EARLY JUNE INTENSITIES

Yesterday at lunch, a group of friends and I raised a glass to the day’s clear skies and sunshine, greeting summer weather and basking in its warmth. We were eating sticky rice, marinated chicken hot from the charcoal grill, asparagus ditto, lightly dressed local salad greens, and a trio of made-by-my friends Thai dipping sauces as side-condiments. And we were eating with our hands, most of us, sensually and happily.

But alas we were prematurely optimistic, for today we’re back to drizzle and chill. The garden is happy, I suppose, in its greeness, but the cool temperatures are holding back the basil and chiles and eggplants, which still look a little shell-shocked even two full weeks after being transplanted. We tend, here in eastern Canada, to bemoan the fact that we have a very short spring season and leap straight from chilly into summer heat. This year is the great corrective, more like English spring than our usual, and lasting several months for a change. Perhaps this means that asparagus season will be extended, and salad greens will going on being tender for longer, rather than being heated into tough and bitter leaves by intense heat. The trick is to look for the side-benefits, right?

I wrote last week that old friends of mine were going to throw an engagement party at my house last Saturday and that I hoped for cool weather so the peonies could stay fresh until the party. Well I perhaps wished too hard, for we had very cold weather all week. But one happy consequence was what I’d hoped for: the two ancient peony bushes in my back garden are still in full aromatic white and pink bloom, spalshy against the bright green of ferns.

The engagement party was huge, and a huge success, for the weather gods smiled, the catering, by Dawn and Ed of Evelyn’s Crackers, was spectacular (all Thai, a lot of it vegan-friendly; the beef and chicken were locally sourced), the DJ’ing (two turntables, the works) by Ben Rothberg was astonishing and wonderful, and everyone was feeling celebratory, and happy to reconnect with the huge network of friends and family of the bride-to-be. Whew! The dancing went on until three… I owe my neighbours big-time for their patience.

A side-bonus to all the work of party prep is that my house is wonderfully clean and organised. There’s nothing like a deadline (and an obligation owed to someone else, rather than just to oneself) for getting chores done well and thoroughly. I feel spring-cleaned to the max.

And I’m also feeling a little wiped out today, as I try to gather my thoughts after the intensities of the week and the weekend. Time seems to be flying by suddenly. I have only two more classes to teach of Foods that Changed the World (I’ll miss the class; it’s been great); right after the last class comes the summer solstice; soon after that I leave to go to the Oxford Symposium, a huge treat; and by the time it’s over we’ll be well into July…  I find that when I’m tired my thoughts tend to rush ahead to anticipate, and when they do, time telescopes so that I feel the days rushing past beneath my feet dizzyingly. It’s not a useful way to feel.

The solution I’ve discovered is to retreat to the age-old technique of making lists, by hand, with a pen or pencil, on a piece of paper. It slows down that rushing forward, anchors me in the present, and generally makes me more realistic and calm. I think I’m due for another session of list-making!

DANCING & SINGING & LEARNING IN SUMMER LIGHT

As I sit in a chilly breeze, by an open door and looking out at the green and growing garden under a clear blue sky, I realise that I often start these posts with the weather. Is it cultural? Some Anglo streak that insists on making itself felt? Perhaps in part, but it's also a reflection of just how much the sky and light and weather generally affect moods and plans and the feel of the city.

Speaking of moods, the break in the heat last Thursday night came just in time, so that Friday night a passle of friends could dance and chat and eat and drink in comfort well into the warm breezy night.  The mood was relaxed, happy, engaged...truly a first summer party feel.

Though dancing was the main event, with talking a close second, there was also what to eat: Fresh strawberries picked that morning in Grey County were a highlight, along with sugar snap peas organically grown there too. We ate the peas raw, almost like green candy, and whoosh! they vanished. On the cooked food front, there were two brilliant cakes, large generous cakes, by dawnthebaker assisted by Evelyn, of Evelyn's Crackers; and some chocolate brownies that disappeared before I even saw them; as well as grilled beef salad, the meat alluringly smoky tasting, I have to say, because of the way the charcoal fire burned, made from flatiron steaks from Sanagan's. I grilled mushrooms of various kinds and they were really the hit for me, because of the (always reliable) olive oil and fish sauce coating of flavour they got just before I put them on the grill. All they needed was a squeeze of lime juice to finish them.

There was some sticky rice left over, and not much else.  Clean-up was easy easy, with help, and done before 3 am. Ahhh

The late nights I used to keep in university and afterward are not as easy now. I mean, they're easy enough at the time, and fun, but the lingering afterward of sleepiness and dopiness at odd hours of the day is a little long - at least three days. It's like jetlag I guess: pleasures that are paid for later.  The easy answer is to make sure to get to bed in good time. But these long limpid-light evenings are irresistible, and so I find myself up and outside in the soft air until way past midnight, way past one, .... you get the idea.

Pedalling around with an old friend on Saturday evening for example, listening in for a half hour here and there to various offerings of the Toronto jazz festival, was a perfect way to linger through the summer evening and make every moment a pleasure. Then yesterday I took my bicycle to Ward's Island for an afternoon singing (shape-note singing) at the small beautiful church, over a hundred years old, made of wood, with generous clear acoustics. We sang with the doors open to the green outdoors. Every once in awhile one of the long trailing tour bus cart things would come by and pause for a moment in front of the church, the guide's amplified voice telling stories of the past to bemused? bored? sleepy? tourists.

At singing we sometimes sight-read a new-to-us song, most often sight-read with the benefit of having sung it before a few times, or often in some cases. We sing a capella and the harmonies are delicious, the syncopations of rhythm occasionally startling. Yesterday was a long packed sing; we tried all sorts of less familiar tunes. And by the time I was sitting at the dock gazing at the mirage-like view of acqua railings framing the city's skyline across the water, I realised I was pooped. Yes, my voice was a little tired, but more it was because of the concentration. Reading music and words and trying to stay focussed seem like easy pleasures, and they are, but/and at the same time they do take effort.

And so although yesterday was not a heavy day of work, last night I was ready to catch up on sleep and dream a long night away.

One more thing, to do with food: I have leggy broccoli raab in my garden, grown from seed. I snap off pieces and then watch them regrow. The same goes for the kale that lasted through the winter.  I chop stir-fry the greens, or float pieces in soup. But I also chop the kale and include it in tender greens salad. Delicious. Last night I did that, and also used it in a simple soup made with masur (red) dal. I tempered the soup with chopped spring onions and some ginger cooked in olive oil, along with a blend of freshly ground cumin and coriander seed, and a couple of dried red chiles. A dash of white wine left over from the party finished it nicely.

Last week I gave the last class of my six-week Foods that Changed the World course at U of T's School of Continuing Studies. I miss it already. There was a pattern of intense reading and thinking and organising for weeks beforehand and also every week all through the course, as I tried to sort out what to cover, and how.  I'll be giving it again next year, and hopefully will be able to do a second food-and-culture-related course too.  More when I know.  And my student feed-back was very good, which always feels great. The thing I learned from it that I will try to do better with next year is that I should have had everyone introduce themselves and give a little of their background. We had some amazing resources in there, and it was only by "accident" that we learned of the expertise and food-related history of the class members.

It's always good to have a clear idea of how to improve and do better next time. And it's a luxury to have a "next time" to work with. Happy summer everyone.

DANCING FREEDOM AT MIDSUMMER

This is the first sunny morning for a week I think, maybe more. The birds are singing with pleasure. I feel like June has mostly slipped away in the clouds and rain, instead of sparkling and blooming as it usually does. Egads, here it is already the 26th!

The twenty-fourth of June is "Midsummer" in English tradition and St Jean-Baptiste, the fete nationale in Quebec. It's a day for bonfires and dancing, the solstice-season celebration, just as Saturnalia-turned-Christmas was/is the date to celebrate the returning sun at winter solstice time.

That urge to make a festival and let go cares at these significant turning points in the year is deeply embedded. And so maybe that's why this year we decided to have a dancing party on the 24th. What a great thing, to be able to dance and play with the doors open to the long-bright evening sky, voices soft in the summer air, the lush green of the garden a generous backdrop, enwrapping everyone in the oasis that is our small back yard.

Some people are picky about the music they'll dance to, while others dance to whatever is on.... And it doesn't matter. In fact, when the music's on and I'm dancing, not much else matters: I'm in the bubble and high of moving and feeling free of care and any thought really. I forgot that I'd had hurt in my left foot, I let go of worries about the edits I need to do on the Burma book, and all those others nagging things that can make me bog down and lose track of the big picture. High on endorphins? High on summer?

Maybe the joy of dancing is that we retrieve our freedom. It's freedom in movement, freedom through movement. Young E, now a few months past her fifth birthday, sure felt that freedom. She danced on her own and with others on the wide open floor, and instead of tiring, seemed to get more and more composed and happy, energised in the best way.

There were summer flavours to sustain us, as well as the music. The stars were the snap peas that Brenda brought down from her CSA farm in Grey County. She'd picked them that morning. We put out a huge bowl of them, raw and brilliant green, de-stringed but otherwise as nature (and Brenda!) grew them. They vanished. Other treats were two different boxes of home-made cookies; mountains of organic grapes, red and green ones (OK not local, but a great refresher after a stint of sweaty dancing!); a brilliant hummous topped with pesto; a creamy lush guacamole; three sauces from Burma, such taste hits; and more that I can't remember. Evelyn's Crackers, and lots of sticky rice - white with a little black mixed in for texture- were the backbone that held it all together.

People drink water when they dance, and yes wine or beer, but they're not pouring it back, so the gaiety doesn't get loutish or stupid, or morose! We had six young people sleeping over on Friday night... When I headed to bed at 3.30 most of them were still up and chatting in that comfortable post-party way, reluctant to lose the intimacy of the night. But as I drifted off I heard the first birds chirping: it was already time for the pre-dawn lightening of the sky.

It reminded me of a time in northern Finland long ago when, camped by a lake, a friend and I stayed up through the night to photograph the midnight sun as it made its circuit. It dipped north in the "nighttime" hours but never went below the horizon. The sounds of the forest went on without a pause. When summer is short and winter is dark, there's not a moment to waste.

If that's a metaphor for life, then engaging with it and enjoying what we have in the way of health and friends and meaningful obligations, while we have them, is what the dance of life is all about. We don't need dancing shoes! It just takes an awareness that the music's playing and the invitation is ours to accept...

SAUNA CLEANSING FOR BODY AND SOUL

A lovely calm in the city this evening, quite a contrast from the post-police heaviness of last weekend. Dom and Tashi and I are just back in our green oasis (the garden is SO spectacular) from two nights in Grey County. It was a great visit, staying with friends, dancing contra dances with friends and strangers of all ages and descriptions, having a leisurely but intense sauna this morning followed by a delicious swooshing swim in a rain-swollen river. It's so liberating to catch the current and get swept along, riding the power but without fear, a benign mother nature carrying us along.

Up in the country I was sleeping out in the forest in a little cabin-like space, a tiny trailer in fact, with screen windows all round, so that the bird calls woke me early and then kept my morning daydreams company. Last night was clear and moonless until late, so the stars seemed to hang low and for sure there were more of them than usual. "Diamonds in the sky" rarely feels like a good metaphor, but last night they were brilliants, draped across the bosom of the sky, I feel like saying.

The sauna, like all purgings, leaves me feeling aired out and light. And that feeling is carrying me along like the river's current. I feel washed of small anxieties for the moment, delighted with the world, pleased with the recipes I have already worked on for the Burma book, looking forward to telling stories and giving the whole thing shape: it's a lovely freedom, a freed-up-ness.

Now how to keep riding this wave a appreciative engagement? How to surf the happiness?

I saw an aunt of mine up north, well over eighty and still lively and beautiful and very engaged. She came too to the contra dancing and kicked up her heels with us all. S(he also taught Dom to waltz, as the band (fiddle, flute, drums, Irish-style) swept us along. She talked earlier that afternoon about how she always felt, as the youngest in her family, that she was not as smart as the others, not good enough. I said to her (after arguing with her that her inability to count up her change and remember dates doesn't mean a lack of intelligence -she has plenty, and it's lively! - just an area that some people are better at than she is, so what?), " But now surely you don't worry about what other people think of you?" She said, "Well, now mostly not, but it sure made me afraid then, afraid of getting things wrong!"

The conversation made me think about all the crippling expectations we put on ourselves, the unrealistic voices we hear in our heads hectoring us over small mistakes, or filling us with doubts about our ability to achieve. What a waste of energy! And how destructive! I don't mean that we should all strut around with chests puffed out and feeling like we're masters of the universe. But I do mean that the judgementalism of early teachers or parents or siblings can corrode us, and burden us, if we let it.

Maybe we carry it around when we are young, but surely as adults our task is to look those hideous negative chains that hold us down square on, confront them, and then laugh at them. They are our own constructions. We need to see them as papier mache, without power, and we need to laugh at them.

Feeling as I do today, thrilled by Dom's great driving (he has his learners licence and was fabulous driving down from Grey County in the red Honda Fit, loving it and confident) and by the lightness of being that's infected me, I am impatient that any of us gets caught up long-term in negative thinking. It feels anti-life, and certainly anti-pleasure and a waste of good energy.

How to purge? is the question. The sauna, by heating us right to the marrow of our bones, feels as if it's driving out all kinds of toxic crap, leaving us slimed with sweat. When the river or lake or shower washes it off, we are freed. Now what is the sauna for the soul and the trapped-in-a-hamster-wheel brain? I don't know.

But surely days out, not so much the buffer days we allow ourselves (see my earlier post from early feb 2010), but more the completely out of our element days, where we change place and pattern and disconnect from the normal, surely those times are the way we can get freer. Short term freeings-up happen when we dance and dance, into a kind of high that transports us. Heavy physical work can do it too, for sure. (Drink and drugs are other avenues, but they mire us down and we pay sooner or later.) But when we get the chance, let's remember to get out of our stucknesses, however much effort it may take.

AND AS FOR FOOD: Now that the new potatoes are appearing, if you have some spare hands around to shell peas, use them in a simple herbed potato salad: Boil the spuds whole, drain and let them cool to firm up. Meantime get the peas shelled and pick some fresh herbs: parsley, mint, plenty of it, chives, and then basil if you have it... or tarragon if you like. Be generous with the quantity of herbs. Chop the herbs and stir them into an olive oil and vinegar (or lime or lemon juice if you prefer, or a blend) dressing with some salt. A dash of Dijon mustard is an option and/or a dash of good soy sauce. Heat a small amount of water in a pot, add the peas, and cook them briefly, until just tender. Put the peas and potatoes in a large wooden bowl (or whatever bowl you have), pour the dressing over, and toss gently. It's a great dish for a potluck (Lillian made a 10 pounds-of-potatoes salad just like it for Saturday night) or for a hungry crowd, especially in hot weather.

DANCING OUT THE DECADE UNDER A BLUE MOON

There's a blue moon to end this decade, the oughts or noughts or whatever we end up calling these last ten years. Here in Toronto it's raining, weeping for us? or perhaps simply washing us clean? as we move on into 2010.

Last night we kicked up our heels and our hearts and danced with friends until the early hours of the morning. It was a very happy evening here with conversation and food, as well as dancing and laughter, with people of all ages and stages (we had every decade covered, from under ten-year olds to over seventy-year olds, a lovely mix).

This morning I woke up feeling a little stiffness in my shoulders and couldn't figure out what dancing effort might have caused it. And then I remembered the start of the day; dancing had nothing to do with it! I'd gone to Kensington Market to food shop and by the time I was walking back I was seriously overloaded with pounds of root vegetables of all kinds from Potz, a pound of Ethiopian coffee, two beautiful chickens from a new local butcher, and other oddments too, like pressed tofu, ginger, green onions, etc.

By seven-thirty in the evening the chickens were roasted and carved (and the carcasses immersed in water for today's soup); there was a large Le Creuset pot of mung dal (tart with tamarind and aromatic with Bengali seasonings and a secret shot of red wine) hot on the stove; the sticky rice was steaming and perfuming the house; two trays of mixed coarsely chopped root vegetables (beets, blue potatoes, black radish, parsnips, parsely root, rutabaga) had roasted in the oven to tender intense flavour (dressed only with olive oil and salt before hand) and were out in a large bowl (though the beets were in a bowl on their own, tossed with a little cider vinegar); two boxfuls of mandarins were heaped on a huge wooden bowl-platter; and friends were starting to arrive with various extra food and drink treats. Of course the party started all jammed up in the kitchen, but eventually, seduced by artfully spun music, some of us moved out into the cleared-of-furniture living room and the dancing began.

It's like a happiness treatment and celebration, dancing. And last night there was a lot to celebrate, apart from the wonderfulness of our extended family of friends old and new coming together. The best was the triumphant survival of a good friend KCC who this time last year had just been diagnosed with inoperable throat cancer. Things looked hopeless for him. Twelve months and experimental chemo and other chemo etc etc later, he is cancer free and looking and sounding like himself again. I like this kind of miracle.

Several of us were talking together late last night about his harsh year, and how hard it had been for his family too, of course. David said that for him the painful and scary passages of life are like a run of very bad luck in a poker game: "It's easy to play a good hand; the hard thing is to play a bad hand well," he said. "You just have to survive and stay solid until your luck changes." Great advice.

So as the numbers turn on the decade clock, and the moon glows full for the second time this month, I wish for all of you an interesting open-horizoned new year, with lots of stamina for enduring the rough passages and plenty of glad-heartedness and generosity for revelling in the smiling times.

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? 

CHIANG MAI DAYZ

Jeff and I have been having a lovely time here in Chiang Mai.  The airports were closed for more than a week, so there was no possibility of making travel plans, which has kept us here and focussed on the day to day.  Turns out that's a rare treat.  Now that the immediate political crisis has passed, life seems to be returnng to normal, and people are feeling less worried, short-term at least. 

Jeff has started work on his second novel and is happy happy to be embarked.  I am working on my Thai, trying to get completely familiar with the alphabet (I now sound out street signs and labels, just like a seven or eight year old learning to read), and it is coming.  Have started doing some shared language lessons with Fern and another friend, Hoa.  They keep me in line, making sure my Thai pronunciation is on target.  Having the alphabet (Thai is a very phonetically written language once you penetrate the intricacies of the tone marks and letter combinations) really helps me understand too.  Fern wants to polish her (already good) English and to get her French stronger and Hoa, who understands a lot of English, wants to get comfortable speaking.  It feels lucky to have collaborators who are so nice, and also fun, so the time flies and it doesn't feel like work.

Had a good time the other day on my own at Gat Luang, the old market near us, buying sticky rice baskets and assorted other things for the cooking classes.  Can't wait to take people there for both food and equipment shopping.  Some of the traditional equipment, baskets and ladles, etc, is so beautiful.

One of the big highs of the past week and more has been two evenings of live music.  The first was with Jeff and Fern, at the Brasserie, a bar and restaurant across the river where nightly after 11 the owner, a phenomenal blues and jazz guitarist with an enticing voice, plays with a small group of musicians.  We danced and danced as they played and played... it was so intimate and so trance-y somehow.  A real treat.  Then a couple of nights ago we went with three friends to a Thai country music place out of town, a huge hall filled with tabels and chairs, and by 10.30 with people too.  At one end was the band on a high stage, brass and guitars and percussion, and always a singer (they took turns) in front, singing words that everyone knows, it seems.  The dancing was fun, long and fun, and with the two women singers in particular, every once in awhile, even with the crowd and the complexities and constraints of dancing by our table, it was possible to hit the lost-in-dancing place.  Lovely!