Zenzero

Zenzero (pr: DZEN'dzedo) is the Italian word for "ginger." I love the sound of this appropriately spicy word. I love how saying it makes my head hum. When I lived in Santa Monica there was a restaurant called Zenzero, which I mistakenly thought was some kind of Asian restaurant. I figured it must've served sublime foods that transported its patrons to a state of Zen. Only recently, when I looked up the word "ginger" in my Italian dictionary, did it dawn on me that there was actually an Italian restaurant in LA I never got to try.


But still, every time I use the word (my three year-old -- who knew -- loves candied ginger) in my mind I still think of Zen+Zero, stretching a connection from the harsh spiciness of ginger to a state of nirvana. Okay, so I know I overthink things, but zenzero pretty much sums up the paradox of my life right now. On any given day I feel a pull in 2 directions: one, to spice up my life more, fill my "plate" (and my palate) with delights - and the other, to strive for a state of zen, simplicity, "zero." It's a constant straddling of a river: one foot on the "have fun, fill up your life, strive for rich experiences" bank, and the other on the "be content where you are, here and now" bank. I guess the two aren't mutually exclusive, but they require a delicate balance nearly impossible to achieve.


I've got my "spicy" projects: getting ResearchMamas off the ground, ramping up my Italian, feeding the big picture dream of living in Italy -- and my "simple" life, always ready for more down time with family, friends, me. I guess I just need to trust that if I straddle my "ZenZero" deftly, these 2 opposing aspects of my life will somehow harmonize. But meanwhile, in the interest of simplifying while making more room on my plate, I'm going to take a longer break from my little A to Z blog. AlphabetDancing has definitely warmed up the writing muscles, my goal from the outset. And it's not going a way; I'll start it Again, perhaps in a different incarnation. For now it's just taking a rest, an extended yet restorative nap. Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Years.

Years come and go, marked by the familiar countdown of a shiny dropping ball and the rising bubbles of expensive (we hope) champagne. We all bid adieu to the old year and welcome the next number on the list of who-knows-how-long. But tonight at the dinner table, a moody, and certainly over-hungry C questioned the basic linear concept of time. She asked when March 26, 2003 (her actual birthday - the only day that really matters, naturally) would come around again. We told her that the March 26 part would come around every year, but that the 2003 part would never happen again. She, however, would have none of the basic time-moves-forward-not-backward explanation. She lost it, and out of nowhere became insta-tantrum child. The simple temporal nature of life turned her into a ridiculously sobbing, hysterical mess. It was beyond her comprehension how she would never experience her actual birth date again. Dammit, she wanted to live in 2003 again! Why can't it happen, Mommy??

It would have been quite comical if I myself didn't want to start crying with her: "I don't know why it has to be this way, C. I would love for it to be 2003 again. I would love to be 20 again, but it'll never happen. I can only celebrate birthdays as I get older and older. And it's so unfair! I don't understand, either!" Heck, if she had been lying on the floor pounding her feet like a 2 year old, I would've gladly joined her. But even my hedge, putting out the possibility of a parallel universe maybe having March 26, 2003 in the future, didn't really comfort her (though it stopped the wailing). And I know this because several minutes later she asked me, "Mommy, does everyone die?" Well, I'll spare you the answer here.

Oddly the passing of time and the fleeting of years has been on the forefront of my mind lately, too. Maybe it's completely normal with the holidays, the getting rid of more baby stuff, Liz's passing (not to mention an inordinate number of people we know who are seriously ill). That doesn't take away the heaviness of it, though. Being so aware of the finiteness of life can really fuck with one's ability to enjoy it. But earlier today when my writer friend K shared her similar emotional fragility around the subject, it gave me such relief to know I'm not alone in my tortured thoughts. Maybe such sensitivity is the price "poets" or "thinkers" pay. I wonder if it's possible to achieve even a delicate balance between living in the moment, while still appreciating the profound passing of the years. I for one, certainly need to tip the scales toward the former.

Coincidentally, while working on this blog entry I got an email from N, who knows absolutely nothing yet about what I'm writing -- an email entitled "Time Flies" with a video attached:

The choppy, silent, low-res quality, and the simple pan of the horizon suggest how fading memories might replay in our minds. Here we are in 2003 with a baby C, out for a walk on a sunny day in Portland. A simple, sweet memory.

So maybe, in a sense, we can go back in time - just for a quick flash, or a snippet of a visit here and there. And maybe if C asks the question again I can give her a real answer: No honey, we can't ever move backward in time. But if we live well today, we can make good memories for tomorrow. And then, in our thoughts and dreams, we can visit all our years, whenever we like.

Xmas

Xmas season is upon us and I had an early gift - 4 days away in Salt Lake, with my sister, to do genealogy research at the Vatican of genealogy libraries there. It was a thrilling time to find new bits of knowledge about our ancestors, turning up new names, going back more generations. But in so many ways the gift was about time (and it was 'about time' I got away for a break, too!). Our trip started out with the huge disappointment of learning that since a 91 year-old Mormon church elder had passed away, the library would be closed almost the entire 2nd day we were there - thus a third of our research time, gone. But we re-framed our thinking, passing time together in sunny Salt Lake & hanging out at a spa (lesson learned: always book a 90 minute massage if possible. :-)

In a much deeper sense what got blazoned in my brain is the time limitation we all have -- thus the reminder of spending it wisely. Searching through generations & generations of records - which are essentially an ancestor's life distilled down to birth, marriage, more births, and death - you see the cycle of life keep repeating and repeating. And of course it's impossible not to be acutely aware that you yourself are in the middle of one of these countless cycles. We're all just part of the current blip in this little patch of evolutionary time...

A sobering example of the life cycle presented itself again at the end of our trip. This time with sad news that hit home. My lifelong friend, Liz N, finally lost her battle to leukemia. She was suffering and the quality of her vibrant, exuberant life had dwindled so, perhaps making the news somehow more acceptable. But it still hurts & she will be missed. It's all a profound reminder of "Life is short, make the best of it." To me that means Love yourself, Love your family, Love your children, Love your friends, Love your community, Love your planet - in no special order. Merry Xmas.

Well.

Well, well, well. (Did you hear the one about the three holes in the ground?) Well... here I am after a significant break from alphabet dancing. What can I say other than "life's distractions," of which I have plenty. Boring to list them all here, but the one that deserves the most attention in the last few months is the Presidential Election. This one had too much at stake to sit on the sidelines, so I poured my energy into making history: Bake sales, debate parties, fund raising, trying to convince (and sadly failing) my parents to vote Obama; and of course being glued to every turn on the road to the White House. The end of this long campaign culminated in an election celebration with friends which was muted by a nasty cold virus fighting to take over my body, where it is now attacking my vocal cords leaving me with writing as the best means to communicate. So while I am thrilled that our country is on the path to wellness, I am frustrated, struggling to stay on the same path to my own...


Wellness -- not something I like to take for granted, though I often ride that nexus of healthy living while frequently teasing my well-being with indulgences like wine and non-vegetable-like foods. (Certainly no crime, but sometimes I wonder if eating a raw food diet would obliterate illness...) But staying focused on wellness in the gestalt sense is how I aim to live. And I pretty much believe that the more people in a community that live "well," the healthier the community. I also think it has a trickle down effect: if the people at the "top" are unhealthy, irrational, dysfunctional, that will ultimately affect the people at the bottom. I remember being given a small poster as a child, and it must've resonated with me even then, because I kept it on my wall all during high school. The words went something like this (only on my poster it was not attributed to anyone):

If there is to be peace in the world, There must be peace in the nations. If there is to be peace in the nations, There must be peace in the cities. If there is to be peace in the cities, There must be peace between neighbors. If there is to be peace between neighbors, There must be peace in the home. If there is to be peace in the home, There must be peace in the heart.- Lao Tsu

So the fact that we, as a nation, elected a rational, deep-thinking president has given me great hope - something I have not had for this country in a very long time. And for each of us - families, communities, cities, nations, and the entire planet - I believe this bodes very Well.

Vagina.

Vagina - well we all know what a vagina is - even my almost five and a half year old knows. When she and her little sister take a bath, it doesn't go unnoticed, especially if somewhere in the process they see their dad make a pee-pee in the potty & they are faced with the opposite appendage. And though she doesn't entirely understand what it's for, the vagina has certainly made it's way into the psyche of my 5-year old.

So, I guess we shouldn't have been surprised when C came home from Grace Art Camp with a bag full of art that included the mysterious genital. The theme for the week was Denmark & the children did art work based on a Hans Christian Andersen fable about a princess and her 11 prince-brothers who had been turned into swans. As we praised C's sweet little drawings of crowns, princes and what-not, we stopped a bit short when we pulled out the next "what-not," which was a ceramic sculpture of yes, you guessed it - a vagina. Actually, it was a "swan"-- and it vaguely looked like a swan -- only the top of the swan was unambiguously a (ahem) labia with painted feathers. To be fair, it had a little pointed head with dots for eyes, but that could be interpreted another way, I suppose... N and I suppressed giggles and our innocent C (after glowingly telling us about her swan sculpture) moved on to show us the rest of her art -- a felt puppet, a refrigerator magnet, and her very own personal coloring book.


I suppose if artists like Georgia O'Keeffe can paint flowers in which admirers patently see vaginas, then somewhere in our collective psyches the female sex organ begs to be represented. I mean, even if you take Freud out of the picture, few would argue the ubiquity of the phallic symbol. But leave it to a cherubic 5-year old to tap into such a powerful icon, which certainly must've given her camp counselors a chuckle when they pulled it out of the kiln.

For right now the little vaginal swan sits on our kitchen counter to get lost among the clutter until we get bit by another organizing bug. It will probably then make it's way around our house to be re-discovered from time to time, at which points I would love to be a fly on the wall watching whomever examines it. Will they chuckle? Will they blush a little? Hopefully it won't horrify anyone with puritanical sensibilities. The most curious moment of re-discovery will be when C picks up her little art camp memento when she's a bit older (a good bit older;-) and the light of recognition goes off in her head. And when it does, will she chuckle? I hope so. Will she blush? I hope so.

Uneducated.

The Uneducated, or maybe more accurately, Undereducated masses, have become screamingly obvious to me since the dawn of the Internet. Yesterday I somehow managed to find five minutes to read the latest on the Barak Obama phenomenon. It's been fascinating how the press plays him, how "the people" perceive him, and how the two go so hand-in-hand. So my usual visit to Talking Points Memo reveals some insightful reporting on recent events by people & bloggers who comment with well-thought out, well-stated remarks. Then a drill down on CNN or ABCnews.com takes me to a string of comments by "the masses" -- the antithesis of well-thought out or well-stated. The comments made English look like a foreign language, with the words strung together haphazardly and barely making any sense. I see this with increasing frequency: people who know their way around the Internet and may have something valuable to say, but are only passably literate and post comments that are more often remarkable for their mistakes than their meaning.

This literate/non-literate division (is it better or worse in the past 40 years? Or is it just more obvious because now we "read" each other's thoughts online?) has always been an uncomfortable spot for me. There's the part that gets frustrated, annoyed, and yes, somewhat condescending. Didn't these people listen in school for crissakes?! And then there's the part that feels pity, believing "we're all equal no matter what" - and that part berates the other part of me. But increasingly I get angry, angry at a system that seems to keep the masses ignorant, because somehow that works better with the Capitalist, Corporate, Military Industrial Complex that America is to such a degrading fault. For if the potential soldiers and mothers of potential soldiers could comprehend a global, multicultural existence and even half its complexities, how could they ever allow themselves to fight in an unnecessary war? Or if they really understood the basic intricacies of the planet's limited resources along with how goods are manufactured & marketed, would they ever allow us all to get to the ecological precipice on which we now stand? (Hell, I know I'm culpably part of that latter category, despite my ability to analyze information!)

I'm usually not of the mind that our inferior education system is the result of a dark conspiratorial intent. But likewise I always get stuck in this place of feeling that people are capable of more. If I can easily envision a better educational system, why can it not be so? I couldn't possibly be the only one who thinks we should lift the bar higher & that most are capable of rising to a new level. But generally that frustrated question sets off a mental paralysis. I don't know where to go from there. Maybe this year with my daughter entering this questionable education system, new neural pathways will form and I'll be able to take a next step, however small. Or maybe my perception will shift and I won't think it so inferior. Either way, I plan to be eyes-open and I hope I will be in good company.

This.

This Alphabet Dance has certainly plummeted to the bottom of the priority list as it's been over a month since I've managed to post. Doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it, though. "T" was going to be Temporary Abeyance after 2 weeks had passed, then "Time Travels" when being blasted back to the '80s at The Police concert. "Trying" for 'trying to write during Trying times with a toddler' gave way to "To Do" as in the list that never stops growing - but that was superceded by simply "Time,"of which there's never enough. "Tinkle" certainly would've been the most eye-catching title as we aim for M to catch her tinkles in the potty. But since that's not really happening to our liking, "This" will simply have to do.

"This" is very simple. It brings one to the Here & Now, and the here and now is this blog, this thing called writing that continues to creep back into my life. It's tricky because This could be the Italian homework I want to do, or the Entangled Minds book I'm eager to finish, or the new surnames I would love to add onto ancestry.com -- all these "This"s call to me, now that I have a couple hours of post-girls'-bedtime silence. If it were daytime This would be competing with family time, exercise and laundry, to be sure. But back to This blog, which is what I'm doing now (not counting, of course, the half-dozen google searches I've done in between paragraphs).

I know that staying focused and present is no doubt my biggest flaw. I'm sure it's learned from my parents, maybe even genetic. When all my distracting thoughts and interests hungrily suck me in or scream at me, I keep circling back to focus on whatever it is I deem as being more important. I keep trying to center on the This, and I have no idea if I'm making overall progress. It may take me my whole lifetime to evolve to being in the Now, and at best I'll only get to Zen monk status by the end of my next life. In the meantime I'm surrounded by distraction and battle with the guilt ("That" f#*ked up issue, guilt) of my under-abilities to focus on "This," the everpresent G-d of Now.