LIGHT AND HOPE IN THE SKY AND ON THE WATER

In the end I did go down to the river last night, along with a cast of thousands. Tonight is the big night, the actual full moon night that is Loy Kratong, but everyone likes to stretch the fun quotient so the festival in Chiang Mai always starts way ahead with early fireworks and partying. Lots of streets were closed and filled with people, mostly young people, eating, and walking, and buying fireworks...

I was headed to the Brasserie to hear Tuk and other musicians (and they were stunningly wonderful, but that's another story). But first I had to get there, a easy ten minute walk normally (the Brasserie is on the other bank of the river across from Wararot Market), but an elaborate and slow dance in the crush of people.

On the footbridge over the river, packed with people standing and watching and with others, like me, trying to thread their way through the crowd to cross to the other side, in both directions, the view was wonderful. The other bridges are outlined in lights that reflected beautifully in the river's smooth water. Occasionally a small long-tailed boat would come through, rippling the pattern with its wake for a moment. In the sky was an endless moving and shifting set of new constellations, warm dots of light in the darkness. Yes there was a full moon, but its light seemd cold and remote compared to the warm glow of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of fire-heated paper lanterns that drifted up and up high into the sky and sideways in air currents and eddies, making ever-shifting patterns.

On the ground by the river and on balconies and streetside were small groups of people busy unfolding and lighting yet more lanterns. They are four to six feet tall, paper cylinders held open at the bottom by a metal frame that supports a container of some kind of gas. You light it, hold the cylinder on the ground as the hot air from the flame gradually inflates it, and eventually starts to lift it. (And if you are like most of the young people I saw, you pause and pose holding the lit lantern, the flame burning bright in the paper(!!), while you each snap photos of the scene.) A further refinement, really fabulous when it works, is that just before you let it go, you hook a streamer of extra fireworks on the frame, then touch the end to the fire. As the lantern lifts and sways its way up into the sky, the firework sputters colourful sparks and then about a minute later, higher in the sky, erupts to leave a shining trail of glitter. Fabulous!

All that light and energy directed upward felt so optimistic, a moment to forget anxieties or tomorrow's cares.

And below, the traditional Loy Kratong was also happening, fire and light and hope the main ingredients there too, but in the form of lit incense sticks and small candles set into flower-decorated leaf rafts that each of us set afloat on the river. That stream of little flickering lights, carrying away our cares and expressing our hopes for tomorrow was a lovely sight, less glamorous perhaps than the lanterns, but touching... Eventually the candles flicker out or get dowsed with water somewhere on their way down the river. But the moment that you set your kratong afloat is pure hope and feeling, untarnished by thoughts of later flickering or decay.

And so once again a ritual festival embodies the arc of life and gives us a chance to think about how we are living it. This year as I watched the kratongs flicker and bob in a delicate fragile stream down the river, I thought a lot about my friend Wendy who died very recently of a swift and unrelenting cancer. Her weakened voice on the telephone ten days ago, just before I left, told me it was our last conversation. I had to strain to hear her, but her thinking was clear and sharp, and her humour too, despite her failing body, a flickering light buffeted by forces that were soon going to extinguish her. But until that moment, she was alight, alive, aware.

So that's the challenge: to keep our awareness bright, our energies focussed, our appreciativeness full and engaged, as long as there's light and life in us.

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.

CHAOS vs THE HARMONY OF COMMUNITY

I had thought, last Thursday, that I would write about the intense day and a half of Indian food cooking that I did last week with Anne MacKenzie, making food to be shot for publicity photos for Cooking with Stella, a film that is being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The film opens in Canada in March 2010; not sure about the US plans.  And yes, it involves lots of food, is set in Delhi, and is a social and cross-cultural comedy.

Well here's a little about that food:  We made Masala Dosa, Sambhar, a Kerala Shrimp Curry, a Mango Salad, some fresh chutneys, and that weird western favorite, Butter Chicken.  Friends stopped by to eat the props, of course, and still there was plenty to feed Dom and Tashi that evening.  I'd made a double batch of dosa batter, so there was some left over.  I put it in the frig and miraculously the fermentation was slowed enough that it made good dosas the following evening.

It was all a reminder that once you embark on it, Indian home-cooking is not difficult, and is in fact very forgiving, as well as delicious.  I expect homestyle dosas will now re-enter our weekly routine.  The kids have already made another batch of the potato masala (boil potatoes, peel off skins, chop; heat oil and drop in mustard seeds, some curry leaves, onions, whatever, then add the potatoes and cook to heat and flavour them; top with coriander leaves).

But food-thoughts were pushed aside a day later.  On Thursday a huge storm came through here, dumping gallons and lakes'-worth of rain (over two inches in an hour) and leaving the sky an emerald green.  Farther north, in Grey County, the storm action was catastrophic, for there a huge tornado came ripping through the town of Durham and up Glenelg Concession Two, tearing roofs off houses and barns, destroying barns and other buildings completely, and killing one eleven year old boy.  We have dear friends whose places are a mess of broken glass, uprooted trees, and wrecked buildings.

This is Kaos, in the Greek sense, out-of-control nature or life, or whatever you want to call it.  There are photos on Facebook, and outpourings of love and concern, and offers of fundraisers, etc.  That's one form of social reknitting, a kind of action at a distance that is warming and important.  The other help and support is the tangible one that has been happening since the tornado:  friends and strangers have come to clear away trees that lie like broken spillikins all over lanes and barnyards, to help pick up debris (pieces of torn metal and splintered beams that lie everywhere) from fields and yards and laneways, to provide food for those who are working at the clean-up....

The help doesn't make the damage disappear, but it does bring some sense of order, and an assertion of order.  It's practical help, in a physical sense, but it's also social and emotional help, for it's community working to try to knit together the social confidence and the fabric of everyday life that the chaos and violence of the tornado tore open.

I am reminded of when I was in Phnom Penh right after the coup that chased Ranariddh out of the country (leaving Hun Sen in control) in the summer of 1997.   There was broken glass in the streets, and most of the foreigner community had fled, but locals were asserting everyday normalcy:  going to the market, carrying on, resisting the impulse to panic or to admit that the fragile society of the country was once more close to unravelling.   

So I guess what I'm saying is that when the tornado hits, or the earthquake, or the political revolution, we are taken to a place where chaos/Kaos rules.  But we are social beings, so we use our best weapon, our sociability, to fight chaos and the panic it makes us feel.  We restore order.

And yet in all this is also the lesson that we are NOT in control.  There are larger forces out there, and we don't know when the chasm will open, so we must live well in the moment, eyes alert to help our neighbours, and hearts grateful for whatever we have of health and happiness.

I'm not trying to preach.  And apologies if it sounds as if I am.  I'm just trying to stay mindful, that everyday obligation!

Two days after the tornado there was a shape-note singing at the Dettweiler Meeting House, south of Kitchener-Waterloo.  People came from Illinois and Pennsylvania, from Wisconsin and Michigan, as well as from Toronto and Durham and London Ontario.  The meeting house is a gorgeous elegant Mennonite stone church built in 1855 and restored now, with lovely acoustics and a peaceful cemetary out back, set outside the hamlet of Roseville.  We sang and sang, and those of us who are not believers in God or Christ or any of the usual gang, sang with just as much feeling and pleasure as those that do call themselves Christians.  

For again it was community, in this case the community of music, the lovely close harmonies, and the feeling of shared harmony, that brought us there and gave us joy.  We paused before the lunch break (an incredible pot-luck spread of summer bounty) to sing for those who were suffering, from illness or tornado loss or other trauma, and also for those who were dead and gone.   It was healing, and uplifting, in all its imperfection and heartfelt intention.  Wonderful.

SUMMER SENSATIONS, LIFE LESSONS, AND FRIENDSHIPS

How did it get to be July 28?  Suddenly the month is almost gone, when so recently it was waiting for us, full of promise, long and juicy to contemplate.

Looking back, July seems more sodden than juicy, loaded with huge downpours and cool temperatures, green lush gardens and green unripening (unripenable???) tomatoes.  It's also been full of friends of all kinds, and with new encounters and new growth...

Last week I had eight visitors staying in the house.  There was Melissa of course, who has been here since May, visiting from Thailand to get her English fluency better and to have a good long first-time-in-North-America kind of trip.  She's nineteen, so it's all new and interesting.  She's now in New York and not due back for another week or ten days.  And then there was a large lovely contingent from Spain: our old friend Rick and his partner Astrid and their six-year-old son Mario, and then a family of four who are friends of theirs.  The mornings began with "hola!" and ended with "hasta manana!" and in between there was lots of action and conversation, embraces and laughter. 

Last Thursday we had other people over (if you're going to feed 10 you might as well feed 20, right?) for a loosely conceived supper.  I grilled some beef and then sliced it for grilled beef salad.  There was a potluck aspect, so there were several huge gren salads, lemon pudding, a ricotta tart topped with sour cherries, some stir-fried green beans and asparagus, etc etc.  We also made "pakoras":  we whisked up a batter of besan (chickpea flour) and deep-fried some zucchini blossoms (halved lengthwise, since they were huge!) and also some fresh garlic bulbs, cut lengthwise.  I added some ground roasted coriander seed to the batter (proportions are about 1 cup besan and scant 1/2 cup lukewarm water whisked in, plus 1/2 teaspoon salt and some generous amount of coriander seed, 1 to 2 teaspoons).  The peanut oil heated in the wok and then we slid in three or four battered items at a time, using a slotted spoon to turn them, then lift them out (pausing to let oil drain off).  They were crispy and delish, the garlic a real taste hit, the flowers softer and milder.  The cooking goes very quickly, and then they all get eaten just as fast!

Then on Sunday night, with the same crew from Spain, up in Grey County at Lillian and Jon's, we deep-fried pakoras again, this time on the wood stove (the wok fits into a hole on the stove so beautifully).  Ian did the frying.  We used day liles from Lillian's garden, freshly picked by her.  Some were in full bloom, some were buds, and some were the softened drooping day-after faded blooms.  They were all delish, and beautiful too.  We made a potato salad using newly dug spuds boiled, peeled, then dressed with stir-fried (in olive oil) sliced shiitakes (grown by Jon and Lillian on maple logs in the forest) and loads of chopped fresh herbs, as well as local cider vinegar.  What's not to like?  

And somehow the taste of place, in all the food, was intensely life-giving, perhaps most of all in the salad of greens that practically leapt off the plate and into the mouth, greens from Lillian's miraculously generous garden.

The hummingbirds darted around us as we ate outside on the deck surrounded by airy deciduous forest.

I had a huge appetite, because before supper I'd had a sauna with Ian and Misha in their newly built sauna house.  I had a lot of saunas in my twenties with the Puhks in the Gatineau by a lake, but that was long ago.  It was wonderful to be back again, breathing in the familiar hot wood-scented air.  I felt my bones take in the heat and melt, somehow, and my skin prickle.   Slippery with sweat, after being in, then out to cool, and then back into the heat for more, we leapt into the car for the two minute quick drive down the road to the river.  (The car windows steamed up with our heat!)  The current flows swiftly there, carries you along in its cool flow, so we played and floated, waded back upstream and floated down again.  Bliss.

But that Sunday began with another kind of miraculous encounter, not with mother nature, but with the wisdom and lovely energy of a remarkable man named Menahem Pressler.  He is famed as a pianist and as the founder of the Beaux Arts Trio, but also as an extraordinary teacher.  And that was my luck, to be able to sit in on a Master Class he gave here in Toronto at the Faculty of Music.  To hear this charming and focussed man in his mid-eighties talk about music, and guide the young pianists that morning with such clarity and insight, was an enormous privilege.  I felt there should be a tape-recorder on all the time, just to catch his comments.  

And I felt, as perhaps one does with all great teachers, that what he said about music and attitudes toward music, was also true of life.  He talked about the need for the performer to renew his or her relationship to a piece of music each time, to make it fresh and clean, a lived experience for the musician and the listener both.  "Music should sanctify us, elevate us, inspire us" he said.  His intelligence and energy, his warmth, his generosity toward the young performers, and his insistence that there be attentiveness and respect, joy and engagement, were a tonic, a lesson, an inspiration.

LAST THOUGHTS BEFORE I HEAD OVER THE NORTH POLE

It's a golden late-Saturday afternoon in Chiang Mai, the light of the setting sun catching the gold tips of the chedis and warming the faces of people heading west on foot, on motorcycles, in the back of tuk-tuks. Had another great market morning, first to meet a friend for breakfast at Talat Somphet, by the moat (we had sticky rice; and pork pounded with lemongrass then wrapped in banana leaf and grilled; som tam (green papaya salad, hot and succulent and crispy); pork and beef "jerky", which is first rubbed with spices, then air-dried, then quickly deep-fried; some tiny fried fishes... all with extra raw veggies, all yum!), and then to Warorot Market to shop for this and that to take back to Toronto.

Yes, it's time to leave (Monday the 15th), or at least that's what my e-ticket tells me. There's the 7 am flight to Bangkok, then the flight to HongKong, and finally the long extraordinary arc of the Air Canada direct flight from Hong Kong to Toronto. I expect the plane will be packed, since the holidays are coming. And all of us in that plane will be flying up over Siberia and then the north pole, and back down over icy wastes to the relative warmth of southern Ontario. Still, "relative" is the operative word. A guy today asked me if any rice grows in Canada and I had to admit to its impossibility(!!!) (wild rice doesn't count).

I went out the other evening to several bars, with a friend. The bar scene here is full of young women (almost all from poor rural homes, usually in Northeast Thailand - Issaan) in search of a living. And "a living" usually means sex with a foreign guy, often an older and not-that-great-a-guy foreign guy. The goal is to get him committed to a long-term relationship. There's apparently a how-to list for the women: hold his hand and be physically close right away, etc etc. (When I get hold of a copy of the list, if ever, I will pass it on.) Looking around, I was seeing guys feeling great because they were being attended to solicitously, their jokes laughed at, etc. And for the women? Well it must be long and tedious, this life, and dangerous too of course. They mask their feelings a lot, their sadness, their neediness, playing at making everything feel fun. And the guys seem to lap it up.

One of the bars I was at is in a katooey area, (katooey are transvestites; one of the charms of Thailand is the open acceptance of katooey as part of life). Many katooey cross-dress, very fashionably and elegantly, and that's as far as they go, but some are now having surgery to make breasts for themselves, perfect breasts. There were some on show the other night, lifeless trophies is how they looked to me (framed on top by a beautiful heavily made-up face and below by a narrow waist and hips and long legs in high high heels). But of course I'm not the target audience. The surgery costs a lot, and the decision to have it must surely push them to engage fully in the sex business: the struggle to get a guy with money, preferably a foreigner, and then keep him, with all the attendant pressures and stresses.

Economic inequality fosters a lot of this open search for a sugar daddy. It's brutal. And it goes on, so it seems to me important to just keep reminding myself of this, as of other uncomfortable facts of life out in the world. Hope you agree.

And on a selfish note, I hope to get out one more time, tonight, to hear blues and jazz at the Brasserie, just across the river. (The bar is great because it is NOT a place of sexual commerce, at least not in a way I have noticed, but a place for engaging with music and having that kind of fun.) Time enough tomorrow for packing presents and camera and computer, giving the plants a last watering (Fern will mind them while we're gone), and friends a last greeting...

And then home to my lovely guys for awhile.