grains of sand

It’s long past midnight and I am writing a post about a movie. I don’t typically write posts about movies, but the four of us were dazed by Brokeback Mountain. Agreement is rare among this very opinionated group. Worth savoring. And so I write. Quick notes, keeping me awake. Except that I would be awake anyway.

Have you taken to liking sweet wine? This one is just as…well, sweet, as the last you opened.
No, you could say that I’ve taken to buying cheap wine.

Hours later I am making blueberry pancakes. Do you want a second one? You have a long trip.

Why do we feel the need to eat for any journey? These are not the days of mules and horses pulling wagons past empty prairies. Still: please let me make you another batch.

In a few more hours the loft will be empty.

I park the car close to the back door. Many suitcases and boxes need to be loaded. These are post-holiday travels. I pause to look at the empty lot that stretches along the tracks, toward the lake. In the morning, the colors are gentle. If you sigh, it comess out as a gentle sigh, to match the peach in the sky.





The daughters are seasoned travelers. Well organized, prompt, they know the routines. We watch them take the escalator to the gate area. They turn the corner, out of view now.

My ex helps me at the loft. I have never in my life seen my ex sit back and do nothing when there are things to be done. The daughters’ room is going into sleep mode until their spring return. He puts away the last plate, the pan after the blueberry pancakes. I take him to the Chicago bus.

Echo Tap, Findorff Yard, Electric Earth Café – names given to mixes put together by a daughter for much of our car travel this winter break. They’re names taken from notable places around the loft: a bar-dive, a café we like to make fun of, the construction company that gutted and rebuilt the lofts where I live. Mixes that I don’t want to listen to this morning.

I break my glasses. Damn! I don’t have a valid prescription. I spend the afternoon at the mall, seeing an eye doctor. I did the same thing three years ago. My eyes are peered at by men who see dozens of patients a day, only once, never after. Transient doctors, never staying long here, in this commercial crazyhouse, working mall hours. The patients don’t ask for them by name. Next available, like at a grocery store checkout line.

Waiting for the glasses, I walk over to Barnes & Noble. I want books for little tikes that I am to visit tomorrow. I am drawn to familiar volumes. Can’t say that they’re perky titles. Can’t say these are perky times.





Long lines for everything. I haven’t showered yet. How can I be out and about wearing skuzzy clothes with yesterday’s lotion on my hands?

On the drive back to the now empty loft I dare put on a CD mix. I am used to sadness. If you look at the hourglass, where sand is changing compartments, you can see how tight things are there in the transition from one to the other. Then the sand settles in an easy way in the lower chamber. I’m in that bottleneck of grains passing tightly around me. They’ll settle down. I’ll settle down. It’s always like that.

run with the sheep

Opening night in Madison. The late late showing. Double screens. Packed audience. A TV camera taking in the long lines to get in. Tickets purchased ahead of time. Seats? Hard to find in a group.

I’m tired. One cup of coffee before. Typically not enough. Dark room. Sheep, mountains, beautiful sky on the screen.

No. No nap this time. Heath Ledger's performance is riveting. Totally.

Complete silence in the theater. No one moves. Some predictable ohhhhhhhs when a shift in story occurs that is predictable. But even in the predictable there is shock. And the agony of watching someone else’s pain. So perfectly depicted.

Brokeback Mountain. If you don't find it to be absolutely stunning, you have some explaining to do.

See? Not a word about pommes frites. I'm all over the blog map today.

why why why why why

This afternoon I was asked yet again – why do I blog (and photograph) so much about food?

I could have been glib: and you find politics, the subject of choice for so many bloggers, that much more interesting? (The answer may have been “yes” so I did not go that route.)

I’m glad people (some people, not the person I was with this afternoon, obviously) seem to accept my obsessive food focus.

But really, it’s not just about food. I know that someone may click on Ocean and scroll down and see a photo of pommes frites and say – okay, I’m not into that, and move on to something more heady (rather than stomachy).

And that’s okay. But those pommes frites? They speak to larger issues. I mean, anyone who does not understand that for me, those pommes frites represent all the pain and anguish of being human in this complicated world of ours is simply giving Ocean a cursory look.

And that’s okay too.

But do know that in my mind, even though I cannot always adequately put it into choice words, it really is more than just about food.

one plate after another

Late last night we set out to find food. Nothing reminds me more that I live in a small town than the absence of conviviality in eating establishments here after the clock strikes nine. Actually, the absence of open eating establishments itself late at night is enough to make me think it’s time to pack up and head for a more Mediterranean approach to eating: late, with lots of people, making lots of noise, over good food and wine.

Wait! No need to pack my bags! We have ourselves a new place off the square, run by a known chef. And and and and…..it is open until 1 am! Madison delivers! Home sweet home.

Time to support these efforts to keep our knives and forks clattering and working late into the night. We show up nice and late. And it’s still crowded. How many good surprises can I stomach during one evening?

One look at the menu and my spine tingles. French onion soup, pumpkin soup with roasted seed oil, figs and goat cheese drizzled with lavender honey, oysters and Madagascar prawns, lamb loin with white bean puree and violet mustard, truffled mac and cheese, scallops with braised endive – we ordered them all! And, because I witness a plate of fries making its way to another table, I practically accost a random waiter to bring us some of those as well. With a tub of garlic mayo for dipping purposes. Yum.

And then it gets confusing. When do you eat what? Tied to convention, we are thinking that first comes the soup then come the meaty fishy plates. We share, but only to a point. Each of us becomes invested in our selection. Don’t touch it! I have a right to try it first! – this is a common cry at our table as three forks reach for the plate of the fourth diner.

And so we eat. And it is good. Plates come and go, some large, some small. I am ecstatic. And increasingly not very hungry. Awaiting my last dish – the oysters and prawns – we banter and laugh and sit back, pleased with life, pleased with this new spot called CocCoLiQuot. And so we wait. And wait. And wait some more until we are the last ones there (it seems) and finally I note that the kitchen is empty and I have the feeling that a cold oyster still needs to be caught or cleaned or something, or maybe the flight from Madagascar is delayed, for these delicious foods are not before me.

It was not to be. Our waitperson, confused by the eating habits of our lot (for we ordered so much!), forgot to place my seafood order. Or, she thought that we should end with les pommes frites. For whatever reason, the last dish never came.

Do we leave displeased? But no! We are able to put aside small transgressions such as missing plates of food. We are thrilled; I, the sole resident of Madison out of the bunch, I am thrilled as can be. I can eat downtown, after midnight. I can eat morning noon and night. I am happy.



les wonderful pommes frites

Ocean update: a new and improved comments policy!

Most blogs I read have comments sections. In nearly all, commenters identify themselves in a consistent way – either with a link to their blogs or webpages, or by use of a pseudonym. The pseudonyms do not change over time. Indeed, I have come to know the commenter personalities by recognizing the name they give each time. The names may not be real, but in my reading of their posts or comments, I know something about these people. And so the conversation is a good one.

In only a couple of blogs, I find a heavy use of complete anonymity in the comments sections. I do not want Ocean to become a forum for anonymous commenters (who, for all I know are only one or two people, muckin’ around as if they were many). So long as I permit the use of “anonymous,” I cannot screen these out. And indeed, some are quite innocent. The writers may not know that I would like a consistent use of an identifying label.

Some are perniciously evil. Some play games by making up a name that they then toss out, only to pick up another. Some have taken to using a name that someone else has adopted as their own. You guys suck and if I sense that this is going on I will ignore you or delete you, as I see fit.

I respect and like comments, but I don’t want a trail of Anons. So please, use names, don’t steal the identities of others and stay with your choice. Please.

[I will also delete comments that bully, jab at or in any way demean anyone the wide world over.]

With deep appreciation,
Nina

toil and trouble

Upon learning of the Recent Great Changes:

Where exactly did you move to?
A loft. Downtown. It is exactly what I need: a large open space where the kitchen opens to the dining area, which in turn opens to the living area – all merging into an organic whole, ideal for a person who wants to cook for others and have them be present there, socially integrated into the process of putting food on the table…

Wow. So how long have you lived there?
Four months now.

And you’ve had bunches of people, eating together at the loft, enjoying each others' company, merging into an organic whole… wow.
More like an organic hole: there hasn’t been much of that actually. One housewarming dinner thing back in early October.

But you’ve cooked for your family and the occasional person that stops by?
Oh sure, that occasional person has had soups and stuff… Organic, but in the agricultural sense…

And family? Surely your motherly nin-clinations have led you to outdo yourself?
Indeed: I was glued to the kitchen space for Christmas Eve, Christmas breakfast, Christmas lunch, Christmas dinner. The buck, or rather the stove, stopped there. It did not help that we all decided clothes were getting tight.

So now, you still have daughters starved for their favorite mommy-meals, drifting in and out of the loft… are you cooking?
Well, no. You're asking why? (pause for profound thought…) I want to support the local chefs, that’s it! They’re having a rough go of it, what with people getting their credit card bills after the holidays, students being gone. I’m doing this for charitable reasons.



tonight's great sacrifice

heading north

Time to leave the big city and return home. Yippitayayey, git along little doggies, you know that Wisconsin will be your old home.

Where are you from?
I don’t know how to answer that. I live in Wisconsin for now.

No, wait, that’s no longer true. In 2006 I am introducing a new line:
I live in Wisconsin. I will keep on living in Wisconsin. Nothing leads me to believe I will live anywhere else. Except for long summers away, riding a motor bike in rural France.

When the weather turned nice in Evanston on Sunday, my thought was: I need to get to some place where the quality of the weather matters. It doesn’t in Evanston. Except when it is cold and you have to move the car every two hours until 6 pm because the parking police are out to get me. They already got me once, the little creeps, not again. Never again.

And on a tour of four night stands, my suitcase and computer in hand...
I could live four nights out of the week elsewhere. I could work on my classes, do my reports, emails, calls from some hole up north and come down only to teach. I need WiFi and a good grocery store, that’s all. Probably hard to come by up north. Forget it.

I have a song, I think it’s a song, it's about you…
I have this discussion with my friend Ed all the time. I ask:
Do you need other people?
No, not unless I can engage them and they me. Not for the sake of just being with people.
But, but, how is it that you could talk to someone and not try to engage them?
It either happens or it does not. It's okay if it does not.
And when you are engaged? Then what? Do you come to need that person (those people) to make you happy?

I got him there, because the answer is, of course, yes.

I wont move up north, south, east or west because I am engaged in multiple ways right here.

[Except when I have to pack up and leave. But only for a while, always just for a little while.]



first Cosmo of 06: to Ocean readers

sailing, sailing over the Ocean blue

Happy anniversary to me…

Awkward first steps: in my second blog post ever (January 3, 2004), I am already riddled with doubt, as I find myself without good material. I panic: if I post daily, will I resort to writing about the weather?

Eventually, I discover that I can write about the weather, or I can Write About The Weather. Eventually. But there are months when I worry: can I sustain this?

Happy anniversary to Ocean…

Is Ocean an extension of me? A small subset of nina expressions? Notably, I have never invited guest bloggers (kep doesn’t count)…

Happy anniversary selfish nina…

Hey, but I invited commenters this year!

Happy anniversary to me.

January 2nd, 2004, Ocean first popped up on the Net. A painless birth.

And now it’s been two years. AND I NEVER SKIPPED A DAY! People died, marriages crumbled, barren mountains beckoned and against all odds and perhaps for no good reason, each day I blogged, only once adjusting the clock by a couple of hours because while posting, I sort of kind of fell asleep at the computer and did not wake up til 2 am the next day. There, confession done with, let me go on.

If you don’t have anything to write about, why don’t you skip a day? Why force yourself to put something down? It’s your blog, you can write as often as you feel like it. Like, when you have something to say?

It is never the case that there is nothing to say about any particular day. Sometimes it takes a minute or two, okay, an hour or two. Once I must have taken (wasted?) three before I felt satisfied that a theme was good (enough) to develop into a (very short) story here on Ocean.

And so each day, I write.

I’m tacking onto this anniversary post a celebratory photo, taken just after midnight on New Year’s. What’s it like to live here, on this side of the ocean? What’s it like to put on striped hats and red white and blue leis? What’s it like to travel to Evanston just to eat dinner here at midnight? Ocean stuff. Pure Ocean material.




Just yesterday I got asked yet again (this time not in the context of blogging): why do you do things in such a crazy way? The answer? Obviously, to me, it doesn’t feel very crazy. Nutty people think themselves to be walking a straight line even as they zig zag all over the place.

Oh, and thank you. For reading. These daily posts. God, I can’t believe I’m still doing this. Okay, I can see the insanity. In a lucid moment that comes every once in a while. I can see it. But it still feels right.

at the end of the day

When the bell tolls I would like to be at a table eating and drinking and laughing. Some (my mother?) may find this to be a superficial and sketchy approach to things, but there you have it. I am what I am. When the work is done and the sun has set, I want the sensual pleasure of a meal, prepared by someone who appreciates the need for the fresh and the honest.

[And yes, I have to come to this table with tired hands, hands that have done their work, hands that have wiped tables and helped frail little ones, hands that have buttered bread for others, hands that have carried bags across the boundaries and borders, hands that have held pens, scribbling endless words until the ink runs out.]

And now, these hands want to hold knives forks and spoons, to raise glasses, toasting life, toasting stories told by others, toasting the end of the day, the end of the year, all endings sad and beautiful, finished with a sip of good wine.

To this table I should come adorned because adornments are a precious statement that we are not animals, we preen ourselves and our environments to provide joy and some minimal levels of beauty. Behold! That is you and me, clean, fresh, glittery, colorful, dramatic.

On New Year’s Eve, minutes before the small stores of Lincoln Park close their doors to the old year, I am rifling through racks of camisoles, ones that show off lacy patterns and silky textures from behind my low-cut sweater, itself outlined in glittery beads.



in the dressing room: which one?


Finally, adorned and festively attired, we make our way to the Chef’s Station (the papers proclaim it to be the best meal in town for those who care about their bank accounts).

A gratifying sight: the table is set for serious eating. No glitter here, just good, sturdy cutlery, at least six pieces deep, announcing at least 6 dishes ahead. The chef will be on display tonight, this proudest night for any cook. You don’t hold back on talent or ingredients now. You let it all out. And he does: pate with sour cherry chutney and balsamic, rutabaga and carrot bisque with cardamom cream, cedar planked salmon with a winter terrine and a lobster-saffron sauce, black cherry sorbet, tenderloin with lobster mushroom and chervil soufflé in a red wine reduction and white truffle oil, pistachio crusted goat cheese on baby greens with roasted strawberry dressing and the best of the best: warm dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate and lavender ice cream in a raspberry coulis.



set for serious eating


At midnight the hats and horns come out. I nudge a not too shy fellow diner to start his song. He has been wanting to sing to his Scottish heritage even as his date keeps telling the world that this is a huge mistake – the lad cannot carry a tune.

No matter, he’s drowned out by the merrymakers who make it their own song.

Two more food presentations and we are done.

The last lick and slurp, the last gulp, the year has ended. 2006 begins.



the end, presented at the beginning of 2006

tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc

what are you doing new year’s?

What am I ever doing: eating, drinking, taking photos, grinning, thinking, spinning back ‘n forth back ‘n forth, writing.

what are your new year’s resolves?

I suppose I should eat less, drink less, take more or fewer photos – depending whom I’m with, spin less, write more, grin more… Oh, I don’t know. Leave me alone.

what was the most memorable moment of 2005?

You’re asking about good moments? Because I had three significant ones and they happened in spring, summer and fall. I guess last winter was sort of a dry spell moment-wise.

What do you hope for in 2006?

Fewer rotten tomatoes in this world, more patience within me in dealing with the rotten tomatoes in my own back yard.

How will you improve Ocean in the year ahead?

Take writing lessons? C’mon, I try. Okay, I’ll try harder.

Any parting words for 2005?

Yeah. I had the year of years. Nothing happened as planned. I survived. To everyone’s survival and to positive outcomes. Especially to you, readers. I favor the chosen few who read Ocean. For you I wish music within and pristine silence of moon-drenched fields all around.

Happy New Year.

where are you going, where are you going, will you take me with you?

Where am I heading on this next-to-last-day in December?

No, Oscar, I am not having an existential moment. This is a very real query.

A hint:


with lots of cheese and a holiday twinkle

Anyone who has ever lived in Chicago will answer: what the hell, that’s a deep dish Lou Malnati’s pizza. Are you in Chicago or did you order on-line?

I am indeed in Chicago and will be here for the next few days. My family follows me to Madison and so it is only just and proper and good that I should follow them here for the New Year’s celebration. We like our habits, external pressures and legal proceedings notwithstanding. For us, there is only one right way to flip that last calendar page and that way is to sit together at a table and eat and drink and make fun of life as we have known it in the year that just passed.

Driving to Chicago in something that vacillates between a snowstorm and a downpour, I realize that this stretch of road is rapidly becoming either a journey toward heaven or hell. The blinding slush storm is breathtakingly beautiful in a fantastically terrifying sort of way.

Squeezed together in a zippy blue car, with suitcases and parcels piled around us, the three of us sing. Loudly. It is what we do on road trips. There’s some harmony, there’s even some recognition of lyrics. True, I would not know a correct lyric from the flag pledge, but I listen hard and follow an eight of a beat behind.

As the rain/snow swirls and trucks speed past and spray us with extra barrels of freezing wetness, I keep my ex’s car in the rear view mirror (as he wants to follow close behind), and we speed forward into the unknown. Oh, alright, not really The Unknown. I know my way around these parts. Still, it is, on this stormy day, a blind journey, to the notes of Journey and Paisley and Williams, and at the end of the day there is this fantastic Chicago style pizza. I live a good life.

pink drinks and white nights

There we were, last night, the Sad Liberals, coming together in the old neighborhood, skirting in our discussions the real troubles of the world, preferring to focus on developments in our own homes and spaces, because, really, it’s too hard to replay the news stories that one hears each day, too hard to remember how close it came to being a different set of stories that November 2nd.

When I left the old neighborhood this past summer to live downtown, I am sure in those blocks I left behind images of a person driven by wild chaos: those last months were all about frantic cooking, ranting, packing and yes, cosmo drinking. A mad fury, needed to get me from one place to the next.

So I am handed a gift last night, something for the tree, but something I decided to put up on my loft refrigerator.





A nostalgic prod into days when I made cosmos that were too strong, where I hardly saw the pink in them, where what I said did not matter just as long as I said it forcefully, where evenings rolled into mornings on the strength of a calendar pushing one day into the next.

Of course, friends know better than to say that I have settled down into a steady pace now. I’m up late, up early, up all ours of the night. Agitated by the wealth of bright things that happen each day, I need less sleep. Markers of chaos then, of great sanguinity now.

Late last night I drove home on one of those bright winter nights were you need no headlights to see what’s ahead. Deer tracks, visible on both sides of the road, white fields, tinted with blue light, serene calm outside, pounding music inside my own space. That pretty much describes my movements now – both the serenity and the pounding music within.

not to be catty...

My friends have cats. That’s not the worst of it: it seems that most of the bloggers listed at the side here have cats. So anything I say about cats is bound to elicit strong thoughts and feelings in the vast majority of readers.

My attitude toward cats has been that they are best left to their devices. Preferably in a barn where they can chase mice and in that way participate in the race for the survival of the stronger species. Though I love birds so I have issues with cats there.

But every once in a while there will come a cat that I do like. No, not the cute little kitten, such as the one I took in as a grad student. That one clawed at my face to get me out of bed before noon – a horrible and spiteful little act. No grad student I ever knew got up before noon. I had to, because of The Cat.

I’m thinking that I like my friend Ed’s cat, Isis. (His other cat -- what can I say… barn life for you as far as I’m concerned.)

But I see that Isis has rights, many rights, ones that any number of people can only dream of. The type of rights I generally associate with the US Constitution. For him it’s all about liberty and the pursuit of happiness with a lot of freedom to participate in commerce thrown in: of the food-transporting kind. Except that he doesn’t have to transport it very far as there are bowls of cat food everywhere. Ed tells me that this is the way it must be with two cats around. Otherwise they fight. Granted. My sister and I always had separate bowls of soup and cereal.

Typically I let Ed know that I am dropping by his sheep shed. But last night his phone was endlessly busy and so I showed up unannounced. Isis obviously had not been told that I was about to usurp his dominant position and hold on the household and so he was out and about, doing his cat thing. Smugly, I entered the sheep shed. The hour is mine, I'm thinking.

Not true. Within minutes Isis, his cat instincts finely set to detect possible usurpers, was back at the shed.

And so I have become accustomed to devoting the first hour of a visit to basically kissing up to Isis. It’s the only way to buy an hour or two of freedom from cat interference into pretty much anything – from sipping wine and munching chocolate to resting with a good book, or what have you. (The cat rejects the wine I bring over, thinking probably that anything of indifferent vintage is not worthy of him, but he sniffs the French chocolate appreciatively. Thanks Isis.)

Okay, so Isis I like. But convince me that other cats out there, the ones that jump all over your fine chocolates and your friend’s lap at awkward times are to be admired and adored. What other beast has such privileges? Fish stay in their tanks, dogs stay in their kennels or get the basement treatment when guests come. Cats? Cats set the agenda. And owners sheepishly acquiesce. That includes sheep shed-living owners.

But I do like Isis.



Larry, the other one, watching the dusk roll in. and me.

three points

The fog ate everyone up. But how do you explain the emptiness of the apartment hallways? All public spaces in my loft building are empty.

Celebrate! I am credit card debt free. As of 10:10 a.m. this morning.

My daughters suggested a pedicure. Never ever, not at any time in the past has anyone except for me come anywhere close to my toe nails with utensils and brushes. Awesome, especially the sugar exfoliant massage.

That’s all. Nothing more to share for today.

fishing alone

I am in court first thing this morning. A foggy day, a wet kind of day. On the bench, my favorite judge. Memories of past trials before her, remembering her compassion, her wisdom.

We’re wrapping things up now, we gather our papers. The opposing counsel comes up, we shake hands. As she turns to leave, she tosses this over her shoulder: you are a great writer – she tells me. I am putting on my coat. I stop. Writer? My last published law review piece was on the impact of the court system on indigent mothers who neglect their children. Surely she is not referring to that. I can barely remember what I wrote there. I have so little patience for most law review articles.

And your photos – outstanding! – she continues. Oh! Ocean! You are referring to my blog! The judge looks up. Blog? Tell me, how can I find it?

Suddenly I remember that my last blog post was about a sheep shed. My favorite judge is about to read a post about sheep shed. And éclairs. And French chefs with cute derriers. My mind races over recent posts. I remember, with relief, editing out an expletive at the last minute. “Hell” is tame. The previously inserted word was not.

We walk out the court building, my ex and I. We talk about the attorneys, about their reading of Ocean. He drops me off at the lake. I want to walk among the fishermen who are out there in great numbers.

Are you cold? I ask one. No, not at all. We have enclosures.

They sit and wait. Mostly, they sit with their own thoughts.



fishing, alone


A few days ago, one fell through the ice. Within minutes they pulled him out. He went out too far.
Oh, so there are others, always there are others.

How many do you catch?
On a good day, 200.
You eat them all?
The limit is 25, we can only keep 25. The fishing is good here, I travel all the way from Fort Atkinson just to fish here.

A long drive to sit alone.

A big grin covers his face. It’s worth it. But then, ice fishermen are an interesting lot. Sit with me and you can watch.

I’m not dressed for it so I walk back to the loft. But I have been drawn to the sight of these people every day now, for weeks. I’ll look for you next time -- I tell him. He sets up his post and throws down a line and waits.



pulling your own lot

a sheepish invitation

I have known Ed since the middle of October. I have fed him bowls of soup, he has helped fix mixers and VCRs at the loft, we have traveled to France together. But I had never set foot in his place until today. Why? Because he lives in a sheep shed and he has always had this line: one look at my sheep shed and you’ll quit being my friend.

As if I would not be friends with someone who lives so… humbly.

Shockingly, I received an e-invite today. Come on over. I’ve cleaned the place up. Me: can I bring my camera?

I rushed. After all, he could change his mind.

Ed lives a mere 9.5 minutes away from me. I live in the epicenter of downtown Madison. Yet, when you approach his shed, you lose the city and suddenly find yourself in the deep countryside. He likes it that way.

I walk up to his shed, noticing the attachment to a dilapidated barn. The shed is slanted. At the lower end Ed, at 6 foot 4, barely clears the ceiling.




I open the door. He is polishing floors. He does not notice I am there. His cats stare at me. Who the hell are you? If a cat can glare with distrust and suspicion, then these guys are glaring. I give them time and space. It is like that with cats and children of another.

Ed designs machines. Predictably, there are machines and tools in odd places. Okay, I am cool with that. My work space intrudes into my living space. So does his. Only it looks more bold and daring to see high tech machines next to the comfy reading chair. It's not a set straight out of Pottery Barn.










Outside, I am shown where the sheep once moved from the barn to the shed. His sheep shed. Obviously not while he has been inhabiting it. Still, it gives one pause.

I want to be honest. The sheep shed has track lighting. It has a better shower situation than any number of b& b’s we stayed in while in France. I mean, it may not be classy, but it’s no shed that any sheep I know have ever inhabited.

Still, it is a conversation stopper. And where does your friend live – I am asked. In a sheep shed – is my honest reply. After that, it becomes all about the weather.

merrily we roll along

Rerun performances: same baked treats for breakfast, same squash soup with goat cheese dumplings, same Cornish hens, same chocolate-orange yule log. We are a family that repeats itself.

All this talk about people staying up late to wrap presents? Hmmm. Me, I just get up before the rest (lofters sleep late) and spend an hour playing on the computer. Merrily. Eventually I get to putting ribbons on boxes. Selectively. Weirdly shaped boxes don’t get ribbons. What for, who’ll even notice? I bake, then I wake. It all works.

What did I enjoy putting underneath the tree? I have to give credit to Jenny’s inspiration: origami papers to make wild animals and a set of paint-by-numbers cards. I warned the recipients that it worked best if you had a potent beverage next to the paints .

Afternoon activity: each year it’s the same. A several hour discussion as to which movie we should see late, after dinner. Endless reviews are presented, three agree, the fourth vetoes, and then we start again.

Christmas. What is it about this day for people like me? Each hour evokes the mood of the same hour last year and the year before. On this one day change is not welcome. Just today, repetition is bliss.




secretly, last minute



an ornament hiding in the ribbon box




new latte mugs, Bourges cookies

it’s Christmas eve, spot, we’ve got lots to do…

So goes the opening line of a kids’ book. Then, in fewer than 100 words, a story unfolds. It’s not a high-drama thing. Spot bumps a few ornaments and the (single?) mommy dog gently scolds him before telling him good night. The next day they find a bone or some such conventional doggie toy and all is well.

I probably haven’t done a great job of convincing anyone here of how evocative this little story is but believe me, it became a favorite in this house – for building on a feeling of warmth and eagerness that so often accompanies this night before Christmas. (Or you can go the poem route. Same thing.)

[Of course, I’m remembering reality here on Ocean. I just read a few blogs where family members were sick for the holidays, and we wont even go to the more troubled corners of the globe which, at last count, outnumber households of peace, of love, of joy.]

This evening of great music and beautiful colors, of foods and friendship and love has had its share of bumps even in households where all should be calm and all should be bright, such as this one. Some eight years ago I distinctly remember wanting to take the gift ribbon so that I could tie it tightly around someone’s neck until they squirmed. And this morning I woke everyone with a growl. I can’t get your goddamn VCR to work and so if you want to watch your goddamn favorite video later today you can goddamn get yourself someone else to fix the goddamn machine! This blasphemy on Christmas Eve day no less. [Thanks Ed. Everyone should have a friend who can fix goddamn machines on short notice.]

It’s because of all this range of bad impulses and frustrations that surface at the slightest provocation that New Year’s resolutions become so attractive – sort of like the idea of dieting after a pastry indulgence. I’ll be good tomorrow.

For me this day is special. I dig deeply within my cluttered soul to make it so with a determination and insistence that comes from no religion but from knowing that I can and should do better. An unexpected visit (Oscar and B., thank you), a moment at the window watching the fog hide the Capitol, Christmas Eve dinner as it has been eaten since as students we first ate it in Scotland decades ago – fondue, with daughters at our elbows now, with laughter, always with laughter and love.

Happy holidays, happy days, gentle loving days to y’all.



Christmas Eve on the lake: a gathering of friends

in the matter of the tree, part 3

So it’s beautiful. But then, it always is.

1966: I set out in the cold, snow-covered, dismally poor Polish countryside, in search of a tree. I am staying with my grandparents in their village home and I am determined.

I find a small tree, ask a farmer to help me bring it home, where we make paper ornaments, my sister and I, adding them to the dozen glass ones we had kept from years ago. The entire project takes great effort. Most likely, more effort than is expanded by my Polish Christian friends who also have trees that year. For me, the tree has no religious symbolism at all. But it is beautiful and I want my childhood sugarplums even as my (parental-sibling) family is already beginning to unravel – a process that would continue even to this day.

2005: There is a gift under this tree, delivered earlier today by my summer real estate agent. It is somehow fitting that the first gift (one gift) should be from her. A Wisconsin girl, she brought a Wisconsin cheese and a Wisconsin wine. She sat down, looked around and said: this loft fits you. It is how I imagine apartments in Chicago look. A Midwestern girl, she thinks within a Midwestern orbit.

1999: When my daughters go off to college, the tree project is always accomplished on the day after Thanksgiving. They want time with the pine scent, with the colors and lights, with the feeling of sugarplums dancing before them. By Christmas week, when they next see the tree, the branches are turned down, brittle with the weeks of waiting for the daughters to return. I mist the needles with water, I check the base to make sure it is drinking and still it becomes dry, significantly so by Christmas Day.

I was thinking this year that I do not want my limbs to turn down, brittle from sitting quietly and waiting for my daughters to return home for a visit. When they come I should be fresh and peppy, having myself returned from somewhere just in time to greet them.

2005: With each year the daughters take on more of the project. Now, in their adulthood, they do it all. No, wait, we unwrap the toilet paper from each ornament and lay it on the table for them to pick up and place on the tree.






No one is hungry this year during tee trimming, possibly because it follows dinner. Or is it because so much is different this year?






I am the only one who has grown used to the loft. I have lived here now for four months. It feels like home. How does it feel to my daughters? Their dad?

When the tree first went up, earlier this week, it offered an intense scent. Unmistakable and pervasive, it alerted you to its presence. By now, the tree has adjusted. You could say it is part of the loft – it no longer feels strange to see it here and the fragrance blends into the smells of cooking and the freshness of its lofty environment.

Maybe this year’s Christmas tree project was the toughest after all. Or maybe what we are trying to do here at the loft as everyone gathers for the holiday is actually quite simple. Maybe the enduring nature of this project, which has survived our reshuffling, their moving out, my moving as well, maybe all this is why our tree this year is especially tall, beautiful.

in the matter of the tree, part 2

I wake up knowing that the day is now longer. We are moving toward summer.

And still the tree remains untrimmed.

[One year, I imagine that we will wake up on December 25th and decide that there just wasn’t the time or the will to trim the tree (even though tree decorating remains at the top of our list of pleasurable holiday rituals). And the tree will remain there, in its beautiful, pristine splendor, naked, without ornamentation that one year. There’s beauty in that as well.]

We intended to go through our splendid evening of tree trimming last night. But the day took another direction.

Suddenly, as everyone rushes to get things done, my pace has slackened. I have my daughter here, at my side and the movement through a day becomes very different. More protracted, leisurely. We have things to do, tasks, chores, all of it and yet our inclination is to linger. For no reason, we detour to look at antiques and embroidered pillows, we sip lattes at length and watch calm moms handle toddlers’ spills of frothy milk. Outside on Monroe Street, we pause just to look at how stunning a stream of cars can be against a receding winter sun, framed by the bare branches of Madison’s numerous trees.






At home, I want to bake something. One does not come back from ten days of pastry-gawking in France without wanting to do at least the simplest pastry (an eclair) right here, filled with the familiar rich crème patisserie (chocolate this time).





And as we drive to the airport late in the day to pick up daughter number two, it becomes clear that tree trimming will not take place on this solstice night. It cannot be rushed. These hours have to be taken as they present themselves. And they are presenting themselves very slowly, deliciously. Dare I say it? Christmas may just have to wait.

Or not. A new plan is hatched: tonight. The tree gets dressed tonight. I think.

to be continued

in the matter of the tree

Before leaving for France, I bought a Christmas tree for the loft. It was no small matter, if you forgive the wording here: the instructions were that it should tower.

Ed, with his rusty truck where mice have taken to nesting and myself, out searching for a big tree. It took two days until, indeed, one was found.

The tree rested on the truck for the weeks I was away. Monday, first thing, while the crows slept and the sparrows dozed, the tree was brought into the loft. Up it went, reaching for the ceiling, the 30 foot ceiling, up up (okay, maybe not to the top, but pretty darn high).

Secured, positioned, ready for the arrival of three people who, together with me, have decorated a tree every year since time began.

First person arrives. She looks critically at it and pronounces it magnificent. But in the wrong place.

Second person arrives and says “not bad” and notes that the position could stand adjustment.

Third person about to arrive. First two people have given excellent advice. The entire loft is rearranged. The tree is pushed against the brick wall. It kind of rocked and wobbled in protest, but it survived the transport from point A to point B.

Tonight, the trimming begins.

Let it be noted that of equal importance is the food that you eat while you trim. Bubbly drinks and festive nibbles.

So, on this day I'm dreamily raising my glass (of cranberry grape juice at this point) to the tree, the wonderful tree that brings people and food together.

To be continued.



wobbling heights

weighty thoughts

Yesterday, Tonya wrote about a dinner party discussion she had where she posed the question “which would you prefer: to be invisible or to have the ability to fly?” I got all serious on her. Because I really don’t want either.

I was telling this to my daughter who is home for the holidays and she asked if not flying or invisibility, which super power would I like to lay a claim on?

Can it be a talent? I want an extraordinary talent. Can I have that? – I asked her.
She sighed in the way that people do when you are not cooperating with them and generally being difficult.

Typically, when people play this game, they refer to super hero powers of the “read minds,” “instant transport,” “strength,” “cause things to freeze or burn,” that kind of thing.

I don’t want any of those, I told her.

You don’t want instant transport? So that you don’t have to waste hours getting yourself from one place to another?

No. If getting there is interminable, then the arrival is more rewarding. If it’s cold outside, then entering a warm room is more pleasurable. Besides, where is the exercise in instant transport?

Pick another then. Surely there is something you could live with. Fly, read minds, twist metal, you can pick one, can't you? It's just a game.

No. I want none of it. Patience. Can I ask for an inhuman dose of it?

The universal conclusion has to be that I’m not good at playing games. I cause trouble and make people gather up their belongings and go home prematurely. Okay, fine. I have myself a New Year’s Resolution. Less stick in the mud, more go with the flow.

from Madison: my Oscar speech

I’m feeling grateful. The trip was such a boost for me, but the boost came not only from being in France. It also came from those who hovered and helped. And there were many:

* Every trip I have ever taken in the last 20 years has had three people tracking my moves and, when the technology evolved to permit it, sending peppy emails. It means tons to me, guys. Thank you.

* And speaking of emails, my students are used to a 5 minute email turn around. There is hardly a minute in the day when I am not connected. Except when I travel. Sorry. It took me sometimes hours to answer your Qs. You are so patient. Now I’m back to 5 minutes, okay?

* On this trip there was Ed: my travel companion with almost as strong a personality as mine. Thanks for not taking that train to visit friends in Nottingham the day I punched too hard. Oh, and thank you for looking at the maps so carefully that when we got lost, it was almost always my fault. Almost. That return to Yvoy? I really was right. I took the correct turn on the round-about. And thanks for loving the food so much. And for ending each day with a smile.

* The chefs at both Cheval Blancs: dang blasted, you guys rock! And chef Michel – your office clutter (and your derriere) was adorable.

* The Air France agents who handed out Valrhona chocolates at CDG airport. This year I had access to the business lounge. There I am pampered and spoiled with champagne, croissants, cookies, baguettes, you name it. But the masses upstairs get nothing. This time everyone at the gate got champagne and Valrhona chocolates. How nice.

* Oh, all the French waiters. I want to kiss your professional faces – you are so great at what you do. My heroes.

* The older woman in Blere who decided she wanted to guide my car out of a tight spot. Her gesturing and waving me forward was precious. I will not forget it soon.

* The commenters, all of you, thank you. There are times when I wonder how sane I am typing away at 4 in the morning, bugging locals for Internet access, conniving ways of dialing up if all else fails. I mean really, you have to wonder. Then. I hear from you and I know you’re reading and it makes it less nutty to be testing the patience of all those around me. Thank you for your words, your encouragement, your time.

~~ from your very humbled Ocean author

from france: final fireworks

Yesterday -- the last day. Morning spent walking through the rich countryside of central France; the afternoon -- in an ostensibly sleepy cathedral town that was not so sleepy on the last shopping Saturday before Christmas. Dinner at le Cheval Blanc. And it’s over. This morning we head back for Madison.

Here it is, a final burst of fireworks from a day that had it all:



is this any way to start the day?





Yvoy le Marron: village chat





he gets around (but why not through the chimney?)





la vraie campagne (the real countryside)




the sun comes out





the ducks play




forest light



Later, in Bourges:




here as well




first stop: pastries of course




dare I order the big one?





no, two small ones will do (Ed shares)





crowds come out on this last Saturday before Christmas





but at dusk, in the shadows of the cathedral...





it's not all about shopping -- a Christmas fair: colorful scarves, beautiful voices





at the fair: a dreamer




hot stuff





on stilts: working the crowds



And back at the Auberge du Cheval Blanc:



the best meat dish of the trip: terrine with onion confiture




scaling back: only 4 this time





the best rendition of that oozing chocolate indulgence