Spinning tops

Life is a blurr (like the photo below?)

Things are spinning, spinning, oh! those of you who were children in the fifties and sixties: remember those tops we had? The ones where we wound the string around and around, climbing it up the sides of the top and then with one fast release – off it went!




Sometimes I think that I have been using my years to wind up this top of mine and now I am letting it fly. Wheeee! Such a cool toy (sometimes the spin is a dud, a failure).

So I’m spinning along, only it seems that, unlike the toy, my speed is increasing.

Diversions, there are diversions: currently I am enjoying the company of one daughter who is home for a few days. Another will join us soon. This is a movement I can live with. Their popping in for a brief spell is like a coating of rich dense chocolate over a candied orange peel. [Now why did I think of that? I am not sure…]

This morning I went to the Saturday market. My first this year! I’m posting three pictures: one of our local cooking hero of the year, Chef Tory, taking care of foraging for foods at the market because his employed forager (me) decided she didn’t feel like working today. [Does he look peeved? No, that’s what makes him cooler than cool. More Tory news later as I plan on celebrating his ascent this week to restaurant stardom later tonight.]

The second photo is of a person who loves her spice girl treat on a Saturday morning (a daughter who has heretofore resisted being part of an Ocean post, but for some reason decided to oblige today; the surprise of the moment was so great that I rushed with the shot blurring it to pieces, of course).

The third is of the bouquet that traveled home with us. If only I could post the incredible fragrance. It smells like…lilacs. Real, wonderful, blooming lilacs. No surprise there.

so cool! 

wonderful 

perfect 

On having someone important ripped from your life

It takes time to develop trust and confidence in a person, to experience mistakes, to repair them, to start afresh, to build and grow, to feel happy and secure in what you have created together. You can’t have that special bond right away, no matter how good the chemistry, how delightful the encounters.

Okay, so it’s there, you’re happy, you hope they’re happy. And then pffft! They’re gone. Just like that.

This is the story of Eva, the waxing woman, the one who was the first to ever shape my eyebrows, the one whom I had just recently grown to rely on. I come home and there is a message on my machine: Eva has moved. She is no longer available. I need to schedule an appointment with someone else.

Easier said. As if I can just plunge right into another relationship. Eva, whom I trusted to be part of my Madison days for a long long time, Eva who loved to talk about how wonderful her visits to Warsaw had been, Eva, who convinced me that my future lies within the world of wax, Eva has betrayed me and moved to greener pastures. Thanks a lot.

Would you take the last miserable piece of sushi offered on an empty plate?

Tonya, Oscar and I were at a party today where there was not enough food. An hour into the event, all platters stood nearly empty. The saddest was the sushi tray, for on it rested one solitary piece of sushi – the reject, the one that no one grabbed in the end and in its isolation, it appealed to none of us.

Oscar remarked that the three of us were of different ethnicities and each of our heritages lead us to demand of parties that there be food. I had to answer that each of our heritages was actually uniquely focused on food and no one from our necks of the woods would regard a party a success unless people left saying “there’s too much food!”

We left early. It is a rule: you leave a party before the last piece of sushi gets taken. Take heed: never, ever run out of nibbles one hour before the guests are supposed to leave.

Local hero

If you're dining at Madison's L'Etoile anytime from tonight onwards, seek out Tory: chef, and as of today, proprietor. Tell him congrats and that you're rooting for him. And then do root for him -- he's got the talent to truly succeed.

My future with the restaurant? No longer uncertain. I'm on board after the month of May -- with the coolest sign-on in the world: whichever Saturday I feel like working.

An ode to the insolent and surly

God, I love these two: rotten and crabby, mean and quarrelsome, churlish and ill-tempered, oooooh, they are my kings and queens! I love their boldness, their from-the-gut honesty, their bravado, their swagger, their “don’t mess with me” stance.

I love it, love it, love it!

I love reading it, eating it first thing in the morning, I love running into it in the course of the day – sends chills down my spine! You vamp! You monster you! Let me get a little closer so that I can feel a tingle from your impertinent and saucy self!

It’s like a cuddle with the devil: get rid of the pink, the fluff, let’s have a black & red attack, with fierce fires raging, pushing that steamy arrogance forward…mmmmmm, sexy, nice!

Oh, to trample down the timid wretches, the cowering cringing unassuming yielding, always goddam yielding spineless wimps: get out of my way!

Yeah, bring on the disdainful, domineering, self-centered ooooh, there are not enough adjectives out there to describe them: my kind of people! Come out, let’s play, I’m in the mood for YOU!

And now that we had our little play, can we all please settle down and try on kindness for size? **** (fill in your favorite curse word), it can't be that hard.

Blogging mommies, blogging women

Oscar (what, you have never read Oscar? Go read Oscar!!) does a nice tribute to moms who blog.

I, too, am enamored with this group: their stories are poignant and often brilliantly insightful. Their dilemmas are real and heartfelt. Their blogs are among the most captivating to read. And whereas the typical blogger makes a million references to every nuance of her or his latest little worry or disgruntlement (I include myself in this group), blogging moms are living the saintly lives where internal peace of mind always always has to be put aside when a kid calls. And a kid calls very often in the course of a childhood.

Oscar asked me if I minded being “outed” with my parenthood. He was right to ask as, for the most part, I keep my own daughters out of the blog. I traded away the right to comment here on their lives by writing under my own name. True, they live far away (in a small city on the east coast, easily recognizable by the careful reader as I visit there often enough) and they are older (23 and 20) and so stories of toddler antics would have to be replaced with their more adult cleverness and sharp wit. And they are the wittiest of all witty people out there! But I stay silent about their world.

One question that I have for you, the reader: so what has happened to all the women who are done with child-rearing? Are they too exhausted to blog? With one notable exception, every female blogger that I know is either prior to or in the midst of child rearing. And even if she decides not to have children – she is definitely under the age of fifty. Young voices permeate the blogosphere: they set the tone even as they write from a history that is very very short.

Oh point me to the blogging woman who is a decade older than I am! Missing, she is missing from my list of daily blogs. [The one small consolation is that Ocean has linked me with readers who fall into that group. They are among my favorite correspondents. They pick up things in Ocean – small, deliberate things that, with rare exceptions, a younger reader will have missed, being, it seems, forever in a hurry to get to the punch line and move on to the next blog.]

Still, I am mesmerized by the singular and yet familiar stories of the mommy blogs. And I read them with a smile, because I know that eighteen years of mommy-sainthood brings you the reward of an adult friendship that is indescribably wonderful. And strong. And enduring. Like no other.

New York Interlude: and how will I choose to remember my trips to the city?

If you go out on a bright day, you can find what you're looking for: the good stuff.

Isn't it important to leave places with good and kind images? Isn't it entirely within us to think just in this way?

P.S. In the last possible second the purse issue resolved itself: small, sleek, marigold yellow, a pouch crossing over and freeing your hands, from Canada, sold with a smile.

stick with the NYC classic 

small pleasures for small people 

an NYC moment 

losing yourself in a big one 

finding the pink 

New York Interlude: admission

If I never left Madison, I would spend no money on clothes. The town does not require updating a wardrobe (the slogan t-shirt from ten years ago still works today; the walking shoes look pretty much the same). Moreover, I hate the malls and the one or two stores on State Street that could tempt me are not on my daily path. No see, no buy.

Damn this city of many stores! New York is another matter altogether. You come here, you spend money, even money that you don’t have. One swipe of the plastic and you are four sacks of clothes richer and that much closer to entering credit card debt forever.

It’s in the walking, I know it is. You have to pass stores to get places. Stores with wonderful sales. Stores that have your size in everything. Stores that remind you what fun it is to put on a bright neon green skirt and set it off with a hot salmon shirt. Stores that tell you that there is a reason why you tend to your appearance (in Madison, I often wonder – why bother?). Devilishly self-indulgent places where you can focus on yourself: I am being good to me me me! I am layering protective armor that’ll keep me from tumbling into an abyss of despair!

And there’s the “this’ll be the last chance” bothersome thought. Man, I am retreating into a Neanderthal shopping cave, where I wont be buying much of anything. I better attend to my wardrobe now, because there may be no shopping tomorrow. Never mind that I wont even be in Madison a full week before I am out again, tempting myself even more.

I know. Many have walked this path of addictive buying before me. It is evil. It is vain. It is fantastic!

Ah, what the hell: I need the pick-me-up. I need the full blue skirt and the coffee pants and of course the neon green thing because everyone has something in neon green this season. I tell myself that I am a deserving professional woman (even though my acquisitions seem almost anti-professional) and that I buy everything on sale anyway.

Life is all about adornments and tragedy. Not that the former obliterates the latter but I can sure as hell deal with tragedy much better if I'm wearing the shoes with the yellow ribbon and a full skirt hugging the hips, with a cool little T just reaching the beltline.

New York Interlude: leaving the city

I’m on my way home to Madison today. I have a morning in the city. Did I miss anything? Should I have gone somewhere, done something differently?

Yes, definitely. Why is it that over the years I have shifted in my thinking so that these days, more often than not I am convinced that each day could have been done with greater panache, savvy, strength, cleverness? Only when I was much younger (twenties, thirties) did I believe that my days were forgivable lessons rather than correctable mistakes.

So on a practical note: what does one do with a last morning in NY?

The obvious is chasing down the cursed purse. Perhaps I should strive for the less obvious.

New York Interlude: once a brat always a brat

Continuing on my trend of seeing NY-specific movies when in New York, I took in two in the last couple of days. Both pleasant and nicely big-applish. One, the Interpreter, struck a chord.

This is not a post about how I could not get enough of Sean Penn’s face – especially in the last scene. Were I to write on that, I would have to add that in addition to great chefs and great writers I am prone to falling in love with men with expressive faces. Or at least with that particular expressive face.

It is, instead, a post about the UN – an organization that elicits tremendously strong feelings in me, though not of the “I am in love with Sean Penn’s expressive face” kind.

Now that I live in Wisconsin, the word brat connotes big greasy sausages, on a bun, with beer.

But many decades ago it was a label thrust upon me by virtue of my father’s work for the United Nations. I was a UN brat. We, children of the diplomatic corps, we ran around the UN building thinking our parents would save the planet for us. We believed in their work and in the hundreds of relief agencies that came to the aid of forgotten, neglected people in far off places.

And I am sure every one of us, even the greatest cynic who’ll flaunt countless examples of failure will acknowledge that the world without the UN, would be worse off. Even without the top fifteen floors of the Secretariat building, it would be worse off.

Today I watched the mayors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima sign declarations of peace just next to the General Assembly (Ocean felt that it ought to bear witness). The Japanese media were there en mass, but ours was conspicuously absent. It struck me right then that in the parts of the UN open to the public, foreign visitors outnumber Americans ten to one.

As I was waiting for the signing, I looked hard at the 1945 photos from Nagasaki on display in the background, the kind of photos that you don’t really want to remember.

Forty years ago, you did not have to pass through countless security stations to enter the UN. Forty years ago we, at the UN School sang songs about Zulu tribes and kookaburras and Per Spelman and his cow. Such brats we were!

And so where has this bold confidence taken us? We, the unhappy surveyors of the now damaged organization, resurrected to prominence in a movie, but not in real life. Even as it keeps chuggin’ away, mostly quietly, providing relief and promulgating dialogue. Not enough, we say, and kick it around some more, listing all its failings, in the same way that bodies were counted after epidemics, ethnic cleansing, nuclear blasts.

Nagasaki, Hiroshima lessons 

United Nations: as good as the nations and the people represented therein