On Moving and Morels.

My love affair with New York City was ill-fated from the start. My husband Jake and I lived in the apartment of our dreams, but far from within our means. We had a washer and dryer. A large kitchen. Two bathrooms. A balcony with a view of the entire Manhattan skyline. My friends called it a “sitcom apartment.” Real people don’t live in spaces like those, not in New York City, especially not when they’re newlyweds just starting out. I had hoped to seduce the city with this slick and confident façade, instead I just doomed myself to working two jobs to make the rent. I worked extra hours at a coffee shop, in retail, babysitting---mostly to the benefit of my two cats, who would luxuriate all day in generous rectangles of sunlight and chatter at pigeons thru the floor to ceiling windows. After fifteen months we decided not to renew our lease. I mourned the loss of what could have been by eating: my last sandwich from the Brooklyn Larder. My last cocktail at Prune. My last espresso at Third Rail. In the days leading up to the move, revisiting my favorite restaurants and grocery stores became a bitter end to a whirlwind affair.  Visiting these places mirrored those last passionate efforts a couple undertakes before they bury their relationship, except that for my part, the breakup sex was a meatball sandwich. It all ended for good as I crossed the Verazanno Bridge in a Budget rental truck, nibbling frantically at my final almond croissant from the Park Slope Food Co-op.

We settled into our new home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, into my dad’s hunting cabin on fifty acres of beautiful farmland in Western Virginia. Though we had physically moved on, I still couldn’t get over New York. I missed the city. I still loved it there. I tried telling myself it just didn’t work out. It was for the best. I force-fed these bitter incantations to my starving, broken heart. I was still hungry.

It was what I had asked for, really. I had cheated on New York. I had always harbored farmland fantasies. When we finally left the city, we took with us the two cats, the truckload of IKEA furniture, the pots and pans, and clothes, and books. But the heaviest box was no real box at all. It was our idea of what this move should be---an imaginary vessel for our expectations, across which we would have scrawled, “handle with care” and “fragile” if we could have. Our specific idea of how we wanted our life to be in Virginia was complete with vegetable gardens, home-brewed beer, and lazy rocking in rocking chairs.  Bubble wrapped and coddled in newspaper, we hoped these dreams would survive the trip.

The move was exciting at first. For once in our lives we actually had a nearer chance of pursuing the benchmarks of rural lifestyle that are luxuries to urban denizens.  In our old neighborhood of Crown Heights, for example, hopes for a vegetable garden were limited to a forlorn terracotta pot on the balcony. There was no space for home-brew equipment in the kitchen. Between the rent and the groceries, I couldn’t spare a cent to splurge on a nice wooden rocking chair nor the time to spend idly rocking. New York City was a dead sprint. We wanted to stroll.

The expanse of time and space we found in Virginia was not unlike the void one finds in life after the departure of a loved one: Unstructured days washed over us with opportunity and freedom. Our schedules had always been measured down to the thimbleful in New York.  Now each day was like plunging into a dunk tank the size of a reservoir. We adjusted over time. We slept through the too-quiet nights with help from a rattling fan. We started a garden. I began home brewing (though it was kombucha, not beer), and I even found an old rocking chair in the attic.  Yet I still couldn’t let go of New York entirely. I needed something powerful to free me from memories of that shattered romance. I needed a rebound.

That rebound, for me, was the morel mushroom. The mystique of this cherished and hard-to-find fungi impressed my imagination and evolved into a symbol necessary to attaining “the good life.” The morel was the materialization of our new life chapter, I thought. To me it was strange and wild; a delicious and rare thing that couldn’t be cultivated, only found.

All that, and yet, I had never even tasted a morel. I hadn’t even seen a fresh one in person.  I had only hunted down websites in search on foraging tips, read about trained mushroom hunting dogs imported from Europe, and studied images of the morel’s pitted, alien looking surface from my glowing computer screen.  The closest I had come to any was in dehydrated form, which I examined through a crinkling plastic bag at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Despite this distance, somewhere between the Brooklyn Bridge and the foothills of the Blue Ridge, I began my desperate, heartsick affair with the morel. The stakes were high: For the move from Brooklyn to the cabin to be a good life choice, I really needed to find some effing morels.

Here’s the scene of my self-affirming mushroom fantasy, which played on a loop in my mind during those first hard weeks at the cabin:

It begins at dawn the day or two after a thunderstorm. The air is warm, a little humid.  The birds are chirping, the insects trilling, the whole forest lit up by a golden sunrise pouring through the trees . . . You get the idea---it’s perfect.  Jake and I are slowly walking through the woods, pausing at the base of trees to carefully overturn fallen leaves. A straw hat and wicker basket fix prominently in this dream scene, too, their charm and utility reassuring my every careful step. We round the trunk of a massive tree, and then . . . morels are everywhere.  It’s like an Easter egg hunt, except the kind for little kids where the plastic eggs are just tossed out on the lawn.  It’s like someone just smashed open a forest-sized piñata that was filled with morels. It’s like . . . again, you get the idea. Time lapse to early evening. We’re at the edge of the woods cooking the mushrooms in a big cast iron pan. Cue the triumphant orchestral music as the pan sizzles and the butter pools.  The morels are cooked and golden. The field is golden. The whole world is golden. We eat our happiness on golden toast. We’re gonna be just fine, says the dream, we’re gonna be just golden.

Obviously I had a bit of a problem. Call it morel-induced neurosis. As silly as that dream sequence feels now, I can’t forget how urgent it felt then. The only release from the pressure of that absurdly vivid idealization of my new life at the cabin was . . . to make it happen. There were no alternatives. The morel was my only ticket, my golden one shot. My hunger for this food I had never tasted was strong and overwhelming. It sent me deep into Virginia where I wandered past creeks, through thick woods, past dirt roads and hillsides. While wandering and searching in the forest we found the skull of a baby bear, a wild turkey sitting on a nest of giant eggs, a serious toad, tons of fiddle heads, a field of bluebells. But no morels. Not one.

It would be weeks before the stars aligned. Eventually the weather shifted and the ground warmed. We learned about the land we were searching on, about the types of trees and the ideal spots for mushroom growth. Then it happened---we hit the mushroom jackpot all at once. They were everywhere, just like in the dream. Huge, meaty, rich. Delicious. We returned to the cabin and cooked the morels in a skillet with butter. I ate so many but I hardly recall their taste now, it was something like bacon and earth. Like minerals and meat.

The rebound worked, at least for a while. I forgot about New York and the meatball sandwiches and almond croissants and espresso. I focused instead on what was before me now. This new love affair didn't make all of my insecurities about moving dissolve, but at least it made them more palatable.

Isla Negra

Every morning, on a remote shore along the Chilean coast, in a small house overlooking the sea, a bulky man blew his trumpet while observing the ever-moving sea surface. This man was Pablo Neruda, the most famous poet from South America, and the place where he chose to spend the later part of his life was Isla Negra, a tiny hamlet an hour’s drive from the capital, Santiago. In 1939, when Neruda started to compose Canto General, he felt the need of a new shelter. He found Isla Negra, a precious spot unknown to most people, on a newspaper ad. The place, a lot with a tiny stone cabin that back then looked more like a wreck, was sold to him by an old sea captain, and it slowly became the poet’s own boat . . . anchored on land.

And soon “the house was growing, as people, as trees . . .” African sculptures, Chinese prints, Buddhas, compasses, maps, old paintings, and even a skull. Ship’s figure heads, shells, nautical decors and more than a hundred bottles the poet bought in the flea markets in France. Neruda loved to surround himself with collected objects, remains and relics from the past, while growing dreams about the future.

“The wild coast of Isla Negra, with the tumultuous oceanic movement, allowed me to surrender with passion to the venture of my new song”.

Rambling and creative architecture, quirky collections of world art, and a stunning ocean view. In the house of Isla Negra Neruda found the perfect place to write, and put together an important part of his literary work. The poet’s appetite for life was endless. He indeed described himself as omnivorous---“I would like to swallow the whole earth, drink the whole sea".

Neruda hoped to leave the house as a heritage to Chilean people (“I don't want my heritage of joy to die”), but sadly that refuge wasn’t far enough to escape Pinochet’s oppression. During a search of the house at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which Neruda was present, a soldier asked Neruda if he hid weapons or something threatening in there. The poet remarked: "Look around---there's only one thing of danger for you here---poetry."

Sonnet LXXX by Pablo Neruda

My Love, I returned from travel and sorrow to your voice, to your hand flying on the guitar, to the fire interrupting the autumn with kisses, to the night that circles through the sky.

I ask for bread and dominion for all; for the worker with no future ask for land. May no one expect my blood or my song to rest! But I cannot give up your love, not without dying.

So: play the waltz of the tranquil moon, the barcarole, on the fluid guitar, till my head lolls, dreaming:

for all my life's sleeplessness had woven this shelter in the grove where your hand lives and flies, watching over the night of the sleeping traveler.

Hildegard von Bingen: Composer. Mystic. Nun.

The other day, Google ran a Doodle in honor of 19th-century composer/pianist Clara Schumann’s birthday, and it took me back to my days as an undergraduate music major. Yes, it’s true—before I was Miss History ‘n’ Pop Culture, I was studying to be a composer. I switched gears, but I still harbor a deep passion for music, and I still play piano. Mostly show tunes.

Anyway, I was reminded how, in my music history studies, of the dozens and dozens of important names we learned, there were maybe three female composers that came up. There was Clara Schumann---wife of Robert Schumann. There was Fanny Mendelssohn---sister of Felix Mendelssohn. But the one who always stood out for me—maybe because she stood entirely on her own—was Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine nun from the twelfth century who wrote, of all things, monophonic morality plays. Fun!

Saint Hildegard (she was “equivalently canonized” earlier this year) was another one of those historical women who seemed to do it all, with the added benefit of living an uncommon 82 years in medieval times. She was born in 1098 in Germany, and as a teenager, she was instructed in psalm-reading by the head of a local Benedictine community. When the woman died, Hildegard was elected the new head.

I should mention---Hildegard had been having these visions ever since she was a child, which she often described as in terms of bright lights. Modern-day physicians would attribute these “visions” (and the visions of many other medieval mystics) to migraines, hence the light sensitivity, which, all in all, is a perfectly satisfactory explanation. But I’d caution against getting too wrapped up in modern scientific understandings of things; for Hildegard, these visions were real, as they also were for many of those who surrounded her. And their very “realness” was the impetus for many of the great things she accomplished.

It was at age 42 when Hildegard had THE vision, the first one that would serve as the divine inspiration for her work. “A burning light of tremendous brightness coming from heaven poured into my entire mind,” she recorded. “God told me, ‘Write what you see and hear.’” And, in the Middle Ages, when God talked, you listened.

From then on, Hildegard was a writing fiend. She would produce a book on theology, two books on science and medicine, over seventy musical pieces, and go on four speaking tours of Europe. She did this all while recording her visions and managing her convents. Notably, she also held regular correspondence with kings and popes and important dudes like Abbot Suger, not easy guys to impress.

This story, I think, illustrates what she was able to achieve very well: In 1148, Hildegard claimed she had been commanded by God to move her nuns to a new location near the town of Rupertsberg. The monks over her head refused, wary of the expense and the loss of personnel. Hildegard then took to her bed, struck sick, too weak to move. Her sickness was, of course, attributed to her failure to follow God’s divine orders. Eventually, the abbot agreed with this interpretation and granted her permission to move to the new site, overruling the monks, and Hildegard got what she wanted. And within a few years, the Rupertsberg convent became so popular they needed to build a second convent just across the Rhine River to accommodate demand. Hildegard managed both.

It’s been noted that, despite her gender, Hildegard didn’t quite jibe with modern feminist ideas—that she sometimes spoke ill of women, associating them with weakness in accordance with dominant ideas of the time. Unlike her male contemporaries, she didn’t toot her own horn when it came to her musical talents, considering herself a mere vessel for the voice of God. (Note: This wasn’t an idea particular to Hildegard or women, however; Jorge Luis Borges notes that writers of antiquity such as Plato considered the poet nothing more than a “fleeting instrument of divinity.”)

But Hildegard’s attitude needs to be placed in its appropriate context, as do her migraine-visions. In fact, they’re kind of related. Much of Hildegard’s power was derived from her claims to legitimate communion with God; this was an incredibly effective means to personal agency in the Christian-dominated paradigm of medieval Europe. Her visions, her orders from heaven, her illnesses were tools from which she could carve out an autonomous space, provoke action from male higher-ups, and, ultimately, leave her mark on music history, religious history, and medieval history, something so few other women were able to achieve.

This is not in any way to say that Hildegard’s successful maneuverings within the system were planned or intentional. But it’s worth noting that, of the privileged few medieval women from the lower (read: not queen) classes who show up on the historical record, a large number were saints and mystics. There was no feminism in 1150. You did what you could.

In honor of St. Hildegard, who according to Wikipedia celebrated a birthday on Sunday (happy 914^th!), I recommend listening to one of her lovely compositions, like Spiritus Sanctus or O vis aeternitatis. Though solemn and ordered by today’s standards, for her time she was very original, breaking many of the hallowed rules of music theory to write soaring vocal lines and even (gasp!) switching modes in mid-song. For perspective, mode-switching didn’t become a la mode until five hundred years later.

Kinda makes you want to go join a medieval convent, doesn’t it? Or at least write a pretty song with a hurdy gurdy in it. I might just go do the latter.

Looking Forward: Dream On

There’s a pivotal moment in The Wizard of Oz, in which a bewildered Dorothy, clutching Toto and gazing wide-eyed around the kaleidoscopic world of Oz, exclaims breathlessly to the dog, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Then, with a big smile: “We must be over the rainbow!”

I had an experience like this a few years ago, waking up my first morning in Warkworth, New Zealand. I had just arrived to work on a small, family-run organic farm as part of a month-long solo excursion that occurred during the year I spent between New York and Los Angeles---the one rife with wondering, worrying, and flailing, that I referenced in last week’s post.

I slept in a tiny wooden cabin tucked away in a corner of the farm, heavy with trees. Outside my window were acres of rolling green fields---the sort I thought only existed in movies. Cows meandered in distant pastures; nearby, a flock of chickens awaited breakfast, chattering affably in their pen. Sitting up in bed, taking it all in, I felt worlds away from the smoggy, sun-bleached haze of LA, the crowded sidewalks of New York City.

It was heaven. I may as well have been over the rainbow.

I spent my days cleaning chicken coops, weeding the vegetable garden, hanging laundry to dry in the sun. I learned to make jam from the bruised flesh of overripe strawberries. Bake bread from scratch. Milk goats. I discovered the joys of pavlova, feijoa wine, and a curiously sweet breed of lemon called a “lemonade”.

I spent seven days living in a trailer in the front yard of a family whose diet consisted solely of raw foods. I flew in a tiny plane to Great Barrier Island, where, in exchange for washing dishes in the kitchen of a local inn, I accompanied the resident fishermen on afternoon sailing trips and ate crayfish with bread and butter by the sea at sunset.

I wasn’t writing. I wasn’t working. I rarely had access to a phone or computer.

But in between the planting and the cleaning and the fishing and the cooking, I was doing something.

I was collecting stories. And I was dreaming.

The disappointment of the previous months behind me, I spent many nights awake---in my cabin, in my trailer, in my bunk---making lists of things I wanted to do when I got home, places I wanted to visit, goals I hoped to achieve. I made plans. I thought about what I needed in life to be happy. I was alone (and sometimes lonely), but the quiet gave me space to think, and the time to prepare for resuming life on my own back in the U.S.

“It’s important to give yourself time to dream,” my dad said to me once, when I fretted over the fact that many of my friends were moving ahead with their careers, starting grad school, living in new cities.

These days, while I don’t have the time or the money to leave the country to do so, I find myself slipping into daydreams frequently---on the train, on the bus, on walks home at the end of the day. Focus, I often tell myself in instances like this. Don’t get distracted. There’s no time; you’re too busy. 

But sometimes what I need most, I think, is time to be distracted. Time to dream. It isn't a luxury; it's a necessity. Dorothy's dreams took her to Oz, over chimney tops, past the rainbow. Who knows where I'll wake up next?

Thinking about that is my favorite daydream of all.

Making the Choice

Early this spring, during my morning of chores and yoga, I watched a documentary about a young woman with cystic fibrosis—the same disease that I have, although hers was much more advanced—preparing for a lung transplant. It was a tough film to watch, but ultimately uplifting. And, for that day at least, it changed the way I thought. An hour or two after the film had finished, I grabbed my keys and headed out to my car to run an errand. As I slid behind the wheel, my mind still on that morning’s documentary, I thought: I’m so grateful that I don’t have to maneuver an oxygen tank; it’s so nice to be able to move freely, without worrying about tubing and concentrators.

Immediately on the heels of that thought came another, much less happy one. But I don’t want to have to be grateful for that, I heard myself saying. I may not be on oxygen, but I still can’t walk very far without getting tired. I still can’t live a normal life, or do normal things. It’s still not fair.

And in that moment, before enough time had passed for me to so much as put my key into the car’s ignition, I had an instant of crystal clarity. This is my choice, I thought. I can choose to be grateful, or I can choose to still want more.

.   .   .   .   .

For several years, I have struggled with the unfulfilled desire for motherhood. I have always been that girl—the one who loved babies and children, the one who used to imagine a family of six or eight or ten, the one who considered twins an exciting challenge. It was hard for me, as a teenager, to realize that my disease and the fragility of my body would make both pregnancy and motherhood difficult; it has been even harder, as an adult, to wait through years of poor health, delays, setbacks, and infertility for the child I longed for so desperately. All around me, my friends conceived and mothered with ease and grace, while I was left childless and wanting.

Again and again, as the frustration and the anger and the pain drove me to what I felt like was the absolute limit of my endurance, I came back to the same truth.

This is my life, and I cannot change it.

I can only choose whether I’ll be happy, or unhappy.

.   .   .   .   .

 Years ago in mid-October, I was admitted to the hospital through the emergency room, after several days of chest pain that had ultimately grown so severe that I couldn’t even sleep. I felt like my nightmares had come true—I had to pull out of classes mid-semester, had to watch my life be completely disrupted by the unexpected turn of events.

For the two weeks that I spent in the hospital that autumn, I found myself feeling an anger I had rarely felt before. It isn’t fair, I thought over and over again. It isn’t fair that this had to happen. It isn’t fair that my life has to be different. It isn’t fair that my future is clouded with uncertainty, and I have trouble seeing past my thirties. None of this is fair.

And yet, when those weeks had ended and I was left trying to pick up the pieces of my life once again, I felt truth sinking into my heart. Fair or not, this was my life, and it was out of my control. The only thing I could control was the state of my heart: would I continue to fight the things I could not change, or would I choose to be happy anyway?

.   .   .   .   .

Late this summer, I watched with disbelief as two pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test on my bathroom counter. After such a long time of waiting, it didn’t seem real; for weeks, I felt like I was on a roller-coaster of joy and hope and fear and disbelief. And, to my surprise, dissatisfaction. Here was my dream come true, the thing that I had wanted for so many years—and yet, somehow, I couldn’t let go of my feelings of jealousy and frustration. I found myself clinging to the idea of what I had originally wanted, wishing that this blessing had come into my life years earlier. I couldn’t stop looking with envy at my friends, their homes already filling with children, so much further along this path that I was only beginning to walk.

Last month, I walked along the North Carolina coastline, trying to reconcile my unexpected feelings of frustration with the incredible joy that this pregnancy had brought into my life. And, as the warm East coast waves lapped at my feet, I came again to the understanding that I have come to so many times before:

It’s my choice. I can allow myself to be consumed in anger and pain and jealousy, dwelling on the things in my life that have not gone as I wanted.

Or, I can choose happiness. I can choose to go where life takes me; to be content with the ups and downs, with the life that I have, rather than the life that I might have wanted.

.   .   .   .   .

This choice—the choice between being happy and being unhappy—seems to confront me at all angles of my life, in good times and in bad. And every time it does, I am struck all over again by the power of this simple truth that so many wise men and women throughout the ages have known:

Ultimately, my happiness is all up to me.

How will I choose today?

Listening

When was the last time that you really listened? I don’t mean to a person. That’s a good thing to do, too, but it’s another topic, for another time. What I mean to ask is, when was the last time that you closed your eyes and just listened to the sounds around you? Let’s do it together.

Right now.

I’m serious.

Close your eyes and listen.

Last week I took an afternoon stroll to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. It’s a pretty usual routine for me. When I’ve finally hit my limit for time I can spend inside a dim apartment typing furiously in front of a computer screen, I strap on whatever sandals are nearest by, make sure that I don’t have toothpaste still stuck to the edges of my mouth and that my hair is moderately combed and I venture outside. Emerging from our tiny apartment I’m certain I look something like a mole, blinking and surprised by the sun, but I put one foot in front of the other and begin to walk and before I know it, I’m feeling better. I breathe deeply, and round a few corners and suddenly there they are, the glittering bay and my Promenade. The Brooklyn Heights Promenade is perched precariously over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and if you ask me it offers one of the most breathtaking views in all of New York. If you head there at the right time in the evening you’ll see that lower Manhattan looks exactly like Oz. I promise.

The Promenade is the place I go to recharge, re-center, re-whatever it is I’m feeling like I’m lacking. Funnily, last week as I sat there soaking in the mid-September sun and beginning to feel like something that resembled a human being, I closed my eyes and listened. It’s a funny thing about cities. They don’t turn off. Just when you think you’re enjoying a peaceful moment of quiet repose, you realize the city is still buzzing all around you. On this particular day, there were helicopters circling overhead, teenagers shouting to each other, dog tags jingling in a strange rhythm with the patter of their tiny paws. There were car horns on the BQE and backhoes digging around in Brooklyn Bridge Park. There were seagulls squawking and tugboat horns blowing and speedboats doing laps on the East River. It was not quiet but somehow amidst all that racket there was still a sense of calm and comfort, too, in knowing that the world is so much bigger than only me.

Now, what are hearing where you are?

IV. Savoie

My dad comes to visit me in Chambéry. I have been here for two months already, and the cold weather of the Alps in late winter, mixed with the overwhelming amount of nothing to do, has led me to become incredibly familiar with all the pizza places in town. I have gained weight, despite all the running I do up these steep hills. It is odd for me, and I feel bad about myself. I love European pizza---the crust is thin, crispy, steaming. Sometimes the chefs will crack an egg right on top of your pizza, no warning, which I think is incredibly funny and adds a touch of suspense to dinner.

I take my dad to one of these places in town. I get a pizza with tons of vegetables, and he gets one with andouille on it. Inexplicably, neither one of us is quite sure what it is.

It turns out to be sausage made with the gastrointestinal system of a pig. It tastes like ass.

Sick Days

My mother has a photograph of me as an infant from the first time I was sick. I am lying on the carpeted floor, a blanket up to my chest, my head on a miniature pillow. I have a doll posed next to me and am looking right at the camera with my deep, dark brown eyes. I am silent, unmoving except for my eyes staring right into you. It may be the only photo from my first two years where I am not a blur of movement. My mother explained that in those days you valued your film, every shot mattered and was important. This was meaningful, my mother noted, because it was the first time I was truly still. Charley has been sick the past few days, and I am reminded of that photograph. It is not that I delight in his discomfort, far from it; it hurts in a different way to see your child in pain. It is just a fever, the onset of teeth or the sign of an upcoming cold. The house has a different energy. We let him watch Curious George quietly in the dark, cool living room. It feels like so long since we have snuggled. Despite looking very much like my husband, he has much of my personality. He has my ability to go all day long, from activity to activity, without napping, too interested in the world around him. Generally our house has the frenzied chaotic energy of a small zoo or college dorm. There is yelling, barking, drinks spilled on the couch, and rallying long past bedtime. It’s not that he is a hyper child; he will find a calm moment to do a puzzle, or build with his Legos. Instead, it’s just that he needs to be constantly entertained, his brain jumps around so much, he’s asking about the dog, he wants to know about the fireplace, he needs to build this boat RIGHT NOW.

I am the same way really, even now. I flutter from hobby to hobby, unsure of how to find that stillness, that quiet satisfaction. The only times calm has visited me was when I had morning sickness. Calm had the ability to make me rethink everything, become introspective.

So, perhaps, a little bit, I relish the times he is sick, and allows me to baby him. I snuggle next to his soft, blonde head, smelling the last of the baby hairs. These days when I pick him up from preschool, his curls are matted to his forehead and he smells vaguely of sweat, sand and whatever they had for lunch (it always smells like meatballs). Gone are the days of carrying him against my chest in the sling, tucked in tightly, fingers clasped around the straps. Instead he refuses to hold my hand in the parking lot and wants to run, RUN MAMA, to see the shopping carts that look like race cars. This weekend though, we spent a quiet few hours, just snuggling on the couch, and we discovered the stillness once more together.

Watching Weather and Red Earth

By Eliza Deacon From up here you can forget that much else exists and your view of the world is only what spreads away down over tops of trees and the Maasai Steppe beyond; at the moment much of that is impassable anyhow after early rains. It would be all too easy not to leave this place and to become deeply rooted in the red soil along with the coffee, easy to become a recluse and slowly slip off the social calender until, in months to come, people wonder whatever happened to you---not such a bad thing really.

The farm grows slowly around us and the coffee seedlings---planted earlier this year---are now knee height or thereabouts. With a nod to the aesthetics of line and form, they are planted on the contours of the hills, gentle curves that owe much to good farming practice; there is something peaceful about following their lines and your walk always finds direction because of them, although the dogs pay them no mind and have yet to learn to tread softly around fragile roots.

I walk a lot these days, frustrations like lack of power (we’re not on the grid) resulting in lack of internet---not so crucial really, except for that lifeline to the outside world---are easier to handle when you’ve been up to the highest point on the farm and squatted down in the red earth letting the view take away often murderous thoughts. I’m trying to learn patience and that all things are not always solved by another glass of wine, when you’re at your limit but you can’t get off the farm, because ‘you can’t actually get off the farm’ as the rain has made the tracks too slippery and you’ll only wrap the truck around a coffee bush if you try. All these things are good. I suppose they’re lessons if only I took the time to remember them.

Our house sits in a wind tunnel and at night the wind howls down off Kilimanjaro and roars straight over the top of us. I now see why the back side of the house is largely without windows and also why we block up the hole in the back door at night with a wooden bread board. I’ve learned, with much cursing, how to start the old cable-pull-start generator for when we need power; two hands and a firm stance are what’s needed, it’s got a mind of its own and doesn’t like me obviously.

It feels far away here. It feels like we’ve left behind a life that was easy, yes, but a tad dull. Here the challenges are not insurmountable, it’s mainly funds---or the lack of---that are much needed, as with any start up project. Our farm, a small but perfectly formed 400 acres, might soon be joined by another 800 or so. You can see that farm on the hills bordering ours, higher up and often in Kili’s clouds; out of reach but perhaps not for much longer. We moved in in July, but already the days have blurred and I don’t think back to where we were; this place wraps itself around you very quickly. It makes me wonder if we’ll ever leave. I rather hope not.

On Waking Up Happy

I am a nighttime worrier. As soon as the sun goes down, my creative and productive energy dissipates, and a dreary little cloud of worry and anxiety takes its place. It’s the sort of superfluous worry—“recreational worry,” as my friend and I like to call it—that winds around and around itself as a tired mind loses steam amidst the liminal space between today and tomorrow. I worry about whether I’ve done enough today, and I worry about what I need to do tomorrow. I worry about larger questions, like finding purpose in life, and smaller questions, like whether I should have worded something differently in an email. This is usually my cue that it’s time to redirect my wayward mind to the simplicity of bedtime rituals and get myself to sleep as soon as possible. I’ve accompanied myself through enough worried evenings to know that this is simply my mind’s way of grinding from “full-speed” to “stop” in a matter of hours.

Mornings, on the other hand, have marked the difference for me across different stages and passages of life. I remember straggling out of bed before dawn, only to fall asleep again on the bus during high school. I remember waking up much later in college, always with a half-finished paper still writing itself in my mind. I remember the summer I took up running, bolting out of bed and out the door each morning with a surge of powerful energy I’d never known otherwise.

More recently, I remember waking up a little disoriented on so many gray Boston mornings during graduate school. My sweetheart was waking up hundreds of miles away, and my footing felt unsure. It took two cups of coffee and several hours before I could fully process stimuli from the outside world.

In my new home, I still tend to fall asleep to the cranking of my internal worry machine, even with my love close by and Southern sunshine to look forward to the next day. Waking up, though, these days is another story. As I rub the sleep from my eyes and my last dream slips from memory, I’m struck by the certainty that I am exactly where I’m meant to be. Before the small disappointments and successes of the day take hold and before my worry mechanism starts asking too many questions about where I’ve been and where I’m going, I can’t help but notice there’s something just right about right now.

I suppose this is what it means to wake up happy: to peek out from the business of life for a brief moment each day and smile at the thought that you’ve secretly begun to enjoy the journey.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

In March of this year, Ally moved from Brooklyn to Leesburg, Virginia. While in New York, she worked as a barista and in retail in order to support her writing and acting habits. She studied classical acting in Oxford, UK, at The British American Drama Academy and English Literature at American University in Washington, DC. Ally and her husband (who is a musician and writer) decided to leave city life on a whim---their lease was up and instead of renewing, they packed up their two cats and moved into her dad's old hunting cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. When she's not pickling poisonous spiders or getting charged by groundhogs, she's a kitchen helper to food writer Cathy Barrow and recipe tester for the Washington Post. She blogs about cabin life at www.thegreencabinyear.com The big comfy armchair in my living room is upholstered in a hunter’s dreamscape. Deer, geese, elk, and moose frolic across the fabric. There are pine trees and creeks and hunting dogs. This is my reading chair, my special spot reserved for reading only actual books. I say “actual” because I think of the printed word as a material thing in addition to its immaterial narrative. A book in the “actual” sense is a specific vessel as well as a world. Sure, I love e-books and laptops, but those mediums show you too much. They take you anywhere, everywhere. The actual book takes you to only one place, to one particular story.

You also get a whole different sense experience with an actual book. You feel the flex of a page heavy with a big glossy photograph. You notice how unlike in texture and weight the rigid cover is from the pulp flecked page. You can hear the spine crinkle and see the deepness of the black ink. Let’s not forget the smell, of course…the must or dust or that of crisp fresh paper.

When learning something new, especially a physical skill like gardening or cooking, I find it particularly helpful to learn from an actual book. That’s what this column is about for me – books that are teaching me new things. As I learn to garden, to cook, to read, I find that I enjoy the flipping back and forth through pages, running my finger up and down a block of text, and sandwiching in post-it notes and neon tabs to keep my place.

In short . . . Hooray for actual books!

Here is what I’m reading now:

New Book of Herbs by Jekka Mcvicar I’ve got a thing for Passion Surfing. Never heard of Passion Surfing? Well, that’s because I just made it up. Passion Surfing is when you find someone who is really passionate about what they do and then you catch a smaller version of their wave and see where it takes you. Usually my Passion Surfs are fun for a few weeks, then glide to a halt on the shore of boredom. But not so with Jekka Mcvicar. Her wave of enthusiasm has inspired me for a really long time.

This book gives guidance in planning new garden beds, growing herbs from seeds and cuttings, and also has sections about uses for fresh herbs in the kitchen and the home. There are recipes and how-tos and manifestos for organic gardening practices. There are so many helpful tidbits of information---did you know that using a seeping irrigation system rather than a spray hose will cut down on the spread of weed seeds? Neither did I! My favorite part of the book, however, is the last section that details 100 of Jekka’s favorite herbs. Jekka and I have been hanging ten so hard lately, I want to grow every one of them!

The Wild Table by Connie Green and Sarah Scott When I moved to western Virginia from Brooklyn I became obsessed with finding a particular type of mushroom called the morel. I imagined that finding this particularly delicious and wild delicacy would free me from the heartsick feeling I’d had since leaving New York. I missed my friends, my job, and the great theatres, cafes, and bookstores. I missed the feeling of “happening”, of hopefulness, of my phone buzzing in my pocket as a pal called me up for a spontaneous after work cocktail. When I got to Virginia all I saw was the traffic and the big box stores and the laser-eyed looks directed at my tattoos. And my phone? My phone became a still and useless rectangle of regret.

Strangely enough, the morel did help me adjust. It became my beacon of hope. I didn’t need anyone calling me if I was poking around in the woods searching for fungi. Soon I took a “grow-your-own wild mushrooms” class at a local organic farm and found a cool job through connections I made there. Eventually I even became more adventurous in the kitchen, which I also credit to my love of wild mushrooms---because if you spend a whole day searching for your food, you’re certainly going to put in the effort to eat it well that night. I found myself appreciating the beauty of Virginia after all. Morel hunting truly helped me see the world in a different way. But wait . . . not that kind of different way, I’m not talking about those types of mushrooms.

The Wild Table is a beautiful book filled with tasty recipes, brilliant photographs, and useful, easy to read information about preserving the morning fetch.  You can use this book even if you have no desire to go tromping around in the woods; just swing by your local farmers market.  If you are in the mood for some fungi fulfillment there’s a helpful “Wild Calendar” in the back that tells you when certain mushrooms and other natural treats are in season.

Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustvedt This book is a collection of essays about a lot of stuff: desire, memory, sleep, literature, visual art. Oh yeah, and neuroscience. Can’t forget the neuroscience. (Except I do forget the parts about neuroscience and then I have to go back and read them over and over again…)  These topics might make you wonder how this book is making an appearance here, among all these other books about things you can eat. Mushrooms, herbs… ideas? Exactly!

In my journey to become a better home cook I’ve hit a few roadblocks every so often. Learning new skills takes some endurance. This book helped me reinvest in my quest to become a skilled cook because of how Hustvedt thinks about memory. She writes:  “it is clear that memory is consolidated by emotion, that the fragments of the past we recall best are those colored by feeling …” Good meals can be bookmarks in the brain.

The example that comes to mind is from my recent weekend trip to New York. I can only vaguely describe the events of that weekend as a whole. But ask me about that delicious meal I shared with my dear friend at a nice restaurant in the East Village? I can give you a play-by-play of the whole experience, not just about what we ate. I vividly remember our conversation, the energy of the room, even details of the place down to the type of air freshener that was in the bathroom. (A lemongrass diffuser, in case you were wondering.)

My dinner that night was pleasure distilled into three courses and a bottle of sparkling wine.  It was certainly a “consolidating” emotion I felt that evening – an emotion I am slowly learning to create again and again for myself, for my family, and for my friends.

The food will be for our tummies; the pleasure of eating it will be for our minds.

Lessons from back to school...

Dearest Clara,

It's been 10 years since I last left the classroom . . . well, the formal classroom anyway.  I finished my graduate degree full of excitement of what was to come, but full of so much sadness for the end of my academic era.  I loved school, I nearly always had.  I could go back all over again to get different degrees, learn new things, and get inspired in all sorts of new ways.  The annual cadence of the school year still stays with me. I still think of September as the start of the new year, more so that I do January.  There is always the air of possibility that rolls in with the cooler night breezes of fall.  But while I'm no longer in the formal classroom, that doesn't mean that I've stopped learning.  Not at all, and in fact, each September I think of what's ahead to master, what books I should read, what friends I will make . . . In my heart, I will always be a student and here are the things I try to do each year in my back to school season:

• Buy a new notebook and new pencils: Nothing says "anything is possible" like a fresh notebook with its crisp pages. I don't even like lines on mine anymore to give me even more space to dream.  And of course, nothing goes with new paper quite like a new pencil.  As I've gotten older and more nostalgic for the annual ritual of buying school supplies, I find myself drawn to a new box of Crayolas, or a new box of tack-sharp colored pencils.  Of course, I could never use them professionally, but having all those colors, fanned out in all directions in a pencil cup give me inspiration to think outside the box and to tackle new things because I want to learn them, and not because I have to do them.
• And while you're at it, buy your fall boots: Every year, I say I'm going to buy my boots, and every year I keep hanging on to the last bits of summer until they are completely exhausted.  I scour the magazines in the search of the perfect boots . . . I hem . . . I haw . . . I think about it some more.  And then one unfortunate day, when it is simply too cold for flats and bare feet, I make the decision to go out and just buy a pair.  But by that time, the ones I dreamed of are gone, not in my size . . . not in my color.  And it's too late.  While most things can wait, good boots for some reason cannot.  Buy your boots early, you'll have a more comfortable year.  Maybe this will be the year I take my own advice.
• Try to make a new friend: I think this time of year can sometimes be intimidating.  As things ramp up after lazy summer days, it can mean new jobs, new cities, new environments for some people.  Just like you would at school, try to keep an eye out for the new kids, and hopefully, as you would in school, extend a hand.  Invite someone new to lunch.  As you get older, it's harder and harder to make new friends, so make sure that you don't fall out of practice.  One day it will be you who is the new person.
• Plan a field trip: One of my favorite parts of school! Plan a trip to someplace you have never been---it can be a day trip, or it can be a museum that's just around the corner.  Sign up for the tour, try to pay attention as if you had to do a book report on it.  Discovering a new place or experience is just as much a way to learn as the classroom.  And invite others, field trips are always more fun when there is a bus or a van involved.
• Don't forget to write down "What I did This Summer": It's the quintessential back to school activity---the essay explaining where it is exactly that three months of summer days went so fast.  As we get older, we are likely to rely on words less, and on pictures more.  But whether it's a quick journal entry, or getting your summer photos together all in one place, don't forget to welcome the new season by properly closing out the prior one.  Years on, it will be easy to forget what happened in which summer, but keeping your memories together will give you hours of entertainment at times when you'll need those memories the most.

Here's to the "new year"!

All my love,

Mom

Mercy, Mercy Me

By Natalie Friedman Strange thoughts visited me in the days following my grandmother’s funeral. For example: while driving to my son’s preschool, the car windows open to the fine spring air, my radio tuned to an oldies station playing Marvin Gaye, I thought: “My grandmother never heard Marvin Gaye in all of her ninety-five years.”

My grandmother never listened to the radio. She never owned a record collection; I doubt she knew what a CD was. The lack of music in her life was tied up with other lacks and other losses, and those are what made me cry in my car as I turned up the radio and slowed down to circle the parking lot a few times.

I grieved for my grandmother in my own private way after she died, and this included making mental lists of all the things she had never done. It was the inverse of what most obituaries are supposed to do: rather than celebrate achievements, I was reckoning the gaps and spaces and silences and had-nots. My grandmother had never driven a car. My grandmother had never been to the top of the Empire State Building or the tip of Statue of Liberty’s lamp. My grandmother had never been to high school or college.

There were, of course, many things that my grandmother had done, things I have never done and may never be able to do. She had baled hay and milked cows and planted vegetable gardens. She had attended several births. She had seen her eldest brother return from World War I covered in lice and raving mad. She had nursed a sick mother and had buried her in a too-early grave. She had been taken to a ghetto and then to three concentration camps. She had walked out of them all alive, supported by no one. She had returned to her hometown, to a place from which nearly all her relatives had disappeared, and she rebuilt a home. She bribed a long line of greedy men to spring her husband from a Soviet gulag. She buried that husband in a too-early grave. She had crossed an ocean with an only daughter, at the age of fifty-three, to start a new life in America. She had worked in a factory, sewing neckties. She had crocheted over two hundred and fifty lace doilies, curtains, and decorative scarves, and had baked more than a thousand cakes from recipes that she kept filed in her brain.

But despite these facts, I felt that my grandmother’s life had been thwarted, unfullfilled, stunted. Perhaps it was arrogant of me to think so, I who had been cosseted by my comfortable American life, I who feel it my due and my right to have any kind of life I want,  to be happy. My grandmother did not have the gift of happiness---she was a depressive her entire life, and I often wondered if she would have been depressed even if life would have treated her more gently. Or maybe life would have treated her more gently if she had been less depressed. She used to say that God smiles at those who smile at God, but she seemed never to have had the ability to smile.

I think that she was unhappy partly because of temperament, and partly because she had been born in a particular place and moment in history. A traditional Jewish household high in the Carpathian mountains was not fertile ground for cultivating female happiness or achievement. My grandmother used to say that she was a very good student in school, so good that her teacher suggested she might be sent to another city to study at the girls’ gymnasium. Her father, my great-grandfather, told the teacher that a girl only needed to know how to put the right shoe on the right foot.

My grandmother was able to summon up her father’s exact words nearly eighty years after he had uttered them, and she repeated them to me and my sister with the frequency of those who remember and do not forgive.

So she had only what amounted to a middle school education, and yet she was one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. She spoke several languages. She could do mental math with lightening speed. She knew all the names of all the people who had lived in her village, and could trace their family histories almost as far back as her own. She remembered the exact moment when she happened to hear, over a contraband radio, that the Russian army was advancing on the Nazis in April 1945. And she remembered that the Scotsmen who marched into Bergen Belsen with the British army to liberate her and the other surviving Jews were playing bagpipes and wearing kilts.

My grandma’s fine skill at observation and her attention to detail filled her brain and helped push out some of the pain she carried around. It’s not for nothing that she was a talented craftswoman, able to knit and crochet and sew. She focused on the small things. It was only when she wasn’t busy with her hands or baking some exquisite cake that she talked ceaselessly about the past. When I was old enough to sit with her at her tiny tea table and listen, then she relaxed her hold on the small necessaries that kept her going. The sad, ugly truths came pouring out, and they were ornately detailed, too; but after a while, she would turn to me and say, “How about a tea? With lemon and sugar? I’ll fix it for you.” And out would come a delicate porcelain cup, a small silver spoon, a pretty napkin, a fragrant slice of homemade cake that melted on the tongue---lovely weapons against ugliness.

Her many talents, her skillful hands, her way with words, her capacious mind---had she been born in a different time or place, she could have been anything she wanted. She could have used her great mind every day in the ways she wanted to use it. But even that is a fantasy: how we use our minds isn’t always up to us, and that painful irony was made very clear to me as I watched my grandmother slowly lose her grasp on the details and particulars, until one day it even lost hold of the things like who her grandchildren were or where she was living.

During the last two weeks of her life, when she was barely responsive, my sister and I talked about the possibility of her death and what her funeral would be like. We knew it would conform to the strictest of Jewish Orthodox standards, because that was how she had been raised. Although women are forbidden from public speaking before a mixed-sex audience in that tradition, we somehow imagined that we would give a eulogy for her. My sister had some touching anecdotes she wanted to share, and I wanted to talk about how my grandmother had been a true survivor, a tougher-than-nails scrapper. We planned and we revised and then we laughed and said, “She’ll pull through; she’ll be out of the hospital and back to her old tricks soon.” And then she died, and the night of her death, the rabbi called our mother and asked her for details of my grandmother’s life so that he could write his eulogy, and I began to see that my sister and I would be silent at that funeral.

When the kindly people at the funeral home asked us if we would like to take a last look at our grandmother, and they lifted the lid of her coffin, and we saw her lying there looking small and pale, her mouth, without dentures, puckering inward as if she had just tasted a lemon, I wanted to shout, “THIS IS NOT OUR GRANDMOTHER! This is not my indefatigable, determined, storytelling, memory-rich grandmother!”  And I wanted to stand up where the rabbi was standing, and shout out my eulogy to the gathered guests, to tell them that they had no idea what reserves of strength this woman had had; that she had been a difficult, pained, tragic woman who had never been given the opportunity to flourish, but who had nevertheless loved us with a fierce and unwavering passion born out of the deepest, deepest fear of loss, the deepest, deepest hunger for life.

I guess this is my eulogy, this flimsy essay. It will have to do; after all, how do we ever capture, in words, the essence of a person? The complexities of a woman’s life? How many grandmothers lie in their graves with a booming silence all around them, the silence of no one knowing how to tell their stories?  And each story is perfect, delicate, ornate, like a dainty teacup, a scrap of lace, a sweet pastry, a song by Marvin Gaye.

Original image by Wrestling Entropy on Flickr

The stress of conversing

Tomorrow I have to do something that scares me.  Maybe scare is a strong word.  But I can’t think of a better one.  I won’t be confronting any of my more tangible fears: Heights, Spiders, or Fish. Nope, tomorrow I have to talk to a stranger. I’ve been asked to be a part of a sort of mentoring program where I work, taking a new employee under my wing so-to-speak for the first two weeks of their new job. While I’m thrilled to be asked to take on a leadership role such as this, my stomach is already working itself into knots.

I don’t like talking to people.  It makes me anxious and nervous and a host of other icky emotions.  I’m a great conversationalist with people I know, I have wit and (I think) a way with words.  I make my friends and family laugh and can speak with some degree of intelligence on a number of subjects. I don’t know if all of that disappears when I’m speaking to someone I don’t know, or a casual acquaintance, but I certainly feel as if it does.  I struggle to find the right words and I worry almost constantly that I’m not making a good impression or expressing myself clearly. I sound disjointed and hesitant to my own ears. And hearing that disconnect, knowing I’m not speaking to the best of my ability, just amplifies my discomfort and anxiousness.

As you might have surmised by the fact that I write this weekly column for The Equals Record, the same dilemma does not plague me with the written word (although this particular post has been more of a labor than most).  I love to mail handwritten letters or type a note on my typewriter. I don’t reach near the same level of anxiousness in an email, blog post, or online chat.  I guess because I can take the time to think about word choices and sentence structure instead of being on the spot.

I don’t actually freeze up while giving speeches in front of groups or in one-on-one conversations; in fact I’ve been told that talking to strangers is something I do quite well.  I guess that’s a sign that I’m the only one aware of the discomfort and sheer amount of effort required to carry on a simple conversation.  That should make me feel better, knowing that it’s in my head, but I’m still dreading the phone call.

Never Forget

My husband and I bought our first home together, a condo in Brooklyn, just about two years ago. Apartment shopping in New York is certainly not for the faint of heart, something we learned after our first round of open houses. After months of searching, we found our diamond in the rough. It lacked the dining space I held out hope for and the corner windows and light our last apartment afforded, but had a parking spot and other amenities that made us cheer, while allowing us to stay in the neighborhood we had grown to love. We moved on a hot and sticky Saturday in August. After saying goodbye to the less-than-quaint walk-up apartment that we---and many families of mice---had called home for the last several years, we drove around the block to our new home, moving vans in tow. My parents arrived on cue, to help with the moving efforts.  After coordinating my sister’s move in Rochester the day before, they were on the road to New York first thing in the morning, to help with their second move of the weekend.  For three days we cleaned, unpacked, argued over where to hang each picture, and of course, ate. We drove to New Jersey to buy our first grill---a housewarming gift from my parents---and on my mom’s urging, we picked up shrimp cocktail and strip steaks, for a celebratory dinner that night.

My favorite moments of that weekend were the conversations with my mom, held over cups of coffee each morning. Long before my husband or father roused, we solved the world’s problems and tackled lingering interior decorating questions. Just the two of us. I’ll never forget my mom, sipping coffee in the perfect morning light from our eastern exposures, and telling me definitively: “You’re going to be happy here.”

I might never forget my mom’s confidence on that beautiful morning, but I have pushed it aside, more often than I’d like to admit, over the last couple years. It's particularly poignant to be writing this today, on 9/11 of all days, in this adopted city of mine that I have such a troubled relationship with. New York and I don’t always see eye to eye, to be sure, and I let that conflict overwhelm me at times. But this, I’m realizing, this is why I’m here. To share a piece of my mom and to connect with others, certainly, but just as importantly, to keep myself in check---to remember the wisdom and no-nonsense advice my mom handed out, wanted or not.

As I continue to share my mom’s stories here, I’d also love to hear from you, dear readers. How and why do these relationships, as mothers, daughters or otherwise, connect us as women?  What is your story? And will you share it here? If you think you might, take a look here for submission guidelines. Make sure to include the title of this column, "You Remind Me of Someone," with your story.

Thanks for reading---and I hope, for sharing.

"New Girl," or In Defense of Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel’s hit sitcom “New Girl” will have its second season premiere in a couple weeks, and I’ll most likely be watching, because I love her, and I’m clearly not alone—in fact, if both her converts and critics are to be believed, she leads a massive charge of women ages 13 to 50 that want to get in touch with their inner sunshine princess.

Culminating in her role in 2009’s romantic comedy-ish (500) Days of Summer—in which she, paradoxically, plays the gold standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl in a film that shows the dream of the MPDG to be airy and insubstantial—Deschanel has made a name for herself by tweeting about kittens, by wearing thrift store dresses, by starring in too-cute Cotton commercials, by singing vintage songs in a husky voice accompanied by a tiny ukulele, and by essentially being, as Jada Yuan from New York Magazine designated her, the Pinup of Williamsburg.

“New Girl,” when it premiered last fall, featured promos about Deschanel’s “adorkable,” very Zooey-like Jess Day moving into an L.A. apartment with three guys---who just can’t figure her out! Cue billboards of Jess standing slightly apart in an oblivious, pigeon-toed stance, as three dudes styled to be average-looking give her “uhh . . . what?” looks from the other side of the poster. Jess is quirky, awkward, and yes, loves girlish, silly things like making pancakes and being sweet to everybody. Based on the promos, even I thought it might be too much Zooey-ness. But it turned out much better than I expected.

For one thing, “New Girl” is actually funny. More than other sitcoms on the air, which are either aimed at the 35-and-over parenting set or continue to be filmed on 1990s-style soundstages with live audiences, I relate to this show and its characters, from the fact that Jess meets her new roommates via Craigslist to the career, dating, life issues that they face as people in their late 20s/early 30s.

And despite the promos, Jess turns out to be a fairly solid character. Sure, she’s got fluffy interests and a sunshine personality, but she’s smart and surprisingly self-possessed. She owns her cutesy persona with pride. This is best illustrated in an episode where she squares off against Lizzy Caplan’s tough lawyer character—a bit of a straw (wo)man, maybe, but I appreciated the implied message about women criticizing other women for undermining their own position as women.

To sum up: Why can’t you love rainbows and cupcakes, if you really love rainbows and cupcakes? Why does that automatically cast you in a submissive role that sets all womanhood decades back? Why must we police other women’s behavior and circumscribe their choices? In the grand scheme of things, Jess’s brand of girlishness seems pretty innocuous when compared to, say, action movie trailers or Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s commercials. Though Caplan’s character also brings up a good point: if she acted like Jess, she’d never make it as a lawyer. But what is that really a comment on?

This particular debate seemed to indirectly address the controversy that surrounds Zooey Deschanel herself. More than most other actress/singer/public figures of her generation, Deschanel is often at the center of fierce feminist debates. For those on one side, she’s an unproblematic symbol of indie culture: friend crush, girl crush, actual crush, style icon. For those on the other, she represents everything that’s wrong with third-wave (read: new) feminism: the idea that it’s totally okay to be quirky, child-like, cutesy, and, yes, a Manic Pixie Dream Girl because we’re over women having to be tough to be strong role models.

Much of this criticism came out of the woodwork with the premiere of “New Girl” last fall. They contend that Zooey represents a flippant post-feminism that, while rejecting the more limiting female ideal of second-wave feminism (ambitious, successful, not crying all the time), reverts instead to a pre-feminist ideal that sees women as childlike, naïve, innocent, to be taken care of. More explicitly, the retro fetishism of the Zooey set creates a female character that seems stuck squarely in 1962, vintage Shirelle crooning and all.

The aforementioned Zooey set is much larger than Ms. Deschanel herself (though some would say she started the trend). It’s in cupcake trucks. It’s in Mindy Kaling. It’s in every woman who has bangs. (Read comedienne Amy Klausner’s vicious takedown of the whole phenomenon.) And ultimately, for critics, it’s seen as a step backwards for womanhood because it allows grown women to present themselves as little girls and thus infantilizes women everywhere.

On the one hand, I understand the danger in constantly presenting women as girls, and how that can be damaging in what is undoubtedly an ongoing struggle for gender equality. Read: We are not post-feminist, and any action taken with the assumption that we are is a misstep.

On the other hand: I love Zooey. And I believe my defense of her stems from two parts, one intellectual and one entirely not.

One part is simply not preoccupied with what she means for feminism. In other words, I love her dresses, I love her hair, I love her bangs. I want to be as cool as her. As I write this I’m wearing a bright red, slightly flouncy A-line skirt and something called Audrey flats and nibbling on a piece of cheese and brie and listening to “Friday, I’m in Love” on my tiny purple iPod, and the image this produces is, all in all, incredibly gratifying to me.

The second part is this. I find it problematic when we define the “ideal” female character within such narrow boundaries. While not prescribing a defined list of rules---i.e., women must wear pants—in the sense that we must repeatedly tell prominent female figures what they should not do, we are creating a limited space in which women are allowed to represent themselves. While it’s completely valid to criticize representations of women in media that are demeaning, or that reproduce negative tropes, or that seem unrealistic (see The Incredible Shrinking Liz Lemon), those criticisms must be tempered by an understanding that a huge part of feminism is women choosing to do what they want to do.

Can I be asked to break down why I buy into elements of this subculture and its imagery? You might as well ask a woman why stiletto heels make her feel sexy. Sure, we could get into the problematic gendered history of shoe fashion and how heels represent a tortured, demeaning misogyny and, in an ideal world, should be discarded altogether. But does that change how they make her feel? And are we going to convince a country full of women that they should convert to a standard-issue, progress-approved flat for the sake of the symbolism? That feels like treating a symptom of patriarchy and not a cause—and, at the same time, getting on a bunch of ladies’ cases for making their own life choices.

I might be overthinking the whole Zooey Deschanel case. Or, I might be criticizing others for overthinking it. I can’t quite tell at this point. Either way, I suppose the most I can do is recommend “New Girl” (which, if you want to know, also has great male characters who are also hilariously quirky and awkward), and leave you with something like “Leave Zooey Alone.”

Looking Forward: Second Chances

When people ask how long I’ve lived in New York, invariably, my answer is, I moved here in 2009. This is, in fact, true, but---I have to admit---it isn’t the whole truth. I moved to New York for the first time the winter after graduating college---in large part, because my boyfriend at the time was finishing his last year at Columbia, and I was eager to close what had been a very challenging long-distance chapter of our relationship. Until then, I’d never lived outside California (as an adult, anyway), and like many recent college graduates, I’d never had to think about things like finding my own apartment or paying my own bills.

I arrived in January 2008, suitcases in tow, ready to move in to a Morningside Heights apartment I’d never seen before. I had no plan for finding a job, and no savings. But, I reassured myself, this is what one does after college---moves away, starts a new life. I was nervous, but more than anything, I was thrilled at the thought of becoming a New Yorker.

I lasted just under six months.

A variety of factors contributed to my speedy exit. My astronomical rent, which afforded me a bedroom the size of a closet in an apartment so dark I never knew what time it was, was one thing. The stress of moving to a new city in the dead of winter was another. On top of it all, the adjustment from a long-distance to same-city relationship was much more difficult than I’d anticipated.

It was just too much. I was flailing. What’s more, even though I’d always loved visiting New York City, it just wasn’t making me happy. Not even a tempting job offer---from one of my favorite fashion companies, no less---could convince me to stick it out. I moved home.

When the dust settled, I couldn’t help feeling that I’d failed. My short stint in New York felt like a waste of time, and, what’s more, a colossal waste of money. I was embarrassed. At least I gave it a shot, I told myself.

To make a long story short---and to state the obvious---I ended up giving New York a second chance. It took nearly a year, and a lot of thinking. A lot of worrying. A lot more flailing. But one day, I got a phone call from an old friend who told me there was an extra room available in her Brooklyn apartment that summer, and something about it just sounded right. There was, of course, no guarantee things would work out, but at the same time, everything about the situation just seemed to point toward yes.

I made the leap---again. And here I am. 

Three and a half years later, I still occasionally find myself cringing with embarrassment when I admit that my first few months in a city I now adore (fervently! with all my heart!) were a flop. And, at times, I still find it hard to explain why I turned down that job in fashion---especially when today, I sometimes barely make ends meet as a freelancer. Why wasn’t I able to make it then in a city that now feels so comfortable? What would have happened if I had just pushed through? I’ll never know the answers to those questions, but I’m beginning to feel better about owning what I used to think of as a personal failure.

As a friend of mine so brilliantly and heartbreakingly once put it, “Sometimes you’re just not ready to be as great as the great things that are happening around you.”

I’ve never forgotten that. There’s sometimes no explanation for the messy and complicated ways things work themselves out. What a wonderful reminder that life is full of surprises, and twists and turns we could never anticipate.

Nothing, I'm finding these days, is ever a waste of time.

Out of Dreams

By Eliza Deacon You know the moment at dawn when sleep still lies over your body and pushes you back into the night's dreams? As you wake, fragments of memory fade too quickly before you can piece together their story; just as you grasp an image, any meaning attached to it is gone. This happens a lot and you are left wondering at the nighttime world you inhabit, when you are at your most open to it. I don't often remember my dreams, although I know that I do dream and sometimes I wake suddenly in the middle of the night stiff-limbed and cold.

I know that the things I see during the days, the things that impact me enough to remain, will appear eventually, although changed; dreams only need a small element of reality, the rest is as if you are looking through a kaleidoscope, warped and surreal.

Last night, during a waking moment, I found a cobra in our garden, large and black and very angry. He had our littlest cat cornered, had his hood flared and was up in the air by at least a third of his body. I shouted at him in the dark, stamped the ground to distract him from my small cat who was naively trying to pat him with her gentle paw. Help came in the lanky form of William, our Maasai askari, who dispatched him with one blow from his knobkerrie stick. I've lived in Africa for 16 years but some things still scare me; this was a nightmare which I know I will revisit later.

As a child, I used to slip into a half-state between wakefulness and the stage they call REM sleep. Not yet asleep and still very much aware. I'd open my eyes and see things in my room, a figure sitting at the end of my bed would slowly turn and face me. I don't remember him as particularly malevolent, but my 13-year-old self was too terrified to do anything but scream and turn on the light. It's funny what you remember; the man at the end of the bed wore a white hat with a silk band. Other nights I was woken by small winged creatures crawling all over my bed and the more I stared at them, the more they took form and shape. Their wings took on detail and I could see the movements of their legs. I'd hold my nerve for as long as I could before I panicked and turned on the light.

My mother, concerned about the state of my mind, took me to a doctor who dismissed it as an over-active imagination. The bad dreams, for that was what they were referred to---although I wasn't convinced---pursued me for the next 15 or so years. And then they took a hiatus for a very long time.

I went back to England last year, stayed in our family house in my old room, which now, transformed into a smart guest room, bore little resemblance to what it used to be. On the third night, my sister---trying to catch some sleep with a newborn baby at her side---was startled by loud screaming downstairs whilst I, in some in-between place, had found myself facing an army of something, exactly what I don't remember, and literally thrown myself out of bed, cracking my head on the window seat on the way down.

I am capable of good and deep sleep though and here, in our mountain castle, I feel the karma that flows in and out of the many open windows and doors. This is a house where I have known most, if not all, of its inhabitants over the years and that gives it a familiar feeling, as if they are present in the very fibre of it. And our large freestanding bed, with softly draped netting all around, is a place I like to be in often. I like the view it affords, almost 360 degrees out of all its windows. You can see far, like a lookout place, see whatever is approaching from any direction. I go to sleep with that thought in my mind. I light a candle in my dreams.

On Living Close to Family

Without trying to, I’ve lived close to at least one side of my family for my whole life.  When I was choosing colleges, while I contemplated far flung schools with catalog-created fantasies (strolling through crumbling stone archways at Oxford, living in a Gothic Southern mansion at Duke), I ended up at Berkeley, the school where my dad had attended and continued to live less than two hours away from.

This meant that when I got the flu my sophomore spring, my dad hung up the phone after I called and showed up at my doorstep that afternoon, bearing cleaning supplies to take care of my sick-filled apartment and chicken noodle soup to heal by belly and soul.  When I moved to San Francisco after college, my dad was there to take me sailing and out to a nice dinner after I got rejected from job after job.  When an adverse reaction to medication caused me to faint and hit my head, my dad moved in with my roommates and I for three days, playing cards with me and watching my pupils for sign of a brain bleed.  An IKEA couch that needed assembling?  Moving from one apartment to another?  Help was only a phone call away.

I live on the East Coast now, and have been similarly spoiled to be close to my mom’s side of the family, who were born and raised in Brooklyn.  My aunt has become my go-to source for intellectual stimulation and emotional comfort, popping over from suburban Scarsdale to discuss men, politics, entertainment, and life over cheap Mediterranean food.  My mom, who fled the cold of New York for Atlanta, hops on the two-hour flight several times a year, to make sure I have enough culture in my life (Broadway plays are always a must-do on the weekend agenda) and color in my clothing (“it’s so much more flattering than all that black you wear, sweetie!”).

It snuck on me as the unconsidered yet blaringly obvious fact of my move to London:  this is the first time I will be living on my own, an ocean away from my family, my points of stability and unconditional love and comfort and constancy.  I’ll have my boyfriend---my partner in all of this---but the support and interactions that come with a romantic relationship differ so greatly from those offered by family.  Yet it makes me ponder something I’ve never before factored into my thoughts or decision making (sorry, Mom and Dad!):  the value of living close to family.  I’ve chosen the cities in which I’ve lived based on their worldliness, their amazing restaurants, their walkability, their job opportunities.  While the dynamics of family relationships have morphed as I've grown older (although having my dad show up with chicken soup when I'm sick will make my heart tingle even when I'm 50), the relationships themselves have been omnipresent.  Family, so consistently, blatantly there, has unintentionally slipped to the backburner for being there in physical form.

I don’t know where Zack and I are going to move when his graduate program ends in two years.  I don’t know how much at that point family will factor into our decisions after having experienced the other end---the being far after being so close.  Do you try to live near your family?  Or try to live far away, or not factor in it at all?  I’d love to hear your take.

III. normandie

One summer I live in Normandie for a month. Clémence is my host sister, about to start her last year of lycée, French high school. We have just spent the past month at my home in Ohio, and now it is my turn to come with her to France. Clémence and I are the same age and height, and thrown together like this we are fast friends.

She lives with her parents, Pauline and Roger, in the countryside just outside a small town called Bernay. Their home is an old barn they spent years converting into a house. It is beautiful, all dark beams and old stone walls warmed by a fireplace that burns real wood when it gets cold, which is often, even in August.

I am given a small bedroom of my own. It is up the steep, narrow wooden steps to the attic, where the ceiling is slanted and the floors creaky. I push open the window and the view is of misty, grey-green grassy fields, scattered with cows and lined with hedges. I can see the next-door farmer baling hay from where I stand. It doesn’t look too drastically different from rural Ohio, but I find it all endlessly romantic.

When I come back to the Unites States it’s my senior year of high school. For New Year’s, my friend Liam has a party out at his house. I drink too much vodka and spend half an hour speaking French to Liam’s cat. Everyone is impressed by my accent.