mulberryshoots

an ordinary life . . .

twice pan-fried noodles with grilled teriyaki chicken

This morning, I read an article called, “Redefining Success and Celebrating the Ordinary” in the New York Times. What a relief to find that there are others who point out how skewed our culture is towards defining personal success. All we seem to hear about are prizes or “wins”: the Olympic qualifying heats that are broadcast multiple times on TV; the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prizes, Emmy Awards, Tony Awards, the Oscars, Facebook IPO, Guggenheim Fellowships and the Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress. An example cited in the article was a student who was a “straight-A, piano-playing quarterback.”

Sure, it’s okay to recognize achievement. But the emphasis by the press and our culture on landmark accolades can make the rest of us think, “What am I, chopped liver?” The answer is, nope, even if you aren’t Nora Ephron nor written books, articles, movies and directed movies that everyone recognizes, you can still say something witty and your husband will smile at you while eating dinner, just the two of you .

The NYTimes article focuses on having conversations with your children about success, so that everything doesn’t merit the overused “good job!” when all a kid does is get their fork into their mouth without spilling food. I also think these ideas are valuable for people like us who are baby boomers and beyond in age. For example, when someone retires from thirty-odd years of service in some public domain and is awarded a medal or a service award, that’s nice. But does that also include whether those individuals were generous people with themselves outside of work? You see where this could keep going, don’t you?

I’m not altogether sure of where I stand in all this either. If I were to start making a list of the ordinary things that make up my life, it might include:

a. being adventurous about cooking, and “cooking from scratch,” although last weekend, I had my fill of making homemade Peking Duck wrappers when the coffee cup I wanted to cut the dough rounds out with still had coffee in it and spilled on to the dough. I don’t think anyone noticed if there was the taste of coffee in them after putting on the hoisin sauce, scallions and roast duck, though.

b. being determined and curious: that’s what my husband says are some of my best qualities.

c. being willing to admit to my own mistakes even when it makes me feel bad for awhile. I am always taken aback when people are unable or unwilling to admit to their own mistakes, such as breaking a couple of eggs while carrying the groceries. But, whatever.

d. in the spirit of the article, I could describe myself as a “straight, piano-playing cook.”

Anyhow, I think the Fourth of July weekend is a good time to think about personal independence, and to consider whether it’s possible to release ourselves from cultural ideals that we have to be extraordinary in order to feel worthwhile. Or, as the tagline in the NYTimes article poses, “Isn’t living a life of integrity as praiseworthy as fame and money?”

What do you think?

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June 27, 2012

later . . .

I don’t want to sound morbid but I’ve been reading David Rieff’s memoir about his mother’s death, “Swimming in a Sea of Death.” Susan Sontag died of leukemia contracted as a result of her chemotherapy treatments for both breast and uterine cancer. And now, overnight it seems, we hear about Nora Ephron’s death from pneumonia contracted as a result of leukemia also. They’re different kinds of leukemia though, (Myelodysplastic Syndrome in Sontag’s case and Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Ephron’s passing.) Both of these women were writers and both loved New York City.

What strikes me is the way that each of them lived and how each handled her dying. Sontag was determined not to believe (really) that she was in fact dying. Or in her son’s words, repeated over and over again in the memoir, that she was headed towards “extinction.” There’s a lot of writing about doctors who choose to maintain a patient’s wish for hope when there really is none. In Ephron’s case, it appears she hardly let it be known that she was seriously ill until the night before she took her last breath, surrounded by family and friends.

So, lest you think that this post is about dying, it’s actually about living. Ephron finished her last book. “I Remember Nothing” by making lists of what she’d like to forget and what she would rather remember. As usual, they were witty and poignant: she wanted to forget Clarence Thomas for one thing, and wanted to remember how it felt driving over the bridge back into Manhattan. Most of all, she exhorted us to do just what we want to do in each moment and not to wait until we get too sick to do something when it’s too late. Because, as even my own doctor said awhile back, “Everyone gets something.”

So this morning, I returned the garden hose for a better quality one that cost twice as much and paid for a foam knee pad and a beautiful pair of grass trimming shears. As I passed the Dunkin’Donuts, I impulsively pulled in for an iced black coffee and two honey dip donuts to share with G. as a mid-morning snack before heading out in the garden to plant the new hydrangeas and the crimson red daylilies.

After lunch, I drove to the library to return my books and took out Nora Ephron’s books to read again.

P.S. Click here for an article about Nora Ephron which appeared in the NYTimes the day after her death.

Click here for NYTimes coverage of Nora Ephron’s memorial service.

P.P.S. Thought you might like to see Nora Ephron’s Lists from (“I Remember Nothing,” Alfred Knopf, 2010):
What I Won’t Miss:
Dry skin
Bad dinners like the one we went to last night
E-mail
Technology in general
My closet
Washing my hair
Bras
Funerals
Illness everywhere
Polls that show that 32 percent of the American people believe in creationism
Polls
Fox
The collapse of the dollar
Joe Lieberman
Clarence Thomas
Bar mitzvahs
Mammograms
Dead flowers
The sound of the vacuum cleaner
Bills
E-mail. I know I already said it but I want to exmphasize it
Small print
Panels on Women in Film
Taking off makeup every night

What I Will Miss:
My kids
Nick
Spring
Fall
Waffles
The concept of waffles
Bacon
A walk in the park
The idea of a walk in the park
The park
Shakespeare in the Park
The bed
Reading in bed
Fireworks
Laughs
The view out the window
Twinkle lights
Butter
Dinner at home just the two of us
Dinner with friends
Dinner with friends in cities where none of us lives
Paris
Next year in Istanbul
Pride and Prejudice
The Christmas tree
Thanksgiving dinner
One for the table
The dogwood
Taking a bath
Coming over the bridge to Manhattan
Pie

6 Comments

June 22, 2012

roses . . .

Gertrude Stein said, “A rose is a rose is a rose.”

Maybe you know what she was talking about. With the heat wave we’ve been having here, and because the rose bower was being trimmed, G. appeared a couple of days ago with rose cuttings over three foot long in his hand. I had noticed a thick glass vase while cleaning out the pantry that day so we put the two together.

Astounding because these were not just “long-stemmed roses,” they were four feet high! Today, I cut more in to save them from wilting in the heat and just had to take a couple of photos so that you might enjoy seeing them too.

Everything may not be coming up roses in our lives, but it’s hard to ignore these just the same.
[click photos to enlarge roses to their full glory!]

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June 20, 2012

assimilation . . .

Katie Brown at the top (Citibank ad)

Yesterday at my shiatsu session, I related the events that have occurred since our meeting two weeks ago when C. first gave me Chinese herbs called “Clearing.” It consists primarily of lotus seeds which “are believed in Chinese medicine to ‘clear heat’ (清熱) and be particularly nutritious and restorative to one’s health.”

I don’t know what has happened,(maybe it’s even some kind of placebo effect,) but there’s been a major shift in my energy based on the amount of productive activity that has transpired since then; not only just clearing things, but reorganizing for optimal usefulness. C. immediately commented that this sounded like a feng-shui element for allowing energy to flow more effectively. Mundane things like the kitchen drawers, cabinets and the pantry have been reorganized from the bottom up, and amusing things that I forgot all about have surfaced, such as a kitchen towel in red letters on a white background saying, “I had a really nice dream last night about Daniel Craig” which is now hanging on the handlebar of my oven.

Anyhow, back to clearing heat from within. Something has shifted or disappeared. This unease used to compel me to question myself, to prove myself or to limit my capacity to be happy even when everything seemed to be fine. As a result, my energy level seems to be steady and strong, not driven or rushed in any way. And I seem to be able to get a lot more accomplished with a lot less impatience. Humph!

C. my shiatsu guru, says that there is a new feel when she takes the pulses of my organs as well. Before she confirmed that, she suggested that perhaps what I was experiencing was what she called “assimilation,” which I thought was a very good word to describe the clearing out of heat and the resulting assimilation within my internal forces.

Assimilation from a biological standpoint means “the conversion of nutrient into the fluid or solid substance of the body, by the processes of digestion and absorption”; assimilation from a psychological standpoint means “incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes.” Pretty good for a handful of Chinese herbs containing lotus seeds, right?

Of course, I’ve been working up to some kind of clearing for some time now–and feel that I have arrived like that woman climber in that incredible ad on TV where she stands on top of this mountainous pinnacle, as relaxed as can be, the rest of us wondering if she actually climbed up there (she did) or whether it was photoshopped in some way (it wasn’t.)

So what do you think about this metaphor that it’s as hard for some of us to change and shift around our internal energy from that which we learned a long time ago as it is to scale the peak of a mountain? Our mountains are what we make of them, aren’t they?

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June 15, 2012

peace of mind . . .

our daily bread . . .

I’ve been thinking a lot about how things are going lately. Outside of ourselves, it sometimes feels as though everything is in play and mostly out of our control. Yes, we can sign the affirmation for recycling in our state with the passage of a bottle bill. But we can’t make Washington change. Nobody seems to be able to. We can’t make the overextended countries in Europe save themselves. We can’t do anything about the stock market nor its impact on our savings, such as they are.

What we can do every day is to realize there is a difference between all the hurtling conflict in the world and how we choose to live our day. It’s the small things, it seems to me, that truly make a difference: reading the newspaper and having breakfast together; having something light and fresh for lunch. Doing chores so that they’re actually done, and not just sitting around waiting for the next step. We are fortunate that we have time to enjoy with each other. Freeing ourselves from being dragged along by the behavior of others outside of ourselves gives us space and energy to do what is meaningful to us, even if it means correcting mistakes in something we’re in the process of making (the corners of the middle 5-star square in a quilt hanging don’t meet properly,) or being honest about why we decide to do things and then do them well, or drop them altogether if we have been doing things for the wrong reasons.

Perhaps I am overly optimistic that we can find peace of mind for ourselves in these small ways. But I don’t think so. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about being mindful. That word always has lots of baggage for me because it seems to entail some level of having peace of mind already in order to promote it. So, appreciating what we have so much of already is a start to living with peace of mind. The idea that the glass is half full or even almost full is a recognition that whatever we might think is missing could be something unnecessary or even bogus.

Now, I think I’m going to have my breakfast and read the paper. How about you?

June 14, 2012

” a room of my own” . . .

in a room of my own . . .

After weeks of inertia, I finally found a way today to make some sense of the boxes of stuff in the plant room. Previously, I had been shuffling things from one end to the other because there wasn’t a good place to store things. Last week, I purchased some big plastic bins with snap on covers at Staples. Today, I stored all the CDs (and tapes!) into one, documents in another and slid them under the harpsichord where they don’t look great, but at least they’re out of the way.

I had been thinking for a long time to dig out one of the old 22 inch monitor screens that I had used for work and make up a writing workstation with a keyboard and mouse. Needing a cable adapter to hook up the monitor to my Macbook Pro, I ordered one at Amazon.com which arrived yesterday. I opened the package gingerly in case it didn’t fit, but lo and behold, it did! And it also had a six foot cable, not just the four inch one that would have been so easy to get instead. Then, G. kindly offered up the keyboard from his study desktop and found me the tiny mouse that I had used (and loved) while I was still slaving away at my clinical operations job a few years ago. He found another keyboard which finally worked on his computer after it was rebooted. (When in doubt, reboot, right?)

The orchid shelf needed tending so I washed it off and trimmed the plants, staging them in a way so that there was some work surface next to the early gateleg table I had decided to use for my writing table. A fat and happy Buddha found a place to sit next to the lamp. By this time, I was on a roll, so we put the old Bose system on a stand in back of the table and hooked it up. Soon, sounds of Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart Fantasies floated through the room. We beamed at each other in satisfaction for cobbling together old computer stuff that was lying around to make this new little space for me.

Golden floss from dross, as they say.

I marveled once again at the endurance the orchid blooms have demonstrated–they first flowered right after Christmas, and here it is now almost mid-June! Just amazing. And how fortunate we are to be able to make yet another place for ourselves in this beautiful old house. Lucky we are, indeed: we give thanks everyday.

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June 10, 2012

life and death . . .

The weather has been so graceful lately: a little rain each day followed by sun and soft breezes. The garden is definitely doing well with this kind of cool growing weather. I planted a stand of white iris called “gull’s wing” yesterday along with two bareroot climbing roses by the barn. Today I will mend the trailing strings so that the morning glory plants will have something more stable to cling to as they make their way upwards over the summer.

Today, being Sunday, I have loitered longer than usual, reading the New York Times with my coffee. “Union Rags”, the horse that won the Belmont Stakes by a nose was owned by Phyllis Wyeth, whose husband is Jamie Wyeth, the painter son of Andrew Wyeth, one of America’s uber-painters. Apparently, Phyllis had sold the horse and then bought him back for three times what she had sold him for. So, yesterday was a day of triumph for her, a change of jockey apparently making the difference between winning the Belmont Stakes and placing seventh in the Kentucky Derby a few weeks ago.

Confined to a wheelchair after a car accident long ago, Phyllis Wyeth’s name conjured up memories I had having read about N.C. Wyeth, Andrew’s father, and Andrew’s own turbulent marriage to Betsy Wyeth, Jamie’s mother. Still living, Betsy is thought to have been both a muse and a stern comptroller of Andrew’s art.

Betsy is quoted as commenting that the strict order and control of her homes (in Chadds Ford and in Maine) were a response to the “inner chaos” she experienced within herself. Although known primarily as an illustrator rather than a painter, N.C.’s death along with his grandson, their stalled car hit by a train was described as mysterious, due to N.C.’s amorous crush on the grandson’s mother, the wife of his own son named N.C.

My goodness! all these reflections coming out of a horse race and the dynamics of owners, their lives, families, the intertwinings of generations of intense people leading intense lives. Maybe the chaos that lies within is something many of us experience in one way or another. Some may deal with it with passivity because they are afraid what it might unleash if not tamped down all the time. Others may ignore it altogether, choosing to will themselves into lives bent on pleasing those around them as a way of feeling worthwhile.

I’ve not pleased a whole lot of other people in my life, it seems. At the same time, I feel that I have at least been honest, for better or for worse. Is that what life and death is about? I wonder.

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June 7, 2012

clearing . . .

looking up at the sky . . .

I don’t know about you but I don’t have enough storage space here to create as much order as I would like. Or maybe I just have too much stuff! Sometimes I imagine in my mind’s eye a meadow of sweet grass where a circle is mown in the middle and blankets are spread out so I can lie on them and look at the clouds in the sky, moving along in balloon animal shapes or some such.

In the midst of these ruminations as I sort through books on the shelves are the seeds of ideas to write something cohesive and on its own (in addition to the little essays on this blog.) I have a feeling inside that this inchoate form is still moving around in pieces and when it reaches a critical mass, I will sit down and the whole thing will just come out, similar to the now mythic description of Jack Kerouac typing his manifesto, “On the Road” on a never ending manuscript inserted into his manual typewriter. Where do we pick up these kinds of idealistic fantasies about writing?

On the shelves are writing books: writer memoirs, how-tos, lectures, guides, self-help, whatever. None of them do what’s really needed, which is to motivate me to just sit down and write “it.”

In the meantime, my goal today is to clean out the boxes in the room with the orchid plants on the shelf and to put away the winter bedding on top of the shelves in the bedroom. Mundane accomplishments to be sure, but at least visually noticeable progress, unlike the glacial creative process going on inside myself.

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June 5, 2012

deliverance . . .

water, washing everything clean

I was thinking about how tensions are resolved and remembered this reading from the I-Ching, The Book of Changes (Wilhelm edition.) As some of you know, the I-Ching is a book of wisdom that serves as a foundation of Taoist beliefs. Here are excerpts from Hexagram 40, Deliverance:

“Here the movement goes out of the sphere of danger. The obstacle has been removed, the difficulties are being resolved. Deliverance is not yet achieved; it is just in its beginning, and the hexagram represents its various stages.

This refers to a time in which tensions and complications begin to be eased. At such times we ought to make our way back to ordinary conditions as soon as possible. These periods of sudden change have great importance. Just as rain relieves atmospheric tension, making all the buds burst open, so a time of deliverance from burdensome pressure has a liberating and stimulating effect on life. One thing is important, however: in such times we must not overdo our triumph. The point is not to push on farther than is necessary. Returning to the regular order of life as soon as deliverance is achieved brings good fortune.

A thunderstorm has the effect of clearing the air; the superior person produces a similar effect when dealing with mistakes and sins of men that induce a condition of tension. Through clarity she or he brings deliverance. However, when failings come to light, we do not dwell on them; we simply pass over mistakes, the unintentional transgressions, just as thunder dies away. We forgive misdeeds, the intentional transgressions, just as water washes everything clean.”

A moment worth rejoicing, right?