The sunlight here at 9 am has an ashen quality to it and the morning air has a sharp edge --autumn is on its way, after approximately one week of summer. Four years ago I was winnowing through my possessions, paring them down to what would fit in two suitcases before moving to Bangkok. Now back in Seattle, I'm eyeing a single suitcase for a return trip to Chungking Mansions and Thailand--a mere six-week stay.
Packing for that amount of time is a very casual undertaking, clothes washed and put in a small suitcase, laptop put in a bag at the last minute with all necessary cables and adaptors. (Hong Kong and Thailand both have different plug prongs.) But my cavalier packing habits are more than compensated for by my obsessive need to make lists.
Most of them are never put on paper or a computer screen and those invisible ones are the most important. They consist of memories that I will chase--or avoid. They fall into loose categories--evening light, fragrance and stench, ice cream, markets, steam after heavy rainfall.
When I lived in Bangkok, I was accompanied by a living memory--geographically distant but still close. He was around every corner of my city--sometimes physically present, sometimes bringing the past close enough for me to touch. Remembering him was a visceral act that I could feel on my skin; now that makes my throat tighten. He'll be there still for me but I'm unsure of how much strength it will take for me to encounter him this time around. I wear him on a chain around my neck, "if it suits you," he said when he put it there. Oh god, he was so unsuitable and so essential.
There are many people in the world of whom I am fond; I can count those whom I truly love, in this life and beyond, on two hands with some fingers left over. It's a list I rarely make. I take in those names as I breathe, they are as much a part of me as my eyes.
Bangkok is a city where ghosts are comfortable. But even if I don't see a spirit this time, I will be haunted by one, as I am in this city. At least in Bangkok, he will be at home.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Postal Postscript
Yesterday I happened to enter my building when the mail carrier was putting mail in the boxes. I told him what had happened and he smiled. "What's your name?" he asked and then "What's your apartment number?" Then he pulled an envelope from my open mailbox and said "Is this what you're looking for?'
It was indeed a replacement check and I was so relieved that it wasn't until I reached my apartment that I realized I'd been handed my mail without having to show any form of identification. Now instead of feeling better, I feel quite a bit worse.
Can we go to privatization now? Please?
It was indeed a replacement check and I was so relieved that it wasn't until I reached my apartment that I realized I'd been handed my mail without having to show any form of identification. Now instead of feeling better, I feel quite a bit worse.
Can we go to privatization now? Please?
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Life-long Learning
I've led a sheltered life, I must admit. I believe people are basically good and that given a choice they will do the ethical thing. I walk in the world without fear and security of any kind often seems a form of neurosis. That is why it has hit me particularly hard to realize that someone living in my building is a thief.
None of us have very much in the International Apartments; all of us live from paycheck to paycheck, as the cliche goes. Many of us are on fixed incomes and live here because it's a no-frills option--clean and basic studios and efficiency apartments in a 100-year-old building that range from 400 to 600 dollars.
When items that tenants no longer need appear in the hallway, they are usually more pathetic than they are useful. Laundry that I occasionally have to remove from a washing machine in the building is faded and threadbare. Tenants are long-term for the most part, usually men; they grow old here and die. For them this is home.
Then there are the younger tenants who are attracted by the low rents and the convenient location on the edge of downtown. Some of the residents are clearly suffering from mental disturbances which they control with medication. It isn't a spot that appeals to everyone but I'm on my second bout of tenancy here, drawn by the light that has flooded into my two different apartments, the quiet of the place, and of course the rents in a city where the cost of occupancy has soared in the past decade.
It's a strange little community but it has always had its own ethical code, which is why I'm badly shaken by the knowledge that somewhere in this building is a person who stole my money.
Mail carriers make mistakes, no matter where you live, and in my building, misdelivered letters are routinely pushed under doors or are pinned to the bulletin board above the mailboxes. That's why I was horrified to find that a check which was laggard in reaching me had been cashed--and not by me.
It's not a fortune, but it makes the difference between bare-bones living and a sliver of real pleasure--buying a book or two, giving a present, meeting a friend for Happy Hour. And it represents a lot of work on my part--hours of turning someone else's unreadable prose into something that can be published. Having just suffered a bout with a writer whose ego far exceeded any trace of talent along with the usual rewrite of poorly translated Chinese to English, I earned that money--which went to someone else.
This can happen anywhere. It's not making me move and it's not making me bitter. But I do feel foolish. I knew mistakes happen with delivered mail and I was certain that people in my building would do the right thing. As I practice the art of austerity a bit more diligently than I had planned, I feel sad that my view of a small part of the world has been tarnished, while wondering how I kept from learning a need for caution for such a large part of my life.
Friday, July 20, 2012
The Summer Book
There are some books that I can't keep. I buy one of them, reread it and then think of someone else who needs to read it too. A year or so later, I buy it again. The English Patient is one of those books, so is Happy All the Time. And then there's Tove Jansson's The Summer Book.
It's such a deceptive little book, beginning with its light and sparkling title. Written by the author of the children's series, The Moomintrolls, these stories about a little girl and her grandmother on an island off the coast of Sweden promise a charming, nostalgic look at childhood and the wisdom of age, something to pick up, enjoy, and forget. So wrong, so very, very wrong.
I can't count how many times I've read this book and each time I find a part of it that I would swear I've never read before. Each time, a new chapter hits me with particular force and overshadows the rest. This time around, it's the one about Midsummer's Eve.
Only people who live in the north understand what midsummer means. It's a day that taps into our deepest fears and our strongest hopes; it goes beyond the rational into the most primitive form of magic. We're never closer to our troglodyte origins than on the longest day of the year, when darkness makes a courtesy appearance, if it comes at all, and then steadily increases each day after until that is all there is.It's a day of celebration and loss, with a healthy dose of fear tossed into the mix. It's the true New Year's Eve, but only for northerners. For everybody else it's Titania and Oberon frolicking in an English wood.
For Tove Jansson's small girl Sophia, it begins with Eriksson, a silent fisherman who comes only when unexpected, bringing a gift. He shows up with a box of fireworks and the promise, "I'll drop by on Midsummer's Eve, if that's all right, and we'll see how they work."
In preparation, the house is filled with green branches and wildflowers, a site for a bonfire is set up, a launching pad is built for the fireworks, and a supper table is set for four. Sophia's father finds a can of gasoline because a strong wind blows in from the north, carrying rain, and "it was a disgrace for a Midsummer bonfire not to burn."
But Eriksson comes in the rain, after dark; "quite dark, since no lamps can be lit on Midsummer." He rushes Sophia, her father, and the grandmother onto his boat and out to sea. Only a few bonfires cut through the rain and fog but the water is full of boats all going in the same direction, coming "out of the darkness, like shadows. Wooden crates with a heavy load of lovely, rounded bottles were bobbing on the gray sea" and the boats scoop them up, "ignoring each other...The salvage went on, like a neatly balanced dance...the Coast Guard turning a blind eye...Grandmother watched it, and appreciated and remembered."
"By dawn the sea was empty." Eriksson drops the family off at their house and leaves. Only one rocket in the box of rain-soaked fireworks goes off; it "sailed up toward the sunrise in a shower of blue stars."
Lawlessness and magic and "the rising and falling sea"--this was my childhood as much as it was Tove Jansson's. This time, this is the gift I found in The Summer Book; I "watched it, and appreciated and remembered" and was pierced by that missing comma. I'll keep reading but this time, here is where my heart stopped. In the next reading, it will be someplace else that I'll discover for the very first time, perhaps in this copy, perhaps in a completely new volume while this one rests on somebody else's bookshelf.
It's such a deceptive little book, beginning with its light and sparkling title. Written by the author of the children's series, The Moomintrolls, these stories about a little girl and her grandmother on an island off the coast of Sweden promise a charming, nostalgic look at childhood and the wisdom of age, something to pick up, enjoy, and forget. So wrong, so very, very wrong.
I can't count how many times I've read this book and each time I find a part of it that I would swear I've never read before. Each time, a new chapter hits me with particular force and overshadows the rest. This time around, it's the one about Midsummer's Eve.
Only people who live in the north understand what midsummer means. It's a day that taps into our deepest fears and our strongest hopes; it goes beyond the rational into the most primitive form of magic. We're never closer to our troglodyte origins than on the longest day of the year, when darkness makes a courtesy appearance, if it comes at all, and then steadily increases each day after until that is all there is.It's a day of celebration and loss, with a healthy dose of fear tossed into the mix. It's the true New Year's Eve, but only for northerners. For everybody else it's Titania and Oberon frolicking in an English wood.
For Tove Jansson's small girl Sophia, it begins with Eriksson, a silent fisherman who comes only when unexpected, bringing a gift. He shows up with a box of fireworks and the promise, "I'll drop by on Midsummer's Eve, if that's all right, and we'll see how they work."
In preparation, the house is filled with green branches and wildflowers, a site for a bonfire is set up, a launching pad is built for the fireworks, and a supper table is set for four. Sophia's father finds a can of gasoline because a strong wind blows in from the north, carrying rain, and "it was a disgrace for a Midsummer bonfire not to burn."
But Eriksson comes in the rain, after dark; "quite dark, since no lamps can be lit on Midsummer." He rushes Sophia, her father, and the grandmother onto his boat and out to sea. Only a few bonfires cut through the rain and fog but the water is full of boats all going in the same direction, coming "out of the darkness, like shadows. Wooden crates with a heavy load of lovely, rounded bottles were bobbing on the gray sea" and the boats scoop them up, "ignoring each other...The salvage went on, like a neatly balanced dance...the Coast Guard turning a blind eye...Grandmother watched it, and appreciated and remembered."
"By dawn the sea was empty." Eriksson drops the family off at their house and leaves. Only one rocket in the box of rain-soaked fireworks goes off; it "sailed up toward the sunrise in a shower of blue stars."
Lawlessness and magic and "the rising and falling sea"--this was my childhood as much as it was Tove Jansson's. This time, this is the gift I found in The Summer Book; I "watched it, and appreciated and remembered" and was pierced by that missing comma. I'll keep reading but this time, here is where my heart stopped. In the next reading, it will be someplace else that I'll discover for the very first time, perhaps in this copy, perhaps in a completely new volume while this one rests on somebody else's bookshelf.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Battling Inertia
A body in motion tends to stay in motion--but how to get a body at rest to move again? My usual answer is to leave the country, but there has to be another way to jump-start my life. Last Sunday I was reading Seattle's mediocre paper, more as an eye-muscle exercise than anything else, when I came across a feature story about an aquaphobic man learning to swim.
At first I approached this as a horror story. I grew up in Alaska where the survival rate in any body of water was estimated at no more than three minutes. This isn't a fact that gives a child the desire to learn to swim. Much later, when I was grown and gone, the local high school got a swimming pool, prompted largely by the number of deaths by drowning in an area filled with rivers, lakes, and salt water. Unfortunately that was too late for me--or so I always thought until I read how a man in his 30s had learned to believe that his body was buoyant.
Now I was approaching the realm of fantasy--but what if this could be true? What if I could become as comfortable in the water as I was on it? That question stops me every time I think of it. And I've thought of it often in the past few days.
Water is my favorite element--I never see a boat of any kind without wanting to get on it and sun sparkling on water is one of the most beautiful sights I know. In Bangkok the Chao Phraya river was my quick fix for malaise--in Seattle I get on a ferry. The idea of moving through water is as seductive to me as it is deeply terrifying. I look at pictures taken underwater and long to see this for myself. One of my favorite books is The Fragile Edge by Julia Whitty. Snorkeling, friends have told me, is complete delight. So what's the problem?
Quite simple--water in my ears makes me feel as though I'm being buried alive. I can't remember a time when having my hair washed didn't send me into a screaming frenzy, long before I could talk. Past life horrors? Perhaps. Hypnosis needed? Probably.
Or a very good teacher--and they seem to be out there. Apparently I'm not the only adult who has this terror. The Seattle Times reporter says it is common among many people of color; I tend to think it's more a matter of social and economic class. Parents with leisure take their children to swimming lessons; both of my own children can swim. My parents were far too busy feeding, clothing, and sheltering five children to worry about instruction in swimming, piano, the ballet--and the parents in my small community who could have taught such things were similarly occupied.
But I have time now, I have some spare cash, and oh god do I have an impetus. My life in Seattle, as I've said to the point of nausea, is comfortable enough to verge on the comatose. Challenging a deep-rooted fear is certainly one way to wake up. Another way? Learning to speak Mandarin--I really don't have to move to Beijing to do that, although I love the Gong Li pouting accent of the women who live there. And come to think of it, the year's more than half over and my resolution to read Moby Dick still goes unfulfilled.
Travel will always be my favorite antidote to boredom, but there are ways to circumvent that while staying in one place. Surf's up!
At first I approached this as a horror story. I grew up in Alaska where the survival rate in any body of water was estimated at no more than three minutes. This isn't a fact that gives a child the desire to learn to swim. Much later, when I was grown and gone, the local high school got a swimming pool, prompted largely by the number of deaths by drowning in an area filled with rivers, lakes, and salt water. Unfortunately that was too late for me--or so I always thought until I read how a man in his 30s had learned to believe that his body was buoyant.
Now I was approaching the realm of fantasy--but what if this could be true? What if I could become as comfortable in the water as I was on it? That question stops me every time I think of it. And I've thought of it often in the past few days.
Water is my favorite element--I never see a boat of any kind without wanting to get on it and sun sparkling on water is one of the most beautiful sights I know. In Bangkok the Chao Phraya river was my quick fix for malaise--in Seattle I get on a ferry. The idea of moving through water is as seductive to me as it is deeply terrifying. I look at pictures taken underwater and long to see this for myself. One of my favorite books is The Fragile Edge by Julia Whitty. Snorkeling, friends have told me, is complete delight. So what's the problem?
Quite simple--water in my ears makes me feel as though I'm being buried alive. I can't remember a time when having my hair washed didn't send me into a screaming frenzy, long before I could talk. Past life horrors? Perhaps. Hypnosis needed? Probably.
Or a very good teacher--and they seem to be out there. Apparently I'm not the only adult who has this terror. The Seattle Times reporter says it is common among many people of color; I tend to think it's more a matter of social and economic class. Parents with leisure take their children to swimming lessons; both of my own children can swim. My parents were far too busy feeding, clothing, and sheltering five children to worry about instruction in swimming, piano, the ballet--and the parents in my small community who could have taught such things were similarly occupied.
But I have time now, I have some spare cash, and oh god do I have an impetus. My life in Seattle, as I've said to the point of nausea, is comfortable enough to verge on the comatose. Challenging a deep-rooted fear is certainly one way to wake up. Another way? Learning to speak Mandarin--I really don't have to move to Beijing to do that, although I love the Gong Li pouting accent of the women who live there. And come to think of it, the year's more than half over and my resolution to read Moby Dick still goes unfulfilled.
Travel will always be my favorite antidote to boredom, but there are ways to circumvent that while staying in one place. Surf's up!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Almost a Year
In 26 more days, I will mark the first anniversary of my arrival back to the Old Country--it has no real significance except as a measuring stick of what changes have come as a result, how I live, what I've accomplished.
I look at the place where I live, which has less furniture than when I first moved in. Except for the little Pullman kitchen set in the middle of one wall, it could be one of my starter apartments in Thailand, except there I always had a bed. Here, after my bedbug invasion, I sleep Thai-style on a mat that I roll up during the day. I call it my burrito bed.
I have a work table, a few cushions on the floor and a TV/DVD player for watching movies. A scrounged bookcase holds the few books that I keep--most of them I give away after I've read them. As far as comfort goes. my Thai apartment on Chokchai Ruammit wins hands-down--but buying furniture in Thailand is much easier than it is here (http://tonedeafinthailand.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-buy-sofa-in-bangkok.html) In Seattle I fall apart at the thought of a delivery truck that might harbor bedbugs--yes admittedly I'm quite neurotic about this possibility.
I think of the people who prompted my move back and feel grateful that I was able to return to them. My sons are men who are pure joy to spend time with and I don't take that privilege for granted. The people they love and live with are generous and smart women who have made a space for me in their lives and that is a huge gift.
Friends? I learned long ago that upon returning after a long absence, some friends become acquaintances and some acquaintances become good friends. Making new friends for me has always been a byproduct of my workplace and working at home has put a large crimp in that. But I'm lucky that there's a large pool of creative and interesting people in this city--that is a major Seattle asset that makes it a place I can live in without clawing at my throat.
On the downside, I became addicted to travel in my three years away and have done far too little of that since I returned. My fault, I think--and the newly established Bolt Bus is a good reason to get out of town often. And I have plane tickets for Hong Kong and Bangkok to be used in a couple of months, which is still hard for me to believe.
On a balance the pluses of the past almost-year outweigh the minuses of grey gloom and persistent chill. Overall I'm lucky to have a place that always offers me a space where I can live and work. Had I not returned, some of the events of the past eleven months might have demolished me and it's certain that I wouldn't have had the perspective that would allow me to write my second book. When I whine about the weather and the dull streets of this city, it's only for a hiccup or two. I'm ready to sign up for another year--thank you for letting me come back to this party.
I look at the place where I live, which has less furniture than when I first moved in. Except for the little Pullman kitchen set in the middle of one wall, it could be one of my starter apartments in Thailand, except there I always had a bed. Here, after my bedbug invasion, I sleep Thai-style on a mat that I roll up during the day. I call it my burrito bed.
I have a work table, a few cushions on the floor and a TV/DVD player for watching movies. A scrounged bookcase holds the few books that I keep--most of them I give away after I've read them. As far as comfort goes. my Thai apartment on Chokchai Ruammit wins hands-down--but buying furniture in Thailand is much easier than it is here (http://tonedeafinthailand.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-buy-sofa-in-bangkok.html) In Seattle I fall apart at the thought of a delivery truck that might harbor bedbugs--yes admittedly I'm quite neurotic about this possibility.
I think of the people who prompted my move back and feel grateful that I was able to return to them. My sons are men who are pure joy to spend time with and I don't take that privilege for granted. The people they love and live with are generous and smart women who have made a space for me in their lives and that is a huge gift.
Friends? I learned long ago that upon returning after a long absence, some friends become acquaintances and some acquaintances become good friends. Making new friends for me has always been a byproduct of my workplace and working at home has put a large crimp in that. But I'm lucky that there's a large pool of creative and interesting people in this city--that is a major Seattle asset that makes it a place I can live in without clawing at my throat.
On the downside, I became addicted to travel in my three years away and have done far too little of that since I returned. My fault, I think--and the newly established Bolt Bus is a good reason to get out of town often. And I have plane tickets for Hong Kong and Bangkok to be used in a couple of months, which is still hard for me to believe.
On a balance the pluses of the past almost-year outweigh the minuses of grey gloom and persistent chill. Overall I'm lucky to have a place that always offers me a space where I can live and work. Had I not returned, some of the events of the past eleven months might have demolished me and it's certain that I wouldn't have had the perspective that would allow me to write my second book. When I whine about the weather and the dull streets of this city, it's only for a hiccup or two. I'm ready to sign up for another year--thank you for letting me come back to this party.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Big American Baby
From the time we can listen to speech, we hear innumerable spiels about what is good for us. Parents, health classes in elementary school, doctors, magazines--the propaganda for a healthy diet is everywhere in America. Our current First Lady has made the eradication of childhood obesity her special cause. We know to be healthy we need to eat lots of fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, lean protein, complex carbohydrates; yet most of us are still battling weight problems.
When I came back to the states, a healthy diet wasn't at the forefront of my mind. Over the three years I'd been gone, I'd maintained my weight at a highish but acceptable level and probably would have lost pounds were it not for the joys of a cold beer in a hot climate. For the most part, what I ate was fresh and low in fat. Protein was usually chicken or fish or small amounts of pork, rarely beef. Fruit carts were everywhere and fresh papaya was one of my favorite snacks. Fruit juice came in very small bottles--maybe four ounces. Bread was an occasional treat; rice was a staple. I ate reasonable portions in foodstalls away from home and my at home food was yogurt, nuts, and bananas. My energy was high and I felt good. Then I came home.
Having an oven was a huge novelty and I roasted and broiled chicken and pork with abandon. The pork was lean, the chicken swam in fat even though I removed big yellow globs before I put the poultry in the oven. The fruit that I bought tasted like nothing at all, unless I was lucky enough to find Mexican bananas grown from Thai seed. The flavors that predominated in the food I ate were sweet and salty. When you threw winter into the mix, the result was inevitable. I gained weight--lots of it--mostly in the danger zone of my abdomen.
Then came spring and when the coat and sweaters came off, the sad truth emerged. I found a book that jumpstarted my foray into nutritious eating. I'm lucky. I live near a supermarket that prides itself on its produce section, and Seattle has a large number of farmers' markets. Locovore is the new buzzword among foodies and the hippest, most popular restaurants cater to that trend. If you read any of the city magazines, you'd be convinced this place is the ideal spot for a healthy diet. Until you find yourself out on the street, on the run, with plummeting blood sugar levels.
Walk into any supermarket and look at what's most prominently displayed. Chocolate, chips, sodas, sandwiches, ice cream--even at my neighborhood produce paradise. Yes, there's fruit--and one downtown supermarket has a sink for customers to wash off their selections for immediate gratification. But the most convenient snacks are the ones that are the ones that are "bad" for you. And much of the fruit has no flavor, because we no longer believe in waiting until something is in season.
As I walk through a city that is more politically correct on every level than most in the country, I yearn for streetside carts that sell bags of freshly cut mangos, bananas, watermelon, papaya and guava. I wonder why we can't buy--impulsively and on the go--small skewers of lean pork, or a piece of grilled chicken, or freshly squeezed orange juice, or even a green papaya salad. I don't begrudge other people their salty, sugary, fatty snacks, but I do want a choice when it comes to fast food.
We've become a country of adults who eat like disobedient children and who feed our own children on the run with "healthy" food that can be sucked from a pouch. We are the 99% and we are fat because fat is big business. Gaining and losing makes other people rich--a sugar-free, chemically-sweetened "ice tea" is marketed over the possibility of throwing a few teabags into a pitcher of water and leaving it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Mango ice cream is easier to find than a fresh mango. And even "free-range" chickens in this country are fatter than they used to be. When they're purchased by the pound, why not?
We're a country that's put our money where our mouth is--and it's killing us.
When I came back to the states, a healthy diet wasn't at the forefront of my mind. Over the three years I'd been gone, I'd maintained my weight at a highish but acceptable level and probably would have lost pounds were it not for the joys of a cold beer in a hot climate. For the most part, what I ate was fresh and low in fat. Protein was usually chicken or fish or small amounts of pork, rarely beef. Fruit carts were everywhere and fresh papaya was one of my favorite snacks. Fruit juice came in very small bottles--maybe four ounces. Bread was an occasional treat; rice was a staple. I ate reasonable portions in foodstalls away from home and my at home food was yogurt, nuts, and bananas. My energy was high and I felt good. Then I came home.
Having an oven was a huge novelty and I roasted and broiled chicken and pork with abandon. The pork was lean, the chicken swam in fat even though I removed big yellow globs before I put the poultry in the oven. The fruit that I bought tasted like nothing at all, unless I was lucky enough to find Mexican bananas grown from Thai seed. The flavors that predominated in the food I ate were sweet and salty. When you threw winter into the mix, the result was inevitable. I gained weight--lots of it--mostly in the danger zone of my abdomen.
Then came spring and when the coat and sweaters came off, the sad truth emerged. I found a book that jumpstarted my foray into nutritious eating. I'm lucky. I live near a supermarket that prides itself on its produce section, and Seattle has a large number of farmers' markets. Locovore is the new buzzword among foodies and the hippest, most popular restaurants cater to that trend. If you read any of the city magazines, you'd be convinced this place is the ideal spot for a healthy diet. Until you find yourself out on the street, on the run, with plummeting blood sugar levels.
Walk into any supermarket and look at what's most prominently displayed. Chocolate, chips, sodas, sandwiches, ice cream--even at my neighborhood produce paradise. Yes, there's fruit--and one downtown supermarket has a sink for customers to wash off their selections for immediate gratification. But the most convenient snacks are the ones that are the ones that are "bad" for you. And much of the fruit has no flavor, because we no longer believe in waiting until something is in season.
As I walk through a city that is more politically correct on every level than most in the country, I yearn for streetside carts that sell bags of freshly cut mangos, bananas, watermelon, papaya and guava. I wonder why we can't buy--impulsively and on the go--small skewers of lean pork, or a piece of grilled chicken, or freshly squeezed orange juice, or even a green papaya salad. I don't begrudge other people their salty, sugary, fatty snacks, but I do want a choice when it comes to fast food.
We've become a country of adults who eat like disobedient children and who feed our own children on the run with "healthy" food that can be sucked from a pouch. We are the 99% and we are fat because fat is big business. Gaining and losing makes other people rich--a sugar-free, chemically-sweetened "ice tea" is marketed over the possibility of throwing a few teabags into a pitcher of water and leaving it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Mango ice cream is easier to find than a fresh mango. And even "free-range" chickens in this country are fatter than they used to be. When they're purchased by the pound, why not?
We're a country that's put our money where our mouth is--and it's killing us.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Signs of the Season
As winter clothes come off, it's a sad fact that of life that winter weight has come on. Once upon a time that was taken care of by walking every day. Not any more...
Middle-aged spread, my grandmother called it. It hit her as she approached her sixties, I'm told, and it has me too. At first I was blithely unconcerned--no waistline? No problem. I told I myself I was too old for vanity. True as that may be, I'm in the prime age for the very real health problems that are associated with weight around the middle. Time for action, but mere activity wasn't enough.
Then I met a friend at the grocery store. He looked great--animated, energetic, and less bulky than he had been a couple of months ago. "South Beach diet," he told me, "essentially no carbs that aren't complex and no processed sugar."
I went home and investigated--it wasn't Dr. Atkins Revisited--it seemed sane. Low fat, high in vegetables and protein, low in carbohydrates. No jasmine rice, no beer (except at Oktoberfest, the doctor who developed this was German)--I sniveled a little and then went out and bought fresh produce.
The U.S. grows some really good vegetables, if you can pay for them. The fruit--not so good--which is why I stopped looking at the produce section of my neighborhood supermarket. That was a big mistake.If this new regimen teaches me nothing else, I thought as I picked up bitter melon and ripe tomatoes, it will at least have sent me back to the joy of fresh vegetables.
It's only been three days so I haven't noticed any spectacular changes--except without the sugar from beer and ice cream and egg tarts, I have fewer blood sugar crashes. Meanwhile my lower back still hurts, which I attribute to the added weight that is pulling on it. When I no longer have to take Aleve in the morning, I'll know I'm on the right track.
I don't have a scale. I don't want to become fixated on numbers. I'll know when my clothes begin to loosen that I'm losing weight. In two weeks I'll begin to add rice, pasta,beans, and perhaps an apple or two to my meals; by then I will have developed a firm and abiding passion for vegetables, which at the moment provide variety and texture to my rather boring allotment of protein. It's certainly the right time of year to rediscover vegetables; the farmers' markets beckon.
Last year when I went to Koh Samet with my family, I was stunned by how openly old European women displayed their bodies. No cover-ups for their bulges and wrinkles--I was envious of their acceptance of age. There's a balance I want in my life--that same acceptance along with a careful respect for my aging body--keeping it as healthy as I can while not forcing it into something it can no longer be. This eating change (I refuse to call it a diet) is the beginning of that balance, I hope.
A friend says aging is one of his last adventures. Martha Gellhorn said the same thing, brandishing her glass of scotch and her cigarette up until the very end. I'm greedy for all that life holds right up until the last minute--and the only way I'll enjoy that is to stay healthy. Pass the zucchini, please.
Middle-aged spread, my grandmother called it. It hit her as she approached her sixties, I'm told, and it has me too. At first I was blithely unconcerned--no waistline? No problem. I told I myself I was too old for vanity. True as that may be, I'm in the prime age for the very real health problems that are associated with weight around the middle. Time for action, but mere activity wasn't enough.
Then I met a friend at the grocery store. He looked great--animated, energetic, and less bulky than he had been a couple of months ago. "South Beach diet," he told me, "essentially no carbs that aren't complex and no processed sugar."
I went home and investigated--it wasn't Dr. Atkins Revisited--it seemed sane. Low fat, high in vegetables and protein, low in carbohydrates. No jasmine rice, no beer (except at Oktoberfest, the doctor who developed this was German)--I sniveled a little and then went out and bought fresh produce.
The U.S. grows some really good vegetables, if you can pay for them. The fruit--not so good--which is why I stopped looking at the produce section of my neighborhood supermarket. That was a big mistake.If this new regimen teaches me nothing else, I thought as I picked up bitter melon and ripe tomatoes, it will at least have sent me back to the joy of fresh vegetables.
It's only been three days so I haven't noticed any spectacular changes--except without the sugar from beer and ice cream and egg tarts, I have fewer blood sugar crashes. Meanwhile my lower back still hurts, which I attribute to the added weight that is pulling on it. When I no longer have to take Aleve in the morning, I'll know I'm on the right track.
I don't have a scale. I don't want to become fixated on numbers. I'll know when my clothes begin to loosen that I'm losing weight. In two weeks I'll begin to add rice, pasta,beans, and perhaps an apple or two to my meals; by then I will have developed a firm and abiding passion for vegetables, which at the moment provide variety and texture to my rather boring allotment of protein. It's certainly the right time of year to rediscover vegetables; the farmers' markets beckon.
Last year when I went to Koh Samet with my family, I was stunned by how openly old European women displayed their bodies. No cover-ups for their bulges and wrinkles--I was envious of their acceptance of age. There's a balance I want in my life--that same acceptance along with a careful respect for my aging body--keeping it as healthy as I can while not forcing it into something it can no longer be. This eating change (I refuse to call it a diet) is the beginning of that balance, I hope.
A friend says aging is one of his last adventures. Martha Gellhorn said the same thing, brandishing her glass of scotch and her cigarette up until the very end. I'm greedy for all that life holds right up until the last minute--and the only way I'll enjoy that is to stay healthy. Pass the zucchini, please.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Watching a Little Girl
Yesterday, I went to lunch with my son, his girlfriend, and her nine-year-old daughter. I watched this child gleefully devour a cinnamon roll as big as her face, a bagel with cream cheese, and then a big, puffy, glazed yeast doughnut. This little girl improbably resembles a rod of bamboo.
Then we went to the library, where she found a copy of Beezus and Ramona, a small, comfortable armchair, and settled into both, calmly inhaling pages as voraciously as she had her lunch. When we walked back down streets filled with new leaves and blossoms, this slender little person danced her way home, chattering all the way.
This is why I want gun control. Seattle's neighborhoods need to be safe, for little girls and their brothers. Our country needs to think of our children, not profits from gun sales.
Spring was tarnished dreadfully for those in our city who think and feel, but still little girls hold life in their hands, the joy of it, the discoveries. They deserve our protection, our ability to make their world a place they can walk through without fear.
Then we went to the library, where she found a copy of Beezus and Ramona, a small, comfortable armchair, and settled into both, calmly inhaling pages as voraciously as she had her lunch. When we walked back down streets filled with new leaves and blossoms, this slender little person danced her way home, chattering all the way.
This is why I want gun control. Seattle's neighborhoods need to be safe, for little girls and their brothers. Our country needs to think of our children, not profits from gun sales.
Spring was tarnished dreadfully for those in our city who think and feel, but still little girls hold life in their hands, the joy of it, the discoveries. They deserve our protection, our ability to make their world a place they can walk through without fear.
Fell on Dark Days
May has been a cruel and barbaric month for Seattle and for my country. Insane atrocities that I refuse to read about have prompted the federal government to announce that there are no such things as zombies. Much closer to home, a place that my oldest son has performed in, a place that he took me to just several weeks ago, became a slaughterhouse when a madman entered it and opened fire. Talent and beauty that this city needed badly was taken away in a day that led to another killing by the same man, with him finally shooting himself on a Seattle neighborhood street in broad daylight.
Many questions arise in the sadness: Why don't we take care of our mentally ill? Why do we let them have access to firearms? Why do we cling to a constitutional amendment that was written for a country that needed guns to kill its own food and faced the possibility of being reabsorbed into the kingdom it fought to leave? Why do we allow the National Rifle Association to dominate all political discourse on this issue? Why has our small city had so many deaths from gunfire in a year that isn't even yet half over?
But then--we have no bombs or grenades going off on our streets, that hideous random violence that efficiently kills more than one or three people at a time. The country I left less than a year ago, the Land of Smiles, the world's favorite playground, has people dying from explosives every day. Because that part of the country has essentially been written off, nobody cares.
My British friends shrug; they went through this in the last century, when the IRA made the English well accustomed to explosives in their daily lives. They survived; so will others now plagued with The Troubles. But the violence of terrorism has a recognizable root and the weapons used aren't legal; guns in this country are. In the state I live in, legislators refused to ban them from public parks--it's legal to carry your firearm to your family picnic. The people killed by gunfire in Seattle died for reasons that are impossible to comprehend--a parent left a loaded gun in a place where children played alone, bullets were fired and struck the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man entered a cafe and killed people who were enjoying their coffee.
I grew up in a "gun culture" where people lived a semi-subsistence lifestyle. A moose shot when needed meant the difference between full stomachs and hunger. By the time I was fully adult, I saw caribou being shot for their head and horns alone--Alaska was becoming a land of trophy hunters. It made me sick.
Life taking life, if there is such a thing as sin, this is it. And by making this an action that anyone can take at will, we are complicit. If there's one thing we can do in our lifetimes, can we please make this stop, as much as we possibly can? "Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is fallacious. In America, people with guns kill people. This is what the right to bear arms has led to. It's a right we no longer deserve to have.
Many questions arise in the sadness: Why don't we take care of our mentally ill? Why do we let them have access to firearms? Why do we cling to a constitutional amendment that was written for a country that needed guns to kill its own food and faced the possibility of being reabsorbed into the kingdom it fought to leave? Why do we allow the National Rifle Association to dominate all political discourse on this issue? Why has our small city had so many deaths from gunfire in a year that isn't even yet half over?
But then--we have no bombs or grenades going off on our streets, that hideous random violence that efficiently kills more than one or three people at a time. The country I left less than a year ago, the Land of Smiles, the world's favorite playground, has people dying from explosives every day. Because that part of the country has essentially been written off, nobody cares.
My British friends shrug; they went through this in the last century, when the IRA made the English well accustomed to explosives in their daily lives. They survived; so will others now plagued with The Troubles. But the violence of terrorism has a recognizable root and the weapons used aren't legal; guns in this country are. In the state I live in, legislators refused to ban them from public parks--it's legal to carry your firearm to your family picnic. The people killed by gunfire in Seattle died for reasons that are impossible to comprehend--a parent left a loaded gun in a place where children played alone, bullets were fired and struck the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, a man entered a cafe and killed people who were enjoying their coffee.
I grew up in a "gun culture" where people lived a semi-subsistence lifestyle. A moose shot when needed meant the difference between full stomachs and hunger. By the time I was fully adult, I saw caribou being shot for their head and horns alone--Alaska was becoming a land of trophy hunters. It made me sick.
Life taking life, if there is such a thing as sin, this is it. And by making this an action that anyone can take at will, we are complicit. If there's one thing we can do in our lifetimes, can we please make this stop, as much as we possibly can? "Guns don't kill people; people kill people" is fallacious. In America, people with guns kill people. This is what the right to bear arms has led to. It's a right we no longer deserve to have.
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