Prepare to die, from the cuteness.

So, some time ago Ross and I happened to purchase a leg of lamb. Since said leg of lamb was approximately the size of two small babies, we only cooked half of it for Thanksgiving dinner with the lovely Evelyn Davidson.

Here’s what we did that time. We carved many, many tiny pockets in its sides into which we stuffed slivers of garlic. We massaged it liberally with salt and pepper. We drizzled the whole thing with extra-virgin olive oil, and then we stuck it in the oven for a couple of hours with a pile of baby red potatoes sitting underneath it, cooking in lamb fat. Mmm. Baby red potatoes in lamb fat. Did I mention the Mmm?

Fast forward oh, two months or so, during which the rest of the lamb has languished in our freezer, waiting for someone to do something useful with it.

This is where you come in. Tomorrow night, the good JoBiv is coming over for a bout o’ lamb and cheer, and I am officially soliciting recipes. At the moment the plan is to cook a couple of different kinds of curry with the lamb, but I am ready to be swayed by any and all suggestions for prime lamb preparation. Bring ‘em on via comment or email, please! I will let you know how it goes, possibly complete with photographs.

Subject: mellow

it is the most beautiful spring night — about 11-14 degrees (celsius) outside, breezy, and cool. i just took a walk across the river to harvard square to pick up a book that i need to read for one of my classes next week, and i walked extra slow so that the walk would take as long as possible. it is just unbelievably lovely here tonight. i love spring.

while i was in the square, i saw a whole bunch of cyclists riding round and round ringing their bells, shouting peace slogans, flags fluttering from their bikes. they were laughing and serious and beautiful.

just wanted to share some calm loveliness with you.

your
m

I just found this email, which I wrote to my parents and sister at 7:48 p.m. on March 28th, 2003. I cannot tell you how much I miss the person who wrote it.
Her joy in life.
Her deep sense of peace and beauty in the world.
Her desire to share those things with the people she loves.
I do not know how deeply she is buried under layers, but I have to believe that she is still here with me.

I just have to figure out how to unearth her.

I’ve talked to a lot of people lately about how things had been going at work, how anxious and frustrated I had become, and above all how incredibly ambivalent I’ve felt ever since I resigned.

I’ve talked to a lot of sweet, wise, beautiful, warm human beings who love me very much and who want nothing more than for me to be happy. And they have all, no matter what they may have thought in their secret-est hearts, responded with understanding, compassion, and support. No matter what they may have thought in their secretest hearts, they’ve told me that after all, I tried my best and what more can a person do? They’ve told me that it’s okay to change my mind about what I want to do, that teaching isn’t for everyone, and that they believe in me no matter what. They’ve told me that they think I made the right decision for myself. That I am not a failure.

And yet, nearly three weeks after my last day in what was ostensibly the environment that was causing me so much anguish, the anguish remains – more palpable than ever.

Tonight, after carrying around a $5 phone card in my pocket for the past seven days, I finally dug through a stash of old emails and unearthed Kubhaer’s number in Malaysia. Some of you reading this blog have had the pleasure of meeting Kubhaer during his all too brief time at Brandeis or on one of his sojourns to Singapore; most of you have not. There are many stories I should like to tell you about him (dear Koobz, do you remember lying on the hill in back of East looking at the stars? Do you remember listening to that singer deliver the most amazing version of Summertime either of us had ever heard, in my favorite jazz bar in Singapore?), but for now I’ll content myself with the breaking news that Kubhaer officially came of age as a Hindu recently. Perhaps this experience has endowed him with the wisdom of the sages… closer to the truth, however, is that he’s simply an incredibly clear-sighted, honest person, someone whom I am more than honored to call my friend, and someone whom I dearly wish was a little fewer than nine thousand miles away.

After about thirty seconds of listening to me whisper and gulp my way through an explanation of what a terrible coward I am for giving up on teaching, Kubhaer said, “Wait. That’s not why you quit though, is it? What about the school itself?”

And then, my dears, I said this:

“Yes, that is why I quit. I mean, sure, the school that I thought was going to be so perfect was really messed up in some ways, and sure, there were a lot of things going on (or not going on) that made being a first-year teacher many times harder than it already is, and yes, I was going a little crazy, but it’s still not okay to renege on a commitment. It’s not okay to run away from something just because you’re scared. It’s not okay to give up. In the end, I left because I was miserable and anxious and I was too scared of what a lousy job I was doing in the classroom to do what I should have done, which was to stick it out until June and do my damndest to see if I could perhaps start doing a somewhat less lousy job. I could talk about the problems of my school until I turned blue in the face, but the truth is that I gave up on teaching because I was just too afraid to do the incredibly hard work that it always takes to become better, and I decided to run away from it instead of doing the brave, right, difficult thing and honoring the promise I made to my colleagues, my kids, and myself.”

Which is what I’ve been trying to say, to everyone including myself, for the past three weeks.

And Kubhaer listened. And I could hear him thinking. And in the pause before he spoke, I could taste the words he was about to say. They tasted bitter, as the truth does. They were also a relief, as the truth is.

He said, “Well, if that’s really the reason you quit – and frankly, it sounds like a much more natural and human reason than the one you talked about the last time I called – then I completely agree with you. I think you should have stuck it out. I’m afraid you’re right, my dear. You’ve done something that, by your own standards for living honorably, you can’t respect.

Don’t do it again.

Look, if you do something that you know to be dishonorable, there are two things you can do: You can try to make amends, and you can learn from it and move on. I assume that you’re not going to go back to your old job at that school, so the only thing for you to do right now is accept that you did a cowardly thing, and next time you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you want to run away, ask yourself if what you should really be doing is working harder.

Oh — and don’t forget the most important thing. No matter what you do, whether you’re a thief or a banker or a car salesman or a road sweeper, as long as you’re not hurting anyone, be the best thief or banker or car salesman or whatever that you can be, and that’s all you have to do to be a good human being. Remember that you don’t have to be the best in the world — just be the best that you can be. And don’t let yourself get caught up in regret. Sometimes reflecting on the past is overrated and you’ve got to just figure out what you can do in your future that will be better.”

It’s not as if Kubhaer’s words themselves were a revelation… it’s not as if he said anything to me that I hadn’t already thought, or heard, or read, or written. The difference is that he let me know he heard me when I said I felt ashamed of my actions, he agreed that I had reason to feel ashamed, and then he told me, without in any way trying to ease my shame, what he thought I needed to do about it.

And having heard his words, the only way I could be more ashamed of myself is if I didn’t listen to them.

Thanks, babe. I love you. And I owe you one.

… answer this terrific question, asked of 120 intellectuals and scientists by The World Question Center. (The World Question Center (what a wonderfully pompous name!) is a project of the rather esoteric Edge Foundation, Inc., whose membership claims to include “some of the most interesting minds in the world.” Frankly, I find this implausible, since I have not yet been asked to join.)

Nevertheless! The 2005 Question is:

What do you believe to be true, although you cannot prove it?

Before you post your own answer, go here to browse amongst fascinating responses by such luminaries as Robert Traviers, Jason Lanier, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Never heard of them? Me neither! So I hereby declare that anyone can play, even those of us who have fewer than 11 vowels in our names. I have also decided that we don’t have to offer answers that have anything to do with our fields of study or professional lives, and that since we aren’t being quoted (yet) as leading intellectuals, we can be as funny, weird, poetic, ironic, melancholy, or flippant as we please.

Here are my answer(s):

I believe, although I cannot prove it, that Coke™ is really good for you.

I believe, although I cannot prove it, that the law of Karma holds true.

I believe, although I cannot prove it, that at the age of 7 or 8 I was able to plan, in detail, the course of my dreams before I fell asleep.

I believe that we will never fully understand the workings of the human brain, no matter how much we dissect it or stick electrodes in it or how many computer models of its synaptic dances we make.

I also believe that there are sentences in neuroscience textbooks that are more beautiful than Shakespearean sonnets.

I believe that Peter Pan is a better book than Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

I believe someday I will reread The Wind in the Willows and finally understand it.

Sometimes, on nights when the sky is so deep it looks purple and the air smells like ice, I believe in magic.

Today I spent a lovely afternoon visiting with Signor Signore (my old halfie compatriot Sean from Brandeis), who is currently recovering (quite nicely) from a several-inch deep self-inflicted stab wound in the thigh. I hadn’t seen Sean in several months, and we caught each other up with the various dramas of our lives over eggs and toast, stuffed animal noises, and hot tea served in a pair of recently pilfered I.H.O.P. mugs. After I left his apartment it was off to Harvard Square, where I wanted to try a free “Sahaja Yoga” class I had seen advertised on a flyer.

Hmm? What’s that you say?

Oh — you want to know about the stab wound. Well, for the full effect you really need to be looking into Sean’s earnest, bespectacled face while he’s telling the story, but I’ll ease your minds by telling you that he didn’t really mean to stick himself with a sleek, sexy, razor sharp stiletto knife. He did, however, purposefully purchase a sleek, sexy, razor sharp stiletto knife as a thoughtful Christmas gift for his younger sister (Yes, she liked it very much. No, she’s not an amateur Jet.), and show her three different ways to open it. The third way, if you’re Sean on Christmas Eve 2004, involves a trip to the emergency room. Also six stitches, a rather impressive scar, and some physical therapy. Plus a couple of blurry yet gruesome pictures of the wound taken on your picture-phone, which you cheerily allow your unsuspecting guests to discover whilst they are clicking through other equally blurry (but considerably less gruesome) shots of your family, your girlfriend, and cute little stuffed rabbits.

Perhaps you’re beginning to see why after an afternoon with Sean a person might be in the market for a little Yoga.

I’m just kidding. Sean is a wellspring of energy, love, and imagination, even when he is hobbling around on crutches and dealing with sundry other emotional disasters. My life put me in the market for a little Yoga.

Which is why, at 6:30 this evening, I find myself changing into a pair of comfy gray pants in the bathroom of the First Church in Cambridge and walking into a large room smelling vaguely of sandalwood and filled with four rows of plastic orange and blue chairs. This is the first odd thing — what are chairs doing in a Yoga class? How will we find the room to do the Downward Dog, or the supported shoulder stand? Where are the mats and pillows? Are we going to contort ourselves into knots while somehow using the chairs? The mind boggles. Ross and I sidle into the back row and take off our coats, covering our confusion by peering intently at the copious number of informational pamphlets arranged on a side table. I count at least a dozen different booklets, brochures, and photocopied handouts, most of which contain helpful diagrams of the location, type, and significance of the seven chakras of the body, and life-histories of Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, the smiling founder of Sahaja Yoga.

I find all this information a little overwhelming, and the person who appears to be in charge — a small, dark-haired man in his thirties dressed, perplexingly, in a checkered shirt and pants — is whispering to someone in a leisurely manner that suggests we are not quite ready to begin. I decide to put the handouts away and get a head start on clearing my mind by sitting silently in close observation of the physical objects in the room, without judgment. I take note of an open piano behind me, a small sink in the left corner with a rubber tube extending from one of its faucets, seven large burnt-red windows, and a rolling chalkboard facing the chairs that bears the somewhat cryptic notation “2048/4096 = 1/2.”

Hmmm. “Two thousand and forty-eight over four thousand and ninety-six equals half.”

…

Yup. Sure does. Fair enough, then. Ok, chalkboard, check. One portrait of Shri Mataji in a gilded frame, check. One lighted red candle, check.

…

I wonder why that’s on the board, though. All by itself, right in the middle. It’s not like there are any other remains of a lesson on ratios. What if it isn’t left over from a math class? Maybe it’s a mantra. Maybe Douglas Adams was wrong and the answer’s really “2048/4096 = 1/2,” not “42.” Maybe we’re supposed to meditate on it while we do our strange, chair-sitting yoga.

I try quite sincerely to understand the deeper spiritual significance of the statement, but while it does seem quite beautiful, in a mathematical sort of way, and provokes some dimly profound notions about what other true equations I could write, enlightenment eludes me. I turn to observing my companions on the path towards peace and flexibility. They include:

• Ross
• a couple of other twenty-something females nervously scanning brochures
• a tall, bone-slender Nordic blonde in cowboy boots and extremely tight jeans (why am I the only one wearing comfy grey pants?)
• a tiny young Chinese woman in black who tiptoes in, peers around at all the bowed heads, and whispers to Ross, “It hasn’t started yet, has it?” I like her instantly.
• several people who seem to be regulars, including a rather regal lady in her forties and an ethereal looking hippie chick who appears about seventeen.

Finally, at about a quarter of seven, the gentleman running the show glides shyly to the front of the room. He is a neat and very compact person who does not resemble in any way the only other Yoga instructor I have ever encountered (the toothpick-thin and frighteningly flexible Jesse of KarmaYoga). In a light, pleasant accent that I cannot quite place (possibly Russian), he welcomes us kindly to the “very special” practice of Sahaja Yoga and invites the newcomers in the group to tell him where we heard about tonight’s session and also to describe why, if we don’t mind, we came tonight – to say what it is we are searching for. I start to think about that question, and realize that there’s no way I can answer it truthfully without weeping. So I gaze beatifically into the eyes of Shri Mataji while the quiet grows. Finally the tiny Chinese woman is brave enough to offer that she’s looking for “a kind of calmness,” and the brunette next to me breathes, then hesitates before explaining that she wants to find out if there’s “something more to being human.”

The teacher smiles at us compassionately and nods. He explains that Yoga can certainly help us find inner peace and a greater understanding of the human capacity, and that it is a path towards what he calls “self-realization,” or enlightenment. He goes on to declare that most people in this country today who “spend a lot of time standing on their heads” don’t understand the true meaning of Yoga, which aims to transform the practitioner’s spiritual state of mind, not teach them how to bend their bodies about. The physical exercises are simply a means to an end, and true Yoga, he says, is really about achieving a meditative state. The people who “stand on their heads” (here he smirks slightly) have bought into a commercialization of Yoga. It’s not false, but it has magnified out of proportion something that is only a small part of the real nature of Yoga.

I am suddenly extremely conscious of the expectations that my comfy grey pants must be broadcasting.

I am also mildly irritated by the trace of condescension in his manner, even though some of what he’s saying seems to make sense. Still, I am here, among other things, to work on becoming a less judgmental human being – so I try to simply take in what he is saying. The next part of the instruction is a brief introduction to chakras, “energy centers” in the body through which the “mother energy,” called Kundalini, moves. Kundalini, the teacher says, is a divine feminine power that enters the foetus at some point during pregnancy and lies dormant unless it is awakened. Again, dear readers, I try very hard just to absorb his words without judging them. It is not as if I have all the answers about spiritual peace. Next he talks us through an illustration of the seven chakras and the spiritual qualities they represent, and describes how each chakra may become blocked or dirtied, leading to physical, emotional, and intellectual malaise. Meditation, he says, causes the Kundalini to “rise” through the chakras and clear them, leading to self-realization.

Now we are ready for a round of meditation, led by Ethereal Looking Hippie Chick.

She asks us all to take off our shoes and close our eyes while she talks us through a series of exercises in which we lay our left hands palm-upwards on our knees, touch our right palms to our chakras, and utter silent mantras to ourselves in which we address our Kundalini energies as “Mother.” Improbable as it sounds, by this point I am getting good at accepting the experience for what it is, without criticism, and I find myself slipping into a very calm, very focused, rather peaceful mental state. I can feel tears pricking my eyelids when, palm pressed to forehead, I am instructed to say, “Mother, I forgive everyone, including myself.” After about twenty minutes I am feeling pretty good. I certainly wouldn’t call this enlightenment, but maybe it’s a start.

Then, it all falls apart when Ethereal Looking Hippie Chick tells us to put our right palms several inches above our heads and “check to see” if we feel a cool breeze under our palms, a sign that the Kundalini has risen through all of our chakras and we have gotten our self realization. Oh – but maybe, it will be a warm breeze instead. Or just maybe, a tingling sensation in one or more of your fingers.

Um. I dutifully put my hand above my head, but I’ve got nothing. I wiggle my fingers. Still nothing. I open my eyes to squint at my fellow peace-seekers. Everyone is frowning in concentration, hands hovering over their heads. I suppress the desire to giggle, because, dear readers, I am STILL trying to be in the moment and live this experience with an open mind.

Nothing? Not even a tingling? Well, try saying the last mantra again. Or maybe rub the top of your head gently. This helps the Kundalini to rise.

Okay, Shri Mataji, now you’re making me cry. My life doesn’t afford me sufficient opportunities to feel like a fuck-up, now you’re telling me that I need to generate a cool breeze above my scalp to prove that I meditated right? Damn you, Sahaja Yoga. You and the bone-slender Nordic blonde, who saw “green and violet light” during her meditations…. Overachiever.

I have to say that my attempts to clear my mind and achieve “thoughtless detachment” went downhill after that, even though I stayed for the “workshop” part of the session where the teacher stands behind you, whispers to you to relax your shoulders, rubs his hands together, draws counter-clockwise circles above your head, and tries to get your Kundalini to rise while breathing heavily, causing you to finally say, in complete desperation, “Um….. I guess the air on top of my skull feels sort of cool. And um…. The ball of my left palm is kind of a little warm. Maybe.”

When we got home, I went to the Sahaja Yoga website, where I discovered that you can actually receive your self-realization “even as you sit in front of your computer!” I felt like a bit of a chump.

Going all the way to Harvard Square when I could have gotten enlightenment from the comfort of my living room sofa.

* Sean is half gnocchi and half won ton, half Fellini and half Wong Kar Wai, half Bel Canto and half water sleeves. He’s Italian-Chinese, is what I’m saying.

Ross woke me up this morning with a cheery “Happy Two-Thousand-und-Fumpf!” I was enchanted. The Germans are brilliant, I thought. What a great way to say “five!” Later this evening I was disappointed to learn that I had misheard. “Funf” just doesn’t have quite the same, oh, I don’t know.
Umpf.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled entry — in which I say “Fumpf” as much as I can.

Despite the fact that we live less than a fifteen minute walk from its Cambridge edge, Ross and I had never crossed the lovely Longfellow Bridge into the brownstones of Beacon Hill — at least, not on foot. I have often driven over it on my way back from the city, tortured by the cruel need to keep both my eyes firmly fixed on the asphalt in front of me while the most gorgeous views zip past on either side. (The only consolation — close your ears, parents! — is that when you are traversing the bridge in a little Nissan Sentra, you can at least imagine that you are engaged in a thrilling dead-heat race with the red line train, whose tracks hug the bridge.) But, as I say, neither of us had walked across the Longfellow in recent memory.

On the first day of Two-Thousand-und-Fumpf, faced with an absurdly sunny, 52 degree Saturday in the middle of a Boston winter, we remedied this criminal state of affairs by taking a long and rambling walk over the bridge, through the park, and into Chinatown in search of a good lunch and dried mushrooms with which to make the next batch of ChickenCrack™*.

The afternoon’s haul included:

1) Several arty photos of the rusty underbelly of the Longfellow, which I will post when I get them developed (ETA: Spring)

2) One delicious lunch at Penang. Roti canai, beef rendang, Hainanese chicken rice. God, I miss Singaporean food.

3) A bottle of Kaya (a.k.a. Nirvana In a Jar). Kaya is an indescribably yummy spread made from coconut, sugar, eggs, and pandan leaves. You eat it on toasted slices of fluffy white bread, while drinking hot coffee with condensed milk out of little plastic orange cups and saucers, sitting at a round marble table in a kopitiam surrounded by old men who sit (like me) with their feet up on the stool next to them. If necessary, however, you can also eat it on leftover hamburger buns on a winter’s day in a Cambridge apartment. Either way, it is delicious.

4) The sad realisation that apparently, one night of dancing and three hours of walking is enough to make my legs resent me deeply. Just you wait, legs! Two-Thousand-und-Fumpf is going to be the Year O’Dancing and Walking!

Fumpf) Um. I got nothing else. Try saying “fumpf” to yourself a few times, instead. I promise you will feel the joy.

*ChickenCrack™: Highly Addictive dish containing green beans, minced chicken, chinese mushrooms, julienned ginger, garlic, oyster sauce, and a small pinch of crack cocaine.**

**I’m just kidding about the crack cocaine.***

***Or am I?