FINDING THE TIME TO READ & TO DREAM

Happy New Year to you all, belated, but no less heartfelt.

Once again I've left a long pause between posts. No excuses, really except for this feeling of impotence and paralysis that comes with extremely chilly weather. 

There’s something aggressive about extreme cold with wind, at least as we’ve experienced it here in Toronto off and on in the past ten days. It’s inhibiting, and a little scary. “Do I really have to go out?” “Is it safe to drive?” “Will my pipes freeze?” “Where is my long underwear?”: the questions and concerns range from the large and general to the detailed-small, but all of them seem to weigh on us. The result has been, for me, a feeling of being pinned and not independent. I don’t like it!

I say this even though I have been out each of the cold days. On January 2, for example, when the wind chill was 35 below, I walked about three kilometres (not far on a nice day) to a friend’s place for coffee. I was warm enough, in sensible boots, two pairs of socks, knitted gaiters to cover the gap between my boots and pants (over tights); merino wool T-shirt under long sleeved merino (both Christmas presents) plus a sweater on top of that; a neck scarf and big hat and wool armlets bridging the wrist gap to my heavy ski gloves; and a not quite knee-length fifties-era sheared beaver fur coat given to me long ago by the mother of an ex-boyfriend. Over all that I wound a long heavy silk shawl to cover my face and help warm the air I breathed a little. That’s a long list of clothing items, that take more time to put on than they do to be written down.

The encumbrances of winter, I sigh these days, as I pull on tights, or layer on another sweater.

But I am lucky and so are all the people who have health and warm clothes. As I hurried along to my friend’s place the streets were pretty empty. January 2 is not a big traffic day, and especially not in frigid weather. I even built up a bit of a sweat in all my garments. But the older man walking carefully across Harbord Street with a cane, wearing only thin gloves, to pick something up at the corner store, looked reduced by the cold and very vulnerable.

Others who have suffered - apart from the homeless, who are in a purgatory that the rest of us cannot imagine - are those who have to work outside in the cold: postal workers, garbage workers, and the people who work the ramp at the airport. And also the police, ambulance, and fire department people, as well as the hydro workers, who have all had to work overtime to rescue many from crises largely caused by the weather.

I am grateful to all who do that work. It takes a lot out of us all to live in the cold; it saps our energy and we want to retreat into hibernation…a natural animal response. At the same time we expect life to go on as usual and are upset when streetcars get jammed, or airplanes don’t fly, or mail isn’t delivered.

There’s a disconnect between what we are prepared to do ourselves and what we expect others to do for us. Hmm

On another subject entirely, I want to talk about reading and books. And that’s because the other day I gave a talk to a book club. I’d been invited by a friend last summer. The books were the first two of the trilogy of books by Patrick Leigh-Fermor about his walk from Holland to Istanbul in 1933-34, when he was 18 and 19. (They are A Time of Gifts; and From the Woods to the Water.)

I had read the books when they were first published (in 1977 and 1986) and had been engaged by the writing, and also aggravated by it. When I reread the books in preparation for the talk, I was for awhile even more aggravated. Some of the flourishes of words and images felt show-offy and unnecessary. They made me impatient.

But gradually I came to think about the writing differently. Yes it’s show-offy. But the cascading words and images are on the page to do the work that photos now do for us much of the time. And reading elaborate descriptions and complex ideas takes work. It’s work we’re no longer accustomed to doing. We are inundated with images, and tend to rush from one to the next, and to be impatient with stories that unfurl too slowly for our now-usual hurried pace.

And so I slowed down and started to try to approach the descriptions in the same way that I like to look at paintings in a gallery, slowly and carefully. Aha!

In the end, like many presenters in many contexts, I ended up talking about me myself and I, about my evolving reaction to the books. I hoped thereby to get people thinking about what we do when we read, and about how much we lose when we hurry along.

If you have stayed with me this far, in this blogpost, then you are a patient reader, and I thank you for it. I enjoy putting these words on the virtual page, working through the process of communicating my ideas and thoughts as clearly and cleanly as possible. But if there are no people out there who take pleasure in the effort of working their way through pages of reading, then books are under threat, and so is the richness of language.

I am confident, from the reaction of many who were at the talk, that a lot of us struggle to make the time to read well. We’re assailed and seduced by our computers and social media. We are enriched by them, yes. But this doesn’t come for free; it exacts a price. And that cost seems to be in a loss of free or dreaming or unmeasured time to get lost in a book.

Life seems to have speeded up rather than easing off as the decades have rolled by. As I walked along the icy chilled sidewalk this afternoon on my way back from Kensington Market (Sanagan’s Ideal Coffee, 4-Life: my basics along with Cheese Magic) I found myself wondering why there seem to be so few pauses in the day, the week, the year. I did have some deep-sleeping calm days over the holidays, but they were rare havens in a sea of rushings-around. And they were helped by my cutting off from social media and from the computer altogether for a few days.

And so now the new year is moving me along again. I am headed to New York tomorrow (if the planes are flying) for a James Beard Cookbook Committee meeting  (such great people on the committee, which oversees the judging of all the cookbooks published in any given year, by a huge number of judges scattered across North America). And then in ten days or so it’s time to prepare for this year’s immersethrough session in Chiang Mai, followed by a food-focussed tour in Burma.

Airplane rides, long ones, become a kind of pause-place, a time to read and daydream. I never mind a long flight. It feels like an oasis between lives. And how amazingly lucky I feel, to be able to have these transitions, these moments to pause and reflect, and to get lost in books.

HEADING INTO BURMA, BOOKS IN HAND

Went off this morning at nine with Fern and Robyn and Dave and Mizuho to visit a remarkable monk south of town. This is the third year we’ve been to see him, to ask for help and receive a blessing. Each time I’m struck by his earthiness and penetrating attentiveness. And each time I feel buoyed by his blessing and the sense that I have been well launched into the new year. How lucky.

I’m due to catch a plane tomorrow afternoon, the direct flight from Chiang Mai to Rangoon. In that forty-five minutes the plane flies over the steep green treed ridges of mountains that mark the Thai-Burma border, over the Salween River and its tributaries, and finally over the flat rich rice-growing lands of the Irrawaddy Delta, before descending into Rangoon.

I’m booked into a different hotel, in a different part of town this time, slightly west of Sule Pagoda, the landmark that is the point of reference at the centre of downtown. Until now I’ve been staying east of Sule, about a mile east, and have come to know the area. I’m trying to take myself in hand by breaking pattern and getting familiar with a part of town I know less well.

I’ve got two weeks in Burma this time. What to do? Apart from seeing friends in Rangoon, I want to get out to somewhere, and haven’t figured out where. I may end up back where I started, on my first trip in Burma more than thirty years ago, in the summer of 1980. That would mean flying into Heho in order to spend time around Inle Lake. When I was there first there was only one place for travellers to stay. Now there are guest houses and hotels galore, and it’s a very popular tourist destination.

So why go there? you ask. Well, it’s beautiful, and it’s also relatively rural, so there’s a chance to be out in fields and to see daily village life and foodways. And there’s something rather wonderful about returning to a place, even if the return is disappointing often...

Until recently I had hoped to get to Dawei this trip, but I’ve been told that flights there are scarce. It’s on the coast well south of Rangoon. Road access by car or bus, as well as train travel into the Dawei region, are forbidden to foreigners. And why Dawei? Well, the food culture in southern Burma is quite different from that of the centre or of districts further north. Also, I’d just love to see that Andaman Sea coast and taste the different takes on mohinga and other dishes that I’ve been told there are in that region, known as Tenasserim. The name alone is enough to entice the traveller!

Tonight I headed out with Robyn and Dave (of EatingAsia) to eat Teochiuw rice soup with delish side dishes/accompaniments (pork various ways, greens, delicious pickly things that were a cross between vegetable and condiment) and then go on to listen to music. We went to Boy’s Blues Bar, on a side soi in the Night Market. Boy plays guitar and for a long time his band was the opener at the Brasserie. Now he’s got his own small bar, a pleasant place that is open-air at the back and cosy, with good acoustics and un-deafening sound. A nice place to check out if you find yourself in Chiang Mai. I pooped out at midnight, but the others were planning to head on over to the Rock Palace, upstairs above a Pizza Pizza in the Night Market, where a local band that does a great job on covers, a band called Nyok, was due on at 1 pm.

I have run out of steam; I don’t have much stamina when it comes to waiting around for a set to start! Instead I’m sitting here in the cool night air writing this blogpost. I’ll find some wi-fi tomorrow and post it up before I go to catch my plane.

In between, other visitors, Jacob and Tanu, are planning to turn up in time to have lunch... Not sure where we’ll head, but perhaps to the woman who sets up her grill until a tree at the southern end of the plant market. She makes astonishing grilled pork and grilled chicken, as well as great som tam (green papaya salad). It’s all best eaten with sticky rice, with good friends, under the shade of the giant tree, as motorcycles and trucks and tuk-tuks pass by on their way to and from the plant market, often carrying stacks of plants, or trailing trees.

And yikes! one more thing to cram into tomorrow: I haven’t got enough books to read for my Burma trip. A friend has lent me The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Will I like it? Hope so. Everyone else seems to find it very engaging. But apart from that and my basic “Learn Burmese” book, I have no other reading material to take. Backstreet Books, a great huge used bookstore few blocks away, is the solution. The only trick is going to be finding a moment to get there.

That’s tomorrow’s problem. For tonight, I need to get to bed. And I’m heading there happy that this year’s immersethrough group was wonderful, and that the whole week went well, with good energy. Everything is cleaned up and bare again in the kitchen apartment, so that it’s hard to remember how full of food and conversation and life it was just yesterday. Thanks everyone!

FRESHLY LANDED AND WIDE-EYED

There's a white cotton blessing string tied three times around my right wrist. As I sit here at my little white laptop (so pleasant to be back with familar tools!) it is in view, an ongoing reminder of Burma. I was given it at a monastery - "paya" is the Burmese term - called Ta-ma-nga that in Burmese style is built on a hilltop, with a steep long flight of stairs leading up the wooded hillside. It's about 40 miles southeast of Hpa'an, in Kayin (Karen) State. The monk who presided there until his death a few years ago was revered for his wisdom, and respected too for his firm support of Aung San Suu Kyi. His portrait is often pasted up in the front of busses, along with a buddha photo or two, and the monastery is a busy pilgrim place and also somehow remarkably peaceful.

Right now I'm still in "just landed" mode, with a jumble of impressions that will in time I hope get a little more sorted out. The photos will help, as I sort through them, and now that I have a few words of Burmese in my head (and more noted down phonetically in my notebook but not yet pounded into my brain!), I can somehow "replay" the texture of encounters and the feel of the street much better than after my last trip.

It's such a slow (and interesting) process, getting a little familiar with another food culture. And in Burma, with its diversity of peoples, from Rakhine and Karen to Bhama and Mon, to Kachin and Shan of many kinds, the picture is wonderfully complex. That's so even before you get to the foods that originate in the Indian subcontinent and are now staples in Burma, subtly transformed in many cases, from their original model. I'm talking about biryani and dosa and porota and paratha and more. Fun!

It was a treat this morning, a Friday, to be at the Haw market here in Chiang Mai, a place where Burmese refugees of various cultures, as well as hill people and Yunnanese, come to sell and buy food. So here, back in Thailand, I had a breakfast that was Burmese, a bowl of mohinga. It varies from place to place, but is most often fine rice noodles (that are known in Thailand as kanom Jiin) with a fish-based broth and then toppings sprinkled over it to add flavour and texture. Here the only choice was a crisp fried cracker as well as coriander leaves, but in Rangoon at the small street stalls there's a wide array of toppings and flavorings ro choose from, including a kind of fried shrimp cracker, and slices of banana flower heart, and, and... The other treat for breakfast at the Haw market is various kinds of khao foon, firm smooth tofu-like squares made of mung beans or chickpeas that have been cooked and pureed and jelled, that are sliced into noodles and then topped with flavourings (shallot oil, lime juice, soy or fish sauce, chile oil, etc). I had some khao foon strips on top of my mohinga today, just for the pleasure of their texture.

The Haw market made me feel welcomed back and also somehow reassured that the cultural and historical cross-connections here in the region are alive and real. And as I try to figure out some of the dishes and techniques I came across in Burma, there should be some help and insights to be found here in Chiang Mai... What a wonderfully lucky thing it is, to be able to be here and trying to learn.

POST SCRIPT ON IMMERSETHROUGH: We have a small group this year for the tour (January 24 to 30, 2010), so we can be portable and flexible. I'm really looking forward to it.