mulberryshoots

April 26, 2012

spring cleanup . . .

Even though it’s been unseasonably warm this winter moving into spring, I’m catching up on some spring cleaning this week. I’ve been meaning to clean up the plant shelf where G. had brought up some gorgeous dusty rose marble planks to provide a surface for the orchids. They’ve been coming along and their bloom is still approaching its peak.

I had a grocery bag full of clippings and dead leaves from the plants, especially the maidenhair fern which had nasty, dried-up brown fronds.

maidenhair fern after repairs

I also noticed that the overheating going on inside me has abated with the wise treatments given yesterday by C., my gifted Shiatsu practitioner. A levelling and cooling off that feels really calming and steady. By next week, some ceiling repair around the skylights and painting will take place in the kitchen and living area. Benjamin Moore’s “Navajo White” paint is my favorite color and has followed me from place to place wherever I have lived. The storage closets will be cleaned out altogether and organized so that we can find cottage and Christmas things more easily. My plan is to provide a swift exit for anything that we won’t use and that we don’t need. Outdated books and CDs will be donated to the local library. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G that remains will have its place. It has already begun to look more spare and feels as right as rain.

To top it all off, here is a photo of little Josie, lending a hand to vacuum the floor at the cottage the day that we left. Priceless!

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April 23, 2012

two kinds . . .

As I drove down Penzance Lane early this morning, returning from buying the morning papers, NYTimes and the Boston Globe, a large, dark red cardinal flew directly across my windshield. Maybe I am one of a handful of people who believes in omens and signs but I felt my heart lift when it happened. I mean, when you think about it, the bird had to launch itself exactly at a certain moment to coincide with the rate at which my car was moving forward in order for that to happen. And my spirits lifted for the day!

As I enjoyed my breakfast, I came upon an article in the NYTimes about David Hoffman, a rebel against building codes and other living requirements in Marin County, California. Mr. Hoffman has built a series of 30 structures, grows Pu-Erh tea and ages them in bamboo containers. He lives with his wife, a native of Thailand and together, they maintain a lifestyle of their own values, apparently ignoring convention and government code requirements.

This got me thinking about some of the dualities that we live amongst:

~ those who believe in omens and those who don’t

~ those who march to societal’s rubrics, and those who do not

~ Confucian principles which honor society’s norms for acceptance
and achievement

~ Taoist philosophy supporting an individual’s quest for,
well, individuality rather than conformity in order to gain someone
else’s approval

I come from a Mandarin family that went to great lengths to pursue individual values and goals, breaking convention and persevering through hardships during the Cultural Revolution. My Aunt Lucy, for example, completed her translation of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman into Mandarin before she died despite personal tragedy and setbacks during her middle and late years in life.

Anyhow, this tea guy in Marin County reminded me of the kind of intensity to be himself in the middle of building codes and some such while carrying out his purpose–producing ancient tea. There is a documentary made about him called, “All In This Tea” that has won numerous film critic awards.

Our home is unconventional in that it is rebuilt from recycled building materials and is heated by a well dug deep under the house. There is no heating oil dependency here with a geothermal system put in by my husband, well over twenty-five years ago before it became popular as green technology.

We live in a working class town so our property is valued at less than half of what it might be were it closer to Boston where more conventional structures appreciate in value just for being located where they are, even when all the houses on the street look alike.

So, I guess there are people who live their lives according to the rules they grew up with and those who chafe at any rules at all. I’m of the latter persuasion and breathe a sigh of relief that I escaped a humdrum existence that I might otherwise have fallen into.

So, seeing red cardinals (3 in one day last week) another a couple of days later and then the one this morning, continue the drumbeat from the Cosmos to my inner spirit, reminding me that “you’re right where you’re supposed to be.”

I think it might be time to revel in this affirmation and live it up, wouldn’t you say?

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April 20, 2012

wonder girl . . .

Okay, so after all the grousing that I’ve been doing about thick, sticky life dramas, here is a refreshing respite. Josie came to visit and brought us a time in her world of wonder. Baby yogurt, noodle soup, smoothies, big strawberries, bubbles and a mindful presence way beyond her age of 19 months.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some that show the wonder of life in its simplest forms.

Enjoy!

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April 16, 2012

seeing red . . .

As some of you know, I’ve been a little disheartened lately. Today, as I was driving along a country lane, a huge, dark red cardinal flew across the front of my car from right to left, his crimson wingspan fluttering in full view. I gasped and thought to myself, “all is not lost,” because I think of cardinals as good omens. Feeling a little better, I picked up my cell phone to call G. While I was describing the red cardinal flying in front of the car, ANOTHER ONE, this one a lighter, golden color, a female this time, flew alongside the right side of my car for about fifteen feet and then winged off into the woods. Two in one day! I began to feel better in earnest.

As I continued driving up to the North Shore, I reflected on what these twin sightings might signify. I asked the Universe silently, “what does this mean,” as I drove up Route 128. All I heard in reply was “everything will be all right” and then a little more softly, “cheer up.”

At the cottage, I ferried things into the house: foodstuffs, bedding, clothing, flowers. The kids are planning to join us tomorrow for the week, then a luncheon for friends next weekend: a busy time. The sky was clear, the sun out, a small red speedboat bounced along the surf, making loud popping noises as it hit the water in its hasty traverse across the horizon. A lovely day.

Returning to the car, I decided to go and fill up with gas so it would be all set for the week. As I edged the car down the rocky lane, I spied a flicker of red in the high bushes to my left. I stopped the car and peered upwards, spying my third cardinal for the day, a male, dark red and pretty large in size.

Seeing red three times today was convincing evidence that it’s definitely time for a change.

For the better!

6 Comments

April 14, 2012

who knew? . . .

Guess what? I’m Chinese. I’ve been Chinese all my life too, ever since I was born in Chungking during a Japanese air raid, as the story goes. For awhile, I lived with my paternal grandparents in their ancient house in Peking. My grandfather was Dean of Religion at the University and was also active with the World Council of Churches. I came to the States when I was five and landed in a country where the three dialects of Chinese that I spoke didn’t apply anymore. I learned English on the fly and also how to take care of myself because everyone around me had lots to do on their own.

Growing up during the McCarthy era was a challenge. So much so, that I grew an invisible set of armor that saw me through most of my life, like Colgate’s “Gardol,” an invisible shield to protect teeth from cavities. Even though I was subject to name calling, that kind of overt racism was easier to take than the covert kind. You know, those people who want to accept other ethnic groups but can’t seem to let go of their own sense of superiority. When I was visiting my first husband’s family in the Midwest, a woman in a grocery store remarked to my future father-in-law that “she has such nice teeth,” as though I were a horse or some kind of livestock at an animal auction.

I wouldn’t even be talking about this in a post except that it happened to me again this week. A former classmate from the Ivy League school I went to came for lunch at the cottage and managed to be so rude as to puzzle me afterwards. During lunch, she mentioned that even though she knew that blacks, gays and lesbians were socially acceptable nowadays, that she couldn’t get past the “training she received as a five-year-old.” She sounded like she didn’t really want to outgrow racist attitudes and even sounded like she was a little proud of it! Later on the drive home, it occurred to me that her behavior might have been an outgrowth of wanting to be superior to me because I happened to be a minority ethnic group. Or maybe it was something else, I have no idea. It did bring back how isolated I had felt so many years ago as a scholarship student among a bevy of well-to-do princesses.

The more I thought about this, the angrier I became with myself. For being so naive and trusting as to ignore the possibility that this kind of covert discrimination had been ever present all my life. Or that who I was as a person and my abilities were insufficient to offset this kind of prejudice from people I thought were my FRIENDS. On the other hand, what good would it have done to acknowledge it then? Maybe I might have seen rejection more clearly. Anyhow, I am writing about what has become a very uncomfortable realization: that life is not fair and that people do care about what your race is.

Who knew?

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April 7, 2012

before and after . . .

Some of you know that I’ve practiced the piano for a long time. My teacher, Basil Toutorsky, taught me how to practice: read the notes for the right hand, then the left hand. Look at the phrasing lines, the dynamics and then play both hands together. Study only one bar at a time until you can play it accurately three times in a row before you move on to the next bar. Slow and steady. Rigorous. Then, speed it up a little. Practice with the metronome so that your rhythm is accurate. Once this process has been followed for one page, stop there. Go back over that page until the notes and the playing start to make musical sense. Play the entire page three times in a row without mistakes before moving forward to the next page. If you make a mistake on the third try, start over again. This was the drill.

Fast forward to today where my facility for sight-reading sometimes gets in the way of patient study habits. Lately, I’ve been drawn to pieces either transcribed or composed by Franz Liszt. This is a kind of anomaly for me because my favorite composer is Bach. One Liszt piece is called “Liebeslied” when it was written originally by Robert Schumann as a wedding gift for his wife, the concert pianist, Clara Schumann. The melody and the harmonies are simple and very touching. It is also called “Widmung” for reasons I’m not aware of once Liszt took it, added sections and embellished it with his usual fanfare of rolling arpeggios and movie-like thematic blow-ups. When Van Cliburn won his tumultuous victory at the Tchaikovsky competition during the Cold War, he played this piece as an encore. A young Asian pianist, Aimi Kobayashi who looks to be about eleven years old, also played it recently as an encore in Russia. (Click her name for a link to listen to this piece on YouTube.)

Anyhow, back to practicing, there’s usually a point in time, a tipping point if you will, when a piece morphs from a study exercise to a piece of music. This phenomenon happened to me recently, a couple of days ago while playing this piece. It went from a period of time over several months, reading the various sections of the piece and playing all the notes. . . to suddenly playing it with a more intuitive grasp of the piece so that the music flows on its own.

In a way, I was thinking about this as a “before” and “after” — from notes on pieces of paper that are transformed into sounds capable of arousing a listener’s emotions. Even if you’re not a pianist, don’t play a note, or, if you think you’re tone-deaf and can’t listen to music, you’ll get it when you listen to this music and it connects with you.

Nothing better.

8 Comments

April 1, 2012

making a difference? . . .

Yesterday, we were having lunch with a friend when the conversation veered to someone we were all concerned about. It soon became apparent that there were two vastly different world views which we felt strongly about. One was, “who am I to judge, criticize or interfere with someone else, even if they are being self-destructive?” The other was, “how can we sit idly by and not try to help in some way?” The former was to strictly mind our own business while living and let live. The other was to take action in some way to make things better, to influence or intervene for a positive change.

Let me just say that during this conversation, we also voiced past examples where no manner of intervention worked to stop someone from doing something self-destructive, whether it be throwing their health away or other worldly goods. So, even trying to do something didn’t necessarily make a difference.

These two vastly different views about our role in life also serve to polarize our society politically, it seems to me: those who want to be left alone to sink or swim on one’s own efforts; and those who feel it is an obligation to help “those in need.” I didn’t realize until now how different these basic attitudes were and how strongly they are held in our present society.

One of the CEO’s I worked with in biotech years ago liked to say: “There are only two kinds of people in the world: simplifiers and complicators.” That adage, I think is true. The one above is more complex and grey rather than black and white.

Nobody likes to be told what to do, and not everyone wants to see things differently, that’s for sure. So where does that leave us?

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March 29, 2012

helpers . . .

Yesterday, I thought about looking for a used high chair on Craigslist. When Josie comes to visit (she’s 18 months old now,) it’s handy to have her sit up to the table with us and she’s coming to visit in a couple of weeks. There was a very cute one advertised in the next town over and I made an appointment to see it. The night before, I had mentioned to G. that the ever-so-slight hiccuping sound in my Subaru when it cruised at 60-70 miles an hour was still noticeable after a few months of driving (including a service tune-up,) and that sooner or later I was afraid something further might happen.

On the way to see the high chair late in the afternoon, I noticed a number of traffic stoppings by flashing police cruisers on Rt. 290 so I stayed in the right hand lane and reduced my speed to about 60 mph. I then went on Rt. 495 south when suddenly, the car gave a sighing sound and all the lights came on on the dashboard. It felt like the car had seized up and had a stroke. I steered the car over into the Read the rest of this entry »

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March 28, 2012

in bloom . . .

in bloom, march 26, 2012

We have a weeping cherry tree in the front yard that usually blooms around the first three days of May every year.

These photos were taken, Monday, March 26th, on the second day of the tree’s blossoming. Last night, it was 26 degrees outside. So let’s enjoy these gorgeous images while they last.

Follow-up photo taken, Thursday, April 5th, on the 10th day (still) in bloom!

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March 27, 2012

perspective . . .

bittersweet

The other day, our family went to our favorite restaurant for a Sunday lunch. We have had meals there on Christmas Eve afternoon and the last time was a brunch with my daughter, C., which had been fabulous. Much to our surprise this time, we were served overcooked dishes with what tasted like leftovers from the night before. Not wanting to spoil our time together, none of us mentioned it. Later, I wrote a review on “Yelp” about our disappointing experience. Shortly thereafter, the GM of the restaurant responded personally to my review in a very sincere and candid manner, apologizing for the sub-par meal that we had had there. I wrote back that we would be glad to return again and hoped the high quality we had gotten used to would be consistent in the future.

This incident made me reflect about the difference between being defensive and taking ownership for something and then apologizing. Have you ever noticed that some of the most entrenched (e.g., angry) attitudes appear when people feel defensive about something they might have done wrong? Nobody likes to Read the rest of this entry »