Megatonlove

The shock of bad news, and the comfort of roses

2010-06-16T12:59:00.001+02:00

This Pierre de Ronsard (Eden) rose is rampaging madly all over our front garden at the moment. I found it, more dead than alive, in the bargain bin of a garden centre years ago. I bought it on a whim and took it home where Skunk looked at it, aghast. (Any other codependent gardeners out there?) It looked so miserable that no one thought it would survive, but it has, and it rewards us with spectacular shows of long-lasting double blooms that fill the garden with colour and scent from May to mid-November each year. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Surrey County Council private car park sign was given to me by a friend who 'liberated' it in her student days. Honest.

These roses are Nature's way of reminding me not to lose hope when I think the sky has fallen.

Had a nasty shock yesterday morning. Skunk, barely 3 months into his new job - the wonderful new position he found after being laid off last autumn by the company where he worked for almost 20 years - was told by his boss that he was now surplus to requirements, so they were letting him go. I was crushed by the news because his new job seemed to be going so well. He was enjoying the work, his new employers had told him they were delighted with him, he looked like a new person. I felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under us. How dare they! Why now? And more importantly, what were we going to do?

Truth is, I simply don't have any answers right now. The sun is shining but the world suddenly feels like it has gone cold. I know it's natural to feel overwhelmed by fear and anger and self-pity when these things happen. It's important that I face today's feelings rather than deny them. It's even more crucial to reassure myself that the situation will eventually change, that something will turn up, another door will open as this one closes, and my family and I will be okay. We've been through worse, and we'll get through this as well. I know that happiness lies not in our circumstances, but in what we make of them.

I'm going to hold on to that.

This much I know -- life is full of surprises, like this climbing rose.

In Arcadia

2010-05-02T18:04:00.005+02:00

This is my favourite private garden. It's beautiful in all seasons, even in the gloomiest part of winter. In spring, however, it's glorious beyond compare. It belongs to two close friends, J (who's 80) and her daughter B. The two of them do all the gardening on this property that's almost 2 hectares in size. They are my gardening heroes. I stop by every chance I get. A visit to their garden inspires me to redouble my efforts with ours. But I also come away feeling a bit despairing of the ordinariness of ours which is a fraction in size. You might understand how I feel after seeing these photographs.

[Double click on the photos to see them in better detail. I have a great new camera and am still learning to use it. By which I mean that I've given up swearing at the instruction manual and am figuring things out in my usual manner, through trial and error.]

When J and her husband bought this property some thirty years ago, it was an abandoned farm with nothing on it but some walnut, apple and beech trees. The garden was entirely designed and planted by J, who's English and comes from a family of passionate gardeners.

Acid green leaves of a variegated maple make a nice backdrop for dark pink magnolia flowers.

This is the woodland part of the garden. Rhododendrons and azaleas will soon set this corner ablaze.

Even the composting area (the wooden structure partly visible on the left) is pretty.

On the path up to the wood, this copper beech is just coming into leaf.

I love this spot at the end of a long path bordered by tall hedges. If you look closely you'll see 'Et in Arcadia ego' carved into the bench. I think it roughly translates into 'Even in Arcadia I exist.'

One of three living willow sculptures by B, who's a sculptor. This willow igloo (we call it a wigloo) has a bench inside it. My children made this wigloo their playhouse when they were younger. J and B also encouraged them to build a fort inside one of their big conifers. Legs and Noodle would collect material for their fort in the wood. We used to hear their woodland skirmishes - the crash and snap of swords and grenades (fallen branches and pine cones) punctuated by loud yelping and hooting.

Under this huge linden (or lime) tree is a bench that's perfect for post-prandial naps. Its branches swoop all the way down to the ground, so when it comes into full leaf in a few weeks, this bench becomes almost invisible, making it the perfect place to hide.

A closer shot of the secret bench under the linden. There are a few other linden trees in this garden. When they bloom for a few weeks in late June - early July, bees will forsake most other flowers to flock to them. Linden flowers have the most haunting scent. Their fragrance fills the entire neighbourhood.

Three ewes and three lambs owned by a local farmer keep the grass down in the apple orchard.

This inquisitive little fellow tried his best not to show me he was interested. He trailed me around the apple orchard at a safe distance while I pretended to ignore him while taking photographs. Once I was safely on the other side of the fence, however, his curiosity got the better of him. See his newly shorn mama lurking next to him?

Two local bee keepers, one of them a Druid, keep their hives in this garden. The beehives sit between the apple orchard and the bluebell wood. We're big honey lovers, and all I can say is that the honey from J and B's garden is the best we've ever had.

Happy honey bees!

The more formal part of the garden. Both J and B are masters with topiary shears. I just like to stand and gawk.

The part on the right that's in shade is a wildflower meadow.

Snakeshead Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) have naturalised under a walnut tree. Here's another look at this tree earlier in the spring when it was surrounded by a carpet of daffodils and crocuses.

B's vegetable garden or potager wakes up from its winter sleep. Everything is organically grown.

The potager overlooks the apple orchard on one side.

Double, deep pink hellebores.

The view from the terrace of J's house in late afternoon sun.

Some of these large box and hebe domes started out as cuttings.

Impossible to resist stroking these box topiary balls by the front door.

Climbing roses on the barn wall.

Finding chocolate redemption (and a recipe!)

2010-02-24T17:00:00.009+01:00

Some people I know have declared that they're giving up this, that or the other for Lent. The odd thing is, none of them are particularly religious, or even all that disciplined, so I wonder why they do it. Has Lent become just another trending thing, like being disgusted with Tiger Woods has become a trend? How does giving something up for 40 days make one a better person, or change the world? Surely it takes much longer than that. Does abstaining from something like alcohol or dessert or shopping mean we give up the deeper emotional hungers that lead to these cravings in the first place?

Not knowing the answers to any of that, I baked brownies. When I'm in doubt about anything - anything at all - I bake. In fact, I baked two, just to give abstemiousness a kick up the backside. Abstinence and Catholic guilt have failed me as both moral compass or slimming aid, so I abandoned them a long time ago. I've been a happier camper since.

I'm not giving anything up for Lent, except the artifice of Lent itself.

Over the years I've experimented with dozens of brownie recipes. I found a few I really liked and tweaked them until I came up with a version that really rocked. Everyone loves my brownies. They're complex, fudgy and aromatic. People fight over them. Girlfriends hide them from their husbands and children. I get invited to dinner parties on the off chance I might bring some. Once, someone asked to marry me because of them. I kid you not.

Use the best quality dark chocolate you can get. Therein lies redemption.

MEGATONLOVE BROWNIES

Ingredients:

185 grams / 6.5 ounces unsalted butter (If you substitute margarine, I'll hex you.)

170 grams / 6 ounces best quality dark chocolate (I use 74% dark chocolate)

2 cups white sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour (not self-raising)

2 tablespoons ground almonds

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Optional (nah, not really):

1 cup walnuts or pecans or a combination of both, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup or more dark or milk chocolate chips or a combination of both (If you can't get chocolate chips, simply medium chop some good chocolate with a knife.)

Method:

Adjust oven rack to middle position. Heat oven to 325 degrees F / 162 degrees C / gas mark 3.

Butter and flour two 8- or 9-inch baking tins (square or round are both fine).

Spread chopped nuts evenly on baking sheet and toast in oven until fragrant, about 5-6 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a medium bowl, whisk to combine flour, ground almonds, powdered coffee, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

Melt chocolate and butter in a large heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely-simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth. When chocolate mixture is completely smooth, remove bowl from saucepan and gradually whisk in sugar. Add eggs one at a time, whisking after each addition until thoroughly combined. Whisk in vanilla. Add flour mixture in 3 additions, folding in with rubber spatula until batter is completely smooth. Do not overbeat, unless you want your brownies rigid like Victoria Beckham.

Transfer batter to prepared pans. Using spatula, smooth batter into sides and corners of pans. Do not resist the urge to lick the spatula when you're done. Sprinkle toasted nuts and chocolate chips over batter.*

Bake until a toothpick inserted into center of brownies comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, 30-35 minutes. Cool on wire rack to room temperature, about 2 hours. Turn out into a serving plate, slice and serve.

Store leftovers (leftovers??) in an airtight container at room temp, for up to 3 days. Storing them in the fridge will give them an even fudgier texture.

* Sometimes I like both nuts and chocolate chips on top. Sometimes I mix the nuts into the batter but sprinkle the chocolate chips on top, as shown in these photos. Or vice versa. Whatever turns you on.

Archipelago of my affections

2010-01-10T14:41:00.013+01:00

This wretched blog has been in a coma for the last three months. Can't say I've been a busy mum, because there are women far busier than myself who blog daily. While busy certainly comes into it, so does distracted, uninspired, undisciplined and most of all, lazy. That's it, mostly. Lazy.

I've lived in Belgium for 23 years and have Belgian nationality. But there's little doubt that my heart's home will always be the Philippines, the archipelago of my affections. I still call those 7,107 islands home even if my last visit was 6 years ago, and a shaky bank balance reminds me that the next visit is far off. I call it home, though I regularly feel desperate and angry about how things are over there: the grinding poverty, the natural disasters, the Catholic church's continuing ban on birth control which is criminally irresponsible given the country's population of 97 million with a growth rate of almost 2%, the shocking corruption of politicians from the President on down, the malaise of the educational system, the non-existence of healthcare, the utter disregard for the environment - the dumping of garbage everywhere, unchecked urban sprawl, the rape of coral reefs and pillage of old growth forests, the unquestioned sway of the West, particularly America, on Philippine culture, and the consumerism that shouts from billboards and gropes pinched pocketbooks in sprawling malls. It shocks me that rich friends think nothing of giving a 9 year old child a 3G iPhone or buying their daughter a $6,000 Louis Vuitton handbag for her 16th birthday, while people who've lost everything in recent floods huddle in shanties closeby. And it saddens me that families spend less time enjoying healthy, home-cooked meals together in favour of eating junk-laden burgers and drinking soulless caramel brulee lattes at Starbucks cafes which have sprouted like a rash all over the place.

Living half a world away and railing about the pitiable state of my homeland does not help much. At most it brings me fleeting relief from frustration which lasts five minutes, if that. In a feeble, angsty First World way, I wring my hands and commiserate with the plight of my fellow Filipinos, for all the good it does them or me. I can get really hot under the collar or feel righteous or shouty or guilty; often all those things all at once. Powerlessness - seeing it in others, and feeling it in myself - is hard.

The joy of seeing comes from being aware that life brings its own little corrections to any given situation, if I take the time to look beyond myself and my overblown judgements.

I came upon this beautiful gem of a video yesterday, and found it starkly moving. It was directed by the artist-activist Mae Paner and shot by Boy Yñiguez, a first rate cinematographer who also happens to be a dear friend. The small group that made it worked for free and produced it themselves. Sadly, there have been no takers for this video among cinemas and TV stations back home because it doesn't have any famous actors or politicians in it. Shame on them. If you like it, please share it with others.

It is simply about a poor boy who finds a paper Philippine flag in the dirt, dusts it off and climbs up an abandoned flagpole with it. The song in the background is the Lupang Hinirang, our national anthem, delivered with sparkling dignity by a children's choir instead of the orchestral bombast that usually accompanies it. That is all. And yet. It gave me pause and made me cry. Everything I love about my country IS in that boy - in the purchase of bare toes on slippery metal, in his unflinching ascent, in the shy smile of victory he allows himself when he reaches the top. He is golden like the morning.

A Brave and Startling Truth

2009-10-04T15:16:00.001+02:00

I have always loved this poem by Maya Angelou. In light of recent events both personal and global, its meaning resonates ever more deeply. Maya Angelou was rushed to hospital in Los Angeles yesterday evening. Maya, beloved lioness of my heart, may you make a successful recovery, or find serene passage.

A Brave and Startling Truth
by Maya Angelou (1928 - )

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn and scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

..... and I think I've got problems?

2009-10-02T14:34:00.021+02:00

Skunk lost his job yesterday. When he got home he told us that the company where he's worked for twenty years no longer needs his services, effective immediately. Yes, just like that. When someone delivers bad news in real time, my senses go into slow motion, my mind blanks and a leaden fear seeps into my bones and settles into a hard, immovable knot in my stomach. That's how it felt when he broke the news yesterday. Noodle, crying a little, said, "Oh well, at least we'll have more time to play board games together." This, from a boy who's never liked board games. Legs began to jabber about mundane things that made sense only to her. We clutched each other for solace and muttered clichéd things that were so lame they fooled no one. Then I fled to the kitchen to choke back tears. I washed dishes that didn't need washing, and then cooked the most dreadful soup of my life. Cream of sludge with cremated bacon, I think. It was vile.

It's morning. I'm clear-headed despite the reckless quantites of vodka and red wine I drank last night. Legs and Noodle are in school. Skunk's gone to the office one last time, to tie up loose ends and wish his colleagues well, including the bastard who fired him, because that's just the kind of person Skunk is. The house is quiet and I'm finally alone. I've wallowed in the luxury of an outraged, self-pitying weep. I needed to. At least a dozen tissues' worth of tears, snot and seething frustration. My bag lady demons are back. Their talons are scritching at the door, they're cackling to be let in. They lie in wait for moments such as these. One wags a bony finger and sniggers that we have no savings. Bitch. As if I needed reminding. Another hisses in my ear that neither Skunk or I will ever find work again, that the fantastic company-sponsored health care and pension package we've enjoyed will dry up and we will grow ill and hungry and poor and end up on the street, that our children will stop loving us because we won't be able to give them the holidays and cool teenage stuff their friends enjoy.

Fuck off, demons. I know you too well. You're not going to win this time.

* * * * * * *

In other news, people continue to suffer in my beloved homeland. An extreme typhoon packing winds of 220 to 240 kph is headed for the northeastern part of the Philippines and is expected to make landfall sometime tomorrow. The death toll from last week's floods in Manila and neighbouring provinces is approaching 300, with many more unaccounted for. Official figures put the number of homeless at half a million people, although friends actively involved in relief work believe it's much higher than that. Evacuation centres are full to bursting, there simply isn't enough food, water, medicine, blankets or shelter to go around. Cleanup crews are burning out. Peace and order is beginning to fray. While her countrymen drown and starve, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo parties with her sycophants. So many people have lost every single thing they have, and she parties.

All Skunk has lost is a job. I must remember that. I must remember that.

These 3 photos of the flooding in Manila were sent to me by a friend. Photographer/s unknown.

Click on the individual photos to see them in more appalling detail, if you wish.

Music: CPR for the heartstrings

2009-09-13T17:52:00.012+02:00

Music heals and redeems. Not just emotionally but also - to my great delight - physically.

The other morning I stupidly got all hot and bothered about Sarah Palin's latest idiocy regarding health care. In need of a Palinoscopy, I listened to music. Later on Twitter I posted a link to that piece called "Stabat Mater" by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt that had somehow calmed me right down. Someone whose tweets I enjoy made this comment on my post: "What a beautiful piece of music. The human voice has such healing properties - it teases out sadness and restores the soul." I couldn't agree more. We tweeted back and forth about it for a bit, and it led me to this blog post.

I've been fascinated to learn through my study of Jin Shin Jyutsu that sound is the one thing that harmonises our endocrine system. Apparently, the ancients knew this. An endocrinologist has confirmed it to me as well, but the whys and wherefores are too complicated for me to understand fully, let alone explain to someone else. The endocrine system regulates stuff like our metabolism, growth, puberty and tissue function. It controls our hormones and helps determine our moods. Diabetes, thyroid disease, obesity, and heart disease are all disharmonies of the endocrine system. Cancers of the breast, liver, pancreas, kidneys and ovaries are also endocrine-related. I've finally stopped wondering why teenagers seem to be surgically attached to their iPods 24/7, or why hormonal people (not just women, mind) go all wobbly when they listen to certain music. Or why the laments of wolves or the callings of humpback whales touch something elemental in each of us. It all makes sense to me now.

The novelty of learning to embed a YouTube video on my blog hasn't worn off. This is how pathetically amateurish I am when it comes to tech stuff, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Feel free to roll your eyes up at my ineptitude, but I bet not many of you can make a killer Peking duck from scratch either. So we're even.

I LOVE this version of "Deja Vu." David Crosby originally wrote it for the first album (of the same name) that his group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released in 1970. That was almost forty years ago. In this video, filmed near Amsterdam in the late 1990s, Crosby performs it with his new group CPR, and there's a beautiful story behind it. The video is 10 minutes long, and I urge you to watch it full screen with the volume up. It may be the happiest 10 minutes you'll spend online today.

David Crosby enjoyed great success as a founding member of 2 pioneering rock bands, The Byrds, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. However, a turbulent personal life ravaged by drugs and alcohol took its toll on his career, health and relationships. Destructive behaviour led to his estrangement from many of his fellow musicians and friends. There was a term in prison for drugs charges. He eventually found sobriety but continued to face grave financial troubles and suffered a near fatal motorcycle accident. An earthquake caused major damage to his lovingly restored home, which he later lost through foreclosure. On top of all that, Crosby's years of substance abuse and an undiagnosed case of Hepatitis C led to serious liver damage. In 1995, he was hospitalised with deteriorating health and unless a suitable liver donor could be found in time, he faced certain death.

What happened next can only be described as the most joyous synchronicity. An eleventh hour liver donor miraculously became available to Crosby, and the transplant was successful. Around the same time, a gifted 30 year old pianist and composer named James Raymond discovered through a search of his birth records that David Crosby was his biological father. Father and son were reunited. They discovered their blood ties forged even deeper by a common love of music. This serendipitous union led to the birth of Crosby's new group CPR with papa Crosby on guitar, James Raymond, his son, on keyboards, and guitarist Jeff Pevar on electric guitar. Crosby's biography also states, "In this same short season of miracles, Crosby and his wife gave birth to a son, Django, and James and Stacia Raymond presented Crosby with a new granddaughter, Grace." Wow. Even Dickens couldn't make this stuff up.

Croz is as wonderful as ever in this video. His eyes have the light of serenity I've seen only in people who've made it through the fire. Watch out specially for the tender look of love and fatherly pride on Crosby's face as he looks at his son at 5:57 and 6:17 in the video clip. At 6:17 he taps his left breast with his fist, right over the space where his heart lies.

In Jin Shin Jyutsu, that exact spot is Safety Energy Lock 13. It is the place that unconditional love and forgiveness call home.

Bad Mama

2009-08-27T11:43:00.002+02:00

My friend Pat gave me this very nice but slightly rude t-shirt from a Belgian rock 'n roll band she's friends with. I showed it to Legs and Noodle and told them I was planning on wearing it when I take them to their first day of school next Tuesday.

No. Not really.

The horrified looks on my children's faces made my day. I just can't help myself sometimes.

Fred Astaire equals Joy

2009-08-23T09:20:00.006+02:00

Fred Astaire stole my heart when I was seven. My grandmother bribed me with a large bag of M&Ms to accompany her to a double feature of "Top Hat" and "Shall We Dance." I could not believe it was possible for two people to move so effortlessly and with so much joy. I watched goggle-eyed, my head flooding with questions. How did they do all that without missing a beat? How did Fred avoid tripping on Ginger's gown? How did she leap and twirl in those heels without twisting her ankle? Why didn't men dress that way anymore? How many years of ballet lessons - which I loathed - would it take for me to be able to dance that way? Listening to Lola sigh through all the dance sequences, I worried she was going to fall into a swoon and embarrass me. She needed a large Manhattan to revive her after the film and let me have a sip of her drink on the condition that I not tell my grandfather or my mother. That was the beginning of my love affair with Manhattans too.

Who can watch this video and not be gladdened by it? Not me. Do turn up the volume and view it full screen. The Vienna-based duo dZihan & Kamien's downtempo beat on "Stiff Jazz" from their album "Gran Riserva" provides the perfect backdrop to Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger's dazzling footwork. However, I think that it might be Astaire's sister Adele with him in some of the dance sequences, although I could be wrong.

No matter, it's all very uplifting. Especially on days when Facebook is littered with the irritating flotsam of Mafia Wars scores and quiz results of addle-pated friends in their 40s or older who are hell-bent on informing me that they have nothing better to do with their lives apart from using sundry Facebook applications as a monumental time-suck. Friend's sample quiz: What Chocolate Are You? Result: Mars bar. Me: Mars bars are NOT chocolate, you pathetic, muttonheaded galoot.

All right, I'll stop grumping about Facebook lameness now and look at this again. Ah, if only I had the fixings for a Manhattan.

My thanks to the clever person who put these film clips and this music together, and to my lovely friend Mnemosyne who patiently explained how I could embed this video onto my blog.

To live as flame

2009-08-12T07:24:00.005+02:00

It all began with this picture. It was sent to me by my photographer friend Lito Tesoro who took it at the Los Angeles Arboretum. He said it reminded him of my mum Daisy. It is the most beautiful photograph I have seen of a daisy, ever. Click on the image to see it in all its glory, and you'll see what I mean. On July 19, the anniversary of my mother's death, I posted it on my Facebook Wall together with this poem by Mary Oliver, one of my all-time favourite poems.

DAISIES
by Mary Oliver

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead

oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their -- if you don't
mind my saying so -- their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example -- I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch --
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

After seeing that, another dear friend, the poet Luisa Igloria left this response to the Mary Oliver poem on my Wall.

(after Mary Oliver's "Daisies")

But if, then, we knew
everything there was to learn,
neither the mockingbird nor the field
overgrown with daisies would move us;
not the sun that sears overhead
in summer, nor its other tokens
that we carry into the year's
different seasons, reminding us
of loss. Having crossed
from hour to laborious hour,
neither do I know what the world is
nor what it might yet be; only
that for the moment it is sweet
to live as flame, to touch and
taste and turn one's face to another's,
grateful for the company.

by Luisa A. Igloria, 19 July 2009

In the Facebook conversation that unfurled, it turned out that Luisa and Lito knew each other decades ago but lost touch. It was a joyous reunion for the two of them. The daisy chain had worked its magic yet again.

A Flower Falls

2009-08-01T19:15:00.009+02:00

the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.

from "Water" by Pablo Neruda

My mother Daisy was killed 19 years ago in a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake that trampled Baguio, my hometown in the northern Philippines. She was just 50. I was already living in Belgium at the time, and returned home to bury not only the woman who had given life to me, but also large chunks of my former life.

Mama (seated) and me, circa 1983

photo by Wig Tysmans

Much of Baguio was in ruins. The airport runway and all major roads leading to that mountaintop city were heavily damaged, hindering rescue efforts because heavy-lifting equipment and essential supplies could not arrive. The city's 3 hospitals were badly hit and without power. There was no electricity or running water for weeks. All telephone lines were down. This being before the advent of the internet or mobile phones, Baguio was essentially cut off from the rest of the world. The sickly-sweet stench of decomposing flesh was everywhere; that smell still clings tightly to my memory. Crushing as our loss was, we were some of the lucky ones. Mama's was the second body recovered from the rubble of the Hyatt Terraces hotel, where she lived in an 8th floor apartment with Heiner, my German hotelier stepfather who was the hotel's general manager. Many others were not as fortunate. They waited days, weeks, even months before the bodies of their loved ones were recovered. Still others lost their homes. A cousin and a poet friend lost brand new homes into which they had invested all their life savings and unlived dreams.

Grief unhinged me in odd ways. I remember nothing of my hurried trip home or indeed the return journey to Brussels, except that I amassed a collection of 21 Lufthansa coffee spoons which I apparently stole whilst in flight. I had not dabbled in petty theft as a pastime before that. Nor have I taken it up since. Severe insomnia emerged as a more serious side effect of my loss. It dogged me mercilessly for 18 years until Jin Shin Jyutsu released me from its stranglehold last year.

I have only vague memories of Mama's wake in my grandparents' house. Lolo, my grandfather, bore the loss of his firstborn child with great dignity, losing his composure only once to roar at the cups and saucers (which, bizarrely, remained unscathed) in my grandmother's china cupboard, and ask why God couldn't have taken him, an old man, instead. Lola, my grandmother, was the reverse. She crumbled frequently, often surrendering melodramatically to the pain of her bereavement. Lola's blood pressure rocketed off the scales, demented as she was by grief, and yet frantic that all our visitors be welcomed and properly fed. Lola's younger sister, a doctor, occasionally had to sedate her with Valium to stop her from becoming too overwrought when relatives and friends came to call in the afternoons and evenings.

Most heartrending of all was watching my stepfather Heiner soldier on. Although devasted by his wife's death, he was very conscientious of his duties to his hotel, his fallen ship, where over 50 hotel guests and employees had died. None of us could imagine what it must have been like for one person to become homeless, jobless and a widower all at once and, against the most hellish odds, find ways to rescue others who lay trapped alive in the rubble. Although his corporate bosses told him to take time off, he refused to hear of it. Heiner remained on site to supervise the rescue and recovery effort until the last body had been found. He also stayed on to oversee the demolition of the hotel, a process that took months. Natural disasters create heroes; he was mine and always will be.

Noemi, a feisty young woman who worked as our cook for many years before leaving to start a family with our driver Romy, astounded us when she showed up a few days before Mama's funeral. Her wraith-like form appeared at the kitchen door one sodden afternoon, hungry, bedraggled and shoeless. She had walked alone for three days up a mountain entombed in shock, fog and landslides to pay her last respects to my mother. Until then, I thought I knew what loyalty meant. Noemi's unexpected arrival redefined it for me. After a wash, first aid for her wounded feet, and a long nap, she threw herself into cooking and cleaning and organised the rest of the help who were walking around in a daze like the rest of us.

Of the funeral itself I have scant recollection. We were astonished at the number of people who showed up at the cemetery, a considerable distance outside the city. It was difficult for anyone to get around because many roads were impassable, and strict petrol rationing kept people housebound save for vital journeys. In post-earthquake Baguio, the social obligation to attend other people's funerals was no longer considered compulsory. Besides, with so many dead, how did one prioritise whose funeral to attend?

At Mama's funeral, strangers clasped my hands in theirs and spoke of her kindness to them: a seminarian she had sent to theological school, hotel staff whose children's birthdays she never forgot, a struggling painter whose work she sold without taking a commission, a flower seller whose ailing mother she used to visit. Even in death our Daisy continued to bloom. As the hearse containing her coffin drew close to her burial plot, a tremendous aftershock shook the ground. From behind a large rock close to where I stood emerged an enormous cloud of white butterflies. I shivered as their wings brushed against me. In that instant, I remembered that Mama had loved butterflies and bees. She had always filled her garden with plants that attracted them; she'd watch them for hours. She often said the simple white butterflies symbolised her best. Suddenly, there they were. It was a moment of sublime synchronicity that thrilled my heart and my imagination.

After the funeral was over, the heavens opened and torrential rain came down thick as stair rods. My grandmother finally collapsed, wailing that her daughter would be soaked. The fact that my mother was dead and buried in a coffin six feet in the ground meant nothing to Lola. She could not be consoled. I held my grandmother's prostrate body in my arms, neither of us able to fully comprehend the loss of the woman who bound us together with a chain of kinship, history and love.

Only then did I remember it was my birthday. The day the earth claimed my mother a second time, I turned thirty.

Neurosceptic Unblogged: Stapled To My Seat Watching Funeralapalooza

2009-07-10T13:41:00.000+02:00

A brilliant, scathing and very funny review of the TV coverage of Jacko's memorial service can be found here:

Neurosceptic Unblogged: Stapled To My Seat Watching Funeralapalooza

Highly recommended!

OFF THE WALL: The Night The Gloves Came Off (a Facebook good-bye to Michael Jackson)

2009-07-10T12:23:00.008+02:00

Because I tend to do most things arse-backwards, this post is a retroactive tribute to Michael Jackson, who died sometime last week, or was it the week before? Celebs tend to irritate me, so I don't follow them on the news. But it was impossible not to know that the King of Pop had popped his clogs. Hearing the news while I was at my Jin Shin Jyutsu class in Ireland, I shrugged and said a prayer for his soul. And idly wondered whether his record label had engineered his death to boost sagging record sales. With all the extremes Jacko had put his body through - it being no secret that he was plastic-surgeried, botoxed and over-medicated to hell and back - I often thought he was headed for an early grave.

Common sense tells me that if we don't love ourselves, our bodies respond in kind. This has nothing to do with looking buffed and coiffed, or wearing designer labels, for most of that is vanity, and vanity is not love; it is fear. I'm talking about simply accepting ourselves, respecting ourselves, and being grateful each day for the miracle of our bodies and our minds. I had to make peace with my chins, my gray hair and all my love handles before I could write any of that. It wasn't easy, but it was necessary.

So anyway, there was no escaping the hype around Jacko's death, even without a TV at home. It was all over the bloody web. I tried to ignore the noise made about him on Facebook, although some of it was getting altogether too melodramatic for my taste. I mean, these people don't even make that much fuss when their own grannies croak. From a previous post, you all know about my allergy to gushy people, so it's no surprise that I don't suffer the maudlin ones gladly either. It all came to a head on Monday when I read somewhere that the Rev. Al Sharpton, that slimy opportunist, was calling for nationwide ‘love vigils’ to honor Michael Jackson on Tuesday, the day of his funeral and memorial service. Love vigils?? For that kiddie fondler and inter-galactic wanker? Pass me the bucket, quick.

In typical low-key, diplomatic fashion, I wrote a status post on my Facebook profile the day before Jacko's memorial service. Having vented my annoyance at the tawdry public reaction to Jacko's death, I thought nothing more of it and got up to cook dinner. I did not forsee the Sturm und Drang that would break out on my Facebook Wall later in the day.

The responses to my post were humorous and light-hearted until V.Rago, an old but not close friend from my party animal youth back in the Philippines, jumped in. I still have no idea why she reacted with such splenetic fury to what I or the others had to say. Especially as she claimed she wasn't a big MJ fan. I'm offering the whole nine yards here for your horror and/or amusement. Names have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. All comments are unedited.

My Facebook status post on Mon, July 6 at 18:20 was this:

"Megatonlove is fucking fed up with the deification of the sick, over-spending pervert that was Michael Jackson. Can they please incinerate him already, and throw Rev. Al Sharpton in the flames as well. Thanks."

And these are the 31 comments that followed. [The annotations in blue are my opinions alone.]

Non-linear Tippler at 18:29 on 06 July
They have to perform ze alien autopsy first 'no?

Latin Cowboy at 18:44 on 06 July
You're back! :)

Mojito Lizard at 18:48 on 06 July
They're selling tickets to his memorial. Holy mother of crap.

Latin Cowboy at 18:55 on 06 July
How much for a backstage pass?

Auntie Bellum at 18:55 on 06 July
"Fantasy Suttee Couples" - now there's a thought!

Babyface at 19:11 on 06 July
Wow, finally someone I can relate with.

ZeusJoos at 19:12 on 06 July
DAMN GIRL, I LOVE YOUR PASSION & I TOTALLY AGREE!!!

[It began here.]

V.Rago at 21:53 on 06 July
Oh come on, Megatonlove. Have a heart. I was never really a fan but the guy was a genius, a visionary. He changed the video music/concert scene and turned into an experience. Yes, he was a troubled child, and I feel sorry that despite world-wide adulation, he could never get over the verbal abuse of not being good-looking enough to be loved (and his father ought to be crucified for that) which brought him to his sad end. What I can't stand is the dredging up of all the crap. Let the man rest in peace.

[Apologists for sick celebs make my bullshit meter twitch, especially when they throw the "it's not his fault he's weird, he had a rotten childhood" spiel at me. If Jackson found himself inadequate despite global adulation, he wasn't a victim, he was a miserable twat as far as I was concerned. I fired off a reply to V.Rago and left Facebook to study my Jin Shin Jyutsu notes for a few hours before going to bed.]

Megatonlove at 22:54 on 06 July
MJ was a great dancer and an okay singer, but the rest of his package was just plain rotten. And he was MORE than just a troubled child, he was a repulsive pedophile who got away with everything because he could buy his way out of trouble. I wish people would stop making excuses for him, or glorifying him as some kind of godhead. What Jacko modelled to his fans - that happiness could be obtained through the point of a scalpel, a bowl of pills and powders, or the flick of a credit card - was just sick bollocks. Too bad he died so young, but he had it coming.

[During my absence from Facebook, other comments arrived.]

Latin Cowboy at 23:19 on 06 July
I'd have to agree with you Megatonlove, he was over rated. If he had grown up with a semi-ordinary kind of life he might have grown in to something much better, but like Elvis before him his early promise was corrupted in to a mockery of himself and then raised to godhead by by crazed masses. They both were more than willing to believe the hype about themselves.

[The temperature began to rise right around here.]

V.Rago at 23:29 on 06 July
I don't quite agree with the pedophile thing-- a lot of those boys' parents were after his money. (Have YOU caught him in bed molesting a child? Do you believe all the scandal sheets?) I know some people who have been sued-- all lies -- just because they have money and a name to protect. I believe MJ was just trying to get in touch with the childhood he missed out on. Call me naive, but I'd rather be non-judgmental. And I don't think people are glorifying him as some godhead-- just paying him the accolades (albeit delayed, because everyone seemed to prefer to trash him) he justly deserves for his accomplishments. No one is perfect. Even Mother Teresa farted. But let's just agree to disagree on this one, shall we? I honestly don't know where your need to vilify him is coming from. What's he done to you? Pills? Addiction to the scalpel? He didn't start that. Might as well spray your vitriol at all the people in Hollywood--- or closer to home. Peace.

[Another reasonable person chimed in.]

ZeusJoos at 23:52 on 06 July
I agree with Meg & watch now if people don't come forward & tell the truth about MJ's pedophilia; especially the victims themselves. He ADMITTED THAT HE LIKED SLEEPING WITH YOUNG CHILDREN, that's pretty damned telling, don't 'cha think? This circus of an all-day wake tomorrow on tuesday is total bollocks.

[Uh-oh, getting irate now.]

V.Rago at 23:58 on 06 July
I like sleeping with children-- mine! I just hope you guys don't get as badly trashed as you do others. Who the hell are you to judge? What gives you the right? Enough said.

[Nothing cracks me up more than judgmental people ordering others not to judge.]

V.Rago at 00:04 on 07 July
And NO! ZeusJoos! That isn't pretty damn telling-- unless you have a sick mind.

[Guess she didn't really mean it when she said "Enough said."]

V.Rago at 00:37 on 07 July
And Latin Cowboy, Just what the hell do you preach? Hatred? Get off your damn pulpit! Or admit you're a hypocrite.

[Hatred? Pulpit? Hypocrite? Yo, V.Rago, you're peeing against the wrong tree here. Latin Cowboy is one of the most peaceable people I know.]

ZeusJoos at 00:44 on 07 July
V.Rago,
I work with men & women who have been sexually molested as children & let me tell you the baggage is HORRIFIC. The damage is unspeakable & seems to have physiological ramifications, not to mention the emotional damage.

Auntie Bellum at 00:49 on 07 July
Abused kids (as he allegedly was) very often become abusers (though it has not yet been proved that he was one - the Daily Mail opinion column is not conclusive enough for me - ), and from way over here I've always thought the parents who encouraged their kids to hang out with an ageing and seriously weird pop star in the evident hope of material benefits seem even more pre-meditatedly wicked than the clearly sick MJ. Really I doubt if there are any nice people in the whole sorry tale.
Re: the wake - seems to me we waste a lot of flowers and candles mourning complete strangers these days. Mass grief is a modern night out. It's just some old gig - though I grant a real live decomposing stiff on stage beats lasers!!! :-)

[Well said, Auntie Bellum!]

V.Rago at 00:56 on 07 July
ZeusJoos, that still doesn't give you the right to abuse the abused. Especially when they can no longer speak for themselves. All this is making me sad. Can't believe there are people like you out there. All I'm saying is, let the poor man be. Why throw shit at him? Are you all clean? I have had enough of this sick discussion. Sad, sad, sad.

[Tee hee, no prizes for guessing who needed to get off the pulpit!]

ZeusJoos at 01:14 on 07 July
People like me? You don't fucking know me, the work I do, my mind-set. "The poor man"? You need to wake up lady. Just another case of blaming the victim.
Well V.Rago, then just exit stage left - you have the right to deify any monster that you choose. I worked in the record business for decades & was privy to private info regarding various intimate details 'bout musicians-wow talk about some troubled folks.... I am no angel, but I do not abuse animals or children, nor do I advocate for their abusers.

[Awwrrright, you tell her, Zeus!]

JoCal at 01:46 on 07 July
easy on each other folks... death is a sad reality no matter whom it strikes...

[At this point it was 2 a.m. here. I thought I'd check my Facebook one last time before heading up to bed. I was rather shaken to find my Wall had turned into a battlefield in my absence. I wasn't sure what to do, so I blew the referee's whistle. Loudly.]

Megatonlove at 02:26 on 07 July
Sheesh, I leave FB for a few hours and war breaks out. V.Rago, THAT'S ENOUGH from you. What's gotten into you, girl? I don't care how hot and bothered you choose to get about Wacko Jacko, your comments on MY wall are way out of order. It's okay to disagree passionately with others, but there's no need to become abusive towards people you know nothing about. What happened to staying non-judgmental? If you want to have a good old rant, then please do it on your Facebook wall, not mine. This conversation is now closed. Thanks, everyone. Unruffle those feathers please. Good night.

[I hoped that would be the end of that. But V.Rago was clearly not done, even though she'd declared she'd had enough, not once but twice!]

V.Rago at 02:40 on 07 July
I wasn't abusive Megatonlove. You were. Condescending and judgmental. AND DON'T YOU EVER USE THAT TONE WITH ME. You chose to post something offensive and provocative on your wall and expected comments. But don't worry. You won't hear ever hear from me again. Nor do I care to hear from you. We're clearly not on the same page.

[OHO, now the pot was calling the kettle black! Instead of striking fear in my heart, V.Rago induced loud snorts of laughter in me that woke the dog. I prayed that the friends who had left comments on my Wall would somehow see the funny side of it too.]

Megatonlove at 02:57 on 07 July
Aw, shaddup already.

[After that parting shot, I deleted V.Rago from my Friends List and fell into bed. Entertaining though she briefly was, I no longer enjoy hanging out with toxic humans in real life or cyberspace. The comments on my Wall continued into the next day, ending as light-heartedly as they had begun. Bless you, Facebook friends.]

Calmer Of Calves at 04:40 on 07 July
    I AM WITH YOU ON THAT ONE MEGATONLOVE!!!! THE RICH AND FAMOUS OR THE FAMOUS IN DEBT UP TO THEIR PLASTIC SURGERY SHOULD NOT GET AWAY WITH CHILD MOLESTATION OR RAPE. THOSE CHILDREN WILL BE DEALING WITH THE EFFECTS OF HIS ABUSE FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. A FRIEND OF MINE WAS TOLD ME THAT SEXUAL ABUSE IS THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING.
    MAYBE HE KILLED HIMSELF BECAUSE THE GUILT (IF HE HAD ANY) WAS 'KILLING' HIM PHYSICALLY, EMOTIONALLY AND SPIRITUALLY? THERE WAS A RE-RUN OF A CLIP OF AN INTERVIEW ON TV TODAY WHERE JACKSON WAS CONFRONTED BY THE INTERVIEWER VERY DIRECTLY ABOUT THE 'ALLEGATIONS'. JACKSON LOOKED DOWN (SHAME), THEN PROCEEDED TO LAUGH AND FINALLY PUT HIS HANDS OVER HIS FACE. ZEUS AND I HAVE STUDIED BODY READING ON MANY LEVELS AND HIS REACTIONS WERE ALL INDICATIVE OF SHAME (LOOKING DOWN AND HANDS COVERING HIS FACE), EMBARRASSMENT (THE LAUGHING) AND SOMEONE WHO WAS LYING.
    I WOULD INVITE ANYONE IN DISBELIEF TO STUDY HIS BODY LANGUAGE AROUND THE TIME OF THE ABUSE TRIALS....

HarpSkunk at 08:19 on 07 July
Whew! Personally I am just hoping that the Thriller video is not a foretaste of things to come, 'Chronicle of an un-death foretold'. Maybe he has gone to live with Elvis in that London bus on the dark side of the moon which is signaling to the mothership.

Blond Igorot at 10:19 on 07 July
and I....missed all the fun. Shucks.

Queen Liz III at 10:25 on 07 July
Yes yes yes...he's still ALIVE!!!!!! It's all a money making scam cause he's in debt up to his plastic ears!!!!!....that's why there's no public viewing of the body....madam toussaud's won't release their copy hehehehehe.....spread the word...he's ALIVE!!!! where did you see him?...
oopppsss sorry Megatonlove...now you're wall's gonna go ape!!!!!!

Blond Igorot at 10:38 on 07 July
Blasphemy....

Megatonlove at 13:48 on 07 July
I believe Wacko Jacko was embalmed pre-mortem. But even people made entirely of silicone and plastic have an expiry date. His brains were also pickled ages ago.

Celtic Banjo at 16:56 on 07 July
Megatonlove, nice one! he can`t buy his way out this one paper burns where he is going he he..."whos BAD" dun dun dun dun dun...dun dun dun dun dun dun...shamone eeee heeeee.

The Ironing Broad at 23:27 on 07 July
Agree w Blond Igorot... Queen Liz III is blasphemous!

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

Albert Einstein

Guest Post: The Safety of Memory by Mark Walther

2009-06-18T14:57:00.021+02:00

My old friend Mark Walther has graciously agreed to write a guest post. I've stretched myself too thin this week, what with the children's final exams, the dreaded annual mammogram (all clear!), and futile attempts to whittle an avalanche of notes into shape for my third Jin Shin Jyutsu class in Ireland next week.

Mark Walther and I met in high school at Brent School, the international school we attended in the northern Philippine city of Baguio, where I lived in my teens and early twenties. He was different from our rowdier American schoolmates - quiet, observant, thoughtful. Always had his nose in a book. I liked that about him because I was passionate about books, too. I was sure he'd be interesting to talk to, but was far too gauche to engage him in conversation. Mark's parents were missionaries in the Philippines, which he always considered home. After 11 years there, he returned to the America, the country of his birth. It was a strange and sometimes difficult experience for a 17 year-old, as he recounts here.

Today, Mark and his wife Maureen live on a bluebell-carpeted ranch near Dallas, where he continues to lead a life that's part Lord Jim, part Buster Keaton, with grandchildren thrown in for extra spice.

Mark Walther in high school, circa 1975

It is already hot here in Texas with the expected highs this week in the upper 90's, and there's talk of hitting the century mark by the end of the week. Soon we will have the obligatory summer TV news report by a rookie reporter cooking an egg on the sidewalk. The tally sheets will come out, records will be compared, so many days over 100 degrees. It is quiet outside, silent in the mid-afternoon sun. I sit in the shade of a mimosa tree, the heat radiating off the ground like sitting in a vast outdoor oven. In the silence, memories start to stir.

Summertime, the heat and a James Taylor song always take me back to the summer of 1976. Back to when the pain of loss and culture shock were fresh. Back to when I had just returned to America and was miserable over the friends and country I had left behind. With my long black hair and beard, I really stood out in a sea of Scandinavian rural midwestern conformity. People who could barely comprehend leaving the state, let alone the country. I desperately wanted to go home and at the same time I was excited at the adventure of being in a new country, at the prospect of what might be in store for me as I began my adult life. Yet, I was a stranger in a strange land. I had never seen so many white people all together at the same time. I longed for things that were familiar: foods, scenery and people. That summer I struggled to find my footing, re-acquainting with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The world was so much smaller in the Heartland, shrunk down to weather, crops and the State Fair. I worked my first jobs: my grandfather's farm, then at a feedmill. I learned to drive. I bought clothes at a store rather than having them tailor-made. Giving perpetual explanations to the never-ending question, "But why would you want to leave the U.S.? We have everything..." Candy bars, shopping malls, drive-in movies, Dairy Queen, pot-luck dinners and backyard barbecues. The shock of how much things cost back here in the U.S.A. Giving countless geography lessons ("So you lived next to France?"). Camping and sleeping on the ground because you wanted to. Hot running water you could use without boiling it first. American cars. Giving endless history lessons ("No, it was the Spanish-American War, not the Korean War"). Electricity 24 hours a day. TV, TV and more TV, all in English! Hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries and steaks. American girls of all shapes and sizes. A bus trip from Florida to Montreal and back again. Canned vegetables and TV dinners (why?!). Corn as far as the eye could see. Concerts of bands I had only known by word of mouth or the radio. The new world was trying to crowd out my old life. I was trapped, boxed in by decisions and choices beyond my control. I wore my memories like armor and carried them like a sword, protection from the isolated loneliness I felt in my new home, the place of my birth. But throughout that mad, hot summer, the thing that really kept me going was music.

Now, in the heat and silence 30 years later I can feel the fierceness and the passion of that teenage boy. My shoulders ache for the weight of that armor, my hand for the feel of that haft. It is summertime and I am going to the Philippines in my mind.

"In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina, can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine
ain't it just like a friend of mine to hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind
Dark and silent late last night I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite. Signs that might be omens say I'm going, going
I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind

With a holy host of others standing 'round me, still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind"

from "Carolina in My Mind" by James Taylor

Clear as a (Marvin) Bell

2009-06-09T13:58:00.001+02:00

Found this the other day via the wonderful writer Andrea Gillies who re-tweeted it on Twitter. Hay fever keeps my head in permanent fog. The old demons of Blighter's Rock are back as well, making writing fraught. This was exactly what I needed. Although I don't write poetry, all of this applies to me, too. Perhaps you'll find it pertinent and clear-headed as well.

Thank you, Marvin Bell.

Thirty-two Statements About Writing Poetry by Marvin Bell

1. Every poet is an experimentalist.

2. Learning to write is a simple process: read something, then write something; read something else, then write something else. And show in your writing what you have read.

3. There is no one way to write and no right way to write.

4. The good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff.

5. Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.

6. You do not learn from work like yours as much as you learn from work unlike yours.

7. Originality is a new amalgam of influences.

8. Try to write poems at least one person in the room will hate.

9. The I in the poem is not you but someone who knows a lot about you.

10. Autobiography rots.

11. A poem listens to itself as it goes.

12. It's not what one begins with that matters; it's the quality of attention paid to it thereafter.

13. Language is subjective and relative, but it also overlaps; get on with it.

14. Every free verse writer must reinvent free verse.

15. Prose is prose because of what it includes; poetry is poetry because of what it leaves out.

16. A short poem need not be small.

17. Rhyme and meter, too, can be experimental.

18. Poetry has content but is not strictly about its contents. A poem containing a tree may not be about a tree.

19. You need nothing more to write poems than bits of string and thread and some dust from under the bed.

20. At heart, poetic beauty is tautological: it defines its terms and exhausts them.

21. The penalty for education is self-consciousness. But it is too late for ignorance.

22. What they say "there are no words for"--that's what poetry is for. Poetry uses words to go beyond words.

23. One does not learn by having a teacher do the work.

24. The dictionary is beautiful; for some poets, it's enough.

25. Writing poetry is its own reward and needs no certification. Poetry, like water, seeks its own level.

26. A finished poem is also the draft of a later poem.

27. A poet sees the differences between his or her poems but a reader sees the similarities.

28. Poetry is a manifestation of more important things. On the one hand, it's poetry! On the other, it's just poetry.

29. Viewed in perspective, Parnassus is a very short mountain.

30. A good workshop continually signals that we are all in this together, teacher too.

31. This Depression Era jingle could be about writing poetry: Use it up / wear it out / make it do / or do without.

32. Art is a way of life, not a career.

Marvin Bell, author of seventeen books, has been the recipient of the Lamont Award from the Academy of American Poets, Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and Senior Fulbright appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. Bell is a longtime member of the faculty of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he is Flannery O'Connor Professor of Letters.

Oh woe.

2009-06-06T19:33:00.014+02:00

The past week's been a bitch. Or rather, I have. I think I've lost it. Legs and Noodle have been playing squabble all week, and no, that wasn't a typo. My patience with them is at an end. I've gone on laundry strike with Legs. So disgusted am I by the clumps of fetid clothing littering her bedroom floor that I've refused to do any more of her laundry - at least until the sight of her struggling to do it herself unhinges me and makes me recant.

I have three months of New Yorker magazines and twelve books by my side of the bed, unread.

In two weeks I leave for a Jin Shin Jyutsu class in Ireland and my notes are as jumbled as they were 6 months ago when I smugly announced that I had plenty of time to get them ship-shape for June. What was the road to hell paved with again? No, don't tell me.

My hay fever has returned, reducing me to a pathetic blob of snot and snuffles, robbing me of sleep. It feels like there's an elephant sitting on my chest. If I'm outdoors for more than 10 minutes, the sneezing and coughing begin. I worry, too, that the sneezing fits I get when driving are turning me into a liability on the road.

Spring, thou art a bitch sometimes.

Everything in the garden is on the rampage, with nettles and dandelions leading the charge. Evil bindweed is back. The brunnera and the linnaria have migrated out of their beds. Deep pink foxgloves are canoodling with yellow poppies, and it looks all wrong somehow. The raised beds will never get done now and the baby cabbage will have to grow in pots. Roquette (arugula) has sprouted all over the cracks on the terrace. I used to pay a premium for this stuff at the Delhaize only to have the children turn their noses up at it. I felt sure they'd change their minds about roquette if we grew it at home; so we did, and they didn't. At this point, trying to stay on top of anything in the garden feels like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. My horticultural get-up-and-go has gotten-up-and-left. Bugger the damn garden.

I mourn the demise of these beloved gloves. I loved them, literally, to pieces. They've been with me since the day 20 years ago when we planted the skinny little wisteria vine which now threatens to gobble up the house.

And to cap a perfectly dreary week, Belgium goes to the polls tomorrow for the regional and European elections. I don't know if there's anything more depressing than Belgian politics, except maybe Philippine politics and I want no part of either. America gets the magnificent Mister Obama, and we at the crossroads of Europe get to choose between the likes of Louis Michel and Elio Di Rupo and a host of other buffoons? Que barbaridad!

It's time to get my gratitude bowl out. I notice it's become dusty from lack of use, so busy have I been with doing that I've left no time for being.

Blimey!

2009-05-29T19:49:00.020+02:00

Early the other morning I noticed that someone had left a new comment on my last post about a tiresome relative named Chlamydia Burana. The comment, from an unknown reader named mnemosynewrites (yes, exactly, mne-mne-mowhat?), read:

"Chanced upon your blog over at Kanlaon and have been a frequent reader since. As a result, I nominated you for a "Kreative Blogger Award", hope you don't mind :)"

Okay folks, it was early in the morning, and because most of you don't know me personally - count yourselves lucky, really - my brain dwells South of Murky in the early morning, and does not resemble anything more evolved than pond life until at least 10 a.m. And definitely not before industrial-strength caffeine has been poured down it.

Neither can I remember where I've parked my reading glasses at that hour, so I tend to wander aimlessly through cyberspace with left hand cupped over left eye to help me focus. As the one-eyed halfwit reading that comment, I understood it to mean that Kanlaon, an excellent blog by a published writer friend in California, had won some award. I made a note to look up the definition of that mnemo-word. I love words, and if there's a new one I haven't met, I'll rush over to shake its hand.

Forward to late morning. Eyes and brain finally operational, I read the comment again and gagged on my toast. A total stranger named Mnemosyne Writes had just informed me that she had nominated me and 6 others for a Kreativ Blogger Award. Moi? Good God! I couldn't imagine what possessed her to do that, but hey, I wasn't about to argue. Without getting all Kate Winslet-y about it, THANK YOU, kind Menemosyne person, for this honor and the rather yummy ego massage that accompanied it. It's come as quite a shock to someone who's still not sure where this young blog is headed, and who continues to hear scary Blighter's Rock rumblings in her head each time she starts a new post.

According to the rules of this award, I have to list 7 things I love. I have to pick 7 other blogs that I think should be awarded the same honor, and inform those bloggers. I also have to link back to the person (above) who graciously nominated me. Without further ado:

Seven Things I Love, and preferrably in large quantities, please:

the ancient Japanese healing art of Jin Shin Jyutsu
laughter
food/eating/cooking
a good night's sleep
books
music
beautiful things made by hand, like my Aran jumpers from a 91-year-old knitter in Inis Mór, the Aran Islands, Ireland

Seven Blogs I Enjoy:

Belgian Waffle - Eurodrone, unfit mother, slattern, this woman has life in Belgium completely sussed. One recent post almost gave me a seizure. I suspect that a soft heart beats underneath Jaywalker's cheeky madcap exterior.

Posit Ennui - Meet Dr. Y.U. Thropplenoggin, bosh-monger, diabolical wit, master of verbal tomfoolery. His pithycisms also make Twitter a chortlesome place for me to roam. I've learned from messy experience not to have any coffee in my mouth when reading tweets by @thropplenoggin.

This Is Reverb - Ryan Detzel, a young father in Cincinnati, is an ace cook and photographer, and possesses some rather impressive tattoos. He's also a pastor whose message gets me in the gut. No mean feat, seeing as I've always been averse to any form of organized religion. Thankfully, this has never stopped me from walking my own spiritual path where I encounter gems like him.

Self-Help Holds with Jin Shin Jyutsu - Astrid, an experienced Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner living in Spain shares her knowledge and experience of the ancient healing art that has become my life's passion too. Read her if you want to know how to stop a migraine or heal a wound quickly without pharmaceuticals or plasters. I promise you this stuff works.

Market Manila - Marketman cooks, entertains, travels, and occasionally rants with great style. According to Anthony Bourdain, he also roasts "the best pig in the world." I dream of eating at his table one day, and so do all his readers. Poor man, he will need a very, very long table.

Borealkraut - Alaska-based Borealkraut is a naturalist, teacher, quilter, hiker, cook, mother, blogger who embodies good, sane womanhood to me - something I aspire to, but regularly fall short of. Her prepositions don't dangle either. She has moose in her garden, I have slugs. Whoever said life was fair? She also has a second blog dedicated to cooking, called Borealkitchen.

golfpunkgirl and benbenbenbenben are newlyweds Liana and Ben Joyce in real life. These are their Flickr pages; they blog with photographs rather than words. They shoot only analog film and oh, what sumptuous, transcendent images they create!

Enjoy!

N.B. A growing list of blogs I visit is on the right hand column of this page. Every single one is worth a detour. Special thanks to my blogging 'aunties' The Lizard Meanders, True Love, Six Kids, One Old House, and Kanlaon for their inspiration and encouragement.

Brocantes

2009-05-22T08:58:00.015+02:00

I love brocantes!

In Belgium, a brocante is a cross between a flea market and a car boot sale. The Flemish call them rommelmarkts. In my area, they usually take place in villages, beginning in the spring until the end of summer. People lay out their stuff on tarpaulins on the street. They're a good way for folk to clear out the domestic detritus they've uncovered while spring cleaning. Fortunately or unfortunately, they're also a good way to pick up more "finds" - or junk - depending on whose point of view it is.

When the going gets tough, the broke go brocanting. Someone's junk is someone else's treasure. Here are some treasures I picked up recently.

From the Noduwez brocante (above) 2 weeks ago: one bundle of organic rhubarb, one bunch of organic parsley, two young cherry tomato plants, a dozen antique coins from Denmark and Belgium and one antique 2 kilo cast iron weight. Total spent: €5.

And this was my haul from Thursday's brocante in Jandrain: a dozen different antique cast iron weights (of varying weights: 2-kilos, 1-kilo, 500-grams, 200-grams, 100-grams, 50-grams), one Japanese serving plate, 5 French blue-and-white dessert plates with peony design from the 1930s, one ceramic planter with a Chinese garden scene, and 11 small glass bowls from the 1930s, which will be perfect for ice cream or jelly. Total spent: €8.30.

Why do I have a thing for cast iron weights? I have no idea, but I can never resist them. Heck, I'm not sure why I have a thing for most of the things I buy at brocantes. I bought my first one, a 1-kilo weight, a few years ago to use as a doorstop. I am now the proud owner of over 60 cast iron weights, and each time I bring more home Skunk rolls his eyes upward and sighs heavily.

Too bad for him.

The Snark Returns: Introducing Chlamydia Burana (warning: expletives undeleted)

2009-05-15T14:26:00.033+02:00

First-time visitors to Megatonlove could be forgiven for thinking this is a gardening blog. It isn't. Only, with spring at full gallop, there's so much beauty outside that it would be churlish not to share some of its beauty with you. Mother's Day morning brought glorious sunshine, love notes and quirky hand-made presents from Legs & Noodle, and the discovery that the Papaver orientalis had started to open. I look forward to these Oriental poppies all winter long. They are the brazen hussies of the garden, their papery scarlet-orange skirts calling to mind the pleated costumes of Issey Miyake. They burst open with devil-may-care abandon, their flower heads unnaturally heavy for their stems, the ruffles and ridges of their mysterious centers coated in inky purple dust. In a few days they're gone, leaving large seed pods in their wake, victorious fists clenched to salute such fleeting splendor. As I photographed them in the early morning sun, I was filled with gladness for the mother that sustains us all. Mother Earth.

I compiled my new flower photos into an album and posted them on Facebook. Everything was grand until yesterday when I noticed that someone on my friends list had posted my photo album onto her Facebook Wall. Without my permission! It irritated me. Especially because this same person had committed the same transgression only the week before with one of my other photo albums. She'd blithely helped herself to my family pictures and posted them on her Wall without as much as a by-your-leave. I wrote her this message:

I would appreciate it if you would kindly take my album "Life in Belgium" off your FB wall as soon as possible. My family's privacy is very important to me and I would rather that my photo albums be visible only to people on my friends list. I hope you understand.

To give her credit, she complied promptly. She explained she only wanted to share them with her sister and friends - none of whom I know, by the way. I enjoy sharing my photographs with my family and friends on Facebook. It's a great way for me to stay in touch because I live so far away from my tribe. However, I remain extremely cautious about sharing my personal details on the web, and I've gone to certain lengths to protect the identities of my loved ones on this blog.

Being a thoughtful person, I'd like to respect my offender's anonymity, so I'll call her Chlamydia Burana. (Take a bow, Chlamydia, dear. This may be your moment of fame.) Chlamydia Burana is close enough to her real name, and it accurately defines someone "with an ability to establish long-term associations with host cells." Gee, thanks, Wikipedia, that scares the shit out of me. An easily-transmitted infection, terrific. Some of my Facebook friends reading this may know who I'm talking about because Chlamydia has wormed her way into their friends lists as well. When I was new to Facebook last year, Chlamydia sent me a friend request. She claimed to be my mother's cousin and, fool that I was, I accepted. I had never met her in person, she lives a safe distance away in Vafancouver, and I had no intention of ever interacting with her. I did wonder at the time why, if she was as close to my mother as she claimed to be, Mama had never mentioned Chlamydia to us while she was alive. Dear Chlammy lost no time friending more family members, and was soon busy busy busy leaving her syrupy pawprints everywhere. Secretly I began to regard her as the Dolores Umbridge of Facebook. The first comment she ever left me, on a photo album titled "What's Cooking in Megatonlove's Kitchen" annoyed me, and I knew it was more than just her appalling punctuation:

hi M, Chlamydia here, 2nd cousin of your very beautiful mommy, Daisy. your aunt P is my contemporary and i am more than happy to have found her on B's album. also, it would be much appreciated if you could post a family photo with your mommy and dad, when you can. apparently, you inherited your mom's cooking prowess. i love all of your creations but, as a vegetarian,this is my favorite! your pup eats better than i do...home cooking!! thanks for your friendship and, like what i wrote to your sister-in-law, J, i am so blessed and humbled to have touched base with family members of my most adored cousin. take care and much love...

Not an auspicious start, but knowing how prickly and saccharine-intolerant I am on a good day, I tried to ignore it and dismissed her as Gushy. Give me Cranky, give me Snooty, give me Bossy or Smelly or any of the other 27 dwarves. Just. Don't. Give. Me. Gushy. Because I'll puke all over her. And Chlamydia was world class Gushy. Upper case SMARMY too.

And so Chlamydia simpered on:

Beautiful children you have.

Legs looks like Little Daisy...

Each time she left a comment, my Bullshit Meter would ricochet. Yesterday, when I saw that she had filched another of my photo albums and posted it on her Wall, after already having been cautioned once, it was a bit much. I sent her another message, more business-like this time:

Once again, Chlamydia, may I ask you to please not post any of my photos on your wall without asking me first? I really find this most intrusive and a complete disregard of my privacy. Although we might be related, I have never actually met you and I do not appreciate the liberties you are taking. You could at least have asked me first. It might be just pictures of my garden, but still. Kindly POST YOUR OWN STUFF on your wall. Thank you, etc.

To which she messaged back:

So sorry again, my niece...

My initial sigh of relief at her reply disintegrated into snorts of exasperation when I saw that my photos were still up on her wall. What the fuck, ya great galoot?! Pathetically, I checked her Wall every half hour. No change. By then, my knickers were dancing the proverbial twist.

This time, for variety, I brazenly wrote on her Wall:

Chlamydia, this is my THIRD and final request: will you PLEASE take MY photo album off your Wall? My photos are my property, and they are not yours to do with as you please. Surely this is not too much to ask? I would not dream of posting anyone's pictures on my wall without asking their permission first. Thanks.

Adrenalin provoked un derangement in me. I decided some extra spleen might not come amiss. Going for broke, I replied to her message:

I will not accept your apology until you take my photos off your wall. For god's sake, Chlamydia, I've had enough of your games. Do you ask permission from the other people whose stuff you put on your wall? Or do you think that because this is Facebook you can help yourself to whatever you want?

Silence. My blasted photos remained on her Wall. Was she suffering an attack of sudden illiteracy? Had her computer crashed? Or was she just being an utter fuckwit? All of the above? I gave it one last huzzah:

Chlamydia, I am now very angry that after asking you 3 times, you still haven't seen fit to remove my photos from your wall. What part of my request didn't you understand? I saw that you removed my comment, but my album is still there. And please don't patronize me by referring to me as "your niece" if you cannot respect my privacy on Facebook.

Nada. I had to admit defeat. I knew what my next step would have to be. Reader, I DELETED her.

Lessons learned, in no particular order:

I can't seem to count beyond 3 when I'm angry.
C'est la folie to ignore mon Bullshit Meter, parce que, mon dew, il est toujours spot-on.
Facebook's Privacy settings are a JOKE. There is no way to remove the Share option from my photos to stop others from posting them to their profile. And not only that, even after deleting Chlamydia from my friends list, my photos remain on her wall. Well, Facebook, as far as I'm concerned, you are now officially Fuckbook.
Some relatives can be downright shits. Bet y'all already knew that.
It feels great to let go of snakes masquerading as friends .

Before I go, I want to leave you with an imaginary message I wrote but will of course never send to her. Unless she tracks me down and reads it here:

Dear Chlamydia, what'll you do now that I've dumped you? I know I was one of the most colorful characters on your Friends List, and you will miss my saucy posts. How dreary your life will be without me. Never mind. Every cloud has a silver lining. Now that Bernard Madoff faces spending the rest of his life in prison, there may be a vacancy for you at Weasels Sans Frontieres.

Imelda Staunton as Professor Dolores Umbridge in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

N.B. Megatonlove wishes to thank a certain lizard for helping her find the right name.

Where Angels tread (and hoe and mulch)

2009-05-05T14:42:00.035+02:00

I have seen larger and grander, but THIS is the garden that's captured my heart for eternity. A springtime ramble through it brings me as close to heaven as I will ever get on earth.

It is the domain of a mother and daughter I shall call Charlie's Angels. They are the most incredible and inspiring gardeners I have ever met, and I have met many good ones in my time. Angel Senior, the mum, is like a second mum to me and an honorary granny to Legs and Noodle. Angel Senior possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things botanical and is a gifted painter and writer, and a marvelous cook to boot. She taught me all about making jams and chutneys, one of my favorite kitchen pastimes. Angel Junior, the daughter, is a renowned sculptor who works in wood and alabaster when she's not busy in other incarnations as a singer, print-maker, photographer and belly-dancer. The Angels are the closest we have to family in our area and we love them to bits.

Their garden is enormous and utterly lovely in all seasons, yes, even in the dead of winter when our garden - and everyone else's - resembles horticultural Hades. Except for arduous he-man jobs like chopping fallen trees into firewood, they do ALL the garden work themselves. Unlike me, they never complain of backaches and have no fear of slugs. This is what their place looks like at this time of year.

I brought a friend to see their garden last week. When people enter for the first time, their typical reaction is usually one of delighted surprise and, often, speechlessness. In the orchard, we were engulfed by giddy-making clouds of apple blossom. There are several dozen fruit trees - mainly old apple varieties, as well as cherries and plums. In the autumn, several hundred kilos of windfall apples are collected and brought somewhere to be pressed into apple juice. The Angels' apple juice is the finest, most delicious apple juice I've ever tasted.

The Angels allow a farmer in the village to keep some of his sheep in their orchard. The 3 ewes and 8 lambs currently in residence get free grazing and reciprocate by keeping the grass down in the orchard. This beneficial agreement creates endless bucolic scenes like the one above. Two local bee-keepers, one of them a druid, also keep a number of beehives in their orchard. The bees feast on the flowers, pollinate them and produce beautiful honey that the bee-keepers offer the Angels in lieu of rent. Everyone benefits. In seeking to live with interdependence and harmony we only need look at Nature's example. The Angels taught me that.

At the rear of the garden is a splendid old wood with mature oak, yew, ash, hazelnut, acacia and chestnut trees which provide cover for an ever-changing magic carpet of springtime flowers. No sooner has the mantle of snowdrops gone over than bands of crocuses and scillas emerge to replace it, only to make way for a blaze of daffodils, then narcissus, and finally culminating in a spectacular blanket of bluebells. This picture does not do justice to just how delightful the wood is, even if the bluebells were coming to an end at the time I took it. Legs and Noodle love building forts and playing make-believe games in this wood. They stay there for hours on end, their shouts, laughter and occasional bickering weaving in and out of the leaves.

A formal hedge separates the orchard from the rest of the garden. A 6-foot tall hornbeam hedge borders this long walkway. Until a few years ago, Angel Senior used to trim this hedge herself, and the sight of this petite woman in her mid-70s brandishing a hedge-trimmer atop a tall ladder would give me the heebie jeebies. I have neither courage nor stamina to take on scary jobs like that. It's what separates hardcore gardeners like them from ordinary ones like myself.

The potager or vegetable garden is mostly Angel Junior's domain. Have you ever seen vegetables more artfully grown? Most people who grow vegetables grow them in rows. Practical, but boring. Angel Junior mixes vegetables and flowers together. Her potager is a suite of rooms separated by 'walls' of raspberry canes, and miniature pear and peach trees on cordons. In about a month's time, a canopy of grapevines and clematis will begin to provide summer shade for the lettuces.

An espaliered crab apple tree in full flower stands guard over Swiss chard, wood strawberries and leeks in raised beds bordered by campanulas and forget-me-nots.

Honesty's vibrant magenta flowers are offset by acid green ornamental grass. The Angels' boundless artistry is present in every picture-perfect corner of their garden. Even their compost heap is pretty.

Lime green euphorbias hug one of several huge walnut trees in the garden. In the autumn, I become the happy beneficiary of walnuts from this tree. They go into all my cakes and their flavor simply cannot be matched by supermarket walnuts.

A magnificent magnolia sheds its petals on the lawn. The Angels love our children and spoil them rotten sometimes. Legs and Noodle have enjoyed Easter egg hunts in this garden since they were little.

They must search high and low to find several kilos worth of Belgian chocolate Easter eggs each year. They have become extremely blasé about going Easter egg hunting anywhere else. This year, I unilaterally (and very unwisely) decided that the children, now 13 and 10, had grown too old for Easter egg hunts. Oh my God, the fallout that ensued! At breakfast on Easter Sunday I was shot stony looks by Legs and Noodle who informed me in the strongest possible terms that they expect to continue this annual springtime ritual on Angel ground until they leave home. As a matter of fact, they refer to the Angels' garden as "their garden," which is ironic because they do not speak of our garden at home - yes, the one Skunk and I toil in - with as much proprietarial affection.

A garden like this is heaven for all forms of wildlife. The Angels, passionate bird lovers, have nesting boxes on almost all their large trees. This sheltered wall hosts a village of bird houses, some of which are recycled from vintage wooden boxes of Earl Gray tea.

More posts on this garden will follow, but for now, I must get back to the weeds in ours.

P.S. I've only just found out that if you click on any of these photos, they will come up larger and in greater detail.

"... lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos."

2009-05-04T19:15:00.005+02:00

As with cooking, I came late to gardening. It wasn't until Skunk and I bought our crumbling old farmhouse in the Brabant Walloon countryside that I first experienced the myriad joys and aches of gardening. Had I known what back-breaking work it would entail I might never have taken it up. But I did. And I'm hooked.

I want to say something about gardening. Keeping a few houseplants or a few pots of herbs on a window sill does not make one a gardener. Walking around in a sun hat while sipping a large G&T and ordering a gardener around to do one's bidding is definitely not gardening either, although my fear and loathing of slugs and snails, the pain shooting up my backside and my despair at the disgraceful state of my hands make me wish I could indulge in such moneyed pastimes. (Gardening for pussies is what I call that, so let's not go there.) Having neither the fortune nor the forbearance to deal with hired help, the only way I know how to garden is to get down and dirty myself. Picture me thus: I'm in a manky old sweatshirt and denim salopette, up to my eyebrows in compost, arms criss-crossed in scratches and nettle rash; grass stains on my knees. Twenty-year-old leather gloves held together by stitching and equally ancient wellies caked in mud and cracked at the seams. Twigs and spider webs in my hair complete the Mrs Batty mien. Let's face it, Country Living will never ask me to model for them.

My gardening year began with the appearance of brave little snowdrops (above) in late winter, an indication that spring was inexorably inching its way toward us. With temperatures in our area falling to a record minus 25 Celsius (or minus 13 Fahrenheit) this winter, we feared that the bitterly cold weather might kill off most of our plants. We lost quite a lot of them, including some real treasures. Many that didn't perish from the cold were heavily damaged and will take several seasons to recover. Some plants that didn't mind the cold at all were the Helleborus niger, also known as the Christmas rose (below). They put in an appearance in late winter and are just going to seed as I write.

Spirits soar when the first of our cherry trees bursts into blossom. This is when I know that winter has finally turned the corner and longer, warmer days lie ahead. Whenever I look at cherry trees in springtime, the part of my brain where gratitude lives does a little Pavlovian pirouette and performs a mental recitation of Pablo Neruda's immortal line, "Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos" (I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees). Apple trees are in bloom now too. Spring, pregnant with scent and the promise of flowers and summer, is without a doubt my favorite season in the gardening year - at least, for as long as I can ignore those returning gastropods of doom.

Our property abuts a neighbor's abandoned, overgrown lot on one side and a cow pasture on the other. While I love not having next door neighbors because I can play music as loudly as I want without anyone but Legs and Noodle complaining, it does create a lot of extra work because the weeds from both sides migrate to ours. It does get very grrr-making especially in the summer when we seem to spend all of our time at weed control. Weeds always win. Of course.

This is the woodland, oh okay, the wild part of our garden with a happy Clematis montana growing out of a beautiful antique porcelain toilet (to protect the roots) that I inherited from a friend who found it abandoned in a potato field.

The enormous billy goat who lives across the street has been casting lascivious glances at my gorgeous deep pink aquilegias. If that wretched beast ever escapes and wreaks havoc on my plants I promise you he will end up as goat curry. A recipe for Jamaican goat curry, all our dub and reggae CDs and my scariest cleaver are already on stand-by.

One of my favorite climbers is the Wisteria. This W. floribunda 'Macrobotrys' in the back garden has magnificent racemes reaching over 3 feet long with deeply scented pea-like purple flowers. I've been dropping hints to Skunk to build a strong tall structure for it to climb. One certainty of gardening is that as we cross off one thing on our endless horticultural To-Do list, two more come to take its place.

The wisteria sinensis in our small front garden (below) is so abundant it's become quite the village showgirl. A Clematis montana 'Reubens' grows through it and when it's at its peak we often see cars screeching to a halt in front of our house. Windows roll down and people gawk and take pictures with mobile phone cameras. I've had to stop gardening in pajamas in the morning since this started to happen. I mean, what if I end up in the papers in my pajamas? Unfortunately, this wisteria took a terrible wallop this winter and we had to cut it back hard, leaving almost no flowers for this year. It'll grow back eventually, but for now I'm cheating and posting a photo of what it looked like last year.

Because I ache so much from gardening until almost 9 p.m. yesterday, I declared today a rest day. Never did get the hang of moderation, and anyway what would be the point? Spring doesn't have a pause button. As I stare at my fingernails in dismay, daydream about a massage I will not get and check the weather forecast for tomorrow, I find a certain amount of comfort and a great deal of truth in this Chinese proverb:

If you want to be happy for a day, drink.
If you want to be happy for a year, marry.
If you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.

On Angrrr

2009-04-20T20:02:00.006+02:00

I was incandescent with fury the other day. A friend called to break a long-standing commitment with me, and as a consequence of her actions I'll be out of pocket by several hundred Euros that I don't have because I am essentially a poor person. Don't get me wrong - I am rich in many ways; money just ain't one of them.

Anger is a fascinating exercise. These days, I can actually listen to what my anger tells me I want. It requires me to get to a place of calm and quiet the noises in my head so I can listen to what I need to do to take care of myself instead of the other person. The other day it started with a slow burn, the getting-hot-under-the-collar bit when calm gave way to pique and swiftly morphed into indignation after my friend announced that her pillock of a husband insisted on tagging along to a week-long class she and I are taking in Ireland this June. This man likes to keep his wife on a very tight rein. Feminist snark that I am, I'm very allergic to neanderthals who behave as if they own their wives. Him coming means I lose my roommate and will then have to spend more on a single room which I can't afford. My carefully drawn budget was in tatters and all patience and compassion went pffft. I was furious at him for derailing our plans, and at her for failing to stand up to him and for not having the backbone to honor her commitment. Isn't anger amazing? In a heartbeat it transforms my reasonably sane and cheerful everyday self into a self-righteous, judgmental, napalm-breathing battleaxe. I can be pretty scary when I'm angry. How easy it is to wimp into coward mode and find fault with others rather than to face what's really going on inside.

If I catch myself early enough and if the irritant is minor, taking deep breaths often helps. When I remember to, I pray the Serenity Prayer while being mindful of my breathing, and that's even better. But sometimes that slow burn comes to a rolling boil before I realize what's hit me, and when it happens, people who know me wisely clear out of my way. Fast. Nowhere is it more evident that I am a double Leo with Aries rising than when I'm angry. I burn; sparks fly. I swear like a linguistically-gifted Captain Haddock, only I spew epithets far ruder than "Blistering barnacles." Let me not name them here.

I'm not a hurler or a breaker. I like things too much to throw them at people, and I hate it when I miss. And what would be the point of pounding a pillow when it's much more satisfying to pound the object of my anger? Except that I don't; not anymore. My brothers who are now in their 40s have a pet name for me. They call me Sidekick, a reference to our childhood in Bacolod when I had the temper of Yosemite Sam and the unerring aim of Bruce Lee whose films I adored as a child. When provoked, I'd aim for their nether parts. My ruthless right foot rarely missed its mark, hence the justly-deserved Sidekick honorific.

Being angry is healthy. Staying resentful is toxic. Years ago, when I was more volatile and less wise, anger was a more frequent visitor. It turned me into a good bread baker. Into the dough would metaphorically go the object of my ire, then I'd knead my angst away. By the time golden loaves emerged from the oven my anger had usually dissolved, and fragrant bread was my reward. It taught me that anger didn't have to be destructive, it could be made positive and creative. Now that I have less time for bread-baking, I've discovered other constructive ways of expressing my anger. Dancing, writing, weeding or pruning in the garden, honing my knife skills in the kitchen are all good circuit breakers. Murderous thoughts still race through my head even as I engage in these calming measures. Thoughts that I am powerless to stop and deeply grateful that I don't need to act upon. So when fury came calling the other day, here's what I did. I remembered to breathe, and I used a Jin Shin Jyutsu self-help technique that involves nothing more complex than gently holding all my fingers one by one. I poured myself a restorative (read: very large) malt whisky, neat, and danced like a dervish to "Happiness" by A. Skillz & Krafty Kuts with the volume cranked waaay up. I sharpened my kitchen knives and cooked a pork belly-chili pepper stir fry. By bedtime I found myself oddly tranquil again. I put it all in God's hands and slept like a baby.

Only when I consciously surrender to the arc of my anger - owning it, expressing it, and letting it go - can I find release from its tenacious grip and accept the gifts of a cleansing fire. Once the ashes have cooled, peace and sanity are reborn. I am restored to the flow.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

~ attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

Painting by Youngheui Lee Lim

the leaping greenly spirits of trees

2009-04-15T13:07:00.018+02:00

Photo by Liana Joyce

Sorry folks, but the garden has just gone ka-BLOOM with spring, and jobs that I was too lazy to attend to during the autumn and winter can no longer be ignored. So I will be spending more time outdoors pruning, staking plants, clearing flower beds of their winter debris, mulching, wrangling a recalcitrant willow igloo into shape and, hopefully, stealing a march on the weeds. At least until hay fever drives me back inside. Oh what fun my gluteus maximus is already having from my exertions which began in earnest last week. Naturally, I reward myself handsomely at the end of a hard day's graft with a very large whisky, or even two. Anyone who thinks I would subject myself to so much pain just for the pretty flowers is being hopelessly naive. Go munch on a Hallmark card.

I'm also taking advantage of Legs and Noodle still being on Easter break this week, thus making them eminently handy for slug and snail patrol duty. Obviously, they'd rather be indoors watching YouTube or listening to endless repeats of the daft but catchy "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun, so I shamelessly resort to my old maternal stand-by: bribery by chocolate. How can someone who enjoys gardening as much as me be so terrified of slugs and snails? Totally pathetic, I know. Living in rainy Belgium means we're doomed to having the little bastards around in vast numbers three seasons out of four, no matter what preventive measures we take. They give me the heebie-jeebies. I simply cannot bear to touch them, especially slugs, not even with a long stick, and I would sooner run a mile than crush them underneath my wellies. Eeeeeeeww. When I'm alone and no one's around to rescue me from these disgusting slimy creatures, I keep a salt shaker in my overalls pocket, all the better to send them to a painful demise by meltdown. I didn't mean to get side-tracked, but now y'all know my Achilles heel.

Till next post, I'll leave you with one of my favorite spring poems by e.e. cummings, he of the bolshy punctuation and the lower-case orthography. He was unconventional, funny, romantic and deeply spiritual, a poet after my own heart. I'm certain he never wrote poetry about slugs.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

ee cummings (1894-1962)

Brussels Street Art 1

2009-04-08T19:55:00.001+02:00

Last spring a series of gigantic black-and-white portraits of African women burst out like tropical blooms all over downtown Brussels. Here are some I caught on camera.

I don't know who the photographer was but I loved the way the women's expressions brought light and laughter to some of the city's dingier corners.

This one was my favorite. It was at the end of one of the little side streets off the Grand'Place, the city's main square. I almost missed it. The look of joy on the woman's face was a blast of pure sunshine after I had been walking around for hours in the rain and cold.

What a difference a smile makes.

Heroes: Legs takes a giant step.

2009-04-05T17:03:00.021+02:00

"I got to where I am because of education."
~ Michelle Obama, speaking to students at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in London last Thursday

Legs and Noodle are in new schools this school year. Skunk and I decided to move them to Flemish schools from the French schools they've attended all their young lives. A bit of background on the tiny but complex country we live in: Belgium has three official languages - Dutch, French, and German. An estimated 59% of the Belgian population speaks Dutch, and French is spoken by 40%. There is a small German-speaking community in the east of the country. We live in the French-speaking part of Belgium although if we drive 20 minutes north we're in Flanders. Flemish is both the colloquial term given to the Dutch spoken in Belgium, and to the inhabitants of Flanders. If this sounds confusing, well, that's Belgium for you.

It was convenient to send the children to the local French-speaking school. They started at the École Communale, a small but cheery primary school a 3 minute trundle from our front door. Eventually, we transferred Noodle to another school two villages away because it was piloting a Dutch immersion program. French native speakers would be taught most of their lessons in Dutch, with the aim of getting immersion students perfectly bilingual in both French and Dutch by the time they were 12 years old. There was skepticism at first, and parents like us who offered up our children as guinea pigs to this experimental program knew we were taking a risk. True, we could have bilingual children by age 12 - something nice to brag about to parents with monolingual kids. But things could backfire, and instead of speaking French and Dutch fluently, there was the possibility that the students would end up confused and speak both languages badly. To complicate matters further, we speak English at home, making English the children's mother tongue. Skunk and I speak passable everyday French. Translated, passable means that we speak it with execrable foreign accents, misconjugate our verbs, gender-bend our nouns, and are a little too free with the use of tu instead of vous. In more concrete terms, I speak good enough French to jaw down the price of a Le Creuset cocotte at a flea market or have a blazing row with the shackass who swiped my parking space in front of the post office, but I will never be able to discuss Sartre eloquently at a dinner party. Not that we go to those types of dinner parties anyway, thank god.

Over the last 3 years we had grown increasingly disillusioned with the Francophone school system's lack of funding and long-term vision. Schools were getting over-crowded, teachers were badly paid, over-worked and demotivated, academic standards were sinking, school equipment was falling apart and not being replaced. After Legs started high school at the French-speaking Athénée in the nearest town, she complained that her teachers were often absent and student discipline was a problem. Most of her classmates were more interested in mobile phones, reality TV and les baskets Converse. She wasn't learning anything. We investigated the possibility of sending her to Flemish schools which are much better funded and reputed to have some of the best academic standards in the world. We found Legs a place at an excellent Flemish high school 25 minutes away, and decided to move Noodle to a primary school in the same town. When the new schoolyear began last September we took deep breaths and prayed hard. Settling in to a new school was relatively painless for Noodle. After 5 years in Dutch immersion learning, his Dutch was almost as good as that of his new classmates who spoke it at home. However, the change of schools has been a grueling transition for Legs, whose Dutch was rudimentary at best.

Skunk and I repeatedly questioned the wisdom of our decision to throw an English mother-tongue, French-educated 13 year old in the deep end at what's turned out to be one of the most demanding high schools in Flanders. It seemed cruel doing it, even though we felt it was the right thing to do for Legs' education. It's been painful watching her struggle with subjects like History, Biology, Technology and Algebra in a language she could barely speak. We knew that all the parental love in the world coupled with her burning desire to succeed did not necessarily guarantee that Legs would make it. We grew frustrated with ourselves because we could scarcely understand the frequent communiqués the new schools sent home. We speak almost no Dutch so there was no question of helping her with her schoolwork. It would have been the blind leading the blind.

It was clear to the headmaster and all her teachers from the start that Legs would be a special case. They welcomed her warmly but said she would have to work very hard. Her new classmates were friendly and helpful, although socially there was the language barrier to hurdle as well. Her first trimester grades were quite poor, as expected. Her teachers were impressed by how hard she was working and gave her the help and encouragement she needed. There was extra Dutch tutoring after school. She began to make friends. She enjoyed gym, especially swimming, which she's good at. She rejoiced in the fact that she was ahead of the others in French and English. In all her other subjects, she scraped bottom. Though she was tired everyday after school, she did her homework diligently and without complaint. She would study for exams a month in advance. She made many sacrifices to help her focus on school: her Nintendo was put away until the school holidays; computer time, unless required for homework, was limited to a couple of hours on weekends only; Saturday afternoon activities in Brussels were put off; her iPod gathered dust.

Every language a child learns brings a different way of looking at the world. Week after week, we've watched with astonishment and delight as Legs' grasp of a new language has grown. The awkward phrases she mumbled six months ago have been replaced by the nimble, confident patter she keeps up with friends and teachers today.

On Friday evening we attended a parent-teacher meeting to discuss her second trimester progress. Both kids left in the afternoon for a competition weekend in the Ardennes with their Flemish swim team. Then it's Easter break for the next 2 weeks. Legs had not seen her latest report card but warned me, "Mama, please don't be upset if my grades are still bad. I really did my best." With that in mind, we weren't expecting much when we sat before her teachers. So we were speechless with shock when we saw her latest grades, which have improved tremendously. Her teachers were full of praise, "We've not met many youngsters like your daughter, she's a real joy to teach!" Her grade point average is now just a few notches below the class average, and if she can keep up her momentum she will have caught up with everyone else by the time school ends in June. Legs has surpassed everyone's expectations. Sitting there listening to all this, I fought back tears of pride and relief. Skunk and I drove home in a daze. I sent a text message to her swim coach to give her the good news right away.

I, perfectionist but slacker extraordinaire, am totally blown away by my girl's pluck and determination. I feel awful for yelling at her on the occasions she was too tired to remember to wash the dog's bowl, bring her dirty laundry downstairs or keep her desk tidy. When I look at the Herculean task she's tackled so bravely I know I should have cut her more slack at home. I could have, but I haven't always remembered to, or wanted to. Had it been me in her place I doubt I would have fared half as well. Humility is a classroom I will have to keep revisiting in earth school.

There's a Zen saying that goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Legs, your student is here.

Photos of Legs by Liana Joyce

Rock & Reel

2009-03-25T22:43:00.018+01:00

The word 'roadkill' accurately describes how I felt yesterday morning after spending the previous night with a demented crush of teenage banshees at a Fall Out Boy concert in Brussels. I was so tired I never even got up to my grumpy morning default setting. It couldn't be the one beer I had, decorous by my standards. And it wasn't that the music was concert loud, because I love that kind of loud. No, it was the non-stop pandemonium in the audience that wiped me out. Teenage hormones in full spate and at ear-splitting decibels will sap the juice out of anyone, even a life-long party animal and adrenalin junkie like myself.

As concerts go, it was a great evening; Fall Out Boy are a terrific band with a big brash sound. What made it special for me was the fact that it was Noodle's first ever rock concert. Being present at this rite of passage was a privilege for his music-mad mama. The look of utter delight on my son's face when FOB hurled themselves into their first song will stay with me forever. He was easily the smallest person there and glad to have us by his side. He'll feel differently in a few years, so we're grateful for today's small mercies.

A disapproving friend wanted to know why I would even take a 10 year old to a rock concert on a school night. (Legs stayed home studying for exams.) Not knowing how to explain myself I simply replied, "Because I like to have fun with my son." But it got me thinking about why Skunk and I do it. We've been taking Legs and Noodle to concerts for about 3 years now. The fun element is crucial, yet there's more. On the practical side, teaching the kids basic street smarts is part of our brief as parents. Noodle and Legs aren't too young to learn about concert protocol, especially how to be safe and enjoy themselves at public events. Stay away from drunks and people who are high or aggressive, we caution them. Know where all the exits are. Don't accept drinks from strangers, I sometimes nag. If the volume's too loud, ask for free ear plugs at the bar. Stay close to the security dudes if the mosh pit vibe gets uncomfortable, et cetera. Luckily, in the 20-odd years we've been going to the Ancienne Belgique, we've never had a spot of bother. It's a mid-sized venue, clean, well-policed and generally attracts a good-natured crowd. Still, better safe than sorry.

But back to the real reason why we take our children to concerts some people deem inappropriate for their age. A singular magic unfolds when good music is performed live. Live music creates fellowship in a way that bottled music can't. Aging rock chick that I am, I have much more in common with the dread-locked heavy or the wispy redhead with multiple piercings gyrating next to me than any of us can ever imagine. Barriers fall, smiles are traded. Kind strangers sometimes turn into new friends. Important discoveries are made about ourselves and what makes our cells hum with joy. We emerge, temporarily deaf but years younger. The happy buzz lasts for days, the memories a lifetime.

Besides, the thought of my children listening to dreck by the likes of Britney Spears or James Blunt is more than I can bear. Give me roadkill mornings any day.

Fall Out Boy performing "Thanks for the Memories" at their Brussels concert, the last gig on their European tour. The footage is shaky in parts due to jostling by deranged teens, but audio is okay. (Length 1:43)

Calming The Snark: When IS ain't necessarily so.

2009-03-21T07:54:00.036+01:00

Gotta hand it to Facebook. Or specifically to the little window at the top of my profile page that prompts me to share what's on my mind. Unbeknownst to me, these little status posts have worked like literary WD-40 on the corroded parts of my brain where my writing used to live. Updating my status posts regularly feels a bit like hitting a tennis ball against a wall and observing my wonky swing grow steadier over time. It tells my friends what's going on with me and helps me stay in the now.

However. I get this frisson of irritation when I log on to Facebook to see what my friends are up to, and read the following status post yet again:

Joe Blow is.

Is what? Yo, Joe Blow, in your IS-ness, have you truly achieved the Zen-like state of being that continues to elude me? Or are you just a bloody bore with neither the imagination nor the gumption to come up with something more interesting to say about yourself? What's the point of friending (I fucking hate that verb) me on FB and then not interacting with me at all? When I agree to, ahem, friend someone on Facebook it's because I'm genuinely interested in what they've been up to since I last saw them in 1981, and I enjoy reading their status posts and seeing pictures of their family. Why have cyberspace friendships gotten so superficial that the only way some people can show others they're thinking of them is to throw sheep, race virtual cars, take idiotic quizzes, pat virtual pets, send virtual Ferraris plants drinks mandalas pizzas Prada handbags snowballs Christmas ornaments Valentine hearts Easter eggs and mysterious chocolate objects that look remarkably like dog turds? That's just lame. And it feels like being stalked. In a friendly way of course, but it's still stalking to me.

But what do I know? Perhaps they're busy with other stuff like falling in (or out of) love, texting, watching TV, driving their kids or being driven mad by them, digging a garden, playing golf, studying for exams, hanging on to a job or looking for one, trying to make ends meet, going to therapy, shopping, taking a loved one to chemo, trying to stay sober, blogging, eBaying, wrangling laundry, gaming, cooking, meditating, writing code, having plastic surgery, learning to belly dance, looking at porn, going to the gym, painting, going on holiday, saving coral reefs, getting Brazilian waxed, making music, making whoopie or whatever it is that takes up people's time these days.

Below are some of my status posts since joining FB in July last year to the most recent. Snapshots of The Snark.

M is wondering if summer will ever come to Belgium (my first FB post on 17 July 2008)
M and Skunk are off to Ireland for a week: to Norrie in Carrickmacross for Jin Shin Jyutsu, and to Galway, Connemara and the Aran Islands for regeneration.
M is enjoying the dog days of summer. They, too, shall pass.
M thinks iceberg lettuce is the polyester of all vegetables.
M is trying to keep her cool against an onslaught of teenage hormones.
M makes plans, Life makes others.
M is trying to get her taichi groove back. Everything aches! Serves me right for slacking all summer.
M is listening to Mission Control at CERN as the first beams are injected into the Large Hadron Collider. What a moment!
M feels humbled to witness the birth of a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe. Now where'd that Higgs boson go?
M is disgusted by all her shoes. Is there a 12-Step program for shoe addiction?
M misses the good old days when Skunk used to dance like the guys in this Duffy video.
M has been over-doing it and will now sit still and have a cuppa and listen to John Coltrane.
M is having a Saturday morning wake-up booty shake to The BPA featuring Dizzee Rascal & David Byrne – ‘Toe Jam (Stanton Warriors Remix)’. Woohooo!!!
M's lunchtime guests have just waddled off into a dark, rainy night, leaving half their possessions (cell phones, jewelry...) behind. Food coma in progress.
M is celebrating 20 years of two-getherness with Skunk today.
M is getting a bit nervous about cooking for a real-life chef on Sunday
M is still half asleep and is making Belgian waffles for breakfast.
M has just made a killer curry, saffron rice and a pile of triple chocolate chip cookies and hopes everyone's hungry.
M is still buzzzzing from last night's unforgettable performance by the Dave Holland Quintet, and is now looking forward to Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80 tonight.
M is lost in the magic of Juan Luna's Revolver by Luisa A. Igloria.
M is ready for change and prays that Obama wins!
M's still thrilled about Tuesday and glad to see that woman (Palin) back in Alaska where she can think paranoid thoughts about socialists.
M would love to see a rescue pit bull as the new First Puppy at the White House. They could call it Sarah! Arf!!!
M is vampire-proof. (garlic-related, natch)
M is off to a monastery in the Flemish countryside to study more Jin Shin Jyutsu.
M is still tingling from the pleasure of discovering Bob Brozman's music last night.
M is ignoring the messy house and making fish curry with Persian steamed crusty rice pilaf for Jaki tonight.
M is grateful she's not rich - no sleepless nights obsessing about the state of the economy.
M has just woken up to heavy snow. Beautiful. Now I gotta drive in this shit.
M is having even more fun now the snow has melted and turned to black ice on the roads. Oh, the joys of winter!
M is dreaming of siopao. Does anyone out there have a siopao recipe they can share with me please?
M's head is still spinning from Cirque du Soleil's Quidam. Amaaaayzing!
M is tired after baking 9 Christmas cakes.
M is thoroughly flummoxed!
M & Skunk are taking the kids to an all night dubstep/triphop/drum'n'bass/hiphop/crunk/ragga/electro-funk/techno meltdown at the AB on Saturday. Must be mad.
M thinks Christmas can be one great big pain in the arse. There. I've finally said it.
M is having a Christmas bypass.
M is wearing a silly red hat (thanks, Legs) that makes her look like a demented cupcake. (on Christmas morning)
M has a date with some dead bodies.
M's just been to Gunther von Hagen's Bodyworlds exhibition and is both awed and humbled by the majesty of the human body.
M is getting ready to end the year dancing and wishes everyone a Happy New NEW.
M is paying a heavy price for last night's excesses and is trying to ignore the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed were-gerbil she lives with. (first real hangover in 15 years)
M has proof that older does not always mean wiser.
M hopes that the global economic downturn will motivate more people to go back to the garden.
M is laughing at Mia doing zoomies in the snow. It's minus 12 Celsius and flipping c-c-cold outside.
M is grateful for the warmth of Aran sweaters, insulated boots and ALL her body fat.
M wishes L and B a big, phat, insanely joyful Filipino wedding and wishes she could be there too.
M is DELIGHTED that a Filipina chef will be doing the cooking for the Obamas. Next step: plant an organic garden to supply the White House kitchen!
M thinks it's FANTASTIC that the next US president is black and has Hussein as his middle name. And if some FB friends don't like my opinions, well, tough.
M is glad that Obama can say "nuclear" correctly, and won't be mangling the English language like his predecessor or that Alaskan moose murderer. Also, he's hot!
M has the house to herself and is listening to Marvin Gaye while eating dark Belgian chocolate with Malabar cardamom. Bliss.
M is grateful to Barack Obama for making smart the new cool.
M is bowing her head in prayer, watching Barach Obama claim his place in history. (posted the exact moment he was being sworn-in, 21 January 2009. Can't cry and spell at the same time.)
M is feeling very wobbly after seeing a dream come true and thinks some champagne might steady her. BARACK the WORLD!!!!!! (And good riddance, Dubya!)
M wants to know if teenagers have a sell-by date. Because her patience is nearing its expiry date.
M has surrendered to dark chocolate and a bag of Cheetos. Too many late nights and frozen brain cells can result in bizarre food pairings.
M has orange fingers and hiccups.
M is lovin' her handles. (that would be love handles)
M has evil designs on a friend's neighbour's Aston Martin.
M has just come down to breakfast to find six bottles of red wine from her love. (on Valentine's Day, because he knows cut flowers make me sad)
M curses Mondays. And bugger the dirty laundry too.
M is listening to the birds trilling the earth awake.
M is going to make dark chocolate brownies marbled with dulce de leche, just to avoid having to wash her car. (photo doesn't show how filthy my car really was)

M is keeping it locked to breakbeats on Annie Nightingale on the Beeb. Oh lordy, my chi is UP!
M is staring at hillocks of dirty laundry. The thilly theathon ith over. For now.
M wouldn't mind roughing it in a hot smelly tent in Darfur if George Clooney would be my roommate. Seriously.
M is now vacuuming books, for crying out loud.
M is convinced that only a 10 year old boy would think that Chaume cheese and Skippy Super Chunk Peanut Butter on the same piece of toast is a good idea.
M is up at sparrow's fart to take Mr. Chaume&PeanutButter to swim training.
M is tending to sulking orchid plants and wondering what on earth made me think keeping orchids would be a good way to learn patience?
M wishes all her Brent schoolmates a great Centennial reunion. Will you guys please let rip, you're too damn old to still behave yourselves.
M is getting ready to groove to John Legend in Brussels tonight.
M is fed up with the indiscriminate use of the word "like."
M wonders why God created teenagers and early mornings. And He expects me to combine the two? In a sane and loving way? Hello!
M wasn't sure a hiphop concert was what I needed but dancing to Q-Tip with a full live band sure chased my big blue funk away. (the day after our cat Trouble died)
M delights in the abundance and creativity of the number 13.
My kids are being bolshy, I have workmen underfoot, and the dog wants to supervise me in the kitchen. Get me outta here!
M is looking for that Rumi poem where he says there is no room in the small heart for a separate "I" - can anyone help?
M just spent 10 minutes trying to explain what a leprechaun is to a deaf Walloon farmer. Now we're BOTH confused. I need a Guinness, now! (on St. Patrick's day)
M is giving up Worry for Lent. Chocolate would have been easier.
M loves the way her kids say, "Oooh, can WE bake this chocolate caramel tart," when what they really mean is can I do it so THEY can inhale it in 15 minutes flat.
M salutes friend & hero Roger Doiron for his work in persuading the Obamas to plant an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn. It's finally happening!!!

Prat du jour

2009-03-16T12:48:00.011+01:00

Though I've always been a passionate eater, I came late to cooking. In fact, when I arrived here in 1987 I couldn't boil the proverbial egg. This didn't bother me at the time because I had a job that allowed me to eat out often and extravagantly. As an events organizer for a global telecommunications company I was regularly wined and dined by hotels and restaurants angling for the company's business. I also had a generous expense account, and a harried boss, god bless her, who barely glanced at my expenses before signing them. This made it possible for me to live and travel like a rich person without actually being one.

Then I met Skunk. He lived in London; I lived in Brussels. Our daily long-distance calls and weekend commutes to be with each other eventually broke the bank (this was before cheap flights, internet or Skype) and we found ourselves having to eat in more often. I began to fret that our romance would not thrive for long on soups, sandwiches and omelettes. They were the only things I could make at the time, although, hey, I made them from scratch. Then came The Blow. Skunk casually mentioned one day that in his opinion no one made a Sunday roast as good as his mother's. He also said that his Last Serious Girlfriend, the one I was secretly jealous of, made a mean curry that he still missed.

Uh-oh. I didn't like the sound of that. At all. I have a Leo-sized ego and a ruthless competitive streak, and if there was anything I couldn't stand, it was not being top banana, at least in Skunk's world. I needed to do something about it. So I spent a fortune - okay, a month's salary - calling my mother in the Philippines and asking her to teach me how to cook rice.

"Buy a rice cooker," she told me. "It's easier. And it makes perfect rice."

"No, Ma. It has to be authentic rice," I insisted.

After reminding me that I really should have learned to cook while I still lived at home, she gave me the first of many tutorials on how to cook rice. I might add that apart from his occasional forays into Chinese and Indian restaurants, the only rice Skunk had ever eaten up to that point was the parboiled Uncle Ben's variety. Over my dead body would Uncle Ben darken my door.

It took me over a month, three pots, most of a 15-kilo bag of Thai jasmine rice, a great deal of swearing in the kitchen when the rice water overflowed, and many frantic phone calls to my mother before I could make a respectable pot of rice. My first two pots had to be thrown away. The rice was burned so badly to the bottom that no amount of soaking and scrubbing would get it unstuck.

Until I got the hang of cooking rice I'd swallow my pride, walk to the Chinese restaurant at the end of my street and ask the grouch in the ratty t-shirt at the take-out window for one order of plain white rice to go. Our exchanges usually went like this.

"What you want with lice," he demanded impatiently. "Today prat du jour beef bloccoli. You want?"

"Erm, just plain rice, thanks," I replied meekly.

"Madame, we are lestolant ha, we not sell only prain lice. You want prain lice, you cook yourself ha."

I stared at my shoes.

"Aaaiyee," he squawked with glee as the penny dropped, attracting stares from passersby. "You not know cook lice? Hahahahaha. You buy lice cooker ha."

I'm certain I made this wretched man's day, because he would then make a big production of scooping cooked white rice into a styrofoam box and bellowing to the cashier - and indeed to the entire restaurant - "One prain lice, lothing else!" I'd pay and scurry home to eat it with a practice pork chop. Never did like the taste of humble pie.

On my next business trip to Hong Kong I bought myself a rice cooker. Today I own three of them, ranging from small to enormous, and they're all in use.

But I can also make a perfect pot of rice over a flame, the old-fashioned way.

Gratitude Walks.

2009-03-13T13:37:00.018+01:00

Facebook reconnected me with an old school friend last year. We didn't hang out much when we were at university. She was busy raising a young family, writing poetry and getting cum laude grades. I was busy raising hell, mostly. I always admired her but felt we lived in different worlds and I was too shy to strike up a conversation with her for fear of sounding stupid. Luisa is now a mother of 4, an associate professor of creative writing and other wondrous subjects at an American university, and continues to write the astonishingly beautiful poetry that is winning her awards at about the same rate I'm collecting love handles and extra chins. My old shyness with her is gone, and we've both discovered to our great delight that we walk large tracts of common ground together.

One day last November we were ruminating by e-mail on the things that draw us to wonder. I decided to tell her about my gratitude bowl. With a few minor alterations to reflect some changes in my life since then, this is what I wrote:

I have an old Igorot wooden bowl with a scalloped rim that holds a ragtag assortment of stones found on beach walks, some of Noodle's bright marbles, a few large, mysterious seeds from Cartagena, Colombia, two sanded glass eggs from a flea market, a small knob of polished turquoise, two tiny fossils from the Moroccan dessert, et cetera. I take everything out of the bowl, and try to put each item back one by one. For every stone/thing that makes it back into the bowl, I have to find something in my life today that I am grateful for. So for example: "Today I am grateful for my health, for the fact it's Saturday and I had a lie-in, for this beautiful Aran sweater that keeps me warm as we try to save on heating oil, for the damp stain on the ceiling because it means I have a roof over my head, for Mia snoring on her pillow, for Skunk and the laughter I share with him, for my dishwasher, for Luisa's poems and the places they take me to, for the back rub Skunk gave me last night that allowed me to sleep deeply, for the cold winter we had because it might mean fewer mosquitos this summer, for the still-warm pound cake in the kitchen that I am trying to ignore, for the kids squabbling upstairs because it means they're not arguing with me for a change, for the smell of this coffee, for the beautiful salt-glazed mug I'm drinking it in and the hands that made it, for the immense healing Jin Shin Jyutsu is bringing to all aspects of my being, for the John Martyn CD playing on the stereo..... et cetera et cetera."

I love doing this because it reminds me how blessed I am and how rich my life actually is. It's so easy to focus on the negative and on what I lack, but it takes real mindfullness to acknowledge what's good. Some years ago, my life was pretty miserable - or so I thought - and I spent all my time feeling sorry for myself. A wise friend, sick of listening to me moan, suggested I find a way to practice gratitude daily. I devised this little game. I began with 10 stones. It took forever for me to find 10 things I was grateful for. But I eventually managed it, so she told me to increase it to 20. I groaned and told her she was nuts. I eventually found 20 things to be grateful for, so she said why not 30? And so on. I think my bowl has well over 50 things in it now. It's literally overflowing, and so is my heart. Legs and Noodle, who are now wise to what this bowl is about, keep adding things to it - a fallen chestnut, a chipped chevron bead, an old Danish coin with a hole in the middle.

Whenever I'm having a crap day, or even an okay one, I take my bowl and practice this simple spiritual exercise. In 10 minutes or less, abundance has banished gloom. Gratitude walks again.

The large round stone at the bottom with the jaggedy lop-sided smile is my Skunk stone.

Good-bye, old friend

2009-03-10T22:23:00.006+01:00

Our dear cat Trouble died tonight. We found him at the bottom of the cellar steps just before dinner, lying peacefully, as if asleep. Legs and Noodle are very upset, and although Skunk and I tried to appear brave and grown-up about it, we failed. We brought Trouble home from a trip to the supermarket one day. A pair of siblings had stationed themselves by the entrance, giving away kittens. He was the last one in the box. Skunk and I argued all the way home about the wisdom of such an impulse; mine, of course. We had the pleasure of his company for 17 years. He used to sit in the kitchen and watch me bake all night, back in the days when I had insomnia. Sometimes I would read poetry aloud to him. He liked Stanley Kunitz best. He never cared much for our current dog Mia.

We shall bury him in the garden between the cherry tree and the honeysuckle, next to our previous dog Banzai, a Rhodesian Ridgeback who was his best mate.

I miss him already. Good-bye, Trubbie.

Fear of Frying

2009-03-06T17:11:00.020+01:00

Now and I again I yield to popular demand and do a fry-up supper. I'm definitely not one of these people who shun fried food because "it's bad for you." I personally think any food that's made without love or imagination is no good for you anyway, and that includes badly-made salads. I absolutely adore fried food when it's done right. Over the years I've taught myself through trial and countless errors to overcome my fear of frying. The only reason I don't cook this way very often is because cleaning up is such a drag, and the smell in the house drives me crazy the following day, no matter what I do to dispell it.

My frying pan of choice is a cast iron chicken fryer by Wagner that's 10 inches across and 3 inches high. I paid about $25 for it 15 years ago and it will probably outlive my children's grandchildren, if they look after it as lovingly as I do. One crucial step many people skip is getting the pan hot (but not smoking) before pouring in the oil. My theory is that heat causes the surface molecules of the cast iron to expand, creating a sealed, non-stick surface. It doesn't matter whether you're deep frying or sautéeing, or whether you use an expensive Staub or Le Creuset pan or something much cheaper like a Lodge or a Wagner. If you add the oil before the pan is properly hot, food will stick. It's as simple as that. The other important thing to remember when frying anything is that the oil in the pan must be very hot, but not smoking, before putting the food in. I'm too ornery to mess around with thermometers, but I always test oil temperature by putting in a few drops of the batter into the hot oil. If it puffs up quickly, I'm ready to rock and roll.

Over the years I've fiddled with many recipes for batter, some of them absurdly complicated. I eventually came up with my own and it's fool-proof. It gives meat, fish or vegetables the ethereal lightness and crunch you find in Japanese tempura. And it's dead easy to throw together. Do not make this batter ahead of time because the yeast in the beer, which is the rising agent in this batter, goes flat. And flat means boring, in batterspeak.

1 cup flour (or 2/3 c. flour and 1/3 c. cornmeal)
1 teaspoon salt
a good pinch of cayenne powder and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup COLD beer (and I mean damn cold)

This gives you enough batter to make fried chicken or fish-and-chips for 4 hungry people. Prepare what you want to cook and pat dry with paper towels. Patting the food dry before dunking it in the batter is important, unless you think getting splattered with boiling oil is exciting. It isn't; it fucking hurts. Get the pan hot, pour in enough oil to cover what you're cooking, and then get the oil hot. Throw the batter together while the oil in the pan is getting up to heat: put the dry ingredients in a large bowl, add the cold beer, and whisk lightly until smooth. That's it, and if you have any leftover beer, for Pete's sake, don't waste it, drink it! Dip the fish/chicken/whatever in the batter to lightly coat it and carefully lower into the hot oil using tongs, unless you have asbestos fingers like me. You'll hear a satisfying sizzly-swooshy noise as the food makes contact with the oil, and you'll see the batter puff up almost instantly - if your oil is at the correct temperature. Watch food like a hawk when frying, and ignore the urge to fiddle with it. You don't want to puncture that thin outer shell and end up with greasy, soggy food. When one side has turned golden, carefully turn it over. When it's a gone beautiful golden brown all throughout, take it out with tongs or a slotted spoon, drain it on a wire rack, and cook the next batch. At this point I usually call out to the troops and tell them to get to the dinner table prontissimo because if there's anything that makes me truly grumpy at meal times, it's when people let my food get cold.

This was our fish-and-chips dinner the other night, or what was left of it by the time I remembered to take a picture. I used about 800 grams of catfish fillets, and the "chips" were not potatoes but courgette (zucchini) wedges that were dipped in the same batter as the fish and fried in the same pan. You can serve this with ketchup or lemon wedges. I like to make an evil dipping sauce of mayonnaise, lemon, garlic, chopped scallions, Tabasco and a slug of Kikkoman soy sauce.

It makes for total silence at the table. There are never any leftovers.

Getting a grip

2009-03-03T15:14:00.018+01:00

Hurray! Legs and Noodle are back at school after a week off for Carnival Break, and I'm enjoying the quiet. It's just me, our dog Mia snoring on her cushion, and the usual hillocks of dirty laundry which I'm choosing to ignore. The beginning of the week is my special "me time," a chance to relax after the chaos of the weekend. Thought I'd sit down and give this another go.

Only now I've got a bad case of the jitters. After the rush that followed birthing my first and only post so far, Blighter's Rock is back. I've just checked to make sure my page is still there and discovered to my delight and, perversely, also to my horror that I now have 3 followers. Hellooo, followers! Oh my giddy aunt, I now have a readership - a tiny one, granted, but nonetheless still a readership. You see, the Committee that lives rent-free inside my head went into overdrive at 4 o'clock this morning and told me I was doing everything wrong. Of course I'm doing lots of things wrong, darn it, I've never blogged before! It probably doesn't help that I've been comparing my timid first attempt with other people's blogs which have hundreds of erudite, amusing posts, jam-packed with cool graphics and exotic photographs. I'd like one of those all-singing, all-dancing blogs too. Note to self: look but don't compare!

In setting this blog up, it took me ages to get to grips with a new language. For example, would it have adult content? Might my occasional use of the F word qualify as adult content? Even if kids in grade school use the F word these days? What does reverting widget templates to default do? What on earth is a wysiwyg editor? I've worked as an editor but have never met a wysiwyg. Did I want transliteration into Hindi? If it comes with kulfi, sure! What's a Post Feed Redirect URL? Will it reduce our electricity bill? My blog can have up to 100 authors? Really? So why the hell am I sitting here pulling my hair out when 99 others can do this for me? Why don't my photos go where I want them to on the effing page? And finally: why oh why don't I have any geek friends within farting distance who can explain all this stuff to me?

I think I'll tackle those smelly socks after all.

P.S. The 2 photos show our garden emerging from a hard winter into spring, looking wild and strangled. I wanted the photos to go down here but they refused.

Blighter's Rock

2009-02-27T18:07:00.012+01:00

For someone who's had serious writer's block for 25 years, there's nothing quite as terrifying as staring at this blank page and writing this first line.

After years of making excuses - too busy, not interested, unsure what to write about - I'm finally starting this blog. I have no idea if it will take off or even survive beyond this first post. And I feel awfully self-conscious about getting into something that everyone else started doing years ago.

I'm a left field, food-obsessed mama living in the wilds of Belgium. I love books, art, travel, Tai Chi and this fragile blue marble we call Earth. I adore my family who regularly drive me bonkers. As a firm believer in equal opportunities, I drive them nuts too. I live to eat, and I'm a pretty good cook and baker. I loathe housework although I do it well..... when I can arse myself to do it! I truly belong behind the wheel of an Aston Martin, but the reality is I drive a tiny ageing red VW named Miles. I'm passionate about things like laughter, Jin Shin Jyutsu, poetry, pottery, music that makes me want to move (and music that moves me), the health of our planet, living simply, giving back. Spirituality is important to me; religion not at all. I swear far too often. I'm a Leo. I believe that faith, love, a sense of humor, chocolate and the Main Central Vertical Flow will get me through just about anything.

There!