[an aside]

Last night I met, for the first time, two special people: One who is a regular commenter on Ocean and one who is a reader but has never posted a comment. To you, reader-non-commenter: I think you should comment. Especially given your craft in life (writing). I could use an occasional slap when my style is off, or when you puzzle over an odd choice of words. Plus, your saying "you're doin' alright!" would mean a lot to me (as it did last night), especially since I am one of those who gawks in complete adoration at people who basically have put aside all earthly pursuits (including eating and paying bills) in favor of writing.

To the rest of you -- comment at your will. Of course, you should know that I print and paste every word onto my bedroom walls and fall asleep happily slurping it all in, repeating out loud each clause, adoring each comma. And if none appear I get drunk on Polish vodka (or cheap beer, Brando) and crawl under the bed weeping. But I believe in taking knocks in life.

Vienna: prelude, part 2

Today I am off on a brief trip to Vienna. For the next four days Ocean will be focused on the other side of the ocean.

*****

It is now 1973. I am in New York, boarding a flight back to Europe. I am heading home. I have spent a year back in Manhattan. I’m working here and attending college. But I can’t seem to stay away from Warsaw. I go back at least three times a year.

Tired of always making a connection through waterlogged Amsterdam, overrun with what look to me, from my still very Polish eyes, like American potheads and drifters, I route myself this time through Vienna.

It is a mistake. I had traveled through Austria just a few years back and felt no pull to it then. It may be that I don’t speak German. I am not used to being in Europe and not speaking some words of the local language. It may be that I have evil thoughts about Austria, in much the same way that I have evil thoughts about the other bordering countries that took Poland apart bit by bit not so long ago.

And now, in the wetness of a cold spring Vienna evening, it may be that I am twenty and everyone around me looks middle-aged, stogy, lost in thought and most definitely ready to hurry home and close the door firmly behind them. Even though it’s barely 9 pm. And they are all wearing horrible, sensible shoes.

I go to the nearest movie house and see Butterflies are Free. With Eddie Albert Junior.

People on both sides of the ocean keep noting how lucky I am to be back in the free, democratic USA. I don’t feel lucky or unlucky. When I am in New York I miss Warsaw, when I am in Warsaw I miss New York.

In my young mind I take the words from the movie and mutate them so that they can be slapped onto my life with some kind of personal meaning. Butterflies are free. Only butterflies are free. No one else, just butterflies.

Vienna: prelude

Tomorrow, I am off, on a brief trip to Vienna. For the next five days Ocean will be focused on the other side of the ocean.

*****

It’s 1966 and I am returning to Poland. I have lived in New York for six years, a diplomat’s brat, a kid picking up ideas and habits off the streets of the city, left alone a good deal of the time, always happy to poke around weird neighborhoods, so different from the ones back home in Warsaw.

But now I am returning for good to the city of my birth. We (my sister, mother, father) all sense that it could be a while before any of us sets foot on “western” soil again. Poland remains a closed country, its western neighbors for the most part refusing to let in those damn commies who just want to escape their own land and deplete western resources.

A train takes us from Cherbourg, where our ship has docked, to Paris. I stand by the window and watch the green Normandy pastures, pelted by rain, beyond my reach now, disappearing before I can touch them. An old man stands next to me, there in that train corridor. He says in French – do you know how to bring yourself luck? Every time you see a white horse, spit on your thumb, touch your palm with it, and pound it with a fist. Comme ca! -- he shows me. At 52, when I see a white horse, I spit on my thumb, touch my palm and pound it with a fist. How else to connect this day with that one?

From Paris, we pick up a car and begin the road journey home.

Our last nights in the western world are in Vienna. I am thirteen. I am determined to find the Spanish Riding School and the White Stallions. I had recently seen the movie about the horses at the time of the War. In one scene, the actor Eddie Albert is there, a soldier in an Austrian tavern, singing the ballad "Just Say Auf Weidersehen."



I want to see the real Lipizzaner horses. I want to touch a stallion that was heroically rescued in the last weeks of the Second World War even though, reluctantly, I have to admit that this will not even be the colt of the horse that lived and performed in Vienna more than twenty years ago.

I drag my family to the Hofburg Palace. The luck of the spit! We come just in time to see the stallions rehearse. Oh God, put me into that horse’s saddle, have me take the reigns and control this one lovely piece of life! The stallions can prance on their rear hoofs, front ones in the air, they can do anything you ask them to!

We buy shoes. My mother says – who knows when next we can buy decent shoes. Consumer sales are in a bleak phase back in Warsaw. Store shelves carry colorless items that look like clothes off the back of someone’s grandmother. My Vienna shoes, brown, sturdy, with a brass buckle tightly crossing the front, last me all the way through the first years at the university.

Vienna, my first encounters with this city of solid shoes and white stallions.

wrong impulse

You would think I’d do the right thing, but NO. I have to stand in the middle of the street with my ears covered, staring dumbly in front of me, slowly trying to incorporate and process what just happened.

My walk to campus this morning was rudely interrupted by a massive car crash on Johnson and Lake. I was about to cross, when #%*&!!#@*&!! a red truck plowed into an innocent little station wagon, moving slowly in its own little lane.

The thing is, I saw it coming. And what do I do, do I scream watch out, watch out, do I run forward arms waving, staving off what surely is a huge collision in the making? Do I then quickly jot down all license plates, like a good lawyer should?

No, I do not.

And it was a hit and run. The pick-up driver had been talking on his cell phone when it happened. I can see his devil eyes looking over the damage and making the calculus. Obviously he didn’t like the numbers he was coming up with because he quickly drove off.

No one was hurt, but still, what kind of a dumb person am I anyway? Where is my sharp wit and quick impulse? Where is my camera??

Then, to add insult, I decide I better hurry off to class. I go up to the screaming-in-anger driver, mumble a few reassuring words and walk away.

Driver, if you read my blog, know that I was ready and willing to help but you seemed fine and on top of things.

Red pick-up driver, you are a slime-drenched piece of ...vomit. (I'm showing restraint here.)

UPDATE: Legally blogged

A week (almost) to put up pictures from the small group karaoke evening? Reasons for the delay? I am so by the book Camic, that I bet if you googled by the book Camic you’d get Ocean as your first hit (don’t try it; in the words and spirit of our leader, reflecting on the wisdom of selecting Miers to fill the Supreme Court vacancy – “trust me”).

By the book Camic obtained written permission to post from all herein so that I would not get a pounding on my door from some overseer of blog legality-propriety informing me that Ocean needs to shape up or ship out to sea.

So, here they are, a few One-Ls from my sweet and lustrous small section, ready to beat the pants off of any other university group engaged in the art of karaoke song.

I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine I'm fine...but how are you?

This post is really about French people. I love France. I do. And I don’t want to hear how the French are this and the French are that. It matters not at all. They down an espresso at cafes on the way to work and wouldn’t think of eating fish for dinner without a glass of wine. And they kiss. Everyone kisses and it is wonderful. The day I bought tights in a little store in Paris and got pecked by the shopkeeper, I knew I need look nowhere else in this world. French people are my kind of people.

Tonight I had to go out and get food. It was impossible to imagine that I would make it through the night with only a box of raisin bran and various configurations of chocolate tidbits. And treasured wine. [There is a "wine cellar" in the loft, if you can believe it. At least I call it that. Basically it is a cubby under the stairs and it contains my never-to-be-opened-because-they're-too-special bottles, acquired in years when French wine growers and I were tight. There were years like that.]

So I am about to enter Whole Foods and stock up and I run into a friend. Not just any friend. A person whom I love with all my friendship heart. A person whom I have not seen for well over a year, as she had been living elsewhere.

She has recently moved back to Madison and I had to say this t her – so…I had not heard from you. And she said: I read your blog, daily. When I need a break, I click on Ocean.

[Okay, one important addition: she is French. She is as French as can be. It is, therefore, unfortunate that every time I ever run into her I am wearing my guy’s grundy, discarded jacket and a pair of shoes with paint stains on them. She, on the other hand, is never unkempt. But that’s just an aside.]

I am so thrilled to see her. I cannot wait to sit down at a table with food (and wine) with her (and her husband) and talk about everything. Oh, and to see their sons, to spend a morning or an evening or an afternoon togehter. We have done any and all of the above. I miss it. But I admit that I cannot get together this weekend because I am soon departing for XXXXX. [I do not have a habit of disclosing destinations on Ocean until I am really up and running toward them, so if you want to know where XXXXX is, click on this week-end.]

Really? She says. So am I!

Now here’s the curious thing: I have not been to XXXXX for almost thirty years. It used to be a frequent enough destination for me in years that I lived in Poland, but recently it has faded, in much the same way that Freud has faded from evening hour conversation over very dry martinis. [Is that EVER a hint.]

And so there you have it: a recognition on my part that so many of my friends care about keeping up with me through my blog and through my blog only.

And, secondly, I have this to say: if you think that Whole Foods serves no useful purpose on this planet, you are so wrong. It is where I always run into my French friend. Without Whole Foods, we would have never realized that we are to be flying over to XXXXX together at the same time, albeit in different carriers. [n.b., I don't want to sound accusatory or anything, but why isn't she flying Air France? Don't the French believe in their own pilots, wine with fish notwithstanding?]

Monday already? Okay, one more run before I close shop on this: vice of the week time

Anyone reading Ocean is waiting for me to admit that this topped all regrettable and reprehensible behavior last week:




But no, you are wrong!

This was an insignificant smudge on my otherwise vice-filled days. Yet, it is for this reason that this weekly feature on Ocean is about to experience its last moment of glory. For, given all that I see and read about in the larger world (let alone in my own smaller one), it is impossibly difficult to lightheartedly admit to one’s own failings on a regular basis. They cease to be humorous – they read to me like the kind of vile excesses that best be dealt with during a process of meditation and internal healing, perhaps on top of some glorious mountain peak where all truth seems within reach and noble goals are easier to set.

So here, enjoy, for one last time, a littany of vices. I'll list, for impact value, the first fifteen, in the order that they spring to mind. Andiamo:

In the last week, among other things, I had evil thoughts, I ate too much, and I failed to accomplish work goals for this week-end. I bought way too many pairs of socks, I biked dangerously, I lied to people who called about the van, I refused to read some blogs and overindulged the reading and commenting on others, I did not call my mother and did call a friend – excessively. I drank numerous lattes, I refused to support sustainable agriculture as I skipped going to the farmers market and instead, on Saturday morning, I woke someone at an ungodly hour to fret about a blog issue. I went over the speed limit, I read poorly written books and I seriously considered spending money on a warm jacket that I cannot afford – to the point of having it set aside for tomorrow, even though I know that I will not be buying it tomorrow; indeed, I will never return, ever, and the jacket will be left hanging with the name Nina on it, ready, waiting with hope and expectation, only to be picked up in a few days by the salesperson at Karen & Co. and, like an unwanted orphan, returned to the rack where the smug others will laugh at it as it droops its shoulders in shame, forced to admit to being rejected after all.

studying the text of Thursday night

Sunday, a day of reflection and atonement. Perhaps even ditch digging if I can find myself a ditch to dig.

Let me start, though, with reflection. Because in the course of the last few days, I have wondered if I should perhaps take stock. And think about, for instance, this: isn’t it the case that academic excellence demands a high degree of concentration and rigor? An intellectual preoccupation with the Task At Hand, which most certainly does not include sidetracking in support of the karaoke trade and the booming tequila industry (no offense, t mockingbird…besides, I think you’ve fallen asleep), on a Thursday night no less? (In my defense, it was the only conflict-free night for the group.)

If so, then I most certainly should step back and engage in a deconstructionist-type* foray into my evening with my beloved Torts law school small section (I insert the word beloved in part because they are such and in part because I do not remember the number of the section, never having had to register for this class myself). For, what good is an author’s (mine, in this case) intention when a different (conflicting?) reality may be picked up from less generously interpreted renditions of the evening?

Let me review things, with aid of a photo or two (thank you, oh finder of camera!) though for now only of myself, as I believe in privacy rights and will not post anything with student faces unless I have their enthusiastic permission to do so.

Thursday. It seems ages ago. I arrived early at Casa B, making sure that the table was set with fine linens and china. In the alternative, paper plates and plastic cups. It’s all in how you read what’s before you.





I had taken a poll earlier on pizza toppings. I was relieved that the vote for pineapple could go unheeded as the unfortunate student-advocate of it fell victim to a horrible case of something or other and could not attend. What remained speaks for itself:





And really, that is the end of the text. The official evening is over, we move now to an epilogue, written by a dozen-plus hardy souls who were determined to pour out their sentiments about work, life and American Pie at the Karoke Kid. I offered to pay for all songs sung, so yes, I admit it, I was an enabler, the ghost writer, as it were. Of course, my European upbringing and exaggerated sense of politeness and protocol did cause me to say “yes, thank you” to beverages purchased by others. How could it be otherwise.

But now that I look at the entirety, from the perspective of time and with the aid of the pictures, I think it is principally my participation in the performance side of things that lacked proper decorum. Because otherwise, only one interpretation held true for everyone: they all behaved extraordinarily well. On the other hand, looking at the photos now, what can be said of a person who, while on stage, looked slightly twisted and off balance, like this:





What lessons then? Perhaps I can eek one out: maybe I should seriously contemplate toning down the exaggerated movements, the gestures, the wild eyes, the loud enunciation of words, ones which could easily be heard even in a less spirited rendition.

I’ll have to remember that when next I am on stage. At the Kid, or in the classroom.

*(independently, you must check out my favorite deconstructionist, who is, BTW, running a marathon today and who has engaged me on the topic of runners' sensitive body issues in the comments here)

Mr. B, you’re fired.

That sounds harsher than I meant it to be. But let it be known that my days of night bike riding are over. At least until the bike path linking all sorts of neighborhoods with my loft is completed.

Last night I endured the swipes at the thigh of passing vehicles that, I swear, did not see me & Mr. B in the dark, in spite of Mr.B’s bright yellow guards, a flashing strobe and a rear reflector. Because the distance was not long, I knew my survival odds were high. And I am proud to say that I managed to land some significant kicks at the sides of a few pretty impressive road hogs.

However, it’s the return trip that finally convinced me that midnight riding in downtown Madison sucks.

Why car-loads of loaded boys (I will not call them men, they are children in my eyes) would find it entertaining to come up close on the cyclist and then shout right in their face something that strikes them and only them as hilariously funny is beyond me, but such are the behaviors exhibited in and around campus after midnight.

So, for now, I’ll be cozying up to the neglected little number sitting in its little parking stall, reserving Mr. B for daytime adventures.

Still, last night’s brush with death, or at the very least dismemberment, was worth it. It’s gotten cold in this town. When you arrive at a house where the hosts have this percolating on their stove, you know you have faced danger for a good end result. Thank you, hosts.

in trouble with the law

It is early. I am wating for a Charter Communications person to stop by. He is not here. The phone is ringing. A potential buyer is asking about the van (I ran an ad for it in the paper today). I’ll be there to show you the van in an hour.

Don’t sell it to another, I need it! He begs. (Why does anyone need a 1993 minivan with a torn seat and a broken headlight?)

The Charter person never shows. Thank you Charter person. I get in the car and drive to meet the potential van buyer. My van is parked off of Monroe Street, in a residential neighborhood, where it is unlikely to be damaged or bothered or disturbed in any way. I am already on Monroe and my cell rings. Are you coming? The potential buyer asks. On my way, on my way, I answer, weaving my way past slow moving cars.

Half a block from my destination I see the telltale blue and red lights flashing behind me. Shit. I do apologize for the vulgarity, but there is no other word for it. Crap might do equally well, I suppose.

The police man comes over and tells me I did a number of reprehensible things, the first one being my driving without an updated registration sticker.

I know, I know, it’s registered, I explain. It’s just that the journey from envelope to car license plate is a long one, oftentimes not taken by me. I am sorry!

And about your weaving in and out of traffic. Let me ask you this: have you been consuming alcohol?

At 8:30 on a Saturday morning??
Officer, I have not even looked at a something containing alcohol (unless you count the toner I now use on my face after being scolded for not moisturizing several weeks back). Last time I consumed an intoxicating beverage was at around midnight on Thursday at the Karaoke Kid. You can read about it here, officer.

I feel he is leaning in to see if a whiff of something mightn’t be found anyway. He seems disappointed as he leans back out.

Finally, you are speeding. Ten over.
Finally? Shouldn’t that be firstly? Indeed. I am going the speed of the car in front of me. That kind of an answer, of course, will get me nowhere. I hear my mother saying: if your friend jumped out the window would you do it as well? – a favorite question of hers, implying, at the very least, that I have suicidal friends.

The young cop takes my license and disappears with the reassuring words we’ll get you out of here and moving soon. Sounds like something you’d day to a person who already is sitting in jail, not simply waiting to sell a van off of Monroe Street.

He comes back and tells me: you have a spotless record. Yes, I know that. I have never had a moving violation in the 35 years I have been driving. I have traversed all continents (well, almost) without putting so much as a dent into any vehicle under my control. I have trucked tour groups around narrow lanes and mountain passes. I have navigated cars through storms, tornados, downpours, heatwaves and blizzard whiteouts and have come out unscathed. You do not need to tell me about my driving record. I am proud of it. And, sadly, it is about to be deflowered, right there on Monroe street, in front of Michael’s Frozen Custard.

I’m letting you go without a citation, he tells me. He hands over a brochure, put together by the Madison Police Department, with the assistance of the Michigan State University Police Department, the Miami University Police Department and the New Castle County Police Department in Delaware. An eclectic bunch, wouldn’t you say?

The brochure asks for feedback, of the “how am I doing?” sort. It is right for him to hand this to someone who has just gotten off without a citation. Even though I have never taken it upon myself to call those numbers on trucks that say “call and tell me how I am driving,” this time, I want to help the MPD. I feel warm and fuzzy toward them.

Except, well, except I think the brochure is all wrong. It outlines what you should do when you get stopped by a cop. It invites a recurrence. It does not have faith in my continued attempts at keeping within the boundaries of the law. So I wont comment. But I did want to use this opportunity to say thanks to the dear man patrolling Monroe, on the look out for signs of early morning corruption and depravity. My purity is preserved.

that's entertainment

And again I was asked yesterday: why do you blog?

And again I answered: it's a writing exercise. In the same way that listening daily to language tapes is something you might do when studying a language, so, too, writing daily posts is something you might consider if you were seriously interested in the craft of writing.

It never stops there. The next line is predictable and it always comes soon after: Don't you find it hard to say something interesting on a daily basis? Why do you presume that you can keep a reader's attention with stories from your days?
And I say: I don't presume anything. I just write.

Next line (it is always like this): do you think it is appropriate to put yourself out there?

Here I stop and think about what the person is really after. Because in writing, just like in music or dance, you do reveal something. And whereas my views on politics, on the law, on corruption in Poland, on issues that typically make it into the press each day -- those pass the acceptability bar, writing about my own life is often called into question.

But I say none of this. Instead, I always remind the person that the day is long and a blog post is short and the relation between one and the other is small indeed.

Imagine: as an exercise for all you blog-doubters, take one day and jot down those events, minute observations, things that you see, conversations that you have -- jot down those that may lend themselves to a short paragraph. If your list is shorter than a thousand points then you're not trying. And think about all the important things you left out.

Are there risks? Oh sure. There is a reason why most known to me bloggers write under assumed names or identities. I do understand this, especially since I grew up at a time and place where so many lived in fear of having their words used against them.

And I know that for every person who warms up to Ocean, there is another who does not (I'm thinking of you, author of note to me from this morning!). I do listen, I pause, I consider the words and then I move on to write the next post, and the next, until at some turn I come to decide that what I am doing is worthless dribble, at which point I will pack my bags and move to a land far away where I can help dig ditches for those who need them. If I feel guilty about anything in life it is that I have not spent enough time digging ditches far away for those who need them.

I left my heart camera in San Francisco the Karaoke Kid. again.

I took my beloved small section (of One-L tortsters) out for pizza and drinks last night. It is a ritual for me. I have a chance to schmooze informally with them and ponder over the meaning and worth of life and pizza toppings. I can understand how, from their point of view, it beats the grind and rigor of class time, where the discussion is decidedly more structured and the questions fired by me are all evil and require them to think legally about the problems of daily life. So they all show up, we eat, we drink, we talk.

So why was last night unusual? Because someone read on Ocean that I am not one to drink myself silly and indeed, haven't overindulged in any substantial fashion since I was an adolescent. (That would have been many many decades ago.)

And so, some devilish minds rose to the challenge of getting Camic drunk.

Bottom line: I won. It can't be done, I tell you. I have this deep seated line of propriety that probably dates back to my past stiff and prudish upbringing (is someone laughing at that?) and me getting out-and-out plastered in public is way below any line that I have (really truly) drawn for myself.

That is not to say that tequilla shots were not downed. You got me there, especially since, to the best of my recollection, I have never done shots at all ever anywhere at any point in my long and tarnished existence. (Trick is to eat many many cheesy fatty pizza slices beforehand and give yourself lots and lots of time in between those tiny evil glasses. There. My secret is out.)

I was, however, plenty silly and yes, I did allow myself to be dragged to the Karaoke Kid where the law school bunch dominated the evening with lots of unbelievably cool singing and dancing. Truly, punch me out for saying this, sociology students (with whom I have also gone to the Kid), but the law students were right up there with the best of the best.

I have to say, I loved the way they went about selecting songs. You would never think that future lawyers would want to gear their vocal talents toward inclusiveness, but indeed, it seemed to me that repeatedly they searched for songs that would have everyone on their feet and singing loudly enough to drive all non legal types out the door.

Just to give you an example, American Pie was a favorite and it was done several times, mainly because no one could get enough of that chevy being driven to the levy. Hey Jude – ditto. It’s those na nas that had everyone roaring (it cannot be described otherwise).

There was another first (besides those evil shots), as well as a second for me: the first was that some silly persons took over my camera and took lots of pictures of Camic looking phenomenally dopey and they did so with such energy and enthusiasm that, for the first time, the camera went dead from overuse.

The second was that I was so bent on fingering the tricky combination on Mr. B’s chain afterwards (was it really that late??) that I forgot my camera. It is under lock at the Kid (I hope) and so any picture posting will have to wait until they open up again.

Thank you, class. What I said earlier, when I gave you back your papers, is true. You are a magnificent and talented lot and your sense of earnest fun is phenomenally appreciated by me as well as, I am sure, by all your friends and future associates.

Have a great week-end. I recommend strong coffee and lots of water.

Badger Bus

It’s 1979 and I am just barely 26. Hey, I am moving to Madison! My husband is beginning his staggering climb up the professorial ladder.

I should be working on my dissertation proposal, but instead, I take a full time job as a lecturer in the sociology department at UW-Milwaukee. We need the money. Three times a week I commute there, riding the Badger Bus from the terminal on West Wash, the same terminal that is now a block from my apartment, the same terminal that I pass every morning on my way to work.

On the bus, I always sit with Elaine, a woman more than twenty years my senior, but quickly becoming my closest friend in Madison. She taught me how to disregard age in friendship. She is brilliant and extremely laid back – a fantastic combination. I am a wound-up spinning top next to her.

Each trip out to Milwaukee frazzles me. I have never taught before. I am given a class in social psych – 350 students with young-and-know-nothing me there on the stage, and a class in the soc of the family, with a mere 60 in it. I am sure I am a terrible teacher and a complete idiot. Temerity and chutzpah push me through each lecture.

I come home tired. My husband greets me at the Badger Bus station. In the three semesters that I do this, he is never late, not once. We go out those nights, eating dinner, often steaks and hash browns, ravenously hungry at the late hour that I arrive back in Madison.

Early on Elaine tells me she is going to die shortly. I tell her so am I. Except that I am just doing my Polish angst thing and she is not. She dies within eighteen months, from ovarian cancer.

Many people look at age 50 as some kind of a turning point. I am fucking fifty! – they seem to think that this somehow puts them in some pile of wasted human material.

My turning point came at 48, when I passed the age at which Elaine died. I can’t believe that I have now lived four years longer than she did. I never thought I would – it did not seem fair that I should.

The Badger bus plows back and forth between two cities that are as different as can be. I come face to face with the terminal at two periods in my life that are as different as can be.


twenty-six years later, still the same inside

It’s like rubbing the belly of a lobster before plunging it into a pot of boiling water

What a day! All sun and warm temps, what a day!

I had been up since 4, agonizing over how many plusses to give to the paper grades I distributed to my first year law students and so you would think that by late afternoon I would be spent. Wrongo bongo!

I took Mr. B for a little 'pleasure trip' after class. I let him pick out guards for the winter (this post led me to believe I should in some way winterize my guy). He opted for yellow against his blue body. I thought it was a little garish (even though I am SUCH a fan of blue and yellow). I would have chosen the steely metal, but you know, you gotta let the guy preen and show off every now and then.



We did far far west side errands and then I took him to Borders on this warmest of October days. Bliss. A Maisie Dobbs mystery, a low hot sun, a latte and Mr. B and me.




Then came the hatchet. Mr. B, I expect service. I want respect for things that are important to me. I need you to carry your weight. To contribute.




The bags are there for a purpose. You are strong. At Willie Street Bikes they said you were built so well! Do your stuff. Carry my groceries for me, please.

I’m in for a period of moping. Indeed, Mr. B was in a reclining position when I retrieved him at my last rest stop. It was all pretense and high drama, I am sure. No matter. I’m firm. I need him to use his muscle. He and I are in this together, while the guilt-car gently weeps.

…like a cigarette should

So, I was a social smoker once. Times were different. Only goody two-shoes prissy girls did not smoke. Smoking was cool. I hated the way it made my lungs hurt (being one with weaker lungs) but I hated being lumped in with the goody two-shoes prissy girls even more.

So, depending on which set of friends I was with – the goody two-shoes super achievers or the rowdy set – I stayed clear of the stuff or I puffed away with the whole motley lot of them, starting (on rare occasions) when I was 15 and finally saying good riddance to the pretence of enjoying it at around 22.

So, of course, then I proceeded to hate smokers. Take your putrid second-hand smoke elsewhere!

So, now I am past that. In France, Poland, Italy (places where smokers are not yet the devils incarnate that they are here), if they’re puffin’ away next to me, I hardly notice.

Still, it was weird for me to be moving into an apartment that had tobacco written all over its walls. Indeed, my place is in a building that once housed the warehouse where Wisconsin leaves rested, awaiting the train journey to North Carolina where they would be used as cigar wrappers – being too low-grade to serve as the stuff of Lorillard brand cigarettes.

I am looking at the brick walls of my loft, not too long ago covered with dirt and soot and I am impressed with their history, for it was a dirty one and dirty pasts bespeak of complicated lives.

I’ve been reading a lot about Lorillard since I moved here – about the company’s curious advertising strategies (even as it commanded a tiny share of the overall market with – remember these names? Kent, True, Old Gold…), about its origins (it is, in fact, the oldest tobacco company in the country, dating back to 1760) and I am, for once, satisfied with my city, for it recognized shades of gray in naming a street just this year after Lorillard – my street, tainted and tarnished. Just like so many of us living there now.



sign of the times: only native prairie flowers are used to surround the tempered brick walls; and there are to be no AC condensers, nor gas-based heating units; instead, an elaborate system of geothermal wells built under the parking lot provides steady climate control to the buildings.

close encounters of the Ocean kind

Yesterday, I am pulling up on Mr. B, rushing to make it to class on time and a (random) student, out on a cigarette break outside, hails me.

Hey there, prof Camic? – she says, seemingly trying to match the face with one she has seen elsewhere. I think your loft is awesome!

This arrests me on the spot, even though I am terribly aware of the clock and of the fact that class should be starting in 7 minutes and I have yet to print out my lecture notes.

You know about my loft… You are a blogger yourself? – I ask, tentatively.
More like a voyeur. I read blogs. I read Ocean.

What can I say but: well now, ha ha! I keep it funny over at Ocean, ha ha! All about light 'n breezy entertainment, after all, ha ha!

Not always so funny, is it? – she counters. You can be very serious.

Ohhhh, is she referring to this post or this?

Ha ha, well, sure, right oh, yeah, well hey! (I mean, what else can one say?)

I move on. Knowing that around any corner I may find a person who knows that I last threw up from drinking too much when I was 15.

Listen, Ocean is just a lark, okay? Just a lark. La di da lark.

P.S. Why is it that when the chancellor of the university spoke last week at the Law School (I did not attend) and subsequently we, the faculty, received an email with basically the following: "chancellor’s missive: what we can do to uphold standards and fight moral corruption at the university" (or words to that effect), I automatically panicked, thinking surely it must be referring to faculty blogs, or more specifically, certain faculty who keep larky blogs, or, hey, one particular faculty member who regularly posts on Ocean?

You’re looking maybe for Ocean’s vice of the week feature? Ohhhh, just sit back and read. I have many up my sleeve.

Where Ocean again files a Monday report on vices [def: moral depravity, corruption, wickedness, moral faults or failings, or, at the very least, habitual and usually trivial defects or shortcomings] manifested by its author, on the theory that if I blurt it out here, I will earn myself a clean slate for (vices to be committed in) the week ahead:

Last night’s loft warming warmed my heart. People are way too nice and I do not deserve any of their goodness.

So why is it that I let them work for their grub? That’s a vice! At least a half a dozen literally finished off dish preparation for me and at least two actually cleaned up a pot or two so that I would not wake to the disaster that typically follows one of my cooking binges.

And another vice – sampling wine from practically every bottle that was opened (okay, only the whites!). And with twenty people, the last ones trickling out after midnight, there were plenty that got uncorked. Vicey!

But here’s the one I’ve been saving up for Ocean. It indeed is about uncorking, except, what is it that I uncorked????

So here’s the story: I got up early and began the usual clean up. I am a woman of great attention to detail. You would not know this about me, just reading my blog, but in the loft, everything is in its place. Very neat. Very orderly. And so of course I was going to correct some guest’s erroneous placement of a piece of paper in the recyclables garbage can. I reached in and was about to transfer it, when my evil curiosity got the better of me.

I unfolded the yellow sheet and read it. (Truthfully, I did worry that it was some important page that accidentally got trashed.)

It had four words on it, followed by a question mark:

Do you love me? Some female hand wrote stealthily.

Okay. There were five married couples here (random note: amazingly, only one out of the ten keeps a blog) and another that also belongs to the 'committed' category. Then there were seven without any Significant Other in sight. So it could have been innocent, right? Married woman asks her adored one, in a moment of drunkenness if there’s passion behind that cool demeanor.

But hey, wouldn’t she have waited 'til they at least got to the elevator? Rather than scribble it right there in the middle of chomping on a crostini with gingered beef and wasabi? The more likely explanation? -- a guest is reaching out to touch someone and that someone is not their spouse at all, but the spouse of another.

Too many permutations and possibilities for me to figure it out. Unless… I compare the handwriting with the cards I received.

Don’t worry. Your secret is my secret.

On to one more vice: a run of photos of, well, me (not always in the most flattering poses). Kathy, was that you working my camera? Okay, for once, I have a batch of photos depicting how absolutely insane I become at one of my own dinners. I have no shame. Here they are, interspersed with the sanity of others and, of course, food.


lofty dusk, stuffed figs, all is calm



why are three others working around me at food prep?



make that four others... (is that a tattoo??)



billed as chocolate cigarettes, but looking more like cigars



off goes the apron



urban flight



watching...



still waters? maybe. maybe not.



I did say to the guests: you need only bring oreos. trust a therapist (not mine!) to be a good listener.

Urban flight

So it was a challenge: come up with a menu for tonight that represents the very urban-ness of my loft. For my first big dinner here, cook up stuff that fits with the brick walls and steel pipes and screaming fire engines and guns blasting and construction trucks making their daily morning racket. Okay, maybe not so much the guns and the fire engines, but you get the picture. This food cannot be tame. It has to zing, it has to, according to commenters, pile high and fuse market flavors. It has to have street character and restaurant sophistication.

So I decided to take myself to the Italian neighborhoods of New York. Pile on the cannelloni, the cannoli, but make it modern! Spice it up! And fuse it – bring in the wasabi, the Serrano and Fresno peppers, the lemongrass, the lavender.

I turned on the TV last night and there on Bravo, I hear the familiar music of the Godfather. Perfect. Let my work begin. Here’s the menu. Eight mains, four desserts, twenty people. Let’s see if anything comes of it.


Grilled figs with Fantome goat cheese, honey and rosemary

Crostini with gingered beef and wasabi flavored crème fraiche

Flatbread with assorted roasted peppers, hot chiles, scallions and mild cheese

Gougeres with aged Parrano cheese

Diced heirloom tomatoes with Chianti Classico olive oil, Balsamic vinegar and slivers of Parmesan

Cannelloni with grilled zucchini, shrimp and thyme butter

Puff pastry with caramelized onion

Grilled shrimp on lemongrass skewers with Asian lime sauce



Key lime tarts with toasted meringue

Chocolate cigarettes

Orange cannoli with coffee mascarpone filling

Baked moonglow pears and berries, with lavender flower topping



always start with the dessert

in my little town...

...I grew up believing
That life is boring.

I changed my mind.
Though anyone looking at this first October day may get the impression that I have simply joined the ranks of the Madisonians who basically love to do the Madison thing, all organic this and healthy that and actively engaged in the community, etc etc. and that’s it – what else could you possibly add to this basket of symbiotic perfection?

And I have indeed succumbed, to some extent. Pulling on some raggy clothes, last seen yesterday, on me, not bothering to even shower, I set out for the market this morning. I am only six blocks away. I can walk. I feel wholesome (if grungy). The sun hasn’t broken the city horizon yet. I am an early bird.

At the market I throw down several twenties in support of sustainable agriculture. I am with the land and the people who grow things on it. I talk to farmers and cheese makers. The moonglow pear guy uses words like epistemology. Or was it nomenclature? Or both? Not that I undervalue the intellectual inclinations of the men and women who till the land, but believe me, the average farmer in Poland does not muck around much with either epistemology or nomenclature. But hey, this is Madison.



eerily, they glow



much needed for tomorrow


I look at the kid who is part of the brood at Avalanche. She looks like the kind of waif of a child I would want to raise on a farm were I into raising kids on farms. That family is so together, so all about wool knits and cottons. And they’re doing well. I buy their stuff at Whole Foods all the time. It makes me happy to find and purchase their bags of greens. I feel like I am helping put the little ones through school. (Or – are they home-schooled?)





The flower family always throws in extras – they give you yellows if you want more yellows, they coddle you and infuse you with their own flowery joie de vivre.




I get a blueberry bar for my coffee which I have yet to consume. This is a morning run, a pre-breakfast thing. Wholesome, remember? The bar is additive free, wheat free, sugar free, gluten free and a bunch of other frees I have by now forgotten. It’s not free-free, but it is Madison-like free.

I pick up a latte and head to the loft.

Okay, so a little glitch here: I have a lot of food. And flowers. And a cup of coffee. And my wrist and thumb have yet to heal from my June bike accident, especially since I ignored the advice of the doc who told me to go do some hand therapy. (Hand therapy sounds sissy-like. I’m no sissy.)

I am struggling. I am thinking that I ought to get a backpack. Wait, I live an urban existence. I have never seen anyone in NY carry groceries in a backpack. Forget it.

On I go. I am about to cross the tracks to get to the loft (third, fourth and fifth windows on the top, from the left) and I see the construction vehicles again. I ask what the fuss is about. They have been grinding away at the space between the loft and the tracks for days. If there is some super highway going up right under my lofty windows, I want to know about it.





But no! This is Madison. They are putting in a new, beautiful bike path, linking the lakes with the city – and mainly, creating even more venues for Mr. B and me. Right under my nose! View remains undisturbed. I can take endless photos of the capitol from my loft. And I can go for wholesome rides everywhere.

So all this is what creates bliss, right?

Nope. Bliss lies elsewhere. But these trappings, they sure as hell make life in (downtown) Madison a good thing, they really do.

the shop around the corner

When my daughters were little, I took them regularly to Fraboni’s, the Italian deli and grocer downtown, on the corner of Regent and Park. We lived on the far west side, but we drove in just so we could load up on Fraboni’s gnocchi. No one in Madison had better gnocchi. And of course, once there, we’d get thinly sliced salami, olives, Parmesan-Reggiano, pasta and so on. I probably could buy this stuff elsewhere, but I liked getting it there.

The Fraboni family knew my girls by name. They would say things like: Oh, they’re growing so fast! I’d indulge in an Italian nougat candy at the register. The girls preferred the cookies. We left happy.


the Fraboni's dude

And then I stopped going. I got busy, the daughters got busy and satisfactory gnocchi could be found elsewhere. One makes compromises.

The other day as I was telling someone how good it is to live downtown, I was asked about the grocery store situation. I hesitated on that one. I need a car for food shopping. Nothing within walking distance of the loft. Maybe when Trader Joe’s is up and running on Monroe (looks to be a half hour walk – just like shopping in Poland!), maybe then I can hike over…

And then, this afternoon, as I was making up a grocery list for my week-end of heavy duty cooking, I thought: there isn’t a place in town that will have this one particular item. Except maybe Fraboni’s.

I went there at dusk. I looked around – it had been years (decades?) since I had stopped by. The old discolored map of Italy was gone. The shelves were filled with many types of balsamic vinegars from Modena. The nougat candies weren't at the checkout counter.

But the family was still there. The son was now one of the proprietors. I asked him about the ingredient I was looking for – he called his mother to talk about it, to check whether my rather weird usage of it would work. I looked around at the cheeses, the sausages, at the shelves that weren’t exactly arranged, the ones that always, in their disarray and devotion, had a distinct taste of Italy.

A five minute walk from my loft, that’s it. My grocery store, just down the block.