(From Washington D.C.) getting it right

Rouse yourself. Don't be a passive reader. Figure this one out:

A mother and two grown daughters have brunch in Alexandria, Virginia. It is a dazzling day by all accounts and Alexandria is totally charming.

The threesome choose this place for brunch. Why? For the important reason that the color of the exterior matches the top the mother is wearing over her polka-dot skirt.




The three place an order.
Question: What did the mother order?

Choice A:

bloody tasty


Choice B:

greens with celeriac and grilled shrimp over mango chutney


Choice C:

blueberry wonderful


Hints:

The mother almost never eats lunch.
When she does order lunch, she rarely has anything apart from plain water to drink with it.
The mother loves blueberry anything.
The mother used to make mean bloody marys for brunches many decades ago.

*******************************
Answer: Choice B.
The mother is having a 24 hour dazzling day (see first sentence). All rules are suspended.

After lunch the mother played with a parrot.



And across the Potomac, all contemplated a familiar sight:

(From Washington D.C.:) three “cities,” three train “stations”

Staying at the Georgetown Law Center in DC puts me two blocks away from Union Station. For many reasons then (Metro, latte, Metro, latte) I have become familiar with it.

Madison, of course, does not really have a train station. But it has a train. Driving to the airport yesterday, I crossed the tracks and noted a big cardboard sign saying “Trains depart at: 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm…” etc. I wasn’t sure where they were departing to, and you could hardly call it a station, but in Madison, that’s all you’re going to get.

Grand Central in NY has been splendidly updated, but it has, to me, a fatal flaw: apart from the downstairs food courts, it has no places to sit. Now, maybe there can never be enough seating anyway for the millions who pass through it daily so why bother, or maybe the Mayors Giuliani and at present Bloomberg want to keep the homeless from appropriating seats for their personal use, but given that most people actually arrive at stations more than ten minutes before their train is taking off – it is a nuisance.

At Union Station, seating is abundant. Most is straightforward, in the style of airport stuff, but in some hallways it is not only adequate, it is quite pretty. This morning as I was in hot pursuit of a latte, I saw it in its empty incarnation.

Union (not Terrace, Station) chairs

(From Washington D.C.)

One tiny plane now flies alllllll the way from the wee little city of Madison directly to DC. Shocking, isn't it?

I enjoyed sitting in the last row (that would be row 12) and counting the number of times people used the restroom in the course of a 90 minute flight. Repeat offenders were especially scrutinized.

How humid is it here? So humid that you’d think DC was built on a swamp. (And so it was.)

How good is the food? I’ll just give you the beginning and the ending, bypassing entirely the moulard duck breast with coriander cassis sauce, sweet potatoes and spicy orange ginger marmalade.
It's all about taste. And color:

chilled cucumber with cilantro, chilies, lime and shrimp salsa


classic strawberry shortcake


espresso of course


Finally, some photographic musings on amusing scenes from an evening walk around Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan.

he's just not into her


he's into her


window lights


window lights, two


Madam's organ at Adams Morgan

I love Madison, really I do…

…it’s just that it’s small. I figured out that in the fall, it will take me something like ten minutes to walk over from my apartment to the Law School, and I will have basically passed the edges of the entire downtown area. I may be a fast walker* but still – not only is the area to be covered not vast, it offers few distractions. And I think I figured out that I can walk the entire distance, cross at legitimate intersections and pass no more than one or two stop lights. That tells you something.

So it’s small. I read with some amusement that Middleton (Madison’s suburb really) was on Money Magazine's list of top ten even smaller towns in America this year. There you could cross the entire downtown in three minutes and you will have passed … not much of anything.

Middleton is where you move to if you want to escape Madison’s urban tempo. You know, because it is so fast-paced in downtown Madison.

So today I got an email message from one of my daughters (both are spending the summer in DC) asking me to select a place for dinner there tonight (I am going for a quick, very spontaneously arranged visit). She submitted four choices. All in one neighborhood. All having menus that leap out at me in their originality. All reasonably priced. Damn! Can’t we go to all four?

I am starved for a neighborhood where people are eating dinner until 2 a.m. on hot summer nights. Places from which I get another note telling me this: we are planning out your day – which of these things would you like to do? – and then follows a list of some ten categories of choices.

I know, I know, Mr. B is grumbling at my side, letting me know that no way would he feel comfortable whizzing around DC’s traffic (as if he was such a safe ride in slower-paced Madison!). And the market, and the lakes, and the green spaces, I know I know. I love my little town, I do I do. Sort of.

But this evening I hit the big stuff. More to follow. From D.C.

* trained to pick up the pace by Madison’s speed demon herself, Ms. kef

A quiet grin and a twinkle

Are people thinking they clicked on to the wrong blog? Hey, you, over there! Seen Ocean lately? Yeah, same old, same old… No no, really, check it out today: the post title is: a quiet grin and a twinkle.

So it’s been pretty much that kind of a 24 hours, what can I say.

In anticipation of my leaving Madison tomorrow, I got things done today – that in itself deserves a ten minute standing ovation, because it has been rare this summer for me to get things done.

True, the show that y’all had me watch with you tonight was sort of kind of sad, rather than funny (sorry! okay okay, I’ll give it another chance! I understand the subtleties, I do, but it was still sad*), and there were storms in the morning and bills had to be paid -- all ready ingredients for a curl-up-and-sob moment.

But I’m sifting and sorting through the hours and they come out on balance in this direction: ahhhhh (rather than ohhhhh).

(Not a small part of it has to do with the fact that tomorrow I will be with my daughters out on the east coast.)

I also did head out to check on the apartment that will be my home in just a few weeks. I think they are making progress! I do! Like, the sink is in, the spotlight lamps are dangling from the old beamed ceiling, the graffiti on the outside has been (pretty much) blasted away.

Tobacco lofts. That’s the name of the place. Me and tobacco, tobacco and I. A funny and clever combination. Yeah.

enter this way

lofty inside


* The Comeback

this day's storms

What a difference a cloud (in one's day) makes… For example:


before noon ... and after noon

Where a highly competent individual who has managed complicated moves and even changes in citizenship cannot figure out how to set the AC in her house

Because I am away from the house at times when it is sometimes opened up for a real estate tour, I need to not only keep it immaculate (bummer! though it never fails to impress anyone dropping by – so clean! – they say, at once telling me that they themselves live in slovenly rat holes because it is not that off the charts tidy). I also need to keep it cool.

As I am continuing with My Summer Without Air Conditioning and Without Car, I do not normally resort to tampering with their mechanical configurations and idiosyncrasies. I basically ignore them and they ignore me right back.

So when I finally was forced to preset the AC timer so that it would miraculously flip on and spread its icy nets over the cavernous expanse of the house in my absence, I was surprised that it made no sense. It is a new timer, put in just a handful of month ago. I set the day. The hour. The temperature. And when the day and the hour come around, it automatically, out of spite I guess, flips up to 85 and stays there.

Normally I would not even notice. 85, 75 – what’s the diff. So long as it is not 65, I am happy. But people touring the place may think that it is a tad on the overheated side. And I definitely want to place them in the buying mode, not the frying mode.

Incompetence, especially my own, bothers me. I like to believe that if thrown out into a lion’s den I will figure out a way to cope with the onslaught of big fangs and sharp claws. Someone recently told me that I do well with new things and places. They are right. The fact that I cannot deal with a new thermostat control is, therefore, so irritating that I swear it will prove to be the proverbial straw. If you next find me moronically sitting in a corner, chewing on a shirtsleeve and singing nursery rhymes over and over you’ll know why. It was Mr. AC, in the parlor, with a control panel.

...blackbird has spoken like the first bird

It is so late… So late that it is no longer Tonya's birthday;

contemplating

Time to make even more changes.

Let’s begin with a new photo for the sidebar. Ann,

skeptical


did you take this one of the Ocean author?


with a latte...

Thanks.

Polish proverbs no. 4, 5 & 6

Okay, SLC, you are not doing a convincing job: there are skeptics who are questioning the authenticity of some of the proverbs contained in the posts below!

Why this cavalier attitude in throwing out the proverbs and sayings? Why aren't I citing sources, providing links? Perhaps because of this:

"Musi to na Rusi, w Polsce jak kto chce" -- meaning:
“You have to” is for Russians; Poles do as they please

So I did, here on Ocean, as I pleased, figuring I do not have to document the Polishness of anything. I’ll just put it out and move on.

After all, the saying goes:

"Wolnoć Tomku w swoim domku" or, in other words:
Thomas, you are free to do anything you want in your own house!

But then, sure enough, in pops an email message saying: That last quote? Not Polish!
The hell it isn’t!
Okay, so maybe others have embraced it as well, but it’s Polish, I tell you! Google it – you’ll find confirmation here and elsewhere.

But actually, I must admit that many Polish proverbs borrowed ideas from German sources and when those sources ran dry, they dug into the Bible, being rather Bible-leaning to begin with. And so there is overlap.

...sigh:

A good painter need not give a name to his picture; a bad one must.

So, too, a bad writer must explain and label things in a more coherent way. The Polishness of the proverbs isn’t throwing itself at you. I should do more to tie the words to the old country, so that you will indeed walk away thinking – now that’s Italian! I mean Polish. Sorry, sometimes it’s a little fuzzy for me as well.

Polish proverb no.3

Yes, another day of SLC trying so very hard to convince you that in Polish proverbs lies the truth about life. So, another one, to give a special boost to Ocean readers:

Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day

Discussion:

I love this proverb! Go ahead, mess up – it tells me. You’ll still hit it right a couple of times, just by virtue of being on the face of the earth.

I already hit it right in the middle of this night: I went on expedia.com and booked a flight to DC to see two very precious beings (I'll take off in a couple of days). Now all I have to do is send a birthday message to the author of this blog and I will have cleared two strikes. Chances are I’ll zip through with a couple more, so in effect, I’ll be even better than the clock that stands still: I will be moving, albeit at a very slow pace.

Rate usefulness of discussion: ***** (too much of the personal, too little of the analytical)

Polish proverb no.2

Continuing on with SLC’s ambitious goal of making you aware of the vast array of proverbs available to enrich and enliven your days, here’s an oldie but goodie, straight from the archives of the Best Polish Proverbs Ever:

When the bitch gets off the wagon, horses have an easier time

(Polish version: “Baba z wozu, koniom lżej” – note that a baba is slightly gentler – somewhere between a woman and a bitch – but I can’t think of another word that captures the derogatory flavor of it, so in my translation it remains bitch)

Discussion:

So often the older proverbs have a certain folksiness to them, with references to pigs, horses, wagons.
But why is this one not gender neutral? Or why aren't we celebrating the departure of that bastard?
Who knows. Fact is, though, that in Poland, two thirds of divorces are initiated by women. [Though you can’t infer much about marital bliss from crude numbers, nor from the very low divorce rates, since the divorce procedure in Poland is complicated and courts will oftentimes not grant a divorce if the judge, in her or his divine wisdom, opines that the children will be better served if the couple stays together.]

Maybe this proverb was born out of a need to console the guy whose woman flew the coop. But I’ve heard it used in a broader context: it’s tantamount to saying “good riddance!” Except that the saying “good riddance” came to us from Shakespeare himself (Troilus and Cressida), whereas this proverb is… well, straight out of the shed where horses and wagons are kept.

In any event, feel free to use the proverb anytime a student drops your class or someone leaves you for another, or you're washing your hands off of some sticky situation. Just shout out after them: when the bitch gets off the wagon, horses have an easier time! Give a smug grin and a dismissive wave and go on with your day.

Rate usefulness of discussion to your understanding of the proverb: *****

Polish proverb no.1

In an effort to break away from writing morose posts these days, the author of Ocean is handing the blog over for a while to the newly established Silver Learning Center ("SLC"), which operates with the slogan: All that glitters is not gold.

The spectacularly unoriginal slogan should clue you in that the SLC is all about aphorisms and proverbs. In its vast and detailed archives, it contains a number of interesting (and authentic) Polish sayings.

Poles are known for their proverbs. Indeed, paremiologists have recognized Polish and Yiddish proverbs as comprising the bulk of the Great Proverbs Out There.*

Sometimes the proverb presented in Ocean will bear some relation to the day at hand. Sometimes it will be of a more general nature. Sometimes it will be accompanied with text (the SLC and I are striking a contract as we speak, detailing its obligations to the blog). Sometimes only with a photo.

FAQs about SLC’s cooperative relationship with Ocean and blogs in general:

Q: How long do we have to endure its presence on your blog?
A: Each day may be the last day (or not), so you really have to check. I am not revealing the terms of the contract. It is going to be a sealed, secret document.

Q: So the readers basically don’t get to follow the progression of your life while SLC is in charge?
A: Whatever made you think that you are following any progression to begin with? The only person that follows my life is me and trust me, there is no progression.

Q: This isn’t like the dreadful kep thing in your June posts all over again, is it? (this question appears less frequently than the others, but is included here for its value as a minority position)
A: I said nothing about kep. I’m talking about a worthwhile organization that will bring you closer to the spirit of Poland and perhaps, inadvertently or advertantly, to Ocean’s author.

Okay, today’s proverb:

A hippo does not have a sting in its tail, but a wise man would still rather be sat on by a bee

Discussion (all participants are Polish, so please view this as a genuine attempt at interpreting their own proverb):

So something can sting but be quite harmless, right? Harm ought to be measured in other ways, correct?
I believe that the proverb misses the point. A sting can go to the heart. Size and choice of poison is irrelevant. Death is death. Bees can spell evil.
I think you are wrong in your interpretation: it simply is telling us that there are greater evils than a mere sting.
Do they even have hippos in Poland? I never saw one. Ever. Not in Warsaw, not in Krakow. How can this be a Polish proverb if there are no hippos in Poland?
Don't be patronizing. We all have seen hippo pictures. We know they are huge and can squash the guts out of you. And we certainly understand bees. They sting to protect themselves. They also bring honey.

Rate usefulness of discussion to your understanding of the proverb: *****

* source of grandiose claim: nlc

Yes, well, I have no oomph to write this post, so make of the sentences in between the photos whatever you want

A lawyer, an artist and a law prof set out for Devil’s Lake State Park. It was 100 degrees outside. At least. The artist was tired, the law prof was completely out of sorts and the lawyer was raring to go swimming.



At a table next to ours we encountered a group of Poles from Chicago. How did I guess they were Polish? Well, the language, of course. And the swimming Speedos on the men! We chatted for a while. It felt like home. Safe. Like, get me out of this world and take me to my homeland. But then, where is my homeland?



The lawyer and I took a canoe out. We left the artist to do his thing. The lake was spectacularly cool and calming. It should have calmed me. It should have.





Back at the shore, we found the artist…. Reading.

Oh sure, he did some watercolor stuff as well. But no big canvases for him today. I knew exactly where he was coming from.



I suggested ice cream. The servers were two Polish students, picking up some money during a summer in America. They hated their employer. Why? The first day on the job he told them: basically, I hate foreign workers, but I have no choice but to hire you. Downhill after that.



At this point the lawyer wanted us to go swimming, but the law prof said no. The lack of oomph was catching up. The idea of changing into swim gear, then out again, was overwhelming. So the swim was scrapped and the great hike took place.



The last time I took this trail was in July, 1981 – ergo, 24 years ago. I was very pregnant with my first child. Hope. It’s all about hope. I’d never in my life felt so hopeful as that month, back in 1981. I could easily say that today I was on a completely opposite slope. Isn’t it funny how one spot – a bunch of rocks around Devil’s Lake can leave such lasting impressions one way or another? Oh, and another thing: then, back in 1981, I was terrified of going into labor, right there, on the cliffs of Devil’s Lake. Now, in 2005, I felt terrified of … nothing.

A long post about not jumping into the pool

Say you have some major life’s changes in front of you that include, but are not limited to a move. Say nice neighbors convince you to go to the neighborhood pool party which is technically for pool members only, but nice friends get special permission from the board to allow you to come. (And no, it had nothing to do with the fact that the pres of the board is a former student of mine. Though you know you are getting along in your teaching career when the phrase “a former student of mine” keeps cropping up in all sorts of unusual settings, including at the neighborhood pool.)

Say you are in the kind of mood that makes you not show up for things and kind neighbors have noted this about you and so they come knocking at your door just before the pool party. And let’s assume you are sort of glad they did, as the alternative, sitting at home, will most likely lead you to be overwhelmed at all that needs to be done and steps that need to be taken and so you will do nothing but read a dumb book or, even more likely, stare at the computer screen wondering how many seconds have to elapse before the screen saver will require you to reach over and touch the pad so that the wallpaper, which is a pretty photo from Giverny, will reappear.

Say you head out and learn that there will be tons of food and bottomless margaritas and every neighbor you could think of will show up and that after a while, many will jump into the pool, sometimes with their clothes on, as the once staid neighborhood is getting a little more adventurous, -- though I would think that jumping in the pool is a thing that even staid people, even in places like stuffy Stamford, Connecticut do. In fact I know that they do this in stuffy Stamford Connecticut, as the family I au paired for when I was way younger had a pool there and it was not unusual for them to jump into it after drinking too much except, most often, they would take their clothes off. Ah, how the rich and famous love to play!

Say you nod and smile and think how nice your kind neighbors are to do all this for you.

And so you follow them along, with a deceptively sprightly step.

Now, everyone in the place knows you are moving. Why? Because you have a goddam sign in front of your house announcing it to the world. Maybe a dozen plus people have known the whys and whereofs and circumstances surrounding the move. But the rest do not. And of course they ask.

The first time you tell some condensed version of story. The second time you reach for the second margarita and hope they uncover the food soon as otherwise you will get way drunk on endless margaritas on an empty stomach and will be likely to jump in the pool before anyone else does, especially if one more person asks you why you are moving.

The tenth time your answer is way attenuated. It goes something like this: So I see you’re moving? Yes. Why and where? Downtown, because it seems the right thing to do. That usually causes people to launch into improbable and hypothetical ruminations about how that is just such a brilliant plan and they themselves would love to do the same because these big houses require upkeep and wouldn’t it be cool to be closer to State Street – all a ridiculous set of claims because you know they never in a million years would move downtown nor hang out on State Street. I’m not sure even I am likely to hang out on State Street, even though I work a mere minute away.

By the twentieth time you find yourself thinking that perhaps big parties where everyone in the world knows you are moving but few know the circumstances and everyone is eager to learn them, it being a slow kind of summer where no patio burglar has made the rounds and the hot drought conditions have been exhausted as a topic of conversation – maybe these events are not good for a person who tends to drink margaritas as if they were lemonade.

So I pretend I needed to use the facilities, and sneak out the back way and considered taking Mr. B out for a late night run, having with utter strong will and determination put a stop to the margarita drinking and having kept my clothes dry and my sanity about me. But then I think of peddling back home from wherever I would be heading and the vision exhausts me, so I go home and read a dumb book and stare at the computer screen instead.

from Ocean to table

Ann’s delightful post about my plunging sweet Hermione into boiling water last night triggered some requests for the recipe for the soup where Hermione reappeared, looking very much like a shark attacking the innocent:

Ann's photo

I am warning you, the recipe requires coordination and patience, though if you treat it like an assembly line operation, you wont fail.

It comes from Alfred Portale’s book (he cooks at the really cool Gotham Bar and Grill in NY).

Chilled Pea Soup with Lobster, Crème Fraiche and Wilted Watercress

Side-note #1: Don’t look for crème fraiche in the store, make your own! The day before, put a cup of heavy cream in a jar, add a tablespoon of buttermilk, cover with lid and leave it out. In some twelve hours you will have beautiful, silky, French cream. Refrigerate it once it gets thick.

Side-note #2: Okay, I substituted what should have been there – fresh pea shoots, which I can only get at the downtown market on Saturdays – with watercress. It works!

Side-note #3: I cheated again in terms of peas. The recipe calls for 4 cups of shelled peas. After shelling three cups, my sprained thumb was killing me so I used as a fourth finely chopped snap peas. Great taste, much easier. Shelling peas in the restaurant where I worked for a bit was always handed over to the very lowest person in the kitchen hierarchy. I actually think that the recipe would work with frozen peas (but only if fresh are out of season, please!) – though then you should reduce the cooking time.

Side-note #4: Here’s the line-up you should have to make it work smoothly: Have a medium bowl with a large fine mesh strainer over it, then next to it a blender, then another bowl set over an ice water bath.

Side-note #5: It says the amount will serve 4. I think it actually is enough for 5 – 6, though the portions of lobster meat grow smaller.

Okay, the recipe:

1 TBSP olive oil
1 onion, chopped
½ rib celery, chopped
1 qt of chicken stock or broth
4 cups of shelled fresh peas
salt and white pepper to taste
up to 2 TBSP unsalted butter

In stockpot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook, stirring, 3 – 4 minutes, until softened. Add stock, raise heat to high, bring to boil.
Add peas, return to boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 12 minutes (until peas are tender). Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.
Strain soup into the first bowl with the strainer. Transfer vegetables to blender and purée, adding only enough of the strained stock to make a fine, thick purée. Add butter and pulse or stir until it melts and enriches the purée.
Scrape contents of the blender into the bowl set in the ice bath. Add the remaining stock, a little at a time, until the soup reaches the desired creamy consistency (I used about ¾ of it).
Cover and refrigerate.

Lobster:

1 1 ½ pound live lobster

Cook it as you would cook a live lobster. For this dish I threw in a half a lemon into the boiling water and cooked the lobster for 11 minutes.
Then cool it under running water so that you can get at the meat.

Assembly:

½ cup crème fraiche
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
salt and white pepper to taste
1 cup lightly packed pea shoots or watercress
(caviar is suggested as an option as well. I omitted it. This soup is already expensive!)

Remove soup from refrigerator some twenty minutes before serving. It should be chilled, but not ice cold.
Whisk together crème, lemon juice and salt and pepper.
Cut lobster into big chunks and toss with crème.
Cook pea shoots or watercress in a small pot of boiling water for 15 seconds, just until wilted. Reserve some leaves for decoration before throwing the lot of them into the boiling water.
Drain.

Then place a mound of the watercress in the middle of the soup plate, lobster on top of that, and ladle pea soup all around the little island. Garnish with fresh watercress leaves and swirls of crème.

You can also just treat this as a great chilled pea soup recipe without the lobster.

food, candles and bells?

It’s almost three, the last dish is either in the dishwasher or cleaned and put away. I have to keep the house immaculate for showings and so I cannot do my usual-- clean up the mess the next day.

In celebrating Tonya’s birthday here tonight I thought how very few things out there are as good as this: to be able to bring together people and create conditions (via food) whereby they (and therefore I) can let go of the stresses of the day and unwind and relax (and eat food).

[earlier this week, there had apparently been a wedding between these two, or at least so it is stated here and here; I admit to being a tad worried as I saw no bands on any fingers, but the photos clearly illustrate that these guys are in celebratory moods:]


celebrating and reaching out

If someone can write a beautiful poem about a lemon*, shouldn’t a blogger be able to write decent posts about pretty much anything?

I have been engaged in a back-and-forth email exchange with a person who is supremely skeptical of blogs and blogging in general. I am getting the sense that she regards these posts as serious attempts to put ourselves out there for you, the readers and sometimes (oftentimes? just about always?) she finds them … lacking. And I don’t mean only here at Ocean, though Ocean I am sure also does not measure up. One of her (numerous) claims is that, being a daily event, a blog (like this one) has to be boring, because how many of us have interesting ideas to put out like this on such a regular basis?

Oh dear. It has never struck me that people are basically a dull lot. That we move through the day robotically, that our brains work hard just to keep us afloat as we navigate life’s hurdles. And that at the end of the day, we are spent. And if we then sit down to blog, we spit out garbage, exhausted and bereft of any creative juice (which, if we have any to begin with, has been expanded elsewhere, in some other fashion).

And so here we are, us motley crew of bloggers, forced to put down something, anything, and make a story of it, even where there is no story, nothing worth pasting into the blog, just endless simplistic worries or observations for you to waste time reading when you should be working or talking to people.

I have great faith. I truly believe that if we wanted to devote the entire day and every day to writing, we could flush out limitless numbers of ideas. Take that, you blog-doubting Thomas! If posts are bland and blogs are sloppy, they are that way not because people lack the juice to make something more of them but because, for whatever reason, they choose not to make it a finer expression. You can sketch ambitiously or you can just doodle on a piece of paper. So, too, on a blog. And in this world, there's enough space and time for both the doodlers and the artists and the vast majority that is nestled somewhere in between, to do their thing.

* ...a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

What are friends for if not to humor you…

You know you’re taken seriously when you post something about wanting to cap each day with a latte and your friend is on her way now as we speak, to drop over, just for that cup of coffee with you. Especially if that friend lives in St. Paul.

This friend is also the one who bought the condo from us when we couldn’t otherwise sell it (as I wrote in an earlier post), probably out of pity and not wanting us to be forever stuck raising a family in closet-like conditions.

And here’s another thing: she went along just to pretest the region of Brittany, France in the year that I had my food tours to France up and running and needed someone to scoot around the northern provinces with me. She even let me drag her to a farm where the woman made fresh camembert from Brittany milk. Predictably, she bought a couple of the cheeses even though she was traveling around after leaving France and couldn’t take them with her. Of course, she then gave them to me.

You don’t all have to go that far to take care of me. But if someday you’re residing at great distances and I say, man I would love company for a latte, follow her impulse. It can lift a soul up up up to have that spontaneous cup, out of nowhere.

speed

You haven't lived until you took the bumps on Mineral Point close to midnight on Mr. B, with only a Cateye to guide you along.

On the other hand, if I do that again, I may not live either. Next night ride: it'll have to be the South West bike path. Mr. B deserves to keep his heart at a steady pace. He's too old for this sort of thing.

Me, I'm scratched from the branches I knocked against in the block I decided to do via the sidewalk. Bloody hell (and bloody arm). People: cut your timber already if it overhangs public spaces!

Allons enfants

A national anthem should be music without lyrics. I’ve yet to come across one with words that I can embrace and sign on to. Saluting war, bombs (the American version), taking back what’s yours by force (that’s the Polish one) and the most brutal of all: la Marseillaise. Consider this:

…Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens
Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

Lovely little gem for little French children to learn and sing, isn’t it?

But the melodies are alright. Plain and to the point, one might say. So, on this Bastille Day, I’ll put on a French CD, drink some French Roast café au lait, and, instead of the cut throats and impure blood, I’ll think about only the first two words of the anthem – allons enfants (come, children).

The picture I like best to accompany this was taken by me in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, against a canopy of chestnut leaves. God, I love those gardens (and the museum contained therein, where one can get exquisite prints)!


playing to the chestnuts, beckoning to follow, in song

the song of a wren

How can you not smile when someone reads the last paragrpah of your post and sends you this message.*

Thanks, earthgirl!

* It struck me that maybe upwards of 50% of Ocean readers glance at blogs on the side, in their workplace. You guys maybe should not click on "this message."

take good care of my… what? I do not have any babies...

I’m hearing a lot of this: take good care of yourself.

I appreciate the good will in that missive, but I am wondering what it means. I imagine that women who take good care of themselves sit in foaming baths, with cucumber slices over their eyelids.

I never cared much about how my eyelids looked – possibly because I have never seen them – and I am not a great user of the bathtub, so what else is there?

Frankly, when I think of indulging myself, I think of two things, one good, one not so good: exercise to excess and drink wine (not to excess, but still, come on, this cannot be a regular activity). So should I do more of each? If I exercised more, I’d be one of those where AARP magazine will be asking for a photoshoot: look at her! Approaching ancient-hood and still not giving up on life! Eligible for membership (that happens, btw, when you turn 50, so get ready!), and still capable of pulling out a 6.2 5.7* mile run (yes, yes and I am proud of it). Look at her, apart from that bulge on her hip (will you quit asking me about the grapefruit in my pocket? It is my bruise. Bruise. Bruise. Sad but true. It will recede. So they say), she looks… fit.

So, I think I need a new definition of taking care of myself. Were you to ask me what I would want, I may say something like this: chirpy messages and visits, allowing me to pass you on the bike trail, hope, and every afternoon capped with one of these:

from yesterday

*Ocean is an honest blog

more on apt films

My mother’s favorite movie would have to be Pollyanna. You know, the one about the young girl (Hayley Mills, actually; God, I loved her films when I was little – she was spunky; I did not much care for Pollyanna though), who went around town with these prisms and convinced everyone that seeing little rainbows gave you reason to laugh in the face of death, poverty and hatred. [Personally, I thought it was a misplaced message. If you’re sick and dying, you should not have to pressure yourself into laughing at little rainbows.]

Why do I link this “don’t worry, be happy” movie to my mother, the queen of melancholy, negativism and despair? Because her absolutely favorite point, one that she makes again and again is right out of the movie, or, more accurately a negation of it and the Pollyanna spirit.

Thus growing up, Pollyanna became for me a household fixture. I learned early on that it is absolutely imperative that we should all dissociate ourselves from this person of misplaced joy. Often I have heard my mother say with great resoluteness and a touch of pride: “I’m not going to be a Pollyanna about it…” (no you are not! you are so correct! not for you the prisms throwing dumb colors on the walls!)

As a reaction to the anti-Pollyanna fever in my household (kids are such rebels), I quickly became a very happy person, in spite of sickness and adversity and yucky post-war-baby lungs. I mean, I actually looked for cheer. And 3 out of 5 times found it (the other two times: I’d say one had to be thrown to blah nothingness and the other to horrible fear and anxiety, but hey, we’re talking two out of five).

I write this because my blogging overlaps with a period of time that produces more of the latter (we’re talking anxious times here) than the former (chipper and sprightly tones). And this may give the mistaken impression that if I were in a line up and the order was given for the real anti-Pollyanna to step forward, it would be me. I mean, I may step forward because of my dislike of the movie, but not because I don’t have tendencies to find happy colors on a day to day basis.

Let it be clear, I am not into gloom and doom. No matter how many posts will follow outlining the rapid disintegration of my befuddled psyche. It is not in my nature to wallow.

Apt, part 2

In reponse to the post below about movie titles that best describe my days, a reader writes:

Thinking about a title for your movie is interesting, but who to cast even more, maybe? Who would you like to play you?

Back in December, I was interviewed on a British blog (one of those "know your blogger" deals) here. If you click, you'll find my reponses to many questions, so don't. In any case, there are so many, that you surely wont even get to the pivotal one, toward the bottom, where I was asked this and gave the following answer (greatly improved, btw, by the superb editing job of a fellow blogger):

Q: Who would play you in the movie about your life?
A: No one who is already famous. Instead, I would be the breakthrough role for someone who looks smart and irrepressible on screen.

Also interesting on that List of Questions was the following, as well as my response to it:

Q: What is your most treasured possession?
A: Absolutely nothing material. My memories.

I wrote that before I knew I would be sifting through posessions in the summer ahead and letting go of so many of them. Why is it that we always sound so arrogantly confident in making statements about matters with which we haven't had much experience?

Apt (and I don’t mean apartment)

I woke up thinking that maybe I could face up to the creative challenge of coming up with a movie title that would best summarize the state of my soul at the moment.

People seem to like lists, so this morning, instead of staring into space and rhythmically, mindlessly crunching granola, I thought I’d run through some tried and true titles and see if they matched my mood. Of course, I should just make up my own, something like: And what have I done right lately? That would be fitting. But these guys are good too, with minor word changes where needed:

Stop the world, I want to get off

The Hunched-back of someone from Notre Warsaw

Staving off Private Cryin’

The (Small) Apartment

The Great Escape

Not the Best Years of My Life

La Grande Illusion

The Summer the Earth Stood Still

Lost in Transition

Whose Afraid of Getting up in the Morning?

Habits

Today I got up and brushed aside any thought that I did not want the day to begin.

I did not begin the morning with writing a blog post.

I did not go for a morning walk. I ran instead and on a different path.

I immediately mailed a package that had to go out east.

I went shopping for a gift. You have no idea how hard it is to get myself to do that.
Thankfully, we have Little Luxuries on State Street. Still, what to get...

the person is really into tea, so maybe these tea tiles?


She's really in love with New York...

...and she has just come back from London.

No, I think I found something better. All wrapped up now. Only it doesn't quite fit in Mr. B's pouch.

(BTW, I seriously think disloyal Mr. B has a crush on that red thing there, in the photo. He's looking all modest and shy, but really, I think it's all about her now. Ah well, he'll come crawling back when Ms. Crimson turns up her red nose and heads in the opposite direction)

The entire time I was in my office I did not turn on the computer.

On the way home I did not pick up a bottle of wine for dinner.

I took out all the mail from the mailbox, not just the stuff that looked potentially interesting.

I even opened mail that had little windows on the envelope.

I broke down with my habit breaking resolve when the afternoon light started fading. You guessed it, I biked down, as usual, for this:

a late latte

the competitive spirit and the edge of capitalism

I would not make a good capitalist: I never caught that overwhelming desire to beat out the other guy in the marketplace. The more, the better! Oh, you’re better at this work stuff than I am? Good, good! Let me watch you excel! I’m all for excellence. I hate mediocrity in work life, social life.

But then we come to sports and games. Here, I play to win. If someone is likely to beat me, then I wont play, I’ll change sports, games, anything, but I will not sit there and watch someone overtake me.

It has been a struggle these past weeks dealing with the hot shooters on bikes who routinely pass me. With their bulging body parts tightly held together by a stretchy fabrics, they whiz by and leave Mr. B and me in their sweaty trail. I make a point of speeding when I sense one of them behind me, but on hills, I am a mere a shadow of their might. So I avoid hills.

I read Tonya’s account of playing War and I was with her all the way: do not surrender, no, keep at it! Beat the brains out of that little squirt (even though he is your sweet son).

Another one: when someone unfairly beat me at chess recently, I subsequently spent nearly an entire overseas flight figuring out my strategy, just in case in the next decade or so I’ll find myself again in a game of chess with someone.

And I read how the two blogging runners are now comfortable at five mile runs. Whaaat??? Damn! Gotta up my own circuit so that I am at 5.5. Never mind that I am almost twice the age of one and my leg length falls four inches short of hers and his (I pay attention to these things!), so that I have to take more steps. And I have post-war-baby-tortured-by-pneumonia lungs. Resolve: add more hills, walk less, run more, feel better.

What’s with me anyway? If I ski with someone, I wont admit that I don’t much care for black diamond hills – I’ll hit the ice-covered slope and close my eyes. I’ve broken my nose doing stupid things on skis and I gave my once-little girls a total Clue complex by always always playing to win and gloating when I beat them at it, even though they were like 5 and 8 and I was 36.

I’m sure it’s all tied up with my displacement, abandonment, and uncertainty about life. I’m sure years of analysis would not help. Somewhere along the way I must have concluded that if I don’t push myself, if I don't figure out a clever strategy, my plate will be empty while everyone slurps down the last bits of cake. I'll lie deserted in the gutter, feeble in mind and body and rot.

So, off I go to pick up that extra half mile. Oh, and I beat the crap out of a racing biker this afternoon on the South West trail.

Jeremy, I am sooooo sorry!

Last night I received an email from the daughter of my closest friends in Warsaw. She is a woman of great poise and intelligence. And tact. She writes this:

i z przerazeniem stwierdzilam, ze Jeremy propaguje mowienie "zzzzCoca", jak rozumiem za Twoja namowa. hi hi, nic dziwnego, ze moga sie wtedy kelnerzy patrzyc dziwnie. ogolnie przyjetym zdrobnieniem od coca-coli jest "cola", "coca" zas oznacza kokaine....

Oh shit! (forgive me for being crude, the situation calls for it)

For those who do not speak Polish, it reads more or less thus:

With great dismay, I concluded (from reading my comment to his post here) that Jeremy is encouraging the use of the term “zzzz Coca,” as I understand it, under your tutelage. [Jeremy, my fellow traveler to Poland, asked how to order “with coca cola” in a restaurant. Being savvy in slang, I said: ask for “z Coca"; “z” means with, and “Coca” is slang for Coca Cola.] He he, it’s not surprising then that waiters looked strangely upon him. The colloquial term for Coca Cola is “cola.” “Coca,” on the other hand, means cocaine.

Damn! I knew there was a slang term. But it’s been years since I had to order Coca Cola for anyone! Jeremy: I’m sorry for getting it wrong and for making you look like a cocaine junkie to all Poles you interacted with on your trip.

How can you laugh When you know I’m down

First of all, if you’re looking for a post detailing my own mental breakdown or decline – forget it. This ain’t it. I’m writing about a movie. A very funny movie.

I would have missed it but for Saul & Mel – the two who are ensuring that this summer I do not fall into a state of cultural nothingness. But they know how I feel about French films and so yesterday afternoon, there we were, sitting at the Hilldale theater along with 6 other people, all of them over the age of 80, all dripping with sweat under a broken air-conditioning system. A situation made to bring out the giggles, no?

Okay, here’s why I adored the film (which, btw, received a scathing review in our own Cap Times but was thrown many plump tomatoes elsewhere). Yes, I’m nuts about the French farce. I’m completely won over by films that have no story line, or an implausible story line and yet still manage to charm you. The acting has to be superb (as it was in this film) and the setting authentic (ditto here). After that – it’s one big pull into the saga that details the peculiarities of human nature.

Apart from my two partners-in-viewing, I was the only one laughing out loud. Maybe the rest could not keep up with the subtitles. Maybe they were napping. Maybe they were in it for the popcorn. But really, how many movies in the last five years have caused me to laugh out loud? Perhaps one other, except I cannot at the moment remember what it was.

What’s it about? Well, suicidal depression for a start. And helping another. This second theme is what causes critics to have a fit because the implausibility here is just outrageous. And yet, I’m thinking that it’s not. I can well imagine a situation where you find yourself spiraling into a giving mode, while someone, the beneficiary, hardly even notices your efforts on their behalf.

I’m not going to ruin the movie for anyone by even hinting at the tragic/comic (maybe none of the above!) ending. But here’s a big plug: most of the story takes place in a Parisian restaurant. I mean, even if you hated the movie, how awful can it be to sit for two hours and watch people eat French food?

The title: après vous

Spying games

I come back home and inspected the premises. Ah! They had spent some time in the master bedroom! A short pause in the living room, a peak at the other rooms. Good sign – they’d ventured down to the rec room.

I remember this kind of detective work twenty years ago when we were selling our little condo. [Oh yes, being city people, we thought nothing of making our first home purchase be a condo, even when there were only maybe two condo projects in all of Madison and everyone was so suspicious of that form of home ownership that we absolutely could not sell it when the time came to move. In the end my close friend from Law School bought it, I swear because I was bursting with babies and she felt sorry for me. It was a very small condo – smaller than the apartment I’m moving into next month.]

It’s the same now as we proceed with the sale of the house: I vacuum all carpeted surfaces and scoot out. Then I come back and study the footprints. Crazy, I know. Sort of on the same level as biking around the block and staring at the people who have come to look – evaluating them as potential buyers. Hmmm… they have a baby. That’s good, a baby should grow in this house – make it her home. A minivan rather than an SUV. Good, good. Why aren’t they saying anything about the beautiful flowers outside? Did they notice all my signs about this being a pesticide-free lawn? Have they kicked the Chemlawn habit?

What am I saying, they just came and looked. There’s no UHaul outside the door yet. They just looked. I’m still safe here. This place is still under my stewardship.

Daughters

I’ve been thinking a lot about them lately (mine are grown, living a thousand miles away).
On my long drive to the farm this morning, I was listening to NPR and they chose to play Edvard Elgar. Wow. My daughters played strings in the symphony orchestra not so long ago. The little one would sing Elgar with me in the car, I remember that.

Daughters. I did many shameful things in my life, but in terms of direct impact, one of the more shameful was that I found a daughter-journal and one day, I read an entry. I wish I had not, but I did. And then it tortured me. And I could not let it go. And finally I told her – right in the midst of her college tour! In the Admissions office of Amherst, I was admitting to her that I had snooped! And she forgave me.

Daughters. My other little one. You have never seen anyone dance like her. No, I mean it. For verification purposes, let me brag: she was Clara in the Civic Center’s annual production of the Nutcracker. Man, that girl danced! And then one day she did not. Because dancing is an all or nothing thing. You dance, or you do other things. She made that decision when she was a wee 13, being arguably Madison’s best of the best dancers then, to let it go. So that she could do other things.

Someone wrote in the most dunce-ish of emails received by me in the last month that children turn on you if you don’t be careful.

I know nothing of this.

My house is full of markers of how they grew up. As I get ready to let it go, I have to remind myself every minute of each day: it’s only a house. It’s only a house.

...Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets to the ocean*

I promise I’ll stop soon with the quotes. It’s just that there is some poetic thorn out there and once it wedges itself into your day, it’s hard not to let it drive your text (and drive the reader crazy, I’m sure).

Today, I was going to go for one last time to the Flower Factory – the place to get any kind of flower you may want to put in to your garden. The afternoon dry heat has done wonders in terms of diminishing Madison’s mosquito population, but it has had a miserable effect on my garden out front. Even though I am abandoning it soon and moving downtown, I can’t stand to see its sad little face. I feel it needs one small little pick me up.

But I lacked the oomph to set out. The afternoon came and went and what do I have to show for it? One Ocean post and a trip with Mr. B to the grocery store. [On the return trip, the additional grocery bag toting foods I could not fit into Mr. B’s pouch banged on the wheel with regular thumps and by the time I reached my house, there were great gashes in the bag. I suppose I should be happy that the cherries and Bunny Luv carrots did not leave a trail on the virtually level road I peddled down on.]

Earlier, I dug out my various ragged books of poems and was reminded that poets are typically even sadder than I am, which is saying a lot. True, my standards – Neruda, Szymborska, the Brits – they have at least as much admiration for Beautiful Things Out There as they have sorrow for when Things Are Not Working Out, but still, their voices swell and soar and you can usually cut out snippets that appear sad even if they are not totally intended that way.

You should see the stuff I did not use, for fear of appearing over the edge! I did store it in a Word document in case the malaise of today is only a small foothill on the mountain slope of misery. Not likely, it being such a beautiful Madison summer season, but you never know.

* Neruda actually writes “sea,” not ocean, but my blog is not nicknamed “sea;” I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded the slight adjustment.

thus we salute thee with our early song*

Oh so early, my song this morning was at the daybreak level of early.


watching the sun crawl up between the branches


I know, Ocean appears to be obsessively geared toward irritating Tonya with coffee posts and photos, but how could I resist this one?

coffee & corn





corn close-up. with wild daisies.


Where am I? I returned to the farm where the old oaks grow on a kind invite to spend the morning there with my camera. The coffee on the deck made it almost impossible to hoist myself out of a blissful state of repose and head out into the fields. But I did, I did. The light beckoned.

birches


yahara r.


The people who live there are working toward restoring some of these overgrown fields and returning them to prairie plants and wildlife. To me, the place is beautiful already, but I see the potential for a better balance. The invasive plants (whose names I always get wrong, so don’t even bother thinking you’re going to learn anything here at Ocean) clutch at the soil so ferociously that it’ll take many seasons to get them to let go. And move elsewhere. Like, to the suburban yard I am fighting to keep in order.

parsnip maybe?


creating a path through canary grass


Under the orange sticks of the sun The heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again**

The morning coaxed me into a better frame of mind, that’s for sure. So I am extremely grateful for the guided trek through fields and forests. Though, in addition to pushing through grass that threatened to swallow you whole, occasionally, you would come across sinister sights such as this:


terrifying oak


I survived. And thrived.

P.S. Being late for the farmers market caused me to reconsider going downtown. Instead, I went to the westside offshoot. Damn it, I liked it! SO disloyal, I know. But the crowds were nonexistant and the prices were better, and even late in the morning, I could still pick up these:



at a dollar a bunch, how cool is that!


* Milton, again.
** Oliver, again.

Why do I love you so?

Because you are so pretty to look at?

at jo's: sip it with the Times and a round of chess

at jo's: sweeten it (no!) or drink it plain

at jo's: outside, on a summer afternoon

I did the bold thing today. I bought my first latte at Jo’s. Jo’s Tazzina is the closest café to the apartment I’ll be moving to (in the Bassett ‘hood) and in a month or so, it will be my place of choice for a latte.

I have been reluctant to try a cup thus far. What if I hated it, what if the barista was without brewing brains? What if it just did not measure up?

But it did. And oh, are the colors good for camerawork!

[Tonya, I am like an unleashed animal around a latte - I cannot help myself with the camera. Ocean is but a vessel for my coffee-posting crazies.]

Left to die

Being a post-war baby in Poland can really cause you to enter the world not kicking and screaming, but coughing and gasping. I was not a healthy little number. By age two (and I mean 2 days), I seem to have been pegged as the one who couldn’t stomach life. By the next two (months this time), I managed to develop the dreaded pneumonia which, without antibiotics, and when added to the fact that I was not eating, was pretty much the kiss of death.

My mother likes to recount this as one hopeless situation. So what did she do? She took me to the village, left me with my grandparents and went back to work in the city (after all, she had one healthy one gurgling in the play pen already).

I have to believe that she shed many a tear, expecting (as she tells it) a little wooden coffin with the limp body of her baby, whom she had barely named some weeks earlier, there - waiting for her upon her next return to the village (they had no phones back then).

I always think that story, which is supposed to be ultimately upbeat (what do you know! On the strength of milk squeezed straight from the cow’s warm udder, you pulled through! -- I am told), is maybe a sign that abandonment works in my favor. True, I was not really abandoned, but I certainly was left to…well, die, actually (if I am to believe my mother’s chipper-ish choice of words).

So if you ditch me for one reason or another – I will surprise you and I will thrive. Fresh warm milk -- organic maybe? -- is all it takes. That is the most obvious conclusion to draw from this. It is, however, not the correct conclusion.

Where there’s a will there’s a way; where there’s no will there’s no way.

Sometime in the last 24 hours I realized that I have too much on my plate right now. Which then caused me to ‘fess up to myself that I am one basket case. And I have run out of steam. Normally, under such circumstances I am one to push the balls to the wall. I cut to the chase, go the extra mile and get things done. No lollygagging for me.

But it’s different now and I am making no bones about it. Each day this month I have been running like a chicken with its head cut off. Until now. Instead of putting the pedal to the metal, I am sitting here stumped and I know I’ll stay here thus til the cows come home. And I don’t even have cows.