Up before dawn to have a chat with an editor in New York, where it was the end of the working day. It was great to touch base about the Burma book galleys and timings etc. just before I get on a plane to fly to Rangoon (this afternoon).
It’s early here, the sun just creaking up in the hazy sky, and casting its glow over the white galley pages I have out on the floor. A spider, a daddy long-legs of some kind, came strolling across the gilded whiteness, and he cast a fabulous elongated moving-spider shadow as he strolled, like some sci-fi creature. It reminded me of that wonderful taken-from-a balloon shot of camels in the desert. You see the dark images of camels on sand dunes, and then you realise that those are the camels’ shadows; the camels are tiny pale imges, casting long shadows at dawn.
I’ve been thinking about details and repetition, about how repetition is what we are often called upon to engage in. Yesterday morning I stopped by Wat Chedi Luang, the ancient wat with its huge damaged chedi that towers like a grizzled valiant warrior. Together with the tall tall old trees that stand sentinal in the wat grounds, the chedi is an essential element in the skyline of Chiang Mai’s old city. I had a small sketch book with me and a charcoal pencil. That’s all you need to settle into mindless-mindful concentration when there’s something you want to focus on. I tried a couple and then the sketch I ended with, and felt most satisfied with, was of the grand chedi itself. As often happens when I am trying to draw the details of Buddhist structures, I got caught up in and kind of enslaved by the repetitive elements: the ripples in the line of brick, the small symmettrical openings, the horizontals of the steep staircase up.
It begins by being tedious, the repetition, because each one is identical, so there’s a need to repeat fairly exactly. But after a few, a rhythm takes over, and the repetition becomes relaxing.
Similarly, during the massage I had recently (Thai massage, fully clothed and wonderfully vigorous), the woman working on me repeated and repeated her gestures; whether it was the pressures up and down each side of my spine in a deliberately spaced sequence, or the succession of pinch- squeezes along the lines of mucles on my legs, a lot of the massage consisted of repetition.
I tend to think of that kind of thing as mindless and tedious, as in, “so many repetitions to get through before it’s done!” But what about the repetition that I enjoy? There’s kneading bread; detailed elements in many drawings; making coffee in the morning in Toronto, to name just a few.
Perhaps it’s all in the attitude I bring to it, but it’s also about settling into a task, accepting its demands, and engaging fully, rather than being impatient to have it over with. Ah, acceptance, that’s such a difficult thing to put into practice, often. And so rewarding when it happens.
Now, as I finish writing this, the day has rolled around to mid-afternoon. I’m at the Chiang Mai airport waiting for the flight to Rangoon. It’s just a short hop, less than an hour, but such a huge transition, a change of worlds, though these days, with life in central Burma relaxing into ease and more freedom of expression, the transition doesn’t feel quite so marked.
And this time I’m going knowing that the Burma cookbook, now called simply BURMA: the cookbook, is far along in design and soon to head into second galleys. How thrilling. Also of course, it has its scary side. Like all cookbook authors I dread errors, but in this case it’s not just typos in the recipes that are a concern, but almost more, a feeling that I owe it to the cooks of Burma to get it right, to do an impeccable job of transmitting their wisdom and rich culinary culture.
On this visit I plan to check a few more things by asking friends, and also by eating and eating. I have ten days in Burma before me, a wonderful prospect!
Showing posts with label Burma cookbook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Burma cookbook. Show all posts
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
UNDER A SMILING MOON
The moon was smiling a slender crescent-curved smile in the western sky yesterday evening as I sat outside at a rooftop bar with a friend. Five full days after the new moon and Chinese New Year, that moon was still looking new and fresh and fragile. Tonight, suddenly, the smile is much fuller, almost a half-moon. How does that happen, a slow-seeming gradual evolution becoming “suddenly” a quick change? Maybe I’m asking the same kind of questions as all those philosophical ones about when is one plus one plus one, etc stones no longer some stones but a pile? What’s the turning point amount at which a bunch of stones is a pile or heap?
Oops! How did I get here?
I meant to start out with that skinny smile-in-the-sky and move on. I wanted to talk about the luck of being here in Chiang Mai and being able to feel each day that I’m a beginner, always looking to understand the human and physical landscape. This state of not-knowing is a privilege. It enables me to ask questions without embarrassment, and to continually feel that lovely edge that happens when I’m challenged. Is it a kind of adrenaline pleasure? Is there dopamine secreted when we engage with the unknown and try to understand it? Must be something like that, surely, because I love that feeling of edge so much.
Today, this evening, we started a week of immersing in culture through food. We began by eating and talking, moved on to the market for looking and shopping and eating, and more shopping, and ended with eating back at the apartment, and lots more talking. A great start.
The good will of people who are curious about the world, who want to learn more about food and culture here in Northern Thailand, and are prepared to be challenged, is a lovely thing. It means that people come together and make something new, a temporary world of cross-connection and mutual appreciation. And it’s exhilarating to watch and be part of.
This week is also the time that the first galleys of my Burma book, PINCH OF TURMERIC, SQUEEZE OF LIME are due to arrive. Nothing like having all my most intense obligations happen at the same time! I’m told I can take two weeks with the galleys, and I’ll need all of that and more. But first, before I start worrying about corrections and amendments (for example, given the recent movement toward more political openness in Burma, the history section, happily, needs altering), I want to take a day or two to just enjoy the galleys. I want to hold onto my sense of wonder and pleasure that they exist, rather than leaping straight into practical tasks.
I’m sure they’ll be beautiful, too, for the sample early pages I saw three weeks ago were stunning.
Perhaps all this good stuff – the start of immersethrough with all its good energy, and the imminent arrival of a FedEx parcel of book galleys (oh, and getting a Burma visa for another trip there) – is what that moon has been smiling at. I like to think so…
Oops! How did I get here?
I meant to start out with that skinny smile-in-the-sky and move on. I wanted to talk about the luck of being here in Chiang Mai and being able to feel each day that I’m a beginner, always looking to understand the human and physical landscape. This state of not-knowing is a privilege. It enables me to ask questions without embarrassment, and to continually feel that lovely edge that happens when I’m challenged. Is it a kind of adrenaline pleasure? Is there dopamine secreted when we engage with the unknown and try to understand it? Must be something like that, surely, because I love that feeling of edge so much.
Today, this evening, we started a week of immersing in culture through food. We began by eating and talking, moved on to the market for looking and shopping and eating, and more shopping, and ended with eating back at the apartment, and lots more talking. A great start.
The good will of people who are curious about the world, who want to learn more about food and culture here in Northern Thailand, and are prepared to be challenged, is a lovely thing. It means that people come together and make something new, a temporary world of cross-connection and mutual appreciation. And it’s exhilarating to watch and be part of.
This week is also the time that the first galleys of my Burma book, PINCH OF TURMERIC, SQUEEZE OF LIME are due to arrive. Nothing like having all my most intense obligations happen at the same time! I’m told I can take two weeks with the galleys, and I’ll need all of that and more. But first, before I start worrying about corrections and amendments (for example, given the recent movement toward more political openness in Burma, the history section, happily, needs altering), I want to take a day or two to just enjoy the galleys. I want to hold onto my sense of wonder and pleasure that they exist, rather than leaping straight into practical tasks.
I’m sure they’ll be beautiful, too, for the sample early pages I saw three weeks ago were stunning.
Perhaps all this good stuff – the start of immersethrough with all its good energy, and the imminent arrival of a FedEx parcel of book galleys (oh, and getting a Burma visa for another trip there) – is what that moon has been smiling at. I like to think so…
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT!
It's such a hot night that eveything is sticking: my forarms to the table as I type, my legs to the chair, and my brain to...I'm not sure what, but it's not an enhancer of clear thinking, for sure!
No complaints though. This house has a good cross-breeze, and anyway I like the feeling of sweating out all that's inside from time to time. It's like an ongoing sauna. The trick with the hot weather of course is the traditional wise technique of having a quick shower anytime you are feeling hot or sticky or fed-up or on edge because of the heat. Instantly you get a lovely little shiver as the wet clings to your skin when you step out of the shower. That momentary cooling from evaporation sends the heavy loggy feeling away and refreshes you. And somehow it makes everything manageable, creates an optimism, I find, so that the heat stops being oppressive and becomes just a bath of sensation to move through.
Bicycling helps too. The breeze from pedalling along is surprisingly cooling, so a bicycle rather than walking is the way to get around in the heat.
Had a question today from a friend who'd been told by a Vietnamese friend about a bitter leaf and flower that is around in the fall in Khmer parts of Vietnam, or maybe in Cambodia. I hadn't heard of it, but her question reminded me of the great spice (not herbs, not yet anyway) page by Gernot Katzer. He's exhaustive and quite meticulous. It's a great resource. Bookmark it so you can go to it any time you have a question. This link is to the SE Asia part, but you can move on from there:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/spice_geo.html#asia_southeast
I went to Shape Note singing this evening (it's once a month in Toronto). What a treat. There's a southern Ontario sing in late August not far from Waterloo in an old Mennonite meeting house, a fab stone building. Before that there's a huge sing in Maine on July 30. These calendars of events that different people keep track of are like different maps laid over the months with their own linkages and contour lines and internal necessities. My map right now involves catching a plane to Kelowna tomorrow so I can visit my aunt Wendy, who is my mother's identical twin. It's always a struggle to decide to go see her, for though my mother has been dead for over thirty years, there's stil a wrench when I see my aunt, a pang and thoughts of how things might be different. And then I am pulled into her present and can let the pangs go, mostly.
The other event, now the fifth annual, but this will be my first time, is the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, in northern Maine. There are two days of conference, designed to help those who want to to learn new skills, and it's followed by the Bread Fair, on Saturday. Dawnthebaker and I are going to drive down, a lovely trip through the Eastern Townships, ten or eleven hours from Toronto in total, at least that's what Google Maps tells me. I would have guessed nine hours or so.
I posted a couple of notes on Facebook about managing the heat. One of them is to get up early, cook something in the early morning, then put it in the frig. That makes supper an easy pleasure, cooked veg dressed as a salad, over cold rice for example. That was supper today (I had new beets, fresh from my CSA delivery and spectacular. The other is the smoothie made of fruit and not much else. Tashi made a raspberry one, adding in some mango that was around. He added just ice and a little honey, no milk product at all. It was a beautiful red. But then I got home and found the red currants, needing to be eaten. SO I cleaned them of stems and blended them to a gorgeous thick puree. I mixed it fity-fifty with the end of Tashi's smoothie, then added some gin.
Now THERE'S a summer drink! wow. Summer pudding is slices of bread that line a bowl, which is then filled iwth raspberries and red currents, covered with bread slices and a weight pressed down on top overnight. It's fab. SO I figure my drink is Summer Pudding Gin. But surely there's a more elegant name waiting to be discovered?
Happy showering and slowing down, everyone!
AND A FOOTNOTE: ANn Bramson had some good ideas about ways to strenthen the Burma book. I have now done those edits and reshapings and I sent the anuscript off yesterday. I've altered the title a little. Now it's:
RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVEL STORIES FROM BURMA
No complaints though. This house has a good cross-breeze, and anyway I like the feeling of sweating out all that's inside from time to time. It's like an ongoing sauna. The trick with the hot weather of course is the traditional wise technique of having a quick shower anytime you are feeling hot or sticky or fed-up or on edge because of the heat. Instantly you get a lovely little shiver as the wet clings to your skin when you step out of the shower. That momentary cooling from evaporation sends the heavy loggy feeling away and refreshes you. And somehow it makes everything manageable, creates an optimism, I find, so that the heat stops being oppressive and becomes just a bath of sensation to move through.
Bicycling helps too. The breeze from pedalling along is surprisingly cooling, so a bicycle rather than walking is the way to get around in the heat.
Had a question today from a friend who'd been told by a Vietnamese friend about a bitter leaf and flower that is around in the fall in Khmer parts of Vietnam, or maybe in Cambodia. I hadn't heard of it, but her question reminded me of the great spice (not herbs, not yet anyway) page by Gernot Katzer. He's exhaustive and quite meticulous. It's a great resource. Bookmark it so you can go to it any time you have a question. This link is to the SE Asia part, but you can move on from there:
http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/spice_geo.html#asia_southeast
I went to Shape Note singing this evening (it's once a month in Toronto). What a treat. There's a southern Ontario sing in late August not far from Waterloo in an old Mennonite meeting house, a fab stone building. Before that there's a huge sing in Maine on July 30. These calendars of events that different people keep track of are like different maps laid over the months with their own linkages and contour lines and internal necessities. My map right now involves catching a plane to Kelowna tomorrow so I can visit my aunt Wendy, who is my mother's identical twin. It's always a struggle to decide to go see her, for though my mother has been dead for over thirty years, there's stil a wrench when I see my aunt, a pang and thoughts of how things might be different. And then I am pulled into her present and can let the pangs go, mostly.
The other event, now the fifth annual, but this will be my first time, is the Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, in northern Maine. There are two days of conference, designed to help those who want to to learn new skills, and it's followed by the Bread Fair, on Saturday. Dawnthebaker and I are going to drive down, a lovely trip through the Eastern Townships, ten or eleven hours from Toronto in total, at least that's what Google Maps tells me. I would have guessed nine hours or so.
I posted a couple of notes on Facebook about managing the heat. One of them is to get up early, cook something in the early morning, then put it in the frig. That makes supper an easy pleasure, cooked veg dressed as a salad, over cold rice for example. That was supper today (I had new beets, fresh from my CSA delivery and spectacular. The other is the smoothie made of fruit and not much else. Tashi made a raspberry one, adding in some mango that was around. He added just ice and a little honey, no milk product at all. It was a beautiful red. But then I got home and found the red currants, needing to be eaten. SO I cleaned them of stems and blended them to a gorgeous thick puree. I mixed it fity-fifty with the end of Tashi's smoothie, then added some gin.
Now THERE'S a summer drink! wow. Summer pudding is slices of bread that line a bowl, which is then filled iwth raspberries and red currents, covered with bread slices and a weight pressed down on top overnight. It's fab. SO I figure my drink is Summer Pudding Gin. But surely there's a more elegant name waiting to be discovered?
Happy showering and slowing down, everyone!
AND A FOOTNOTE: ANn Bramson had some good ideas about ways to strenthen the Burma book. I have now done those edits and reshapings and I sent the anuscript off yesterday. I've altered the title a little. Now it's:
RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVEL STORIES FROM BURMA
Friday, July 1, 2011
A MONTH OF EDITS AND LIGHTROOM EXPLORATIONS
There's a pop-pop-popping happening, sporadically close to and then farther away, as people all over Toronto set off fireworks. The annual July 1 Canada Day celebrations are almost over...and summer is just beginning. Many friends are already out of town. Half of them seem to be in Cape Breton or PEI, eastern Canada anyway.
I'm still here though, now done with my deadline and moving in the freer air of edits. Ann Bramson has, as she always does, some good ideas about how to present the Burma book, how to get people turned on and tuned in to Burma. And as always I need to find more interesting titles for the recipes (just plain "beef curry" doesn't cut it! for example). It's a treat to have the manuscript written and the chance to re-enter it and shape it further. I am amazed, as always, with how much greater my perspective is now that I've had a few weeks away from it (and the suggestions from Ann to help me take hold of it freshly).
The other work on the immediate horizon, and I wrote about this on my facebook fan page, is that I have started to try to take hold of LightRoom, the powerful and not-always-intuitively-understandable program that helps sort images and also work with them. Thanks to N, a friend of Tashi's I am feeling more confident and have a starting-to-grow understanding of how to use the program to sort and engage with my Burma images. They're all digital, most in RAW and some in JPEG. I need to pull about four hundred, so the designer has images to choose from for the book. They'll be portraits and markets and scenes of various kinds.
The first task is to find the strongest images, and then make sure there's a balanced group of picks to send. I feel a long way from slides and the physical and damage-able fragility of slides. It's always scary to send them out. But digital images are (once I get used to the basic idea of how ephemeral they are, how dependent on electricity and modern stuff like computers) less "fragile. I can send them and keep them at the same time. It would have been a hard concept for our forbears to grasp, for sure.
Good food this week, from the growing thriving herbs in the garden, and tender leaf lettuce, to garlic scapes (those curving elegant tips of young garlic, so delish lightly fried). Grilled some bavette this evening and poached asparagus, and had our first new potatoes of the year. Hurrah!
Yesterday a friend retested two different fish curries and a chutney,as well as a fish head soup, all recipes from Rivers of Flavor, the Burma book. A squeeze of lime at the end made a huge wonderful difference to the soup, pulling it all together. And the fish curries reminded Dawn to interrogate me about whether I was putting info about sustainable fish and those others we shouldn't be eating, into the Burma book.
(By the way, Jake Tilson has a fish book just out in the UK, and in the US in September, called "In at the Deep End: Cooking Fish Venice to Tokyo." It should be a wonderful resource, and beautiful, for Jake is a designer and has really made the book, not just the words and pictures. I can't wait to see it.)
In answer to Dawn's good reminder, I will put the URL of a couple of sites in the Burma book, sites that people can now consult to know whether a particular fish species is endangered, etc etc. More later, when I get the info.
Had a crisis this week, small but distracting. I had a guy named Eric come and connect the water to the garage out back, but then it turned out there was a leak somewhere. Lots of digging later (by Eric and also by me) and the solution turned out to be to replace one stretch of pipe. But meantime, apart from the blisters on my hands, I've lost leaf lettuce and mint (as dirt got piled on them, or dug up around them, or both) and also a huge amount of ivy, for we had to cut ivy roots as we dug. Most of the dirt pile is gone, and the hole/trench filled in. And now there's water and good pressure.
The digging and then refilling of the hole reminded me of how hard hard labour can be. It's really wearing. And often very low-paying. But why do we pay so much for brain work and so little for work that uses up your body? I know, it's about value, and demand etc. But it is a harsh unfair reality that guys who labour with their bodies often get worn out. And many who work in offices could not possibly do labouring work, (though many go to the gym to stay fit). The temptation to disdain what you cannot do is powerful in our culture, maybe in every culture. hmmm
Meantime I'm pleased that even though half the ivy has been stripped off the back building (I did that once it had wilted overnight after we cut the roots), the change or loss is not devastating. Instead it gives us all a chance to look freshly at how the garden is organised and how we might change things.
Once again the only "constant" is that everything is in flux and will change, so it's up to us to handle the shiftings and gains and losses on this roller-coaster of life with equilibrium, and to enjoy the ride!
I'm still here though, now done with my deadline and moving in the freer air of edits. Ann Bramson has, as she always does, some good ideas about how to present the Burma book, how to get people turned on and tuned in to Burma. And as always I need to find more interesting titles for the recipes (just plain "beef curry" doesn't cut it! for example). It's a treat to have the manuscript written and the chance to re-enter it and shape it further. I am amazed, as always, with how much greater my perspective is now that I've had a few weeks away from it (and the suggestions from Ann to help me take hold of it freshly).
The other work on the immediate horizon, and I wrote about this on my facebook fan page, is that I have started to try to take hold of LightRoom, the powerful and not-always-intuitively-understandable program that helps sort images and also work with them. Thanks to N, a friend of Tashi's I am feeling more confident and have a starting-to-grow understanding of how to use the program to sort and engage with my Burma images. They're all digital, most in RAW and some in JPEG. I need to pull about four hundred, so the designer has images to choose from for the book. They'll be portraits and markets and scenes of various kinds.
The first task is to find the strongest images, and then make sure there's a balanced group of picks to send. I feel a long way from slides and the physical and damage-able fragility of slides. It's always scary to send them out. But digital images are (once I get used to the basic idea of how ephemeral they are, how dependent on electricity and modern stuff like computers) less "fragile. I can send them and keep them at the same time. It would have been a hard concept for our forbears to grasp, for sure.
Good food this week, from the growing thriving herbs in the garden, and tender leaf lettuce, to garlic scapes (those curving elegant tips of young garlic, so delish lightly fried). Grilled some bavette this evening and poached asparagus, and had our first new potatoes of the year. Hurrah!
Yesterday a friend retested two different fish curries and a chutney,as well as a fish head soup, all recipes from Rivers of Flavor, the Burma book. A squeeze of lime at the end made a huge wonderful difference to the soup, pulling it all together. And the fish curries reminded Dawn to interrogate me about whether I was putting info about sustainable fish and those others we shouldn't be eating, into the Burma book.
(By the way, Jake Tilson has a fish book just out in the UK, and in the US in September, called "In at the Deep End: Cooking Fish Venice to Tokyo." It should be a wonderful resource, and beautiful, for Jake is a designer and has really made the book, not just the words and pictures. I can't wait to see it.)
In answer to Dawn's good reminder, I will put the URL of a couple of sites in the Burma book, sites that people can now consult to know whether a particular fish species is endangered, etc etc. More later, when I get the info.
Had a crisis this week, small but distracting. I had a guy named Eric come and connect the water to the garage out back, but then it turned out there was a leak somewhere. Lots of digging later (by Eric and also by me) and the solution turned out to be to replace one stretch of pipe. But meantime, apart from the blisters on my hands, I've lost leaf lettuce and mint (as dirt got piled on them, or dug up around them, or both) and also a huge amount of ivy, for we had to cut ivy roots as we dug. Most of the dirt pile is gone, and the hole/trench filled in. And now there's water and good pressure.
The digging and then refilling of the hole reminded me of how hard hard labour can be. It's really wearing. And often very low-paying. But why do we pay so much for brain work and so little for work that uses up your body? I know, it's about value, and demand etc. But it is a harsh unfair reality that guys who labour with their bodies often get worn out. And many who work in offices could not possibly do labouring work, (though many go to the gym to stay fit). The temptation to disdain what you cannot do is powerful in our culture, maybe in every culture. hmmm
Meantime I'm pleased that even though half the ivy has been stripped off the back building (I did that once it had wilted overnight after we cut the roots), the change or loss is not devastating. Instead it gives us all a chance to look freshly at how the garden is organised and how we might change things.
Once again the only "constant" is that everything is in flux and will change, so it's up to us to handle the shiftings and gains and losses on this roller-coaster of life with equilibrium, and to enjoy the ride!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
SOLSTICE THOUGHTS AND RECIPE TESTS
We've crossed that huge marker, the summer solstice, so now the long days start getting shorter. I'm not ready for this! Meantime all is green and growing, from the wall of ivy out back to the clematis, now starting into rich purple bloom (a hardy jackmanii that rewards each year; I keep saying I'll plant a white one, or another more exotic, to keep this one company, and have not yet managed to).
Last weekend I travelled to New York City with friends for a weekend of no work, just play. We saw a couple of shows, something I've never done there. That part of town, Times Square/Broadway, is another world, with all of us out-of-towners and also the bridge and tunnel people, all lining up outside theaters, mostly patiently. On Friday night we were at a musical, the revival of the 1934 Cole Porter musical "Anything Goes". I hadn't really been looking forward to it, for musicals aren't my favorite thing. And how wrong i was in my dim expectations. It was wonderful, brilliant words and sharp acting and staging, a real show. The next night we saw an entirely different kind of performance, "The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo". It was at the very cosy and old-style charming Richard Rogers Theater. I still haven't read reviews, but i'm told that some love it and some hate it. I thought the acting and the conception and staging were all terrific, until the last fifteen minutes or so, when instead of quiet thoughtfulness we got bombast from the tiger (played by Robin Williams, who otherwise did NOT overact or upstage the others). The cast was so strong, a great lesson in ensemble acting. I feel lucky to have seen it.
Apart from the shows, we also spent time walking along the newly extended High Line, so well done in design and execution. And I got back to see the McQueen exhibit at the Met, and had another visit with the Stella paint stick on linen black and white "drawings", so intense in their huge spaces and their interaction.
Coming back to the day-to-day here took some adjustment. I'm now well launched into my history section for the back of the Burma book. It's a kind of integrated bibliography and history, and so far so good. And with help from a friend I am getting to the retesting of some recipes that need another tweak, or another check and fine-tuning. This evening we're doing two with pork belly, which in Asia is generally called, in whatever language "three-layer pork", a more attractive name than pork belly, I always think. The other test is a vegetable curry alternate. The original is made with pumpkin, but I also want to check out using sweet potato instead, for it's often more available in North America than pumpkin. The pumpkin version is delish. In ten minutes I'll taste the sweet potato curry and see how it does (there's tamarind in there as a balance to the sweetness of the vegetable).
I hope you're able to be out in the long evenings these days, enjoying the lingering brightness in the sky, and dreaming of the possible and the impossible.... that's my ambition these days.
Last weekend I travelled to New York City with friends for a weekend of no work, just play. We saw a couple of shows, something I've never done there. That part of town, Times Square/Broadway, is another world, with all of us out-of-towners and also the bridge and tunnel people, all lining up outside theaters, mostly patiently. On Friday night we were at a musical, the revival of the 1934 Cole Porter musical "Anything Goes". I hadn't really been looking forward to it, for musicals aren't my favorite thing. And how wrong i was in my dim expectations. It was wonderful, brilliant words and sharp acting and staging, a real show. The next night we saw an entirely different kind of performance, "The Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo". It was at the very cosy and old-style charming Richard Rogers Theater. I still haven't read reviews, but i'm told that some love it and some hate it. I thought the acting and the conception and staging were all terrific, until the last fifteen minutes or so, when instead of quiet thoughtfulness we got bombast from the tiger (played by Robin Williams, who otherwise did NOT overact or upstage the others). The cast was so strong, a great lesson in ensemble acting. I feel lucky to have seen it.
Apart from the shows, we also spent time walking along the newly extended High Line, so well done in design and execution. And I got back to see the McQueen exhibit at the Met, and had another visit with the Stella paint stick on linen black and white "drawings", so intense in their huge spaces and their interaction.
Coming back to the day-to-day here took some adjustment. I'm now well launched into my history section for the back of the Burma book. It's a kind of integrated bibliography and history, and so far so good. And with help from a friend I am getting to the retesting of some recipes that need another tweak, or another check and fine-tuning. This evening we're doing two with pork belly, which in Asia is generally called, in whatever language "three-layer pork", a more attractive name than pork belly, I always think. The other test is a vegetable curry alternate. The original is made with pumpkin, but I also want to check out using sweet potato instead, for it's often more available in North America than pumpkin. The pumpkin version is delish. In ten minutes I'll taste the sweet potato curry and see how it does (there's tamarind in there as a balance to the sweetness of the vegetable).
I hope you're able to be out in the long evenings these days, enjoying the lingering brightness in the sky, and dreaming of the possible and the impossible.... that's my ambition these days.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
FREED FROM DEADLINE: FRESH THOUGHTS ON WRITING AND IMAGES...
Surfacing from a deep sleep this morning I slowly came into the remembrance that there's a freeing-up of life that's happened. And why? Because yesterday I carried the manuscript of RIVERS OF FLAVOR, the Burma book I've been working on for two years, to the fedEx office and sent it off to New York City and Ann Bramson's desk at Artisan. I feel lightened, for sure. But I also had a slight shakiness yesterday, almost a psychological equivalent of the shaking-legs-after-a-big-effort feeling. That has now gone. And the feeling of "should" and "ought to" which is necessary for getting things done, but can be oppressive, we can all agree, has lifted for now.
It's Saturday morning. I'm in bicycling shorts and heading out to Brickworks Market on my bicycle. The day will unfold as it unfolds. And I will try not to think "I should" about anything!
On the other hand lurking in the shadows is a list of "should"s, starting with the need to take hold of my office and indeed the whole house. I'm talking about cleaning and tidying up and organising. These fits come upon us at turning points, don't you think? And there are more things to do for the book. There is some recipe retesting, but that's easy and unpressured.
Bigger things still: I have the Glossary to do. It might seem like a dictionary-writing kind of chore, but I enjoy it. It's a chance to pull threads of information together and to give the book a solid factual anchor. I also have a back section to write which I am calling Burma Over Time. It's a bit of a chronology/history that incorporates references to the writings of others: historians, memoirists, travel writers, from earlier times and from the present. I want the book to have a political and historical context, but I don't want the brilliant food culture of Burma to be burdened by the politics. That's why it's going at the back.
And the last and most fun part I have left to do is the photographs. Photos are so important to me. Why aren't there any in this blog? I can hear you wondering. Well I think they're wonderful, and give us windows into other places and people and dreams and ideas. But sometimes mixing photos and text, interrupting text with photos is what I mean, does both a disservice.
I do love photos with captions. You can get lost in the image, or read the captions, or both, but there's a balance, and they are meant to work together in a complementary way. It's rare for the same thing to work with text.
Photos are attention grabbers. The steady processing-ideas kind of attention that is needed to engage with writing is shoved aside by the immediacy of apprehension that we have when our eyes alight on a photograph. We see and feel it, and then perhaps we also start to conceptualise about it and engage with deeper more continuous reflective thought, but the first hit, if I can call it that, lies outside the steadiness of reflective thought, for sure, and pushes it aside.
I hadn't thought I'd be writing about this photogrpahy-writing connection and disconnection today. It's just arisen as I contemplate the process of organising my Burma images in a digital data base, and then pulling those that I want to submit for the book.
You might wonder about why then I think photos will work in the Burma book. Well there, as with Hot Sour Salty Sweet and the other four-colour books I've done, the text is in pieces, so text and photos work with each other, like an assemblage of colours and patterns in a quilt.
But in a longer piece of writing I do believe that photos are a disruption. The exception I think proves the rule. That exception is Sebald's work. In his books there are small un-pushy black and white images occasionally. Because they are not road-hog photos, not attention-grabbers, but instead quiet, they don't shout out in the text, and instead are there to be discovered. They're also integral to the text, a complement to what he is writing about; instead of taking us away, they take us more deeply into the thoughts and reflections he is pulling us into. He was a genius...
It would be interesting to write a book and include photos, spectacular attention-getting photos, but instead of interleaving them, to have the writing run continuously for the first half, the photos for the second. Or it could be the other way around. The order will have an impact, but it doesn't really matter I think. The important thing is that the two ways of seeing and engaging not interrupt each other. Once you've read the book, you engage with the images, or the other way around. AFter you've done both, they can reverberate with each other. hmm
Have you come across any books that have been designed this way?
The sky is overcast, the birds are singing, and it's time to have a long drink and then head out on my bicycle. After all, it's the first day of the rest of my life!
It's Saturday morning. I'm in bicycling shorts and heading out to Brickworks Market on my bicycle. The day will unfold as it unfolds. And I will try not to think "I should" about anything!
On the other hand lurking in the shadows is a list of "should"s, starting with the need to take hold of my office and indeed the whole house. I'm talking about cleaning and tidying up and organising. These fits come upon us at turning points, don't you think? And there are more things to do for the book. There is some recipe retesting, but that's easy and unpressured.
Bigger things still: I have the Glossary to do. It might seem like a dictionary-writing kind of chore, but I enjoy it. It's a chance to pull threads of information together and to give the book a solid factual anchor. I also have a back section to write which I am calling Burma Over Time. It's a bit of a chronology/history that incorporates references to the writings of others: historians, memoirists, travel writers, from earlier times and from the present. I want the book to have a political and historical context, but I don't want the brilliant food culture of Burma to be burdened by the politics. That's why it's going at the back.
And the last and most fun part I have left to do is the photographs. Photos are so important to me. Why aren't there any in this blog? I can hear you wondering. Well I think they're wonderful, and give us windows into other places and people and dreams and ideas. But sometimes mixing photos and text, interrupting text with photos is what I mean, does both a disservice.
I do love photos with captions. You can get lost in the image, or read the captions, or both, but there's a balance, and they are meant to work together in a complementary way. It's rare for the same thing to work with text.
Photos are attention grabbers. The steady processing-ideas kind of attention that is needed to engage with writing is shoved aside by the immediacy of apprehension that we have when our eyes alight on a photograph. We see and feel it, and then perhaps we also start to conceptualise about it and engage with deeper more continuous reflective thought, but the first hit, if I can call it that, lies outside the steadiness of reflective thought, for sure, and pushes it aside.
I hadn't thought I'd be writing about this photogrpahy-writing connection and disconnection today. It's just arisen as I contemplate the process of organising my Burma images in a digital data base, and then pulling those that I want to submit for the book.
You might wonder about why then I think photos will work in the Burma book. Well there, as with Hot Sour Salty Sweet and the other four-colour books I've done, the text is in pieces, so text and photos work with each other, like an assemblage of colours and patterns in a quilt.
But in a longer piece of writing I do believe that photos are a disruption. The exception I think proves the rule. That exception is Sebald's work. In his books there are small un-pushy black and white images occasionally. Because they are not road-hog photos, not attention-grabbers, but instead quiet, they don't shout out in the text, and instead are there to be discovered. They're also integral to the text, a complement to what he is writing about; instead of taking us away, they take us more deeply into the thoughts and reflections he is pulling us into. He was a genius...
It would be interesting to write a book and include photos, spectacular attention-getting photos, but instead of interleaving them, to have the writing run continuously for the first half, the photos for the second. Or it could be the other way around. The order will have an impact, but it doesn't really matter I think. The important thing is that the two ways of seeing and engaging not interrupt each other. Once you've read the book, you engage with the images, or the other way around. AFter you've done both, they can reverberate with each other. hmm
Have you come across any books that have been designed this way?
The sky is overcast, the birds are singing, and it's time to have a long drink and then head out on my bicycle. After all, it's the first day of the rest of my life!
Sunday, June 5, 2011
KIDNAPPED BY SLEEP ON A WARM EVENING
It's Sunday night, dark and with the moon almost set. I've somehow lost a few hours. No I'm not hallucinating. We had supper, I did some rereading of my Burma travel journals, just checking this and that as I head into my final week of editing the Burma manuscript. And then sleep overcame me. Yes yes, perhaps it was the tedium of deciphering my own handwriting! Whatever!
Over two hours later I resurfaced, in that state of post-deep sleep paralysis that meant it took me another half hour to get off the sofa. Whew! I think I have to treat this as a second morning. I won't head out for a run (had a wonderful one this morning, long and easy) but I will try to knock some chores off my to-do list with my sort-of morning energy.
This weekend has already been productive. The big thing? yesterday I printed out a final draft of the Burma manuscript so a friend could read it through. This will be my last pass through and tidy up, and then off it goes... I now have a working title, by the way: RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVELLER'S TALES FROM BURMA
How does that look to you?
Getting that far ahead meant that I could at last do a little more in the garden. I have talked here about my plan to plant tomatoes in bags of soil, because of the blight problem in the garden soil. Now that's done, and we'll see how they do. It's not an attractive arrangement, for sure. The bags are all along the wall of the house in the side yard, so they won't get as much sun as plants do in the back, but the wall will hold in warmth and hopefully lengthen their season.; it should also give them some support. The other plants that I bought last week in Grey County are all planted: many kinds of chiles and basil and some cumin too, and after the heavy rains mid-week, they are looking better than perky and starting to grow.
Meantime on the flower side of the garden the irises are in full glorious bloom and the columbines too, lots of shade of blue and purple and all the in-betweens. Then late this afternoon the first peonies came out, creamy white edged with pink. A fab week for flowers...
Just started reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It's quite amazing. Part of my mind's eye is living in Japan, with the motley Dutch trading community on an island off Nagasaki in 1799. Maybe that's what left me feeling dazed and needing sleep after supper. Hmm It could also be late payment for sleep deficit caused by the adrenalin of getting near the finish with the book. I have been pumped, for sure, unable to sleep more than five hours solidly each night. Not good!
I want to send a map in with the Burma manuscript. It's always good to be able to find where you are on a map, when reading about a new place. At least that's how I am. Do you feel the same way? A map makes it real somehow. Yes photos help, but the map is essential. That's next on my to-do list. It will have major rivers and cities and towns that are mentioned in the book. I'm using mostly the older names: Burma (not Myanmar) and Rangoon, not Yangon, for example.
Speaking of photos, I'm soon going to be able to (and I need to) start working on organising my digital photos, over two years' worth. I'm ashamed that I haven't done it until now, you're right. It's a big project and I knew it could side-track me, so I've left it for after I submit the manuscript. I've already got a list of some of the photos I like best, but they all need organising, using Lightbox. First I need to buy the program, then learn to use it. These transitions into new tech or new programs can be scary, of course, but since the pressure of the photos has grown so huge, I am not worried, just desperate to get started.
Meantime summer will be blooming and beautiful outside while I am insidel looking at this computer screen for hours. But at least the windows will be open, the fresh air pouring in, and the streets lively with summer ease.
Bring it on!
Over two hours later I resurfaced, in that state of post-deep sleep paralysis that meant it took me another half hour to get off the sofa. Whew! I think I have to treat this as a second morning. I won't head out for a run (had a wonderful one this morning, long and easy) but I will try to knock some chores off my to-do list with my sort-of morning energy.
This weekend has already been productive. The big thing? yesterday I printed out a final draft of the Burma manuscript so a friend could read it through. This will be my last pass through and tidy up, and then off it goes... I now have a working title, by the way: RIVERS OF FLAVOR: RECIPES AND TRAVELLER'S TALES FROM BURMA
How does that look to you?
Getting that far ahead meant that I could at last do a little more in the garden. I have talked here about my plan to plant tomatoes in bags of soil, because of the blight problem in the garden soil. Now that's done, and we'll see how they do. It's not an attractive arrangement, for sure. The bags are all along the wall of the house in the side yard, so they won't get as much sun as plants do in the back, but the wall will hold in warmth and hopefully lengthen their season.; it should also give them some support. The other plants that I bought last week in Grey County are all planted: many kinds of chiles and basil and some cumin too, and after the heavy rains mid-week, they are looking better than perky and starting to grow.
Meantime on the flower side of the garden the irises are in full glorious bloom and the columbines too, lots of shade of blue and purple and all the in-betweens. Then late this afternoon the first peonies came out, creamy white edged with pink. A fab week for flowers...
Just started reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It's quite amazing. Part of my mind's eye is living in Japan, with the motley Dutch trading community on an island off Nagasaki in 1799. Maybe that's what left me feeling dazed and needing sleep after supper. Hmm It could also be late payment for sleep deficit caused by the adrenalin of getting near the finish with the book. I have been pumped, for sure, unable to sleep more than five hours solidly each night. Not good!
I want to send a map in with the Burma manuscript. It's always good to be able to find where you are on a map, when reading about a new place. At least that's how I am. Do you feel the same way? A map makes it real somehow. Yes photos help, but the map is essential. That's next on my to-do list. It will have major rivers and cities and towns that are mentioned in the book. I'm using mostly the older names: Burma (not Myanmar) and Rangoon, not Yangon, for example.
Speaking of photos, I'm soon going to be able to (and I need to) start working on organising my digital photos, over two years' worth. I'm ashamed that I haven't done it until now, you're right. It's a big project and I knew it could side-track me, so I've left it for after I submit the manuscript. I've already got a list of some of the photos I like best, but they all need organising, using Lightbox. First I need to buy the program, then learn to use it. These transitions into new tech or new programs can be scary, of course, but since the pressure of the photos has grown so huge, I am not worried, just desperate to get started.
Meantime summer will be blooming and beautiful outside while I am insidel looking at this computer screen for hours. But at least the windows will be open, the fresh air pouring in, and the streets lively with summer ease.
Bring it on!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
SLOW UNFOLDINGS OF SPRING IN GUSTING WINDS
The leaping green here, after only one warm day, is astonishing, especially in the cold and winds of today. Mother Nature is running to catch up, for everything is a week late or more. Today I saw magnolia blooms struggling out, a blue haze of scillas in several front yards, the first green leaves on the crabapple tree out front (hurrah!), and daffodils waving yellow in the gusting April winds. It's all so heartening, even as we all walk with our faces tucked in to keep them out of the intermittent cold rain and chilly winds.
Someday soon we'll be able to relax again, look around, and say "Oh, spring really IS here!" Does living in a four-season climate with cold winters and unpredictable springs make us tougher? more tenacious? Or does it just help us perfect our whining and complaining skills?? Hard to say!
As we come to the end of April (usually a softer month after March, but this year their roles were reversed), I'm ready to heave a sigh of relief that we're through it. Taxes are in and done with for another year, the last exams are being written today at the University of Toronto, leaving only marking and stray papers to be finished, winter coats and boots are partly put away, and then there's the garden. I've put manure onto the back garden, need to put on more, and am hoping all the rain is washing it in. The digging will be next week, hopefully in sunshine and warmth.
When May first comes, the worker's holiday celebrating labour all over the world except in North America, I'll be thinking of le premier mai in Paris. It's the fete des muguets, when everyone is buying and giving small posies of lilies of the valley and the air is perfumed, even the stale dusty air in the old Metro stations. My lilies of the valley in the front yard have been so shell-shocked by the cold that they are only just getting their pointy little shoots above ground. I'll let you know when I see the first blooms, but it won't be for another ten days, I'm betting.
Still on flowers and spring, today as I was finishing my run (two shirts, long pants, and a winter vest! to keep out the raw wind!) I came on a squirrel discard: a broken-off tender barely unfolding stem of chestnut leaves with an attached bud of chestnut flower. It's pale green and delicate, the infant foretaste of the confident tall "candles" of horse chestnut flowers and broad strong green leaves that the trees on my street will be flaunting in about three weeks.
Amazing to think that contained in the tender small bud and leaf of today is the full expression of leaves and flower and hard spiky chestnut. I guess it's no more amazing that the infant becoming the child... But it reminded me of how much I glance at without seeing. The wonders of spring, the foretelling of summer glories and autumn bounty, are all around us in this brief moment, if only we have the eyes, and time, to see.
Just saying!
I hope May is generous with you. And as I plod along with my Burma book, writing, editing, testing, I continue to be delighted to be working on it. The food is so creative and interesting, and distinctive, as well as delicious. I still don't have a title: any suggestions? Please feel free to make suggestions...
The other day I made two soups, both of which I'd been shown how to make in people's kitchens. A friend came by (my favorite situation: recipes tested and someone other than me to taste them!) and had a small bowl of each. She liked the first (Tashi loved that one, a Kachin Soup made with chicken and garlic and toasted rice powder) , and loved the second one (a bean thread soup, the broth flavoured with dried shrimp, the large dark red ones, and shallots, the noodles slippery and pleasing, definitely one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" magical soups). She's now asked me for the recipe. Now THAT feels good!
Happy end of April everyone.
Someday soon we'll be able to relax again, look around, and say "Oh, spring really IS here!" Does living in a four-season climate with cold winters and unpredictable springs make us tougher? more tenacious? Or does it just help us perfect our whining and complaining skills?? Hard to say!
As we come to the end of April (usually a softer month after March, but this year their roles were reversed), I'm ready to heave a sigh of relief that we're through it. Taxes are in and done with for another year, the last exams are being written today at the University of Toronto, leaving only marking and stray papers to be finished, winter coats and boots are partly put away, and then there's the garden. I've put manure onto the back garden, need to put on more, and am hoping all the rain is washing it in. The digging will be next week, hopefully in sunshine and warmth.
When May first comes, the worker's holiday celebrating labour all over the world except in North America, I'll be thinking of le premier mai in Paris. It's the fete des muguets, when everyone is buying and giving small posies of lilies of the valley and the air is perfumed, even the stale dusty air in the old Metro stations. My lilies of the valley in the front yard have been so shell-shocked by the cold that they are only just getting their pointy little shoots above ground. I'll let you know when I see the first blooms, but it won't be for another ten days, I'm betting.
Still on flowers and spring, today as I was finishing my run (two shirts, long pants, and a winter vest! to keep out the raw wind!) I came on a squirrel discard: a broken-off tender barely unfolding stem of chestnut leaves with an attached bud of chestnut flower. It's pale green and delicate, the infant foretaste of the confident tall "candles" of horse chestnut flowers and broad strong green leaves that the trees on my street will be flaunting in about three weeks.
Amazing to think that contained in the tender small bud and leaf of today is the full expression of leaves and flower and hard spiky chestnut. I guess it's no more amazing that the infant becoming the child... But it reminded me of how much I glance at without seeing. The wonders of spring, the foretelling of summer glories and autumn bounty, are all around us in this brief moment, if only we have the eyes, and time, to see.
Just saying!
I hope May is generous with you. And as I plod along with my Burma book, writing, editing, testing, I continue to be delighted to be working on it. The food is so creative and interesting, and distinctive, as well as delicious. I still don't have a title: any suggestions? Please feel free to make suggestions...
The other day I made two soups, both of which I'd been shown how to make in people's kitchens. A friend came by (my favorite situation: recipes tested and someone other than me to taste them!) and had a small bowl of each. She liked the first (Tashi loved that one, a Kachin Soup made with chicken and garlic and toasted rice powder) , and loved the second one (a bean thread soup, the broth flavoured with dried shrimp, the large dark red ones, and shallots, the noodles slippery and pleasing, definitely one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" magical soups). She's now asked me for the recipe. Now THAT feels good!
Happy end of April everyone.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
SPRINGTIME FULL MOON THOUGHTS
It's full-moon day today, with a big fat moon promised for this evening, the largest and brightest for some years they say. It was already huge last night. I have no idea why it would sometimes be brighter and others not... Whatever the wattage, the full moon has a magic, not measurable, just there. Wonderful.
Last night I was out with some old friends for supper at the Niagara Street Cafe. Such a pleasure to be with people with whom I don't have to edit or filter or in any way watch what I say. So often we make conversation with others, trying to reach out or to not offend or to put the other person at ease. All these goals are laudable, some more than others, but best of all is the luxury of full human to human communication without political or social worries. It's so much fun to just let go.
We ate slow-cooked Ontario lamb, and also some deep-fried frogs'-legs (from Ontario too? not sure) and duck confit and special Japanese-bred pork. There was a delicious parsnip soup too. It was a treat to have tastes from others' plates...
And after watching several old episodes of West Wing on the computer with Tashi, I headed for bed to read some more of my current book: The Man from Saigon. It's extraordinary, a vivid novel set in 1967 in Vietnam at the height of the war. The book is by Marti Leimbach; it's a Nan Talese/Doubleday book published in 2009. This copy is a bound galley lent to me by a friend. I can't remember reading about the book or seeing it in stores. Did it get noticed? Did it have any success? I hope so. Do go and look for it in a library or bookstore.
This week is new year (Nouroz) in Iran, a time just before the equinox when people eat green and growing things (sprouted wheat berries for example, and fresh herbs) and celebrate the return of the sun and new growth everywhere. New year in springtime makes a lot of sense to me. The Thais and Burmese and Lao have their new year in mid-April to mark the end of the death that is hot season and the arrival of the first rains that will bring the ground back to life...
Speaking of spring, I celebrated the arrival of warm weather this week by flinging open the doors of the house and spring cleaning. No, it's not glamorous, and it certainly didn't advance my word count on the Burma cookbook. But it did feel great. All rugs got aired and shaken and vacuumed, the floors washed, and some non-essentials purged. The house now feels relatively dust-free and refreshed. And a feeling of light airiness as light and warmth return is visible on people's faces as they walk down the street. Despite the harshness of news from the wider world there's a lovely optimism in the air here.
What a pleasure.
Who knows if this no-fly zone will help the democratic forces in Libya; let's hope it doesn't just lead to endless fighting and bloodshed. And let's hope that the beleaguered people in north-eastern Japan get more warmth and shelter and a measure of healing this week. We've all been so concentrated on the nuclear crisis that the living victims of the earthquake and tsunami have rather faded out of our consciousness. SImilarly, the democratic forces in Bahrain and in Libya continued to struggle and suffer this week without the encouragement of the eyes of the world upon them. It's heartbreaking and overwhelming.
Let's hope that there is dialogue rather than bloodshed that results in the end of autocratic rule in the Mahgreb... and let's rejoice as the sap continues to run, the birds return, the snow melt, the green return... There's such a sense of expectancy as all the signs of new life appear. They're like a fanfare announcing that the death that is winter is finally leaving for another year!
And don't forget to take a long pause to wonder at the full moon's radiance today.
Last night I was out with some old friends for supper at the Niagara Street Cafe. Such a pleasure to be with people with whom I don't have to edit or filter or in any way watch what I say. So often we make conversation with others, trying to reach out or to not offend or to put the other person at ease. All these goals are laudable, some more than others, but best of all is the luxury of full human to human communication without political or social worries. It's so much fun to just let go.
We ate slow-cooked Ontario lamb, and also some deep-fried frogs'-legs (from Ontario too? not sure) and duck confit and special Japanese-bred pork. There was a delicious parsnip soup too. It was a treat to have tastes from others' plates...
And after watching several old episodes of West Wing on the computer with Tashi, I headed for bed to read some more of my current book: The Man from Saigon. It's extraordinary, a vivid novel set in 1967 in Vietnam at the height of the war. The book is by Marti Leimbach; it's a Nan Talese/Doubleday book published in 2009. This copy is a bound galley lent to me by a friend. I can't remember reading about the book or seeing it in stores. Did it get noticed? Did it have any success? I hope so. Do go and look for it in a library or bookstore.
This week is new year (Nouroz) in Iran, a time just before the equinox when people eat green and growing things (sprouted wheat berries for example, and fresh herbs) and celebrate the return of the sun and new growth everywhere. New year in springtime makes a lot of sense to me. The Thais and Burmese and Lao have their new year in mid-April to mark the end of the death that is hot season and the arrival of the first rains that will bring the ground back to life...
Speaking of spring, I celebrated the arrival of warm weather this week by flinging open the doors of the house and spring cleaning. No, it's not glamorous, and it certainly didn't advance my word count on the Burma cookbook. But it did feel great. All rugs got aired and shaken and vacuumed, the floors washed, and some non-essentials purged. The house now feels relatively dust-free and refreshed. And a feeling of light airiness as light and warmth return is visible on people's faces as they walk down the street. Despite the harshness of news from the wider world there's a lovely optimism in the air here.
What a pleasure.
Who knows if this no-fly zone will help the democratic forces in Libya; let's hope it doesn't just lead to endless fighting and bloodshed. And let's hope that the beleaguered people in north-eastern Japan get more warmth and shelter and a measure of healing this week. We've all been so concentrated on the nuclear crisis that the living victims of the earthquake and tsunami have rather faded out of our consciousness. SImilarly, the democratic forces in Bahrain and in Libya continued to struggle and suffer this week without the encouragement of the eyes of the world upon them. It's heartbreaking and overwhelming.
Let's hope that there is dialogue rather than bloodshed that results in the end of autocratic rule in the Mahgreb... and let's rejoice as the sap continues to run, the birds return, the snow melt, the green return... There's such a sense of expectancy as all the signs of new life appear. They're like a fanfare announcing that the death that is winter is finally leaving for another year!
And don't forget to take a long pause to wonder at the full moon's radiance today.
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