perspective, I have also started to realize how rarely I actually do what I want to do, follow my own desires, make decisions based on me rather than everyone else. This deficiency spans from what I order at restaurants ("I should have the steamed salmon and broccoli, but what I'd like to have is the burger and fries") to how often I exercise, to how I spend my evenings.

I've noticed that this is a pattern I create and recreate. Even here, on an island in Thailand island where I knew no one a week ago, I have managed to pack my schedule: there is tea with M, dinner with T, yoga with TB, and then dinner again, possibly with C from Agama yoga, or maybe D from Pyramid yoga ... Even here I find myself reaching a breaking point over-compromising myself, forgetting to make time for me - to write, to take a stroll or a dip in the ocean, to breathe and retreat and do what I came here for... As a result, I almost missed out on the one opportunity I've been craving more than tea or breakfast with another foreign tourist: spending time with a Thai family, in their home, sitting barefoot in their circle on the floor, sharing their food, holding their children, learning their customs.

I can't believe I even hesitated.

On April second, I will be taking the boat to Surat Thani with Jim, Baum, Jim's husband whose name I've forgotten again, and little Pow with whom I already clap and sing -- although I needn't bother trying so hard: like his uncle, Baum, Pow cracks
up any time he catches sight of me. It's kind of nice.

Shabbath Shalom from Cochin

2008-03-18T09:12:00.000Z

Traveling has made me feel at times that the world is too huge to grasp, that the difference between me and others is vast and insurmountable. At other times, it has done the opposite: my heart has been warmed by similarities and little showers of kindness from local strangers, fellow travelers and new friends.

Standing around the Shabbath table of the KR family in Cochin, India, listening to Mr. KR recite the blessings and sing the songs I have sung all my life on Friday nights with only a slight variation to the familar melodies, I found myself whispering along with him, culling the words from a part of myself I so rarely access these days. He blessed the Sabbath and the wine and then invited me to sit around the table with him and his family. They went back and forth between Malayalam and English in much the same way as the community I come from switches between English, Spanish and French or German, snacking on spicy, fenugreek-infused finger-food.
"Did you hear, Sarah's husband died. The funeral was today."
"Who?"
"Sarah, Sarah, remember, she used to live three doors down from your cousin."
A middle-aged couple, M and A, from Israel, whom I had met at the synagogue, had brought news of old friends and Mr. KR, sitting on my left, was getting louder and more agitated as they told him about this person and that -- who had died, who had married, who had how many grandchildren. Though I couldn't understand most of the conversation, it had the exact timbre of my grandmother and her friends when they get together. Though Mr KR kept apologizing, he needn't have.

I had decided to come to Cochin spontaneously and had hurried to the synagogue upon arrival so as not to miss the Friday night service. When the services had not been held due to a lack of people (only four men -- not enough to have a minyan, an official service -- and three women including myself), I had contented myself with sitting in the women's area, taking in the atmosphere while trying not to succumb to my usual discomfort with religious institutions. I guess that's part of it for me, however -- be it in Antwerp or Cochin, London or New York. The two other women prayed quietly, each speaking the words at her own pace.

Though I was three years old when we left El Salvador and too young to remember the synagogue, sitting in Cochin, I thought this was what it must have been like: simple, with rows of seats facing the Torah scrolls hidden behind the typical deep blue velvet curtain with the ten commandments embroidered on the front. The synagogue in El Salvador had served as a social gathering place as much as a religious institution. This seemed to be the case in Cochin as well. In the men's area, two octogenarians talked animatedly in hushed tones.

I don't know what I expected to find at the synagogue, whether I was looking for comfort, a sprirtual epiphany or somewhere to anchor myself for a moment. As the other women prayed, I opened the book they had handed me and spoke the only words I really remember:
"Shma Israel Adonai Eloheinu ... Baruch Shem Kevod ..."
They were as void of significance as ever, but the familiarity of the words felt like plush pillows against my back after having sat on wooden benches for a while. I didn't continue. Instead, I took in the room, its effect similar to the words I had just mouthed.

Described in the guidebooks with superlative flamboyance and awe, the Pardesi synagogue in Jewtown is simple and as restrained and meticulous as its few members. In the centre of the men's area is a white podium surrounded by banisters on three sides where they supposedly read from the Torah scrolls. Dangling from the ceiling are tens of typically Keralan glass balls that served as lampshades at one time; and I counted no less than twelve chandeliers, each one different, some with candles, some with lightbulbs, none in use. Instead, harsh fluorescent lights coat everything in the room with a flat, white veneer.

The same was true of the KR house. Spacious and filled with photographs of children and grandchildren, the fluorescent lights gave the large room the impersonal feel of a restaurant or a museum.

When I had first approached him, Mr. KR had been extremely abrupt:
"I have no time for you. I'm ging to America. I'm very busy."
But then he had invited me to his home for kiddush (Sabbath blessings) after prayers. I realized when I returned a few days later how many people like me must appear on a daily basis to ask questions and make requests from these people. When I returned to their house two days later to write down a recipe from Mrs KR (writing is not permitted on Shabbath, so I convinced her to give me ten minutes of her time on Sunday morning -- not an easy feat!), there were no less than thirty tourists, waiting in front of the synagogue for a chance to speak to whomever they could about the Jews of Cochin. Mr. KR barrelled through the crowd without paying anyone any heed.
"I'm busy now," he kept saying to no one and everyone, "I have no time for you, I'm going to America."

I felt a rush of secret pride: unlike everyone else, I knew that he was going for Passover and his daughter's wedding, and that they would only be returning at the end of May. My trip to India had been a last-minute decision as I had originally been planning to save it for the final leg of my trip in May -- exactly the dates Mr and Mrs KR would have been away. I have to keep reminding myself of these serendipitous gifts during the difficult moments when I feel lonely, or question what I'm doing and why I'm on this journey -- as I wonder where to go next and fear that I'm not going in the right direction.

When D and I decided to get married, no one in my family mentioned the fact that he isn't Jewish. On the contrary, they have been encouraging and supportive of our relationship and the joy he has brought to my life. They love D, regardless of his cultural and religious background. Interestingly, it is mostly religious Jews -- those who choose to segregate themselves from other cultures, to isolate themselves in their little Jewish micrososms in order, they say, to preserve and protect their Judaism -- who have been the harshest and most judgmental. There have been those who have tried to point out the positive:
"Well at least he looks Jewish"
or
"[D's last name] -- it sounds Jewish" (D's last name sounds as Jewish as Goldberg sounds Muslim)
A few times, however, people have been quite rude. M and A, the middle-aged Israeli couple who had come back to the KR house with me were visiting Kerala for a couple of weeks. Originally born in Cochin, both had emigrated to Israel in the nineteen-fifties at age three and seven respectively. Though A still speaks Malayalam and has a slight accent in Hebrew, M sounds completely Israeli and only has a basic understanding of the language.

On their last visit to Cochin, they had journeyed to the school where M's father had been a teacher sixty years before. One of the people they had met there had started to cry when M had told him who she was.
"When you left, our luck left with you," the man had told her as he'd pressed her hand strongly in both of his, "since the Jews left, our lives are not the same."
M and A had related the anecdote with pride, but it had made me very uncomfortable; as if the Jews were looked upon not as individuals, but more like some sort of charm, a mascot with a bald head or a golden foot that one could rub for luck.

When A asked about my partner's background, I admitted that D is not Jewish. "But we're getting married in Israel," I told him, as if that would make up for the obvious flaw.
"That's terrible!" he said.
"Why is it terrible?" I didn't want to argue in a stranger's house, but I couldn't acquiesce without mounting a basic defense, "I have met a wonderful man who treats me well, who loves me. How can that be terrible?"
A shrugged obviously as aware as I was of his surroundings. "There's always conversion."
We left it at that. I found out later that A had worked for the Jewish Agency all his life -- an institution set up to bring Jews back to the "Homeland". He and M have five children, all of whom are extremely religious, all of whom have refused, on principle, to leave Israel.

The next night, wanting to learn more about the Cochin Jewish community, I arrived at M and A's hotel (by Shabbath-desecrating taxi) in time to bless the new week. Over the most flavourful, aromatic South Indian pea masala and root vegetable "cutlet", we talked about the Jews of Cochin and their long history. Unlike Mr and Mrs KR, who are light-skinned and almost European looking, A and M look Indian.
"The Jews of India are unique." A explained, "Nothing was wrong with our life here, there were no pogroms, no anti-semitism. We did well, we got along with our neighbours, we had money. But when the State of Israel was declared, we left with little more than the shirts on our backs in order to go support the Jewish State."

The irony of the situation was extremely poignant. For the first time in a month, I had been able to get past an uncomfortable situation and get to know the person. The simple facility of common language had made it so that we could explain our points of view instead of waving the other person away.

For the past month, I have gone from place to place -- Hong Kong, Koh Pan Ngan, Bangkok, Cochin -- enjoying many exchanges with local people but enduring too many of them. My inability to converse, to ask questions, to understand directly from the person in front of me what they are trying to say has been one of my most fundamental challenges. I have wanted, more than anything, to penetrate that simple barrier, to be able to say more than "how much?", "good day" and "thank you".

As a result of this basic shortcoming, whenever any kind of conflict has arisen, the outcome has been quick and severe: a wave of the hand, a disgusted look, a few bitter, incomprehensible words, and that's it, we're done. Sitting across from M and A, I realized that I probably had less in common with these orthodox right-wing uber-Zionists than I would have with so many of the people I have been unable to communicate with in the past few weeks. Like the masseuse on Koh Pan Ngan who giggled and squeezed my hand when I returned for a second treatment, or the Indian yoga teacher who kept commanding me to "Exile" (exhale) and demonstrated the postures rather than talking me through them. But it was these people that I was getting to know, with them that I was pushing past those first impressions rather than moving on.

By the end of the meal, A and M had invited D and I to stay with them:
"Why drive all the way back to Tel Aviv or Haifa from the Dead Sea? No, no, when you go down to plan your wedding, come stay with us."
When M added that she would show me how she cooks typical Indian Jewish food, I couldn't refuse.

The basis of my culture is exactly that: an open house, a welcoming attitude, a human connection. If I ever see Mr and Mrs KR again, they will most probably treat me like a stranger. Nevertheless, for one evening, they opened their home to me, welcomed me in for Shabbath, shared their food and their stories. On a similar note, A and M didn't think twice about asking me to stay in their home even though I'm a "smolanit" (left-winger), a Chilonit (secular, non-practising Jew), and I'm marrying a goy.

Jews come from everywhere. We have customs that vary to different degrees, but our culture is what binds is, makes us all part of the Jewish people, whether we practice or not. For me, it is about a basic humanity, an acceptance and understanding which is the essence of my culture; and that is something that D not only grasps but possesses, by the bucketload -- whether he's circumcised or not, baptised, christened or dunked in cow dung.

A note about the food:
As I write this, sitting on my little 9 quid a night balcony, listening to the sounds of birds, trucks, goats, children and a man who retches about once every twenty minutes, the smells wafting up make it extremely difficult to concentrate. Sweet chillies, mace, turmeric -- the scents are as mesmerizing as the dishes themselves.

The other night, the lady of the guesthouse where I'm staying shared a few of her recipes with me. She also explained basic curry-making secrets like the need to fry masala spices in oil before adding them to food, and how that is best accomplished by using a heavy pot with a round bottom (similar to a wok but without the handle) in order to minimize the amount of oil needed.
"When the oil rises, the spices are cooked and you can add them to the dish" she repeated again and again, "so you don't get an upset stomach."
That night she happened to be going to the supermarket and insisted I come along. As we walked through the spice isle, she pointed out the different ones and how she used them.

Until now, I have been very careful to keep my purchases to a minimum, both for budgetary reasons as well as the need to keep the weight of my backpack down. Needless to say, I have probably added at least five pounds of cumin, black cardamom and various masala mixes to my load and can pretty much guarantee that upon my return, the first Shabbath dinner will be a curry -- either chickpea and vegetable or fish.

Another Day, Another Airport

2008-03-12T09:26:00.000Z

The rocking of the train, the humming of the plane engines; sometimes I think the traveling is my favorite part - when you have already left but have not yet arrived, when you are still free to comtemplate where you are coming from, where you are going, what you've left behind, where you're heading.

Those few minutes or hours when none of it is real yet or anymore, when only you connect the dots in preparation for what is to come, with memories of what has transpired, or not at all.

At JFK airport in New York, I would go to the same spot every time -- a specific chair in a specific cafe. I have no idea what the place is called, but I'm pretty sure I could navigate my way there blindfolded. When I lived in New York, it was part of my travel ritual: check in, go through security as calmly as possible, head directly to my fabricated oasis amidst the chaos for a cup of overbrewed, poor quality chammomile tea. Somehow my chair was never occupied when I got there. I would order my tea from the same aggravated waittress, sit for as long as I could, watching the world swirl around me -- take off, land, transfer -- and write about nothing, about sitting in that same chair. "Here I am again" I would start.

Here I am again. In another airport, heading for yet another completely new experience. Mother India as they call her. It makes me wonder what they would call Israel: the cousin with problems nobody wants to talk about?

I am flying in to Kochin where I will be staying at an organic farm, learning the art of vegetarian and Ayurvedic cooking, tea growing and other regional customs. That is the only plan I have made so far for the next five weeks as the one thing I've been taught again and again on this trip is that everything is constantly changing -- from my moods to my options, nothing stays the same for long.

For the past 6 days, I have been hiding out in an ivory tower, regrouping behind fortified walls of luxury and massages, practicing yoga, making up for the meals I missed the week before. I did no sightseeing in Bangkok as I will be meeting D here in five weeks and we plan to do all of that then.

What was interesting, was how naturally I found me way on public transportation. I am a city girl after all and navigating a subway system seems ingrained in me, even in places I have never been before. In that way, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London, New York -- as long as the line you're on is the right color, you'll get there eventually.

Besides, after a venture as a passenger in a suicidal tuktuk, a cab ride with a maniacal, pill popping cab driver, and the lines of never-ending traffic, I have to say that in Bangkok, the Sky Train really is the best option by far.

I am tired. I am homesick. And I am ready to move forward, discover what's next as this journey continues to reveal itself. I have to admit that my very foundations have been shaken. There is nothing to hold on to out here, no safe option, nothing familiar to take refuge in. I watch as memories create themselves, knowing what will stick in my mind as events are taking place. It's a strange feeling: to remember in the present, to constantly think "I'll never forget this moment" as it is happening.

There are so many ways to travel, I realize now. As I planned the trip, it was all about what I would see -- the famous sites, the places so beautifully described in the guide books and on countless Internet sites. Now that I have been here for a little while, however, I do not want to explore yet another temple.

I am a nomad at the very core of my being. I don't need to buy the t-shirt and I can virtually guarantee that the mug will break in my bag. I am not interested in bargaining yet another street vendor down. What I seek is more difficult to describe and sometimes I think I could just as well have sought the same things back home -- in fact I probably do.

Because it's not sites but rather experiences that I am after, the moments that will change me, even just a little bit, forever.

A conversation, a song, a piece of food given to me by the person who cooked it, a connection that will teach me something about my self that I may or may not have known deep down. Maybe some of those are hidden in the incense coils of temples or under the flies in the market stalls. Maybe I'll find some in the person seated next to me on the plane; at the check in desk of my next guest house. I don't know what I'm looking for, only that I am -- looking, searching for something. Of course there are glimpses of it, like lightning bolts sending electric shocks up and down my spine, prying my eyes wide open, making me want to sing at the top of my lungs, and dance.

Like I did on Koh Pan Ngan after my first massage a hundred years ago -- or four weeks. As J, K and I descended the stairs onto the beach, a sticky, silky trio, a group of young Thai men started playing what sounded like a sitar, shaking their maracas and singing at a table above us. I knotted my tie-dyed green sarong around my neck and started to dance, skipping lightly down the sand as I whirled around, holding hands with my new friends. We laughed and waved at the guys who sang louder in encouragement. Over the ocean, the sun was slowly setting, colouring the water a silvery shade of blue and making our bodies glow from the oil.

An Emotional Post About An Emotional Week

2008-03-10T05:07:00.000Z

It was four in the morning. The fat, middle-aged woman sitting next to me was snoring loud enough that the sound hissed over the screeching of the train wheels. She broke wind again and turned over in her chair. The air-con was pouring buckets of freezing, stale air, directly onto me. Everyone around me seemed satisfied with the thin white blankets the train's conductor had provided at the beginning of the journey. I had played every single song I had ever taken solace in on my iPod before the batteries had died a few moments back.

I was exhausted but glad to be traveling North.

Even if I had been in my own bed, I would not have slept that night.

The silent retreat was not due to end for another four days, but I had escaped, and breathing in the outside world felt like the biggest gift I had ever received. The irony lacked humour at four o'clock in the morning. It was repulsive, sticky, like dirt on my skin that I desired, more than anything, to wash off: that a meditation retreat, ostensibly all about how to work with the breath to obtain a certain level of calm had done the opposite. For the past six days, I had felt my heart and lungs gradually shutting down, shriveling up like my fingers when I spend too long in the bath. Sitting on that train, surrounded by sleeping travelers, I reached my head for the ceiling, held my mouth wide open and gasped for the breath I hadn't been able to inhale for six days.

On the second night of the retreat, lying in my cement cell on my cement bed, in the few minutes I had managed to sleep, I had dreamt of a beautiful Thai woman, a stranger whom I recognized as an employee of the retreat. In my dream, the woman kept offering me a trip back to Surat Thani, the town where my boat from Koh Pan Ngan had docked, for two hundred Baht.
"Take it," she kept saying, "is good, only two hundred Baht."
I had already purchased my ticket and I told her so. Still, she would not let up. She repeated with her beautiful smile that I should take it, that the trip was cheap. My insistence that I didn't need it made no difference to her. She said the same thing over and over, as if she couldn't hear what I was saying, or it didn't matter.

I woke up understanding the meaning of my dream perfectly: this was not my place, it was not my trip, not the route I would be taking. They were trying to sell me a ticket for a journey that I didn't want. I was going somewhere else.

A couple of days before, I had shared a ride to the retreat with a Spanish woman and her Irish flatmate. The woman had already been complaining about having to give up smoking for ten days and how much she hated Thai food. More than a little smugly, I had commented to myself that there was no way she would last all ten days. She was weak, dependant on her nicotine and -- I mean, really, how can anyone hate Thai food???

As with everything else that has happened to me in the past month of traveling, my expectations were aboslutely shattered. In fact I was right; that woman did leave after day one. But so did I. On day six.

What is ten days in the space of a lifetime? With a bit of luck, not very much. And yet every day at Suan Mokh felt like seven years. I thought of the Biblical figure of Isaac, working seven years for his beloved Rachel and then ending up with Lea. That was how I felt at the end of every day.

On the second day, as I was tending to my daily assigned chore -- sweeping the leaves around the dining hall (Karate Kid anyone?) -- I watched as a man, his pack on his back, departed the retreat with conviction. I thought about how I would have felt ashamed to be walking out, to fail. I would probably have been staring at the ground, walking as quietly as possible, not starting straight ahead, my gait obvious and loud. But rather than judge him as I had the Spanish woman, my thought was "how courageous." I was surprised. After all, wasn't I here to gain important insight into my self and my meditation practice? Wasn't I searching for perfect health through this breathing practice and perseverance? Was I really that weak?

The first gong sounded at four in the morning every day. Four-thirty meditation was followed by yoga and then more mediation and a lecture by the abbott who spoke little discernable English. The rest of the day was a mixture of sitting meditation, walking meditation, standing meditation and lectures on breathing techniques as well as the philosophies behind them. Lights out was at 9:30, each of us locked in our individual cells, under our mosquito nets, trying to get comfortable on our wooden pillows.

I didn't mind the phyisical hardships -- the "showering" which consisted of dumping freezing cold water over my sarong-wrapped body, the fasting between one in the afternoon and eight in the morning, or even the silence. In fact, I was most thankful for the silence as it had brought with it a peace of mind in a way I had never experienced before -- I didn't need to be speaking or entertaining others. Instead I was free to focus on wherever it was that my thoughts and feelings led me. My inspiration flowed.

Though they request that participants not bring notebooks or journals with them, that people refrain from reading and writing, I had kept my journal which I wrote in constantly -- at first in secret, but pretty soon whenever a new "epiphany" appeared. And there were many. With no spoken words to distract me, the thoughts popped up with a frequency and clarity that would convince anyone interested in self-exploration to shut the hell up for a long, long while.

Truthfully, I loved the silence. I also loved the food -- mostly grown on the premises, the vegetarian curries and fresh salad leaves were some of the freshest, most delicious meals ever. I loved the people I would occasionally smile at, some of whom would smile back, provided they were having a good moment. Even the roller-coaster aspect of the days didn't bother me. Mostly, I loved what I was experiencing in my head, how much I was falling in love with my life, how real the characters of my novel seemed, how much insight and understanding I was gaining.

And yet on day six, I ran. I ran as if there were murderous crowds following me; as if wolves were nipping at my ankles. I ran. Because I didn't want to hear them anymore -- the people who could speak, the ones who did speak, constantly at us, telling me that the self is an illusion, that thoughts are futile, that art is a waste of time, that passion and joy only lead to unhappiness, that the ultimate goal is complete dissociation from everything I consider the best part of being human.

I think the final straw came when one of the laywomen explained to me about karma and how people who are abused have obviously done something to deserve it. I had come to her with questions about the lecture she had given on Loving Kindness and had admitted that it had been difficult for me to send any to my father because of how he had treated me and my brother as children. Without a trace of emotion or compassion, the woman had explained that nothing comes for no reason, that we always deserve what happens in our lives, that I had obviously done something to merit abuse.
"But I was a baby!" I said.
"Still, if your father do bad thing to you, you do bad thing first." she said.
I thought of what I lived through as a child, much of which I have been working to overcome for years, moments that had come rushing back to me often throughout the previous few days of silence. With a huge amount of self-restraint, I moved my chair back as calmly and quietly as I could and thanked her for her explanation.

One of the draws of Suan Mokh is the "British Monk". Everyone I have met who has experienced the retreat has told me that his lectures are unmissable. They've called him fascinating and hilarious. The monk is originally from the UK and the fact that his English is understandable differentiates him from almost everyone else who addressed us while I was there.

A self-professed reformed aesthete, he gave up both his Western name and way of life to become a monk. Every afternoon, carrying a closed black umbrella, he would trudge over to our meditation area in his orange robes and lecture about their philosophy of Buddhism as well as giving instructions on the proper techniques of breath manipulation. In addition to preaching abstention from worldly pleasures, he talked about his love of ale, how much coffee friends from around the world bring him, and how the notion of work never really appealed to him. He also enjoyed denigrating anything connected to thought, art or passion as regularly as possible, and with as much passion as his dispassion would allow him.

I had much the same reaction to these people as I did to the Rabbis who tried to make me into a better Jew: I needed to get as far away from them as possible. Not wanting to make any rash decisions, however, I let the idea of leaving settle for a couple of days. Throughout that time, every few minutes brought a new decision with it: I should stay and skip the lectures, focus on the meditation; I should go, my trip is only three months long; I should stay and finish what I started; I should go, make my way to Laos, take a cooking class. I watched the people around me with new interest. How were they feeling? What was going through their minds? Who was enjoying? Was anyone else looking like they were going to crack?

For the first part of the retreat, I had focused on my own thoughts. The emotional highs and lows I had been experiencing had been too much of a distraction to allow me to pay much attention to anyone else. But looking around me, I realized that by depriving us of sleep, food and stimulation, we were all slowly being turned into zombies. Many kept their gazes firmly on the floor; the smiles exchanged were diminishing by the minute, and the only sounds we heard other than those of the nature around us were the words of people who had probably taken refuge in their practice because they had not been able to find their place in regular society.

The world in Suan Mokh appeared to drain of color. It started to look more and more black and white to me, a charcoal sketch in shades of grey, a place where color is associated with pleasure, that dirty word. Though the grounds are stunning, it had started to feel as if I had stepped into the world that lies between life and death, where silence pervades so as not to disturb the balance. The shift was dramatic. Was I the only one experiencing it?

Outside of the compound, I heard trucks drive by and children scream from the back of their parents' cars; women laughed as they walked by -- I was hearing life and I craved it. It wasn't that I wanted anything fancy or luxurious to offset the basic living conditions at the retreat. What I wanted could not be bought. I wanted to feel alive, to smell great food, to taste it, to see the sites and listen to the chatter of people whom I couldn't understand. I wanted to see colors, for my senses to be awakened by all sorts of unexpected stimuli -- the stimuli I was being told were the origin of human misery.

Maybe the self is an illusion, maybe we are all addicted to external stimulation, maybe our desire for pleasure is what causes our unhappiness. I don't care. If I'm an illusion, I'll take it -- lock me up, make me certifiable. If pleasure and joy and love are my downfall, I'll hurl myself off that bridge without hesitation. If external stimulation, including the creation of art, are an addiction, then I'm guilty.

So I left. Day six brought with it a tailwind and energy that I had been missing until then. I had gotten what I needed and it was time to move on. My eyes opened wider than they had in six years. I smiled my first real, happy smile, packed my belongings and made my way to the road from which I was going to catch a ride to town with my head up and my steps firm.

Twelve hours later, I turned to wash my hands in the train's bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror. It was the first time I had seen myself in a week. I had lost weight and my shabby tank top was hanging off my shoulders. But my eyes were bright and I smiled. I felt like I had been given a choice and I had chosen: LIFE.

The first thing I did was call my mother to tell her I love her. And D. My wonderful, magical, bless-him-for-putting-up-with-my-madness future husband.

It's now been two days and I am finally starting to come down off the week that was. Yesterday, I was unable to do much of anything. But I did, for the first time since leaving London, have a glass of wine. I have cried a lot. Like today when I encountered D's first novel in a bookshop. I have laughed out loud walking down the street, and on the train to Bangkok, I spent a good hour singing as people slept around me. I wonder why it takes trips to the other end of the world and silent retreats for me to be grateful. But grateful I am. I am also on the other end of the world.

As I mentioned before, the food at Suan Mokh is outstanding. It is simple, but the ingredients are fresh, which makes all the difference. The day before I left, they served us these exquisite little veggie cakes. When I asked for the recipe, they told me I was too attached to food, that my attachment would bring me misery, that I should let it go. In the end, I think because they realized I was a lost cause as far as theirs was concerned, I managed to get it out of them:

Use fresh soy beans. Make milk out of them as you would any nut or bean*
Steam the soybean pulp leftover from the milk
Once the pulp is steamed, add finely chopped vegetables such as corn, carrots, green beans
Optionally, seaweed can also be added (I love it)
Mix together with salt, pepper, chilli paste and a pinch sugar if desired
Make into balls that you then fry (they use palm or soybean oil)
(Blot off the extra oil by placing the cooked balls between paper towels)

* soak the beans overnight. In the morning, throw away the soak water and then mix 1 part beans to one part water. Strain. In this case, don't throw away the leftover pulp as it is integral to the patties.

Out of Silence and Into Fish Ball Soup

2008-03-06T09:15:00.001Z

There is so much to say about the silent meditation retreat but I've decided to wait and let myself digest before imparting the buckets of wisdom I encountered, tripped over, sank my teeth into during my six days there.

In the mean time, however, I would like to focus my attention on something much more amazing: fish ball soup.

When I left the retreat, the taxi took me to Chaiya, a small town about twenty minutes away where I was planning to catch the very next train to Bangkok. I arrived at the train station at 11:30 in the morning with two German women from the retreat, one of whom was as ecstatic as I was (although in a much more German way), the other who clearly would have preferred to have stayed behind. No matter, I was too wrapped up in what my own senses were experiencing to pay them much heed and in a bit of culture shock after the days spent in complete silence.

Like any self-respecting Westerner, I made my way directly to the only Internet cafe and plopped myself down to check my email, see how Obama is doing in the polls, and find out who's doing who in Hollywood. Happy for a little time without struggling to make conversation in broken English or attempt my irreparable German, I told the other two they could leave their bags with me. They were anxious to find some food as we passed the time until nine p.m., when our train was due to depart.

A few hours and three unsuccessful Skype attempts to D later, they returned glowing, with bellies full of pork and rice, Thai sweets and chocolate bars. It occurred to me that it was three in the afternoon, a full two hours after we would have finished our second and last meal of the day at the retreat. I thought it might be time to find lunch.

This was going to be my first real adventure into the Thai culinary world as until now, I have stayed within relatively safe boundaries, sticking to English speakers and places that people have recommended as being "healthy."

Thai cuisine is full of chillies, lemongrass, turmeric to name a few of the spices... and sugar. There is sugar in everything. In fact, the sweetness balances out the spice; and many of the spices are used for their strong anti-fungal properties -- a must in this kind of weather. But everything looks and tastes extremely fresh -- as if the plants are picked minutes before appearing on my plate, the pig is slaughtered only after a customer orders it. I wandered around the market examining the stalls closely, knowing I would not spend time here again and wanting to choose the most delicious thing I could find amidst strange-looking creatures and napping stall owners who probably would have been of little help even if they had been sitting upright. The market offered everything from raw meat submerged in big bowls of water surrounded by flies, to transparent plastic bags with greenish bulbs floating in yellow liquid, to dry-looking pastries, live crabs and mysterious parcels in banana leaves.

After a few false starts, I settled on a little shack across from the market where a woman smiled at me as she scooped red goop into baggies -- the Thai really love putting everything possible into little, transparent plastic bags (kind of like zip-locks except without the ziplock part) which they then knot and fasten a rubberband around in such a way that makes it almost impossible for untrained fingers such as mine to pry them open.

I pointed at a bunch of noodles and said "rice"?
"No, no" the woman told me and proceded to explain in perfect Thai what I was pointing at. They looked like straight rice noodles to me and I decided to chance it. Nodding, I pointed back at them and said "soup?"
"Kah, kah," she said, yes yes.
"May Pong Churot" I told her, "no MSG" -- a girl must keep her priorities, after all.
"Ah, ah," her husband, or lover or son nodded vigorously. "May Pong Churot"
I wasn't sure whether that meant there was MSG in the soup or not, but he had pointed at a seat at the far end of the room and I thought the only polite thing to do was go sit down. However there was one more question to be answered:
"Paw" he said.
"Paw?"
"Paw! Paw!" The woman pointed into a pot out of which I can only assume there were pork hoofs sticking out.
"NO, NO! NO Paw!" I said with a smile. "Tofu?"
"Aw, tofu" he pointed at an abandoned tray at the far side of his counter, "tofu."
Next to what looked like fried tofu were little round balls that looked slightly more appealing. Now that I think about it, this is possibly because they resembled Matzo balls. Because objectively, they were far from the Claudia Schiffer of the food world. On the contrary: these were small, beige, non-descript balls of who knows what.
I pointed at them, "tofu?"
"Aw, aw, fi-bah, fi-bah" The Thais seem to be able to pronounce every vowel and consonant in their own language but, for some reason, they don't in translation. No matter, we understand each other when we need to. Besides, with my three words asking them to remove ingredients, I really shouldn't talk!

After one more foolish request -- "May Nam Ta'an", no sugar -- which brought about some panic, I waived it away, "no matter, no matter" and returned to my seat to watch them put together my "sou".

The man threw the raw, stiff noodles into a net-like contraption that he dunked in the pot with the hoofs in it -- the pot had two parts to it -- I'm choosing to believe he used the other bit. He stood there for all of fourteen seconds after which he pulled the net and my now cooked noodles out and dumped them into a large soup bowl, to which he added some clear broth, soy beans and the fish balls.

In front of me were a myriad of sauces which a kind gentleman explained were vinegar, sugar, vinegar with sugar, chilli, and vinegar with chilli. I added a bit of red chilli to the broth which had, until then, been made up of shades of beige, and slurped some noodles into my mouth followed by a bit of the hot soup.

As soon as the food hit my lips, my hunger, which I had not really felt until then, resurfaced violently. Luckily the road around me was extremely loud and busy.

For the past six days, I have been eating two meals a day, the first at eight in the morning, the second at half past noon. While I highly recommend the Thai Buddhist monk diet if you want to lose weight, it does little for either expelling or satiety. At the retreat, I ingested some of the freshest, most delicious food I have ever had. It was all grown on the premises and organic which, according to the food blessing I chanted before eating, I was not supposed to enjoy in any way other than to keep me alive so I could "follow the spiritual (way of) life."

Before the retreat started, the coordinators had asked us to store our valuables in their vault so we wouldn't have to worry about any of it getting stolen. Along with my wallet and camera, I had handed in a small bag of homemade granola from Koh Pan Ngan. That bag had appeared in my dreams, in my meditations, in my thoughts at all sorts of random times -- not so much because I was wanting to eat it as much as it had become a symbol of the worst form of what the monks were telling me was the root of my despair: craving, enjoyment, pleasure. That small bag of granola was also the first thing I reached for after leaving; only a couple of bites so I could savour it for longer. I plan to eat the rest of it on the train tonight, in celebration of my cravings, my enjoyment, my freedom.

My soup here in Chaiya may not have been organic or as fresh as what I'd been eating at the retreat, but it was delicious, and the woman who had sat down a few tables away to enjoy her own soup looked over and smiled at my delight. What a change!

It was the fish balls, however, that won me over. They were small, maybe the diameter of a quarter, if that; doughy and chewy while remainnig firm and full of flavor. They were slightly salty with a very unobtrusive yet distinct fish taste. And they balanced out the liquid in the soup and the slippery noodles perfectly. At first I thought there were only three of them and was so excited to discover a hidden fourth under a clump of cheeky parsley that I actually laughed out loud.

When I finished the bowl, I asked for more, "just fish balls" I told them, ignoring the fact that they understood no English, "and maybe a little soup." Somehow, with more gestures, licking of my lips and rubbing of my belly, the said fish balls and broth appeared. The man kept looking at me and laughing. In the back, two women kept repeating "fareng, fareng", or "foreigner, foreigner." I din't care.

In Buddhism heaven and hell are not a place where you end up after you die; they exist in the here and now as a state of mind. This afternoon, for a few moments, I found a little piece of heaven. And it's located in a fish ball.

Koh Pan Ngan Lexicon II

2008-02-28T11:05:00.000Z

SWAG: Super Wanky Aggressive Guy -- a local adaptation of the SNAG. This is the guy who comes to yoga, breathes hard and loud and asks if you're going to the party later. He has a difficult time hearing anything but Yes

Au Revoir Paradise

2008-02-28T08:56:00.000Z

It's official: I've taken off my watch. There is no need for either exact time or an itinerary and the presence of a clock has served little purpose other than to remind me of what I'm not accomplishing. Still, I find myself looking down at my wrist a hundred times a day, wanting to guide myself by it what tells me rather than what I feel -- whether I'm hungry, or tired, or needing some alone time. The watch is only a distraction, and so it has been relegated to the bottom of my bag to be dug out when I need to catch a plane, a train or a boat.

K left a few days ago (or is it months? I'm not sure) and J and I have rented a little white scooter which has become our main mode of transport. Though we have not named it, we should as this scooter has a definite personality and sense of humour: on the front it says BOOM -- the owner's name -- in big, bright letters; the back says CLICK; and it refuses to turn on in the rain.

Some roads are paved, others are covered in slushy orange clay, a precursor to cement, that sticks to the bottom of my flip flops. Both kinds are dotted with deep pot-holes that spring up like weeds and I have been perfecting the art of swerving as we traverse the island.

As we zip around, the jungle stretches out around us in superlative shades of green. Sometimes at the top of one of the big mountains, the ocean becomes visible for a moment in all of its photogenic vastness, bleeding turquoise into dark, deep blue, and back again.

I imagine Hemingway's Cuba or Gauguin's Polynesia -- places where they went to seek refuge from the bustle of life, to create, to gain perspective, to ponder. Here I feel constantly inspired. Still, it's not easy to find the time to write. I had imagined the hours leisurely stretching ahead of me, that time would be as readily available as the coconuts, but I find that even here, I have to actively seek it out. Like everywhere else, days can so easily fill up with other things, pushing my writing to the bottom of the list. The added complication on this trip is that unlike my life back home, where I take so many things for granted, I am aware of the potential for every detail to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This journey is, by its very nature, a cliche at times, and it is very easy to fall back into the overanalysis, esotheric questioning and existential musings I am guilty of indulging in anyway. But the freshness of my surroundings help to take me out of my self and focused on what's going on around me rather lock myself than inside my head.

Little huts sit by the side of the road. They are sparse and look anything but secure, their wooden walls and metal roofs cobbled together shoddily. Many rest on stilts above chicken coops. Older women sweep the porches slowly, or light little fires at the back while babies toddle around looked after by whichever family member is closest. School only goes until age eleven on the island, so many teenagers work in the family business, tending bar or serving food at the resorts and restaurants.

The animals all look lean and strong. Dogs take their siestas at any time of the day or night, usually by throwing themselves down in the middle of the road. There is an abundance of land for the cows to graze on under the palm trees, and the chickens cluck happily as they wander around the houses. I have discovered that roosters are a great alarm clock when you want to make it to yoga by nine and get some writing time in before class.

The little gasoline shacks simply say "Gasoline" in painted red letters. In order to get the petrol to come out, the attendants manually wind a lever and pull a little stick that looks more like a toothpick out of a hose. The pump is straight out of a Hollywood Western.

Song tangs, the local taxis, which are little more than pickup trucks with benches and sometimes roofs on the back, barrel past with little regard for which side of the road they are meant to be on. It took J and I a few days to remember to stay on the left, but now we're old pros, swerving, breaking, honking, at ease with the road and enjoying the feeling of the wind in our coconut-oil soaked hair.

Building is going on all over the island and the power tools are almost always audible alongside the mopeds and the old cars. Still, riding around on one of the two roads that traverse the island, I am barely aware of the sounds that I know all too well from home. Instead, it is the wind in the trees, the waves, the crunching of the clay under the wheels of the bike, the barking of the dogs that I mostly hear.

Now that the Full Mooners have wound down and departed until next month, the partyers have been replaced with an older, more mellow crowd that seems to want to relax and enjoy the sun rather than getting trashed and blacking out.

Yesterday, my last full day on the island, J and I decided to go hiking. We made our way to the Phaeng waterfall and hiked into the depths of the jungle. It's been raining a lot these past few days -- someone told me it always happens the few days after the full moon -- and the leaves were wet and slippery. The ground was invisible under all the foliage: greens, browns, golds, yellows; mushrooms that looked like they should have hookah-smoking caterpillars perched on top of their perfectly flat tops. Around and above us, the white sky was hidden behind thick treetops. We hiked far below some of the tallest trees I've ever seen. There was barely anyone else on the trail and it was at points difficult to follow as there were no real demarcations. The hums and calls of the birds and the insects was, at times, deafening with high-pitched shrieks that went on and on until I had to put my fingers in my ears; the alarm was obviously being sounded about the strange creatures invading their space below.

The jungle was dense, the air was musty and heavy but pure, clean. For the first hour or so, I felt fantastic, the days of consistent yoga fueling my sense of strength. The beginning of the hike involved stairs, both manmade as well as organically formed by the jutting out, twisted roots of the trees. I got quite nostalgic for a moment remembering the last hike I'd been on that involved climbing stairs on a beautiful island. That one ended with a proposal and a diamond ring on my finger. But this hike turned wild and unexpected in a very different way, as nature became more overpowering and unforgiving the deeper we trekked. At a certain point, the path we thought we were following disappeared. Suddenly we were surrounded by nothing but foliage, fallen trees, white moss and the deafening sounds of the animals. At the same time as realizing that we had no idea of where we were, or how we would get back, I felt a deep sense of calm. It was as if we had arrived into the core, the uterus of the island. Though we were lost, I felt protected, I was not afraid. After a few interesting turns that forced us to double back and a couple of minor battle wounds, the extent of my irrelevance become potently evident. In nature, it doesn't matter who you are, it's nothing personal, but you can go from conqueror to victim without having the time to grasp what is actually happening.

J, with her park ranger expertise, led us back to our bike with little hesitation and only one curse-worthy bug bite. Though she is constantly running late in the outside world, in nature, she has a keen sense of time and navigation. As she says: "it's tricky being an American icon."

Tonight, I leave for the main land. The boat to Thong Sala leaves at ten and arrives at six in the morning. From there, I will take a mini bus to Wat Suan Mokh, where I will embark on my ten-day silent meditation retreat. While I am nervous about it, I am also very much looking forward to the challenge and curious about how I will react to the rigorous lifestyle that supposedly includes a vow of silence for the duration of the retreat, sleeping on a cement block for a bed, no food after noon, and a wake-up gong at four in the morning.

Wish me luck.

In Thailand, lemongrass is used in everything from soups to meat dishes. Though the herb itself is too tough to eat, when chopped up lemongrass adds a lot of frangrance and flavour. Healthwise, lemongrass is said to aid with digestion, relieve colds and flu and they say it has anti-fungal properties. Here it is often used in conjunction with chillies, garlic and coriander to make Tom Yam soup, for example. Besides enjoying it in my food, I have also steeped fresh lemongrass like a tea. It tastes citrussy and refreshing and has just a hint of sweetness.

Bare Feet and Other Surprises

2008-02-23T14:07:00.000Z

Back home in London, my wedding dress has arrived. I picture it sitting on top of the closet, wrapped up until the time comes to try it on again, envelope me in its luxury, start the last part of the run-up to the wedding. I imagine what I will look like wearing it, David's face when he sees me in it for the first time, what it will feel like as we dance under the stars.

And then I stop to make sure that the armpit smell is not coming from me. Because this is the tropics and Thailand is unforgiving even on cloudy days.

Koh Pan Ngan is a tourist-filled island that attracts every age, shape and size: there are the middle-aged men too undesirable in their home countries who come to visit their "Thai girlfriend", the tattooed, drunken Brits, the frat-boy Aussies, the yogis, the retirees, the young families, the anorexic college girls, the dread-locked travelers looking for a cheap place to breathe and play their flute. And amidst all of this there are us women traveling alone sprinkled in here and there; each one in search of something slightly different -- or, as they say Thailand: same same but different.

Day three on the island was when we started hitting our stride, my two serendipitous new companions and I. K is an Aussie who's taken six months off to travel through China, Vietnam, Laos and London. J is an American park ranger exploring Korea, Thailand and Laos for a couple of months. We met unexpectedly, and, even more surprisingly, have spent much of our time together since. Every noontime and evening, we've been enjoying long, philosophical meals at Big Mountain, where they see me coming and laughingly greet me with "no sugar, no honey" in their angular Thai accents. We've spent our afternoons in the ocean, going for massages, or investigating the various yoga classes and teachers this place has to offer -- one more amazing than the next.

And we talk. We talk like old friends, like women who have known each other for a long long time. We talk about why we have come on this journey, what we hope to find, who we want to be; about who we are "back home", in civilian life, as I call it, and what we hope to become. Our conversations are punctuated by a lot of vigorous nodding and many intense "Yeah!"s as we discover that though we didn't know of the others' existence a few days ago, our experiences have been similar in so many ways -- we have much more in common than I would have expected from total strangers, which is another reminder of how insular my life is and why it has been so important for me to come out here.

J, K and I laugh, cry, dance on the beach, share fresh coconuts, taste each others' curries, recommend books and movies, compare parents and boyfriend stories ... There is something unique about meeting new and wonderful people when all parties are so far out of their comfort zones. It levels the playing field, maybe because we have nothing to lose, maybe because out here, we have quickly become each others' connection to anything familiar. Instead of worrying in silence, we voice our concerns; instead of assuming, we effort to discover one another, we ask, we dig. Every physical occurrence is a metaphor for our mental and emotional states; every new idea is cause for hours of discussion. We push each other, encourage each other, comfort each other. We remind one another to lock up the bungalow we are sharing, and lend each other money until we get to an ATM. And we are all very grateful to have found one another in a way that would be embarrassing back home. There's a lot of hugging going on.

Even in this short space of time, we've created some semblance of a routine.

Every morning is comprised of stretching and an update on the state of our tummies. Then yoga -- J inspires me to hike up the mountain and get myself to another class. Luckily she says I'm doing the same for her in terms of writing, which we are endeavoring to do often as everything feels like it needs to be pondered. K is our anchor, definitely the responsible one. We moved into our third bungalow today -- and feel we have truly fallen into the lap of luxury. Not only does this one have hot water and mosquito nets on the windows, it also came with loo roll and soap! At 500 Baht (roughly 8 quid, $16 or 64 shekels) a night, it can't be beat!

Though J, K and I have created our own little microcosm, we are all still very much aware that there is also a whole new part of the world to take in, and a journey to be had by each one of us separately. The learning curve is so vast that regardless of whether I turn left or right, something powerful is going to happen.

Every single yoga class has been a revelation. Today, was a tantric yoga workshop. Yesterday was yin yoga. We keep looking at each other at the end of class, amazed by what our bodies are capable of and where are minds take us.

As always, in addition to the whole spiritual journey, there are the mundane details that make being here exotic. Like the obligation to remove all footwear before one enters a building; the squatting loos that don't flush, the buckets by the loos where one throws used toilet paper, the fishermen's pants that are the traveler's uniform (mine are a burnt orange color). Unlike in the Middle East where everyone caters to tourists, where walking in the old city of Jerusalem is a constant battle to not get dragged into stall after stall by "welcome" and "come to my store, very nice", the feeling I get here is that the locals get on with their lives independently of us foreigners. They rarely seem to give a damn, which can lead to situations that are in turn hilarious or irritating. Like when J took a taxi and he announced to her a few minutes into the journey that he needed to stop over at a friend's house in the opposite direction of where she was going before he could take her to her destination. If we don't disturb their routine, they are friendly; but there doesn't seem to be much heed paid to us. We are an income, nothing more, and often very little effort is made. For example, people don't speak much of any language other than Thai -- imagine trying to find out whether the noodles are made out of rice or wheat or whether vegetables have been cooked in butter or oil.

Don't get me wrong, though: I'm loving it. Every second.

One thing that I especially love is walking barefoot. Like everything else, it is a great metaphor for an aspect of life I have previously not given much thought to. Being barefoot alongside everything else is much more than simply the removal of shoes. When your feet are touching the ground, when there is no sole to serve as a barrier, something changes. I feel more connected to others as I have to trust that the floor is clean, that everyone around me has taken responsibility for their cleanliness and sanitation while I too am forced to really examine how I leave my surroundings much closer than I do back home. It sounds small, unimportant, but it actually provides a comforting sense of equality: regardless of how much you paid for your shoes, once you're barefoot, it really doesn't matter.

I think of how I'll look in my wedding dress and bare feet, how beautiful I'll feel, how different from the ratty, unwashed traveler I resemble right now. The contrast makes me smile. I can't wait.

Most of my food here is coconut based. In addition to it being the milk in my tea, and the cream in my soups, I have a green coconut every day. They cut open the top so I can slurp the water with a straw and scoop out the flesh with a metal spoon. You haven't lived until you've had a fresh green coconut.

There are also a lot of root vegetables to explore. So far, I've enjoyed my encounters with taro, which I have had blended with garlic as a soup but also as a flavor of vegan, coconut-based ice cream - amazing. My favorite, however, has to be the galanga root soup. Galanga root is often used in Thai cooking. Though it is a cousin of ginger and bears a family resemblance, it differs from it in taste. One of my favorite dishes here has been a galanga root soup made with coconut milk, tamarind and lemongrass. I'm still working on getting the chef, Jin at Big Mountain, to divulge her incredible recipe. Stay tuned!

An introduction to the Koh Pan Ngan Lexicon

2008-02-19T07:27:00.002Z

In Thailand, one is bound to learn new words.

I'm still struggling with hello and thank you in Thai, but have picked up some fantastic new words in English --

DAG: Australian slang.
The word literally means the piece of poo hanging off a sheep's backside, but is used as an affectionate term in everyday language to describe someone who is gauche, whose clothing is inappropriate for the situation they're in.
For example, one could say that I felt like quite the dag in Hong Kong where everyone was dressed to the nines and I only had my hiking boots and travel gear with me.
The hostess at the Penninsula hotel didn't allow me into the new Felix bar, a bar designed by Philippe Starck, as I was wearing a "trashy suit" (after some questioning, I realized she meant a track suit)

S.N.A.G: American slang, acronym for
Sensitive or Super New Age Guy.
Used for what I have termed the Namaste Capitalists. These are men who use new age, and the journey for "truth" to justify an egotism and self-involvement that would otherwise be embarrassing. It is important to note that the SNAG uses his New Ageyness as a way to pursue women, and a ticket into the more lightheaded female yoginis' pants.

Hong Kong

2008-02-16T10:52:00.000Z

OK, so between the Valentine's crap, the Chinese New Year celebrations and the final blowout sales announcements, the already crowded signage landscape in this city is out of control. It looks like Hallmark took over Disney, Hijacked Picadilly Circus, married Wall street for its money and has Mulan working for sweatshop wages translating the lot.

Seriously, I'm still looking for that "wonderful, unique mixture of ancient history and modern Western culture" I was promised. If by "Western culture", people mean bad haircuts with glistening globs of gel holding pimply boys' long side-parted bangs in place and shopping malls comparing penis sizes on overy corner, then yes, we've definitely made it over here.

I found a hint of the said ancient culture really only in one place: a tiny temple around the corner from the hotel that the guide books don't mention that was absolutely stunning -- a true oasis of peace and quiet with huge red and orange coils of incense burning and statues of all sorts and size scattered around. Because of the holiday, there were worshippers lighting incense and praying during their lunch hour. It was a peaceful moment all too quickly forgotten as I made my way back into the chaos and mayhem that is Hong Kong.

Luckily, I staying in Kowloon on the mainland and so was able to see a little more than malls and moneymakers. When exiting my hotel, I turned inland instead of towards the water and ended up in a galaxy far far away... in the immigrant neighborhoods brimming with Chinese workers -- "the poor people" I was later told by a disgusted hotel concierge. I took in the shops, each blasting their own mix of Chinese pop songs, filled with clothing, herbs, tiger penises or local snacks -- dried seafood of every kind, from shrimp, to mussels, to squid and octopus -- on display in open crates much like nuts and dried fruit are in the Middle East. I saw residential areas from the top of a public double decker bus (3A) that reminded me of how I first saw London as a child with my mother who had figured out that the cheapest way to see a city is to buy a day-pass and ride the public transport. I watched television in the subway and tasted the best Dim Sum of my life in a tiny vegetarian place. In Hong Kong, they sell Dim Sum from little booths at the front of restaurants as takeaway. Mostly, I froze as Hong Kong was experiencing the coldest spell in years.

There will be loads of photographs to share, once I figure out how to upload them, but they don't capture the sensory experience: the pollution, the smog in your lungs, the triangular sounding words, seemingly yelled at the top of one's lungs to break through the relentless noise.

Imagine thousands upon thousands of people. Add hundreds of cars, all with breaks that need oiling, interactive billboards, stores and stalls blasting every kind of music on earth (all in Chinese), and rock and roll cell phone. One might argue that Times' Square fits this description. And at rush hour this is probably true. However, multiply that one city square by block after block of this, turn the volume up by abuot 400 decibels, add pedestrian crossing where each stoplight is metalically pinging at a different rhythm (with red being the slowest, green being the fastest, and flashing green being somewhere in between) and you've got Hong Kong.
Everything is written both in English as well as Chinese. On my first day, this gave me confidence that everyone would not only understand what I was saying but would also be able to respond accordingly. How wrong I was! And how spoiled I've been. Traveling in Spain, France, even Italy, I could make myself understood in the worst of times, blend right in in the best of times. No chance in Hong Kong. Where I wandered, English was an outdated hangover from colonial times, long-since forgottenor purposely ignored. There I was, feeling exceptionally large, tall and white, trying to make myself understood ... Lunch was a far cry from my usual "no wheat, no dairy, no mushrooms, no vinegar, bla bla bla" I settled for a simple "NO MSG?" and failed even at that!

This place is a conspiracy theorist's dream. Everything says "Buy! Buy! Buy!" There's a mall at every corner, next to every tourist destination. The signs flash, sing, vibrate -- although hilariously, many of them are still held up by bamboo scaffolding (it just occurred to me that that may be where the ancient culture bit comes in).

I have never seen so many people in one place, never heard so much noise at all times, never eaten so many unabashed additives in food. The streets are littered with people who charge into each other without acknowledging anyone else's presence. There is not a smile to be seen for miles and the only hint that this is an Asian city is the writing and the people's facial structure. Oh and the fact that there is not a hamburger in site. There was, however, still a head attached to the duck I shared with some lovely friends from home who happened to be here at the same time.

Hong Kong, to me, feels like a city disappointed, a city trying too hard to be something other than what it is. I have looked for emotion, for sympathy, for connection, even a tiny hint of it would have convinced me to give this place more of a chance.

Instead, I have found myself looking at the people wearing their hospital face masks in the street and wondering whether they are trying to keep things from getting out of getting in...?

I think my few days here can best be summed up with what happened last night: I decided to spend my last night, Valentine's day, watching a movie so I called downstairs to the Japanese restaurant and asked whether they did takeaway.
"Why you want takeaway and no sit here?" the woman demanded.
"It's Valentine's Day, and I'm alone" I told her, hoping the excuse would garner some sympathy or at least get her to agree to let me take it up to my room.
She burst out laughing; I'm not talking polite, slightly nervous chuckle either -- this was a full on belly laugh.
When I showed up to pick up my meal, she took one look at me, burst out laughing and said, "take-away, right?"
Had her English been any better, I probably would have reminded her that she was working on Valentine's Day. But I held my tongue and she didn't spit in my miso soup and salmon belly sashimi so I guess we're even... Although on second thought, I spent the rest of my evening blow-drying the only notebook I brought with me which had myseriously fallen into an invisible puddle -- so maybe she got the advantage after all...

Congee is a typical Chinese breakfast. Though I have seen it on a couple of menus as a dessert, for the most part , it is a savoury dish that is made by cooking rice in water until it achieves the consistency of thick, watery porridge (it turns out that the two are not mutually exclusive). You can then add meat, fish, poultry, vegetables -- just about anything.
At Nathan's Noodle and Congee, they had about fifteen different kinds, mostly made with parts of pig -- everything from the hoof to the guts. I ordered mine with fish. It also contained some fresh slivers of ginger and spring onion. On a cold, underdressed morning, this proved surprisingly delicious; I'll take it over a fry-up any day (provided I'm not hungover, of course)

A quick note before I board my flight to Hong Kong

2008-02-10T19:51:00.000Z

A few days ago, D and I went to see Speed the Plow at the Old Vic. It is a play written by David Mamet. This production stars Keving Spacey and Jeff Goldblum. For most of the performance, I reeled at the razor-sharp dialogue, anxious to get as far away from it as possible. At the same time, I couldn't move. No even to blow my nose or take a sip of water. It was like a million paper cuts applied by Spacey and Goldblum, and the girl whose characer should have been called 'Eve' as the role was clearly limited to holding the poisoned apple that would mean the men's downfall.

It felt like a nightmare: there I was, stuck, no way to get out, having to watch this dialogue of never-ending evil narcissism. There was nothing kind or forgiving about it. And yet I loved every second. As the story progressed, it was like being forced to look in the mirror and seeing only your flaws, but because you can not look away or leave the room, you keep staring until you see past them, to the vulnerability and the humanity that is every imperfection.

When the play ended, I jumped out of my seat applauding. Yes, partly because I could finally shake out the pins and needles but also because the sheer power of the two actors and their rat-tat-tat machine gun performances made me feel like I had stuck my fingers in an electrical socket. I was inspired and disgusted, taken aback and excited, and most of all, grateful for my wonderful life in London that offers me these kinds of opportunities -- to see these kinds of things, to experience, to take in, to live... and then to hop on the Jubilee Line home.

On the tube, D and I looked at each other as we have so often in the past few weeks, realizing that our time together was coming to an end; that I would not be seeing him for 72 crazy days, that although we both feel this trip is so right, we're also both very aware that we don't know whether we'll recognize each other at the end of it. He smiled and held my hand, because what else is there to do, really? I squeezed his.

I need to go, see, cope, to fear, and face those fears. Like I was stuck in that chair, forced to watch Spacey and Goldblum even when my instincts were willing me to run away, I feel a need to be far away from everything that is familiar, and I know with a certainty I rarely feel that, like the play, I will return home in awe.

OK, in the spirit of complete honesty, I need to admit this small, lovely, ridiculous detail: I am sitting in the Virgin lounge writing this. D, bless him, surprised me with an upgrade, so I'm starting my down-and-dirty trip munching on sushi and sipping champagne (or I would have if I wasn't so hungover).

I have brought my little 'packed lunch' with me so I don't go hungry on the plane. Because flying is so dehydrating, I'm constantly thirsty and though I'm rarely hungry, I do get terribly bored so I bring tons of food with me.

AIRPLANE LETUCE WRAPS

large lettuce leaves (or similar), washed, dried and spread out one by one. (I also sometimes use collard greens)
vegetables to taste -- I love the sweeter ones like beets, or the ones with tons of water like cucumbers, but anything that can be sliced finely works. It's also good to use more crunchy vegetables because they give the wrap structure
sprouts (optional - I like them as they add an extra little kick)
Good fat filler -- I have used almond butter, pumpkin seed butter, avocado, hummus, depending on my mood.
fresh herbs if desired

Basically this is a cross between a summer roll and a wrap. The lettuce is used to roll all the other ingredients in. I make a bunch and munch on them one by one throughout the flight.

Today's wraps:
lettuce, beets, alfalfa sprouts, avocado

Flight's been called. Time to go.