hilarity

Laughing at someone’s mishaps is a delicate matter. Ed will stand passively as one of my tennis returns flies by him (not today: I had no time for tennis today). I’ll ask – why did you ignore that? He’ll say – I had no idea you’d hit it back at all, let alone within range. Ha ha ha. I laugh. Had he pushed it further (had he said, instead -- woaaaaa! You returned that? Really? Unbelievable! Woaaaaa, that’s beyond incredible!) I may have walked off the court and told him to find a different tennis partner.

Of course, one could argue that some of us (me?) are hypersensitive on some issues and some of us (Ed?) are hypersensitive on no issues. Life is very complicated in this way.


I brought Ed along to yoga class today. It was his first time.

Now, Ed is plenty athletic and strong. I was sure, for instance, that he would not faint right there on the purple mat.

But he’s a big man and so you have to believe that flexing a 6’4’’ body that is used to unloading a truckload of woodchips but less used to greeting the sun with arms extended is going to be a challenge.

Our instructor, little Nicky (she is almost 80 years old and certainly no more than 5 feet tall and 100 pounds thin) tries to help Ed stretch back as he drips with sweat and reaches for the sky. Except not really. When Ed reaches, the ceiling tiles move.

The woman on my other side whispers – he seems in pain… tell him not to over do it.

Indeed, Ed is moaning. And then he topples to the floor and everyone laughs in relief.

Laughter is wonderful. Had they laughed when Ed fells asleep during the last ten minutes of relaxation, I would have felt protective. Don’t laugh! He’s exhausted! But, take a self-proclaimed fit man and put him on a yoga mat in a child's pose and he’s fair game.



The air outside is cool. And truthfully, the blooming season hasn’t quite burst forward. But, as always after yoga, the world feels like it has a lot of potential to be a good place.





In the late portions of the day, I work and Ed recovers under a warm quilt, with a bag of chips and a carton of ice cream. I’d say it is a very typical kind of April day.

recovery

It’s good to know how to proceed with recovery. To act deliberately, with method rather than madness. So that in the end, you’re fine. Maybe even better than before the fall. That’s the hope. The American Dream relies on this.

Though truthfully, I never much bothered with thinking about the American Dream. Because for an immigrant like me, that dream was anyone’s dream and success was not promised here or elsewhere. Indeed, when I came to the States as a young adult, with a job but no money with me, I learned about falling flat very quickly. I got sick. I got better. I got married. I found work. I lost work. I found better work. I got divorced. I got sick again. I got better. I found an occasional traveling companion… and so on.

The savvy and the lucky can recover. For me, the American Dream is the possibility of recovery.

I’m keeping this in mind as I bounce through this housing madness that threatens to either put me out on the street (owing more for your condo than its assessed value - so the city told me yesterday - can do that to you) or, in the alternative, push me forward.

Now, what is it that I have to do today?

Let me start by looking at the market flowers now growing on my condo balcony.

green-eyed monster

I think I have run through my share of sinful emotions (behaviors?) in life. But I’ll say this – I am not especially prone to feelings of envy. I like it when people fare well for themselves. That they travel, have summer cottages in beautiful places, eat well, write books, look beautiful, have perfect dogs, perfect aunts, nieces and nephews – all gathering together for large Sunday meals, preferably outdoors under a grape arbor, at a long table covered with a red-checked tablecloth – fantastic! I could watch a movie about other peoples’ happiness again and again.

But sometimes, at rare and odd times, the green-eyed monster pops up. Here I am, ready to torture you!

Take today: I wake up, step out on the balcony and I am absolutely joyous at seeing the first market of the year (both the downtown Farmers Market and the Westside Community Market began their outdoor sales on this day).





Ed and I cross the street, my Pierrerue basket swinging with us, and voila, there it is! My very own, very local Westside Community Market.





I emphasize “local,” because our farmers markets sell only local, Wisconsin grown and produced foods and plants.





And this “only local” rule is great. At least, it’s great in April through October. The tradeoff is that if you don’t throw some California or Florida produce at us in winter, we get almost nothing that grows (I say almost because the cold spell does still give us hoop spinach and greenhouse tomatoes), unless you count mold grown on cheese and I haven’t seen much of that either in this otherwise cheesy state.

By contrast, French markets are year-round. But they are not local. You can tell where each product is from (there are signs) – what region in France, or perhaps Italy, or Spain – but you definitely get an infusion of the more distant stuff. Local stands are mixed in with stands that sell south of the border fruits, and local cheeses are supplemented with the usual Roqueforts and Reblechons from the other parts of France.

Is this better? I’m not saying that. We couldn’t have outdoor markets in Madison anyway, so why create a winter “grocery store” of produce and cheese once a week indoors?

Here’s why: because the produce is so limited in the winter, I don’t bother going to the indoor winter market in Madison. But I would go if it had just that little more for me to buy. It wouldn’t be my local across the street market, true, but I’m willing to drive a little to buy a lot. Or, a lot more than I see myself buying now at the “only from Wisconsin” winter market. From November til mid-April, I stay home and mope and wish we were more, well, France-like.

Or maybe this is simply too big a country. Zipping up Florida oranges to Wisconsin seems a bigger deal than zipping up Spain oranges to France. Or am I wrong? We already get a shrimp guy driving up once a month from the Gulf and he seems happy with his sales in Madison!

All this to say that the farmers markets in Madison are superb. And they conjure up in me that green-eyed monster as I think how those who have bountiful, or even halfway bountiful markets every week, without pause are so damn lucky! Simply put – I’m jealous.





But not for the next six and a half months. Right now, I’m in my joyous mode: the markets have arrived. Including my local one, just across the street. Bliss.

who would not love…

… a day so full of sunshine? Who would not be made happier by it? It’s ridiculously easy to let loose. All the negative ideas, thoughts, grumblings that I hear daily, in the same way that we all do (probably because it’s not as fun for people to push the upbeat as it is to remind us of life’s hazards)? I know you don’t mean them. Not today.

(Damn sun! You are so powerful!)


Late last night I lay awake thinking about my office neighbor and colleague – a woman who has an astonishing ability to describe things (inadvertently) in ways that invite peace and gentleness. It is not surprising that I nearly always stop by her office before I enter my own. (She doesn’t read my blog and does not know how much I treasure those quick visits.)

I thought what a gift it is to make someone feel upbeat and how tight we (the rest of us) are with our reassurances. As if we don’t really believe them. As if we think that if we warn of pain, that pain will leave our own backyard and migrate elsewhere!


The sun is strong. So strong that for our game of tennis, I am down to my undershirt.





Ed and I volley balls for two hours and slowly I dissolve in the warmth. If yoga was like a massage, today’s sunlight was like a week-long yoga class.


In the late afternoon, Ed zips me on his ancient motorbike over to La Baguette (for a baguette, of course; and a coffee and brioche). I watch people deliberate and select and I think -- that's right! Your moment here, at La Baguette, may be one of the very best, in ways that you (we) don't even realize!





Maybe it’s the sun. Maybe. Or maybe it's a moment spent over food and drink...





Maybe it’s the daylong massage of warm air that makes it possible to love the ordinary again.

one last ordinary Thursday

All year long, it’s been a challenge to post on Thursdays. I come home late and I’m beat.

But April has this way of pushing things to a close really fast. From snow on the ground on April Fool’s to the end of the semester – time rushes, as if we can’t stand the pace of winter, as if we need to sprint to the academic year’s end.

Today wasn’t really the end of the semester – a week and a half remain. But it’s the last ordinary Thursday and so I’ll do what I always want to do on a Thursday evening – post a few photos and call it a day.

But what photos! Not exciting in their beauty, but exciting in what they stand for – the beginning of Madison’s best face – the face of warm, sunny days, by the lake, in green spaces, against the irrepressible blue skies of the Midwest.

So, here you have it, the perfect, if still ordinary Thursday:

… early morning bike ride on the lake shore path…











…up Bascom Hill to my office… (already a gaggle of girls congregates on the grasses of Bascom Mall, even though there’s still a nip in the air)





And the day of lectures begins. Classes keep me indoors. And when I do finally take an afternoon break and head outside for an espresso, I see that in these few hours, the campus (and therefore Bascom Hill) has moved into that wonderful presummer pink sunglasses mood. Relaxed, unclothed, happy.





And no place demonstrates this better, that Madison mood of outdoor pleasure, than Union Terrace. Predictably, it’s starting to fill.






I’m back in class for the rest of the afternoon and then, suddenly, the hands of clock slide all the way down and I am done.

I bike home. When the semester started, I would stand at the bus stop and count each second, willing it to be the last one of waiting in the cold. Now, I zip past the stop on the bike, enjoying the spin so much that I even take a detour to Centennial Gardens, where the pink buds are about to burst into bloom and the birds dart in and out of the branches, excited and as pleased as I am that we have sprung into a summery spring.





And the two girls on the grass smile and smile. And my ordinary Thursday suddenly is feeling very very bright and beautiful.

greatness thrust upon it

The day is destined to be big. Not insignificant, or lost in the detail of work and food preparation, or wiping wet dishes that should have dried in the washer.

For the first time since January (when I was so close to Venezuela that it didn’t count) I am warm outside. A turning point. A huge step into the next stage of life. In which I am going to take endless big steps and finally move forward.

Ed nudges me to play tennis and I do, but I get distracted. By the conversation of two older East Asian men (there are many East Asians here, just up the street, and they come to the tennis courts often and they play integenerationally and very well)…





…By the school class that takes their tennis lesson here (and they all play badly but with such energy that it doesn’t matter)…










…and finally by my own poor plays that rise in frequency with each degree added to the thermometer. At 59 degrees, Ed suggests we stop for the day.

We pick up odds and ends at the grocery store and I return home to work.





Want to go on the bike ride later? – he asks.
No, not tonight, I have big things to do today and I expect I will be doing them all the time. (He does not press for detail and that’s good, because right now, all I can see are the contours of greatness. Magnificence without specifics.)

At 63 degrees, but really in the sun it’s almost 90 (I know because my outdoor thermometer is poorly positioned), I stop working, go out on the balcony and sit, thinking big thoughts.

It is so beachlike out there that I reach for sunscreen. I read a New Yorker story about twin brothers, both writers, and I think about my daughters – neither would call herself a writer (I don't think) and they are not twins, but they are twin-like in their closeness.

Inside, I take one more look at my work notes, close that page and open a new one for a blogpost.

Later, I take an evening walk and watch a young woman walk a tightrope. Made tight in partnership with her friend.










Do all spirited days have warm beginnings? Looking forward. It’s so important to look ahead to even greater days.

at the end of the day...

...It’s never uncomplicated for me. I want to think that upbeat people thrive on mornings and I am one of them. Wake up with energy, plans, enthusiasm. Retire with doubt.

Except on summer days, when the bike ride home on the lake path is brilliant and delightfully buoyant…










…and the light fades only after you’ve eaten dinner.

Today may as well have been a summer day in Madison (though a cool one; I still wore my pea jacket). It’s hard to fault an evening when you bicycle past flowers that bloom with colors of Ocean...





...and bees emerge from inside the bluest petals.

hang your head

I’m in a beautiful, modern house, shaking on a mat – one of ten purple and blue mats, laid out neatly in two rows on a wooden floor.

Or at least, my leg is shaking. It’s telling me that it’s not used to me placing demands on it in this way.

It’s a yoga class. People think Madison is a yoga kind of town. Is there anyone within six miles of the isthmus who has never done yoga? I’ve certainly dabbled in it. Really, most everyone has.

But forty or fifty years back, you could not find a decent yoga class here. That's what Nicky Plaut tells me. She moved here from Belgium to marry a Madison man. She came with a love of pilates ("since I was six!"), dance and yoga.


Fifteen degrees in! Your other foot needs to be at that angle, she tells me now. Nicky is tough. Nicky wont let you slouch. And by the way, in three months, Nicky’ll be celebrating her 80th birthday. Last month, she left Mounds Yoga (after 26 years of instructing there) to open her own business from her home. Ah, the entrepreneurial spirit: it can strike at any time. ("I don’t have to drive to work in snow anymore!") Many commute a long way to get to her new studio. Me – I’m barely half a mile down the road. And I’m a brand new fan.

Hang your head. Let it go now…

Nicky wants me to hang my head, but I want to keep my eyes focused on her. So nimble! How does one get to be so nimble at that age?

Is there any doubt? After class, she shows me her own quiet space upstairs. This is how she begins her day…



























Release between the shoulder blades…

We are in the final minutes of the 90 minute class. A pillow under my head, a warm wool blanket covering me (“you can’t relax if you’re not warm…”). Nicky talks about relaxing different parts of the body. It’s like a complete mental massage. But so much cheaper! All this and a nimble body for $10?

The class is not easy. She holds us in position for a long time (“you should release if it’s too much!” Maybe you should, but I’m too competitive; I’ll hang in there until my muscles scream). But at the end of class, I am completely mellow… at peace with pretty much everyone and everything.

Drippy cold rain outside... Nice... It’ll make the flowers grow.

[If you need to be inspired, stretched, relaxed, call Nicky at Hill Top Yoga – 233-8406. Tell her I got you to pick up the phone.)

Easter

A beautiful holiday, if you think about it. Sort of like a springtime Thanksgiving, but with a more upbeat, forward looking punch to it. I’m thinking of the renewal elements, the egg dishes and pastel colors. Yes, I know – that’s a limited repertoire of associations. My parents gave some attention to Christmas (at least during my childhood) but they neglected Easter. I don’t know that my mother quite knew what to do with it. Bunnies? Baskets? Not in our house.

My kids were probably shortchanged as well. St Matthew’s Passion doesn’t have the zip of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Yes, there were Easter dresses and early on, we even took them to church (see? This is what it’s like; these are your roots…). There were egg hunts in the backyard – a laughable thing, given that Wisconsin in March is so, well, traumatic. And there was a spring feast of sorts, but I struggled there as well. I don’t like to roast lamb or pork and so we’d have chicken and mashed potatoes. Served on better china.



When, in an outpouring of generous spirits, old neighborhood friends invited me to Easter brunch and newer but no less special friends invited me to Easter dinner today I was thrilled.

Ed stayed away. If my family didn’t do Easter well, his Jewish family, who acquiesced to having a Christmas tree in December, did not go along with an Easter Bunny motif. And so he is both clueless and fairly indifferent to it all. He’d rather be pruning his peach tree.

After a rousing game of tennis, where the balls reminded me of Easter eggs…





…and I bounced around the court in my finest Easter attire…





I waved Ed off and pedaled to the old neighborhood…

…to enjoy egg dishes and Easter decorations with friends who were no strangers to this holiday.











Later, at home, I thought more about Easter and families and spring and renewal (again, a very limited repertoire of associations), then got back on my bike and pedaled in the opposite direction to the home of a lovely family who were at least in cahoots with the Easter Bunny. It was wonderful to watch their kids search for hidden Easter treasures (and to see the brother peek into his little sister’s bag to make sure the loot amounts were equal).





You could say that I am hijacking the holidays of others. Maybe. But then, aren’t holidays supposed to be borrowed and shared? Fact is, every day is not a holiday. And every day is not a day of renewal, eggs, asparagus and chocolate carrots.

keeping happy

Your friend did that to you? That’s just wrong! After all you’ve done for him! You’re mad, aren’t you?
No.
Why? I mean, it’s maddening, anyone would see that…
Look, I’ve got what, maybe five, ten years of life? (we like to exaggerate imminence of demise in this household) Why would I waste them on feeling mad at stupid things?



(later)
I have soaked the pot in water. I have squeezed orange rind into the potting mixture. I have rinsed the roots of the orchid in grapefruit dishwashing suds. Still, the ants keep multiplying and spilling out onto my condo floor.

That’s it. Out it goes. I wanted to wait until the frost date, but this plant has pushed me over the edge. It stays on the balcony, frost or no frost.
Put it in a basin of water overnight. The ants wont be able to leave. Let's think about it.

(the next morning)
Any ants out and about ?
No, they’re probably having a town hall meeting in the root ball, thinking of the next move.
Put the plant outside for the day.
Yes, just that. It’s never coming back in.
But the water basin worked, no? The ants were contained?
Yes, but the roots don’t like to be placed in water…
Then put the plant on a platform, above the water. The ants wont be able to get out to the condo. They’ll farm aphids, or whatever the hell it is that they are doing in your orchid.
So, I should keep the plant inside like this?
..with a moat around it. Ants are happy, your condo’s happy. What more could you ask for?


Keeping happy.

It can be a moat around an orchid with ants.

It can be a game of tennis on a cool but sunny Saturday afternoon.
You're getting better! Fewer Nina hits! (He means fewer totally odd body contortions on my part.)

Phone calls from loved ones? Yes, those too.


(later)
I read an article in the Isthmus (our weekly alternative paper) about the appearance of loons on Lake Monona. It comes as a surprise: loons don’t like cities, they don’t like people, noise, they don’t even like to share a lake for mating purposes (odd thing, considering Lake Monona is bigger than a bed and loons are smaller than humans). Yet, they’re here, several dozen, passing through.

Ed and I head out to the lake to see if we can spot them. Black beaks, red eyes, darting underwater for minutes on end – they’re easy enough to separate from, say, the common duck. There, see it? A loon.





Shy, but daring, at least when in the company of fellow loons. But spooked by noise. And, over by Monona Terrace, on a sunny Saturday, there is plenty of sound. Out would come the loon, floating, as if on a forgotten Canadian lake…





…and back underwater it would retreat. Again and again.





The water hides them for a while and I never know where they will emerge next.

Ed lies down on a stretch of grass and dozes as I lean on the edge of the terrace wall, waiting, watching.

It’s funny how a new face can get your attention. The local mallard reminds me that he, too, is not without beauty. Yes, you’re right, you duck…





He paddles off to play with his mate on the silky waters of Lake Monona.





So happy. So very content to be following her this way and that.

adding tones

You don’t need it. Your hair looks great, you’re hair looks great.

Nah. I can’t buy it. For one thing, half the time he’s saying it, his nose is buried in something or other.


It’s nippy again. The sun is deceptive. The thermometer is telling me 43.

That hair that looks great is getting in my way as I swing my tennis arm. A little wild, but I need the extra motion to keep warm.

Kids at the next door court are half volleying, half talking. It’s cool to see that: two young boys toying with the game, with the afternoon.





I have to go. It’s a 6 mile ride for me – I tell Ed.
I pedal to Jason’s.


Happy New Year – I tell the color genius. I haven’t been here that long. He’s got a new tattoo. He’s into yoga more, too. There’s growth in my hair and growth in his life and on balance – I’d say we’re chuggin’ along in our orbits just fine.


I bike home more slowly. It’s near evening and I’m not in a hurry. Friday at dusk is a no hurry time.

Your hair’s okay, Ed tells me. At least he’s consistent.

full

There is so much to be said for a Thursday in mid-April (I’m fudging dates a little). The teaching week is over for me. The days are April days, which, no matter how cold, smell differently. Of thawing earth. Somewhere between rotting wood and forsythia. Probably closer to rotting wood as forsythia hasn’t yet made an appearance here.

But here’s the downside of any Thursday: it’s a long work day. Bike to campus…





Look out office window (with a smile)…





Finish up, bike back.





A good day. Yes, and awfully, awfully full.