mulberryshoots

August 19, 2013

fresh! . . .

Once in awhile, an image comes along that embodies the word, “fresh”. This is one of them. Not only does it look delicious to eat, it’s a refreshing take on the concept of a sandwich. A piece of grilled bread, ricotta, thin slices of pear, a drizzle of honey and freshly cracked walnut pieces.

White peaches would be good too. I might even try my hand at making ricotta.

After a maelstrom of heaviness these last few weeks, this image of freshness started my day off with a feeling of lightness and clarity.

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August 17, 2013

dumpster . . .

It’s finally here. G. rented a dumpster to haul away piano wreckage and stuff from the barn and cellar. It’s sitting in the driveway now off the street and I look at its cavernous insides with visions of clean closets floating in my head. We have until next Thursday to fill it up. I plan to go through all the closets and the crawl spaces behind them to clear things out. We’ll be able to move out without having to move away!

Yesterday, I returned from a week away on Cape Cod where I took a memoir writing workshop in Truro at Castle Hill. I drove early in the morning to the workshop from a spartan motel in Yarmouth, an hour away. In the afternoons, I returned on one of the major three thruways (Rt. 6, 6A and 28) to orient myself to the towns and neighborhoods of the Cape. That this occurred during the height of the tourist season was high folly, jammed with bumper to bumper traffic once the day got underway. Some weeks earlier, I had contemplated the idea of a second home on the Cape, a romantic notion of a quiet place with the ocean nearby enough to be “near the water.” What I came away with after my memoir sojourn is how fortunate I am to be living here in the Queen Anne Victorian piano place we call home not anywhere even close to water.

home, sweet home . . .

I was surprised to notice the huge population of workers servicing the Cape and the tourist industry: restaurant workers, motel workers, cleaning staff, workers in the souvenir shops by the side of the road. Hordes of workers in seafood restaurants and seafood shops. There seemed to be more fried seafood places than probably anywhere else on earth, and for sure in the state of Massachusetts.

These workers were a real contrast to some of the people who attended the workshop. Some stayed in Wellfleet and Truro homes, passed down or owned by their families for generations. Cars were parked with New York license plates. Some flew in from California. Everyone was well educated and able to afford spending five mornings and the cost of the class to attend. From my Yarmouth motel to Truro and back again each day, I got to see both worlds everyday.

Part of the reason this post is called “dumpster” is that the experience of the class which required writing memoir, allowed me to finally write about parts of my early childhood that were very painful. I knew objectively that it was painful, all right, but actually writing about it as a creative exercise, to dig down into it allowed me to feel the pain afresh. AND more important, it allowed me to finally get rid of it. I didn’t come away from the workshop wanting to dig even deeper and revise the essay further. I knew right away that it didn’t interest me, feeling like why would I want to do that in the name of what people call “art?” Nope, that kind of suffering for art’s sake is not my idea of art, for one thing. And for another thing, events occurred all week that quickly shuffled out those and other stale feelings once and for all. To say that it was cathartic is an understatement. This kind of pain was a path to feeling better. But I don’t have to keep feeling that pain to keep getting better. I got it. Now, that that slate is so much cleaner, the actual physical part of cleaning up the environs here will be, well, almost a pleasure.

So, after a week of listening to others talking about and actual dumping of old memory, old pain, old grudges, old regrets, old images of ourselves in high school, in college and long afterwards, through marriage, divorce and lost love that was finally gone rather than imagined still to be lurking somewhere in the back of my mind. Seeing things in a truer light by being away by myself with time to process was better than ten years in therapy (although I don’t know what that would be like, not having gone there.)

I don’t think the big dumpster outside in the driveway could figuratively hold as much emotional baggage and leftovers of memory that clogged my sensibility of myself for so long! If I think the physical cleaning out of my closets will be a chore this coming week, let me just say that the mental and emotional cleaning out was much harder. More intractable. And yet, it was quick to dislodge, once it got moving. Quick as a fox jumping over the fence or whatever they say on typewriter test pages to show the font.

So, for me, August is dumpster month! What a great opportunity to start afresh in September when it’s all said and done. Done and over with, that is.

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August 12, 2013

“as it lays” . . .

Joan Didion wrote a book about her years in California called “Play It As It Lays.” I read from it last week and found her writing rather dated when compared with two of her recent books, “A Year of Magical Thinking” and “Blue Nights.” These very personal memoirs filled with grief for the deaths of her husband and adopted daughter elevated the content and perhaps that’s what set them apart from her earlier work.

I have been thinking about what “as it lays,” might mean in terms of some of my own actions lately. For instance, I have noticed that sometimes I have an idea in the abstract about being independent, looking for a place (real or imagined) where life would be different. I try these ideas on and when I do, discover a huge difference between mind and matter.

When hard reality hits and things come down to earth again, what I’ve learned in these little experiments is that freedom is a state of mind, not a place or thing. When they say, “inner freedom” the operative word is “inner.” You can’t buy inner peace (noticed that I just equated freedom with peace.) So it’s fruitless to search for it by doing too much, piling on more than we can handle.

I’ve noticed that my pace is slower than what goes on in my mind because it’s important for me to process things as I go along. That takes time and when I’m behind in processing what’s happening, I am out of sorts and feel ill at ease.Life has been pretty frenetic lately and I am both wondering why and how to slow it down to make a soft landing. “As it lays” isn’t going to change unless I know what it is. A quiet space and being still may help to regain perspective. Let’s hope there was some there to begin with.

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August 10, 2013

“doing her own thing” . . .

Well, here’s a secret to life I heard in passing today:

“do your own thing (informal)”
“to do exactly what you want without following what other people do or worrying about what they think.

you have to give your children a certain amount of freedom to do their own thing.”

I’m really good at the first part, the second, not so much. But from now on, I get it!

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August 9, 2013

“memoir” . . .

Next week, I’m doing two things I never thought I would attempt:

~ go to Cape Cod for a week in mid-August, the height of the tourist season;

~ and take a writing workshop on “memoir”.

Truth be told, I signed up for the memoir class because I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a novel for women using the device/format of a fictional memoir. Imagine my surprise when I received an email mid-week to bring with me 5-10 pages of “work in progress” and 3-5 pages of writing that I “love” to share at the workshop.

That requirement sent me scrambling to look over notebooks of what I had written a few years ago, my first attempt at writing a novel of about 65,000 words. It seemed okay but a little tepid and mannered, to be honest. I then began looking for an example of writing that I loved. I still haven’t decided yet what to use. I discovered that what I’ve enjoyed reading (“The Glass Castle,” “Body and Soul”) isn’t necessarily writing that I just love. I’m thinking of Alix Schulman’s memoirs too but haven’t been able to locate them as yet in my library. So the jury is still out on what to pick. It’s kind of amazing that I haven’t been able to glom instantly onto writing that I love. What’s up with that?

So, after I decided nothing I had written so far was anything I wanted to be associated with, I sat down and started typing. Not thinking, just typing. I have resisted the notion of writing about myself and my life for as long as I can remember. Yet, here I was, writing about my childhood in China. Writing about members of my family who made their way in the world a century ago. Along the way, I noticed that I didn’t know very much about them that I could write about except for what I could remember myself.

I had to look up my grandfather on Wikipedia to find out for the first time that he left China as a youth to study at Vanderbilt University in 1914, receiving a Bachelors and Masters degrees. It was family legend that in the 40’s, Vanderbilt gave him an honorary degree but we never understood how that came about. Dwight D. Eisenhower was also honored that day. My grandfather was active in the World Council of Churches while he was Dean of Religion at Peking University. But from Wiki I learned that he was elected one of the Six Presidents of that Council in 1948! Amazing.

What I remember and wrote about in my 8 pages of memoir was how he would make up fairy tale-like stories while holding me on his lap, smoking a cigarette that I would watch in fascination, its tail of ash getting longer until it fell softly onto my clothing as I listened, entranced. I remember my grandmother scolding him when this happened but it was a regular part of our story-telling ritual. I was much loved and coddled as the first grandchild of a favored son. There are snapshots of me dressed snugly in a dark red wool coat trimmed in white rabbit fur with a matching muff. There’s another snapshot of me in a quilted Chinese coat riding a tricycle, a rarity during a wartime of Chinese armies fighting each other and the Japanese at the same time.

So, you can see that this little exercise for a writing class that I’m still tinkering with has spun out a broad net of memory.

The biggest questions I’ve had to myself during all of this is: how did they get from here to there? How did a youth interested in religion get from China to Tennessee and back again? How did he get to London where the World Council of Churches met? How did my Aunt Lucy find her way as a girl in China (but educated as well as the boys in the family,) to writing a dissertation on Henry James for her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in the 1940’s? When and how did she meet T.S. Eliot and what prompted her to translate his poem, “The Wasteland” into Mandarin?

Hard to believe as it may sound, these questions are just the tip of the iceberg in my family. But I’m not going there just yet. I think that one reason I’ve avoided so prodigiously looking at my family and their legacy is the depth of pain suffered in addition to the fripperies of fame. Both my grandfather and my Aunt suffered harsh treatment during the Cultural Revolution that lasted for decades. I’m also sorry that I didn’t spend more time talking with my grandfather in the 1970’s when I brought my children to Peking before he died at the age of 91.

So much memory. So much achievement. So much pain. People who say glibly: “no pain, no gain” have no idea what they’re talking about.

I don’t think this is what I signed up for in taking this mini-vacation for myself on the Cape. But, Life takes us on paths we may not expect. That I have tried so hard to avoid writing and thinking about my family and now falling into this little memoir exercise is either karmic or, (fill in the blanks.) My eight pages are loaded with memory, good and bad. The outcome of this new path, however, is still an open question.

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August 7, 2013

gone, (update) . . .

Yesterday, after I wrote the post “gone, baby, gone” a number of unexpected things came up and the day floated by without any activity.

This morning, I got off the couch and started emptying the contents of the small closet in our spare bedroom. You might think it small, or at least I did, until I started emptying it out. From an endless bottom, it seemed, there were suitcases of all sizes, carry-ons, three suitbags including a tan Hartman that I used for business travel when I worked in biotech and travelled business class, believe it or not.

G. helped me to stage the contents of the closet in the big plant room so that we could consolidate and go through what was there. The most surprising discovery is that most of the contents of the closet belonged to HIM!! Clothes and other things that went back FORTY YEARS, including a carryall with music in it from his student days at Berklee College of Music.

Five bags of Goodwill stuff later, we still have things piled up all over the room to go through later today and tomorrow.

One of the things I discovered is that I’ve had similar and consistent taste in shoes for a long time. Delighted, I found an old pair of black suede Birkenstock sandals, a pair of barely worn black Nike sneakers with flashing lights in the sole no less, and a simple but sophisticated pair of black leather strappy slip-on sandals. They looked just like ones I was thinking of searching for on Zappos. It’s kind of embarrassing, but it’s also great to know that I already have what I’ve been looking for (again.) When will this cycle of wish/want/have already ever cease?

We thought we’d take a break since many of G.’s things to go through are still draped over the piano bench, the chair and a pair of new-found old shorts put in the laundry. Over the years, we’ve pared down our clothing so that it’s hung on a stainless rack on rubber wheels like the ones they use in the garment district in NYC. This shows how little we want to have, and that the huge amount of stuff in the closet was not only out of sight, but also way out of mind. And now, most of it is out of the house!

There’s a big stash of luggage that we could use to go around the world in eighty days. But since we don’t travel (at least, we don’t have plans to,) we’ll have to figure out where to store it all for that one day when we just might need it.

To be fair, this house is a Queen Anne Victorian with limited closet space (since the Victorians furnished their homes with huge armoires and other storage units.) We are looking to find places to store seasonal bedding and linens, sheets, coverlets, blankets and comforters which take up so much room.

My collection of handknit sweaters, made by me and a few others, is mothballed in plastic bags to take care of any potential moth larvae. In the Fall, I’ll take out what I will use and handwash a few in Ivory Snow, air-dry and then store in drawers with cedar blocks. It’s a constant battle against these destructive tiny critters and I’ve thrown away more than I’d care to admit.

And so, the “gone, baby, gone” saga continues. Were it not for some intrinsic life lessons that this kind of activity brings up, it would be just one more boring polemic to “simplify,” “de-clutter,” and “clear.”

For me, it feels like so much more than that! Now that we’re part of the way through the small closet, I’m not so anxious about starting the big one next week!

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August 6, 2013

Gone, baby, gone! . . .

I’ve been writing about the act of clearing, inwardly and externally, for a long while in this blog. Now the time has come. Instead of wondering in my head how to get through the stuff in the closets, I’m just going to empty them out in the big room, sort through it and jettison off what I haven’t been able to get rid of up to now. Clothing goes to Goodwill; yarn and arts and crafts kinds of things like beads and supplies can be volunteered to the Old Folk’s Home down the street from where we live.

Much to my surprise, my husband, G. said he was thinking of renting a dumpster to clean out the cellar, the garage and his piano workshop. If we don’t take care of our own mess, who will?

On a more reflective note, it also seems like time to clean up our inner acts and ignore them no longer: like noticing how our attitudes don’t help us but hinder us in having a good day. That’s all we can do is to have a good day or a bad day or a ho-hum day. I know that mine is more often than not encumbered by holding onto things that happened in the past that feel sad or are tinged with disappointment. What good does that do? Nada. It’s fine to think about moving forward and to write about it in this post, but to really wipe the slate clean? Not so easy.

So, today’s the day to make some real progress. Inertia is the opposite of taking action. Inertia has had its day for too long. I’ve planned this out for so long which in itself is an exercise in inertia. Just get off the couch and do it.

I’ll let you know how it’s going.

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July 30, 2013

return . . .

“Attain ultimate emptiness of mind; maintain absolute peaceful stillness of body,” (Lao-Tzu ~ Dao de Jing) Calligraphy by my late father, Edward C.T. Chao

Some of you may know about my relationship to an ancient book of wisdom called the I-Ching. It has many identities for as many readers: a book of changes about the constant alternation of Yin and Yang in our lives; an oracle which introduces us to the condition of things which our sub-conscious seems to recognize, and for me, an invisible link to help and assistance from the Universe anytime that I consult it. If you’re looking for Helpers from the Universe, they are accessible by using this book. Aside from some Confucian overlay that occurs in the Richard Wilhelm/C.F. Baynes edition, the I-Ching is also considered as a seminal source for Taoist beliefs.

I was first introduced to the I-Ching by someone who appeared out of nowhere to help me close out the move from our family home when I was getting divorced from my first husband. At the time, I was job-less, my children scattered, trying to grow up and go to school while their parents were breaking up. Not to belabor further how exigent things were at the time, the I-Ching Book of Changes became my refuge, an unknown hand of the Universe leading me through that harrowing time. I wrote down all the readings and the lines that sprung out at me as though written especially for that daily circumstance. Many spiral notebooks later and through the years, I became so familiar with the book that I knew many of the lines by heart and most of the hexagrams by number. The I-Ching is a dynamic book, certain hexagrams like “the Marrying Maiden” or “Obstruction” or “Darkening of the Light” making me cringe when I received them. Others, “Taming Power of the Great,” “Possession in Great Measure,” “The Well” and “the Cauldron” were more consoling and uplifting.

So why am I writing about the I-Ching today? Recently, we have experienced a few shocks that occurred outside of our control. And I was thinking about looking for my I-Ching book to do a reading or two as I drove back from my shopping trip the other day.

Yesterday, a big box arrived from one of my cousins, the middle son of my favorite cousin, Pei Fen, who had died earlier in the summer. Packed very carefully with rolled up newspaper emerged a black slipcase boxed set of the I-Ching in two volumes, a Bollingen version that had belonged to Pei Fen and had sold at the time for about $7.50 in 1950.

It was as though the Universe had arranged for this well-bound, oversized version of the I-Ching to arrive on my doorstep as if to say: “Here I am, remember?” I made a brown parchment paper cover for the first volume and taped a copy of the legend on the newly covered back of the book for easier access. Then, I threw a series of six readings for a complex situation that we have been facing and read them aloud for G. and me to digest together. The nuances for each question were clear as day to each of us. It was comforting to receive them as a guide for how to think about moving forward.

This I-Ching return is of great portent for me, especially at this moment. It helped me (might I even say, saved me?) during the worst period in my life twenty or so years ago. It magically reappeared yesterday, thanks to the thoughtful gesture of this gift from my cousin Pei Fen’s house. Thank you, S.! Among Pei-Fen’s last words to me were, “Be happy!”

The timing is perfect. What a consolation it is to be reminded once again that there is help from the Universe, anytime I am open to, and ask for it. I give thanks for these golden threads woven into my life.

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July 27, 2013

sea change? . . .

Have you ever felt like you were in a deep morass of things when one day, you wake up and say to yourself that what you really need is what’s called a “sea change?” I looked it up on Wiki and it gives this definition:

“Sea change (transformation), an idiom for broad transformation drawn from a phrase in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.”

Hmmmmmm. So, of course, the first thing I did was to go shopping! First to Nordstroms where I found a small Marc Jacob indigo blue and white crossbody bag that I loved but didn’t buy. Then, I went window shopping in the mall which was fairly empty, due to this being a weekend day with fabulous dry, cool enough, sunny weather. Everyone was outdoors and no one seemed to be shopping for a personal transformation.

Found a couple of shirts, one an updated version of a 70’s print shirt from India, which was actually MADE in India,(not China or Vietnam) but out of some lighter material than the usual heavy cotton. I guess even modern day hippies like me might appreciate this finer material. Then, I had lunch at Wasabi, the revolving sushi lunch place in the middle of the mall. I ordered mine separately from those on the conveyor belt and was pleasantly surprised by the reasonable bill.

I hardly ever go to a mall. Sometimes, my daughter and I go to Nordstroms after having lunch together. Usually, we find something that she likes at Anthropologie. I tried on two sweaters there with the salesgirl hovering over me as though I might put one of them into my Nordstroms bag and walk out. I know they’re just doing their job, but really? Walking by Sur la Table, I saw a special on colorful Le Creuset “skinny grills” that you can use on top of the stove but I bypassed buying one although I planned to grill Korean barbecue chicken thighs tonight for dinner. Fresh new corn from the farmstand to go with it and a small green salad.

So, back to shopping for a transformation. I actually thought about it a lot in the car driving back home. Sometimes, the privacy of being in a car by myself and driving on the highway helps to clear my head and odd ideas jump in there when you least expect it. I’ve been thinking that my attitude and perspective haven’t been so hot lately as witnessed by the last few posts (“meltdown” and “waiting for godot.”) So, what would I change about myself if I were out at sea?

First, I’d realize that I have a lot to be thankful for and that things are not as bad as they feel they are. Next, I’d admit that I’m pretty lucky AND that I’ve worked hard so am able to pursue options I might not have seriously thought about up to now. Blaming others never helps. Throw out the bottle of self-pity whenever its poison appears. Get more sleep. Eat less and stop thinking about things for awhile.

Ease up about cleaning the closets, putting the mulch on the garden and writing sections of the book. Just relax for awhile, I say to myself.

R-e-l-a-x?!!??

Now, THAT would be a sea change!

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July 23, 2013

waiting for godot . . .

This famous play by Samuel Beckett was written for two male characters who while away the time (and their lives) waiting for a personage named Godot. They don’t really know him. And it seems as though they don’t even seem to know WHY they are waiting for him either. Beckett objected to women actors playing the two character roles for various reasons, including the fact that women don’t have prostates, one of the characters having to go to the bathroom often during the play.

This metaphor of waiting for (fill in the blanks) is an appropriate one for us women too. In fact, I find myself waiting a lot: to be heard and be listened to; to do what I’d like to do before numerous other things have to be done first, and so on and so on. Lest you think this is mere feminine whining, let me say that I believe this kind of languorous waiting is endemic to many women’s lives. Everyone’s schedules around me are more urgent, more pressing. Once things have died down, no one has the interest nor energy to listen to what I’ve been thinking about or found out during my quiet time ruminating.

But I had an “Ah” moment today–not quite an “AHA” one and it goes like this. To stop waiting. That’s all. So simple, isn’t it? To carry on and volunteer to do things I’m waiting for others to do so that it just gets done. Passivity towards myself and the Universe (waiting for Godot) doesn’t help at all, I’ve decided.

I was taken aback recently when I realized that I’ve held on to my maternal instincts and created a garden path that I chose to go down, focused so much on my family, rather than letting go of my brood of successful and self-reliant children more than a decade ago. They’re having a wonderful time together. My job is done, I realized, way too late. How to compensate for lost time for myself is something I’d like to ask Mr. Godot about if he ever turns up!

My personal revelation is that it’s up to me not to wait anymore, for other people to tune in and/or listen and give some moments of their attention during a busy day. As mothers, I think we give our attention sometimes too freely. In the future, though, there’s no one to blame but myself and so I’m resolved to stop doing that. Stop waiting. Stop feeling bad for having to wait in the first place. After all, I had the best of intentions but feel I have overstayed my tenure as a helicopter Mom. Like the two old men waiting for Godot, there are gobs of women, I’ll bet, doing the same thing, every day. Worse yet, some of us don’t even realize we’re (still) doing it!

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