Think good thoughts & keep watch for good things.

Yes, those are new glasses. And a hat, in the house,
though I'm still so cold I can't feel my fingers as I type.

Today this came in the mail. In terms of the study of Ayurveda, taking a little correspondence course isn't even the tip of the iceberg. It's an interesting introduction — but ultimately like studying a single, tiny snowflake at the tip of that iceberg. The surface of a 5,000 year old Vedic medical tradition can't be scratched in 40 essay questions, but, completing the course in the 5 month deadline I set for myself (one can take up to a year if it's needed) represents a project both started and finished. Not wished for and procrastinated about and left half-finished in a pile someplace where good ideas and intentions crawl off to die, but actually completed. That feels good.

I finished the course just in time, as I'm currently being bombarded with freelance projects from every direction, even hearing from clients I haven't worked with all year. I could say this is happening "out of the blue" because I haven't physically picked up the phone and contacted any of these people looking for extra work — but then I remember that loaded little word I chose for 2011, manifest, and can't help but wonder if I've attracted these opportunities to myself by thinking so earnestly about them over the past few months. They say that works, but it's a little frightening to believe it actually could. I'm now wondering if perhaps I should try to limit my thoughts about freelance work to occasional, more manageable spurts, and focus my attention on winning the lottery instead.

This morning I left the house before sunrise to head into Vermont for a video shoot with an author. I'm not a pre-dawn kind of person in winter, (though I can tell you that Ayurveda recommends getting up before sunrise as part of one's daily routine, and why) but when I stumbled out to the driveway to warm up my car the sight of a bright sliver of crescent moon on the horizon made the reality of having to function on too little sleep more bearable. Less than an hour later, as I zoomed westward on the Mohawk Trail, a Bald Eagle swooped from the sky and flew directly over my car. This has only happened to me once before, and on both occasions I've been driving alone, unable to share my giddiness. Neither time has this prevented me from shouting, "I just saw a Bald Eagle!" out loud. Sometimes you just have to tell yourself something.

Gift A Stranger

I just stumbled across this site and wanted to share. At giftastranger.net sending a little happiness is easy. Click "send gift." Get a random address somewhere in the world. Print the address and send your gift. The site does ask you to sign in with your own address and upload a photo of the gift you're planning to send - each of those blue dots on the map can be clicked to reveal some of the gifts that have already been sent. Fun!

Cooking Stuff Up

This weekend I've been hiding in the kitchen with my non-leaky sink, cheap new faucet and freshly painted walls (even though I don't like the neutral "mannequin skin tan" color I chose for the walls).

Yesterday afternoon I made my second batch of homemade ghee...

cooking it over the lowest heat setting this time and allowing the milk solids to sloooowly separate and fall to the bottom of the pan while the water rose to the top and evaporated,

creating a more shelf-stable end product with a higher smoke point for cooking. This took at least 45 minutes to achieve.

For this batch I used 4 sticks of unsalted Cabot brand butter, which has a lower percentage of milk solids than other butters — meaning I'll get get the maximum amount of usable ghee possible. Despite using a fine strainer lined with cheesecloth, a little lump of rogue solids still found their way to the bottom of my container, a pint-sized mason jar.

So I restrained, just to be type-A about the process.

Here's the still warm (and solid-free) golden ghee in the window. By this morning the chilly kitchen had turned it pale yellow and solid.

While I waited for the butter to transform on the stove top I also boiled some milk for my first-ever batch of homemade yogurt (using local Sidehill Farm yogurt as a starter, not Stonyfield, hiss hiss boo). Then I tried my hand at Besan or chickpea flour crackers. Then I made some Swiss chard and white bean soup followed by a very salty batch of salt caramel brownies that came out more like fudge and looked, according to J, like "poo lava" coming out of the oven. Then I did a whole lot of dishes. The entire time I measured and stirred and scrubbed I mulled over a book idea I'm thinking of starting come spring when I've crawled back out of my yearly Seasonal Affective Disorder slump. A book about trying to gain mindfulness and lose attachment, a book about how something that's seemingly very small can add up to become something quite heavy and cumbersome. A book that feels very doable and fun to work on.

Some days are simply made for hiding in the kitchen, dreaming in the presence of comfort food.

What are you cooking up this weekend, food or otherwise?

What ARE those blue things in your muffin?

Brought to you by the non-profit Consumer Research Center, this video exposes some of the deceptive marketing practices used by major food manufacturers like Kellogg's and General Mills. This piece has to do specifically with products advertised as containing blueberries, but you know this is just one small example of misleading packaging.


It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that Pop Tarts aren't stuffed with real blueberries, but in related news I just learned that even the "organic elite" like Whole Foods and Stonyfield Farm are surrendering to Monsanto. From the (very informative and equally infuriating) article on The Organic Consumers Association website:

"In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack."

Well I guess I've just purchased my last container of Stonyfield. Goodbye "Banilla!"

This afternoon I need to make some more ghee — perhaps I'll give homemade yogurt a whirl while I'm at it.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to tell President Obama and Sec. of Agriculture Vilsack to Adopt a Moratorium on the Planting of GE Alfalfa you can sign a petition here.

No flag.

I used to want buyers for my words.
Now I wish someone would buy me away from words.
I've made a lot of charmingly profound images,
scenes with Abraham, and Abraham's father, Azar,
who was also famous for icons.

I'm so tired of what I've been doing.
Then one image without form came,
and I quit.

Look for someone else to tend the shop.
I'm out of the image-making business.
Finally I know the freedom
of madness.

A random image arrives. I scream,
"Get out!" It disintegrates.

Only love.
Only the holder the flag fits into,
and wind. No flag.

— Rumi

Lunch Scribblings

Two men bundled in florescent yellow hats and gloves collaborate to change the enormous vinyl advertisements on either side of a billboard tucked between crooked tenement houses. Only a block away a police cruiser, lights flashing, is parked across the entry to a dead-end road. I crane my neck as I drive past and catch sight of a stationery fire truck and red coats moving slowly towards a decrepit brick garage, the gray Hoosak river tossing in the background, on its way out to the sea. There's no smoke, no flames. Nothing to see here.

Outside the office men in bright orange cherry pickers are battling icicles with chainsaws. The chainsaws appear to be winning as the deadly overhang is reduced to a choppy block of ice politely keeping to the roof tiles. Mounds of shattered, glassy pieces appear by the doorway. No one will be maimed by the elements today — though there's still a slight chance of being crushed beneath a 10,000 lb block of melting snow obeying the law of gravity as you enter or exit the building.

Inside it's silent with the exception of the usual white noise of the office — and the sound of a coworker clipping her fingernails at her desk. The sound, which punctuates the office environment more often than you would expect, makes me wish I had a long, sharp icicle with which to stab myself.

As of eating my last forkful of Vietnamese Tofu Salad, studded with carrots and doused in a tangy vinaigrette, there are three and a half more hours to this workday.

Weekend Fresh Air...

Microfiction Monday

The drizzle had subsided, but Mark kept the umbrella open as a safeguard, its handle resting on his broad shoulder like the barrel of a gun.

*140*

When I saw this week's image on Suz's blog I was inspired to play along for Microfiction Monday — 140 characters or less.

Onward!

The appraiser has come and gone, just like that. He toured the entire house, beginning with the scary basement — which now has a bright light to illuminate the albino spiders hanging from the rotting beams. He snapped digital photos and wrote notes. He peeked quickly in the closets, admired the fireplaces, asked enthusiastically about the improvements we've made, ran his measuring wheel along the outside walls, stomped impressively around in the snow and ice covered yard, generously assured Vixen that she was a good girl, and went on his way. He was more gracious than I expected and seemed to sincerely appreciate the antique features of the house. Some people "get" old houses. Some people do not. I think he was of the "gets it" camp. Phew.

Despite the projects that have yet to be done I think our little cape looked clean and cozy and well-organized and loved. J and I enjoyed walking through the rooms before the review, picking at stray dust bunnies and appreciating how much work we've done — not just in the past three weeks but in the last 10 years. I think this will all work out ok. Maybe even better than ok.

On to the next decade!

I'm not sure I've mentioned that in the midst of preparing for the appraisal I've also been working on a freelance book project, which makes me very happy indeed (that's just a little snippet above). When it comes to design work, book design is time-consuming — a giant puzzle of words and images — but incredibly satisfying. When a book is finished you get to hold something of substance and quality in your hands, knowing you've played an incredibly important part in giving the author's words and intentions substance — a shape, a costume. They don't call it "book building" for nothing — getting a manuscript from a publisher is like having the raw materials of a house dumped in an empty lot, and it's the designer's job to assemble those materials in a way that makes the book both structurally sound and beautiful. Its layout needs to flow, just like the layout of rooms and hallways that takes you from the front door through the house.

I love playing architect with words and images, and doing it in my home office — even if the cold makes my fingers numb, and my cute but uncomfortable Ikea chair makes my legs tingle, and the work eats up most of my nights and weekends because I'm doing it in addition to my day job — well, that's ok. In fact it's better than ok. Much better.

On to the next decade!
Wait, will printed books still exist a decade from now? Despite the e-trend, I believe they will.

If not maybe I can become a real estate appraiser. I'd wouldn't mind seeing what other people keep in their closets.

Om Namah Shivaya

Here's Shiva Nataraj dancing on the windowsill this morning. I've heard that it's a bad idea to put deity statues by the bedside, where, for 8 hours a night you ignore them.

But it's important to me that this statue is one of the first things I see in the morning, poised gracefully behind my parent's wedding cake topper and my mom's coiled rosary beads — a reminder that creation dances on.

Winter Windows

Snowshoe Hike

We Need More News Stories Like This One

I just wanted to share one of the most heart-warming stories I've ever read A teenager’s simple act elevates all - The Boston Globe. Photo is by Essdras M Suarez/Globe Staff.

Flowers that come and go

The 5 gallon bucket of fresh tulips that appears on the counter of the local coop at exactly this time every year reminds me of my mom's birthday, which would have been today. Their buds are a welcome sight, a mirage of springtime in the middle of the long New England winter, but it's a little bittersweet too, seeing them arrive.

This photo is from the last birthday my mom was able to celebrate at our house, back in 2008. By the following January she was too sick to make the trip, and for that matter so was my dad in a much different way. I love that they both look almost child-like here, in their admiration of the glowing cheesecake. It was well worth the effort it took to bake it.

This (Very) Old House

For the past several weeks I've been in the throes of refinancing my mortgage, digging through old paperwork and trying to prove to the bank in all manner of ways that I really am committed to living well within my means and have been doing so for decades. As I mentioned in my last post, soon the old house we live in will be appraised.

J and I are very private about our home and have been known to regularly hide from both phone calls and visitors, even well-meaning ones. Our simple lifestyle, which involves no central heat and no tv to name a few apparently shocking examples, has become perfectly natural to us but is inevitably met with raised eyebrows from others, along with the following two questions:

"What the hell do you do out here in the middle of nowhere without a tv?" and "How cold is the house when you wake up in the morning?"

To answer, J and I are incredibly good at entertaining ourselves and each other with a wide variety of time-consuming hobbies, obscure interests, and childish antics. On long weekends such as this one our laid back routine makes the advice in Real Simple read like something Rube Goldberg could have written. In the morning, before J stokes the stove, it's about 50 degrees in here, tops. No problem, I just thaw myself out in the shower, slowly, like a piece of solidified chicken from the freezer. In fact, when I now try to sleep in a well insulated, nicely heated room I shrivel up like a raisin, and if I were to stay at your house I'd have to throw open a window and drag the bed in front of it, or else curl up beneath a tree in your back yard. I take my sleeping bag with me everywhere, just in case, and have a funny story about this I'll share with you someday.

The concept of a stranger coming to our house with a notebook and measuring tape to poke around in every corner of our living space feels extremely invasive to me, a kind of domestic colonoscopy. I absolutely dread it. Had I known an appraisal was involved in refinancing I might not have pursued the dangling carrot of low interest rates. Going forward, I have to keep reminding myself that reducing my monthly expenses is an important step towards manifesting change in the coming year. Or is it? Perhaps it's just one of those hoops I mentioned, which I'm holding up in between where I am now and where I think I want to be. Am I enmeshed in more maya than I know what to do with and spending a ton of money on home repairs while I'm at it? Time always tells.

Speaking of time, when I say the house is "old" I really do mean "old" — 221 years to be exact, the past ten of which it's been in our care. You can never really "own" anything, and living in a house that's been occupied by generations of people who once harbored hopes and plans and dreams and eccentricities here, just like the two of us, reminds one of that humbling truth on a daily basis. You can't take it with you, and as a result this house can be no more "mine" than it ever was "theirs." To me, the people who came closest to owning the house were the ones who undoubtedly sweat and bled and woke up terribly sore after felling trees and stacking rocks to erect it — members of the Warner family, who now lay beneath the frozen ground in a graveyard up the street, where someone has taken the liberty of hanging plastic skeleton heads from the branches of trees along its perimeter.



In 1883, the same year the Brooklyn Bridge opened to traffic, this old house was already a centenarian, and this is how it looked, above. Among other area buildings and landmarks it was photographed by the Howes Brothers of Ashfield, MA and this photo appeared in a local calendar not long after we moved in. And yes, I have noticed that the guy with his hands behind his back looks an awful lot like J, and would bet money that there's a woman who looks an awful lot like me standing just out of sight behind one of those windows. I certainly feel like I've been here for centuries, a thought that makes me wonder about the concept of attachments and reincarnations and fate. I knew immediately upon walking into this house that I wanted to buy it, despite being told by the inspector that it would need to be completely renovated, despite my fear of commitment and legally binding agreements of any sort.

Here's the house on the day we moved in, January 2001. From this angle you can't tell that a small addition grew on its right side sometime in the 1960's, to house a postage-stamp sized kitchen and the room where our wood stove chugs valiantly away all winter. Everything inside and outside of the house, which had been on the market for 8 years and rented out to a string of tenants for most of that time, was painted in this same cream and dull blue color scheme. We've done a lot of painting.

Here's the house today, still standing, bordered by a picket fence that J made.

Within the short span of time since this refinancing business began I've developed an almost psychotic hyper-awareness of everything that's wrong with this piece of property, and am determined to correct all of it in 2 weeks, armed with only a broom, vacuum cleaner, assorted tubes of caulk products, and an array of Benjamin Moore paints. Last weekend, in addition to painting, spackling, scrubbing and caulking I found myself standing in the mud-floored, stone-walled basement with a broom and a flashlight, knocking disgruntled spiders from the ceiling. You already know how this weekend's tasks are going, and I haven't even written about J's Saturday afternoon beneath the kitchen sink yet. Suffice to say I did the dishes in the bathtub Sunday morning, and J is back under the sink now, uttering unrepeatable words...

I hate to admit it, but when the appraiser gets down to the basement, where several of the centuries old beams are slowly turning to cottage cheese from the inevitable moisture that comes when you build a house on the down slope of a giant hill and invite a forest-load of melted snow to run through its stone-walled basement every spring for 221 years, dangling spiders are the last thing an they're going to be looking at. They'll be busy ogling those beams and the great behemoth of a propane furnace that hangs rusting from what's left of the ceiling. I'm only hoping I can keep J from inviting them to view the house's "bung hole," which he claims is the legitimate term for the room-sized cave at the base of the giant center chimney. I think it's more likely a good way for him to scare whatever house guests we do have away forever.

Last week a repair man from Verizon showed up to fix our phone line and asked if he could see the basement. "Um ok, but it's scary because it's so old" I warned him, motioning towards the cellar door, which opens up into our living room. I wonder if anyone has ever responded to his simple question in such a foreboding way. It was actually a bit of an understatement.

The poor man stood at the top of the stairs looking down into the pitch blackness and reached hopefully for what looks like a light switch but isn't. It may have once turned on the furnace, back when the furnace still had the will to turn on. There was a ominous click, followed by a long moment of silence and a healthy continuation of utter darkness below. I stood behind him, trying my best to appear as unmenacing as possible but all the while wondering how he would react if I decided to let loose with a crazy-sounding cackle at that very moment. Honestly, at times I have no idea what's wrong with me.

Luckily for both of us he managed to restore our dial tone in a matter of minutes and was soon out the door and on his way to the next repair, hopefully in a more modern and well-lit basement.

The second strange thing that's happened as I wait for the appraisal date and spackle, scrub, caulk and paint my way through the house is a very untimely arrival of flies and rodents. And by arrive I mean that something has taken the liberty of chewing a hole in the kitchen wall, which now requires major triage with both spackle and paint. And by flies I mean a nearly Apocalyptic Swarm has filled the attic. Though J and I have been practicing strict ahimsa for the last 7 or 8 months, respectfully ushering all manner of creepy crawlies out of the house in jars and taxiing mice to a more rural, riverside location in the back seats of our cars, last night we were reduced to defending ourselves with plastic swatters. The floor upstairs is now attractively carpeted with fly carcasses.

I can't wait until this whole refinancing business is over so I can stop looking at everything around me so critically — stop cleaning, stop bothering the spiders and the errant spots of paint on the ceilings (and J for that matter) and move on to manifesting something else to fret about. As soon as the appraiser leaves I'm going to hang a big "Go Away" sign on the door and go back to meditating and living like it's still 1823. In the end, however much we paint and clean, the house is going to be worth whatever it's worth. The experience of living in it has been priceless.

My Half Day in the Half Bath (it's not what you think)

It began with a spot of gray paint on the ceiling. Never mind that it's been there since I painted the half bathroom 3 or 4 years years ago, it was suddenly Extremely Noticeable in light of an upcoming appraisal — which is a blog post in itself.

I took what seemed like perfectly reasonable action and dabbed at the errant gray spot with a paintbrush full of white ceiling paint. However, as soon as I'd done so it became equally Extremely Noticeable that the ceiling of the half bath wasn't even close to being white, as I'd been telling myself all these years while trying to avoid the onerous task of repainting it. Not white, that is, except for the new white spot I'd painted on it to hide the gray spot. The white spot immediately began to make a mockery of the rest of the ceiling, calling it unflattering names like "dirty" and "dismal."Obviously it was time to bite the bullet and paint the entire ceiling.

This morning, as I assembled my ladder and paints in the tiny space, I surveyed the rest of the room and noticed that some of the white trim needed cleaning up as well. Thankfully the gray walls still looked decent. It only took a couple of hours to carefully edge and roll out the ceiling (twice) and painstakingly repaint all of the trim. The project really should have ended there, but once the ceiling and trim looked shiny and new I could see some Extremely Noticeable spots in the gray walls that I decided would be simple enough to touch up with some leftover gray paint.

So...next I grabbed the old can of gray paint, but found that all of the legitimate brushes in the house were already occupied with various colors (we've been doing a lot of painting these past 2 weeks). In a hurry to finish the project and move on to something more fun, like vacuuming the attic, I grabbed the only brush I could find - a tiny 1/2" wide art brush - and began dabbing at the walls. Unfortunately, as the new spots of gray paint began to dry I realized, to my horror, that they had all come out quite a bit darker than the rest of the gray paint around them.

J blamed this on the newly touched up places not being dry yet — but I demonstrated that they were indeed dry by rubbing my hand back and forth across them vehemently. By now it was early afternoon.

Glumly I had to admit that my only option was to repaint all of the walls gray again so they wouldn't look as though they had a rash. Since I couldn't very well use a 1/2" wide brush to achieve this during my lifetime, I rooted around in our supply cabinet until I found the only other bristly tool remaining in our arsenal — an enormous, square-edged house painting brush. House painting brushes are perfect for slapping paint on large areas, but cutting carefully around things like sinks and freshly painted trim is like trying to perform brain surgery with a chainsaw. Miraculously I managed to avoid slaughtering the fresh white areas as I brushed the walls gray again — with the exception of a new gray spot on the ceiling.

I was now beginning to feel as if I'd embarked on an endless cycle of painting the half bath, and with the arrival of the new gray spot it seemed as though I was right back where I'd started. "This just may be where I finally lose my mind" I thought, "chasing spots of paint around a windowless bathroom."

As I write this post Saturday has become Sunday and the walls have gone from light gray with splotches of dark gray to dark gray with splotches of light gray where my cumbersome club of a house painting brush skipped or could not fit. The new gray spot on the ceiling is mocking me. It's well past bedtime. Tomorrow I'm sure I can finish it.

Snow, Love, Dharma

Today is most certainly a snow day. Most years I've been so protective of my vacation days that it seemed well worth shoveling myself out the front door and braving the endless white-on-white of unplowed country roads to preserve them — but this winter is different. Instead I listen to the forecast leading up to the storm like an expectant child waiting to hear that school's been closed, eager for any excuse to stay safe and warm in my quiet house.

Out the window the fluttering prayer flags are a bright splash of color against a gray and white backdrop. What silent prayer will I send out to the cold universe today? Over the course of these last few weeks I've learned something about my daily practice by telling myself I'm too busy and preoccupied to partake in it, and that is: it really does work. It fills up depressions in my heart worn by worry and fear, and when I let it subside those familiar cavities are quickly filled again with a grief that catches me off guard.

Yesterday I found the very same Yogi Tea bag label, twice. What are the chances? First I spotted it on the floor of my car (though I don't remember drinking any tea in there recently) and then again the very same rectangle of white caught my eye hours later on the slushy ground in the office parking lot. It must have fluttered from my pocket as I grabbed my keys on my way out to lunch and was waiting for me to return and pick it up again.

"Your head must bow to your heart" it read. Must.

"Well I'm trying" I thought, "but it would be much easier if my heart weren't constantly drawn to things that seem downright impractical to my head." It reminded me of a paragraph I was struck by while reading The Wisdom of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras by Ravi Ravindra this winter.

"Love for God is a love for something we do not know, but are drawn to. This is true for us at all levels of love; we do not know rationally why we love. I participated in several small group discussions with Krishnamurti, and sometimes I could not understand why he gave so little importance to making efforts, to undertaking practice, and to thought. On one occasion, there must have been some exasperation in my voice. He stopped me in mid-sentence, and asked: "But sir why do you keep coming?" Without the intervention of any thought or hesitation, I said, "Because I love you." This was the truth of the matter. One does not know why one does certain things but there is an interaction of subtle forces, inside as well as outside, and in matters of love or spiritual influences, there is a mutuality of relationship. Does an iron filing decide to be attracted to a magnet? Does it know why? As long as we are making decisions we are not following the heart. The heart chooses without an enumeration of mental reasons which can give a satisfactory explanation to somebody else."

The first time I read that it made me laugh out loud. Oh yes, I'm quite familiar with the task of trying to come up with "satisfactory explanations" and I'm afraid it's far from finished. The passage also brought to mind an article by Dr. Marc Halpern, The Dharma of the Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist, which you can read in full here (I've read it about a dozen times since I stumbled across it months ago),

It is gift to know one's dharma. It is as if God has spoken and you have heard. At that time, all that is left is to surrender and serve. These two tasks are not as easy as they sound. Surrendering is perhaps the most difficult action any human being can take. It means putting aside one's personal desires and goals in favor of service to the divine. It takes tremendous faith and courage to act in a self-less manner. Selfless-ness is by nature very scary. Our self or ahamkara struggles to maintain its current existence. It does not like change or growth. A new way of being threatens the very existence of self. As a result, we usually sabotage our growth as the self fights back to maintain the status quo. One way this appears as higher Self doubt. Is my perception of my dharma my imagination or is it a truly divine offering? If it is my imagination, am I giving up my pursuit of personal gain for no real reason? This type of higher Self doubt troubles many people whose faith is not secure. As a result, most higher pursuits fall short as the person eventually gives up, going back to a self- existence. Some never gain the clarity to see the door of dharma. Of those who do, few walk through. It takes great courage and faith.

Success in life has many measuring sticks. Most measure it based on money and power. Few measure it based on service and accomplishment. Surrendering to dharma assures a balanced success based upon all parameters. The universe supports those who align with its divine intention.

As I pause from typing the dog reclines on her bed and gazes at me adoringly with half closed eyes. She doesn't even know that I just ordered her an orthopedic memory foam dog bed with a denim cover. She doesn't care that the last bit of toast crust I just tossed her way was only a burnt part I didn't want anyway. The snow blows sideways outside the window and the prayer flags toss and flap on their string. May we all find the courage and faith to walk through the door of our dharma. Even if it requires some shoveling out first.

I've never heard it said that change is easy.

It seems 2011 has already taken off like a horse through the gate, and between work, a huge freelance job and some renovation projects that J and I are in the midst of tackling at the house (photos to come) I haven't had as much time as I'd like to be taking photographs and blogging. Or snowshoeing, or doing yoga, or going to the gym, or watching Anatomy lectures, or finishing up my Ayurveda correspondence course, or reading, or going to Sunday night kirtan, or just doing nothing...

I joke with J (but am only half joking) that striving to simplify my life is, at least for the moment, only complicating it further. I feel a bit like I'm creating my own special hoops for jumping through — flaming hoops, moving hoops, hoops that get progressively smaller and more difficult — and as I'm jumping through then I'm telling myself, "Once I jump through this everything will be easier — no more hoops!" But then I inevitably create another hoop.

Hopefully this is only a temporary part of moving from dreaming to doing.

I did give myself a night off last Thursday, when J and I met a friend at the new Ibiza Tapas in Northampton. Wine and conversation flowed, and soon many tiny plates had filled the table — Tortilla Española (Spanish potato omelette with romesco sauce), Aguacate con Remolacha (avocado and roasted beet served over toast with extra virgin olive oil), Queso Nevat con Higos y Nueces (goat cheese, dry figs and walnuts on crispy toast with truffle oil), Setas al Ajillo (an assortment of grilled mushrooms with garlic, parsley,  and spiced olive oil)...I'm so glad I took a break to go.

Could the new year be only 9 days old?

Sightings

Last weekend I caught this Witch Hazel tree thinking about its late winter blooms. Unless these are the blooms? I have to admit I've been expecting something a bit more dramatic, but will settle for whatever pod or petal it produces. Just seeing the little twig of a tree we planted years ago beginning to spread out its limbs at the edge of the field is rewarding enough.

Before the holidays distracted me I promised details about the birthday cake J and I brought for my brother on Christmas day. Here's an action shot of the frosting process, which joins a series of similar images we've taken throughout the years — J in comfortable at-home clothes, usually late at night, stooped over some sugary creation with the trashed kitchen in the background (notice how tightly I've cropped in here?). This year's cake was Mocha Spice with a thick, double layer of Mocha Whipped and Sour Cream Frosting from the pages of Heaven's Banquet. It wasn't until I reached the licking-of-the-pan part of the process that I realized this was an eggless recipe. As such it was denser than many layer cakes but absolutely delicious, especially left over and cold from the fridge. Before lighting the candles I added a little red dinosaur to the field of frosting to be festive — not thinking for a moment of the implication that my brother may be prehistoric. Oops! Next year I'll choose a different theme.

Speaking of prehistoric, is it possible that birds with feet larger than my own have moved into the woods behind the house? Dodos making a comeback, perhaps? I'm sure this print was the sun's work, but it still caught my attention.

Sage Warrior

I just wanted to share Guru Singh's message for 2011. I love the concept of the "Sage Warrior" and you can read more about it on his blog. Perhaps it's my inner Sage Warrior that needs to manifest this year. His writing is fairly dense, but if the message catches your attention I suggest listening to his podcasts (free to download on iTunes), in which he explains his concepts, and those of his own guru Yogi Bhajan, in much greater detail. I'm still working my way through his "Year of Fearless Wisdom" classes for 2010, continuously amazed by how relevant they are to my life.

A Brush with Complication

Yesterday afternoon J and I decided to take advantage of the spring-like temperatures outside and clean out the chimney, a yearly task that's usually fairly easy. J scrambled up the roof with his rope as I crouched by the exterior flue clean-out door holding the stiff metal brush, waiting for him to drop the line down the chimney. Once the end of the rope appeared I attached the brush via a metal carabiner who's latch mechanism, I noted, was loose.

"The clip is broken" J called down from high above me, "but once I get tension on the rope it'll be alright."

"Ok" I yelled up, trying to sound cheerful as I struggled to shove the unweildly brush into the dark space. I hate cleaning the chimney.

"Something's wrong!" I called up seconds later, heaving and pushing, "it's never been this difficult before!"

J clambered back down to the ground, rolled his eyes at me and made quick work of getting the spiny brush out of sight, while I pretended to pout at my own incompetence. A minute later he was back on the roof, hauling the brush up like a hooked fish. The sound of scraping could be heard from within the bowels of the chimney and a smattering of black creosote rained down, bringing with it the acrid, smokey smell of success.

Suddenly there was complete silence. I glanced up at J, who was now in silhouette against the late afternoon sky and looking back down at me. In his hands he was holding the end of the rope with the carabiner — the one that should have been attached to the brush.

"The brush is stuck in the chimney!"

"Noooooooo!" I stood gaping at the suddenly ominous-looking concrete column, "We're doomed!"
Except I didn't actually use the word "doomed."

My mind likes to jump directly to the Very Worse Case Scenario, and as I stood on the muddy ground watching the sky above darken and cloud I had a vision of J, Vixen and I huddled together on the floor of the living room for the remainder of the winter, slowly freezing to death in a sad tangle of domestic stupidity that the cats would most probably find and devour when we thawed out in May. Oh, if only we'd taped that carabeener closed, we could have lived to see another spring!

While I was busy being mired in despair J was devising a new plan.

"Get that long pole with the red hook on the end of it out of the barn" he advised, "I think it's off to the right."

I hope that none of you will ever see the inside of our barn. Suffice to say that just about anything you could possibly want is probably in there — motorcycles, scarecrows, a satellite dish, doors, windows, a ripped up sun umbrella, an obsolete tent, a push mower, our retired mailbox, various piles of mismatched tiles, an ancient furnace, a small white bar sink, seed starting supplies, bottles and cans full of chemical goop that I'm sure were once necessary for solving some legitimate mechanical problem, boxes of books, a plastic cat carrier, our old dvd player — and all of this stuff (that's apparently too important to get rid of) is buried, fossil-like beneath a thickly interwoven layer of wood scraps. There's a piece of wood for any and every occasion in there - mahogany, pine, cherry, zebra-wood, walnut, scraps of antique molding, sheets of plywood. It's practically a museum of wood.

A thin path winds through this jungle, and of course I couldn't find the long wooden pole "off to the right" amongst the backdrop of other long pieces of wood. Instead I stood tentatively glancing from side to side and resolving, once again, to clean the place out this year while I waited for J to appear and help me, which only took a few minutes. He immediately spotted the pole tucked above us between the rafters. He fished it out while I pretended to pout at my incompetence and then it was back up the ladder with the long pole for him and back to the dingy black clean-out door below for me.

Down the pole went, into the dark chimney to valiantly rescue the brush and save us all from a slow, cold death. A great plan — except that the red hook refused to cooperate with the end of the brush handle. It was getting darker and colder.

"I'll have to push the brush back down with the pole" J announced matter-of-factly. All 9' of the pole slowly disappeared into the shaft. I worried for a moment that the chimney had become some kind of black hole, hell-bent on sucking in whatever came near it. Within minutes the encouraging sound of scraping and the sprinkling of creosote resummed, then stopped again. I looked up at J who was now holding the very end of the pole like a giant soup spoon in the cauldron of our chimney.

"Can you reach the brush yet?" Reluctantly I knelt by the door and stuck my arm as far up into the gritty chimney as it would go.

"No!" There was a moment of silence.

"I need another pole!" Good grief. The concept of freezing to death was starting to sound peaceful. J climbed back down for the third time, grabbed another long piece of wood from his supply in the barn, grabbed the screw gun from his shop, and headed back up to lengthen our homemade brush-rescuing contraption. Down down down went the newly extended pole, and I could suddenly hear the brush approaching again.

"I've got it!" I yelled, reaching into the chimney and pulling the prickly sweeper to freedom. Above me J was occupied pulling his 15' long pole out from the top of the chimney. He passed it down to me carefully, and I let it drop safely into the snow-covered garden.

I immediately grabbed some duct tape and fixed the carabiner. We hoisted the brush up the chimney again, just in case it was still dirty, and called it a day. It's definitely clean enough for this year.

Hello, 2011

"Vision without action is a dream, and action without vision is a nightmare."

My word for 2011: Manifest
(embody, reveal, materialize, personify)
It just happens to rhyme with quest, my word for 2010
but that's not why I chose it.
I chose it to test the theory that what you concentrate on
you will eventually become:
the law of caterpillar and butterfly.

I chose it because choosing the word "quest" last year
definitely manifested a quest.

Will choosing the word "manifest" help me to
begin materializing my vision for the year(s) ahead?

Time will tell.
Now let's get on with it!