Visits

My sister was visiting me recently, and among the wonderful things she brought with her was a willingness to knuckle down and help me for a few tense days as I prepared for an important job interview.   Thanks, Jules!!  I’ll just post a few pics of us at a nice dinner here in Montreal, and one she took of me gardening.

Of that Hopeful Green Stuff Woven

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
— Walt Whitman

Up until a few months ago, my gardening experience consisted of transplanting a few pretty flowers to a large pot that sat on our front porch in Boston.  Since we’ve been babysitting our friends’ garden, it’s expanded considerably, even if I haven’t exactly done things by the book.  Diarmuid and I knew/know next to nothing about soil, about how to space plants, even when to water them.  We did a bit of research on the internet about germination times for certain seeds, but didn’t really know what to expect when we planted the eight by ten plot.  A few things were already there — raspberry bushes, roses, mint, lavender, a beautiful creeping vine with orange flowers (which Diarmuid is convinced is a pea plant, but I’m not sure).  We planted some of things from seed — carrots, beets, swiss chard, yellow squash, cilantro, pole beans, mixed lettuces — and the rest were baby plants transplanted: kale, tomatoes, parsley, basil, eggplant, cucumber.

I approached the garden the way I do most new experiences in life — with no expectations whatsoever, but with a lot of hope and optimism.  I had no idea the squash and cucumber would spread out as much as they did, and now they’re growing over and through the eggplants.  What is either mustard greens or arugula has grown so big that it’s vying for space with the two tomato plants in the back row, and we didn’t stake the tomato plants quite right, because many of their green arms have sagged and cracked (Julie and I recently remedied that with taller, stronger stakes and wire cages).  With its little crowded squares next to empty rows of dirt where seeds failed to grow, it must look like an amateurish garden to experienced gardeners.

But walking towards the garden plot last week after having left it to the welcome rains for five days, I thought I must have gone to the wrong part of the community garden.  It didn’t look like the garden we had planted anymore: everything had grown three times its size, and bloomed into full color, exploding with life.  It was amazing.  I was the only one there, and the sun was shining.  I spent the next three hours weeding and poking around, smiling and clapping my hands.  It was one of my happiest days in a long time.

While we can’t take credit for the most beautiful aspects of the garden (the vibrant lavender, the gorgeous red roses, the wild mint, and much more) I feel very proud of having gotten this far with the large patch of dirt that looked so dead and dry after the winter lifted away.  I miss the garden when I don’t go there every day, and I find myself dreaming of gardens in the future, bursting with green lettuces, herbs, red tomatoes, juicy berries.  Diarmuid and I now have another thing to add to our list of wish-we-could-haves for our future home.  We want to be able to plant and tend our own garden.  And not just a small hanging cherry tomato plant on the porch, or a few nice houseplants.  A real garden.  We can add it to having a real working fireplace, and a big well-equipped kitchen with an island in the middle.  Who knows?  Maybe one day we’ll be lucky enough to have at least one of those.

In the meantime, I’ll post the before and after pictures of the garden.   We’re set to move into a new apartment next week, and soon we’ll say goodbye to the garden.  But it’s been such a great experience.

"AFTER"

"BEFORE"

Catching Up

I’ve really slowed down with posts, for a number of reasons.  I’m very busy here in Montreal, with a lot to do and look forward to.  We’re taking care of a garden for some friends, and it’ll be our first time gardening.  I just hope we can manage not to grow a few measly vegetables, and not let weeds strangle everything in sight.

I’m also finishing up a pottery course, which has been frustrating and fun.  It’s a LOT harder and more physically demanding than I anticipated to throw clay on the wheel and make something coherent out of it.  So far, I’ve made some lopsided bowls and a few fat cups.

For now, I’ll just post up one of my favorite songs, one of my favorite poems, a few pics from our recent trip down the coast, and leave it at that.

A Blessing

by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

A Certain Sweet Little Muffin

Just a few pictures I took of Eitan.

Even Bus Stops need Winter Clothes in Montreal

Writing & Other News

It got warm and sunny for about a week here, and we were on the porch with our tank tops and shorts.  Then a few days later it was hailing.  Then it snowed.  Now it’s evened out to a nice, cool rain.  That’s my Montreal update.  I do miss the sunny LA weather, but there’s something to be said for variety.

In other updates, check me out here on Basilica Review’s webpage and blog.  I’m the “Featured Poet” for their Spring 2010 issue.  Pretty snazzy!

In the metro, I came across this advertisement from the Canadian Association of Colorectal Cancer, promoting regular checkups.

Wow. Only in Montreal.

Ireland 2010

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Portlaoise, Co. Laois, Ireland

Chilly, wet, misty, green, gray.  Just wonderfully moody. That’s still how Ireland feels to me, returning two years later.  Not much to say at the moment, as I’m still so sleepy and jet-laggy.  But here’s a few pictures from the Rock of Dunamaise.  Gorgeous, shivery sunset picnic by candlelight with Diarmuid’s brother Enda and his girlfriend Saminee.

To Tao or not to Tao?

I recently started reading the Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity.  It goes over all the bad habits that modern man has gotten himself into, mostly nutritional, and then tells you how to make things right, essentially.  I’m vastly over-simplifying, but for now I just wanted to make a note about food.  Apparently there are good food combinations and bad food combinations.  And apparently, I’ve been eating like a big, modern idiot.

The wrong combination – i.e. starch with protein – can lead to things getting all crazy in your stomach and intestines.  Crazy, in the book’s terminology means “putrefaction, fermentation and gastric distress.”  Yuck.  So then what?  Eggs with toast – out the window.  Bread with jam – out of the question.  Cereal with milk?  Cross that off the list, unless I want to eat it knowing full well that “milk curdles immediately on entering the stomach, so if there is other food present the curds coagulate around other food particles and insulate them from exposure to gastric juices, delaying digestion long enough to permit the onset of putrefaction.”  Yum.

Bug and I frequent L’Enchanteur, where every Sunday we’ve been chewing and swallowing putrefaction-inducing food combos by the plateful.  Weekend after weekend.  Witness our happy, innocent faces (on the left) after such a meal.  Sure, we look happy. But now I know that our sweet little stomachs are “perpetually stuffed with denatured foods taken in incompatible combinations,” our livers are “swollen and strained with the effort of breaking down massive intakes of animal protein and fat,” and our colons are “lined with layer upon layer of glue-like crud that poisons the bloodstream.”  Kind of puts you off Sunday brunch.  Yes, I’ll have another order of “mucus lining as hard and black as a piece of old hardened rubber you see on a highway, torn from a truck tire.”

So all today I’ve been feeling rotten.  Literally.  I had a cup of artichoke tea and a slice of dry bread for breakfast, as per the Tao’s instructions.  And I felt okay.  Then I researched colonic hydrotherapy salons in Montreal for the next few hours, contemplating the large slice of mocha-chocolate mousse cake we’d eaten with great delight the day before accompanied by two steaming hot espressos.  I swear, I could literally feel that cake crawling around my intestines, poking me here and there with a big, putrefied grin on its face.  I then contemplated a 7-day fast. Or a 40 day fast, like Plato and Aristotle’s students were made to do before receiving their master’s most enlightened teachings.

But then Bug and I went out for a walk and a few hours later we were hungry.  And it had been, in our defense, about 6 hours since our last meal.  So we got to a lovely little cafe and instead of ordering a $14 salad (I can’t justify paying that kind of money for lettuce), we both ordered the cheapest thing on the menu: the Sunday $7.95 burger and fries special.  And we ate every last bite, washing it down with a thick, dark St. Ambroise Noire beer.

Do I feel awful?  Actually, yes.  Because I rarely eat red meat, I immediately felt the urge to curl up on the couch where we were eating our dinner and fall asleep.  I think I might be one of those vegetarian metabolisms.  I’m very confused about what I should be eating now, or how paranoid I should be about my colon.  This happened once before, when I researched nutrition and came up with pages upon pages of pictures of the scary twisted things that came out of people when they did a “cleanse” or had colonic irrigation.  I actually burst into tears that day after doing my research and curled up in a ball, convinced that my insides were most surely rotten and that it would take years to rid myself of it all.  The truth is, I eat very healthfully.  Olives, nuts, fruit, veggies, rice, fish.  Chicken every once in a while.  The occasional burger.  My diet’s been consistently good for the last five or six years.  But sure, when I was younger I ate McDonald’s, Taco Bell, pints of ice cream.  And I am awfully fond of cakes and sweets.  So I’m undecided as to how seriously to take the Way of the Tao.  When I do something, I do it all the way.  If I am going to try and cleanse my insides and let my body start fresh, I am going to do it 100%.  So…more research and contemplation.

And a little square of mint chocolate before bedtime, of course.  Just until I make up my mind.

Winter Life

Bug and I often find refuge in Eglise St. Cecile, the mostly always empty and beautiful church around the corner. Here's a shot of their lovely crib.

People embrace the winter here, which makes it bearable. Here's a shot of a hockey game going on across the street at Parc Jarry.