yesterday i confessed to tom that i'm having difficulty with the number 26. i am almost 26. just writing that now nearly takes my breath away.
he told me not to worry, it's not till you turn 27 that you're in your late twenties.
funny, i didn't think it was till 28.
oh boy.
off to take a nap...
in ahhh music
i have yet to unpack my suitcase. yet to do laundry. my apartment is in disarray.
i barely slept this weekend. well, that's not true, i slept. just not enough. not enough to counteract all the sun and all the drinking and dancing and living of life.
and i've barely slept since arriving home to new york where the air is sweet and cool in the mornings and blazing hot in the afternoons.
so after running errands all morning i'm lying down for a nap.
life is so good. it's so good right now. as hard as it still is i'm just so happy at this moment.
so while i sleep i leave you with another video...it's a week of music.
the vaccines was the first band i saw on friday morning. and i have to tell you, i really have a thing for brits. this song is on repeat in my home.
the cost of food
i have a thing for airline magazines.
i love them.
unabashedly, i love them.
and i always leave the plane with one.
the writing is good and funny and among the smartest out there.
and the subjects range from travel (obv) to brain development to the life of a bee.
when i traveled this past monday i plopped in my seat and immediately reached for Hemispheres (united's magazine).
and it didn't disappoint. in fact, the question and answer with alice waters is among one of my greatest magazine reads to date.
who is alice waters? well, let me just quote the article's author, david carr:
"Even if you've never had the pleasure of eating at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' remarkable restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., you have likely dined at a table that she has indirectly set. When your grocery store stocks a legit organic produce section, you have Waters to thank. When the waiter at your local bistro goes on and on about how local and fresh the ingredients for the day's special are, he is channeling Waters' philosophy. And when a dish arrives at your table glorious in its simplicity and unadorned by all manner of highfalutin, ego-driven flourishes, Waters can take a bow." essentially, Waters is the godmother (someone else's term, can't take credit for that) of the organic food movement. one of the most influential activists promoting local foods for the health of the environment, the economy, and the each person eating them (us).
and of all the interview, what follows is the thing that struck me most--the thing that had me folding over the page, knowing i'd blog about it later in the week.
Hemispheres: What is the one thing we don't understand about food.
Waters: That it's precious. We need to pay for it. We need to pay for the food and pay the people who produce it. That's profound and terribly important. We still think we can get it for free. And you know, it's that idea that we have been indoctrinated to believe, that food should be fast, cheap and easy. And it's really that kind of thinking that is destroying the world. so, i have one less glass of champagne this week or look for a cheaper apartment or pass on a pair of shoes so i can afford to pay for local produce and raw almond butter?
yup, i'm okay with that.
because by paying more for the good stuff now i'm helping to create a market for it.
honestly, it's my belief that because i can afford to pay for the local produce, the healthy stuff, the unprocessed food it's my moral obligation to do so. because my doing so will help one day make the good stuff more affordable for everyone (or God help me, i hope so).
illustration by jeffrey decoster
in quotes
i don't ask you to love me always like this,
but i ask you to remember.
somewhere inside me
there'll always be the person
i am tonight.
f. scott fitzgerald
a little note to some of the anonymous commenters out there. (and this will be the one and only time i address this).
there were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.
anais nin
i've been thinking about words lately.
words versus experience. words aiming at experience. and how words do not always fail, but they are never the thing.
a photo of an apple, let's say (first thing that came to mind, must remember to have one later) is not the apple. it is an image of the apple. and a compressed image at that. and because compressed, inherently distorted.
words convey an image. compressed and distorted. aiming at truth, but not the truth itself.
when i first went to see tom many moons ago (to deal with that nasty case of bulimia) we talked a lot about weight. a number. weight is a number. but it isn't, not really. weight is a constantly changing thing, contingent upon countless factors--many of them unknowable. tom told me that even with the very best scales the world has to offer, taking my weight at the same time each week, after many weeks all he would be able to give me was an approximation and an idea as to whether my weight was going up, down, or holding steady (well, holding as steady as weight ever can hold).
but we americans we like to know things. we like things in black in white. we want the concrete. and a number, well, that's concrete.
i began this blog as a way to tunnel out of a very dark period in my life. a way to focus on the good and identify all those things that fill me up and fill me out. as a way of cataloging progress and change. but after the last three years with this blogspot lover of mine, the only thing i can say with any certainty is this: i am not what i wrote last week, nor what i wrote two years ago. but somewhere in the space between--if you could subtract the one from the other--somewhere in the weeds of all that muck, you'll find me.
this is all an attempt. an attempt at truth. an attempt at my truth. and i tell lies and omit things and twist the facts to aim at a larger truth. but it is not truth.
there is a buddhist expression: the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.
everything i've shared here, it is not the moon, it only points to it.
but i'm trying. and that's something.