more time for lunch

"Madame," the waiter in the small town of Amboise in France said to me with a serious face, "I cannot serve you if you don't have enough time for lunch." My daughter and I were on a breath taking whirlwind group tour through France and Spain and we had a 2:30 château visit scheduled. We had just breezed into town from Chartres. It was 1:45 when we sat down in the little sidewalk café, and I had just told the waiter that we had 45 minutes for lunch - not a lot. Well, the French like to take their time with meals, and rightfully so, have their wine, linger, chat - especially on the week-end. And here I came to tell the waiter to rush, on a Saturday of all days. It went very much against his grain as well as mine. I hate to rush meals. As a matter of fact, I hate to rush, period. Life doesn't get much better than a lazy summer lunch in a small French town in a small restaurant, choosing whatever house specialty is on the blackboard that day - a delicious tuna tartar one day, this time a big salad with roasted pork belly and local goat cheese, another time grilled squid and vegetables and an octopus salad, a glass of wine from the area, watching the people passing by, listening to the birds, and enjoying the fantastic weather.

Life is better when it's slow.

the lightness of summer

Summer has something carefree about it, something lighthearted.   The kids are home from school and college, schedules tend to be looser, cities empty out as people go away, outdoor cafés and restaurants are filled as we yearn for meals under the blue or starry sky, farmer's markets sell a bounty of flowers in poppy colors, we wear lighter and brighter clothes, and everything just seems, well, bouncier. This energy is a great contrast to the heavier ambiance of the colder months - at least for those of us who don't live in southern climes.  Being aware of the change in energies with the seasons makes it possible to live each season more fully, more aware, more in sync with nature and the universe. Summer energy means eating lighter (more greens, more raw stuff, more fruits), adding color to your menu (red chard, orange and yellow peppers, yellow corn, tomatoes in all kinds of colors, red kale, green peas, purple carrots) and wardrobe (more flowery patterns, splashes of color), spending more time outdoors, bringing the outdoors in with flowers, cooking outside, opening your windows to let the breeze in, breathing deeper, singing while you make the beds - you get it.

Live lightly, enjoy the lightness!

no one likes to lose

According to our current cultural thinking if I want to win I have to take it away from you.  Our economic culture of lack has conditioned us to think that there is not enough, that you have to have less if I want to have more. This thinking brought forth the survival of the fittest misnomer of how nature supposedly works - although nature is really a lot more complex and cooperative than that. This belief system - and that's all it is! - has also brought forth a host of competitive games and sports that always create one loser and one winner. Imagine if we could all win? Imagine if no one had to lose? We wouldn't have to explain away our crummy feelings when we are losing with "being a good loser." Losing makes you feel crummy. No one likes to lose!  Don't kid yourself or your kids.

The better way is called cooperation over competition, working out solutions that work for you and me, not just for me. It may require a concession, it may require my coming a bit your way or vice versa. But what's so bad about that if we can both win?

When we sold our house last year we had a price in mind we wanted to get. But the market said otherwise. We could have insisted, and sat on our house some more, and waited for that illusory "winning" sale. Instead, we went with the flow. We sold for a bit less, we sold exactly when we needed to, we sold to the one buyer who really wanted our house - in the end we all won.

hooray

The Supreme Court ruled today on the constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Nationwide that is; in every state, conservative or not. This is huge! It is a monumental cultural shift and signals ever more fluidity in family and partnership arrangements, which is likely to sweep across the world, west to east.

The ruling seals a development that has been ongoing for thirty or so years. Ever more families live in non-traditional arrangements, whether two moms with kids, or two dads with kids, sons with single dads, kids with single moms, but also family patterns that are being rearranged, unravelled and rewoven through divorce and remarriage. Living arrangements are on the move and morphing, allowing more flexibility and more creativity than ever before.  In turn, we are becoming more open to non-traditional arrangements as they make their way into the mainstream - see a previous post on the subject - social arrangements on the move.

I find it refreshing that we are no longer stuck in what we considered a societal norm of mom and dad with kids, but that everyone can be whoever they wish to be and can express that in whatever way pleases them. Yay for opening our hearts and minds to greater tolerance and possibilities.

let the universe do its job

It's probably happened to you that you misplaced your keys or your wallet. Or maybe your glasses. The other day my daughter was up in arms because she had misplaced her wallet with her library and debit cards in it. She looked everywhere but couldn't find it. So she came to see me and asked what she should do. Some people pray to Saint Anthony, patron saint of lost items. I told her to send the universe a request to turn up her wallet before going to bed, or before 6PM, or however else she wanted to formulate her request. "Then," I said, "let it go. Forget about it. Don't think about it anymore. Let the universe do its job."

Lo and behold, around 6PM she came with a really big grin on her face and exclaimed "I found it!"

This method also works for coming up with solutions to problems you have been banging your head against the wall about. When you try too hard, solutions from outside your usual frame of mind don't have a chance to penetrate the thickness of that mind wall. Side stepping the thinking mind is a much better way. Before going to bed put your problem out to the universe and state with intent that you'd like to wake up to a solution. Then let it go, don't think about it anymore, go to bed and see what comes up in the morning. The solution is likely to come from the place where we go when we meditate or daydream, and it may just be a really good one. Try it sometime.  And always, always, thank the universe.

awesome details

The advice not to lose the forest for the trees general a good one because the big picture frames our perspective and reminds us not to get lost in minutiae. This is especially practical advice when trying to get something accomplished.  Yet, you may miss out on some hidden jewels.

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Contemplating nature's details can be a deeply meditative activity. I am always amazed at the intricate and delicate details of my orchid blossoms. Nature creates such incredible complexity on such a micro level, it's awe inspiring. It's also easy to pass by without noticing it. The first picture above just shows an abundance of phalaenopsis orchids, too many to look at the details.  But get down on your knees - so to speak - and the colors alone of the orchid center are spectacular. Orange, crimson red, lime green, and lemon yellow set against a porcelain white background. And how about the shapes, tiny as they are? So elaborate, so intricate. How about the two wispy filigreed extensions, that start out white and end in a curled yellow spiral? Or the yellow and red striped part in the throat of the orchid? Or the orange pad (is it the stigmatic surface?) with the red dots in the very center?   And did you notice the see through holes the petal shapes are creating? Or the interesting shape of the lip, the protruding part the insect would land on?

            Ultimately the names of the parts don't matter at all. It is about the experience of savoring the exquisite details and colors inside the otherwise so sculpturally white orchid that gives me such pleasure when I walk past the flower that I need to stop every time and tell it how beautiful, how perfect it is.

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            Of course you can contemplate other shapes in nature and be awed - moss for example, or crystals, or a butterfly's wings. There is endless beauty, perfection and intricacy to be found all around. Each one merits its own attention.

on respecting nature

Hearing bear stories and seeing one up close are two different things. A few days ago I observed a bear out of my office window, playing with a log, meandering along the tree line, trying to get down from the cliff behind our house, then deciding it was too steep, and slowly disappearing back into the woods. Today, I took a - brief - lunchtime walk and saw what I presume was the same bear, slowly crossing the road in the not-so-distant distance. I was in awe and treaded back, hence the brevity of the walk.             Even the Native Americans respect the bear because it is so powerful and can be fickle. It behooves us to respect nature, to bow in reverence before its grandeur, power, unpredictability, and force, whether nature comes in animal, plant, weather or geological form. It seems to me that we as a culture

have unlearned to work with it, alongside it, leaving it alone when need be, and not walking all over it with disrespect and hubris. When we live away from nature we tend to see nature as something different from us, something we can use and exploit.

But are we not nature, too?

live foods/dead foods

sprouts

I am currently researching live foods - and dead foods in juxtaposition. A lot of what you find at your local supermarket is dead food. Why such a horrendous name? Because food that's been manufactured (funny way to talk about food, no?) in a factory (yep, that's where breakfast cereal comes from, or processed cheese, or bottled dressing) has no life energy. Dead food is basically any food that comes in a carton and is sold in the center aisles of your supermarket. Food advocates have long recommended to shop the perimeter of your supermarket in order to eat better, where produce, fish and meat, bread and dairy are sold - although even supermarket meat (and fish), and supermarket dairy and breads are adulterated (which is a whole other chapter). So what are live foods? Food is created through a transformational process of sunlight into energy, photosynthesis. A raw green plant grown above ground is just about as live a food as you can get, as its relationship with the sun is so direct.  So, salad in other words, leafy greens and anything raw, hence the recent craze over the Raw Food Movement. A tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, or Cheez Whizz, or Funny Frosting in a tub is just about as far away from sunlight energy as you can possibly get - zero, zilch, nada life energy, empty calories, no minerals and vitamins for sure. The further removed from sunlight a food is, the less life energy it has. Meat is two steps removed from sunlight because the animal eats grass, which in turn grew with the help of sunlight. Meat from predators is yet further removed from sun energy, which may well be the reason why humans don't usually eat it (there are some exceptions with some indigenous tribes, as far as I know).  Lion steak anyone?

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Some of the alivest (is this a word?) food is sprouts, and leafy greens for example have more direct life energy than say root vegetables. Have you ever thought about the fact that some of the largest animals on this planet are plant eaters? Elephants, rhinos, cattle, hippos, dinosaurs (the largest of them all) are all greens eaters, whether grass or leaves.  Wheatgrass and barley grass juice are some of the most healing potions you can ingest.  Take a look at what you currently eat and consider adding more greens and more raw foods to your diet.  It will increase  your energy level.

bamboo socks?

Yes, bamboo socks. There are a lot of new and old cool natural fibers out there that are still crowded out by the cotton lobbies and what not. But as we explore alternatives to the oh-so-last century petroleum based nylons and polyesters (please, people, make some better gym shorts!) we find that many of these fibers are more drought tolerant than our beloved cotton, organic or not, can be grown in poorer soil, and thus require far less water, chemical pesticides and fertilizers. These fibers tolerate broader weather imbalances and many of them grow fast. And, not unimportant either, they are natural and comfortable to wear.             I had no clue that you could make fiber out of bamboo until I found these socks, which are incredibly soft and comfortable to wear. Although I later learned that the process is not so eco-friendly compared to some other natural fibers out there.

Better alternative fibers are hemp (poo pooed for years because of the supposed marijuana connection - but it is a non-psychoactive member of the cannabis family), which is drought tolerant and easy to grow, as is flax (currently mostly grown for its omega-3 rich seeds). Lyocell or its tradename Tencel, which doesn't sound very natural and has its detractors because it goes undergoes a lengthy industrial process, is a fiber made from eucalyptus trees. Something really exotic is SeaCell fiber made from cellulose and seaweed (mmh, maybe better to eat the seaweed), and also SoySilk, made from the leftovers of the tofu industry (now that's a good one, what with all the tofu we now eat).

So many new fibers made from natural materials to explore.

going paleo?

Is the Paleo Diet another one of those diet fads like the Atkins Diet or the South Beach Diet?   Come to think of it, there may be a bit more to it, indeed. The so called Western Diet, which is now traveling east and infecting Europe, India and China, is full of sugar and starches. Given that starches in the form of grains, and transformed into bread, pasta, pizza and cereals - our new daily staples, have only been in our diet since the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, they seem to throw our million-and-some year old digestive systems for a loop. Add to the starches the addicting amounts of sugar we seem powerless to control because big food puts them into everything from pickles (why?) and mustard, mayonnaise (serious?) and bread (what's it doing in there?), to pasta sauce, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, and whatever else they can find, you may be in for a health mess unless you cook everything from scratch. And it (the health mess) shows - Celiac disease, diabetes 1 and 2, rheumatoid arthritis, gluten sensitivity in general, perhaps even cancer, too - all seem to point to the same evil - sugar and grains, and are on a drastic rise. I admit that I used to boast that my digestive system could handle all that grain, and what was it with all those gluten intolerant people.  After all, I grew up in the land of baguette and croissants, and was born in the land of the crusty breads.  Yet a recent diagnosis of Diabetes Type 1 in a close relative hit home and made me think again.

The Paleo Diet cuts those two culprits out - no refined sugar, no grains. Instead, meat and fish in small quantities, no or limited dairy (my homeopathic MD recently said dryly "dairy is overrated and usually adulterated" - unless you go raw), lots of vegetables (and preferably not the starchy kind - keep it green), some fruits, as well as nuts.   Stories abound of healing diabetes 1 and 2 (yes, both), Celiac and various inflammatory and auto-immune conditions by going gluten-free or following the Paleo Diet. I'm trying it.