Dreaming and Waking

The earth doesn't care about new year's. If at midnight, a bird sang sweetly, or a cat stirred in its sleep, or the world seemed to hold its breath for a moment, it was coincidence only. The change in calendar doesn't mean anything to the Mother Nature, but you wouldn't think so in Vancouver today.

The day dawned with the kind of clear blue cold that the rest of Canada often sees in the winter, but that we rarely do. The air's so dry that the mountains look too close and overly real. The ground's frosted and shimmers in the sun. Everything feels clean and fresh and new.

I don't celebrate new year's eve (mostly for reasons summed up by Cracked.com). I boycott by staying home, watching DVDs, cleaning, and going to bed before midnight. I can't resist new year's day, however. I love the symbolic new start and the feeling of optimism as everyone, for a least a day, attempts to let go of bad habits and start to floss, eat better, exercise more, be better.

I drank an eggnog latté, mailed Christmas thank you notes, walked a labyrinth, made bagels, read and ate bagels, walked with Russ through the sunshine, saw a bald eagle perched on a church steeple, watched the first season of "Red Dwarf", and did some writing.

It was a good new day.

It happens every time I organize an event, even if it's just for the seven other members of Silver Spiral: I spend the week before thinking about it constantly. Until the ritual is designed, I obsess about it, and in between attempts to write it, I meal-plan and write shopping lists and schedule when I'll go to various stores to get speciality ingredients.* On the day of the ritual, I turn into a little whirlwind. Last Sunday, Imbolc, Russ was startled several times when I suddenly squeaked and ran out of the room, yelling "the timer!", "the bread!", or "the ginger beer!" over my shoulder.

Even after my guests arrive, I am rushing around, setting up the altar, assigning parts, getting drinks, finding cat-free places for jackets and bags. During the ritual, I'm trying to remember what comes next. Then, ritual over, the true chaos kicks in as everyone looks at me and says "how can I help with dinner?"

Last Sunday, the meal plan was simple: pasta with sauce. Of course, the pasta and sauce were both from scratch. Russ browned chicken and supervised stove-related items while a couple of people chopped veggies at one end of the table and a couple more made pasta for the first time, under the supervision of our resident home economics teacher. I fetched and gathered and assigned and set the table and opened wine... and in the midst of all of it, I suddenly feel the tension drain out of me and I remember: This is what it is all about. It is all about this steamy kitchen full of people laughing and talking and making dinner together. It's all about this family of spirit sitting down together with mismatched napkins and glasses of juice and wine. It's all about seeing everyone's face when my sister announces her pregnancy.**

It's all about needing a bigger dining room table soon.

* Speciality ingredients tend to be a must when feeding a group requires or has required in the recent past: no meat, no dairy, no nuts, no onions, no garlic, no gluten, and no alcohol.

** Russ and I had to keep that secret for six weeks, and it was hard. Now that she's put it on her FaceBook, it must be completely fair game.

Breakfast

When traveling, I highly recommend choosing hotels that include breakfast. We had such a hard time choosing food for lunch and dinner sometimes (not because nothing sounded good but because everything sounded good) that I can't imagine what we would have done trying to choose a breakfast place before having coffee.

All three of our hotels included breakfast buffets that we took very complete advantage of. There were always pastries, fresh fruit, yogurt, and my new favourite breakfast: fresh buns and slices of mild provolone cheese. There was also cappuccino every morning, to my delight.

Coffee

Russ and I are espresso drinkers at home too. Years ago, when Russ worked at Starbucks, we used his staff discount and a Boxing Day sale to buy an espresso maker. We gave up the regular coffee machine fairly soon after.

"I don't want all these fancy drinks – these cap-a-chinos. Why can't I get a regular cup of coffee? I just want regular coffee," the woman was obviously American by her southern accent. She is sitting with her husband and another couple at a nearby table in the breakfast room in our hotel in Florence.

Russ, ever helpful, leans over: "Order an Americano."

"An A-mer-i-can-no? Is that a regular coffee?"

"Kind of. It's espresso and hot water. It's like a regular coffee."

"Marvin? Marvin, go order me one of these A-mer-i-can-nos."

Marvin obediently gets up and goes to the espresso bar at the far end of the breakfast room. In the meantime, his wife turns to the other couple at their table: "Do you guys want some too?" When they nod, she yells across the room: "Marvin! Marvin, get two more of those A-mer-i-can-nos!"

We left for a tour while their order was being made, so we never did find out if they found an Americano enough like regular coffee or not.

On a friend's recommendation, we made another delightful discovery (in additional to bread and cheese for breakfast): espresso con grappa. This is not a breakfast drink, but best sipped after dinner, perhaps with a tiramisu. We brought a bottle of grappa home with us to enjoy.

Tiramisu

We made it a tradition to celebrate our last night in each city with tiramisu.

In Rome, we had tiramisu on the Piazza Navona. We laughed again at the story we'd learned during our walking tour of Rome: Bernini, who created the famous fountain at the center of the piazza (the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi), and Borromini, who designed the church along one side of the piazza (the church of Sant'Agnese), were great rivals. The pope of the time set them to work at the same time in the piazza. Their rivalry is reflected in their great works: the four characters on the fountain are all turned away from the church – one has her face covered, while another has a hand out as though to ward off the church's ugliness – and on the church's front, the sole character – a statue of the saint – is turned aside so only her profile is seen and so that she doesn't face the fountain.

In Florence, we had tiramisu on the Piazza della Repubblica. First, we went to this very fancy restaurant and candy store – a candy store where we had accidentally spent €12 on two tiny bags of candy the day before – but after saying "sit anywhere", no one came to bring us menus or see what we wanted. After waiting for fifteen minutes, we moved on to one of the many other restaurants on the piazza. The staff at the snobby restaurant looked quite shocked that we were leaving, but at the second place we tried, we were served delicious tiramisu (my favourite of the trip, actually) and espresso con grappa in a prompt and friendly manner, and for several Euros less than the other place as well.

In Venice, we had tiramisu at the base of the Ponte del Rialto, along the Canal Grande. We briefly considered celebrating our final night in Italy in the Piazza San Marco, which is even more iconic than the Rialto, but one look at the prices quickly made us look elsewhere: the cost of a dessert was going to be more than we had spent on some meals. And the Canal Grande is gorgeous at night anyway.

Wine

Every restaurant we ate in seemed to have a house wine. They were all delicious, and they were all labeled "vino della casa", with no other information about how we could buy a similar wine at home. The Italians have a wonderful invention that I've never seen in Canada: the 375 mL wine bottle. It's just a half-sized bottle, complete with cork, and it is perfect for two to share over a leisurely meal without overindulging or leaving any behind. It is especially perfect to share over lunch, when you don't want to end up too tipsy or sleepy after.

Pizza

Red wine and pizza go very well together. Red wine goes especially well with whatever wonderful drug is in Italian tomato sauce: it tasted so simple, but was undeniably some of the tastiest sauce I've ever had in my life. Since it is vegetarian and easily identifiable, I had a lot of pizza margherita in Italy, which was delicious, but I also had a most wonderful creation one day when we escaped from the rain in Venice by ducking into the first restaurant that looked warm: tomato sauce, bocconcini, asparagus spears, and an egg right in the middle. Sounds weird – it looked weird too – but tasted like the best of breakfast and pizza brought together.

Coming home

Since coming home, I've been eating breakfast regularly for the first time in years. I have a slice of bread, sometimes with jam, and I've been experimenting with different brands of provolone cheese to find one that tastes right (some are too aged to be eaten so early in the day) and is affordable (the pre-sliced one from the Safeway deli tastes right, but it is a bit pricey, and I'm perfectly able to slice my own cheese).

Today, walking home from the Central Library, I was getting hungry and thought I'd stop somewhere for dinner. The whole walk home, through a good part of downtime Vancouver and all of Chinatown, I kept looking for some place to eat, and nothing looked appealing. I wasn't sure what I was looking for – what I wanted to eat or drink, what kind of atmosphere I wanted – until I realized that I was looking for Italy. Realizing that I wasn't going to find wine and pizza or perfect melt-in-your-mouth gnocchi on a cobblestone street or lovely piazza, I went home. I made my own pasta dish and opened a bottle of Russ and I's own "vino della casa" (a Pinot Noir we made at a local u-brew) and consumed most of both on my back deck in the last hours of sunshine, reading my book. It wasn't Italy, but it was lovely, and close enough for today.

I swagger when I wear a tank top. It's a tight white tank top with wide shoulders; the kind often called a "wife beater", but I don't call them that because that's an ugly name, though I understand where that comes from because wearing one does give me a sense of bravado. When I wear it, I swagger, I stand with my legs further apart and with one hip out, and I take up more room on the bus. A tank top brings out my inner Tough Broad.

I'm restless today. The weather's nice but cool - sunny late summer meeting early Autumn - and the Tough Broad wants to go.

I want to grab my keys and a twenty dollar bill and walk. Walk out. Walk until my feet are sore and the sun has dipped below the tree tops, then stop and spend all twenty dollars on whiskey shots in a bar that plays Tom Waits too loud. Tell anyone who tries to buy me a drink or strike up a conversation to piss off. Keep walking.

What do you do when your other self – your wild self that only comes out when you wear those boots or hear that song - tells you that you are too domesticated, too tame, too content?

Keep swaggering.

I need to hang my laundry.

Through my dark living room window, I can see the occasional leaf falling. Lots are falling tonight, because there's a ferocious wind tossing everything around. The leaves catch the light as they spin, flashing orange in the glow of the street light.

I think the leaves are bigger this year. On my walk home, maple leaves bigger then my hands were falling all around me.

I love the Autumn wind. On my walk home, that wind carried the dry smell of leaves and the perfect fall smell of pipe smoke.

There's a European food warehouse down the street from us that is open to the public for a couple of hours each day. We bought some Czech and some German mustard. Russ will have to report back on their respective merits; I don't eat mustard.

You would think I would have had enough chocolate* in the past couple of months, but there's something about a box without any English on it that makes the contents seem even more delicious. We did resist picking any up this time, but I make no promises about next Saturday – the discounted brandy beans were singing quietly, and a little obscenely, to me. That's how brandy beans are.

Walking through Chinatown, I feel very tall. And very young.

We had fresh green onion pancakes for lunch, cut into greasy quarters and stuffed into a bag. The man at the counter seemed a little bemused by Russ' full knowledge of authentic Chinese food. I'm not sure many white people venture into his plain little storefront in the heart of Chinatown,** much ones that know red bean pancakes from chive and egg pies.

My dinner, many hours later, was in Little India. tareija and bob_lazar invited me out to all-you-can-eat vegetarian Indian food, which for me means all-you-can-eat naan bread and Chai tea, with some curry and rice on the side. I enjoy spicy food a lot more then I used to, but I am still a carb-lover first.

Multiculturalism may be challenging, but the benefits in food alone make it worth while.

*I won a year's worth of Purdy’s chocolate back near Christmas… that really does deserve its own post.

**Vancouver’s Chinatown isn't really a tourist destination like Victoria's or San Francisco's.

I'm in my livingroom, sitting on the floor before a warm computer in my pjs, with a kitten in my lap and another cat napping on the couch behind me. It is snowing (a rare thing in Vancouver), and I can watch the snowflakes fall against the background of bare tree branches from where I am sitting. I have an eggnog latté and a couple of seedless mandarin oranges.

In this moment, everything is perfect.

10 things that make me happy in no particular order:
1. My meditating gargoyle statue.
2. Chocolate and peanut butter.
3. A thermos of hot tea at work.
4. Listening to the rain while cuddled up in bed.
5. The really soft and warm blanket my grandma made for me.
6. Round knitting needles.
7. Hot showers.
8. The smell of dried rosemary.
9. Being able to surf the Internet while sitting on my bed.
10. Wearing my pumpkin hat.

I danced in the alley behind my house in a shaft of sunlight while fat raindrops mushed on my head and shoulders.

It was beautiful out today.

Sometimes I envy those who live dramatically simple, disciplined lives, like monks and nuns. There seems to be such peace, tranquility and contentment in those lifestyles. As one who does not bore easily, I see the endless path of predictable days, of struggle only with one's self-discipline and faith, as a bit of an ideal life.

I have met people who live such lives within society, who haven't needed to escape to a isolated sanctuary to achieve inner peace. They live with little material goods, have simple needs and few desires, and are peaceful and content. They experience the depth of life.

The people I respect are those who have sacrificed material gain, conventional success and, sometimes, bodily comfort and pleasure in favour of a life that feels richer to them. They have chosen discipline as a lifestyle, choosing not to eat junk food, not to drink or smoke, not to have sex, or whatever, in order to achieve something spiritual. The best yet is seeing these people use the extra time, money and energy they have to achieve something beautiful and powerful in the world, making other people's lives better.

To me, this sort of life looks like a soft, baby blue blanket: comforting, warm, peaceful, strong, but constant, unvaried. In contract, some people live lives like eccentric quilts, with hundreds of fabrics, from rough linen to silk to corduroy, all patched together in crazy ways. They live highs and lows, moments of ecstasy and depression, always with waves of emotions. Their lives are always changing, they live extremes, they are always seeking variety and bigger and better experiences. It feels chaotic, unstable, like the fabric could unravel at any moment.

This also feels like it has value. These people experience the breadth of life.

I guess I fear that my life is always somewhere in between: neither deep nor broad, neither disciplined nor varied, neither content nor ecstatic. I hope there's a middle way with value as well.