The hills are alive...

Today I took advantage of some gorgeous sunny weather to go for a stroll in the Adelaide Hills, past farms that roll along grassy knolls, and cows that seemed as happy as I for the warm morning.  I was mostly avoiding some pressing commitments, but I'm sure some philosophers would have been on my side.  Leisure is not idleness.  And this little jaunt was planned and unexecuted many weeks ago, left unfulfilled for long enough that I got antsy.

And yes, I did sing... Julie Andrews ain't got nothing on me.

Who needs Scotland?

There's nothing like a lovely walk to get the mind reflecting on things.  My thoughts this morning spanned the usual crazy gamut, pondering, pondering... The last year has been a veritable roller-coaster, just when I was starting to feel like I'd gotten a handle on it all!  There's certainly plenty of moments to rehash and analyze.

Rumination is the thinking man's curse, only slightly less gnawing than regret.  And I suppose regret is the worst feeling one can endure, if one lets it fester too deeply.  I've generally thought it best to act and live with the consequences than refrain and live with the questions.  But there are those who disagree with me, and as I grow older I am trying to understand and practice that difficult thing known as restraint.  There's a strange, deep satisfaction in delaying gratification and mastering ones' emotions.  The British are much better at all this than we rash Americans.  Discipline or regret... our wild little souls suffer either way.  Stiff upper lip!

I had a lovely chat with an old college friend (thanks to the earth-linking power of Skype!) who got on the subject of time vs. commitment.  We agreed that as Americans, and particularly as products of a liberal arts education which forced us to think broadly and quickly, we are not well-suited for being static.  Both he and I now find ourselves in the early stages of quasi-adulthood living for the first time in places where we are responsible to communities.  What a difference this permanence makes!  Suddenly Band-Aids aren't solutions and problems don't disappear with a new wave of people.  We must cultivate and nurture, and grow ourselves.  It's a new challenge, but the long-term reward is immense.  I, for one, am loving the sensation that I'm working for something larger and longer lasting than myself.  The question is no longer "if" I want to buy in.... but "how" and "where."

Which circles me back to the subject of discipline, because only with measured actions can we hope to withstand time and trials.  It's uncommon that I feel regretful about paths not taken... more often I lament things I did that I should not have done!  Quick judgment leads to bad decisions, which lead to regret in the end.
In the end I think regret vs. discipline must be a balancing act.  There is a time for impulse and spontaneity... quick action and unfiltered words are sometimes the only thing that will do.  They come from the heart, and that counts for something.  Perhaps the trick is to be in complete control of one's thoughts at all times... that way whatever slips out in the spur of the moment is representative of the whole rather than a momentary spasm of emotion. 
Master thoughts and emotions... sounds very Buddhist, no?  I think perhaps I should go back to the Hills and contemplate some more.

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.”  – James Oppenheim

Bragging? Maybe. Only a little.

I am so very, irrepressibly pleased with the newest development in my life: a job at a gorgeous winery in McLaren Vale.  For those of you tracking my progress, this means I have two jobs... both fantastic in their own ways... to keep me busy all summer.

The general theme of this blog has been not to name names or specify places (protect the innocent), so I'll follow suit here.  I will however, show off a picture from the winery's website, just to emphasize what I mean when I say 'gorgeous:'

It's such a great feeling to have a position for the right reasons, at an organization where the philosophy jives perfectly with passions I was already developing.  The winery is very keen on sustainable development, organic growth (of the business and the vineyards alike), and honest creation of quality.  And the wine is definitely quality.

The whole place resonates with a lovely purity of spirit and practice.  Sheep and cows graze in pastures alongside the vineyard, cover crops grow freely between rows of grapes, fish swim in the reservoirs that provide irrigation to the property, a pile of natural fertilizer sits in the sun with its earthy rich stink filling the air.  The winery dogs are as adorable and friendly as can be.  The winemaking philosophy is a modernized, hands-off approach: wild-yeast ferments, natural malo, aged oak regimens.  And there's a window in the cool, dark barrel shed that looks out across the vineyard, so it's impossible for workers in the cellar to forget that this product--which demands scientific attention and will be shipped to all points of the globe in glass bottles--this wine actually comes from a real place... right up there, where the sunlight is hitting the crest of the green hill.

Perhaps I'm obsessing a little bit, but perhaps that's as it should be.  I feel incredibly lucky to be included in this business and in this industry, and am thrilled to get to work.  I've been pooling my talents, honing the resources for a good long while now, and finally I'm in the position to use it for a good cause!  And there's more to learn!  Always ways to grow!

Then too, this position finally gets me on track towards a happy future that I've been blueprinting for some time now: working hard to cultivate, sustain, and promote a beautiful little piece of the world... (somewhere!)... hopefully one day adding in the blessing of my own beautiful family to raise, take care of, and proudly send into the world.  Its a profoundly fulfilling and edifying dream.  It's all about living in the now, for the betterment of what is to come.

I don't think it's totally crazy to think of wine as a savior against a robotic and soulless future.  Really now:  What better product than wine--with its hedonic peaks and scholarly valleys, its modern growth and ancient roots--to draw the everyday consumer into its nuances?  A lot of people want to get geeky and proud about wine knowledge, but I think wine lovers revel in yammering on about wine because it's fundamentally a glorious, unanswerable mystery.  Every vintage, every vineyard, every bottle offers a new opportunity to marvel at what nature has produced and man has harnessed for a moment.  How is it possible to drink wine without honoring the grapes, the vines, and the land from which it is born?   Nature--given her own way--never fails to awe those who are still, and quiet, and looking out across the landscape.  There's a beautiful, inexplicable flowing continuity of life bound up in the land, and wine invites us simply to bask in it.  

Or get nerdy about it, or pay too much for it, or share it with friends on the beach, or simply unwind.  What a gorgeous, happy life!

This Haitian Life: Doomsdaying

I'm a little behind on my podcast listening, but I am a devotee of Mr. Ira Glass, voice and brain behind an NPR show called "This American Life."  Every week, he and a team of investigative radio reporters start with a broad topic and delve into the illuminating details of topics that shape our collective culture.  Back in May, TAL ran an episode called "Island Time," which considers Haiti in the wake of the catastrophic January earthquake.  How is it, they ask, that the small island nation has been floundering for half a century while 10,000 NGOs and millions in foreign aid have focused attention on the place?

There were some really interesting quotes, my favorites penned and read by an author named Ben Fountain, who went to visit a friend of his in Haiti in the immediate wake of the disaster....

1.  "I've noticed it's as if God gives you 205 years to do something with Haiti, and if you fail, He passes it on to someone else.  The Spanish had it from 1492 to 1697.  Two hundred and five years.  Then the French from 1698 to 1803.  Two hundred and five years.  Then the Haitians from 1804 to 2009.  Two hundred and five years.  So what is coming next?  Maybe revolution."

The Mayans predicted a revolutionary shift to a new world order in 2012.  The timing is getting creepy... plus the weather is nuts here, Guatemala isn't having a great week, and Christchurch, NZ is as flat as it's been in 100 years after the weekend quake there.  In literature we call this "pathetic fallacy."

2.  "I've been hearing how backward Haiti is for as long as I've been going.  What about this?  What if Haiti is ahead of the times?  It seems to be on the leading edge of so many current trends: environmental degradation, serial ecological disasters, crumbling infrastructure, a population that exceeds resources, plus a skewed economic order that channels vast wealth to a privileged few while the great majority of people stagnate and struggle.  By any objective measure, Haiti appears well advanced on the track that the rest of the world seems hell-bent on following."

I don't want to get into politics.  Just reflecting.

3.  [observing the destruction of Port au Prince's cultural institutions]  " 'Art is finished in Haiti,' he said abruptly. 'After what happened here, art has nothing more to say to us.'  And he went on, 'The philosopher Hegel said that before the end of time there will be the end of history.  And before the end of history there will be the end of art.  Maybe this is what we're seeing here: the enacting of Hegel's theory.  Haiti is leading the rest of the world to the end of time.' "

 Buy art.  Buy books.  Support your local chefs, bakers, farmers, and potters.  Drink more fortified wine.   Go back to the land, because --dear Lord-- when the ground itself starts to move underneath us, what in heavens will we all hold onto?


****I am unabashedly plugging "This American Life."  Check it out and download the podcast for illuminating insight on subjects you didn't know were out there (ie. the competitive business of interstate rest stops.... pet life insurance... the hedge fund that shorted their own investments and made a killing just before mid-2008)  One could find worse reasons to walk around the neighborhood for an hour with your iPod.****

Grasshopper Salad

I've been meaning to change my sheets for a good week now. I guess there's no way of denying when the time is right.

Since Sunday, I've been bedridden with a high temperature, sore throat, general chills and aches and night sweats and flu-ish-ness. Today, for the first time in days, I actually had a desire for solid food. Mind you, I have managed to eat mashed potatoes (from a box) and chicken noodle soup (from a can), but it would be an insult to root vegetables and poultry to call either of those items "food."

For those of you to whom I have not already preached, I here profess I am a unabashed devotee of a gentleman named Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food." In both of these gripping non-fictions, Mr. Pollan details the life of our dinner, from the ground where it originated to the substances with which it is cooked. If you thought "Fast-food Nation" had a profound effect on your eating habits, try the "Omnivore's Dilemma" chapter on corn (never mind the bit about feed lots... anyone can be terrifying while detailing what happens to chickens destined for styrofoam and plastic wrapping). These books are not about denying us humans the pleasure of a hearty meal, but about developing a new awareness of what our food actually is. So much of the Western diet revolves around processed food, chock full of corn and soy by-products with chemical preservatives and flavor additives tossed in. Canned chemical compounds do not a hearty stew make. From all Mr. Pollan's research, a maxim emerges: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables." He goes on to list the basic rules for determining what is food. Primarily, if your great-grandmother would not recognize it as food, you shouldn't eat it. And if you cannot pronounce the ingredients listed on a label, don't put it in your mouth. Stay out of the middle aisles of the grocery store... stick to the periphery where fresh food lives.

All that said, I've been doing a lot of shopping at the farmer's market, and I convinced my sick and ailing self that the best meal to speed me along my path to recovery would be a salad. I rifled through the fridge and came up with half a tomato, an avocado, some feta cheese, a carrot, and a bit of turkey. Looking good. I went for the romaine, pulled off a couple leaves to give them a rinse, and found there, nestled among the greenery, a dead grasshopper. Oh disgusting. But after my initial squeal and horror, I decided I liked the notion of eating lettuce so un-pesticided that a grasshopper could nestle in it. Content with my environmentalism, I pulled off one last leaf. There lay two more grasshoppers. Big ugly things. These were not crickets; they were the size of my thumb. One healthy little bug is icky, three is another thing entirely. I have never washed lettuce so vigorously or with such inclination towards using soap to aid the process.

At last I put my salad together, and convinced myself I still wanted to eat it... in bed, the throne on which I have been riding out these uncomfortable days. I got my bottle of soda water from the fridge, went to my room, set the salad down on the wine law book on the bed, opened the soda water. The soda water exploded. One quarter of a 1.5L bottle of soda water sprayed with abandon, as if the grasshoppers had spent their final hours dancing salsa with the carbonated beverages in the dark of the refrigerator. When I finally got the cap closed and assessed the damage to my bedroom, I was looking at a splattered wall, wet sheets and comforter, a doused cell phone and alarm clock, a bookshelf of hosed books, a puddle on the floor, and one very very soggy sweatshirt. I had precious little humor for the situation, so as I cursed and set off, I gave one good kick of my wet slippers. And my food caught on the laptop power cord. Which dragged hastily over the bed, flipped up the cover of the law book, and tipped my fresh salad over into the sheets. I'll let you imagine for yourself the first words I chose to describe the moment.

Some days are just made for boxed mashed potatoes.

STUFF!

After a long and extraordinary process, I have finally received the five boxes of personal items I packed and shipped from Florida in January. My closet overfloweth. Frankly, I don't have sufficient room for everything now, largely because I only have shelves, no space for hanging things like coats and dresses.

Then, in my wandering across the interwebs, I stumbled on this admonition:

"Stop buying unnecessary things.
Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness.
Reduce half again.
List 4 essential things in your life,
stop doing non-essential things.
Do these essentials first each day, clear distractions,
focus on each moment.
Let go of attachment to doing, having more.
Fall in love with less."

I choose the word admonition judiciously. It comes from the Latin "ad" (towards) plus "movere" (to move). Generally admonishment connotes a sort of verbal punishment, a result and reaction after bad behavior as in, "I admonished Fido for peeing on the rug," or, "Dad admonished me for failing my chemistry test." As I considered the perfect noun for this little web-based poem, I realized that it is not meant as indictment but instead as motivation to move towards something.

"Move towards" reduction of these material constructs. " Move towards" clarity and purpose. "Move towards" simplicity.

Now, I'm not much of an ascetic, and am not about to renounce my worldly possessions, but there's something to be said for the freedom and clarity that derives from having little. If you can pack everything that matters into a bag, you can go anywhere you please. For several years now, I've denied myself the comfort of home and familiarity, actively replacing that stasis with travel and new horizons. I've been unfettered and unattached as possible. I've consciously sought to collect a life in the form of experience rather than things, and I've been deliberately unemotional about leaving behind places and people over and over again. Frankly, it's incredible, even depressing, to me that living this way I've still managed to accumulate so much stuff, mostly clothing. It's even more frustrating to know how upset I was at the long delay in its arrival. I like to think I was just desperate to get warm clothing for the winter.

Maybe what this admonishment is driving me to move towards is a different awareness of what exactly I'm collecting. With less material items, the mind focuses more acutely on more ethereal spoils of the road: friends, education, collected tidbits of wisdom, sunsets that cannot be photographed. Of course these things have long been my goals, but how often do I really focus on them? How often have I lost a moment by thinking ahead to the next one? I could slow down, I suppose... stay awhile.

And I won't run off to the Salvation Army with my boxes tomorrow. I'm so grateful to have a diverse selection of t-shirts and warmer winter clothes that I have been spending the last couple days dumbly smiling at the closet. But let's be realistic: I'd do just fine and dandy with half of all this. Or less. It is, in the end, just stuff.

Happy Easter!

I wish lots of chocolate and bunny love to everyone on this beautiful Easter Sunday. It's is a highly secularized holiday in Australia, notable for public holidays on both Friday and Monday. Shops have been closed since Thursday, and many people left town to enjoy the final warm weekend before cooler fall weather sets in. Yes, it does get cold here.

I went to an Episcopalian Eucharist this morning, just to soak in the meditative calm that is generally associated with churches on their most popular day of the year. No less than three babies were hurriedly carried, screaming, from the sanctuary. But the hymns were lovely and reminded me of home. I should start going to church more regularly.

The roomies and I were treated to brunch of lovely blintzes with strawberries, cooked by resident Chef Jeff, and the Easter bunny did leave behind chocolate eggs and hot cross buns. After the feeding, we trundled off to the beach in my gorgeous little car, and joined the throngs of Australians enjoying the sunny day. I laid back and promptly fell asleep.

Last night was a long and fun one. I was the female escort for my three Columbian friends at a salsa dance party downtown, and for reasons I cannot fully explain, I chose to wear strappy stilettos. By eleven, my feet were numb with pain, and pain isn't particularly conducive to quick, sultry dance steps. I managed to catch the heel of one shoe on the straps of another, and took a nasty fall smack on my knee. It's a lovely bruise to accompany the motorcycle gash. Just another battle wound, really. I tried to pretend I wasn't fazed, and thankfully my partner and friend just kept on twirling me like I was a rockstar. I do love dancing.

At some point rather late in the evening, I consented to dance with a burly Asian-slash-Australian-looking dude with long curly hair pulled back in a bush of a ponytail and giant biceps bursting forth from a tight sleeveless-tee. I don't know why it surprised me that manhandled me in a way that would have qualified as abuse in most Westernized countries. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he dances, and I suspect this guy makes crude demands of hapless young girls when he gets into more private settings. Note, he wasn't the uncomfortably sensual type, or one of those guys who "oops" touches you provocatively. He simply drove me forcefully past where I was able to follow his lead, and kept throwing me around, laughing as if it was good fun. It was like rape on the dance floor. In lieu of being vocally rude, which I probably should have been, all I could do was survive the song, desperately looking towards my Columbian men in hopes they would recognize my distress and step in. They were preoccupied with blondes.

Then, the real kicker, the brute dropped me! He shoved me into this treacherously low dip, and rather than feeling his mammoth arms scoop me back up to a standing position, I felt the smack of my horizontal body against the wood floor. It was surprisingly painless, but I did struggle to think of a more embarrassing moment as the crowd around me stopped dancing to ogle, giggle, and ask if I was alright. No one asked the thug if he was alright in the head. He wanted to keep dancing, and just kept on laughing maniacally as if it were all good fun to chuck a girl on the ground. I don't know if he actually meant to do it, but the dance continued as viciously as the first half, and I tried to pretend I didn't want to spit in his face. When the song ended I scrambled quickly back to the Columbians. For the rest of the night, I danced only with Manuel, who leads as if I'm a delicate and gorgeous thing to show off. He's the sort of partner that makes a girl look good. Somewhat more enjoyable than watching the disco ball as if it were the moon among stars and I reclining in a country field.

I suppose it takes all types to make the world go round, but maybe we as a humanity could do with fewer men who like to harm small animals for fun. Long live the bunnies. Long live the Christian ethic. Merry Easter to all.