think travel, read Ocean View

Two new stories for you on the Ask For an Ocean View website: one on how to pick a restaurant in Paris without really trying and another on flying free and rubbing shoulders with the business class.

It’s a snowy day here in the Midwest. Finally, winter. I can’t believe I was singing its seasonal virtues just a few days back. Damn cold out there. Time to think about getting away.

onion

A vegetable of tears, the name of a satirical paper, a food of central Europe. And as a food – unforgiving. Bad vibes, bad breath, sad days, long days.

One daughter returns to her home out east today and this causes me to think the following: daughters are irreplaceable. Sons must be as well, but I don’t know anything about sons. I only have daughters.

I wrote earlier to her that even in the silence of a sleeping daughter, there is the comforting noise of her presence. The anticipation of a waking moment. The knowledge that you can shout up and get a (mumbled, sleepy) response.

In the evening, I go to Whole Foods to buy vegetables for dinner. No onions. Forget nutrition, forget the good price. Dumb vegetable of sadness.

snow

…covers all. Doesn’t take much. A light flurry, like a sedative. What are the choice words? Under a blanket of snow, a dusting of snow… Forget about the grays, the departures, the tiredness, the work, the long period before spring. All hidden, blocked. Under a blanket of snow.

Flavors

Potatoes, and flour. Sage – lots of sage and olive oil. Porcini mushrooms, shallots, parmiggiano. Small tomatoes, fresh kernels of corn, arugula. Eggplant, mozzarella, oregano. Sage again, and olive oil and fontina cheese. Bread with this one. Oh! Celeriac and celery and nutmeg. How could I forget! And finally – pears, blackberries, raspberries, lavender buds, honey and oats.

There you have it – the principal items, assembled in the above combinations, creating dishes. No meats, no fish, none of that – just the veggies and cheeses of Sicily and Calabria, the fruits of, well, the Americas and lavender buds of the Mediterranean in general.

I have zapped away the gray that has hovered over Madison these past days. My mind, today, is focused on what the kitchen can create.

colors

When you have been inundated with the blues and delightful tones of virtual travel (especially in and around the Mediterranean), you begin to think that this really is the way the world presents itself. I mean this in the broadest sense: you begin to believe that life is made of days where all you have is the hot pursuit of all the beautiful rooms with views out there. I kid you not.

But, at the close of the day, the photos, the web site where you have been placing them, they all recede. The splash of reality. It’s like someone pouring a can of gray paint over your day. Work, chores, and the tones of a mid January afternoon in Madison seep in. I know it looks like Pittsburgh, or Detroit maybe. But it’s Madison.




Except, you know, you know, that in a matter of secs, okay, hours maybe, you can go back and reclaim the blues. Hang in there, blues! I’ll be back in a little while.

it’s here!

There were the much needed pats on the head: there, there, you know most website launches are delayed for technical reasons.

And the encouraging words: I have never seen you so preoccupied. Come up for air! It will be fine! It already is fine.

Not good enough yesterday, nor the day before, but good enough to launch on the promised date: today.

If you are a travel enthusiast, an Ocean enthusiast, or just damn curious, click on this brand new website, brought to you by...me: Ask For an Ocean View.

The site will be updated several times each week, so keep checking for more.

And now, a pause for some fresh air. Haven’t had much of it lately.

signs

Well, it can happen. One arm may work, the other may not. But the thing is, it's only a blog. It's only a website. It's not all that happens in a day. A taste, a fraction, a little piece comes up and gets posted. The rest continues, regardless of what happens on the Net.

Still, one gets invested in it. And one hopes for the best. And, walking down the stairs with a garbage bag for the trash bin, occasionally one gets rewarded with a storybook sign of good things to come.

the Internet

I think it came to us too late. Five years maybe, not more, but too late nonetheless. For those of us whose work doesn't rest on absolute Internet proficiency there is no hope. We are the lost generation.

We want to know it, understand it, work with it, benefit from it, but we cannot. We take a step, we feel competent and proficient and then something happens and we feel horribly undermined, discouraged, put down.

It is no mystery by now that I am working on a website. The frame of it is there, finally, after a week of hard labor and great assistance from a person who is able (as opposed to me).

I'm working away at filling things in, linking, writing, endlessly, happily and then I notice one of the pages is completely out of wack. The alignment suddenly looks off. And I cannot fix it. I try, but I am stumped. I call my able person, she asks me to zip it to her (people of my age don't routinely zip and unzip files and so I have to reeducate myself there). It may be that I have to start from scratch. A mess up on the computer can be costly.

I think about this now as I try to navigate and search and insert and adjust and replace. Skills no one ever taught us. Skills that make or break a project.

Inept, behind, without skills. Partially literate, wholly incompetent. My generation. Or at least me.



double latte for a pick me up

discarded

Ideas, activities, thoughts, more concrete plans and perspecitives -- discarded because I am so focused on something else.


along Lake Mendota: discarded tree, discarded pumpkin

After this coming January 10th I'll be more balanced. Of course I will. Hang in there for the unveiling of grand schemes. In the meantime, I am woking hard to permit Ocean to bloom in days where I should be sequestered in the bubble of my own work and... secret project making.

Patience, said so and so, is extraordinarily rewarding.

That better be true.

in transit

Leave one place, find another. Wake up, looking out on the alley and the house next door. It’s warm, inside and out. I crack the window. Mmmm, breezes, good breezes, gentle breezes.

How unpredictable it all is!

One last stop, with daughters, picking out sale items on a clothes rack. I learn from them. They steer me to the good stuff in life.

Oh, don’t let’s leave yet… there’s an Italian café, maybe a latte for the drive back?



It’s an easy drive. Three hours. I have done it maybe 159 times in my life, maybe more. Surely more.

We buy vegetables, grill them, eat them. Home, back at the loft.

from Chicago: questions

If someone tells you you’re swell, terrific, the best, how do you respond next time you work on a project with that person? Do you try even harder? Or, do you think -- eh, I already won the person over, let me put my efforts elsewhere?

Separately: if someone comes into a windfall and needs your help in spending his/her fortune, would you put great efforts into assisting him/her in acquiring his/her dream situation or would you pout at the unfairness of it all?

Separately: if you go out to dinner and one of your party announces that they are suffering terribly from a debilitating pain and potentially horrible illness, would you continue to chomp away at the food before you, or would you abandon all pretense of a fine evening and move on, perhaps to a local ER room?

Separately, if this were your last overnight in Evanston, probably ever in your life, because your family member who has heretofore provided housing in Evanston every time you stopped over in the greater Chicago area, would you feel compelled to do something Evanston-specific? Like, teeter along among the staid and proper? Or would you go to your favorite Chicago neighborhood and enjoy it, because it is oh so much more with-it than this northern city enclave?


leaving Evaston, finding the hipper neighborhood of Andersonville


All this to consider in one day. My last day in Evanston (Chicago). Tomorrow, back to Madison.

from chicago: is it night? day? what?

I wake up early, stumble to my computer and check for messages. Bingo! One from my partner in crime, the graphic designer who has been helping me change things from html to readable matter on my new website.

I read it. There is a suggestion and a question. I answer with ten emails, clarifying and asking for new things to be added.

Breakfast. Shake granola into bowl, drink coffee with warm milk. Back to corner of the room where I remain huddled over my screen for the rest of the day.

Work – does it ever grab you? So that there is nothing that you would rather be doing? I have periods like that and this is one of them.

I go over data from last semester’s exams, I make notes on a new class I am to teach in spring, I consider changing some of my travel ideas for spring and summer and then its back to the new website. Text, written a day ago seems flat. I want to change it. I don’t know how to put in changes. Not yet.

More emails back and forth. Jo, the designer, responds. She is quick. I need quick. I am not the wait, for God’s sake, patient type.

Out I go to move the car. City life. My day is punctuated in two hour intervals. Move the car, avoid ticket. Each trip out is my breath of fresh air. I walk to the car, take note of the warm temp, pull my polar bear pajama bottoms up to avoid puddles (do writer type people ever get out of their pajamas? why?), look for an empty spot, go back and write.

By three I need a latte. At least I tell myself that I must surely drink a latte. It is another marker of the passage of time.

I am in Chicago, but I may as well be in Poughkeepsie. I drift in and out of Starbucks (too preoccupied to think about going elsewhere), return home for the last stretch before dinner.

from chicago: excess

I had an excess of blog-related writing today. Tons and gobs. A whole day’s worth. The webpage is getting a big push into the world. A few more days! Still, a fair warning: the waters haven’t burst yet. In fact, burst is exactly the wrong word. It is a slow and painful process. I may lose all friends and family along the way.

(Thank you those who are continuing to be patient and amused rather than ick-ed out in these days when I am preoccupied and admittedly a pain in all regions.)

In the meantime, the good weather is passing me by. Much is passing me by.

In the evening, I make my way to a strip mall and have myself a hell of a good green curry dish.



Then it’s back to the blog. World, I am busy. Be patient. It’s bang or bust. I am forging ahead.

Ocean, 3

Today marks a three year anniversary for the Other Side of the Ocean.

Another year of daily posts, though some have come terribly close to midnight and on three occasions I missed posting altogether. No WiFi on mountain summits in Canada.

Just as the idea that I should blog came suddenly, moments before I published my first post, so too, in the last days of this December, the idea that I should do something completely new and different with Ocean morphed into a reality. Of sorts. The ends aren’t tied, the paint isn’t dry, but the decision has been made.

This month, something new will appear on the Net. An Ocean offshoot, a child, bearing the name of the parents and some awfully familiar traits, but taking them into directions that are only in part Ocean-esque.

Look for the newborn. She'll be here soon. And today, I get to announce her name: ask for an Ocean view.

Like a teetering old thing, Ocean itself will continue in a parallel universe. It’ll lend support and encouragement to the other young thing and then, the hope is that the young thing will make it on its own and maybe support Ocean in her old age.

If this all seems too oblique and mysterious, keep checking in. The exact date of birth, as in all births, is a more or less thing. Let’s just say labor has begun.

In the meantime, I’m ready for champagne. Three years of daily posts is a long time.

Thanks, to all you kind readers and patient souls, good commenters and out-of-the-blue emailiers – you have been Ocean’s fuel. To a year of good ideas and even better images, for all of us.

in Chicago: clean dishes

And so midnight came and champagne (tinted a shade of rose) filled glasses and chunks of lobster sat precariously on fat scallops.



lobster on a scallop, over truffled leeks


Thrilling foods, reserved for this one extraordinary evening.

And then you wake up and it’s back to menu planning. Daily bread foods. Polenta with tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms. Field greens and rosemary flatbreads.

A clean plate on the table. Welcome, 2007.

eat, drink, be merry…

And travel far. Is there a better wish?

I didn’t travel too far for New Year’s Eve, but I am away from home. In Chicago for the week.

For the past two dozen years, I have celebrated the midnight hour that heralds in the New Year by savoring mouthfuls of great food. People blow horns and throw streamers at the stroke of midnight, they party and dance and play New Year’s Eve games. I eat.

I have wondered if this pattern of extremely festive and caloric consumption keeps me from taking New Year’s resolutions very seriously. How can I resolve to act reasonably and eat sensibly (isn’t that what people resolve?) when in the very first minute of the New Year I am doing neither?

So I don’t resolve much of anything except for telling myself in general to do better.

And a better, finer year ahead for all you Ocean readers. May great moments be yours, whether in the peace of a quiet home or the exuberance of a crowded market square. And thanks! You know, for being there and reading.

bells

Someone told me recently that they do not believe in the institution of marriage. Yawn. I’ve heard this before: Marriage is a convention that doesn’t appeal to me. I am above it.

Yawn again.

I attended a wedding today.

Hey la, hey la, hey la! Come and sing together!
If you dance then you must have, boots of shining leather!

I think weddings are some of the best events ever. They speak of yay! feelings. Of determination to beat all odds. They celebrate hope. They speak to the belief in the life of someone other than yourself.

Marriage.

Hey, bride, I know where your tattoo is because I was there (in Krakow) when you got it! [True, you know where mine is and how desperate I was to get the tattooist to make up an image that suited my fancy. ]

Wedding bells go jinga-linga, toes and fingers freeze and tingle, in our hearts we gaily mingle as the snowflakes fall.

No snowflakes today. Balmy breezes, drizzle, cloudy skies, but who cares. There’s joy out there to be found, inside the glass-encased lounges of the Overture Center. Go find it. Mer and David did (you over-achievers, you!).

Wow. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.

toward the end of the year

Sometimes, the hardest thing for me is to write lightly here, on Ocean. Events unfold. Floods, wars, executions; endless drama cumulatively played out in real life. How is it that I can draw attention to the free champagne on Air France flights (it’s true!), or write about the sheep slowing me down on roadways?

I bought a CD when I was in France. Pop music and, true to its genre, incredibly popular.

On m’appelait la cite pleine de grace (once called the city full of grace)
Dieu, comme le temps passe (God, how time passes)
On m’appelait capitale de lumiere (once called the capital of light)
Dieu, que tout se perd (God, how all is lost)
Je m’appelle Bagdad. (my name is Bagdad)

I’d say that in the summer, when I stayed in Pierrerue and listened to the radio daily just to have sound in the deeply cavernous studio apartment I had rented, I would hear this song at least half a dozen times each day.

Tina Arena, the performer, is Italian and she is one of the few non-French vocalists who has managed to excell on the French radio scene. True, she does sing in French, but so do I and no one is asking me for a return performance or even for a first run on French radio. Fine, it's not an apt comparison.

A hauntingly evocative melody, it would not leave me alone, all summer and fall.

Je m’appelle Bagdad (my name is Bagdad).

When I came back to France in September, this song was still… hot. Or at least it was played on Cherie FM (the equivalent of any of our light rock stations) over and over and over again.

So I wanted to buy it when I came home. Not so easy. Itunes did not list it. Okay, I did not try hard. But when I went to England (where it was also played, repeatedly) in November, I bought the CD.

Ocean is not exactly political, but then, in what way is this song political? It is a pop tune about a city that, over time (crucial unspoken query: what period of time are we talking about here?) has been destroyed. Arena herself says that it is an allegory: it’s not about Iraq, it’s about the destruction of physical beauty in general.

I suppose that one could sing it, therefore, in reflecting on the demise of spotted owl.

But for me, it is not about the spotted owl, nor about the demise of physical attractiveness over time. (Give me a break, Arena, you don’t really think anyone would buy that, did you?)

It’s the end of the year. I’m thinking about it – the year behind, the year ahead. There is nothing to be gained (but for administrative expediency) in numbering one year 2006 and the next 2007, except that in that break between the two you get to consider what is behind and what is ahead.

from Minneapolis: fifteen hours

So brief was my stay here! So brief, that I could pick up the return boarding pass as I was checking in to fly out. So brief, that after dinner with my wonderful St Paul friend, no minutes were left to reflect on the fact that I was in the Twin Cities.

I would have had those spare minutes had I remembered correctly where expedia.com had booked a room for me. But, at midnight, I asked to be dropped off at the wrong hotel. Empty, with a sole wedding party attendee sleeping soundly on a leather couch, it reminded me of how quickly fullness drains into nothingness, how cities on this side of the ocean, so fast paced during working hours, slow down considerably at the close of the day.



I looked for my real hotel, found it finally at the other end of the city, chatted pleasantly to the night clerk about what brought me here for these few hours in the post-holiday world of low key travel, rode the elevator up up, to my room, to see a view that almost any city in America might offer the person who chooses to sleep in its commercial hub.



Normally, I love waking up in a new city. But waking up on a late December morning in Minneapolis gives you a view of the world that is remarkably similar to the one at midnight. It is dark at midnight, still so at six-thirty, seven-thirty…

By eight-thirty I am pacing the downtown streets. Nice buildings, clean buildings. And those passageways. Everyone has heard of the passageways of Minneapolis. Did I know each would be different? They are like the bridges of Minneapolis, the glass walkways, there to avoid the brutal winds and profusion of traffic below.

Except there are no brutal winds. It is a balmy 40 degrees. And the street is shut off to all but buses. And so the feeling again is of great emptiness. The party is elsewhere. You missed the beat. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time.



I turn back and eat a horrible breakfast at the Hyatt (included! It’s all included in my Minneapolis flight of fancy. Here I am, chasing fancy miles and fancy privileges in the city of northern lights). Chopped up melon and barely unfrozen pastries, served in a dining room that is, well, empty.

No people watching. No matter. In Minneapolis, you make do with building watching.



I take the bus to the airport and catch my flight home, in time for lunch with my family. Fifteen hours from take-off to return landing.

I saw Minneapolis in a terrifically unique light (or lack thereof). Beautiful, all of it.

from Minneapolis: which door?

Was it that I had had enough holiday excess? That I needed an escape, because me, resting under one roof for more than ten days in a row is inconceivable? [Nina, I could not believe it when you told me that you like to go away at least once a month… No wonder you’re so (fill in the blank)]

Or, is it guilt: I have gone to distant places, sure, but I know little of the cities north of where I live. In fact, I have never set foot in Minneapolis. Now is the time!

Or maybe it’s out of friendship: one of my very closest friends lives in St. Paul. She had a birthday this week. I’m into birthdays. Off I go to celebrate!

So true, yet so off the right track.


It’s the crazy game of miles and flight segments logged in for 2006. It’s airline games and, what’s the American phrase – manning the system.

It's a cost–benefit analysis: I needed one more flight in 2006 to keep those elite bonus miles and perks flowing in the year 2007. A flight to Minneapolis late tonight was the cheapest, easiest way to handle it.

The other suggested reasons for being here, up north, are good, but they do not quite a trip make. Oh, and just erase the first one. I am not in need of an escape. I am in need of a descape. Or, is that not proper English?