MAPS FOR LIVING & ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD

The bright sun on this Monday morning makes a lovely start to the week. And the world outside is extra-brilliant because of all the fresh snow still coating all surfaces. The deep cold temperatures we’ve had felt all the more brutal because the ground was bare, but now with the snow winter feels less harsh somehow.

As a friend said to me on Sunday morning, under grey skies, with the snow making soft edges everywhere, “We love this. Not in April we don’t, but in December and January, we love it.”

Yes and I am happy to be here for the whole of December for once, able to head out on my cross-country skis yesterday in the fresh snow. No, I didn’t drive out of the city, I walked to the end of my street then skied around in the university grounds and the neighbouring park, beautiful with huge old trees.

We can’t have it all, no matter how much we fantasize about the possibility. I can’t be in Chiang Mai or Burma, seeing friends and enjoying sunshine, bare arms, and fresh local greens, and also be here in the slanting northern light and crisp air of snowy Toronto. Luckily I don’t generally yearn for where I am not. I mean, homesickness or wishing to be warm when cold, or cool when overheated, are not afflictions I suffer from. When I’m traveling I’m not fighting myself, usually, however lonely or uncomfortable a particular situation or trip might be. And that makes it all much easier.

The whole of life is a trip, from one point of view. And then the questions becomes, how comfortable or engaged are we in the place we find ourselves? Do we yearn for something else? It’s an interesting way to conceptualise our daily and yearly choices, don’t you think? After all, a certain itchiness and awareness of the wider horizon is necessary if we are to understand the choices we have in life, and the possibilities for being creative, or doing useful work, or whatever, that are out there. We need to know about them in order to make decisions, in order to push ourselves outside our comfort zone too. Yet at the same time we surely live better if we make ourselves comfortable and accepting of our current situation, whatever it is. That way we can make the best of it rather than pining and moaning about what we don’t have.

There’s a tension here between ambition and harmonious daily living…a tension that we navigate at each stage of life.

For as we move through life, sometimes on auto-pilot (as when we are surviving and trying to do our best raising young children), sometimes more consciously making choices and striving outward (as young people and then perhaps again once the kids are launched), we’re charting our own geographies, map-making, annotating the map of time and place with our personal experiences and hopes.

Cartography was one of my favourite subjects when I was an undergraduate majoring in Geography. It’s technical, and was a required course that many students disliked. I loved the questions of psychology and perception that underlay cartographic decisions. How to make this border stand out and that one be less important? What makes a map or any mapping of information clear, and what makes it a struggle to decipher?

Those questions have become more generally relevant as we have moved into this digital and e-universe. We can see charts and graphs and other information-mapping posted by newspapers, magazines, and bloggers. For example the Economist, a useful mag whose politics I don’t usually agree with, posts great charts and graphs, comparing countries, usually, but on the basis of infant mortality, or literacy, or diversity or whatever. I find that charting and graphic comparison informative and enticing, a helpful underpinning to words and commentary, and often a corrective too.

This post started with snow and ideas about having to be in one place at a time. Yes, and at the same time we can be many places at once in our imaginations and thoughts. Those charts help us picture and compare places far away from us, and from each other. They allow us to attend to other places and situations in the world intellectually or emotionally, while staying physically in one place.

In my case for now that means wearing warm pants over long-johns, with two layers of sweater plus a scarf on top, to stay warm as I work in my office. And let’s not forget the extra socks!

As I’ve worked here and done household chores too, in my mind’s eye I have travelled many places already this morning, from the refugee camps and ruined threatened cities of Syria, where temperatures are at a record low and people lack basic bread, as well as security and heating (see this recent report by Lyse Doucet: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25397140 ); to tropical Rangoon where my friend Ma Thanegi’s newly issued Burma cookbook has just won a World Gourmand award; to Sikkim, where a new Twitter follower @Cafe_Fiction lives and works; to Burundi where the always interesting blogger DianaBuja now lives: http://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/antibiotics-bed-rest-and-friends-standard-for-recovery-in-central-africa/ .

I’ve also gone the other way this morning, travelling internally into memory and imagination, after reading a piece from Lapham’s quarterly about the art of dying, centred around one story but raising issues that affect us all: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/roundtable/the-art-of-dying.php .

The statistic cited there, that seven out of ten Americans would prefer to die at home but in fact that instead that same proportion die in hospital with tubes and sterility, should make us think hard about how we approach end-of-life issues, not just for ourselves but for others. My father and mother died young, (at 48 and 56 respectively) but they at least had the privilege of dying in their own bed, with a loved one right there and no medical intervention causing extra suffering. How do we manage this for ourselves? How do we respond to the needs of others?

….

There’s life too, as well as death and cold, in this month of December. Yes, the sun will return and the days get longer. And whether pagan or Christian or Hindu or Moslem or Jewish or unbelieving, we all rejoice at the return of the light and the promise of new life.

Meantime we eat. European tradition in this season includes rich festive fare, reminders of summer in winter. That’s at least how I think of candied peel and dried fruits like currants and raisins and apricots. I made peel a few days ago (a mix of lemon, grapefruit, and orange of several kinds) and then used some of it in the four large loaves of stollen that I took out of the oven late last night. (I followed my recipe in HomeBaking, except that I used mostly Red Fife, together with some white spelt flour, rather than all purpose; much better flavour and liveliness I think.)

It looks like a lot of food, but once I start thinking about the people I’d like to give some to, I realise I need to make another batch. Soon.

There’s another mental map: the people I want to make treats for….

SPRING MAINTENANCE, & REFLECTIONS IN A SNOWY PLACE

Last week I wrote about the full moon and an expectation of spring. By then I had grilled outside over wood and charcoal (beef, mushrooms, smoked pork chops), a sure sign of milder weather and rising hopes. But now six days later we're back in the deep-freeze, truly. It began with heaps of wet snow that cooled into lighter drier snow and blanketed the city, every telephone wire, fence-top, sidewalk, tree branch. The cat wouldn't set foot outsdie, and nor, it seemed would the city crews, who were NOT ploughing streets at all.

(We have a new and horrible mayor, anti-bicycle, anti-public transit etc; my theory is that he's going to point with pride to the money he's saved. Meantime we've had three days of clogged, then icy-with-sun-melt-and-refreeze sidewalks. I've seen several falls and lots more near-misses.)

SInce I was away for a chunk of the snow-season, it was kind of lovely to find myself yesterday afternoon walking across the great white snowy circle at the University of Toronto, the sun reflecting glaringly into my eyes off the pristine white. I was hurrying to meet a friend for coffee, and thinking, as I rushed across the circle on the student-created packed snow path, that the glare on my skin reminded me of long ago when people would sit outside in the spring with reflectors, tanning, in breaks from spring skiing. That feels so long ago. DO people still tan like that?

I had made an appointment last week in the warm weather to take my bicycle in for its spring tune-up, and cold and snowy yesterday was the day. The street was so icy I decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Feeling rather pathetic! I walked my bike to Urbane Cycle rather than risking a fall. And today I was able to ride it home, whizzing along on almost-dry roads (the sun, even with freezing air temperatures, is evaporating the snow and ice off the streets beautifully). The air was cold on my ears (no room for a hat under my helmet) but with a new rear derailer, new fromt tire, newly regreased front end, everything felt so smooth and easy; what a difference good maintenance makes!

That's a truth worth remembering in lots of contexts, not just bicycles.

On the night of the big snow day, Wednesday, I made a huge pot of beef stew, flavoured at the start, just before I put in the shallots/onions, with mustard seed, nigella seed, and some turmeric (into olive oil). (I find I use mustard seed and turmeric, a light dash, almost every time I use hot oil, except when stir-frying distinctly Thai or Chinese dishes.) I had potatoes from Marcus, brought to the house last week by Dawn and Ed of Evelyn's Crackers and still remarkably good, and some carrots from Quebec, as well as stewing beef from Grey County, bought at Sanagan's in Kensington Market.

A satisfyingly hungry crowd of young people (five in all) made short work of it. For greens there were very non-local wing beans ("tua plu" in Thai), bought at the Viet Grocery store on Spadina. They're long with frilled edges, and are best cooked in a little water quickly, like asparagus. I do them in a cast-iron skillet in an inch of water. When they're just cooked (about 5 minutes), I drain them and cut them into 1-inch lengths, then dress them in a light vinaigrette. Delish, and also beautiful.

This morning, with the temperature still freezing (wind chill of minus 15 at eight), I went for an early run. WInd pants, long underwear, three layers on top as well as hat and mittens: not my idea of springtime running gear! I needed it all, though was able to take off my mittens to cool down on the second half of the run. It felt so good to be out in the sun, breathing and moving freely. What a great thing that morning run is, a tonic that lasts all day.

Tomorrow I'm heading north for an afternoon of cross-country skiing and supper with a group of friends. I'd thought my one ski in December was all I'd get this year. So I suppose I'm ending this part of the post with the reflection that I've a lot to be grateful for, including this late snow...

Meanwhile in the wider world, there was an earthquake late Thursday, followed by many aftershocks, in the far eastern part of Burma's Shan State, just along the road from Mae Sai/Tachilek to Kengtung. I travelled that road last month, going up in a car and back south in a crowded bus. It passes through steep hills, and when it's in valleys, the hills on either side are beautiful and sweepingly massive, rather like the Jura or mountains in Tuscany. People in that region who live in villages have wooden houses, mostly, on stilts. In towns there are some brick and stone houses, often covered with plaster. The early reports talk of landslide danger, because of the steepness of the terrain and also, I imagine, because there has been a fair amount of rain in the region this March, very unusual.

Now we wonder whether the Burmese government will accept any help with this disaster, or not. The region is very cut off from central Burma, almost a different country, it seems. There are huge army camps (for the Chinese border, southern Yunnan, is not far away), and maybe that's who will end up doing the work of rescue and rebuilding.

And in Japan, two weeks since the earthquakes and tsunami, there is no relief from unfolding pain and fear, or so it seems. We can only hope that those who were stranded in the north have mostly been reached and given some form of shelter and support, so at least they are warm and fed. But who can tell what the end result of this kind of trauma is, for individuals who lost so much, and for the country as a whole? It seems reasonable to anticipate that emotionally and politically there will be aftershocks and tsunamis, in the public sphere as well as in the private.

Meantime Japanese fortitude and focussed attention to helping neighbours and getting life moving again are an example to us all. I don't mean just because of the astonishing stamina and "suck-it-up" determination involved, but also because it's an ongoing reminder not to take for granted our good fortune at being alive, whatever immediate pain or unhappiness we may be feeling from time to time.

I haven't even mentioned the other hot places, all painful and complicated, that feel my mind's eye: Cote d'Ivoire, where there's civil war and ethnic cleansing happening; Libya, say no more; Yemen and Syria and Bahrein and Morocco and... where change and hope and repression and fear are all blooming and struggling with each other. It's a humbling world out there.

All I can say is, bring on some peaceful resolutions, please, to these struggles.

LIGHT IN THE DARK

Sharp cold, bright sun, fresh snow: a beautiful welcome to 2009 here in Toronto.  I check the news and there's death in Gaza and the Congo, sexual slavery in Cambodia and elsewhere, anxieties world-wide because of the economic crisis, as well as individual stories of suffering and grief.  

But life goes on, we take our distance from the sufferings out there so that we don't go crazy, and then what?  Well I try to be mindful of now, of who is with me or what is around me, and of the larger picture too.  I assume most people do this: travel in and out, from the immediate to the larger world and back.  But appreciating the moment is a vital part of finding a balance.  We can luxuriate in the beauty of the day or of a painting, or kick up our heels at a party, even as we know that the dark and painful is always happening too, in places far and near...

Being present to strangers, for example to the guy begging in the market, or to the old man who collects bottles - skinny and hard-working, hauling his cart behind him down the sidewalk - having conversation with them and seeing each as a person rather than a cog in the landscape, is the place to start, for me.   So the effort for me is to slow down and take notice, real notice.  

This reminds of a couple named Adrienne and Rick, from Nanaimo.  They have been working at the micro level for nine years, always helping children: taking money to an orphanage in Cambodia; and to Karen and Burmese refugee children on the Thai border; and to other people in need in other parts of Cambodia.  They look to see what's needed, flip-flops for kids, or notebooks, or help with building a clinic or a school, and after consultation they give money and time and labour directly to those who need it.  They are the best example I know of people making a difference by giving targeted mindful help and respect to others. 

This is also the time of year when those of us in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere need to assert our confidence that the sun will come back and life will spring anew.  For us a big part of that assertion comes through dancing.  The other night we had our winter dancing party.  The music was DJ'd by two young friends, Emily and Ian, who each did two sets.  There was music solidly from eight until 1.30 in the morning, and it was wonderful.  Lots of young people, as well as forty-somethings and up, all dancing, engaging, caught up in the moment: what better way to affirm life in the often gloomy prognostications of the coldest darkest time of the year?