Mindful Cooking

Photo: The "cheesy" snowman appetizer I made on New Year's Eve, from an idea I found on Pinterest


"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."--Elbert G. Huddard

Last spring I started a family recipe binder.  I bought a stack of clear insert sheets, and divided them by categories like "Eggs and cheese," "Shrimp and meat" (shrimp is the only fish I can stomach), "Vegetarian" (that section is the thickest because Mike is a veggie and a good guinea pig for my cooking lessons). The rule is my family recipe binder can only include dishes I have made and liked (or that would be good with some minor tweaks).  On each one I write the date and make notes about the process and results ("Make this one when tomatoes are in season" or "Mike LOVED it but it gave him gas").

The recipes themselves are from all over--stained index cards in my mother's handwriting for dishes I remember having as a kid, like Lentil Stew and Chicken Cacciotore, which she wrote out for me before I left home.  My own writing on torn notebook paper, some sheets dating back to my college years when I used to go to the library and copy down recipes from hardcover cookbooks I couldn't afford to buy.  Lots of pages ripped from magazines, dating back to 1994, when my job at the University Bookstore included managing the magazine rack. When a new issue came in, I was to pull the old one off the shelf and rip the cover off in order to mail the unsold covers to the distributor.  I'd take topless copies of Eating Well and Food & Wine back to my dorm room, ripping out recipes I planned to follow once I had more than a hot plate and one aluminum pot.

Photo: Chicken with cherry tomatoes, onions, and grits


Back then I was eager to have my own kitchen because cooking dinner was something very adult and sophisticated.  I didn't see it as domestic drudgery, like cleaning the toilet and washing the windows.  Cooking was dinner parties, family meals around the table, creating new tastes and experimenting, sharing my love of food with my guests or partner.

 Photo: Shrimp stir fry with shiitakes and snow peas

What I love about cooking (and baking, although that tends to be a more exact science) is that I generally don't worry about making a mistake.  It's one of the few areas of my life where it doesn't bother me if I screw up a step because I usually find a way to fix it so the dish is still edible, or even unaffected.  I think it's this kitchen confidence that keeps me from second-guessing myself.  Cooking and baking are fun, they're creative, and you usually get an end result that makes people happy. 

Photo: Mini lasagne in pastry shells

I find that unless I've had a particularly tiring day, even cooking on weekdays can end things on a good note.  Yes, it means laundry has to wait until tomorrow night and maybe the pile of dishes will sit overnight.  But cooking and baking are two of my favorite ways to unwind, especially on a cold winter night when you feel lucky to be indoors, warm, and well-fed.  You have to find the things that engage you in this life--and then have the courage to pursue them without worrying about being perfect. 

Photo: Coconut chocolate-chunk muffins (made with coconut and rye flours)

It's good to have a creative outlet where you aren't expecting to win anything, or make money off of your effort, or impress strangers (yes, I am sharing pictures of my cooking and baking online, but that's simply because I love looking at pictures of food and yes, I'm proud of what I make).  I almost always follow recipes so it's not like I'm coming up with all new dishes destined to win a cook-off.  I do slip in the odd substitution here and there, and by doing that I learn what flavors compliment each other and how I can work with a recipe when I don't have all the ingredients readily at hand.

Photo: Chicken with potatoes, green olives, and lemon

I was surprised when I heard from my mother that most of the family members in my generation on my father's side, Italian-American women and men living in a city where just a few blocks away there are stores carrying every imaginable ingredient, never learned to cook from their older relatives (or simply don't bother).  My great aunts and uncles, my grandparents--they all cooked amazing Italian fare everyday, but these days my cousins are more likely to order in Chinese or serve cold cuts at social gatherings.  I don't understand how they could grow up with such a bounty of home-cooked food always available to them and not want to replicate this for their own families. 

Mike grew up with home cooked meals every night, but like most kids he also had a taste for junk food.  Recently, after he heard that Hostess (and the New England division, Drake's) was going bankrupt, he started searching the snack aisles of every convenience store, bodega (or as New Englander's curiously call them, Spa), and supermarket in Kendall Square trying to find his childhood favorite, Funny Bones, those chocolate-covered peanut butter and devil's food logs.

Growing up I wasn't allowed to eat Twinkies or Devil Dogs, though inexplicably my mother did allow me to have Hawaiian Punch and Chips Ahoy cookies, which are no paragons of health. For some reason it was anything Hostess-branded (including Wonder Bread) that was off-limits to me.  Of course she couldn't stop me from eating whatever was offered at the slumber parties hosted by laxer mothers, or at the convenience store five blocks away that my friend Heather and I would frequent, gripping our weekly allowance in our fists.

Thing is when I did have my first Hostess cupcake, I wasn't blown away.  In fact I was disappointed in the off-taste of the creamy filling, which I thought would taste more like the fresh whipped-cream my mother made.  The little frosted donuts and the coffee cakes were pretty good, but nothing special.  I far preferred my mother's homemade cookies.

Yesterday Mike found his Funny Bones at our local Shaw's.  Wanting to see if the coffee cakes were better than I remembered, and, more importantly, wanting to share in his nostalgia, I picked up a box.  I felt like a felon placing the artificial cakes in the cart.  I didn't want anyone to see them and say to the person next to them,"Wow, that couple isn't discriminating about what they eat, are they?"

When we got home and unloaded the groceries, I opened the box of coffee cakes and slid out a plastic-wrapped two-pack.  They were smaller than I remembered, but most things are when you're a grown up.  They tasted OK--sweet, but not cloyingly so, and moister than I was expecting (of course, they contain "stabilizing agents," whatever those are).  Mike savored his first Funny Bone, which he said was just as tasty as he remembered and a little taste of his childhood.

So when I told him that I was planning to bake brownies, he said, "What for, we have the Drake's cakes."

"I want to try this new recipe in Cook's Illustrated," I said.  "They've perfected the classic brownie.  Anyway, the Drake's will last for weeks and weeks. Isn't it Twinkies and cockroaches that can outlive us in a Nuclear attack?"  Maybe that's something else I like about making something from scratch--it's a delicious moment in time best enjoyed the moment it's served.

Photo: Cook's Illustrated brownies

Back to Black Friday

 

"I just don't understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed."--Charlie Brown from A Charlie Brown Christmas  


Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, hands down. Ornamental glass and glitter to dress up a freshly-cut Douglas Fir, Elvis crooning about his hope for snow, the feast of the seven fishes on Christmas Eve in Bensonhurst when my grandfather was still alive.  I didn't actually eat any of the fish--certainly not the stuffed squid or the marinated octopus.  But even though my dinner consisted of several slices of semolina bread and rice balls I was content.  I liked the traditions, even the ones in which I didn't take part.  And the presents!  At midnight was the crisp pop of an Asti bottle, an opened Panettone creating a cloud of powdered sugar overhead, and all the relatives and friends squeezed into the tiny livingroom to sit shoulder to shoulder on the plastic-covered faux baroque furniture.  Piles of opened gifts formed at our feet, and the sounds of appreciation and glee continued as the last present was presented to Pipina, or sometimes Pipinella,  my grandfather's nicknames for my grandmother Josephine, or Guiseppina in their native Italy.

Even as I slipped into my twenties and early thirties, and the boisterous Christmas Eves in Brooklyn became the much tamer Christmas Eve's of my parents' house in New Jersey, I still looked forward to Christmas. We no longer waited until midnight to exchange gifts, and there were probably only five or six fishes if you were counting, but there was still the comfort of traditions my parents and I shared.  My mom and I exchanging one gift early ("Just a little one!") The tree festooned to toppling with an assortment of ornaments that took my mother decades to accumulate. I worried a little more about getting the right gifts (and enough of them) for my family, but I also felt expansive in my desire to make other people happy.  I felt a connection to my father--who always goes a little over-the-top at Christmas--every time I was extravagant, buying those last-minute cashmere gloves for my mother or the basket of gourmet treats from Chelsea Market for my Aunt. 

This year my parents will be in Sweden on Christmas, visiting my uncle and cousins on my mother's side.  While I'm happy for them, I can't help feeling like I'm losing the lovely feelings that the holidays usually bring.  Some people might say that Christmas is a holiday meant for children, and we don't have any small children in our immediate family.  Others look to the spiritual significance of what is otherwise a consumer bonanza that starts in mid-October.  But unlike Charlie Brown's existential holiday blues, I'm not newly inspired by the story of Mary and Joseph in the manger because I'm not religious.

Even my husband, who is usually adept at cheering me up, is no help here. He dreads Christmas because he sees it as a time of excessive obligations.  Whatever joy he brings to the occasion is for my benefit.  We adopted our rescue dog Carmelita last year because, while attending a performance of the cloying A Christmas Celtic Sojourn , I wept at the sight of little girls in frilly dresses and striped tights, knowing they were much happier than I was at that moment and wishing to borrow one of them to distract me from the crap playing on stage.  Actually I was the only one who appeared to be bristling at the sound of Brian O'Donovan and the sight of the blonde and bouncy young thing kicking it up every interminable minute.
 
Black Friday is this week, an ugly reminder of the disregard some of us have for the welfare of others (and I'm not excluding myself here--I can be a hellion at a sample sale) as we push our way toward the promised deals before some other knucklehead gets them.

Even if there is bad news, like the kind I received from a close friend recently, and heard about secondhand from others--the holidays still come.  What do those families do to get through, and how can you celebrate when you know there is suffering going on in your midst?

How do we make the holidays meaningful again, without completely deflating the joy and occasional frivolity?  I'm not trying to be a joykill here, I just don't deal so well with change and naturally there have been a lot of changes since I was young.  It used to be my main concerns were as shallow as "Did my father get me the perfume I want? or "will I have a boyfriend this year and if so, what should I buy him that shows the right amount of affection without scaring him away?"  Now I wonder if there's more to the holidays than a discounted iPhone.  Even the cookies I like baking have become sugary carb bombs as I get older and thicker. 

Maybe I just need to start simple and without high expectations. You know, peer into some decorated department store windows, or make an ornament out of pipe cleaners, or buy a holiday outfit that will make me feel pretty.  Or maybe I'll try to think up some new traditions that will fit the way my family, friends and I live now.

Do you have any favorite holiday traditions that make the season bright for you?

Pinned down by Pinterest

Photo from crafterminds.com


"A great many women view shopping as a form of recreation.  The 'thrill of the hunt,' the acknowledged excitement of shopping, tugs you into a powerful magnetic field, designed to cloud your judgment and extract your money.  You need to pass up those wild rides on the consumer merry-go-round and instead use a different vehicle to satisfy your basic needs for stimulation, activity, attachment, affiliation, and self-expression."--April Lane Benson, PhD, To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop

"Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests."--Pinterest mission statement


I login and press the down arrow.  The pictures render achingly slow.  I avoid looking at the screen because I don't want to spoil the surprises in store.  The OCD part of my brain says, I must start where I left off, I don't want to miss even one!  When I hit the bottom of the page, I feel an unease in my stomach that comes from knowing there are more posts that came before these, and that I've missed out on them, maybe forever.  What if there was a knock-out dress or some yummy recipe using pumpkin seeds or a book shelf cleverly mounted on the outside of a door?  It's the same feeling that I imagine Twitter users feel when they try to read every tweet they missed in that 1/2 hour window when they were away from their computers.

But then the fluttery anticipation, the kind I get when walking into a Lord & Taylor with a 20%- coupon-off-already-marked-down-wear-now-merchandise or, to phrase it a different way, what a junkie experiences on his way to scoring some Horse from his dealer (I've watched a lot of episodes of Intervention).

If it's not an addiction I have, then it's at least lust.  I would say love, but the object of my desire is for the perfect high-heeled Mary Janes, the beautiful bathroom with soaking tub and lots of windows,  an artistically-wrapped present, or the most luscious cupcake recipe.

I'm pinned by Pinterest.  In McDonald's-speak, I'm a Heavy User.

A colleague introduced me to Pinterest as a way to promote a new imprint our company is launching.  When the two of us and the Marketing Assistant sat in Red Mango that day, I had a hard time understanding the concept behind this new social media site.  I was also having a hard time hearing her over the weirdly-inappropriate club music the yogurt chain was blaring.  Later, I dismissed it as dumb, but knew I should at least check it out for publicity purposes.

I dabble in social media primarily for work and for the occasional reunion with an old friend or to talk about books I'm reading.  But I can always walk away without any difficulty, like turning off an episode of I Survived that I've already seen.  When I started using Pinterest, I had trouble understanding what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to find and get followers, or even what the point was of "pinning" pictures on virtual bulletin boards.  It didn't take long for me to catch on, though.  While ostensibly using Pinterest for work, I was also sucked into it on a personal level.

Before Pinterest, I used to come home from work and never turn on my computer, having stared long and hard at a screen all day, and now just wanted to rest my eyes, move around--even if it was to go from the kitchen table to the couch to my bed.  Now I'm coming home and logging on to see what cool DIY project one of the people I follow has discovered.  Two hours pass before I realize just how much of my free time I have (squandered?) pinning pictures of celebrity haircuts to my STYLE board.

Pinterest is essentially like making wish lists using pictures.  And there's nothing I like better than making lists.  And it's not just me--lots of people like lists.  It's why copywriters and magazine editors love using bullet points and sidebars and favor titles like "The 7 Ways to a Flatter Stomach" or whatever.  To me, Pinterest is also a throwback to when I was a teenager and used to tear out pictures from magazines and tape them, collage-like, on my bedroom wall.  

There are some advantages to being a regular pinner.  I am following all of my authors who are on Pinterest and repinning their pins.  I am also getting that retail high, the thrill of the hunt that usually leads me astray on shopping sites like Rue La La.  Pinning new skirts from Anthropologie and a hot holiday shade of OPI nail polish keeps me from actually shopping, but provides almost the same kick. 

Buddhists would call my current obsession another form of samsara or "being hooked" to earthly desires.  Although finding the occasional deal on a Kate Spade handbag brings me pleasure, there are times I find myself wandering alone around the Prudential Center in Boston, looking for something to lift me up from some mild but persistent malaise.  I won't feel right, I reason, unless I buy SOMETHING, even if it's as small as a tube of lipstick.  Mindless shopping--without a purpose other than to cheer me up or to give me a false sense of power--inevitably leads to disappointment and less money in the bank, not to mention owning up to my husband that I have spent beyond our agreed budget for the week.

With Pinterest I can be creative and express my personal style in a way that won't cause arguments or lead to an accumulation of barely-used lipsticks.  I like seeing other peoples' pins as much or more than I like pinning my own finds.  I try to maintain a few non-materialistic boards, like "Mindful", which is populated with nice quotes and sublime imagery from nature.

Now if I could get myself to actually DO some of the projects I've pinned to my DIY IDEAS board like that pretty flower necklace, or bake those pumpkin pie cupcakes on my RECIPES TO TRY board, this would take Pinterest from a relatively harmless diversion to a life-enhancing technology, which after all is what social media is supposed to be about.

Boundary issues

"Compassionate listening is crucial. We listen with the willingness to relieve the suffering of the other person, not to judge or argue with her. We listen with all our attention. Even if we hear something that is not true, we continue to listen deeply so the other person can express her pain and relieve tensions within herself. If we reply to her or correct her, the practice will not bear fruit. "--Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh

I got off the train and steeled myself. I should not enter the building cranky or resentful. I should not bring negativity to someone who has already had a lifetime of suffering. On the one hand I felt guilty and ashamed for being so petty. But I was also thinking, "What will she ask me for next?"

I was visiting my older friend Linda for our weekly talk. I've been volunteering with her for almost three years now and I have pretty good attendance. I know that she counts on my visits as a break in her routine, so I try not to skip a week unless I'm sick or on vacation. The thought of her alone in her apartment day after day is more than a little heartbreaking.

But lately my compassion for her has been tested. Really, I should have seen this coming.

Linda and I talk a lot about boundaries. She has encountered certain people in her life who have boundary issues. Because she lives in Section 8 housing, she has been placed in residences with a mixed population of mentally ill, disabled, and the elderly. Linda has had at least two friends who have been mentally challenged in some form or another.

I was starting to notice that she herself refused to set boundaries with others. She often complains about a neighbor who is kind of a pseudo "friend." Really the woman is a bully, but Linda prefers to keep her enemies close.

According to Linda's side of the story, which may or may not be slightly exaggerated, this woman calls and visits Linda at all hours of the night, barges into her apartment without knocking, and asks her for favors and money. Linda is on a fixed income and is not very good at handling her money. I get angry when I hear that her "friend" has asked her for everything from a glass of juice, to the repeated use of her vacuum cleaner, to a gift of a pricey talking scale (!!), even cash. She wakes Linda up early in the morning and demands a cup of coffee. Linda has trouble with her mobility and whenever the neighbor knocks on the door, Linda has to launch herself up and walk across the room, even if she's not in her braces.

This is not the first time I have heard stories of Linda's being taken advantage of. She says the people who do it don't know any better. That may be true--there seems to be a lack of social intelligence going around. I tell her repeatedly, "Stand up for yourself! Don't let yourself get pushed around." That's when I begin sounding like an article on assertiveness in a woman's glossy. "It's OK to say no to people!"

Although I still fill out a time sheet for the volunteer organization that first set me up with Linda, I consider her a friend and assume she feels the same. But there are times when she seems to turn the tables on me and starts testing MY boundaries.

Every week I bring a snack for us to share, usually hummus and celery or guacamole and chips. She used to put out a bowl of pretzels when I came over but later told me that she couldn't afford to keep doing it, so I willingly took on snack duty. She provides seltzer water. Everytime we start eating, I can sense that she's waiting for me to finish. I'll have a bite in my mouth and she'll immediately exclaim, "Dig in!" or "Have some more." But when I shake my head because I don't want to answer with my mouth full, she always looks pleased with my response and consequently moves the snack closer to her.

Before our visits she often calls me at home and on my cell--repeatedly if I don't answer right away--requesting small items. I don't mind picking things up for her. After all, she doesn't get out much and the person who used to help her isn't in the picture anymore. Usually because the items are small--aspirin, lotion, dental floss--I refuse to let her pay me back for them. I figure as long as it's a once-in-a-while type of thing it's OK.

But when she comes to expect these things and more from me week after week, I start to get resentful. Two months before her birthday she started naming things she wanted me to buy her: Pajama jeans (I talked her out of those), an Episcopal silver cross necklace that you can only find in select religious stores in the outer suburbs, a tacky pleather case for her Bible that she found in one of those Fingerhut-type catalogs, the ones that you see and wonder, "Who buys this shit?" Now you know. We settle on slacks from Land's End. Now I am forever on their plus-size catalog mailing list.

Recently Linda asked me, "Can you cash a check for me?" I asked her what she meant since she has her own bank account. She replied, "I'll give you a check for $32 and you give me cash, and then hold the check until I get my social security next month." A loan. She had just finished telling me how angry she was at a relative who refused to lend her $65 for a pair of sneakers. "He's got a fancy house with an indoor pool and he can't spare $65!" Now who was the cheapskate-miser? Me.

I still said no. Boundary erected.

I did agree to be on Linda's Lifeline list, to be her local ICE (in case of emergency) contact listed on a form magnetized to her refrigerator, and her emergency cat sitter. I am proud to be able to do be these things for her. The difference is these responsibilities come with being a good friend. They don't cost anything except time.

I try to play my role of listener, of confidant. I try to be present for her even during the times she frustrates me. I don't know if her stories of unfriendly encounters with the cable guy or the crazy woman on the sixth floor are exaggerated--she does have a tendency toward paranoia. I don't know if she is really having bad cell phone service or she just wanted to have an excuse to switch carriers again because she's a maximizer. I try not to tell her what to do, but like a mother to a wayward teenager, I find it impossible not to give her advice, even while I know she probably won't take it.

The last time I visited she gave me a piece of banana bread her neighbor made and a frozen Challah loaf (she's recently reverted back to Judaism, which she converted to years ago) saying "I'm afraid of the oven. I didn't know you had to bake it." I take these gifts with the thought that maybe my friendship means more to her than the opportunity to shave a few dollars off her grocery list.

I'm happy just being a lifeline.

Why I fear death

"When you are standing at death's door and you have a chance to say something to someone, I absolutely think that that proximity to death is going to influence the words that come out of your mouth."--Harvey Chochinov

I was listening to NPR this morning. The segment Your Health came on, and the topic was dignity therapy. The phrase caught my attention because of how much I value the concept of dignity, being dignified, giving others their dignity. Dignity therapy is practiced on the dying--the "lucky" ones who know when they're going to die and can mentally prepare for it while they are still living.

What bothers people most about dying? Psychologists who work with the dying, hospice workers, philosophers, and religious thinkers have all tried to address this question. For some it's the fear of being forgotten, disappearing into nothingness, all of our thoughts and experiences and stories just vaporizing.

Dignity therapy is designed to allay this fear and allow the dying to tell their story the way they want it to be told. The therapy was created by a psychiatrist named Harvey Chochinov. Chochinov was treating a patient with a brain tumor. He noticed that this pale and weak patient had prominently placed a picture of himself on his bedside table, showing him when he was young and healthy, a muscular bodybuilder. Why that picture?

The man was sending a message: This was how he needed to be seen.

As Chochinov continued his work with the dying, he confronted this again and again — this need people have to assert themselves in the face of death. And he started to wonder about it.

"Why is it that how people perceive themselves to be seen should have such a profound influence? How does that make sense? What does that mean?" Chochinov says.

I worry about how I'll be perceived when I'm dead. Heck, I worry about that NOW. It's like an old person trying to convince a child that they were once as young and cute and energetic as they are. The kid can't see it. Or how strangers perceive the elderly, not identifying that they will be them one day. We post our most flattering pictures on Facebook, we tell ourselves stories about who we are--but what will happen when we die? Will that carefully-constructed version of ourselves also be annihilated?

Dignity therapy involves writing down a person's story while they are still here to tell it. The therapist asks the patient questions and records details that are important to him or her. The document is then transcribed and edited by the patient to their satisfaction. When the patient dies, the document is given to their loved ones. This document often becomes as precious to the survivors as the deceased was in life. Sometimes it even surprises family members, revealing missing details and truthful feelings that they never knew about before.

Does it matter if these patients describe events differently then how they really happened? No. Our perceptions shape our reality; what may have been a disastrous relationship with a sibling becomes a meaningful and unbreakable bond. A difficult day is remembered as also having some beauty, some value in it after all. In the end, we often see things differently than we did when we were actually in the thick of it, and that's normal. Maybe that's even a good thing.

Of course dignity therapy can't help those who die suddenly, unexpectedly, mysteriously. I have many questions about my maternal grandmother who died before I was born. I will probably never get those questions answered--or not completely--because she left behind so few details of herself. What if she had taken the time to write about her life--even a few pages about key moments would have been a wonderful gift to my mother and me. This was probably what my mother was thinking of when a few Christmases ago, she gave me a journal in which she had written her memories of her life before I was born. A more thoughtful gift is hard to imagine.

And then there are those who experience a living "death." I'm reading a book called Head Cases. It's a fascinating book with stories of people affected by TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury.) There has been a lot of talk of TBI in the news lately--high school football stars sustaining head injuries that they'll likely carry through the rest of their life, military men and women whose head injuries cause a variety of changes in their physical body but also in their personality. The brain is such an amazing machine, but it's also a mysterious and fragile organ that, when damaged, can cause people to forget they have a wife or a child, to think they're dead, to suffer violent rages, or to become highly gifted artists. You think that you will always be the same person, but you won't--whether it's by means of an accident or an awakening, you will change, and then you will adapt as best as you can to your new reality. But we may not want to leave our old selves in the dustbin like some discarded clothing that doesn't fit us. Those old clothes are still infused with our memories, our meaning.

Which makes me think that we all better get writing the story of our lives right now.

Let the music play

Photo Credit: dougandadrienne.info

"Why am I doing such a thing as performing an improvisation on a piano? I have a quick answer. I need to know who I am, and this is my most complete way of knowing. And as for why you are listening? You need something as well, some connective beauty we all seem to be longing for.

Now the piece is over. In the moment before applause, the sense of community is palpable We've been connected, but not necessarily in the same ways to the same places. If there is anything we can hold onto in music it is perhaps this quiet, infinite instant when we inhabit our collective body."--W. A. Mathieu, from Bridge of Waves: What Music Is and How Listening to It Changes the World

My favorite record store when I was a teenager was a place called Vintage Vinyl. It was a stand-alone store on Rt. 35 in Oakhurst, NJ. Before I had a driver's license, I would walk from our sprawling condominium complex on sidewalks few ever used because the car is king in the suburbs, past the 7-Eleven and a shopping complex that can only exist in a overdeveloped New Jersey town--Cobblestone Village. I'd make a mad dash across the median of the highway and climb the hill over to the record store. I was maybe 15 years-old, babysitting money in my pocket, and the anticipation of buying a new album or cassette tape made me giddy.

When I had a car I'd drive to Red Bank, to Jack's Music Shoppe, where I'd spend an hour or more flipping through the CDs. Music--like books--were my solace and refuge from hurt and disappointment, but also a celebration of being young, knowing all the tidbits about a band's likes and dislikes, or at least what they claimed in Spin magazine. Music was an essential backdrop in my life in college--whether I was writing a paper (flamenco guitar or anything soft and lilting like 10,000 Maniacs), getting ready to go out on a Thursday night (updated disco from Deee-Lite or the jazz/hip-hop hybrid band Digable Planets), or letting fantasy and wistful song lyrics fill in the blanks of an otherwise unpromising crush (any young female at a piano.)

In my twenties it was live music in New York City, and my best friend's band Bionic Finger--a four-girl pop band who played in delightfully seedy venues in the East Village and Brooklyn. Live shows at these dark clubs not only made you feel young and in-the-know, but united you with all the other familiar music lovers inevitably in the crowd.

In my thirties I could sense the change in my musical proclivities. No longer was I searching out new bands or buying obscure foreign releases of a favorite artist. I still listened to music, but it was usually a rotating collection of discs released 2-5 years ago. I don't want to blame married life for dampening my musical enthusiasm, but so much of what I liked to listen to I associated with being young and single and free. Now the radio dial was locked on NPR News and stations that played that ultimately unhip musical category--Adult Contemporary.

Mike had also been a huge music fan--though his favorite bands were about a decade older than mine--but now he described music as unmoving. I thought that was incredibly sad, and wondered if I would feel the same in ten years. Already I was only seeing bands like REM and Prince live, and even those shows were less-than-thrilling because of the huge arena crowds and the grating, off-tune warbling of the guy next to me screaming out the lyrics, thereby wiping out the voices of the actual musicians I had come to hear.

So it was sweet relief when I saw Raul Malo (former lead singer of The Mavericks, a rockabilly-country band popular in the '90s) this past Friday night. It's true that the venue was a far cry from the dank, sticky clubs of my youth. This place had tables with linen tablecloths and served delicious food made with produce from local farms. The median age in the room was around 45.

But the acoustics were far superior to any I had experienced on Ludlow Street. The audience, clearly enjoying the show, refrained from screaming out the lyrics to every song just to prove THEY were the ultimate fans. The band was phenomenal and Raul's voice might as well have been Elvis's back in the day because every woman in the room was swooning. I was reminded why I still listen to music and how even if the bands I listened to have changed (or are the same as 20 years ago) they still have the ability to make me feel alive, in the moment, and connected to something bigger than me.

I remember a (partial) quote by John Keats that I once copied in my journal: "Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors." Art and music and books will always be essential. They are an integral part of my spiritual life.

Don't break the chain

Photo from Blurt-Online.com


Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret

Mike sent me this article today. It's related to yesterday's post about choosing a daily practice and motivating yourself to stick with it. What would you like to make your daily action?