FierceDesire

Japanese Tea and Sweet Potatoes

2010-12-17T16:21:00.000-08:00

In one of the most elegant and minimalist shopping plazas in Kyoto. a city of elegant and minimalist Zen architecture, a city known for its tea shops serving mochi, traditional sweet rice cakes, is Chaimon, a restaurant devoted to tea (cha) and sweet potatoes (imon).

My 20something daughter, Tina, and I were visiting Kyoto several years ago when we happened upon Chaimon. As soon we stepped inside, we noticed the two piles of sweet potatoes, one golden, the other purple, beside a grill, along with a display case of delicate petit fours. Tina and I were led to a table along the back wall and handed two menus. The table was edged in dark wood, with a square metal hot plate in the center. The menu was entirely in Japanese, and although I had studying nihongo for over a year, the only word I could make out was the ideogram for “tea.” There were no plastic models in the window and the couple of tiny pictures on the menu were for decoration rather than explanation.

When the server came to take our order, I indicated in my halting Japanese that I would have the same as the woman at the next table, although I wasn’t entirely sure what she was eating. Having already decided that she wanted a whole sweet potato, Tina led the server back to the front to make her choice. When the waiter asked what we wanted to drink, I answered tea, but had no idea how to reply to his follow-up question of which kind. I racked my brain but the only two types that came to mind were matcha, the bitter bright green powder used in tea ceremonies, and genmaicha, a low-caffeine green tea with roasted rice kernels. The waiter suggested sencha, a high-quality green tea, and reached under the table to turn on the heating element connected to the metal plate, which would keep our cast-iron teapot warm. To drive away the chill of the early spring evening, I also ordered a glass of the lovely, fuschia-colored liquid I had seen on the counter, which turned out to be shochu, the Japanese equivalent of vodka. Although made with sweet potatoes, this shochu didn’t taste at all of the vegetable, but instead had the same roughness as other grain-based alcoholic beverages.

Waiting for our food to arrive, Tina and I noticed that the walls of the cozy jewelbox of a room, painted the color of garnets, were subtly adorned with sweet potatoes, painted a slightly darker shade of red-violet, an unexpected touch of humor.

The waiter set down a selection of delicate sweets in front of me: a small pile of candied, matchstick sweet potatoes, a scoop of off-white ice cream, and two little wagashi, the Japanese cakes usually made with beans but in this case, with sweet potatoes. One of the cakes was golden and topped with a fresh cherry blossom in honor of the season, the other dark pink; all were delicious. Tina’s single oval, purple sweet potato, carefully placed on the diagonal of a square, matte black plate, was more refined than any I have encountered before or since. I don’t know if this unusual café is still in business, but for me Chaimon encapsulates, as clearly as any Zen temple, the Japanese aesthetic, developed over the centuries in the ancient city of Kyoto.

Note: This piece first appeared in the travel blog: http://epicaro.com/hp_wpordpress/

Personal Branding?

2010-07-12T13:29:00.000-07:00

I’m a sucker for quizzes and questionnaires, from the serious Myers-Briggs and silly ones on Facebook. The only problem is that I usually come up as a little of this and a little of that. Equal proclivities for being helpful and wanting to be in control, for being an artist and being an intellectual. Introvert and Extrovert. When it comes to fashion, I’m a mix of casual and romantic, bombshell and rocker, with a little gamine thrown in for good measure. My home is even harder to categorize although eclectic comes closest to describing my mix of classic modern Scandinavian, friends’ cast-offs, and Crate and Barrel furniture, accessorized by textiles from far-flung travels and dog paraphernalia.

So when I found “Style Statement,” a book with nine questionnaires that held the promise of distilling my style down to two words, I couldn’t resist. The questionnaires covered everything from body image to money issues, from dream travel destination (Easter Island) to what you would wear to the Oscars (strapless lavender silk gown).

But after taking all the questionnaires and reading all the profiles, from authors Carrie McCarthy (“Refined Treasure”) and Danielle LaPorte (“Sacred Dramatic”) to their clients (“Timeless Constructive,” “Genteel Vitality,” etc.), I still felt a bit lost. I re-read the explanations of the “foundation words,” which represent your 80% “core identity,” as opposed to your 20% “creative edge.” The second word came fairly quickly: allure, which in my mind includes playfulness and feminine mystery. But I couldn’t settle on a foundation word that encompasses my intellectual and creative sides, my practical, cut-to-the-chase directness, love of travel and propensity to nurture. Was I “Feminine” or “Sophisticate” or “Genuine”? Genuine Allure sounded pretentious while Feminine Allure seemed redundant.

I like the description of “Elemental” as being interested in the mysteries of the universe, but I wasn’t sure that I could live up to the quality of making everyday life magical. “Elemental Allure” did have a nice ring to it, plus the dot com address was available. The authors encourage readers to use their style statement as a tool in everyday life, which led me to wonder what kind of enterprise I could launch as Elemental Allure? (Hand-carved wooden furniture and jewelry with raw gemstones came to mind.) How would my life, or just my wardrobe, change—if at all—were I to adapt this as a motto of sorts?

The idea that two words could make sense of my past, help me in winnowing out what no longer works in the present and choose more wisely in the future is incredibly seductive. And certainly for someone working in the design field, especially as a consultant, like the author and many of those profiled, a style statement could help differentiating oneself from the competition and develop a kind of brand identity. But for the rest of us, the idea that any person, even oneself, can be summed up in a single phrase, a personal brand if you will. is just a little disturbing.

The New Vampire

2010-06-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Remember Dracula, the Transylvanian villain who gradually drained young women, including the hero’s fiancé, of their life force, in the book by Bram Stoker? This vampire may have been wealthy, clever and suave as ancient nobility, but there was no question as to his basic nature: he was evil personified.

In contrast, Angel, the vampire star in the TV series by the same name, is the good guy. He’s not unblemished—he killed hundreds of men, women and children in earlier years—but he is repentant; he has been cursed—or blessed—with a soul. He struggles against his basic vampire nature to drink the blood of living humans and instead subsists on bottled pig blood, warmed in the microwave. He still kills, but this time it’s the undead whom he stakes to save individual humans. He is capable of genuine love, for his miracle son, for his beloved, for his friends, making him almost human.

Despite lacking breath and a pulse, Angel is hot. Tall, brunette, and handsome, with a buff body and a brooding nature, he is the strong, silent type, a man of action rather than words. Played by David Boreanaz, Angel is a knight without the armor, literally saving damsels in distress from the deadly attentions of vampires and demons, seeking nothing, not even gratitude, in return.

But Angel is only one example of this new breed of vampire. Edward, the heart-throb of the “Twilight” movies is another. Tall, handsome and fair, he is also a strong, silent type. He, too, has integrity, drinking only animal blood and killing only to protect his beloved Bella from another vampire. Bella pleads with Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can be together forever, but he refuses, unwilling to risk her immortal soul. Unlike other vampires who literally catch fire in sunlight, those in the “Twilight” series merely glitter.

In “Daybreaker,” Ethan Hawke plays Ed, a hemotologist turned vampire by the younger brother who can’t live without him. Although Ed says he can’t remember what it was like to be human, he dedicates his life to finding a cure for the bloodlust that is destroying both humans and vampires. Made in Australia, where the Earth’s ozone layer is dangerously thin, the movie also portrays an entire society for whom the sun is death, albeit not the comparatively slow demise from metastasized melanoma but immediate immolation.

And then there are the vampire romance novels, such as the Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward. Here, too, the vampire males are strong, silent, types who form a bond with their beloved which can only be broken by death. Once a vampire has found his mate—which can take a century or more-- he will protect her with his life. If she dies, perhaps in childbirth or at the hands of an enemy, he is like as not to walk into the sunlight and certain death. Not only is he incapable of hurting his mate, he can’t cheat on her either. The female struggles to maintain her independence in the face of her mate’s protectiveness, but she recognizes that he’s hard-wired that way. Besides, between their chemistry and his stamina and size, the sex is out of this world.

Angel, Twilight, the Black Dagger Brotherhood books-- all can be seen as 21st century fairy tales for adult women who still long to be swept up in a protective embrace and passionate love-making by a male who is capable of committing for eternity.

And then there are the two television series "True Blood" and "Vampire Diaries"; the central plot line of both is two vampire males fighting for the attentions of the female lead. These stories explore the archetype of the sociopath-- charming one moment, sadistic the next-- and the possibility of redemption, by power of love, specifically the love of a good woman (be she human doppelganger or telepathic fey). In an era of terrorists and serial killers, these stories can also be seen as morality plays posing the question of what it means to be truly human.

But beyond the sex, love and violence, there is another layer to these narratives. Although we are manifestly at the top of this planet’s food chain, we don’t seem particularly comfortable there. We want there to be other forms of intelligent life among us, whether alien visitors from outer space, demons from another dimension, soulful vampires from this one, or angels from the great beyond. Nor is this desire necessarily a reflection of a more secular culture: look at the succubus and incubus of the Middle Ages, demons who took the blame for unlawful sexual encounters. Even the saints, who intercede with God on behalf of a particular individual, can be seen as another form of unseen but intelligent beings who keep us company. The fact that all of these beings are largely invisible means their existence cannot be disproved; it remains a leap of faith.

As science discovers more about the size of this universe and other daughter universes, perhaps our human need to not be alone, with or without our Maker, is intensifying. Perhaps we are looking for a more intelligent being who will not judge us, but who will save us from ourselves, not only as individual sinners but as a species. Perhaps these other beings can reverse environmental degradation and restore our planet to some semblance of Eden-- or at least unite us in a common cause.

Nude Heels

2010-04-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

Nude is one of this season’s hottest trends. Nude not as in clothing optional, but nude as in (Caucasian) skin tones. In other words, beige gussied up with names like oatmeal, flesh, and taupe, as well as spring’s perennial pinks and peaches. Not only is this palette “in,” but wearing heels in a color that matches your skin will make your legs look longer, at least according to best-selling fashion author Charla Krupp, quoted in an interview in “O” magazine. At 5”3”, I can use all the illusion I can get, so off I went in search of nude heels.

Surfing the fashion blogs turned up a pair of peep-toe stilettos by Giuseppe Zanotti in a patent leather pale pink that looked as though they would “make your legs go on forever,” as the description on TheShoeGoddess.com suggested. The only hitch was that I’ve never mastered the peculiarly feminine art of walking in high heels. Mastering as in being able to walk down the street with my usual long strides in the delicate, sexy shoes my eyes are invariably drawn to. Despite the fact that I’ve ended up giving away or returning virtually every pair of high heels I’ve ever bought, hope--or marketing-- springs eternal. Perhaps this time I would find a shoe that was sexy, comfortable and matched my legs. Surely, that was not too much to ask.

My first stop was the Nordstrom shoe department, primarily because of its generous return policy. I tried on two pairs of Cole Haan pumps with Nike Air heel pads, one with peep toes, the other closed, but the toe box in both felt too confining and the shade of beige was too yellow for my coloring. A pair of Athena Alexander leather slides in a cream color were fairly comfortable, but not vamp enough. And then I spotted the Nine West ankle strap pumps in a variety of colors, including a deep metallic blue and a pinky nude. The latter were the closest match to the color of my feet, and fairly comfortable, but the blue ones also tugged at my heart strings. I could imagine wearing them for a night out with black tights and a little black dress or even to work with black tights and a navy dress. In contrast, the nude heels would have to be worn with bare legs or pale fishnets and couldn’t go to work. I tried not to think about the fact that both pairs had three-inch heels, and put both on hold, heading off to the gym to ponder my choices.

The next day, I settled on the nude heels. My boyfriend suggested I wear them to an upcoming party. After prancing around my apartment for an hour in my new three-inch shoes, I felt my back noticeably relax when I removed them. I went back to the store to look for another pair, a lower-heeled, more comfortable one, but alas, the only one I found was a taupe snakeskin slingback with a kitten heel, which at $278, was several times the cost of the Nine West pair and out of my price range.

Saturday night came and we arrived in San Francisco’s Mission District. Once we were inside the party, I slipped on my nude heels. In the dim light, it took me a few minutes to find the right hole in the ankle strap. At first, I walked hesitantly but by the end of the evening, I was dancing in them. I felt not only taller, but also sexier and more confident. No one mentioned my shoes but one woman told my boyfriend, “Your girlfriend is hot.”

At the end of the party, I took off my magic slippers, releasing my foot from its arched position-- a position that mirrors the foot’s natural tensing at certain moments of bliss. Perhaps that, rather than any leg lengthening, buttock lifting, or back arching, is the real reason for the allure of high heels.

As for me, I’ll wear these again indoors for a few hours, but I’m still looking for that sexy comfortable pair, the ones with the grace and delicacy of a Manolo Blahnik, the sexiness of a Christian Louboutin, and the comfort of Pumas. Those would truly be magic slippers.

The Lure of the Little Black Dress

2010-03-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

“Wear more greens, blues, and purples—and less black,” reads the note I’d written in a bout of self-improvement. A former color consultant once suggested that I would feel less depressed if I wore less black. She was right. My face lights up when I wear turquoise and bright, grass green sets off my hazel eyes and brown hair. And the bright, clear colors of summer do make me happy, whether they’re on my bed, the wall or my feet. So why did I just buy another little black dress?

It’s not like I needed one; I already own several already. There’s the Nicole Miller, a classic LBD with ruched sides that I bought for my 50th birthday. There’s the dress I bought in London at the Goth-Glam chain, All Saints, that has gold threads subtly woven into its textured cotton fabric and a strappy neckline. It’s closest cousin, a shorter, more form-fitting black cotton knit that I found on sale in Berkeley, also has an unusual neckline, intricately cut out to highlight my décolletage.

Perhaps that is the theme of these dresses, as even the most demure, long-sleeved, knee-length, mock turtleneck LBD in my closet has an envelope opening between collar bone and cleavage. (I admit to being a tiny bit proud that at 53 my décolletage is still smooth and fair, the direct result of having spent my youth indoors reading rather than outdoors sunbathing.)

And then there are the two most outrageous ones: a cotton knit bandage dress and a fluttery-sleeved number with a deep scoop neckline in the front and an even deeper dip in the back, only slightly obscured by two sashes that keep the dress from falling open. (Actually the most surprising thing about this garment that I even bought a backless dress that reveals the long, faded scar from my scoliosis surgery.)

But none of this explains why I dropped more cash than I care to admit for another short, sexy, sleevelss cotton knit LBD? Was it because none of the others had this precise feeling of beachy casual? With its ropy halterneck above a keyhole opening, flattering draping, and just above the knees length, this dress is both soft and sporty—which makes sense as the boutique where I found it was inside a gym.

Was I hoping to show off arms toned (at some indefinite point in the future) by lifting weights and legs strong from stationary biking while obscuring the belly that only surgery can flatten? Or was I reacting to the fact that it was a medium rather than a large, proof that my new diet of whole grains and veggies was paying off? Was I responding to the subtle pressure of being told that it was the last one in the shop? Or was it something about the way it recalled the draped tunics of ancient Greece and Rome, of the Amazons or Diana the Huntress? All I know is that when the saleswoman held the garment up, I fell for it from across the room.

Clothing announces us to the world, whether we like it or not, whether we are even aware of it or not. There was a period when all I bought were long gowns that were perfect for the Renaissance Faire but totally out of place with my suburban housewife lifestyle. And yet those velvety creations moved and reflected something of the priestess, the artist, the time-traveler, the romantic in me. Similarly, the LBDs that I have acquired, all of which are perfect for travel and none of which are appropriate for teaching, carry a message to others and for me. Perhaps because my job is so consuming, I am unconsciously choosing to assert a different image on my own time. When I look in the mirror at the woman in the modern little black dress, I see a woman who revels in her sauciness, choosing rocker chic over rocking chair, a late-bloomer who devotes her weekends to exploring San Francisco’s alt culture scene, dancing with her boyfriend to a techno-beat.

Return of the Girdle

2010-02-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

I have vivid memories of watching my two older teenage cousins getting ready for a night out. Their hair in rollers, they took turns sitting in front of the vanity mirror in their mother’s bedroom, applying concealer, foundation, powder, blush, mascara, eyeshadow, eyeliner, and lipstick. Their bodies were encased in white nylon bras and white latex girdles, the latter extending from the waist to below the thighs, designed to hold in their voluptuous figures and hold up their nylon stockings.

By the time I was a teenager, pantyhose had superceded stockings, bras were being burned and the girdle had gone the way of the buggy whip. Not that I had much to hold in-- or up, for that matter; my figure was more Twiggy than Marilyn Monroe.

Fast forward a few decades to the return of the girdle. It started with control top stockings and then control top panties, with lycra substituting for the latex of yore. And then Spanxx came along with a well-publicized line of items to smooth and shape, targeted directly to the women of my generation. The same women who had escaped having to wear girdles at 16 were now at 36 or 46 or 56 buying the lighter-weight, more comfortable but still confining modern equivalents, a.k.a. “shapewear.”.

Certainly, there are times and places when one would want to have all of one’s “jiggly bits,” as Bridget Jones described them, smoothed and shaped, especially if being photographed is on the agenda. If you’re walking down the red carpet or down the aisle, or attending a high school reunion, then shapewear and false eyelashes make sense. But aside from these rare occasions, why would anyone want to wear tight “bike shorts” or a “long-line” undergarment that extends from just under the bust to a few inches above the knees.

A bra is one thing, providing embellishment as well as support. And a corset, while too confining for my taste, can be lovely enough to wear on its own, as seen in the recent designer fashion shows. But, really, how sensual is a layer of nylon and lycra against the skin? And how sexy is it to slip off a dress, and then have peel off the tight girdle beneath. Of course, since we live in a visual culture where image is paramount and the firm thighs, flat abs and pert buttocks of a teenage athlete are the ideal, who can blame us women for wanting at least the illusion of a Barbie body?

Blocked

2010-02-25T10:59:00.000-08:00

Blocked, that's what I am. Blocked as in writer's block. The words that used to flow through me onto the page, the screen, have slowed to a trickle. No longer does the perfect sentence percolate up to the surface of my consciousness as I drive down the highway. No poems, however illogical, come to me in dreams. The days and nights of losing myself in the rhythm of language, when time and space collapse until only the words on the screen and my hands on the keyboard exist-- these are no more.

As one who came to the craft through journalism, I was trained to produce, on deadline, no matter what. Writer's block was never an option. Now, I teach writing, but no longer write, illustrating that horrible cliché that those who can't, teach. Although I have had my work published for several decades, I barely even journal. Of course, as an English teacher, I do still write: emails, lists, and, every couple of months, a new syllabus or three, not to mention corrections and comments on several dozen student papers each week.

I could blame the block on my day job, on my commute, on my dog, on my resolution to get in shape, all of which take time. Yet I have hours to spend watching "Angel" and "True Blood" on DVD or reading fashion magazines and browsing such shopping sites as Pixie Market. I even have material to work on: three different book projects, all on serious topics, all of which strike me as far too depressing. If I were to pick up any one of these again, the angst would drain me more than teaching four hours straight.

Perhaps the problem is that I am basically happy with my life by the sea. I have largely laid to rest the torments of the past and have little interest in digging them up again. Does one have to be tortured to create?

Actually, I'm a little embarrassed that what captures my attention now are colors and shapes: the sculptural folds of a garment, the play of light on the ocean outside my windows, the fun of pulling together a costume, the challenge of creating an apartment home that feels cozy rather than cramped. But compared to war, recession, health care reform, the fiscal nightmare in
Sacramento-- not to mention global warming-- my fascinations seem too, well, trivial. Frivolous.

If I could, I would write a book that was light and playful, warm and charming, one that would make a reader smile or even laugh, although I have no idea what the topic would be. The year I learned to party? But while I wait for inspiration, I'll just keep blogging

Virtual Obsolescence

2009-04-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

Since the '80s, I've been a loyal Apple customer; in fact, I've never owned any other computer. After my gorgeous "Bondi Blue" iMacG3 kept freezing, I almost switched to a PC, but once again fell for Apple's cool design and bought the smallest iBook G4, which I'm writing this on.

Although I've had to replace the battery once and the keyboard several times, the hardware is still completely functional. But suddenly, I can't view the videos friends post on Facebook, call my children on Skype or update my profile on the directory at work. Apparently, my computer's operating system is too old to run a host of common software applications. When I tried to upgrade to the latest version of Adobe Flash Players or Safari or Internet Explorer, I discovered that they only work on a Mac OSX 10.4 Tiger and above-- and my computer's OSX is a 10.3.9 Panther. At the Apple store, I was told that I could buy a 10.4 Tiger upgrade for $80 from Amazon and maybe prolong the life of my machine another year and a half.

Upgrading to Apple's current Leopard operating system isn't an option apparently, so my other two Apple alternatives are to buy a brand-new Mac laptop with Leopard already installed (starting at $1000) or wait until the summer when the newest operating system, Snow Leopard, is expected to be released.

Yes, I know that three years in a lifetime in the frenetic world of software development and that there have been two major upgrades since Panther was the latest and greatest, but really, how customer-friendly-- not to mention environmentally-friendly-- is it to create an operating system that won't run on hardware that's only a few years old?

It's interesting that Apple has chosen to name its operating systems after endangered big cats, and somehow, apt. In a world with overflowing landfills, where Third World children "recycle" the heavy metals from First World computers, this kind of planned obsolescence isn't merely annoying-- it's virtually obscene.

Facing Fear

2009-02-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

I first heard about the February 22nd terrorist attack on Cairo’s Khan-el-Khalil market when a friend called from Germany. Hours passed in a daze before I went online and found more details about the attack on the famous market, where I had spent a memorable Sunday evening, just last winter with my son, Michael, and his Egyptian friends.

I have a photograph from that night. We were gathered around a tiny brass table laden with water bottles, small teapots and glasses. We were inside the bazaar at a table in the alley outside Fishawi’s Café. Beside each person, save me, was a sheesha, or standing water pipe. In the photograph are my son and his friend Sharif, who lives in London but had come to Cairo for a family wedding; his sister, Yasmin; and their step-sister, Natalie, as well as a family friend, Steve, who was a university student in Pennsylvania. Also at the table were Khaled, a high school friend of Sharif’s whom my son had met in London, and Khaled’s friend Waled.

In a way, we were there because of Khaled, who had offered to show Michael around if he came to Cairo and graciously included me in his invitation. Since elementary school, I had wanted to see the pryramids and as a college student, I had studied Egyptian history as part of my major in Middle Eastern Studies. At that time, I couldn’t afford to travel to Egypt but later, when I could, the country always seemed a little too dangerous to visit, especially with two children in tow, especially after the terrorist attack in Luxor. But as I approached 50, I realized that it was time to take a few calculated risks. Egypt was at the top of my list of dream destinations, the place I would immediately hop on a plane to see if I ever got a terminal diagnosis. So why wait? Going to Egypt meant confronting not only a fear of terrorism but also more personal fears, of being raped, which I very nearly had been while traveling as a young woman in another North African country, and fear of getting sick. My intrepid son offered to come along but a sudden spike in airfares delayed our plan for a year. When Michael met Khaled the following Novemeber, the timing suddenly seemed serendipitous. A fortnight later, we had booked our trip, arriving in Cairo shortly after my 51st and my son’s 27th birthdays, at the beginning of my sabbatical year.

Sharif and his sisters turned out to have booked the same flight to Cairo. On our arrival, Sharif showed us where to get a visa and negotiated a taxi to take us to the boutique hotel we’d found on-line. After checking in, we met Khaled across the road at the local Gar, an Egyptian fast food chain.

Michael and I both noticed the Viagra sandwich on the menu but were too embarrassed to ask what it was. Khaled ordered hummus (garbanzo bean dip), tabbouli (cracked wheat salad), baba ghanoush (eggplant dip), falafel (garbanzo bean patties) and fool, (fava bean dip) to go with the hot pita bread. I was nervous about getting Pharaoh’s Revenge, but relaxed a little when Khaled pointed out that in a place this busy, the food wasn’t sitting around and was more likely to be fresh and hot, which it turned out to be, as well as tasty.

Late the next afternoon, Khaled took Michael, Steve, and me to see the pyramids. We drove through the back streets near the famous tombs, eventually stopping at a stable. It had been years since I’d been on a horse and to say that I was anxious would be an understatement. Fortunately, when my horse started trotting off on its own, the guide grabbed the reins, slowed its pace and steered us in the right direction. Gradually, I got used to the rhythmic gait of the horse moving through the sand. I started to relax and really enjoy the amazing scene. There were no cars, no buses, no houses, no pedestrians even, just horses and camels, with or without riders, the pyramids to our right, and elsewhere, desert as far as the eye could see. Despite the occasional dune buggy whizzing by, there was a timeless quality, as though nothing much had changed in the past century, We headed up to a ridge where a weathered man handed us cups of hot tea as we watched the sun set. Then back through the falling darkness, the guide now managing not only my horse but also Steve’s, which kept heading in the wrong direction. While my son rode peacefully alongside us, Khaled had disappeared. No, he hadn’t gotten bored with our leisurely pace; his horse, eager for dinner, had galloped all the way back to the stable.

For our own dinner, we headed to Andrea’s, where we met up with Sharif, his brother and sisters and several of their friends, male and female, most of whom had gone to Cairo’s American High School. Before reaching the main entrance, we passed women baking pita bread over an open fire and rows of rotisserie chickens being roasted outdoors. The food was simple but cooked to perfection. In addition to moist chicken and hot pita bread, the 12 of us shared mezzes, or appetizers, including filo dough triangles stuffed with spinach, grape leaves filled with rice and ground meat, grilled eggplant, meatballs, French fries, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, drumsticks, and various dips including yogurt, baba ghanoush and hummus.

The following day, Michael and I visited the Pyramids again on our own and took each other’s pictures in front of the Sphinx. We toured the Egyptian Museum and saw some of the finds from King Tutankhamun’s tomb; we had seen some of the same funerary items 25 years earlier at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum, although my son, who would have two at the time, had no memory of them. Later that afternoon, we had Cleopatra Cosmopolitans, made with hibiscus instead of cranberry juice, in the bar at The Mena House Hotel; we could see one of the pyramids through the window. For dinner, Khaled took us to a traditional Egyptian restaurant, Abu El Sid, where my favorite dish was the Circassian chicken, a mound of rice and chicken blanketed in walnut sauce.

It was near midnight that evening when Khaled found a parking place near the Khan El-Khalili souk, or bazaar, which dates back to 1382 A.D. There were four of us, including Khaled’s friend, Waled; Sharif, his sisters, and Steve would meet us later at Fishawi’s, a café in the bazaar which has been open 24/7 since 1773, with the exception of one day during WWII. Many of the shops in the bazaar were shuttered by this time on a Sunday evening, but a surprising number were open. They were clustered together by type: perfume sellers, clothing vendors, spice merchants. We wandered around for a while, watching a man making fettir, Egyptian crepes, and stopping in various shops for a quick peek. I was surprised by how many things seemed to be made in China.

At a perfume store, we checked out a variety of scents: from amber to gardenia to blends with names like Moonlight Garden. The clerk insisted that the perfumes were all natural, no alcohol, and put a lighter near an open jar to prove it. The shelves of the shop were lined with delicate blown glass bottles, some in the shape of animals, like the elephant that Michael bought for his girlfriend. I chose a small curved vial, with swirls of gold and red and 50 ml of Cleopatra’s Secret, which smelled of roses and spices.

Sharif phoned to say that they were on their way. When we got to Fishawi’s, the café itself was full, so the waiter simply grabbed a few chairs and a tiny table and set us up in the adjacent alley, adding another tiny table and more chairs when the rest of the group arrived. Each table was just big enough to hold one of the brass trays the waiters carried on their shoulders then set down with a flourish. We ordered soft drinks or tea-- I choose hot karkadeh, hibiscus infusion-- and everyone but me ordered a waterpipe with tobacco flavored with apple or watermelon. I would have tried one but I had arrived in Egypt with a cold that I didn't want to worsen.

After chatting for a while, Sharif led his sisters, Steve and I off on a shopping expedition. In one three-story shop, I watched Sharif and Yasmine haggled in fluent Arabic for a dumbek, or hand drum. They also bargained on behalf of Natalie, who had found a snakeskin handbag and a couple of chunky bracelets that would look great back in London. Steve thought he’d like several statues of the Egyptian gods to take back to friends in the States. When he asked how much they were, Sharif explained that Steve had to first decide what he was willing to pay for them and then they could start the bargaining process. Although I had studied Arabic at university for more than two years, I understood virtually nothing of the conversation but it clearly involved more than prices; there was a back and forth banter with smiles and laughter. In fact, the verbal interaction seemed to be the main point, with the actual exchange of purchased objects and Egyptain pounds a mere after-thought.

The next morning my son and I left for Luxor, where we visited the ancient temple complex at Karnak, with its statue of the lion-headed goddess, Sekhmet, tucked away in side shrine, and the temple of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, carved into the desert rock, both monuments so enormous that it was hard to believe they were built by ordinary human beings. We saw descendants of the builders, dressed in long, traditional robes, living in mud-brick houses near the papyrus fields; the scene could have been from the distant past, save the ubiquitous cell phones. One evening, we ran into friends from Stanford, who suggested a hot air balloon ride over the city of the dead.

Waking early to meet the van on our last full day in Luxor, I was nervous and excited. Taking a hot air balloon definitely involves some risk, but I rationalized that the Egyptian government has a vested interest in keeping the number of crashes low. As it turned out, our pilot had previously flown jets for Egypt Air but had switched to ballooning to spend more time with his family. I tend to get airsick easily and I’m also afraid of heights. But my excitement over having a bird’s eye view of the monuments we had previously explored on foot won out over my anxiety, which proved mostly groundless. Perhaps because the ascent was slow, vertigo never hit and the only wave of queasiness I felt came at the end, when the basket hit the ground, and passed quickly. Overall, the ride was exhilarating.

I’m glad I took the chance and went to Egypt. Perhaps because I was an older woman, the mother of a grown man, I was accorded a certain level of respect, and not only by my son’s friends. Michael, who is engaging and genuinely interested in the lives of other people, was treated with respect and friendliness. Sometimes people assumed that I was my son’s wife, rather than his mother, which we both found hilarious. I had only one creepy moment, when someone touched my upper arm in passing; I turned and shouted “Imshee,!” Egyptian Arabic for “Go away!” but the offender had already disappeared into the crowd. Like every other tourist, we were accosted every few yards as we walked along Luxor’s main thoroughfare by men offering to sell us a boat ride, a taxi ride, a carriage ride, but a polite “Laa Chukran,” or “No, thanks” in Arabic was sufficient. I never felt in danger, but then again, there were soldiers everywhere, particularly in Luxor. Nor did I get sick, although I was careful to drink only bottled water or hot tea and avoided raw produce and dairy products. My only culinary regret was that I didn’t try the milk pudding, one of Egypt’s national dishes.

There is always a certain amount of risk involved in traveling, as in life, and therein lies some of the excitement. For me, traveling is a way of encountering other ways of being, thinking and doing, as well as a way to gain perspective on my own life. Often, I return with a deeper appreciation of what I have, both as an individual and as an American.

My decision to travel to Egypt was also an opportunity to face my fears-- of political violence, of personal assault, injury and illness, even my fear of heights-- to acknowledge them, manage them and move through them, and in the process stretch my capacity to do so again, in future situations.

The whole point of terrorism, whether political or personal, is simply to terrify, to cut away the ground beneath our feet, to rip away the illusion of safety that allows us to venture out into the world. While I’m not suggesting a vacation in a war zone, if we let terrorists determine where and when and how we move in the world, then we are surrendering our inalienable rights. Sometimes fighting back means taking up arms, other times it’s simply a matter of living life: getting on the bus in London the day after 7/7, heading back to work on Wall Street after 9/11, or sitting down for a cup of tea at Fishawi’s Cafe in Cairo’s Khan el-Khalil market.

Following the Thread

2009-01-23T14:01:00.000-08:00

Ever since I was a girl sitting on the front porch with my best friend, the two of us making clothes for Barbie and troll dolls, I’ve nurtured a secret wish to be a fashion designer. When the opportunity came to take a step in the direction of at least exploring that childhood ambition, I went for it, signing up for a week-long course at the London College of Fashion. Doing so required me to set aside my qualms about the garment industry, fears about my finances, and an amorphous guilt over indulging in something so seemingly vacuous as fashion, to follow the thread of my own fascination, wherever it might lead.

The course began at 10 a.m. on a Monday in mid-December, on the top floor of a building near Oxford Circus. Despite the number of students enrolled in this week of short courses, the college’s heat had been off all weekend. Vanda, our teacher or tutor as the English would say, coped as best she could with the freezing conditions, giving us a tour of the ground floor (and much warmer) library, followed by an early lunch. We spent most of the afternoon back in the library, exploring possible research topics; we had to choose three by the end of the first day, which we would present to our classmates at the end of the first week.

After class, some of us walked to the fashion bookstore R.D. Franks, where I found a book about the designer I’d chosen to study, Vivienne Westwood, a Brit whose work combines Edwardian tailoring with a fondness for the outrageous. (She and her partner Malcolm McLaren, manger of the Sex Pistols, were at one point fined for “exposing to public view an indecent exhibition.”)

For someone as word-oriented as I am, whose idea of research is to read a lot, it was an interesting departure to focus on the visual, to search magazines not for articles but for images to create the mood boards, which were the jumping-off point for design development sheets that led to finished illustrations.

Day 2: I dressed as warmly as I possible, with long underwear over my tights and Ugg boots on my feet. The room was still freezing but at least I wasn’t. We spent the morning learning design development by taking an item from our bag and using its colors and shapes as inspiration for clothing and accessories. I pulled out my skeleton room key with a red trapezoidal rubber tag and eventually had a page with drawings of shoes whose edges matched that of the keys, a suitcase the same shape as the tag (“Sweet,” Vanda said approvingly), and, at the teacher’s suggestion, a red T-shirt dress with an enormous black key on the front of it. The afternoon was devoted to learning some of the basics of fashion illustration, beginning with how to quickly draw a proportional “8-head” human body from a piece of paper folded into eighths. “Give yourselves the gift of a life-drawing class,” Vanda urged us all.

In addition to reading about Vivienne Westwood, I decided to pay a visit to her boutique on Conduit Street. Despite the swarm of Japanese tourists, I was enchanted by the mix of bright-colored rubber heels and tailored plaid suits, the reproduction T-shirts from the designer’s 1970s Let It Rock shop, and the whimsical house logo, a royal orb in the middle of a flying saucer (or one of Saturn’s rings?), on everything from cufflinks to pendants. I appreciated the kindness of the clerk who said of the too-snug wrap dress I was trying on, “It’s made in Italy, so it runs small,” as he went off to fetch the next size up. If I didn’t live in 70-degree California, I would have been tempted to splurge on the purple wool knit number, with its ruffled neckline that managed to be flatteringly plunging but cut so that it didn’t need a camisole underneath. As it was, I succumbed to the charm of a pair of red jelly flats with ankle straps that took forever to put on or take off and had just a hint of fetish to them. After all, one of the subjects I was investigating was bondage’s influence on fashion.

Day 3: I woke up late, only minutes before we were supposed to meet at the Victoria and Albert museum, but managed to arrive at the Tsarist exhibit before the rest of the class. The exhibit was small but there were some intriguing military jackets that could easily be adapted to the 21st century. More poignant was the sweet little coat worn by Tsar Peter II, who died while still in his teens after ruling only three years. Called a “soul-warmer,” the coat was once scarlet but now a faded salmon hue, its removable sleeves tied to the shoulders with matching ribbons.

In an adjacent gallery was an array of couture gowns, including Westwood’s “Watteau” shot silk and taffeta evening dress in sea green with deep violet trim, one of her corset dresses with the boning inside, a style which would suit my willowy daughter very well. From there the class proceeded to another exhibit, Fashion V. Sport. Interestingly, the featured Westwood design included a felt hood that covered everything but the mouth and chin, with two vertical eye holes rimmed in copper metalwork, a reference to a 1965 Edward Mann hat in another concurrent exhibit on the Cold War. The most fantastic piece though was a sparkly extravaganza by Dior: grey tracksuit leggings topped with a fluorescent green corset and tutu embellished with sparkles, vintage white lace undergarments and a tangle of silk lacings.

While the other students took off for the shops in nearby Knightsbridge, Vanda and I had coffee in the museum dining room. Afterwards, I headed to Dover Street Market for another of our shop reports. My favorite piece of clothing in this multi-story consortium was a black taffeta skirt, which would have been rather formal if not for the two giant pairs of lips, edged in pleats, cut out through both sides of the fabric; they would like great with a red slip underneath. I also liked the market’s signature black T-shirts with their black heart-shaped appliqué of two black eyes.

The afternoon class was missing several students, presumably captivated by the post-financial collapse, pre-Christmas bargain frenzy. Vanda showed a film of a runway show by a Japanese designer whose work was inspired by the igloo at the back of the catwalk, the colors of the polar sky, and the region’s fauna. The take-home message was that anything can inspire a collection: all that is required is a fascinated imagination.

That night my daughter and I went to Selfriges, a department store chain which is somewhere between Saks and Macy’s, for another of my assignments: to choose a designer represented there and try on a piece of clothing. The street-level window had a scene featuring Alexander McQueen’s vision of winter with a ballerina dressed in snow white and blood red and another figure with a jeweled headdress and huge red cloak, so I decided to check out his ready-to-wear upstairs. What the hell, I thought as I took a crinkly scarlet ball-gown costing 2,025 GPB from the rack. The off-the-shoulder puff sleeves and empire waist flattered my decllotage, but under the voluminous (and heavy!) skirt, the rest of my body disappeared.

Day 4: Today we were all hard at work, leafing through magazines, cutting, drawing, pasting and printing things off the Internet. By 2 p.m., when I’d finally finished my third mood board, I was so light-headed that I had to stop for lunch. The next part of the process was to do a design development sheet for each mood board.

My bondage board included black and white images of strappy sandals, a Dolce and Grabbano dress with “chastity belt,” a corset and laced gloves, all cut out with tabs like paper doll clothes and mounted on a red rubbery surface. For the design development sheet, I had already sketched some pastel silk skirts and tops with corset-like lacing but Vanda pushed me to do something raw with the bondage theme. For my finished illustration, I came up with a red satin strapless, tight, bandage-style mini-dress, with overlapping layers of fabric like lacings, worn with black espadrilles.

At an inexpensive fabric store that night, I got samples of bright green and hot pink silks for my colors of India project, along with a crinkly silk sample which would work for the strapless bondage dress if it were in red rather than pink.

Day 5:. In researching the use of color in India (my third topic), I learned that while there are regional differences, Hindu culture generally equates bright colors with youth and fertility, two qualities which brides hopefully epitomize, hence the opulence of Indian bridal wear. As women age, they are expected to wear more muted colors and use less embellishments in keeping with a belief that older people should be less interested in the affairs of this world (a view which is found in other cultures as well). While my mood board included magazine images of hennaed hands and Bollywood stars, the design development sheet focused on images of the ornate, close-fitting, sleeveless or short-sleeved tops worn with saris, clipped from the pages of an South Asian wedding magazine. I had the idea of creating a line of corsets in such saturated solid colors as emerald, tumeric, lapis and magenta found in Indian bridal wear and Bollywood gowns. I added a few sketches of corsets and the fabric samples I had gotten the previous evening, but ran out of time to do a finished illustration.

The work I was proudest of was on the topic I had put the most effort into: Vivienne Westwood. For the design development sheet, I cut and pasted pictures that showed the details of her tailored clothing. But how could I take this quintessential British look and make it relate to the culture of my country? How could I show the source of my inspiration without appearing to copy? In a flash, I thought of the colors of New Mexico, where I had spent so much time: the bright blue clarity of the sky, the deep green of the forests on Taos Mountain, the blue-violet of the mountain itself, and decided to incorporate those. I also liked the sexiness of Westwood’s clothes, so I took the waterfall frill from the neck of a blouse and put it on the back of the pine green pencil skirt, to highlight the booty. For the final illustration, I created a background collage of Southwestern colors, and then added the finished sketches.

Looking back on my week in the world of fashion, it’s too early to tell whether it will lead to a career change. What I did experience was a sharpening of my observation skills, an expansion of my range as a visual artist and the encouragement which is so vital for anyone in the arts. Vanda’s enthusiasm was infectious and I started noticing and recording the little details, the fleeting moments, which might serve as future inspiration for a collage or painting, if not a dress design. The rows of star-shaped twinkling lights in fuchsia, green and clear hanging from an office window, the wall sconces reminiscent of medieval torches at a café called Sacred, the intricate cut of a gothic-black silk blouse at All Saints, my favorite British chain. I’m seeing not only cut and color, fit and fabric, but also the connections between inspiration and final product, between past and present, the invisible web of fashion as an art form, an art which each of us participates in whenever we get dressed.

Lingerie and Ruby Slippers

2008-11-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

Late this summer I attended my first lingerie trade show, Curves, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Much as I loved working the show, one of the highlights of my day at the fair had nothing to do with undergarments, although it had everything to do with sex appeal: namely my visit to the Christian LouBoutin boutique, home of the signature red-soled stilettos.

I have a passion for shoes, which I seem to have inherited from my daughter. Shoes should be either fun or beautiful or both—blue Mary Janes made from Brazilian rubber, sneakers of silver kimono fabrics, bejeweled copper sandals. Unlike my tall daughter who favors heels that put her on a par with her 6’3” brother, I’ve always insisted on shoes that I can walk in, that is, flats. But that may be changing.

I was sitting in the Double Helix bar with my assistant, Rachel, having a quick lunch of Cosmopolitans, pate on toast and mocha cake when I noticed the shoe store a few yards away. Although I had never seen even a single pair outside the pages of a magazine, I recognized the boutique, named after its French designer, at once. The prices were as high as I expected, well beyond my usual splurge, but the red-soled shoes were also more exquisite than I had imagined. Beautiful but barely functional. Although there were a few token pairs of pointy-toed flats, not even these looked comfortable. No, this was part of the beauty as torture, “no pain, no gain,” aesthetic. As a young feminist, I hadn’t seen the point. Now, with two bad knees and chronic heel pain, I didn’t dare to even try on a pair lest their gorgeousness sweep aside my common sense.

There is one pair in particular that haunts me, a pair of burgundy patent heels that seem like the couture version of Dorothy’s ruby slippers in “The Wizard of Oz.” For me, ruby slippers are a metaphor for my Kansas childhood, my fascination with the faraway, the maelstroms of life, and my belief that in the end, we come home to ourselves. In the third grade, I had my first and only starring role as the Wicked Witch of the West (she who melts away while trying to steal the magical slippers) in a neighborhood production. Now, as an adult, I keep a photograph of a pair of sparkly red high heels to remind me that I can always click my heels three times and (with a swipe of my credit card) find my way home to San Francisco.

Since coming back from Vegas, I seem to be seeing pictures of red-soled shoes everywhere. And I’ve learned that CB as well as other famous shoes designers have actually created crystal-studded ruby slippers for the upcoming 70th anniversary of the movie. Although I’m not ready to fly to Vegas just to buy a pair of shoes that I couldn’t stand in without pain and that cost nearly a month’s rent, I have realized that these lovely heels do have something in common with undergarments after all. Just as a well-fitting bra can compensate for gravity’s effects, so too can a pair of stilettos. And then there is the argument that I may not be 25 or even 38, but maybe I’m still young enough to learn how to walk in high heels, and certainly more able to now than I will be at 70.

In the meantime, in my dreams, I’m painlessly and pertly prancing down the yellow brick road in ruby stilettos, in absolutely no hurry to get anywhere.

Twenty Years

2008-11-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

How bad will climate change be? Is it irreversible? And if so, how much time do we have before we're all in really big trouble?

For one answer to these questions, turn to the last page of the November, 2008, U.K. "Harper's Bazaar," where British designer Vivienne Westwood, she of the famed corset dress, plugs her "Art Manifesto" (www.activeresistane.co.uk). Click to enter and look to the far right for an interview by Decca Aitkenhead with Jame Lovelock (reprinted from "The Guardian," March 1, 2008). The 'maverick" climate scientist is best-known as the father of the Gaia Hypothesis, the theory that our planet is "a self-regulating super-organism," an idea which, according to the article, "forms the basis of almost all climate science."

What is Lovelock's answer to the questions above? Bad, very bad. By 2020, less than a dozen years from now, he expects extreme weather to become normal. And it's too late to do anything about it.

In a nutshell, Lovelocks thinks we're fucked, pardon my French. When the interviewer asks what he would do if he were her, the octogenarian answers, "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky, it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

From an individual perspective, his advice makes perfect sense, regardless of global warming. None of us knows how many hours we have left. Most of us plan our lives assuming that we will wake up tomorrow morning and the next and the next for decades to come, but most of us also know that this assumption is just that, an assumption that can be shattered by an earthquake, an aneurysm, a terrorist attack. If nothing else, enjoying life is an antidote to the fear of our individual mortality.

But collective mortality is another matter. As the mother of two adult children who are just beginning to carve their way in the world, who have always talked about the children they someday hope to have, my stomach clenches reading Lovelock's words. How does one plan for a future of mass chaos? And yet this is already the case in much of Africa where climate changes such as desertification and viruses like HIV have combined with human greed and hatred to produce large-scale death and destruction. While the rest of us might prefer to think that Africa's fate is far removed from our own, Hollywood is already busy imagining what might happen when the icecaps melt.

So how do we reconcile the need to live our everyday lives, with their individual dramas of hopes and dreams, loves and losses, with the knowledge that we may all be living in the equivalent of Darfur sooner rather than later, in this life and not in some future circle of hell? Perhaps Lovelock is right and it's already too late, but it seems to me that we have a moral obligation to try to stop the rising tides. It's time to put the environmental crisis, not the credit crisis or the Middle East crisis, front and center on the international agenda. And at the same time, try to enjoy each and every moment.

The Real Rapture

2008-10-17T11:25:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to Beauty. The beauty of a small pug dog snoring softly beside me, The pleasantly heavy warmth of the down comforter, its red sateen cover glowing in the morning light. The scent of roses on the nearby table. The taste of strong hot tea with milk. The music of Snow Patrol urging me to forget the world outside.

And yet I also woke up to the world outside, remembering a broadcast I’d heard just yesterday. The G7 had met and there was talk that in bailing out their financial institutions, the Europeans had just blown their environmental budget. Each country had its predictable sob story as to why it couldn’t meet its target for lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Poland cried that it was too poor to revamp its Soviet-era coal plants, while Germany wanted to protect its car manufacturers. The Brits proposed paying developing nations to not cut down their rain forests, in lieu of lowering its own carbon footprint. At least they all agree that global warming is a man-made crisis and are committed to some level of action, unlike the powers-that-be in this country who are just getting to the point of admitting that climate change is happening. And while humanity dithers, the polar ice caps and the Greenland Ice Sheet continue to melt, drop by drop into the oceans, causing them to slowly rise, and eventually flood the coastal cities where much of humanity now lives.

There are some who view this as good news. The New Agers hope that collapse will bring on a more sustainable civilization. And if not, they’ll tell you that since “we’re spiritual beings having a human experience,” what happens on this planet doesn’t really matter anyway. And then there are the Christian fundamentalists who are looking forward to the Apocalypse because they’re so convinced that in the “Rapture,” or the Second Coming, Christ will beam them up to the Pearly Gates. It never seems to occur to those who take pleasure in shooting wolves from the air that God might think twice about allowing into Heaven those who managed to turn the Garden of Eden into Hell on Earth, even, or especially, if they did it in Her name.

If we were not in such a hurry to transcend this world, perhaps we could slow down enough to see its beauty and be moved to protect it-- out of love. There is the immense beauty of the disappearing Amazon Rainforest, the melting Greenland Ice Sheet and the dying Great Barrier Reef, but there is also the everyday beauty that still exists in even the most impoverished or frenetic of lives: the sight of the crescent new moon, the quiet sound of snow falling, the bittersweetness of dark chocolate, the scent of wild fennel growing along the bay, the warmth of a friend’s embrace, the ecstasy of a lover's caress, the heart-opening beauty of a child’s smile. If we could see how each of our lives is shot through with beauty, perhaps we could learn to cherish each moment and each other as well. And that would be real rapture.

Whatever Happened to Compassion?

2008-10-03T20:46:00.000-07:00

I listened throughout the debate between Vice-Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin for the topic of abortion to come up, but the interviewer focused on economic and international issues, denying Governor Palin the chance to state again her ardent belief that even incest and rape survivors should be forced to bear their rapist’s babies, that even if her own daughter were raped, she would want her to “choose life.”

When I was raped at 16, I chose life—my life. And thanks to the passage of Roe. v. Wade the previous year, I was able to choose to save my own life.

At that time, there was no word for acquaintance rape. Rape happened when a strange man, usually of a different race, jumped out of the bushes with a knife, not when a co-worker with coloring like your mother’s got you so drunk you blacked out and then “took advantage of you.” Like a good Catholic girl, I blamed myself, my naivete, my drunken state, my midriff-baring top, not to mention the fact that I had already lost my virginity. As though any or all of those factors negated my right to bodily integrity.

I couldn’t tell my parents. And I knew at a gut level that if I did, I would be blamed, and that if they called the police, I would be the only one on trial. Alone, I found my way to a health clinic where I got the morning-after pill. When that didn’t bring on my period, I arranged for a menstrual extraction at five weeks, one week short of the then-six week waiting period for a pregnancy test. I’ll never know if I was actually pregnant, but I wasn’t going to wait the extra week. The doctor who did the procedure was the coldest I have ever met, but I am nevertheless deeply grateful to him. Ten years passed before I could acknowledge that I had been raped. Thirty-five years this month have passed since the rape and never have I had one single moment of guilt about my decision to choose my life.

I have two healthy, amazing adult children. No woman should be forced to bear a child she does not want, no matter what the circumstances of conception. But if that woman conceived as a result of rape or incest, forcing her to bear that child is beyond unconscionable.

To say that a rape or incest survivor should “choose life,” may sound noble to some, but few wish to imagine the gritty reality behind Governor Palin’s statement. But ponder this, dear reader. A girl of 11 or 13 or 15 has been impregnated by her father/grandfather/brother/uncle/cousin. Do not try to envision the horrors that this girl has already lived through, the excruciating pain of having her young body violated, most likely again and again, the broken heart that comes from having one’s basic trust devastated, the perhaps subtle neurological damage caused by this trauma, which will impact virtually every aspect of her life for decades to come. Now imagine the usual nine months of pregnancy, with its myriad physical discomforts, and the agonizing pain of childbirth-- difficult but ultimately worthwhile challenges for adult women who want a child but pure torture for those who do not. And after childbirth, what will this abusive family choose for this girl? Whisk away the baby to be adopted or keep the baby, to be raised alongside its mother, perhaps used as a hostage to force her continued compliance?

Whatever happened to compassion?

And for those who look to the Bible for their answers, I find it hard to believe that the compassionate Jesus of the New Testament would agree with Governor Palin that the innocent should be punished in a cycle of violence without end.

Return to Another Planet

2008-09-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Here I am again, back at the Anaconda Bar, in the El Monte Sagrado hotel in Taos, New Mexico, listening to Jimmy Stadler and Don Conoscenti playing “Moon River,” which they’ve dedicated to the bartenders Dexter and Rushan. A woman walks past wearing a bejeweled T-shirt with the words, “Wild West.” My mind drifts to earlier conversation in which a local mentioned that the midwife here packs a 357 Magnum under her front seat (for the rattlesnakes?). I thought to myself, “Honey, you are in the Wild West!” As opposed to Santa Fe, or “Fantase,” as artist Felipe Ortega calls the city an hour south of here, land of velvet broomstick skirts, cowboy boots and Wild West T-shirts.

The café gallery where I was so inspired on my last trip has closed but the friendships I made within those four walls seem to have generally survived. And the surge in creativity that I experienced before has happened again, albeit not as strong as before. I feel the absence of what Julia Cameron calls a “fuse lighter,” the person whose enthusiastic support of our artwork fuels our own creative fires.

While I’ve been somewhat less productive this visit (5 paintings instead of 12), I’ve done more exploring. I’ve seen the awesome Rio Grande Gorge and the bridge that crosses it, the second highest cantilevered bridge in the U.S., and the Earthships, a fanciful term for the housing development outside of town employing sustainable rammed earth construction methods and recycled materials, notably old tires. I’ve soaked in the mud bath and iron pool at Ojo Caliente, one of the oldest hot springs in the country. I discovered that I’m allergic to some part of the juniper plant, although I’ve had no trouble imbibing gin and tonics. And most nights of the week, I’ve gone dancing to music played by bands both local (Tijerina from Albuquerque) and international (MindFlow, Brazilian progressive rock).

I’ve gotten more used to driving my Beetle down dirt roads and, ironically, being out in the country has encouraged me to embrace my inner glamour puss, thanks to Eliza, owner of The Muse, an eco-lingerie shop. I’ve also felt myself slow down here, feeling my body and my emotions more, a healing process that continues to unfold.

And then there is the sacred Taos Mountain, which exerts a gentle but inexorable pull. I am not surprised when another local tells me that beneath the mountain are metal deposits so dense that they can be detected from space by U.S .government satellites. I too, am relieved when he goes on to say that, fortunately, the Red Willow people of Taos Pueblo aren’t about to let anyone close enough to the mountain to investigate.

When I was here before, more than one person told me that the mountain either accepts or rejects newcomers. In the three weeks since I arrived this time, I’ve been trying to guess how she feels about me. The night my glasses break, followed by my digital camera and new sunglasses disappearing, I thought that might be a sign that she wanted me to leave. Then a woman from Taos Pueblo told me that the mountain accepts each in its own way, which gave me some hope; the camera and sunglasses resurface, the glasses get fixed.

Despite the complaints by old-timers that the town has changed and that it’s almost impossible to make a living, for me as an artist/writer with virtually no corporate experience, Taos seems to have more possibilities than the overcrowded metropolis of San Jose/San Francisco/Oakland (its official name). Perhaps it’s the wide-open spaces and big skies,, or that so many people here are also in the arts, or even that housing is a whole lot less expensive.

Other things, like drinks in this bar, which caters to tourists, are only slightly less expensive than at home. Of course, it’s all relative; to my son who lives in London, everything in the Bay Area is cheap. The upside is that unlike many small towns which wallow in provincialism, Taos has a uniqueness which draws visitors from all over the world, so that the person sitting next to you at the bar could just as easily be from Sydney as from Denver.

Unlike my last visit, where I sat in the Anaconda sipping a prickly pear margarita and feeling like an alien, I feel more like a local now. Instead of watching others, I’m participating, flirting with the bartenders, laughing with my friend, and dancing (but not the two-step). Instead of black, I’m wearing an aqua floral silk garment, one which is considered a dress here and in L.A. but a nightgown in Silicon Valley.

As Don sings “Beautiful Valley,” my heart resonates, and I wonder again if a girl from the Valley of Semi-Consciousness can find happiness in the valley of the Sacred Mountain.

A week later, I’m back in the San Francisco Bay Area, driving along Ashby Avenue in Berkeley. The stoplight turns red and I glance up, only to have my breath taken away by the sight of the hills dotted with houses and the blue sky streaked with clouds. A block or two later and to my right I see the Bay glittering in the distance, with the Pacific Ocean stretching beyond.

Where is home?

June, 2008

Artist Statement: Forbidden series

2008-06-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

As the name implies, the series “Forbidden: Women’s Lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban” explores the sequestered life of Afghani women under the Taliban regime, as an example of how fundamentalist religion restricts and reduces the lives of women in the name of maintaining men’s honor. The work was inspired by a variety of sources, including Eve Ensler’s book, “Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir,” the movie “The Kite Runner” and the work of RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, but also reflects the artist’s long-standing interests in woman in Islam, the subject of her undergraduate thesis at the University of California, Berkeley, and the intersection of religion and women’s bodies.

Judith created the series during a retreat in Taos, New Mexico. Their genesis was a surprise to the artist, who bought several sheets of handmade papers at a local shop, intending to create a piece based on New Mexico, but found something entirely different emerging.

“Forbidden Self” is part of a larger series of yoni (vagina) paintings. The image of the woman locked in her house is a metaphor for the locking in of women’s sexual desire. The full moon, in the position of the clitoris, represents the potential for pleasure that women are born with, a potential which is seen as threatening to male dominance and too often ripped away under a practice euphemistically referred to as “female circumcision,” not only in Afghanistan but in other parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

As in the other pieces, the windows in "Forbidden View" are blackened, a Taliban rule ostensibly made so that no unrelated man can see the women inside the house, but in fact keeping women from looking out. In this case, one young woman breaks the rules, standing on rocks to peek out at the full moon.

“Forbidden Knowledge” is inspired by the secret girls schools set up by RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) after the Taliban outlawed female education.

Among the many things that women and girls were not allowed to do under the Taliban was eat ice cream, because this pleasure, like others, was seen as lascivious; “Forbidden Pleasure” refers to the secret ice cream parlors which Ensler describes in her memoir.

“Forbidden Love” depicts a woman holding a love letter, which resulted in her being stoned. This last piece was also inspired by a conversation overheard in the cafe/gallery in Taos, New Mexico. A local woman who was stationed in Iraq in 2007 with the Army National Guard described seeing an Iraqi woman being stoned, a horrific event which both she and her platoon were not allowed to interfere with or stop.

Shapeshifter

2008-05-09T21:25:00.001-07:00

Like a cat,
She grows talons
Sharp enough to tear
Human flesh.
Her body elongates,
Sleek black fur,
The gold of her eyes
Gleams in the darkness
As she bounds away
Rider and Ridden.

Medea, Another Version

2008-05-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Medea,
Priestess of Athena,
Violated in Her temple precincts
In the name of Poseidon
By invaders whose God of the Sea
Usurped Aphrodite's realm.

Medea,
Driven mad
By visions of
Writhing snakes
Forcing apart her lips.

Medea,
Granted revenge by the Goddess.
A crown of sacred serpents
The gift of turning to stone
Any man who comes too near.

Medea,
Honored by Athena
Who wears her frightening visage
Upon Her breastplate.

Medea,
Her gaping mouth
Every rape victim's
Unheard
Scream.

Desire: The Acrostic Poem

2008-05-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Demented
Emissary
Setting
Irresistible
Reactions
E-Motion

1/11/04

Raw

2008-05-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Dressed in a navy blue suit,
she sits at the counter,
eating ikura sushi.
In her mouth,
the primal dance
of life and death.
Orange fish eggs pop
on her tongue
like so many orgasms.

Hearthless

2008-05-08T00:21:00.000-07:00

We have no hearths, only television sets
and gourmet kitchens that no one cooks in.
Our fireplaces are but for show;
Our central heating has no center.
The sacred mystery of fire, unseen,
how soon forgotten,
As we sit in houses warmed by atoms split
and watch electrons dance.

A Mother's Fears

2008-05-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

Demeter,
Did you try to rein in Persephone,
prevent her from growing up,
keep her by your side for too long?
Was she abducted or did she run away?
Why were you so afraid?
Was Hades a motorcycle-riding,
black-leather-jacket-wearing,
impudent young god?
Did he sweet-talk your daughter,
sweep her off her feet?
Did he promise to take her to the stars,
but instead delivered Hell on earth?
And those pomegranate seeds,
Were they fruit or blood or children?
She would have stayed for her children's sake.

Sappho Preparing to Worship

2008-05-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

She sits at her vanity table,
Dressing her unruly black tresses
with olive oil and ivory combs.
Her body petite, almost frail,
Her belly soft with birth giving and age.
She darkens her lids with kohl,
Making her black eyes smolder.
Dabbing imported scent on
earlobes, wrists, the hollow of her throat,
the space between her breasts,
She thinks not of the Goddess
but of her lover's mouth.
Smoothing her fine white chiton,
she pulls her dark cloak on and
goes out into the night,
A priestess of Aphrodite's errand.

Published in SageWoman, No. 58, Summer 2002

Artistic Courage on Bali

2008-05-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was walking along the main road, in the town of Ubud, on the island of Bali, in Indonesia, when I stumbled on Bali Tirta Art Gallery. What drew me in was a colorful painting of a child sleeping on a bed of newspapers in front of a pile of boxes. As I slowly walked around the one-room gallery, I noticed a dozen or so paintings of the traditional landscape/beautiful women/ market scene genres. But what captured my attention were the large, brightly-colored acrylic paintings which, like the one of the sleeping boy, explored the underside of paradise. Tightly-cropped like a photo, with simple compositions and minimal but telling detail, these paintings were completely different from anything else I saw on the island.

A woman’s hands outstretched to receive a single 100,000 Indonesian rupiah note (worth about $11) from a man towering above her. A young boy with a cell phone looks down at the image on the screen of a man and woman having sexual intercourse. Two men standing next to each other, one of whom is picking the other’s pocket. A young child intently looking at a magazine, on the back cover of which a woman is posing suggestively. A girl sprawled on the ground, her eyes closed, face and arms lacerated, a teddy bear and torn bag nearby.

Mesmerized, I took a couple of photos to jog my memory, and called the number on the shop sign. A young woman offered to meet me the next morning at the gallery. When I arrived, she was already there with her husband and small son. The paintings were the work of her 21-year-old brother, Tirtayasa, who is still a student at the art institute in the island’s capital, Denpassar. The brother-in-law mentioned that the gallery would only be open for a few more months as the rent was so high.

The piece I was most drawn to was called “Girl with Pepsi,” which subtly comments on the changes global capitalism has had on the traditional way of life. A woman in Balinese dress holds a flower-filled offering basket made of coconut fronds and a Pepsi bottle, which is labeled with the words “holy water” in Balinese.

As a lover of beauty, I appreciate the talents of those who create traditional scenes of life on the Island of the Gods for visitors to take home. But it takes not only talent, but also courage and vision for an artist to depict those aspects of life which are less than idyllic and far from picturesque, especially when there is little or no financial incentive, and perhaps substantial financial risk, in doing so. And yet, this is what we expect of artists: an individual interpretation, an authentic expression of the larger truths that affect us all.

I hope that Tirtayasa and other artists like him receive the support they need to continue.

Dancing to Ecstasy

2008-04-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

We were on the Stanford campus, in a small room that used to be a nursery school classroom. Most of the people standing around were friends of the band or friends of friends. The female lead singer sang in Turkish but even if I understood Turkish, I doubt I could have made out the lyrics over the boy band’s driving rock beat. From the first chords, my body was in motion. After all, what else is live music, especially live rock and roll, for but to dance to? I looked around at the other people in the room, most of them a decade or two younger than me, as they stood, some swaying to the beat, others stock still. A few took pictures. It was as though they were watching a symphony concert or a televised event.

I had a sense of déjà vu to the Death Cab for Cutie concert I had attended a couple of summers earlier at the outdoor Greek Theatre in Berkeley. There, the number of people over 40 totaled about six, and I was perhaps the only one who wasn’t escorting a gaggle of teenaged children. The crowd was enthusiastic, cheering wildly after each song, singing along with some, but they seemed locked in their heads, or locked out of their bodies. I simply couldn’t fathom how they could just stand there so passively, with only the slightest movement. Were they all so afraid of being noticed? Of doing something other than what the rest of their peers were doing?

It reminded me of another concert I’d gone to a decade earlier in Boston. Roxette, a Swedish rock band, was performing in a small downtown theatre. Most of the audience, including my then-husband and I, were sitting in our seats, tapping our feet or moving our shoulders. Finally, the female singer, Marie Fredericksson, her voice admitting a tiniest bit of frustration, called out to the audience, “Do you wanna dance?” “Yes,” they responded. “Well then you have to stand up and move,” she said, giving us permission to stand in the narrow aisle and dance.

One definite advantage of being older is that I, for one, no longer care what the anonymous “they” think about me. If I want to dance, then I’m going to dance. I’ve always loved dancing, but when I was younger I was too self-conscious, too afraid of other people’s opinions to move to the music, especially without a partner. My husband was even more self-conscious, so for years, I sat on the sidelines, tapping my feet, wishing that I could move body and soul to the beat.

No wonder I felt as though I’d come home the very first time I attended a 5Rhythms class three years ago. I didn’t have to wait for someone to ask me to dance, didn't have to dance with anyone, although I could if we both wanted to. It was just me and the music, but it was also me moving in community. A community of like-minded souls. Finally, I had found my tribe, the dance tribe. Whenever I join a 5 Rhythms class, whether my weekly local or a workshop or a class in another city, in fact, whenever I attend any kind of free-form ecstatic dance class, be it contact improvisation or Soul Motion or Biodanza, I have that sense of connecting with my tribe, that sense of coming home.

But the practice of ecstatic dance was brought me far more than community. It has helped me to know myself on a deeper level, to connect with my emotions and let them flow through me with the movement and the music. Not only have I experienced deep connection with one person and with a whole roomful of people, I have healed deep pain, released deep grief and rage, and expressed deep joy. I have found a level of energy, vitality and stamina that belie my age, that I simply didn’t possess when I was young. And so tonight, when the band started playing, I dropped into my center, let go of any self-consciousness or fears of being judged, and moved to the music, blissfully riding the waves of sound to ecstasy.

Travels to Another Planet

2008-04-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

Two weeks into my sojourn in northern New Mexico, I was having an over-priced plate of blue cornmeal calamari and a prickly pear margarita at the Anaconda Bar, while listening to live country music and watching couples do the two-step. In my all-black garb, sitting alone with my travel notebook, a overwhelming sense of being an outsider washed over me. I felt like a foreign correspondent just off the plane from, say, London or San Francisco, or maybe another planet, assigned to report on local color.

The next morning, when I mentioned my culture shock to friends at my favorite café, Dave the owner piped up with, “You are on another planet. Welcome to New Mexico.”

At the time, I attributed my feeling of alienation to having been snowed in at a friend’s place in Santa Fe one night, followed by being snowed out of the place I was staying in Nambé the next, caught without a change of clothing, but fortunately with my pug dog and laptop in tow.

But now that I’ve returned to “Californicate,” as they call it, I feel torn between a desire to return to the enchanted vistas of New Mexico, where I was incredibly productive, and the sense that I’ve woken up from a dream into my real life.

In the three weeks I spent in New Mexico, I felt like I connected with more than half a dozen people on a more than superficial level. I signed my first gallery contract for 10 pieces of art that I produced during that visit. I got more writing down than in any other equivalent period of time. I even had that strange but flattering feeling when locals assume that you are one of them, And perhaps because I was not a local, a window opened for me into another world, or should I say worlds.

Taos is country town, where everyone has a truck to deal with the rutted dirt roads, a town where poverty is apparent in the multitude of trailer homes, and wealth in the plethora of art galleries. A town full of singles at the base of ski destination Taos mountain, a heart chakra mountain of whom people say, Move to Taos, lose a spouse A place that is said to be a karmic accelerator, where the newcomer quickly sees both the up and the down sides of small town living, where people’s characters are quickly revealed, both their weaknesses and their strengths. A town where the Anglos are the newcomers, the Hispanics the landed gentry, and the Native Americans have been living for 1200 years in the oldest continually-inhabited settlement in the United States. A town that is home to healers, artists, ski bums, vets, tourists and outlaws.

Maybe it was just dumb luck that I found a café with free wireless to work in, potential friends to socialize with, good food to eat, art supplies that inspired me, a gallery owner who was moved by my work, and three offers of places to stay when I return. Maybe I could not keep up that level of output, or find that level of support and inspiration if I had the distractions of my everyday life to deal with. Maybe the small town gossiping, the country-western music, the dramatic weather, or the mountain herself would push me away if I tried to stay longer.

One of my last days in Taos, I had my tarot cards read. The reading was entirely positive, filled with abundance, not only of money but also of love, all kinds, including a dharma mate to share my life’s purpose with. When I specifically asked if I should move to Taos, the psychic replied, enigmatically, “There is an opening for you here, but you have free will.”

Maybe it was all a dream. And yet, after having my karma accelerated and my heart opened, I’m now back in Silicon Valley, which seems more banal and plastic, in a social environment where my connections feel more tenuous and shallow than I remember—and I’m no longer sure that this is home.

So, the question for this big city girl, who thrives on the diversity of the Bay Area and having friends who are brilliant, who loves redwoods and fancy restaurants, who wants to be a fulltime artist but also would like to someday own her own home, is whether moving to Taos is a good bet or just a fantasy, a really bad idea or only one of many possibilities? For now, I’m waiting for the answer and living with the question.

Not Ready for Prime Time

2008-04-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

My trepidation about visiting China began when I went to the consulate in San Francisco to apply for a visa.

I hadn’t planned to go to China at all this spring; in fact, the only reason that China came up as a possibility was that Air China is a Star Alliance partner with United Airlines and I was using my accumulated United miles to get to my main destination, the island of Bali, in Indonesia. When the United agent suggested routing my journey through Beijing, with a layover on the way home, I thought, Why not?

I drove up to the consulate on a rainy Wednesday in early February, only to find it closed for Chinese New Year. The following Tuesday, I drove up again and this time found the Consulate open for business. I walked past the handful of people protesting the government’s treatment of the Falun Gong group, stepped inside, took a number and an application and sat down to wait. When my number was called, shortly before the office closed for lunch, I headed to the appropriate window and slid my application over the transom.

“Do you have a letter from your employer?” the clerk asked, to my surprise. I had given my occupation as writer/teacher.
“No, I’m not employed right now. I work as a contract teacher, but I’m on sabbatical now,” I explained.
“What kind of writing do you do?”
“I write about travel and food,” I replied, and wrote the address of my website on the margin of the application.
The clerk called a supervisor over.
“Do you write about politics?” the other woman asked.
“No, nothing political,” I answered. She hadn’t defined what she meant by political and I decided that my pieces on the environment didn’t fall into the same sensitive category as, say, human rights or Tibet.
“There was a woman who said she wrote cookbooks, but she was arrested,” the supervisor said, giving the impression that the woman had lied. “You’re welcome to visit China as a guest but nothing political.”
By this time, I was wondering why I hadn’t given my occupation as artist or English teacher, which would also have been true, rather than writer. I came back the next day and picked up my visa, which the clerk affixed to my passport with no further adieu. Ironically, I had had no intention of writing anything political about China, or even of writing anything at all about China, but with the supervisor’s grilling and veiled threat, I had essentially been handed something to write about.

It was March 26 when I arrived at the newly opened Terminal 3 in Beijing for a three-hour layover on my way to Bali. I followed the signs for transit passengers and stopped at the immigration desk, behind which was a young woman. I was her only customer, but she looked around for help, as though she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she examined my passport and visa, stamped the visa and waved me through.
The airport terminal was enormous, obviously expensive, and virtually empty. There were a few shops selling handicrafts, or Olympic souvenirs, or the usual multinational duty-free perfume/cigarettes/alcohol. I found a restaurant serving Italian food; to my surprise, the banana split arrived before the pasta. There were gaggles of young, uniformed Chinese employees, but not nearly enough customers to keep them busy. Their command of English was minimal, like that of the Air China flight attendants. For example, on the flight, the two attendants in my vicinity were able to ask if I would like fruits with cheese, but neither could understand nor answer an expected follow-up question, “What kind of fruits?” ) I wondered if this was deliberate; it certainly would prevent the Chinese from answering any question the government might deem political.

Fast forward nearly three weeks. I was nervous about my return trip through Beijing. So nervous that I only booked the hotel a couple of nights before and had made no plans of what to do or see during my 40 hours there, beyond a tour of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. I chose the hotel based on a description in a magazine, DestinAsian, which I found on Bali. The Emperor was described as a newly-opened boutique hotel whose rooftop bar offered a view of the Forbidden City (and indeed, this was one of the highlights of the hotel.) I had had mixed experiences at boutique hotels in the past, most recently in Cairo, but I’m a sucker for cool design (witness my loyalty to Apple Computers). My room at the Emperor was on the turquoise floor and the room was done entirely in white and turquoise, which happens to be my favorite color. Unfortunately the service was not quite up to the same level as the interior design. For example, when I arrived at the hotel at 1 in the morning, it took 30 minutes to check in, despite the fact that there were two clerks and I was their only arriving guest. Leading me to my room, one of the young clerks said, somewhat dejectedly, “I guess you don’t want to play the game.” Instead of room numbers, the hotel uses names of emperors and arriving guests apparently can make a game of finding the room whose name matches that on their key card. “No, I’m too tired to play a game,” I muttered.

The next morning, the staff apologized for the check-in delay. After a prodigious breakfast that included sliced fruits served on a mirror, I asked about getting a taxi to the Great Wall. “You don’t have enough time to see the wall today, I think. They’re repairing the causeway and it will take you more than one hour, maybe more than two hours, to get there. I think you should see the Forbidden City today. You will have to come back to see the Great Wall. Two days is not enough time to see all of the things to see in Beijing,” the young employee insisted. I acquiesced to his suggestion, but now I wish I had braved the traffic to see the Great Wall, even if it took two hours to get there, which, after all, is considerably shorter than the amount of time I spent flying to get to Beijing in the first place.

So off I went to the Forbidden City. As soon as I crossed the threshold of the North Gate, a young woman came up to me, offering a tour in English. She was a Beijing native and had a wealth of information at her fingertips. When I expressed an interest in learning more about the Empress Cixi, she tailored the tour, pointing out the places where Cixi had lived and ruled. At the end of a couple of hours, she introduced me to a friend of hers, a rickshaw driver, for a tour of the Hutongs, a nearby area of old, one-story houses built around courtyards.

Interestingly, these rickshaw drivers were far more willing to transport a foreigner than the taxi drivers who either wouldn’t stop at all or who had trouble following the bilingual map on the hotel’s business card. Indeed, whenever I stopped a local and asked for help with my bilingual map, at least half the time I could expect the person to wave their hand, dismissing me. Was their reaction because I was a foreigner or because they didn’t want to deal with the language barrier? Recalling the days, not that long ago, when Chinese who spoke to foreigners would be interrogated by the police, I wondered how the government could expect its cautious citizenry to suddenly be open and friendly to the foreign tourists in their midst. Maybe during the actual days of the Olympics, the situation will be different, but I was left with the feeling that Beijing, and her people, are not yet ready for prime time.

Descent into the Underworld

2008-03-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

“ On a scale of one to five, where one is little or no anxiety, how are you feeling about the cave journey tomorrow,” Megan, our fearless leader, asked. “One.” “One and a half.” “Zero,” came the responses from the other women in the room, who had gathered on Crete to explore the island’s ancient Goddess culture. “Five,” I said, my voice cracking with shame. Actually, if I had known then how difficult it would be for me, I would have said, “nine.” I was terrified of falling and worried that the torn meniscus in my knee would act up, but I also knew that I needed to go on this cave journey. I could not have explained why this journey was so important, but I was determined to push through my fears.

From the other side of the circle, a voice piped up, “I’d like to volunteer to be at the back of the line so I can help Judith.” It was Sue, a mother of two boys from Minneapolis. “I have lots of experience leading treks and I’m not at all nervous about this one. I’m convinced that I was a mountain goat in a previous lifetime,” she said with a laugh.

Without Sue’s kindness, I would never have been able to complete the cave journey. I could not know then that descending into the cave and climbing back up would be a symbol of the healing journey I was about to make into the depths of my own psyche. I did not know that the prayers I uttered in the darkness of the cold rock womb would be answered in the brilliant sunlight of an ancient temple, or that months of hard work would pass before I could really integrate the whispered message of hope.

The central myth of Crete is the story of the Minotaur. As Megan told the story, the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon, had sent Minos, the king of the island, a magnificent white bull. Instead of sacrificing the bull to the god, the greedy king kept the bull for himself. Poseidon’s revenge was to make Minos’s queen, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull; from their union was born the Minotaur, half man, half bull, a living reminder of the king’s sacrilege. Minos commanded the royal architect to build a labyrinth under the palace to keep the monster out of sight. To appease the Minotaur, the powerful king demanded that his vassal states render an annual tribute of noble young men and women. The youths were trained to perform the Cretan art of bull-leaping, before being led to the labyrinth, never to return.

After some years of this, the Athenian prince, Theseus, decided to take matters into his own hand and slay the beast. He volunteered for the yearly tribute. On the way to Crete, he worked with his fellow captives, so that by the time of the bull-leaping performance, they were a tightly-disciplined team. His performance and comeliness caught the attention of Pasiphae and Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, a priestess of the Snake Goddess, who danced in the temple rites. The night before Theseus was to be sent into the maze, Ariadne gave her lover a red thread, that he could use to find his way back out, and a labyris, the bronze double-headed ax sacred to the Goddess, with which to slay the Minotaur.

The night before the cave journey, the 13 women on our tour gathered in the common room of the retreat center for a grief ritual to clear our hearts. A large low table was set up as the altar, adorned with scarves and objects sacred to each of us: a crystal wand, a statue of the snake mother goddess of Crete, a deck of tarot cards in a velvet pouch, an embossed silver portrait of Jesus. We stood in a circle, singing the simple chant that Megan had earlier taught us while she drummed on and on. Whenever the spirit moved one or more of us, we sat or knelt in front of the altar and prayed/cried/keened our grief while the others witnessed, supporting us with their voices and their presence. I cried for my lost marriage, for my lost childhood, for lost love. As everyone’s individual waves of grief rose and fell and ebbed around me, I prayed to the Goddess to help me let go, to help me heal, to help me move on. Gradually, the pain eased as this particular round of grieving came to an end. We went outside for a late-night snack of chocolate and tea, then climbed the stairs to our rooms, opening the verandah doors to the cool, dry air.

After an early breakfast of Greek yogurt, honey, ripe fruit and biscotti-like cookies, we piled into several rental cars and headed for the next village. Our destination, the Cave of the 99 Holy Fathers, might seem an odd choice for a group of women who had gathered to discover the Great Goddess. Or perhaps one should say that it was odd for a cave, which represents the womb of the goddess, to be a place where a group of Christian priests sought refuge from persecution. In any case, this cave was near our retreat center on the south coast and had far fewer visitors than the island’s more famous sacred caverns.

We drove past the village on a single-track dirt road leading up the side of a low scrubby mountain. Thankfully, it was early enough that there were no vehicles coming the other direction. I blanched when I got out of the car and saw the path leading up to the top of the mountain. “It’s just a 10-minute walk from the parking lot,” was all Megan had said about the trail.

The first few minutes were less difficult than I expected; the trail was rocky but wide, with no precipitous drops to either side. As we neared the cave, the rocks became boulders. At the mouth of the cave, we pulled out the pants and sweaters from our backpacks and turned on the lamps we each wore around our heads. I waited as the other women moved past me, then joined the end of the single-file line walking alongside the cave wall, with Sue falling in just behind me. The plan was that we would all meet at the first chamber, then continue up to the second chamber. Hopefully, we would get there before any other tourists so that we could hold a silent meditation in total darkness.

Before we even got to the first set of ladders, Sue said, “Why don’t you give me your backpack.”
“I can carry it,” I answered stoically.
“It will be easier if I’ve got it. Don’t worry, I can manage it.”
“Okay,” I said, sheepishly.

When we got to the first metal ladder, Sue went down first, then instructed me on how to turn around and grab the handrail while stepping onto the first rung. What if I fall, I thought. But Sue kept encouraging me and I took the chance of trusting her.

“There’s a rung missing here, so make the next step down a big one, okay?” Sue called up to me.
As I climbed down the ladder, I could feel the panic rising, pulling my consciousness out of my body and into my head, out of the safety of the present moment and into my fear of future disaster. I wanted to freeze, but I couldn’t let the group down. I realized that the only way I could get through this experience without panicking was to stay in the moment.
We reached the bottom of the first ladder. “Breathe. Take a deep breath,” Sue told me.
Scrabbling down the rocky path between the first and second ladders, she held my hand.
“Don’t look to your right. Look at the wall on your left.”
Then onto the next ladder.
My heart clenched as I cleared another missing rung.
“Good job. You’re doing fine.”
At the bottom of the second ladder, Sue offered me individually-wrapped hard candies. “The yellow ones are lemon. Take two. I have more,” she added.
Near the bottom of the third metal ladder, she said, “I’m going to lift you over this rung, okay?” In one sure movement, Sue grasped my waist with one arm and lifted me down to the next rung. I was too surprised to be impressed by her strength.
Suddenly, we were in the first chamber of the cave. To the right, a small altar with an icon had been built in the wall. “You’re doing great,” Sue enthused.
We started up the first wooden ladder. Unlike the metal ladders, which had been bolted into the rock wall, these were just leaning against the rock walls. I struggled to not imagine falling backwards.
“Breathe. You need to take a deep breath,” Sue instructed.
I pushed the thought of an earthquake out of my mind.

Just before we started up the second ladder, she kissed my forehead. At the top of the ladder, she took my hand, hoisting me up and into the second chamber. Everyone else in the group was already there, looking for a place to sit for the meditation or for rocks to take home. I picked up three small stones from the cave floor and sat away from the opening. The light from our headlights flickered on the walls, enlarging our shadows so that we appeared to be giantesses.
And then there were noises coming from nearby. Other tourists were arriving. We had arrived too late. And it was all my fault. I started to cry.

Megan got up and went over to the two young men and one young woman, then came back. “They’ve agreed that we can have five minutes.”

Sitting in a circle on the cold floor of the earth mother, we turned off our headlamps. For a moment, one tea light shone bright and then with a breath, it was out. We were in total darkness, holding hands. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, it no longer seemed as pitch black as it had when the candle went out. I realized that I am not afraid of the dark. Eyes wide open, I cried for the wounded boy, for the wounded girl, for the solace they had sought in each other, for the pain of all their losses. And in the silence, I fervently prayed, “Make me whole.”

The climb down the wooden ladders was tough, but as I continued, with Sue’s help and the group’s encouragement, past the first chamber, over the rocks, up the three metal ladders, towards the opening of the cave, I began to feel lighter. A wave of relief came over me as we cleared the entrance and stopped for a group photo against the rocks.

Hiking back to the cars, Sue stopped to take my picture. In the photo, I am laughing. “You look reborn,” she said.
If I was reborn, then Sue was the midwife. I thanked her effusively, insisting that I could not have done the journey without her.
She demurred, saying, “It was an honor to witness your courage, cave sister. “

A week later, the group pile out of taxis at the palace of Knossos, the central palace-temple complex where the Goddess had been worshipped for some 1,500 years. They quickly walked to the far side of the archaeological site, down the steps to a courtyard known as Ariadne’s dance floor. Our leader, Megan, had been told that the guards would break up any attempt at a group ritual on the site, so we each went our own way to individually meditate. I took off my flip-flops and danced barefoot on the warm rock tiles, where the priestesses had danced 4,000 years ago. I sat at the edge of the courtyard, underneath an olive tree, and opened my heart. A voice whispered, “You are already whole.”

Was it the voice of the Goddess or the yearnings of my deepest unconscious? Does it really matter? It was the answer to my prayer in darkness of the cave, the red thread that would lead me out of the darkness of my own past, the truth that my therapist would echo in the ensuing months of intense and deep psychic healing. Not only for me but also for those I have loved, for all who believe that violation left us irreparably broken, it was a message of hope.

No Gels, No Questions

2008-02-13T17:04:00.000-08:00

Other people wax rhapsodic about riding Hawaii’s great waves; I could go on and on about the pleasures of eating warm popovers with sweet whipped butter and poha berry jam at the Orchids restaurant in Waikiki. For me, the poha berry jam is what makes this an island breakfast. Also known as cape gooseberries, poha berries came to Hawaii before 1825 and can be found on all of the islands. They have a sweet tartness and orange color similar to the cloudberry, another rare fruit that I’m rather fond of. One could say that tpoha berry jam is my version of Proust’s madeleine, a symbol of an earlier chapter in my life, when I came to Hawaii with my children and their father and his mother rather than alone.

On a recent vacation there, I indulged in poha berry jam with popovers for breakfast not once but two successive mornings in a row. On my last full day on Oahu, I bought a jar of poha berry jam to take home. Packing that night, I put the jam in the middle of my bag, and my tiny jars of macadamia blossom honey into the zip-locked plastic bag with the other liquids like face creams and mascara. I got to the airport an hour ahead of schedule, picked up my boarding pass and headed for the security line. The noise of people talking and bags rolling was punctuated by the frequent announcements that the airport was experiencing an orange-level alert (one step down from red alert and two down from the black alert of a terrorist attack, according to one sign) and that any suspicious person or bag should be reported immediately. When the security agent asked to examine my bag after it passed through the X-ray machine, I wondered if they were concerned about my hair clip with a pointed end. But no, it was my jar of poha berry jam. It had never occurred to me that the prohibition on gels included edible jams and jellies. My other two jars of jam were tiny and fit into the requisite plastic bag, but the poha berry jam was more than 3 ounces. The agent also wanted to take my jar of sea salt because it was more than 3 ounces, but relented when I pointed out that salt, was neither liquid nor a gel. Although she apologized about the poha berry jam, saying, “I know it’s good stuff,” I still burst into tears a few minutes after the ordeal.

If I had been less upset by the implication that I was threatening national security, I could have gone back to the check-in area and put my carry-on bag through to San Francisco with the jam in the bottom of the hold. But losing this one souvenir, which, at least in that moment, symbolized my own lost past, of children at home and an intact marriage, apparently overwhelmed me. With the plane due to take off in less than half an hour, I felt I had little choice but to let go.

Of course, I was welcome to carry aboard any tropical jams, jellies, body lotions or bottles of water that I purchased on the other side of security. After all, we can’t let security concerns interfere with the big businesses that run the airport concessions. How many million dollars would be lost in a single day if no gels or liquids (cosmetics, perfumes, alcohol, coffee) could be sold past the security zone? Isn’t it ironic that we can trust these businesses, and all of the airport personnel to not threaten national security, but we can’t trust ordinary citizens not to pack explosives in their hair gel?

Air travel is the frontier of Homeland security, the place where we are most willing to sacrifice personal freedom in exchange for nebulous promises of safety. After all, if restrictions on water bottles and jars of jam keep the airplane that I’m on, or my daughter, or son, or brother are on from exploding in mid-air, then, like any sane person, I will acquiesce to the restrictions. If the goal were to prevent terrorist attacks, why not just install scanners at every airport that can detect plastic explosives? Or why not ban all gels and liquids of any size from being carried on board or even sold at the airport? Maybe we could have an exception for glasses of water and ceramic cups of coffee which could be purchased to drink at the airport; think of the reduction in wasted paper and plastics.

But instead, the current tactic seems to be to instill fear and anxiety in the nation’s flying public---who are primarily members of the educated, middle to upper middle classes—with, for example, constant reminders that we’re in a state of orange alert (which never seems to go down, even momentarily, to yellow, green, or blue). This state of alert, in turn, is used as a justification for insisting on absolute obedience to a series of annoying restrictions and rules——remove your shoes, the sweater tied around your waist, your laptop, don’t let your 10-year-old crack a joke about a bomb at the airport, which gradually become more numerous and more invasive, no water bottles over 3 ounces, put your toothpaste and contraceptive gel in a transparent plastic bag, remove your belt buckle, let security personnel run a metal detector wand over your breasts if your underwire bra triggers the metal detector, don’t dare to question those in charge for fear of arrest. What if the real goal is not to stop another 9/11, not even to make us feel safer, but to accustom those of us in the middle and professional classes, those of us with the education, money and time to actually question authority, those of us who think our American citizenship gives us the right to do so, and especially those of us who think our race will give us immunity, to living in a police state?

Breasts: Toxins :: Personal: Political

2008-02-13T17:03:00.001-08:00

One morning, a few months ago, I was awakened by a sharp pain in my right breast, radiating from the nipple. My monkey mind immediately jumped to the obvious, catastrophic conclusion: terminal cancer. My rational mind thought, no, the dog must have stepped on it.

Said dog, a 25 pound pug, is a bed-hog; he likes to sleep with his body pushed against my arm, immobilizing it, while he snores through the night. But as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, he jumps up, pushes his face close to mine, snorts, and starts trying to lick me. If I don’t immediately get up, he jumps from one side of me to the other, sometimes landing his weight on my torso if I haven’t rolled over onto my side fast enough. A couple of times, he has—ouch!—landed on a breast. So I took an Advil and held my breath, hoping the pain would disappear.

The next morning, I awoke to the same pain, called my MD and got an appointment for the following day. Then I googled breast pain and called a couple of close women friends for reassurance. I soon found that most of the women in my circle, aged 30something to 60something, had had a breast scare at one time or another. One friend offered to loan me the “breast shells” that she’d had on her altar when her mammogram came up negative. Another suggested that breast problems are related to mother issues.

Of course, the day of the doctor’s appointment, I woke up pain-free. My physician found no lumps, but she did discover a polyp. She told me to go off hormones, cut out caffeine, check the polyp every day for the next month until my mammogram appointment -- and added that I shouldn’t worry.

Meanwhile, another friend started sending me information about the dangers of mammography and suggested I check out thermography, which uses the infrared rather than the X-ray part of the spectrum to pick up soft tissue abnormalities.

This same environmentalist sent me information about the link between breast disease and environmental toxins. The more I read, the more shocked I was. Like so many of us, I had trusted that the government, in the form of the Food and Drug Administration, and even corporations to have my best interests at heart. I had assumed that body care products were subject to the same degree of scrutiny as other chemicals which could be absorbed through the skin, like nicotine patches or estrogen creams. I was dismayed to learn that in the U.S., body care products and cosmetics are barely regulated at all, that only a handful of toxic ingredients are prohibited, that products can be labeled organic even if they contain only a single organic ingredient. That a commonly-used class of preservatives called parabens, found in everything from eye shadow to shampoo, has also shown up in breast tumors. I was outraged to discover that while the European Union has adopted a precautionary approach, which requires chemicals used in cosmetics and personal care products to be proven safe, the U.S. employs a different standard, which only prevents a few known toxins from being sold. In other words, the EU takes a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach, while the U.S. has an innocent-until-proven-guilty standard for toxins, and the corporations that produce and sell them. The more I learned, the more I came to believe that, if I had contracted breast cancer, the reason would have far less to do with my mother and far more to do with corporate greed.

I had the mammogram, and then waited a week before the doctor called to tell me that I needed to come back for a more X-rays and an ultrasound to check out a possible anomaly. While waiting for the new appointment, I busied myself with researching cosmetic brands. I bought new shampoo, conditioner, eye shadow, lip gloss, sunscreen, and body oil, choosing only those brands that were paraben-free and as close to 100 percent organic as possible. Between the three health food emporiums in my town, doing so was easy, if expensive ($28 for a tube of intensive conditioner, for example). I emailed my adult children the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website
(www.cosmeticsdatabase.com), which has detailed information on the safety of thousands of products, and offered to reimburse them if they switched to healthier choices. And although I am not yet ready to go grey, I made my next coloring appointment at a beauty salon that uses less toxic dyes.

The day of the second appointment, a friend met me at the radiology lab. I had two magnified views, then a third because one of the first two X-rays came out fuzzy. In the ultrasound room, I watched as the technician found and photographed a black spot. Was this a mark of death like the black spot in “Treasure Island”? I grabbed my friend from the waiting room and held her hand tightly when the technician came back a few minutes later with the signed diagnosis on a slip of blue paper. A cyst. Come back in one year for another mammogram. In the parking lot, I burst into tears of relief as the tension of the past month’s anxieties broke.

Although I do not seem to be in immediate danger of having my breast cut off, I am no longer capable of being reassured in the same way that I was before. This minor health crisis has left a lasting mark on my psyche, bursting my bubble of innocent trust. I am outraged that my body, my daughter’s body, my son’s body, my friends’ bodies, have been silently soaking up toxins along with moisturizers and sunscreens, blemish creams and shampoos, mascaras and lipsticks-- and that neither those who manufacture these products nor those entrusted to regulate them apparently give a damn.

Plastic Planet

2008-02-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

My friend M. is trying to solve the garbage problem single-handedly by not disposing of any item which is potentially useful. He hasn’t bought anything new in years. He tries hard to find homes for old books and magazines, for worn clothes and shoes, for knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. He reuses bags and bottles and jars as many times as possible before putting them in the recycling bin. And he keeps the detritus which can’t be recycled, like plastic straws and bottle caps, rubber bands and wire bag ties, rather than consign them to the landfill. Unfortunately, these small objects take up space and seemingly multiply, like creatures in a sci-fi movie threatening to overpower their host.

Another friend, C., has a more typical consumption pattern. On her way to work, she usually stops for coffee. Some days she brings her own cup, but other days not, so she leaves the coffee shop with a paper cup and a plastic lid, a paper napkin and maybe a plastic straw if her latte is iced. At lunch, she gets a sandwich to go, wrapped in paper or plastic wrap, a bottle of water, another paper napkin, and a soda in an aluminum can for her afternoon pick-me-up, all stuffed into a paper bag. On the way home, she picks up a bag of groceries. Maybe she uses the cloth bag she keeps in the car, but puts the produce in the store’s plastic bags. Her total for the day: one paper cup, one plastic lid, a square of sandwich paper or plastic wrap or aluminum foil, a plastic bottle and cap, two paper napkins, an aluminum can, a paper bag, and several small plastic bags.

Of these dozen or so items, the bottle and the aluminum are recyclable (but not the bottle’s plastic lid), while the bags can be re-used or recycled. That leaves half a dozen non-recyclable, non-reusable items for the landfill. Of course, the problem is not really about her or my or your half-dozen plastic bits; it’s our daily total times 365 days per year multiplied by the 300 million other Americans, plus the billion-plus Chinese and Indians whose societies are headed the same direction.

With a little effort, C. could bring her own cloth napkin and bags, fill a glass bottle at home with water and a ceramic cup with coffee, and bring her own string produce bags to the market, if not every day at least more often than not. But while these small changes are certainly a step in the right direction, as is M.’s sense of responsibility for every item that comes his way, the global trash problem is not so easily resolved.

Take plastic bags. It’s no secret that they suffocate children and sea creatures or that the world’s oceans are awash with them. These bags also collect in our homes, crowding out the junk in the junk drawers of our kitchens. Even when we wash them and reuse them, new ones come into our hands on an almost daily basis. And then there is the over-riding fact that each one will last a very long time, that every human alive today will be earthworm food long before a single plastic bag has decomposed. Interesting how the petroleum that we have extracted to make plastics comes from creatures who crawled or swam long before the first humans came along and the objects we have created from this material may out-last us all.

It’s not just plastic bags. It’s broken hula hoops and torn shower curtains; it’s enough plastic cutlery to give all six billion of us an 12-place setting. It’s disposable objects that can’t be fixed when they break. It’s the case of the computer I’m writing this on and the cables that transmit these words over the Internet. It’s not only the discarded plastic objects that fill our drawers and garages and landfills and seas. It’s the leaching of toxic chemicals from plastic bottles and food containers. It’s the phthalates in our teenagers’ nail polish and our children’s pacifiers, whose molecules cling to their insides like embedded time bombs, potentially causing genetic abnormalities and higher risks of cancer, asthma and other diseases. It’s the hidden cost of a disposable society. It’s the result of an industry, a government, a culture that values convenience and profits over safety or sanity. It’s the world we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren.

Japanese Beauty

2008-01-18T11:56:00.000-08:00

On my first trip to Japan, I was standing outside the gift shop of an expensive Tokyo hotel, looking at two tea bowls, glazed dark and shiny, one of which was priced ten times higher than the other. To me, they appeared to be of equal value, but given the price difference, they clearly were not. In that moment, I realized that there was another ideal of beauty, another way of measuring the value of an art object than the Greco-Roman aesthetic, which underlies much of Western art. My curiosity was piqued; I wanted not just to understand the price difference (which I now know was most likely based on the potters’ relative fame), but even more to explore the Japanese aesthetic, to see with different eyes.

Beauty is still what lures me to Japan. Beauty in the midst of industrialization, modernization, globalization. Beauty created over time by human beings collaborating with the natural world to celebrate the cycle of the seasons and the transience of life. whether in the form of an indigo garment dyed by hand in a family workshop, a tea bowl embellished with swirling maple leaves, a temple rock garden built 300 years ago, a haiku poem that honors the melancholy of a full moon in autumn. The beauty of an old wooden neighborhood shrine to Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, rebuilt after being fire-bombed during the war.

On that first trip to Japan, I not only didn’t know how to see, I didn’t really know where to look. I was disappointed that the picturesque Japan described in the travelogues and histories that I had read as a girl was nowhere to be found. Small wonder since the ostensible goal of the trip was to attend the World Expo at Tsukuba, where the entire emphasis was on the world of tomorrow. Not until the end of our week in Tokyo did I happen upon a slice of what I had envisioned in Asakusa, a downtown neighborhood centered on the large shrine of the same name, rebuilt after World War II. Here were quaint craft shops and stalls selling traditional items, like imagawa-yaki, a round pancake filled with an, sweetened adzuki beans, and the floral combs worn with kimonos by geishas and Japanese girls on special birthdays.

Nearly ten years passed before I was able to return to Japan and pick up the thread of my earlier fascination. This time, I was in Kyoto with my mother-in-law for a walking tour of gardens, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines. It was late October, but we were lucky enough not to have missed the fall foliage. Everywhere we went, there were golden gingko and scarlet Japanese maple leaves. Not only on the trees, but on the kimonos of the geisha dancers, the handmade wagashi paper used to make wallets and boxes, the cloth handkerchiefs Japanese women carry in their purses, the designs etched and painted on the tea bowls, even the shapes and colors of the confections (also called wagashi) that accompany the tea ceremony.

Like all tour groups, this one had a troublesome member, a person who demanded an inordinate amount of attention. A brusque character who snored so loudly that his two roommates were unable to sleep. I was asked to give him my single room and move in with two older women (who did not seem pleased with the idea) so that his roommates could sleep in peace. A mother and people-pleaser, I at first said yes, but then decided, no, the tour leader would have to find another solution. Looking back, I find it interesting that the day after I stood up for myself, was the day I first encountered the beauty of wagashi, the edible Japanese art form that turns beans, rice flour and sugar into delicate peonies, clouds, and maple leaves.

I had already tried yatsuhashi cookies, a Kyoto specialty, made from rectangles of brown dough laid on metal cylinders of dough so that they curve as they bake. One meaning of the word hashi is bridge and, like many other symbols in Japan, this one has a air of melancholy to it. According to “Must-See in Kyoto,” these crispy cookies with a slight hint of cinnamon represent a bridge made by a mourning mother whose child had drowned. Looking more like the cover over a covered bridge than the bridge itself, today these sweets, both baked and unbaked, are a popular souvenir for tourists from other parts of Japan to take home and are sold at shops lining the avenues leading up to the city’s major temples.

But the pastries I saw that afternoon were different, like the difference between butter cookies and petit fours. In the window of the elegant shop was a plate with a single, exquisite chrysanthemum blossom. Created as a counterpoint for the bitterness of matcha, the powered green tea used in the tea ceremony, the selection of these sweets, shaped and colored to look like flowers and fruits, change with the seasons. I walked in and bought a chrysanthemum namagashi, a fresh, moist cake made from beans and sugar. Like many things of beauty, namagashi do not keep; I ceremoniously consumed mine over a cup of tea in the hotel room.

Returning to Japan in the spring a decade later, this time with my college-age daughter, Tina, in tow, I planned to continue my exploration of Japanese aesthetics in general and wagashi in particular. Arriving the day after the equinox, we were fortunate enough to experience the cherry blossoms in both Tokyo and Kyoto.

Visiting Japan in cherry blossom season requires not only planning but also luck. If the week before you are scheduled to leave is unseasonably warm, the blossoms may open and if the weather turns windy, a white carpet of spent flowers may be all that is left when you arrive. Of course, you can travel further north to catch the blossom wave, but it may be difficult at best to change your reservations, especially if you aren’t fluent in Japanese.

But the risk is worth it, for cherry blossom season is a magical time. Lasting only about 10 days in a given latitude, this season seems to impart a palpable joie de vivre. The magic of this season is much more than a relief from winter, which is fierce only in the far north of the country. Rather, the sakura has become a symbol of the transience of beauty, of youth, and of life itself. In the Samurai period, the cherry blossom’s fall was a metaphor for the goal these warriors had of a glorious death at the height of their prowess. The movie, “The Last Samurai,” makes reference to this in the scenes where the Samurai leader played by Ken Watanabe has first a dream, and then a dying vision of cherry blossoms falling. Cherry blossom season is also a time for special parties, known as sakura-ben, in which families and colleagues gather in parks and gardens to eat and drink under the trees and then stroll along the paths to view the flowers.

One of my students, Anita, a Taiwanese woman who had lived in Japan for more than a decade, invited us for a picnic in Shinjuku Park in a very modern part of Tokyo. While my daughter went off on her own to explore Harajuku, another trendy neighborhood, I met Anita at the Shinjuku station. Anita had made sushi and noodles for lunch, but suggested we stop at a bakery to pick up a couple of slices of cake for dessert. Wandering around the Tokyo Food Hall with its fascinating array of comestibles, I was reminded me of the food department at Harrod’s in London. After checking out all the possibilities, we chose a green tea mousse cake and bottles of cold oolong tea.

The park boasted more than half a dozen types of cherry trees, some with white blossoms, others with pink. Throngs of Japanese walked down the middle aisle, with picnickers crowded beneath the trees. Anita found a suitable spot and spread out the blanket she’d brought along. After the light and delicious lunch, she suggested we go for a stroll. I picked up the blanket and started to shake it out, like I would at home, but she quickly stopped me, a fleeting expression of shock on her face, gently explaining that the grass I was shaking out was likely to end up in our neighbors’ food, so close were we sitting. One of many little reminders that I was far, far from home.

After strolling through the park, we met up with my daughter at the station, then meandered through one of the adjacent department stores. Tina was fascinated by the ballet flats, in bright colors, in silver, with big chunky “jewels,” a style that would hit the U.S. two or three years later. Fortunately for her budget, the largest size was too small. I was fascinated with the idea that an entire 8-story department store, one of half a dozen in the same genre, was entirely geared to women under 25 and that Anita, at 30, felt too old to be shopping there. The bright pink coats in the window, the color of cherry blossoms, only underscored the idea that youth and youthful beauty are transient.

As an older Western woman, this idea makes me uncomfortable, for its corollary is the reminder that life itself is transient, as expressed in one of the four truths of Buddhism, that everyone and everything we love, including our very selves, will age, sicken and die. A passive acceptance, which becomes palatable to me only when I think of the Roman proverb, “Carpe diem,” Seize the day. A reminder that while I look for commonality and seek to understand this other culture, I am still the product of my own culture, still learning to see.

Iceland

2008-01-18T11:31:00.000-08:00

Imagine an island in the North Atlantic, whose center is Europe’s largest glacier, where roads end at waterfalls cascading down volcanic mountains, where millions of birds nest, where a belief in magic goes hand-in-hand with a nearly 100 percent literacy rate, where the people can trace their family trees back 1000 years to the Vikings who wrote and starred in the ancient sagas-- and you have a glimpse of Iceland.

The first time I visited Iceland, I was almost 30 and accompanied by my husband and two children, then 18 months and 5 and a half years old. We were on an Icelandic Airlines layover, and in those few days, I fell for the country’s geological charms. This time I am returning alone, my children grown, my marriage a roiling sea, hoping that this island’s wild beauty might soothe my confused and desolate heart.

My first stop after arrival is the Blue Lagoon, a man-made pool of mineral-rich milky blue water, located in the dark, lunar-like hills near the international airport at Keflavik. The sensation of soaking up to my neck in warm water as the cool summer breeze ruffles my hair is exquisite. The sensual delight deepens into profound relaxation as one of the swimsuit-clad masseuses kneads my tired shoulder muscles, while I lie on a floating mattress.

The stress of the flight having melted away, I continue driving the rental car into downtown Reykjavik, to the hostel on a quiet street where I have booked a room. A basement room as it turns out, with casement windows and white stucco walls. The colorful timber houses in this part of town remind me of the houses my children used to make from Lego blocks. I vividly remember walking through a similar neighborhood on another misty summer evening with my young family. Then as now, clouds scuttled across the sky and the sound of seagulls pierced the air. Hoping to distract myself from the swell of melancholy, I walk along the pedestrian-only main shopping street, stopping to browse in a bookstore. Upstairs, I find a café with deliciously moist cakes, fruit teas and strong coffee, and magazines to peruse in both English and Icelandic. Most of the books on the second floor are in English, Iceland’s second language, a good many of them imported from England. Although several of the dozens of British cookbooks look tempting, the prices are on the high side. I do, however, buy a small book of gorgeous photographs of the island as a souvenir.

By this time, I’m ravenous. On that first trip, we ate at the Hard Rock Café, which had just opened a Reykjavik branch, where I had a plate of grilled salmon that tasted amazingly fresh, as though it had just been caught. I have eaten quite a few salmon over the years, but that was perhaps the best, the freshest. Tonight, I pass a quaint restaurant with puffin on the menu and go inside for a lackadaisical lobster dinner. (Puffins are too cute to eat if there are other options.) Next trip, I will go straight for the Italian restaurant and order spaghetti Bolognese.

Despite the jetlag, I sleep most of the night. Like most lodgings in Scandinavia, the hostel offers a hearty breakfast buffet of cold cereals, yogurt, boiled eggs and sandwich fixings: breads, cheeses, pickled fish, ham, and sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, along with strong coffee, black tea, milk and orange juice. I toast a slice of rye bread, spread orange marmalade on one side, top it with mild cheese and cucumber slices and eat it between sips of tea. The sky is bright but cloudy, and I wish that I had brought a warmer sweater. If I decide that I need one, at least I am in the right place to purchase one; sweaters seems to be one of the country’s major products, judging from the plethora available in the shops on the main street.

The first time I came to Iceland, I was the only one in the family who didn’t get an Icelandic sweater. Instead, I was cold, rationalizing my choice not to take care of myself by telling myself that I wouldn’t have any use for it back in Los Angeles. Later back home, I had to cajole the kids to put on their itchy woolen pullovers and caps to pose for that year’s Christmas card photo.

After breakfast, I stretch my legs with another stroll around downtown, then drive northeast out of town towards an area that tour operators have named, “The Golden Circle.” Not that this place is teeming with tourists. In less than an hour of leaving the capital, I am in a landscape with few signs of human habitation. There are no billboards, no electrical towers or telephone poles, no factories, farms or houses, no barbed wire fences, no sheep. Only the mountain rising to my left, the road beneath me and the occasional passing car. The only other sign of life is the odd Icelandic horse, singly or in pairs. Short enough to qualify as ponies but stout enough to carry an armed Viking, these animals have a unique gait, called a tolt. Since my first trip, I have secretly dreamed of taking a pony trek into the island’s glacial interior, but the only move I’ve made in that direction was one summer’s worth of riding lessons, nearly a decade ago now.

In earlier centuries, Icelanders rode their ponies every two years to Thingvellir, a plain that includes the continental divide, for the Althing, the world’s oldest continuous parliament. Not only were laws passed at the Althing but also grievances were aired, cases tried and judgments carried out. As I walk the trail alongside the meadow of Thingvellir National Park, I try to imagine what it must have looked like with crowds of men and women, horses and tents. Off the main walkway, I detour to two small pools where women accused of witchcraft were drowned and pay my respects to these victims.

Not only is this plain a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also where the tectonic plates beneath of continents of North America and Europe meet—and slide. No wonder there are so many earthquakes here. Walking under the shadow of the ridge of black rock, I remember one night during that earlier trip when we were staying in a tiny cabin a quarter-mile from the nearest farm-house, off a dirt road between the sea and a dormant volcano, and how I was too afraid to light the propane heater after an earthquake visibly shook the bunk beds. That night I understood intuitively how Icelanders could still believe in magic.

Leaving Thingvellir, I drive towards Geysir, the geological wonder after which all others geysers are named. In a field pocked with bubbling hot pots, Geysir sends a burst of hot water into the air at regular intervals. Nearby is Gullfoss, a huge double waterfall. On this cloudy summer day, there are a couple of dozen visitors wandering the path between these two, eating ice cream or a lamb sandwich (slices of lamb on soft flatbread, this is Icelandic fast food) bought at the kiosk. Inside the visitor’s center, another ten or 12 people browse the racks of Icelandic woolens or the shelves of books and tchotchkes.

On my first trip here, there was no visitor center and, on that late August day at the very end of the tourist season, no other tourists. Having been to Niagara Falls with its masses of visitors, shops and tour boats, I was stunned by the contrast. Not only were there no other people, stores, or boat rides, there wasn’t even a guardrail between the dirt path that ended in a rocky shelf and the edge of the falls. It was just the four of us and the roar of the falling water. There was a lone marker, a stone plinth with a engraving of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a local woman who in the 1920s fought to save the falls from being dammed for hydropower. I took a photo of my little daughter, dressed in pink Icelandic sweater and cap, standing in front of the marker, and one of my son with his father behind him on the edge of the falls. Seeing these places again, I feel the bittersweetness of nostalgia and melancholy at the passing of time wash over me.

On the way back. I stop for a bit at Thingvellir Lake to sip some hot tea from a thermos cup and nibble on my lamb sandwich as I look out on this placid deep blue lake in the harsh hills, and the grass and tiny wildflowers at my feet, soaking in the serenity of nature and her healing power. I know that I will return here again another year, and that I will be yet again changed and the same.

A Weekend in the City of Angels

2008-01-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles is a city that many love to hate. If only it didn’t have so many people, so many cars, so much traffic, so much pollution. Whatever happened to the valley filled with orange groves, where the beautiful were discovered in soda fountains and transformed into stars? And yet this polygot city of angels still draws the young, filled with dreams of making their creative mark on the silver screen, as well as the ambitious poor from south of the border and beyond, hoping to make a better life.

What I love about Los Angeles is the visual creativity that permeates this metropolis from the major fine arts museums (LA County Museum of Art, the L.A. MOMA, the Norton Simon in Pasadena, the Getty in west L.A. and Malibu, to name a few) to the quirky vintage stores and hip fashion and interior design shops of Robertson Blvd., Los Feliz and Melrose Avenues, and the graceful Spanish-style stucco bungalows and apartment complexes that dot the city.

Now that my daughter lives in L.A., I manage to spend a weekend there every few months. The best time to visit is in the winter when the air looks the clearest and it is even possible to see the hills that ring the valley.

Arriving on a Friday night, I suggest dinner at Cha Cha Cha’s, a West Hollywood restaurant with Caribbean-inspired food (coconut shrimp, jerk chicken, vegetable-filled sopapillas). Over a margarita, corn tortilla ships, fresh salsa or guacamole, we catch up while taking in the festive surroundings: statues of saints, strings of Christmas lights, punched tin star-shaped lanterns, and floral-patterned vinyl tablecloths in a riot of colors.

This city has endless possibilities for night life, but one of my favorites is the rooftop garden bar at the Standard Hotel downtown, where classic movies like “Cool Hand Luke” are projected on the walls and the dance floor is tiny but lively. If the crowd seems too much, there are small pods, complete with waterbed mattresses, to escape to. Downstairs is a coffee shop that is worth at least a look-see for the 1960s décor.

Saturday morning, we head to the closest Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a local chain that makes the best honey bran muffins. To drink, I like the green tea ice blend, a creamy concoction made with matcha, the concentrated green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Or, if I’m off caffeine, I might have a tea latte with herbal Swedish berry tea. For brunch, we might go to Toast, a trendy place with delicious huevos rancheros (corn tortilla topped with beans, salsa and fried eggs). I find it sad and slightly ridiculous that so many of the patrons waiting to be seated have the same blonde hair, flawless tans, and surgically-enhanced busts. Other times, we opt for the organic and very French Figaro Bistro, for steamed mussels with French fries or a frisée salad with poached egg and a bowl of café au lait or a mimosa. I love browsing the fashion and interior design boutiques in the same neighborhood as Toast as well as the vintage clothing store next to Figaro. On my last vintage shopping spree., I found a Versace wrap dress for $119 for my daughter and a $14 cropped ladylike jacket in a lovely shade of blue with white top stitching for me. The latter perfectly matched the blue and white “Question Everything” button I found in the nearby independent Skylight Books, one of the best bookstores anywhere.

A trip to Los Angeles wouldn't be complete without at least a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean so in the afternoon we drive to Santa Monica, stopping first at the cupcake bakery Sprinkles for an afternoon pick-me-up. It might not be a quick stop, since there is often a line going out the door, but it will definitely be worth the wait for one of their red velvet cupcakes with vanilla icing, a Southern specialty, or any of the other dozen-plus flavors.

After we’ve on the beach or browsed the shops on Main Street in Santa Monica, I might suggest dinner at Raw, which serves vegan raw or “living” food. The term “raw” in this context means either uncooked or not heated above 118 degrees F., the temperature at which the food’s “living” enzymes die. Raw cuisine encompasses much more than green salads, gazpachos and fruit smoothies. Think Mexican pizza, pumpkin tortellini, spring rolls, cheesecake, apple pie, all made from such raw ingredients as nuts, seeds, sprouted grains, and coconuts, as well as fruits and vegetables, transformed by the low-heat of the dehydrator into reasonable facsimiles of the real thing. My favorite dish is the faux eel sushi, which has the same crunchy, meaty texture and salty flavor as the original. The chocolate parfait, made from coconut and raw cacao is also scrumptious.

Wandering around the farmer’s market is a fun way to spend Sunday morning. I like to check out the tables heaped with fresh produce and flowers and the booths with take-out food and drinks. We might try a strawberry lemonade or a bottle of sugarcane juice or a plate of Korean barbeque. Half a dozen or more artisans sell their wares as well, from handmade soaps to summer dresses to one-of-a-kind boxes and bags decoupaged with images ranging from Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits to Maxfield Parrish’s ethereal youths.

Sunday afternoon is a great time to explore the Getty, which now has two locations, the remodeled original Getty Villa in Malibu with the ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art collection and the Frank Gehry-designed Getty Center on the west side of Los Angeles, housing European art from the Middle Ages to the present. The former (which is free to enter but requires advance reservations) is the home of one of my all-time favorite pieces of art: a 4th century Sicilian sculpture of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans). Here in Los Angeles, a city permeated by a culture exalting youth and beauty, one might expect the usual image of the goddess as girlishly coy and scantily-clad. But instead, this majestic sculpture of Aphrodite, with one foot forward, her arms raised and her loose robes billowing, stands as an apt reminder of the awesome power of beauty, sexual desire, and love in human life, a power as unpredictable as that of the nearby Pacific Ocean.

A last glimpse back at Aphrodite, then the ocean, the freeway, the airport and then home again.

Freudian Slip

2008-01-16T11:09:00.000-08:00

Seeing other women’s beauty is easy, seeing my own is hard. The reasons are both generic and specific. A culture that worships the perfection of youth. Shaming parents. The body cast that covered my torso from shoulder to hipbone my freshman year of high school. Therapy and affirmations and self-improvement have helped me to reclaim a sense of ease and appreciation for this body, but I still struggle to have the confidence that other women, including my daughter, seem to just naturally possess.

On Christmas Eve, my 20something daughter and I are in Paris, walking through the 7th arrondisment, when I notice a name on a shop sign that I recognize from decades of reading fashion magazines. That Sabbia Rosa is an upscale lingerie store is immediately evident from the lovely white satin nightgowns on the mannequins in the display windows. Since Tina is interested in fashion design, I suggest we take a peek inside.

Tina quickly finds something to try on and disappears into one of the dressing rooms, while I wander around a bit, checking out the multitude of prints and colors. On a whim, I decide to try on something. From the rack, I choose an exquisite floral slip in autumnal colors on a white background, with rust lace, and the shop girl hangs it in the other dressing room. Peeling off the winter layers of coat, scarf, and boots takes a while. Finally, it’s me and the tiny slip. Cut on the bias, this one-size-fits-all gown hugs every curve, the ones I like and the ones I’m not so fond of. The length just above the knees, shows off my legs. When I peek out from behind the curtain, my daughter (who looks gorgeous in everything) enthuses, “It looks great on you, Mom!,” The shop girl agrees, adding, “You can even wear it as a dress!”

The colors remind me of a John Donne poem about the beauty of an autumn face.
Back again in the privacy of the dressing room, I gaze at the woman in the mirror. A woman in the autumn of her life, with long, auburn hair and brown eyes with flashes of green. A woman whose skin is no longer girlishly smooth, whose belly is rounded and stretch-marked from childbearing, whose body shows the effects of gravity. Gazing into the mirror, I struggle to suspend my disbelief until I can see her as beautiful, as desirable. There, there, it is. A beauty that is not airbrushed perfection or the flawlessness of youth, but the beauty of a body that can still dance, still feel deep joy.

As I slip off the dress, I glance at the price tag. Six hundred and thirty euros, or about the cost of my transatlantic ticket. I could dip into my savings and buy this nightgown, made in France, from French silk and lace. Another dress comes to mind, a pricey little black number by French designer Azzedine Alaïa that I tried on once. It was a dress that also embraced every curve, like all of his clothes. At that time, I could have afforded it more easily than I can this one, but I totally lacked the confidence to wear it. Browsing in a bookstore here, I saw a quote by Alaiä, along the lines of why would any woman spend big money on a little skirt, if not for seduction; why else wear clothes. Indeed, the Parisian department store, Galeries Lafayette, refers to its lingerie section, which takes up an entire floor, as “seduction fashion.” However, if I buy this slip of a gown, I will not be looking to seduce another, but to please myself.

A few days later, just before leaving Paris, I return to Sabbia Rosa to try on the gown again. The shop girl remembers me. “Is everything alright?,” she calls out as I stand for a few minutes gazing again at the woman in the mirror. The gown is just as exquisite, the woman wearing it looks just as lovely as before. Resolving to remember this image in those future moments, when insecurity or Botox temptations assail me or old age overtakes me, I take a picture of her with my mental camera.

When I’m 90, I want to remember this moment.

Thriving

2007-11-25T23:02:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in a spacious room at the Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach, looking out at the ocean. A pigeon--or is it a dove?-- prances on the balcony, looking for crumbs from the room service breakfast of warm popovers and poha berry jam. Instrumental island music is playing on the stereo, foreground to the background of waves and children’s shouts from the beach eight stories below. An antherium in shades of green sits on the desk, alongside a dove-grey folio which holds the hotel stationary, embossed with its trademark orchid, on which I write these words. I am reveling not only in the view, but also in an uncharacteristic feeling of happiness, of joie de vivre.

This is the trip I used to fantasize taking with my mother, back when I was still courting her, still hoping to win the approval and affection of the woman who gave me life, but could not give me love. I imagined that I would invite her to fly to Hawaii and stay at this luxuriously beautiful hotel, where we would sit on the veranda, telling funny stories, drinking pina coladas and watching the sun set. But it was always just a fantasy. For however much the child in me wished to give my mother such a vacation, the adult me knew that if I had offered it to her, she would have found a way to back out at the last minute, to reject me once again.

The white rooms and the green lawn below, shaded by palm trees and adorned with deck chairs, resembles the park-like sanitoriums found in European movies, where the heroine goes to heal from the shock of a near-fatal accident or the loss of a loved one. As I sit here, soaking up the beauty of ocean and sky, I wonder whether three nights will be enough.

I am here alone over the summer solstice to celebrate getting my master’s degree while simultaneously doing a year of intensive therapy to come to terms with my childhood abuse. I have come to this island, ruled by the fire goddess, Pele, as part of my effort to re-parent myself, to learn to be my own good mother, to see myself as beautiful, to treat myself as the precious child I once was.

I ask myself what I would have offered my mother if she were here, and then give that to myself without guilt. An early morning walk on the beach. An afternoon shopping for the perfect pair of bronze, bejeweled flip-flops. A hair treatment of warm coconut oil scented with mangoes A slice of macademia nut pie before dinner.

In the process of meeting my own desires, I am also reconnecting with my body, experiencing pleasure through senses dulled by pain and feeling my own abuse. I walk along the beach, holding the hand of the little girl who is my inner child. I slide through the shallow pool, then lay on the lounge chair and let the sun dry me. Wearing the slinky black dress with ruched sides that I bought for my birthday, I take myself out to dinner at the hotel’s French restaurant, La Mer, where I dine on chilled lobster salad and organic vegetables. While savoring the dessert of five tiny scoops of sorbet arranged like dabs of paint on a cookie shaped like a palette, I watch the hula dancer’s graceful hands and hips moving to the rhythm of the slack-key guitar and ukulele and sway in my seat. And at night, even as I toss and turn with the unfamiliar found of crashing surf, I rest in the softness of the sheets against my skin.

As I revel in the beauty of this place, as I take in the sensual pleasures of that surround me, I feel I have finally come home, to this body, to her beauty, to an uncharacteristic sense joie de vivre, the joy of being alive. The joy of not only surviving but of thriving.

Seeing

2007-09-11T11:18:00.000-07:00

In his book, “A Language Older Than Words,” Derrick Jensen writes of the relationship between the abuse he endured as a child at the hands of his father and the abuse civilization perpetuates upon humans-- especially indigenous peoples, women and children-- and non-humans. In other words, the violent family is a microcosm to the macrocosm of a violent civilization.

A friend loaned me Jensen’s book as I was going through my own process of recovering from an abusive childhood. It took me more than half a year to read it, not because of its length, but because so much of this beautifully-written book is full of pain: the pain of a lost childhood, the pain of the devastation of forest and salmon, the pain of animal testing, the pain of enslavement, the pain of debilitating disease. And yet Jensen is also dogged if not in his hope then in his determination to survive, to persevere in the face of forces driven to annihilate us all.

As I have worked through the shock, rage, sadness and loss of my own childhood, as I have let go of the myth that the family I grew up in was a-little-dysfunctional-but-basically-loving, I have begun to see past the myth of our culture, our nation as a-little-unequal-but-still-basically-good. I am starting to see how we, the upper, middle and even the working classes of the U.S., have been anesthetized, while our government and the transnational corporations have operated with impunity, wreaking havoc on humans and the environment in the name of greed. We live in a system that forces us to work longer hours than virtually any other industrialized nation (400 hours more per year than the French) and assaults us with the most sophisticated advertising ever produced to convince us that we must have the products touted to be whole human beings, to be valuable, to be loveable, so that we spend our scant leisure time shopping on-line or at the mall or zoning out in front of the television set, absorbing more advertising.

This systemic anesthetizing process goes hand-in-hand with our individual needs to cope with the long-term effects of domestic violence. In a country where one out of every three to four women and one out of every five to seven men have been sexually abused as children, where spanking is still condoned and beatings are common, where emotional and verbal abuse are rife, is it any wonder that we try to numb the pain with everything from substance abuse to work to shopping to sports to on-line porn? All while clinging to our belief that it-really-wasn’t-all-that-bad, our parents were only trying to teach us discipline when they took off their belt, only trying to show their love for us when they reached into our pants, only trying to teach us self-control when they screamed at us at the top of their lungs, just as their parents had done to them.

Meanwhile, our lifestyle, comfortable beyond our great-grandparents’ imagination, with central heating, automobiles, digital gadgets, hot showers, convenience meals, clothes in every color, etc, etc, etc, is based on extracting natural resources in ways and amounts which are so completely unsustainable as to be rapacious. Rape, literal and metaphorical, along with murder, torture, and institutionalized poverty are tools used to control those who resist the destruction of the land and her creatures. These atrocities, committed overseas or in our own poorest ghettos and reservations, happen out of sight, even of the TV cameras. If the people of a wealthy U.S. suburb like Plano, Texas or Palo Alto, California were to riot because their water was supplied by a foreign company which was raising rates to one-quarter of the average person’s monthly salary, that would be news. But when the same thing happens in a poor city on another continent, CNN and Fox News are nowhere in sight. The dumping of toxic chemicals into rivers, the employment of children in sweat-shops, the clear-cutting of forests, the birth defects resulting from radiation poisoning, these do not make the evening news, not least because their very prevalence, their “normality,” the very fact that they are not new, keeps them from being considered newsworthy.

If we can take off our blinders, unplug ourselves from the mass media, and remove the layers of denial, perhaps we can gather the courage to confront the reality of our lives and of our world, to see the damage done to us and the damage done by us, directly and indirectly. Perhaps we can see reach out to heal each other and together change direction from violence to peace, or at least from destruction to survival.

The Thrill of the Pole

2007-07-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

The Thrill of the Pole

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the idea that New Burlesque—or any other form of public striptease-- could be empowering for women. But my daughter is a passionate proponent of this art form, so when she suggested we catch a show at Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce in Los Angeles, I was curious to see what she found so fascinating.

My image of burlesque was beautiful young women doing dance routines while removing gorgeous sequined costumes. So when a lovely young woman came out on stage in a royal blue long-sleeved sequined top and matching ankle-length skirt, slit up the front to reveal a provocative bit of gold fringe, my expectations were met. What surprised me was the playfulness of her routine and the fact that even after she’d stripped down, she was still as covered up as if she were on a local beach.

At first, I was impressed simply because she could prance around the narrow bar in 6-inch heels. But as the show continued, I was even more taken with her agility and strength, especially when she hung upside down from the ropes. By this point, she was in a glittery pastie bra and white bikini bottom with a fringe “tail,” which bobbed up and down as she moved to the beat of the drum. I could never have done that, not even when I was 18 years old. The audience was entranced, but most importantly, the dancer herself seemed to be having a very good time.

The next day, I had the opportunity to delve a little deeper into the art of the striptease with an introductory class at the S-Factor in Los Angeles. That’s “S” as in stripper. As it happened, I was one of the oldest women in this class, and probably the least fit. To my relief, the room was dimly lit with no mirrors. The instructor explained that the absence of mirrors was meant to encourage us to focus on feeling good in our own skin, rather than on how we might look to others.

We arranged our mats on the floor in an oval around the three shiny poles in the center of the room and introduced ourselves. As we followed the teacher and her assistant through the strenuous workout targeting hips, buttocks, legs and abs, they encouraged us to play with our own hair, touch our faces, stroke our legs. Some of the exercises were variations on yoga postures, like hip circles combined with the bridge pose or cat and cow with a circling torso motion, but rather than holding the position, we moved through it in slow-motion, which added to the challenge.

The 45-minute or so workout ended with learning the S-Walk, a languid movement of crossed legs and dragging toes, perfect for approaching the pole. For our first pole trick, we held on with both hands, hooked one ankle around it, picked up the other foot and spun down. “No firemen!,” the instructor admonished, explaining that we were not to hug the pole tightly but to maintain a certain distance. It looked simple, but while the other women seemed to catch on quickly, I could not get my back foot off the floor, which meant that I was painfully pulling my wrists down the pole on each attempt. Finally, near the end of the class, my persistence paid off and I was able to mount and spin around the pole. My classmates applauded. Once I figured out how to spin, I didn’t want to stop. Even as the class drew to a close, I was sneaking in a couple of extra spins and wondering where I could get a pole of my own.

Although I learned how to mount the pole, spin down it, and dismount with cocked-hip first, I didn’t particularly feel like a stripper-in-training. Instead, I felt like a thrilled 10-year-old who has finally learned to do a cartwheel and can’t wait to show it off, which I did as soon as my daughter arrived to pick me up at the end of class.

Empowerment takes many forms.

Beautiful Things

2007-07-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

I love beautiful things, especially clothes, and I enjoy shopping for them. I like the process of perusing the racks for my favorite colors and running my hands over the fabric, a process that seems like a modern-day version of hunting and gathering.

Years ago, I decided to avoid polyesters in favor of all natural fabrics like cotton, thinking that I was making a more sustainable, healthier choice, as well as one that was more aesthetically pleasing. But I recently learned that cotton garments are neither sustainable nor healthy; a single garment can require up to a third of a pound of pesticide to produce. Appalled, I decided to take action—the only new clothes that I would allow myself would be those made from sustainable fibers, such as organic cotton, bamboo, soy and flax. Everything else would be vintage or gently used.

An on-line search revealed that there are a number of designers in the eco-fashion niche, with clothes that are hip, if a tad expensive (for example, a $125 T-shirt). But ordering on-line has it own costs, such as the carbon released in the delivery process, so I decided to look closer to home. After seeing the press attention to eco-fashion designers and noticing that both my local natural foods stores have a small selection of eco-clothes, I took my quest to the next level and headed for the closest mall.

I started at Lucy’s. I asked the clerk if any of the clothes were made from organic cotton, bamboo, or other sustainable fibers. She didn’t know, but asked her co-worker, who said they didn’t have anything with organic cotton, but led me to the black Tonga skirt, a long, knit garment that was made from bamboo. Fun but I have enough black in my closet. At the neighboring retailer, Lucky Brand Dungarees, the clerk answered my question by saying that most of the items were made from cotton. But he didn’t know about organic cotton. I went on to Eileen Fisher, which had two styles of dresses and two styles of tops in three different colors, six or so choices in total, made from organic cotton. None of them were my style, but I was pleased to find something nonetheless. Maybe there was hope. I went on to TSE, MaxMara, and United Colors of Bennetton, but no luck. Feeling rather discouraged, I headed for Bloomingdales. In the juniors department, the clerk I asked turned to her co-worker and asked if she knew anything about organic cotton. Her answer was “Yes, but not here.” However, as I was walking out of the department store, I sped a selection of socks in several different styles and earth colors. Each had a sustainable fiber—soy, bamboo, organic cotton, flax (a.k.a. linen)-- prominently labeled, while the other fibers (such as nylon) were listed in tiny print on the back.

My informal survey was hardly comprehensive. I know that Sephora carries a couple of lines of organic skin care products, including the locally-produecd Juicy Beauty. It is entirely possible that I missed a handful of other garments made from sustainable fibers. It is even possible that in another year or two there will be a Linda Loudermilk boutique or an eco-fashion emporium at this upscale shopping center. Although I applaud retailers who offer eco-chic clothes, solving the environmental problems generated by the garment industry is not as easy as replacing all current merchandise with garments made from organic cotton, silk, bamboo, soy, or seaweed. In other words, we can’t shop our way out.

Remember the three ecological R’s: reduce, re-use, recycle?. Most people I’ve met in the socially-progressive Bay Area are dutiful to the point of being religious about recycling. Every week they rinse out their wine bottles, soda cans, and plastic containers and put them, along with newspapers, junk mail, and used office paper, into big blue bins and haul them down to the curb. Some of them also re-use items, such as bringing their own bags to the grocery store or writing down their shopping list on an old envelope rather than a new sheet of paper.

But what about reduction? How many of us are reducing our consumption? Of course, if you’ve been laid-off or are retired or home on maternity leave, you might reduce your consumption to save money. Or you might just switch to shopping at less-expensive retailer, say, Ross instead of Nordstrom. If you were aware of the cost, not just in dollars and cents, but in natural resources extracted, in child labor and other inhumane practices, in toxic chemicals inhaled by farmers and added to the global total, and in increased landfill volume when the garment is no longer trendy or its looks have faded, would you shop differently?

Of course, there are times when you need a new garment due to changing circumstances and you might not be able to find a suitable used one. In this situation, we can turn for inspiration to those arbiters of chic, the French, who think of shopping in terms of coup de couer, to fall madly in love, with a piece of clothing. If you can let the cacophony fade, tune out those voices created by advertisers and marketers which insist that your life will not be complete without this product, and listen closely to your own heart’s desire, buying only those garments that speak to you, then you will have a closet filled not with false or fair-weather acquaintances, but with steadfast friends who, in exchange for a little care at laundry time and the occasional trip to the tailor for updating, will provide you with years of comfort and beauty.

Passionate Sustainability

2007-07-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I was standing in front of an art gallery named Hang looking at a rectangular piece hanging in the window. Half of the rectangle was a mélange of cheerful colors with a couple of words, including “desire”; the other half was a chalkboard with the heading "Goals for 2004," followed by several possibilities written in chalk.

I went inside to take a closer look. At the sales clerk’s urging, I erased the previous list and wrote in my own goals. Study Japanese. Make Art in Santa Fe. Visit Mongolia. Live a Life of Passion. I went outside to look at my handiwork. Somehow, seeing it there in black and white, with random passersby and my 20something son as witnesses made the list seem more real. “What do you mean by living a passionate life?” my son, Michael, asked. At the time, I didn’t really know what I meant; I only sensed the absence of desire. Desire as the yearning, the spark, that leads to passion, not only physical but also metaphorical. In a word, I was depressed.

In the years that followed, I stepped away from the path which others expected me to take and onto the path of following my own heart. Like the yellow-brick road, this path is sometimes bright and other times faint. It has taken me through dangerous territory, places where angels fear to tread, and into moments not only of despair but also of ecstasy.

In walking this path, I have questioned, again and again, what my life’s purpose might be and how I can make a difference to both humans and non-humans. What, if anything, can I do to end the destruction of the environment? How do I act from my understanding that we—you, me, this tree, that bird, those bees, the stars-- are all interconnected in a web of life when I live in a culture that considers stars to be dead matter and values only some people (and their companion animals)? Is it possible to live a life of passionate sustainability, to live in a way that does not damage the ability of future generations to sustain themselves, without disengaging from society altogether?

But lately, in thinking about the link between passion and sustainability, I have come to wonder if it is possible to live a sustainable life, at least in the industrial world, without passion? I would argue that the answer might well be no. Without passion, where will we get the energy to protect the natural world, of which we are a part? Without a desire for something different than the current system, where will we get the will to engage in the struggle, to act differently, to not be sheep following the path of complicity with corporate greed and governmental deceit? Without the support of other passionate people, how can we endure and overcome the feelings of helplessness, the fears that we may be doing too little too late to save even our own grandchildren, not to mention countless other species? Without passion, how can we survive?

Making Friends with the Mirror

2007-07-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you focus your attention on what you perceive to be your assets or your flaws? Do you notice your long neck and fingers or do you focus on the tiny wrinkles at the corners of your eyes? How do you see yourself? With loving-kindness and appreciation as you would a lover or with criticism and judgment, as you would a bitter rival? Can you love what poet Mary Oliver calls “the soft animal of your body”?

Self-love has had a bad rap in Western culture. Think of the queen in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” looking into the magic mirror and asking “Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?” The queen is vain, obsessed with her own appearance, so obsessed that she will poison the younger woman who is now her competition. Snow White is humble and pure, so unconcerned with her looks that one cannot imagine her asking the mirror’s opinion. And even if someone told her that she was the fairest in the land, she would not believe it for a second.

People say that beautiful women have the hardest time with aging because outer beauty fades irretrievably. And if beauty is synonymous with youth, then it will slowly vanish. But just as you can stay young at heart and keep a youthful open mind even when the body is no longer as firm and flexible as it once was, so too can you see yourself as beautiful even if your beauty is not the same as that of a supermodel or film star. I’m not talking about inner beauty, which contributes its own mysterious glow, but about outer beauty, about the perspective you take on the temple of your spirit, your own body.

Think of a lover, who never seems to notice your stretch marks, but instead praises your long neck when your hair is up or who compliments your behind, the same rear view that you have always loathed because one cheek hangs lower than the other. Can you imagine seeing yourself as your lover would?

Think of the women and men you know, your friends, your beloveds, your children. Most likely, you see their individual beauty. One friend belly-dancing in a local performance, her voluptuous body swaying to the beat of the drum. Entranced by the music, her face radiant, her costume glittering, she is an embodiment of the Divine Feminine. Another friend’s brown hair shot with silver, blowing in the breeze, her eyes alight with interest as she talks about the challenges of making a living doing what she love. A third friend whose deep orange caftan and carnelian necklace draws your eyes to her deep blue ones, her laugh as she shows off her Italian sandals, which have the word “sexy” stamped on the inner soles.

Now think of yourself. Do you see yourself the way you see your friends? Or do you focus on your every zit, grey hair, wrinkle, stretch mark or pound? Do you hate your thighs, your breasts, your upper arms, your belly, because they aren’t as firm or high or taut as they used to be, or as some celebrity’s appears to be?

I used to think that beauty was a gene that, like red hair, could skip generations. My blonde, blue-eyed mother with porcelain skin and my tall, brunette daughter with dark, almond-shaped eyes were the beauties to my plain Jane. All I could see were the width of my thighs, the stretch marks on my belly, the mousiness of my hair color. But as my daughter blossomed into young womanhood, I knew that if I wanted to be a positive role model of graceful aging, I needed to go beyond appreciating my body as a machine and change my self-perception to match my daughter’s view of me, which could be summed up as, “You’re beautiful and don’t let anyone tell you anything else.”

In my quest to see myself as beautiful, I wrote affirmations, lost a few pounds, bought clothes that fit my body, colored my hair auburn, found a good therapist to unlearn my negative conditioning, and began a 5 Rhythms dance practice. Now when I look at photos of my younger self, I can see the beauty that was there all along. It’s not the cool perfection of a Grecian statue or the willowy body of a catwalk model. It’s the thoughtful look in my eyes, the softness of my touch, the shy curve of my smile, the swaying of my hips as I move to the music of life.

What is Fierce Desire?

2007-06-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Fierce Desire is the name of this blog, the name of my website (still in development) and the name of the business I envision creating to help others embody their passion. Fierce Desire is also my personal journey to find my own heart's desires, to pursue a life of passion, to speak my own truth with love, integrity and compassion.