MAPS FOR LIVING & ENGAGING WITH THE WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

….

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

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

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

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

FIRST SNOW & SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT CONFIDENCE & WORK

First snow-sticking-on=the=ground=and-slushy-roads day in downtown Toronto. The provident already have their boots out and the rest have wet looking feet. I am still looking for the snow shovel; it must be in the garage.

I love fresh snow in the city, for even with grey skies and the weight of that ugly word “slush”, the snowed surfaces brighten the day, giving us spare wintry lightness. I can love it because I’m not trying to drive in traffic made worse by the slush or to navigate the slippery sidewalks with a cane or walker or while pushing a child in a stroller.

Snow now is a reminder of time. Yikes! Every year December seems to collapse, lose days, until suddenly it’s the weekend before Christmas. Part of it is that we all raise our expectations at this time of year. We make more of an effort to see people and socialise, we may be doing those extra shopping errands for presents, or packing for a Christmas holiday departure. Whatever the extra “it” is, the month accelerates past.

In the last five or six years I’ve been away in November and the first half of December, so I’ve missed these early weeks and landed as the holidays were about to start. Now that work travels are taking me elsewhere my travel away pattern has shifted. I like that. The change helps me see with fresh eyes, and appreciate the details I might have ignored when I was last around at this time of year.

In this past five weeks since I got home from Iran I've been able to really dig into my Persian World project. I've come to realise, as I've been digesting my Iran and Georgia trips, doing recipe work, engaging with photos, stories, and historical research, that I love being home working and reflecting. And with short days and chilly weather, being indoors is feeling good, and productive. It’s a privilege to be able to settle in, to NOT have to think about airplanes and packing, etc. for awhile.

Is this age, I caught myself wondering yesterday, this pleasure I am taking in being home and working steadily?

Perhaps. But I think it’s also a change in working style. And that in turn comes from increased confidence. Rather than rushing from thing to thing, afraid I’ll be late or miss out on something, I am now more prepared to work steadily and to not worry about the possibility of not getting this or that done in a day. I guess I am being more methodical and generally more deliberate. Part of the explanation for the change is that after doing the Burma book sola, rather than with a partner, I know that I can trust myself to carry a big project through on my own. And I enjoy the whole process more, for I am in control of what is done or not done. It’s all up to me.

I used to think that carrying one large project, a thesis say (which was how I first imagined what a large project would be, when I was in my teens and early twenties), would be impossible for me, too sustained and onerous a burden. Then once I started making books in a partnership, I discovered that like almost every other task, the work of researching writing, etc. gets broken down into pieces and gradually as the pieces get worked on, the whole takes shape. Once the first book, Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas, was finished, and the manuscript sent in, starting on another book seemed like an obvious and wonderfully desirable thing.

But in those early years there were the kids to factor in, and the organising of travel and other work, and the complications of partnership. It all seems like a whirling blur as I look back.

In comparison, this process of deciding what work I will do on a particular day is very easy and uncomplicated. I can recipe test, or write up work already tested, or take on the writing of a story, or read some history, or edit photos… All of those possibilities are inviting. That’s the thing. And none of them scares me, though they do all require me to have energy and to take them on with creative imagination, rather than passively.

I think that’s the essential difference between a chore and work that you love. A chore is something that just needs to be done, and can be done with a dull mind and heavy or exhausted spirit, whereas work that I like and that I look forward to requires good energy and engagement. If I’m sleepy or otherwise exhausted I won’t get any good work done. And in such a state I’m better off doing some chore like cleaning or tidying my office or looking for that shovel.

I can imagine you wondering, 'and what about writing this blogpost?' For me writing, all writing, including these explorations of ideas on the virtual page, requires a fresh head and good energy. And of course I also need to have an idea in my head that I want to explore. I woke up this morning knowing that I wanted to write this. And now here it is, miraculously.

Once I’ve posted this, and done some other book-writing work, I’ll hit a low ebb, energy-wise. And then it will be time to get that sidewalk shovelled!

LIVING ON THE ROLLER-COASTER OF LOSS AND LUCK

Freshly landed in the new year, I want to talk about losing and finding. I'm thinking about this because of something that happened today.

It's an important subject to explore, always relevant I think, because of the difficulty I usually have letting go when I lose something that I treasure (a scarf, an earring); the difficulty I have accepting the death of a friend or the loss of a friendship; the difficulty - and this will perhaps seem extremely trivial to you - of changing plans or ideas in midstream when things go awry or other people change their minds.

All these situations, some trivially small and others huge and very painful, demand a suppleness and some equilibrium. It takes work to navigate them or digest them. And it's an ongoing life-pursuit for many of us, I think. For it often feels as if just as I get reconciled to one loss, another comes and crashes in.

But I've come to realise that there are equally surprising and unexpected "finds" or positive gifts or bonuses that turn up in our lives. Don't you think so? It's just that we don't often look at them in the same way. We're happy to have the good luck to meet someone special who becomes a close friend. Or we catch a break somehow, an unexpected break and then say briefly, oh that was lucky, or thank heavens ..x..  happened when we didn't deserve that good luck. Then we move on.

With losses, on the other hand, we linger, the pain goes on, we carry the resentment or unquiet spirit of loss with us for hours and days and sometimes years.

In the superficial loss situation, where I struggle to accept that I truly did leave that precious shawl behind in the car lot and that it's gone forever, there's a nausea. It takes a real effort to push it back down and to really just let go. I've found though that if I remember to mark, or remark on, the occasions where a "find" or a good luck thing happens, then I am forced to acknowledge that things often do balance out, that sometimes the unexpected works in my favour. And this acknowledgement helps me accept the harshness of loss.

This is all a rather clunky introduction to a simple story: Today I hustled up to Yorkville to meet a friend for coffee (I had left the house a little late and so had to walk-run for much of the way). The paths across Queen's Park and across the university playing fields were snowy, hard packed, and uneven, which made the rushing along a little precarious. It was a beautiful cold clear day, with sharp shadows of bare tree skeletons cast on the white white snowy expanses I was hurrying across.  

Some time later as we sat chatting and drinking our coffee, my friend and I, I realised that somewhere in my rushing I had lost an earring. Ah...the perils of winter, and of long hair that catches earrings, and of chilly air that seems to encourage them to slide out.  Too bad. And so I managed to shrug off the loss, more or less, with a slight lingering nagging feeling of nausea.

On my way back home nearly two hours later, walking at a more thoughtful pace along a well-shovelled university pathway I saw a small gleam. It was my lost earring. A miracle? Not really. But a lucky find...the fates smiling and giving me a chance to remember to feel grateful for finds and good fortune, instead of clinging only to the remembrance of losses.

I guess in life we end up with more loss than gain, if we're being literal, for death awaits us all. But just as it does no good to dwell on that fact, it is useless and often harmful to focus on what's broken and can't be fixed or what's lost and can't be retrieved. (I know, easy to say and hard to do...for sure.)

But that's life: an ongoing changing and evolving tapestry, with gains and losses, unexpected treats and shocking and disturbing catastrophes. It's up to us to navigate all this, like a skiier on a steep mogul-filled hill, with grace and, with practice and luck, some elan too.

Happy new year to all...

SPRING MAINTENANCE, & REFLECTIONS IN A SNOWY PLACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POST-SOLSTICE FRAGMENTS

It's eight days since I walked back in the front door here in Toronto, to a warm house and Jeff and Dom and Tashi and Ian, as well as a young visitor from Germany named Vanessa.  Vanessa was here for a visit, her first time in Canada, never imagining that she'd be here for the coldest snowiest December ever (or at least that's how it seems).  When we drove her to the airport today, she said to us on parting that she'd be back only in the summer - "if there really IS summer here!" was her parting shot.

The sun IS coming back, we said feebly.  Solstice is a time for hope, right?!?

The Burma proposal is coming together.  It feels so important to be doing it, for many reasons. And in the course of doing research for the proposal, we've realised how right it is from a food point of view.  Burma is such a crossroads, with influences from Thailand, Yunnan, and the Indian subcontinent on the various local cuisines.  It's ideal for us, for we're pretty well-grounded in the surrounding culinary cultures.  Burma is like the keystone, the place in the middle where our other books come together in a fascinating overlapping way.  So I think we're going to be able to navigate happily in the colorful patchwork that is Burma's culinary heritage, and to celebrate its richness.  I can't wait.

Meantime, since getting to Toronto we've had a rather heady bunch of encounters and emails and conversations, many of them because of Jane Kramer's piece in the New Yorker.  Among them was a one-hour radio interview, a live phone-in, on NPR, that ranks as one of the two or three best and most satisfying radio interviews we've ever done, separately or together.  We were on  show called On Point, last Thursday, the 18th, for the show's second hour (11 to noon Eastern).  It's out of Boston, and is available in pod-cast.  The host, Tom, was so skilled, and so at ease in the larger Asian world (he worked as a journalist all over Asia for a long time), that the transitions and conversations felt effortless and beautifully connected.  We all had fun, including the many callers. We're now going to make a habit of catching his broadcasts online.  When radio is good, it is so wonderful...

Another recent fun event was the solstice party we went to on the 21st.  We both love that feeling of swimming into a party where we know few of the guests.  It's a little like a treasure hunt.  This party was especially fun and engaging, with a great mix of people who were prepared to engage in fun conversation.  We even got in some dancing!

And the weather?  Well that's less hot - deep crunchy squeaky snow everywhere, and slush at the sides of the main streets.  Yikes!  Haven't had a white Christmas for awhile in Toronto, so I suppose we're overdue, but this year is a shocker.

Then in mid-January I'm due to head back over the pole to Chiang Mai.  I'll miss Dom and Tashi and Ian, but I so love the immersion in language, the chance to embark on the unknown.  And it's time to move to the next (less domestic) phase of life, to be out and about, with my eyes wide open.  Our eight-day immersethrough food cooking class starts February 1, and then by mid-February I hope I am in Sittwe, on Burma's west coast, hanging around...   

All suggestions welcome!