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.