“ On a scale of one to five, where one is little or no anxiety, how are you feeling about the cave journey tomorrow,” Megan, our fearless leader, asked. “One.” “One and a half.” “Zero,” came the responses from the other women in the room, who had gathered on Crete to explore the island’s ancient Goddess culture. “Five,” I said, my voice cracking with shame. Actually, if I had known then how difficult it would be for me, I would have said, “nine.” I was terrified of falling and worried that the torn meniscus in my knee would act up, but I also knew that I needed to go on this cave journey. I could not have explained why this journey was so important, but I was determined to push through my fears.
From the other side of the circle, a voice piped up, “I’d like to volunteer to be at the back of the line so I can help Judith.” It was Sue, a mother of two boys from Minneapolis. “I have lots of experience leading treks and I’m not at all nervous about this one. I’m convinced that I was a mountain goat in a previous lifetime,” she said with a laugh.
Without Sue’s kindness, I would never have been able to complete the cave journey. I could not know then that descending into the cave and climbing back up would be a symbol of the healing journey I was about to make into the depths of my own psyche. I did not know that the prayers I uttered in the darkness of the cold rock womb would be answered in the brilliant sunlight of an ancient temple, or that months of hard work would pass before I could really integrate the whispered message of hope.
The central myth of Crete is the story of the Minotaur. As Megan told the story, the Greek god of the sea, Poseidon, had sent Minos, the king of the island, a magnificent white bull. Instead of sacrificing the bull to the god, the greedy king kept the bull for himself. Poseidon’s revenge was to make Minos’s queen, Pasiphae, fall in love with the bull; from their union was born the Minotaur, half man, half bull, a living reminder of the king’s sacrilege. Minos commanded the royal architect to build a labyrinth under the palace to keep the monster out of sight. To appease the Minotaur, the powerful king demanded that his vassal states render an annual tribute of noble young men and women. The youths were trained to perform the Cretan art of bull-leaping, before being led to the labyrinth, never to return.
After some years of this, the Athenian prince, Theseus, decided to take matters into his own hand and slay the beast. He volunteered for the yearly tribute. On the way to Crete, he worked with his fellow captives, so that by the time of the bull-leaping performance, they were a tightly-disciplined team. His performance and comeliness caught the attention of Pasiphae and Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, a priestess of the Snake Goddess, who danced in the temple rites. The night before Theseus was to be sent into the maze, Ariadne gave her lover a red thread, that he could use to find his way back out, and a labyris, the bronze double-headed ax sacred to the Goddess, with which to slay the Minotaur.
The night before the cave journey, the 13 women on our tour gathered in the common room of the retreat center for a grief ritual to clear our hearts. A large low table was set up as the altar, adorned with scarves and objects sacred to each of us: a crystal wand, a statue of the snake mother goddess of Crete, a deck of tarot cards in a velvet pouch, an embossed silver portrait of Jesus. We stood in a circle, singing the simple chant that Megan had earlier taught us while she drummed on and on. Whenever the spirit moved one or more of us, we sat or knelt in front of the altar and prayed/cried/keened our grief while the others witnessed, supporting us with their voices and their presence. I cried for my lost marriage, for my lost childhood, for lost love. As everyone’s individual waves of grief rose and fell and ebbed around me, I prayed to the Goddess to help me let go, to help me heal, to help me move on. Gradually, the pain eased as this particular round of grieving came to an end. We went outside for a late-night snack of chocolate and tea, then climbed the stairs to our rooms, opening the verandah doors to the cool, dry air.
After an early breakfast of Greek yogurt, honey, ripe fruit and biscotti-like cookies, we piled into several rental cars and headed for the next village. Our destination, the Cave of the 99 Holy Fathers, might seem an odd choice for a group of women who had gathered to discover the Great Goddess. Or perhaps one should say that it was odd for a cave, which represents the womb of the goddess, to be a place where a group of Christian priests sought refuge from persecution. In any case, this cave was near our retreat center on the south coast and had far fewer visitors than the island’s more famous sacred caverns.
We drove past the village on a single-track dirt road leading up the side of a low scrubby mountain. Thankfully, it was early enough that there were no vehicles coming the other direction. I blanched when I got out of the car and saw the path leading up to the top of the mountain. “It’s just a 10-minute walk from the parking lot,” was all Megan had said about the trail.
The first few minutes were less difficult than I expected; the trail was rocky but wide, with no precipitous drops to either side. As we neared the cave, the rocks became boulders. At the mouth of the cave, we pulled out the pants and sweaters from our backpacks and turned on the lamps we each wore around our heads. I waited as the other women moved past me, then joined the end of the single-file line walking alongside the cave wall, with Sue falling in just behind me. The plan was that we would all meet at the first chamber, then continue up to the second chamber. Hopefully, we would get there before any other tourists so that we could hold a silent meditation in total darkness.
Before we even got to the first set of ladders, Sue said, “Why don’t you give me your backpack.”
“I can carry it,” I answered stoically.
“It will be easier if I’ve got it. Don’t worry, I can manage it.”
“Okay,” I said, sheepishly.
When we got to the first metal ladder, Sue went down first, then instructed me on how to turn around and grab the handrail while stepping onto the first rung. What if I fall, I thought. But Sue kept encouraging me and I took the chance of trusting her.
“There’s a rung missing here, so make the next step down a big one, okay?” Sue called up to me.
As I climbed down the ladder, I could feel the panic rising, pulling my consciousness out of my body and into my head, out of the safety of the present moment and into my fear of future disaster. I wanted to freeze, but I couldn’t let the group down. I realized that the only way I could get through this experience without panicking was to stay in the moment.
We reached the bottom of the first ladder. “Breathe. Take a deep breath,” Sue told me.
Scrabbling down the rocky path between the first and second ladders, she held my hand.
“Don’t look to your right. Look at the wall on your left.”
Then onto the next ladder.
My heart clenched as I cleared another missing rung.
“Good job. You’re doing fine.”
At the bottom of the second ladder, Sue offered me individually-wrapped hard candies. “The yellow ones are lemon. Take two. I have more,” she added.
Near the bottom of the third metal ladder, she said, “I’m going to lift you over this rung, okay?” In one sure movement, Sue grasped my waist with one arm and lifted me down to the next rung. I was too surprised to be impressed by her strength.
Suddenly, we were in the first chamber of the cave. To the right, a small altar with an icon had been built in the wall. “You’re doing great,” Sue enthused.
We started up the first wooden ladder. Unlike the metal ladders, which had been bolted into the rock wall, these were just leaning against the rock walls. I struggled to not imagine falling backwards.
“Breathe. You need to take a deep breath,” Sue instructed.
I pushed the thought of an earthquake out of my mind.
Just before we started up the second ladder, she kissed my forehead. At the top of the ladder, she took my hand, hoisting me up and into the second chamber. Everyone else in the group was already there, looking for a place to sit for the meditation or for rocks to take home. I picked up three small stones from the cave floor and sat away from the opening. The light from our headlights flickered on the walls, enlarging our shadows so that we appeared to be giantesses.
And then there were noises coming from nearby. Other tourists were arriving. We had arrived too late. And it was all my fault. I started to cry.
Megan got up and went over to the two young men and one young woman, then came back. “They’ve agreed that we can have five minutes.”
Sitting in a circle on the cold floor of the earth mother, we turned off our headlamps. For a moment, one tea light shone bright and then with a breath, it was out. We were in total darkness, holding hands. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, it no longer seemed as pitch black as it had when the candle went out. I realized that I am not afraid of the dark. Eyes wide open, I cried for the wounded boy, for the wounded girl, for the solace they had sought in each other, for the pain of all their losses. And in the silence, I fervently prayed, “Make me whole.”
The climb down the wooden ladders was tough, but as I continued, with Sue’s help and the group’s encouragement, past the first chamber, over the rocks, up the three metal ladders, towards the opening of the cave, I began to feel lighter. A wave of relief came over me as we cleared the entrance and stopped for a group photo against the rocks.
Hiking back to the cars, Sue stopped to take my picture. In the photo, I am laughing. “You look reborn,” she said.
If I was reborn, then Sue was the midwife. I thanked her effusively, insisting that I could not have done the journey without her.
She demurred, saying, “It was an honor to witness your courage, cave sister. “
A week later, the group pile out of taxis at the palace of Knossos, the central palace-temple complex where the Goddess had been worshipped for some 1,500 years. They quickly walked to the far side of the archaeological site, down the steps to a courtyard known as Ariadne’s dance floor. Our leader, Megan, had been told that the guards would break up any attempt at a group ritual on the site, so we each went our own way to individually meditate. I took off my flip-flops and danced barefoot on the warm rock tiles, where the priestesses had danced 4,000 years ago. I sat at the edge of the courtyard, underneath an olive tree, and opened my heart. A voice whispered, “You are already whole.”
Was it the voice of the Goddess or the yearnings of my deepest unconscious? Does it really matter? It was the answer to my prayer in darkness of the cave, the red thread that would lead me out of the darkness of my own past, the truth that my therapist would echo in the ensuing months of intense and deep psychic healing. Not only for me but also for those I have loved, for all who believe that violation left us irreparably broken, it was a message of hope.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
No Gels, No Questions
Other people wax rhapsodic about riding Hawaii’s great waves; I could go on and on about the pleasures of eating warm popovers with sweet whipped butter and poha berry jam at the Orchids restaurant in Waikiki. For me, the poha berry jam is what makes this an island breakfast. Also known as cape gooseberries, poha berries came to Hawaii before 1825 and can be found on all of the islands. They have a sweet tartness and orange color similar to the cloudberry, another rare fruit that I’m rather fond of. One could say that tpoha berry jam is my version of Proust’s madeleine, a symbol of an earlier chapter in my life, when I came to Hawaii with my children and their father and his mother rather than alone.
On a recent vacation there, I indulged in poha berry jam with popovers for breakfast not once but two successive mornings in a row. On my last full day on Oahu, I bought a jar of poha berry jam to take home. Packing that night, I put the jam in the middle of my bag, and my tiny jars of macadamia blossom honey into the zip-locked plastic bag with the other liquids like face creams and mascara. I got to the airport an hour ahead of schedule, picked up my boarding pass and headed for the security line. The noise of people talking and bags rolling was punctuated by the frequent announcements that the airport was experiencing an orange-level alert (one step down from red alert and two down from the black alert of a terrorist attack, according to one sign) and that any suspicious person or bag should be reported immediately. When the security agent asked to examine my bag after it passed through the X-ray machine, I wondered if they were concerned about my hair clip with a pointed end. But no, it was my jar of poha berry jam. It had never occurred to me that the prohibition on gels included edible jams and jellies. My other two jars of jam were tiny and fit into the requisite plastic bag, but the poha berry jam was more than 3 ounces. The agent also wanted to take my jar of sea salt because it was more than 3 ounces, but relented when I pointed out that salt, was neither liquid nor a gel. Although she apologized about the poha berry jam, saying, “I know it’s good stuff,” I still burst into tears a few minutes after the ordeal.
If I had been less upset by the implication that I was threatening national security, I could have gone back to the check-in area and put my carry-on bag through to San Francisco with the jam in the bottom of the hold. But losing this one souvenir, which, at least in that moment, symbolized my own lost past, of children at home and an intact marriage, apparently overwhelmed me. With the plane due to take off in less than half an hour, I felt I had little choice but to let go.
Of course, I was welcome to carry aboard any tropical jams, jellies, body lotions or bottles of water that I purchased on the other side of security. After all, we can’t let security concerns interfere with the big businesses that run the airport concessions. How many million dollars would be lost in a single day if no gels or liquids (cosmetics, perfumes, alcohol, coffee) could be sold past the security zone? Isn’t it ironic that we can trust these businesses, and all of the airport personnel to not threaten national security, but we can’t trust ordinary citizens not to pack explosives in their hair gel?
Air travel is the frontier of Homeland security, the place where we are most willing to sacrifice personal freedom in exchange for nebulous promises of safety. After all, if restrictions on water bottles and jars of jam keep the airplane that I’m on, or my daughter, or son, or brother are on from exploding in mid-air, then, like any sane person, I will acquiesce to the restrictions. If the goal were to prevent terrorist attacks, why not just install scanners at every airport that can detect plastic explosives? Or why not ban all gels and liquids of any size from being carried on board or even sold at the airport? Maybe we could have an exception for glasses of water and ceramic cups of coffee which could be purchased to drink at the airport; think of the reduction in wasted paper and plastics.
But instead, the current tactic seems to be to instill fear and anxiety in the nation’s flying public---who are primarily members of the educated, middle to upper middle classes—with, for example, constant reminders that we’re in a state of orange alert (which never seems to go down, even momentarily, to yellow, green, or blue). This state of alert, in turn, is used as a justification for insisting on absolute obedience to a series of annoying restrictions and rules——remove your shoes, the sweater tied around your waist, your laptop, don’t let your 10-year-old crack a joke about a bomb at the airport, which gradually become more numerous and more invasive, no water bottles over 3 ounces, put your toothpaste and contraceptive gel in a transparent plastic bag, remove your belt buckle, let security personnel run a metal detector wand over your breasts if your underwire bra triggers the metal detector, don’t dare to question those in charge for fear of arrest. What if the real goal is not to stop another 9/11, not even to make us feel safer, but to accustom those of us in the middle and professional classes, those of us with the education, money and time to actually question authority, those of us who think our American citizenship gives us the right to do so, and especially those of us who think our race will give us immunity, to living in a police state?
On a recent vacation there, I indulged in poha berry jam with popovers for breakfast not once but two successive mornings in a row. On my last full day on Oahu, I bought a jar of poha berry jam to take home. Packing that night, I put the jam in the middle of my bag, and my tiny jars of macadamia blossom honey into the zip-locked plastic bag with the other liquids like face creams and mascara. I got to the airport an hour ahead of schedule, picked up my boarding pass and headed for the security line. The noise of people talking and bags rolling was punctuated by the frequent announcements that the airport was experiencing an orange-level alert (one step down from red alert and two down from the black alert of a terrorist attack, according to one sign) and that any suspicious person or bag should be reported immediately. When the security agent asked to examine my bag after it passed through the X-ray machine, I wondered if they were concerned about my hair clip with a pointed end. But no, it was my jar of poha berry jam. It had never occurred to me that the prohibition on gels included edible jams and jellies. My other two jars of jam were tiny and fit into the requisite plastic bag, but the poha berry jam was more than 3 ounces. The agent also wanted to take my jar of sea salt because it was more than 3 ounces, but relented when I pointed out that salt, was neither liquid nor a gel. Although she apologized about the poha berry jam, saying, “I know it’s good stuff,” I still burst into tears a few minutes after the ordeal.
If I had been less upset by the implication that I was threatening national security, I could have gone back to the check-in area and put my carry-on bag through to San Francisco with the jam in the bottom of the hold. But losing this one souvenir, which, at least in that moment, symbolized my own lost past, of children at home and an intact marriage, apparently overwhelmed me. With the plane due to take off in less than half an hour, I felt I had little choice but to let go.
Of course, I was welcome to carry aboard any tropical jams, jellies, body lotions or bottles of water that I purchased on the other side of security. After all, we can’t let security concerns interfere with the big businesses that run the airport concessions. How many million dollars would be lost in a single day if no gels or liquids (cosmetics, perfumes, alcohol, coffee) could be sold past the security zone? Isn’t it ironic that we can trust these businesses, and all of the airport personnel to not threaten national security, but we can’t trust ordinary citizens not to pack explosives in their hair gel?
Air travel is the frontier of Homeland security, the place where we are most willing to sacrifice personal freedom in exchange for nebulous promises of safety. After all, if restrictions on water bottles and jars of jam keep the airplane that I’m on, or my daughter, or son, or brother are on from exploding in mid-air, then, like any sane person, I will acquiesce to the restrictions. If the goal were to prevent terrorist attacks, why not just install scanners at every airport that can detect plastic explosives? Or why not ban all gels and liquids of any size from being carried on board or even sold at the airport? Maybe we could have an exception for glasses of water and ceramic cups of coffee which could be purchased to drink at the airport; think of the reduction in wasted paper and plastics.
But instead, the current tactic seems to be to instill fear and anxiety in the nation’s flying public---who are primarily members of the educated, middle to upper middle classes—with, for example, constant reminders that we’re in a state of orange alert (which never seems to go down, even momentarily, to yellow, green, or blue). This state of alert, in turn, is used as a justification for insisting on absolute obedience to a series of annoying restrictions and rules——remove your shoes, the sweater tied around your waist, your laptop, don’t let your 10-year-old crack a joke about a bomb at the airport, which gradually become more numerous and more invasive, no water bottles over 3 ounces, put your toothpaste and contraceptive gel in a transparent plastic bag, remove your belt buckle, let security personnel run a metal detector wand over your breasts if your underwire bra triggers the metal detector, don’t dare to question those in charge for fear of arrest. What if the real goal is not to stop another 9/11, not even to make us feel safer, but to accustom those of us in the middle and professional classes, those of us with the education, money and time to actually question authority, those of us who think our American citizenship gives us the right to do so, and especially those of us who think our race will give us immunity, to living in a police state?
Breasts: Toxins :: Personal: Political
One morning, a few months ago, I was awakened by a sharp pain in my right breast, radiating from the nipple. My monkey mind immediately jumped to the obvious, catastrophic conclusion: terminal cancer. My rational mind thought, no, the dog must have stepped on it.
Said dog, a 25 pound pug, is a bed-hog; he likes to sleep with his body pushed against my arm, immobilizing it, while he snores through the night. But as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, he jumps up, pushes his face close to mine, snorts, and starts trying to lick me. If I don’t immediately get up, he jumps from one side of me to the other, sometimes landing his weight on my torso if I haven’t rolled over onto my side fast enough. A couple of times, he has—ouch!—landed on a breast. So I took an Advil and held my breath, hoping the pain would disappear.
The next morning, I awoke to the same pain, called my MD and got an appointment for the following day. Then I googled breast pain and called a couple of close women friends for reassurance. I soon found that most of the women in my circle, aged 30something to 60something, had had a breast scare at one time or another. One friend offered to loan me the “breast shells” that she’d had on her altar when her mammogram came up negative. Another suggested that breast problems are related to mother issues.
Of course, the day of the doctor’s appointment, I woke up pain-free. My physician found no lumps, but she did discover a polyp. She told me to go off hormones, cut out caffeine, check the polyp every day for the next month until my mammogram appointment -- and added that I shouldn’t worry.
Meanwhile, another friend started sending me information about the dangers of mammography and suggested I check out thermography, which uses the infrared rather than the X-ray part of the spectrum to pick up soft tissue abnormalities.
This same environmentalist sent me information about the link between breast disease and environmental toxins. The more I read, the more shocked I was. Like so many of us, I had trusted that the government, in the form of the Food and Drug Administration, and even corporations to have my best interests at heart. I had assumed that body care products were subject to the same degree of scrutiny as other chemicals which could be absorbed through the skin, like nicotine patches or estrogen creams. I was dismayed to learn that in the U.S., body care products and cosmetics are barely regulated at all, that only a handful of toxic ingredients are prohibited, that products can be labeled organic even if they contain only a single organic ingredient. That a commonly-used class of preservatives called parabens, found in everything from eye shadow to shampoo, has also shown up in breast tumors. I was outraged to discover that while the European Union has adopted a precautionary approach, which requires chemicals used in cosmetics and personal care products to be proven safe, the U.S. employs a different standard, which only prevents a few known toxins from being sold. In other words, the EU takes a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach, while the U.S. has an innocent-until-proven-guilty standard for toxins, and the corporations that produce and sell them. The more I learned, the more I came to believe that, if I had contracted breast cancer, the reason would have far less to do with my mother and far more to do with corporate greed.
I had the mammogram, and then waited a week before the doctor called to tell me that I needed to come back for a more X-rays and an ultrasound to check out a possible anomaly. While waiting for the new appointment, I busied myself with researching cosmetic brands. I bought new shampoo, conditioner, eye shadow, lip gloss, sunscreen, and body oil, choosing only those brands that were paraben-free and as close to 100 percent organic as possible. Between the three health food emporiums in my town, doing so was easy, if expensive ($28 for a tube of intensive conditioner, for example). I emailed my adult children the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website
(www.cosmeticsdatabase.com), which has detailed information on the safety of thousands of products, and offered to reimburse them if they switched to healthier choices. And although I am not yet ready to go grey, I made my next coloring appointment at a beauty salon that uses less toxic dyes.
The day of the second appointment, a friend met me at the radiology lab. I had two magnified views, then a third because one of the first two X-rays came out fuzzy. In the ultrasound room, I watched as the technician found and photographed a black spot. Was this a mark of death like the black spot in “Treasure Island”? I grabbed my friend from the waiting room and held her hand tightly when the technician came back a few minutes later with the signed diagnosis on a slip of blue paper. A cyst. Come back in one year for another mammogram. In the parking lot, I burst into tears of relief as the tension of the past month’s anxieties broke.
Although I do not seem to be in immediate danger of having my breast cut off, I am no longer capable of being reassured in the same way that I was before. This minor health crisis has left a lasting mark on my psyche, bursting my bubble of innocent trust. I am outraged that my body, my daughter’s body, my son’s body, my friends’ bodies, have been silently soaking up toxins along with moisturizers and sunscreens, blemish creams and shampoos, mascaras and lipsticks-- and that neither those who manufacture these products nor those entrusted to regulate them apparently give a damn.
Said dog, a 25 pound pug, is a bed-hog; he likes to sleep with his body pushed against my arm, immobilizing it, while he snores through the night. But as soon as I open my eyes in the morning, he jumps up, pushes his face close to mine, snorts, and starts trying to lick me. If I don’t immediately get up, he jumps from one side of me to the other, sometimes landing his weight on my torso if I haven’t rolled over onto my side fast enough. A couple of times, he has—ouch!—landed on a breast. So I took an Advil and held my breath, hoping the pain would disappear.
The next morning, I awoke to the same pain, called my MD and got an appointment for the following day. Then I googled breast pain and called a couple of close women friends for reassurance. I soon found that most of the women in my circle, aged 30something to 60something, had had a breast scare at one time or another. One friend offered to loan me the “breast shells” that she’d had on her altar when her mammogram came up negative. Another suggested that breast problems are related to mother issues.
Of course, the day of the doctor’s appointment, I woke up pain-free. My physician found no lumps, but she did discover a polyp. She told me to go off hormones, cut out caffeine, check the polyp every day for the next month until my mammogram appointment -- and added that I shouldn’t worry.
Meanwhile, another friend started sending me information about the dangers of mammography and suggested I check out thermography, which uses the infrared rather than the X-ray part of the spectrum to pick up soft tissue abnormalities.
This same environmentalist sent me information about the link between breast disease and environmental toxins. The more I read, the more shocked I was. Like so many of us, I had trusted that the government, in the form of the Food and Drug Administration, and even corporations to have my best interests at heart. I had assumed that body care products were subject to the same degree of scrutiny as other chemicals which could be absorbed through the skin, like nicotine patches or estrogen creams. I was dismayed to learn that in the U.S., body care products and cosmetics are barely regulated at all, that only a handful of toxic ingredients are prohibited, that products can be labeled organic even if they contain only a single organic ingredient. That a commonly-used class of preservatives called parabens, found in everything from eye shadow to shampoo, has also shown up in breast tumors. I was outraged to discover that while the European Union has adopted a precautionary approach, which requires chemicals used in cosmetics and personal care products to be proven safe, the U.S. employs a different standard, which only prevents a few known toxins from being sold. In other words, the EU takes a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach, while the U.S. has an innocent-until-proven-guilty standard for toxins, and the corporations that produce and sell them. The more I learned, the more I came to believe that, if I had contracted breast cancer, the reason would have far less to do with my mother and far more to do with corporate greed.
I had the mammogram, and then waited a week before the doctor called to tell me that I needed to come back for a more X-rays and an ultrasound to check out a possible anomaly. While waiting for the new appointment, I busied myself with researching cosmetic brands. I bought new shampoo, conditioner, eye shadow, lip gloss, sunscreen, and body oil, choosing only those brands that were paraben-free and as close to 100 percent organic as possible. Between the three health food emporiums in my town, doing so was easy, if expensive ($28 for a tube of intensive conditioner, for example). I emailed my adult children the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep website
(www.cosmeticsdatabase.com), which has detailed information on the safety of thousands of products, and offered to reimburse them if they switched to healthier choices. And although I am not yet ready to go grey, I made my next coloring appointment at a beauty salon that uses less toxic dyes.
The day of the second appointment, a friend met me at the radiology lab. I had two magnified views, then a third because one of the first two X-rays came out fuzzy. In the ultrasound room, I watched as the technician found and photographed a black spot. Was this a mark of death like the black spot in “Treasure Island”? I grabbed my friend from the waiting room and held her hand tightly when the technician came back a few minutes later with the signed diagnosis on a slip of blue paper. A cyst. Come back in one year for another mammogram. In the parking lot, I burst into tears of relief as the tension of the past month’s anxieties broke.
Although I do not seem to be in immediate danger of having my breast cut off, I am no longer capable of being reassured in the same way that I was before. This minor health crisis has left a lasting mark on my psyche, bursting my bubble of innocent trust. I am outraged that my body, my daughter’s body, my son’s body, my friends’ bodies, have been silently soaking up toxins along with moisturizers and sunscreens, blemish creams and shampoos, mascaras and lipsticks-- and that neither those who manufacture these products nor those entrusted to regulate them apparently give a damn.
Plastic Planet
My friend M. is trying to solve the garbage problem single-handedly by not disposing of any item which is potentially useful. He hasn’t bought anything new in years. He tries hard to find homes for old books and magazines, for worn clothes and shoes, for knick-knacks and bric-a-brac. He reuses bags and bottles and jars as many times as possible before putting them in the recycling bin. And he keeps the detritus which can’t be recycled, like plastic straws and bottle caps, rubber bands and wire bag ties, rather than consign them to the landfill. Unfortunately, these small objects take up space and seemingly multiply, like creatures in a sci-fi movie threatening to overpower their host.
Another friend, C., has a more typical consumption pattern. On her way to work, she usually stops for coffee. Some days she brings her own cup, but other days not, so she leaves the coffee shop with a paper cup and a plastic lid, a paper napkin and maybe a plastic straw if her latte is iced. At lunch, she gets a sandwich to go, wrapped in paper or plastic wrap, a bottle of water, another paper napkin, and a soda in an aluminum can for her afternoon pick-me-up, all stuffed into a paper bag. On the way home, she picks up a bag of groceries. Maybe she uses the cloth bag she keeps in the car, but puts the produce in the store’s plastic bags. Her total for the day: one paper cup, one plastic lid, a square of sandwich paper or plastic wrap or aluminum foil, a plastic bottle and cap, two paper napkins, an aluminum can, a paper bag, and several small plastic bags.
Of these dozen or so items, the bottle and the aluminum are recyclable (but not the bottle’s plastic lid), while the bags can be re-used or recycled. That leaves half a dozen non-recyclable, non-reusable items for the landfill. Of course, the problem is not really about her or my or your half-dozen plastic bits; it’s our daily total times 365 days per year multiplied by the 300 million other Americans, plus the billion-plus Chinese and Indians whose societies are headed the same direction.
With a little effort, C. could bring her own cloth napkin and bags, fill a glass bottle at home with water and a ceramic cup with coffee, and bring her own string produce bags to the market, if not every day at least more often than not. But while these small changes are certainly a step in the right direction, as is M.’s sense of responsibility for every item that comes his way, the global trash problem is not so easily resolved.
Take plastic bags. It’s no secret that they suffocate children and sea creatures or that the world’s oceans are awash with them. These bags also collect in our homes, crowding out the junk in the junk drawers of our kitchens. Even when we wash them and reuse them, new ones come into our hands on an almost daily basis. And then there is the over-riding fact that each one will last a very long time, that every human alive today will be earthworm food long before a single plastic bag has decomposed. Interesting how the petroleum that we have extracted to make plastics comes from creatures who crawled or swam long before the first humans came along and the objects we have created from this material may out-last us all.
It’s not just plastic bags. It’s broken hula hoops and torn shower curtains; it’s enough plastic cutlery to give all six billion of us an 12-place setting. It’s disposable objects that can’t be fixed when they break. It’s the case of the computer I’m writing this on and the cables that transmit these words over the Internet. It’s not only the discarded plastic objects that fill our drawers and garages and landfills and seas. It’s the leaching of toxic chemicals from plastic bottles and food containers. It’s the phthalates in our teenagers’ nail polish and our children’s pacifiers, whose molecules cling to their insides like embedded time bombs, potentially causing genetic abnormalities and higher risks of cancer, asthma and other diseases. It’s the hidden cost of a disposable society. It’s the result of an industry, a government, a culture that values convenience and profits over safety or sanity. It’s the world we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren.
Another friend, C., has a more typical consumption pattern. On her way to work, she usually stops for coffee. Some days she brings her own cup, but other days not, so she leaves the coffee shop with a paper cup and a plastic lid, a paper napkin and maybe a plastic straw if her latte is iced. At lunch, she gets a sandwich to go, wrapped in paper or plastic wrap, a bottle of water, another paper napkin, and a soda in an aluminum can for her afternoon pick-me-up, all stuffed into a paper bag. On the way home, she picks up a bag of groceries. Maybe she uses the cloth bag she keeps in the car, but puts the produce in the store’s plastic bags. Her total for the day: one paper cup, one plastic lid, a square of sandwich paper or plastic wrap or aluminum foil, a plastic bottle and cap, two paper napkins, an aluminum can, a paper bag, and several small plastic bags.
Of these dozen or so items, the bottle and the aluminum are recyclable (but not the bottle’s plastic lid), while the bags can be re-used or recycled. That leaves half a dozen non-recyclable, non-reusable items for the landfill. Of course, the problem is not really about her or my or your half-dozen plastic bits; it’s our daily total times 365 days per year multiplied by the 300 million other Americans, plus the billion-plus Chinese and Indians whose societies are headed the same direction.
With a little effort, C. could bring her own cloth napkin and bags, fill a glass bottle at home with water and a ceramic cup with coffee, and bring her own string produce bags to the market, if not every day at least more often than not. But while these small changes are certainly a step in the right direction, as is M.’s sense of responsibility for every item that comes his way, the global trash problem is not so easily resolved.
Take plastic bags. It’s no secret that they suffocate children and sea creatures or that the world’s oceans are awash with them. These bags also collect in our homes, crowding out the junk in the junk drawers of our kitchens. Even when we wash them and reuse them, new ones come into our hands on an almost daily basis. And then there is the over-riding fact that each one will last a very long time, that every human alive today will be earthworm food long before a single plastic bag has decomposed. Interesting how the petroleum that we have extracted to make plastics comes from creatures who crawled or swam long before the first humans came along and the objects we have created from this material may out-last us all.
It’s not just plastic bags. It’s broken hula hoops and torn shower curtains; it’s enough plastic cutlery to give all six billion of us an 12-place setting. It’s disposable objects that can’t be fixed when they break. It’s the case of the computer I’m writing this on and the cables that transmit these words over the Internet. It’s not only the discarded plastic objects that fill our drawers and garages and landfills and seas. It’s the leaching of toxic chemicals from plastic bottles and food containers. It’s the phthalates in our teenagers’ nail polish and our children’s pacifiers, whose molecules cling to their insides like embedded time bombs, potentially causing genetic abnormalities and higher risks of cancer, asthma and other diseases. It’s the hidden cost of a disposable society. It’s the result of an industry, a government, a culture that values convenience and profits over safety or sanity. It’s the world we are leaving to our children and our grandchildren.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Japanese Beauty
On my first trip to Japan, I was standing outside the gift shop of an expensive Tokyo hotel, looking at two tea bowls, glazed dark and shiny, one of which was priced ten times higher than the other. To me, they appeared to be of equal value, but given the price difference, they clearly were not. In that moment, I realized that there was another ideal of beauty, another way of measuring the value of an art object than the Greco-Roman aesthetic, which underlies much of Western art. My curiosity was piqued; I wanted not just to understand the price difference (which I now know was most likely based on the potters’ relative fame), but even more to explore the Japanese aesthetic, to see with different eyes.
Beauty is still what lures me to Japan. Beauty in the midst of industrialization, modernization, globalization. Beauty created over time by human beings collaborating with the natural world to celebrate the cycle of the seasons and the transience of life. whether in the form of an indigo garment dyed by hand in a family workshop, a tea bowl embellished with swirling maple leaves, a temple rock garden built 300 years ago, a haiku poem that honors the melancholy of a full moon in autumn. The beauty of an old wooden neighborhood shrine to Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, rebuilt after being fire-bombed during the war.
On that first trip to Japan, I not only didn’t know how to see, I didn’t really know where to look. I was disappointed that the picturesque Japan described in the travelogues and histories that I had read as a girl was nowhere to be found. Small wonder since the ostensible goal of the trip was to attend the World Expo at Tsukuba, where the entire emphasis was on the world of tomorrow. Not until the end of our week in Tokyo did I happen upon a slice of what I had envisioned in Asakusa, a downtown neighborhood centered on the large shrine of the same name, rebuilt after World War II. Here were quaint craft shops and stalls selling traditional items, like imagawa-yaki, a round pancake filled with an, sweetened adzuki beans, and the floral combs worn with kimonos by geishas and Japanese girls on special birthdays.
Nearly ten years passed before I was able to return to Japan and pick up the thread of my earlier fascination. This time, I was in Kyoto with my mother-in-law for a walking tour of gardens, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines. It was late October, but we were lucky enough not to have missed the fall foliage. Everywhere we went, there were golden gingko and scarlet Japanese maple leaves. Not only on the trees, but on the kimonos of the geisha dancers, the handmade wagashi paper used to make wallets and boxes, the cloth handkerchiefs Japanese women carry in their purses, the designs etched and painted on the tea bowls, even the shapes and colors of the confections (also called wagashi) that accompany the tea ceremony.
Like all tour groups, this one had a troublesome member, a person who demanded an inordinate amount of attention. A brusque character who snored so loudly that his two roommates were unable to sleep. I was asked to give him my single room and move in with two older women (who did not seem pleased with the idea) so that his roommates could sleep in peace. A mother and people-pleaser, I at first said yes, but then decided, no, the tour leader would have to find another solution. Looking back, I find it interesting that the day after I stood up for myself, was the day I first encountered the beauty of wagashi, the edible Japanese art form that turns beans, rice flour and sugar into delicate peonies, clouds, and maple leaves.
I had already tried yatsuhashi cookies, a Kyoto specialty, made from rectangles of brown dough laid on metal cylinders of dough so that they curve as they bake. One meaning of the word hashi is bridge and, like many other symbols in Japan, this one has a air of melancholy to it. According to “Must-See in Kyoto,” these crispy cookies with a slight hint of cinnamon represent a bridge made by a mourning mother whose child had drowned. Looking more like the cover over a covered bridge than the bridge itself, today these sweets, both baked and unbaked, are a popular souvenir for tourists from other parts of Japan to take home and are sold at shops lining the avenues leading up to the city’s major temples.
But the pastries I saw that afternoon were different, like the difference between butter cookies and petit fours. In the window of the elegant shop was a plate with a single, exquisite chrysanthemum blossom. Created as a counterpoint for the bitterness of matcha, the powered green tea used in the tea ceremony, the selection of these sweets, shaped and colored to look like flowers and fruits, change with the seasons. I walked in and bought a chrysanthemum namagashi, a fresh, moist cake made from beans and sugar. Like many things of beauty, namagashi do not keep; I ceremoniously consumed mine over a cup of tea in the hotel room.
Returning to Japan in the spring a decade later, this time with my college-age daughter, Tina, in tow, I planned to continue my exploration of Japanese aesthetics in general and wagashi in particular. Arriving the day after the equinox, we were fortunate enough to experience the cherry blossoms in both Tokyo and Kyoto.
Visiting Japan in cherry blossom season requires not only planning but also luck. If the week before you are scheduled to leave is unseasonably warm, the blossoms may open and if the weather turns windy, a white carpet of spent flowers may be all that is left when you arrive. Of course, you can travel further north to catch the blossom wave, but it may be difficult at best to change your reservations, especially if you aren’t fluent in Japanese.
But the risk is worth it, for cherry blossom season is a magical time. Lasting only about 10 days in a given latitude, this season seems to impart a palpable joie de vivre. The magic of this season is much more than a relief from winter, which is fierce only in the far north of the country. Rather, the sakura has become a symbol of the transience of beauty, of youth, and of life itself. In the Samurai period, the cherry blossom’s fall was a metaphor for the goal these warriors had of a glorious death at the height of their prowess. The movie, “The Last Samurai,” makes reference to this in the scenes where the Samurai leader played by Ken Watanabe has first a dream, and then a dying vision of cherry blossoms falling. Cherry blossom season is also a time for special parties, known as sakura-ben, in which families and colleagues gather in parks and gardens to eat and drink under the trees and then stroll along the paths to view the flowers.
One of my students, Anita, a Taiwanese woman who had lived in Japan for more than a decade, invited us for a picnic in Shinjuku Park in a very modern part of Tokyo. While my daughter went off on her own to explore Harajuku, another trendy neighborhood, I met Anita at the Shinjuku station. Anita had made sushi and noodles for lunch, but suggested we stop at a bakery to pick up a couple of slices of cake for dessert. Wandering around the Tokyo Food Hall with its fascinating array of comestibles, I was reminded me of the food department at Harrod’s in London. After checking out all the possibilities, we chose a green tea mousse cake and bottles of cold oolong tea.
The park boasted more than half a dozen types of cherry trees, some with white blossoms, others with pink. Throngs of Japanese walked down the middle aisle, with picnickers crowded beneath the trees. Anita found a suitable spot and spread out the blanket she’d brought along. After the light and delicious lunch, she suggested we go for a stroll. I picked up the blanket and started to shake it out, like I would at home, but she quickly stopped me, a fleeting expression of shock on her face, gently explaining that the grass I was shaking out was likely to end up in our neighbors’ food, so close were we sitting. One of many little reminders that I was far, far from home.
After strolling through the park, we met up with my daughter at the station, then meandered through one of the adjacent department stores. Tina was fascinated by the ballet flats, in bright colors, in silver, with big chunky “jewels,” a style that would hit the U.S. two or three years later. Fortunately for her budget, the largest size was too small. I was fascinated with the idea that an entire 8-story department store, one of half a dozen in the same genre, was entirely geared to women under 25 and that Anita, at 30, felt too old to be shopping there. The bright pink coats in the window, the color of cherry blossoms, only underscored the idea that youth and youthful beauty are transient.
As an older Western woman, this idea makes me uncomfortable, for its corollary is the reminder that life itself is transient, as expressed in one of the four truths of Buddhism, that everyone and everything we love, including our very selves, will age, sicken and die. A passive acceptance, which becomes palatable to me only when I think of the Roman proverb, “Carpe diem,” Seize the day. A reminder that while I look for commonality and seek to understand this other culture, I am still the product of my own culture, still learning to see.
Beauty is still what lures me to Japan. Beauty in the midst of industrialization, modernization, globalization. Beauty created over time by human beings collaborating with the natural world to celebrate the cycle of the seasons and the transience of life. whether in the form of an indigo garment dyed by hand in a family workshop, a tea bowl embellished with swirling maple leaves, a temple rock garden built 300 years ago, a haiku poem that honors the melancholy of a full moon in autumn. The beauty of an old wooden neighborhood shrine to Kannon, the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, rebuilt after being fire-bombed during the war.
On that first trip to Japan, I not only didn’t know how to see, I didn’t really know where to look. I was disappointed that the picturesque Japan described in the travelogues and histories that I had read as a girl was nowhere to be found. Small wonder since the ostensible goal of the trip was to attend the World Expo at Tsukuba, where the entire emphasis was on the world of tomorrow. Not until the end of our week in Tokyo did I happen upon a slice of what I had envisioned in Asakusa, a downtown neighborhood centered on the large shrine of the same name, rebuilt after World War II. Here were quaint craft shops and stalls selling traditional items, like imagawa-yaki, a round pancake filled with an, sweetened adzuki beans, and the floral combs worn with kimonos by geishas and Japanese girls on special birthdays.
Nearly ten years passed before I was able to return to Japan and pick up the thread of my earlier fascination. This time, I was in Kyoto with my mother-in-law for a walking tour of gardens, Buddhist temples, and Shinto shrines. It was late October, but we were lucky enough not to have missed the fall foliage. Everywhere we went, there were golden gingko and scarlet Japanese maple leaves. Not only on the trees, but on the kimonos of the geisha dancers, the handmade wagashi paper used to make wallets and boxes, the cloth handkerchiefs Japanese women carry in their purses, the designs etched and painted on the tea bowls, even the shapes and colors of the confections (also called wagashi) that accompany the tea ceremony.
Like all tour groups, this one had a troublesome member, a person who demanded an inordinate amount of attention. A brusque character who snored so loudly that his two roommates were unable to sleep. I was asked to give him my single room and move in with two older women (who did not seem pleased with the idea) so that his roommates could sleep in peace. A mother and people-pleaser, I at first said yes, but then decided, no, the tour leader would have to find another solution. Looking back, I find it interesting that the day after I stood up for myself, was the day I first encountered the beauty of wagashi, the edible Japanese art form that turns beans, rice flour and sugar into delicate peonies, clouds, and maple leaves.
I had already tried yatsuhashi cookies, a Kyoto specialty, made from rectangles of brown dough laid on metal cylinders of dough so that they curve as they bake. One meaning of the word hashi is bridge and, like many other symbols in Japan, this one has a air of melancholy to it. According to “Must-See in Kyoto,” these crispy cookies with a slight hint of cinnamon represent a bridge made by a mourning mother whose child had drowned. Looking more like the cover over a covered bridge than the bridge itself, today these sweets, both baked and unbaked, are a popular souvenir for tourists from other parts of Japan to take home and are sold at shops lining the avenues leading up to the city’s major temples.
But the pastries I saw that afternoon were different, like the difference between butter cookies and petit fours. In the window of the elegant shop was a plate with a single, exquisite chrysanthemum blossom. Created as a counterpoint for the bitterness of matcha, the powered green tea used in the tea ceremony, the selection of these sweets, shaped and colored to look like flowers and fruits, change with the seasons. I walked in and bought a chrysanthemum namagashi, a fresh, moist cake made from beans and sugar. Like many things of beauty, namagashi do not keep; I ceremoniously consumed mine over a cup of tea in the hotel room.
Returning to Japan in the spring a decade later, this time with my college-age daughter, Tina, in tow, I planned to continue my exploration of Japanese aesthetics in general and wagashi in particular. Arriving the day after the equinox, we were fortunate enough to experience the cherry blossoms in both Tokyo and Kyoto.
Visiting Japan in cherry blossom season requires not only planning but also luck. If the week before you are scheduled to leave is unseasonably warm, the blossoms may open and if the weather turns windy, a white carpet of spent flowers may be all that is left when you arrive. Of course, you can travel further north to catch the blossom wave, but it may be difficult at best to change your reservations, especially if you aren’t fluent in Japanese.
But the risk is worth it, for cherry blossom season is a magical time. Lasting only about 10 days in a given latitude, this season seems to impart a palpable joie de vivre. The magic of this season is much more than a relief from winter, which is fierce only in the far north of the country. Rather, the sakura has become a symbol of the transience of beauty, of youth, and of life itself. In the Samurai period, the cherry blossom’s fall was a metaphor for the goal these warriors had of a glorious death at the height of their prowess. The movie, “The Last Samurai,” makes reference to this in the scenes where the Samurai leader played by Ken Watanabe has first a dream, and then a dying vision of cherry blossoms falling. Cherry blossom season is also a time for special parties, known as sakura-ben, in which families and colleagues gather in parks and gardens to eat and drink under the trees and then stroll along the paths to view the flowers.
One of my students, Anita, a Taiwanese woman who had lived in Japan for more than a decade, invited us for a picnic in Shinjuku Park in a very modern part of Tokyo. While my daughter went off on her own to explore Harajuku, another trendy neighborhood, I met Anita at the Shinjuku station. Anita had made sushi and noodles for lunch, but suggested we stop at a bakery to pick up a couple of slices of cake for dessert. Wandering around the Tokyo Food Hall with its fascinating array of comestibles, I was reminded me of the food department at Harrod’s in London. After checking out all the possibilities, we chose a green tea mousse cake and bottles of cold oolong tea.
The park boasted more than half a dozen types of cherry trees, some with white blossoms, others with pink. Throngs of Japanese walked down the middle aisle, with picnickers crowded beneath the trees. Anita found a suitable spot and spread out the blanket she’d brought along. After the light and delicious lunch, she suggested we go for a stroll. I picked up the blanket and started to shake it out, like I would at home, but she quickly stopped me, a fleeting expression of shock on her face, gently explaining that the grass I was shaking out was likely to end up in our neighbors’ food, so close were we sitting. One of many little reminders that I was far, far from home.
After strolling through the park, we met up with my daughter at the station, then meandered through one of the adjacent department stores. Tina was fascinated by the ballet flats, in bright colors, in silver, with big chunky “jewels,” a style that would hit the U.S. two or three years later. Fortunately for her budget, the largest size was too small. I was fascinated with the idea that an entire 8-story department store, one of half a dozen in the same genre, was entirely geared to women under 25 and that Anita, at 30, felt too old to be shopping there. The bright pink coats in the window, the color of cherry blossoms, only underscored the idea that youth and youthful beauty are transient.
As an older Western woman, this idea makes me uncomfortable, for its corollary is the reminder that life itself is transient, as expressed in one of the four truths of Buddhism, that everyone and everything we love, including our very selves, will age, sicken and die. A passive acceptance, which becomes palatable to me only when I think of the Roman proverb, “Carpe diem,” Seize the day. A reminder that while I look for commonality and seek to understand this other culture, I am still the product of my own culture, still learning to see.
Iceland
Imagine an island in the North Atlantic, whose center is Europe’s largest glacier, where roads end at waterfalls cascading down volcanic mountains, where millions of birds nest, where a belief in magic goes hand-in-hand with a nearly 100 percent literacy rate, where the people can trace their family trees back 1000 years to the Vikings who wrote and starred in the ancient sagas-- and you have a glimpse of Iceland.
The first time I visited Iceland, I was almost 30 and accompanied by my husband and two children, then 18 months and 5 and a half years old. We were on an Icelandic Airlines layover, and in those few days, I fell for the country’s geological charms. This time I am returning alone, my children grown, my marriage a roiling sea, hoping that this island’s wild beauty might soothe my confused and desolate heart.
My first stop after arrival is the Blue Lagoon, a man-made pool of mineral-rich milky blue water, located in the dark, lunar-like hills near the international airport at Keflavik. The sensation of soaking up to my neck in warm water as the cool summer breeze ruffles my hair is exquisite. The sensual delight deepens into profound relaxation as one of the swimsuit-clad masseuses kneads my tired shoulder muscles, while I lie on a floating mattress.
The stress of the flight having melted away, I continue driving the rental car into downtown Reykjavik, to the hostel on a quiet street where I have booked a room. A basement room as it turns out, with casement windows and white stucco walls. The colorful timber houses in this part of town remind me of the houses my children used to make from Lego blocks. I vividly remember walking through a similar neighborhood on another misty summer evening with my young family. Then as now, clouds scuttled across the sky and the sound of seagulls pierced the air. Hoping to distract myself from the swell of melancholy, I walk along the pedestrian-only main shopping street, stopping to browse in a bookstore. Upstairs, I find a café with deliciously moist cakes, fruit teas and strong coffee, and magazines to peruse in both English and Icelandic. Most of the books on the second floor are in English, Iceland’s second language, a good many of them imported from England. Although several of the dozens of British cookbooks look tempting, the prices are on the high side. I do, however, buy a small book of gorgeous photographs of the island as a souvenir.
By this time, I’m ravenous. On that first trip, we ate at the Hard Rock Café, which had just opened a Reykjavik branch, where I had a plate of grilled salmon that tasted amazingly fresh, as though it had just been caught. I have eaten quite a few salmon over the years, but that was perhaps the best, the freshest. Tonight, I pass a quaint restaurant with puffin on the menu and go inside for a lackadaisical lobster dinner. (Puffins are too cute to eat if there are other options.) Next trip, I will go straight for the Italian restaurant and order spaghetti Bolognese.
Despite the jetlag, I sleep most of the night. Like most lodgings in Scandinavia, the hostel offers a hearty breakfast buffet of cold cereals, yogurt, boiled eggs and sandwich fixings: breads, cheeses, pickled fish, ham, and sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, along with strong coffee, black tea, milk and orange juice. I toast a slice of rye bread, spread orange marmalade on one side, top it with mild cheese and cucumber slices and eat it between sips of tea. The sky is bright but cloudy, and I wish that I had brought a warmer sweater. If I decide that I need one, at least I am in the right place to purchase one; sweaters seems to be one of the country’s major products, judging from the plethora available in the shops on the main street.
The first time I came to Iceland, I was the only one in the family who didn’t get an Icelandic sweater. Instead, I was cold, rationalizing my choice not to take care of myself by telling myself that I wouldn’t have any use for it back in Los Angeles. Later back home, I had to cajole the kids to put on their itchy woolen pullovers and caps to pose for that year’s Christmas card photo.
After breakfast, I stretch my legs with another stroll around downtown, then drive northeast out of town towards an area that tour operators have named, “The Golden Circle.” Not that this place is teeming with tourists. In less than an hour of leaving the capital, I am in a landscape with few signs of human habitation. There are no billboards, no electrical towers or telephone poles, no factories, farms or houses, no barbed wire fences, no sheep. Only the mountain rising to my left, the road beneath me and the occasional passing car. The only other sign of life is the odd Icelandic horse, singly or in pairs. Short enough to qualify as ponies but stout enough to carry an armed Viking, these animals have a unique gait, called a tolt. Since my first trip, I have secretly dreamed of taking a pony trek into the island’s glacial interior, but the only move I’ve made in that direction was one summer’s worth of riding lessons, nearly a decade ago now.
In earlier centuries, Icelanders rode their ponies every two years to Thingvellir, a plain that includes the continental divide, for the Althing, the world’s oldest continuous parliament. Not only were laws passed at the Althing but also grievances were aired, cases tried and judgments carried out. As I walk the trail alongside the meadow of Thingvellir National Park, I try to imagine what it must have looked like with crowds of men and women, horses and tents. Off the main walkway, I detour to two small pools where women accused of witchcraft were drowned and pay my respects to these victims.
Not only is this plain a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also where the tectonic plates beneath of continents of North America and Europe meet—and slide. No wonder there are so many earthquakes here. Walking under the shadow of the ridge of black rock, I remember one night during that earlier trip when we were staying in a tiny cabin a quarter-mile from the nearest farm-house, off a dirt road between the sea and a dormant volcano, and how I was too afraid to light the propane heater after an earthquake visibly shook the bunk beds. That night I understood intuitively how Icelanders could still believe in magic.
Leaving Thingvellir, I drive towards Geysir, the geological wonder after which all others geysers are named. In a field pocked with bubbling hot pots, Geysir sends a burst of hot water into the air at regular intervals. Nearby is Gullfoss, a huge double waterfall. On this cloudy summer day, there are a couple of dozen visitors wandering the path between these two, eating ice cream or a lamb sandwich (slices of lamb on soft flatbread, this is Icelandic fast food) bought at the kiosk. Inside the visitor’s center, another ten or 12 people browse the racks of Icelandic woolens or the shelves of books and tchotchkes.
On my first trip here, there was no visitor center and, on that late August day at the very end of the tourist season, no other tourists. Having been to Niagara Falls with its masses of visitors, shops and tour boats, I was stunned by the contrast. Not only were there no other people, stores, or boat rides, there wasn’t even a guardrail between the dirt path that ended in a rocky shelf and the edge of the falls. It was just the four of us and the roar of the falling water. There was a lone marker, a stone plinth with a engraving of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a local woman who in the 1920s fought to save the falls from being dammed for hydropower. I took a photo of my little daughter, dressed in pink Icelandic sweater and cap, standing in front of the marker, and one of my son with his father behind him on the edge of the falls. Seeing these places again, I feel the bittersweetness of nostalgia and melancholy at the passing of time wash over me.
On the way back. I stop for a bit at Thingvellir Lake to sip some hot tea from a thermos cup and nibble on my lamb sandwich as I look out on this placid deep blue lake in the harsh hills, and the grass and tiny wildflowers at my feet, soaking in the serenity of nature and her healing power. I know that I will return here again another year, and that I will be yet again changed and the same.
The first time I visited Iceland, I was almost 30 and accompanied by my husband and two children, then 18 months and 5 and a half years old. We were on an Icelandic Airlines layover, and in those few days, I fell for the country’s geological charms. This time I am returning alone, my children grown, my marriage a roiling sea, hoping that this island’s wild beauty might soothe my confused and desolate heart.
My first stop after arrival is the Blue Lagoon, a man-made pool of mineral-rich milky blue water, located in the dark, lunar-like hills near the international airport at Keflavik. The sensation of soaking up to my neck in warm water as the cool summer breeze ruffles my hair is exquisite. The sensual delight deepens into profound relaxation as one of the swimsuit-clad masseuses kneads my tired shoulder muscles, while I lie on a floating mattress.
The stress of the flight having melted away, I continue driving the rental car into downtown Reykjavik, to the hostel on a quiet street where I have booked a room. A basement room as it turns out, with casement windows and white stucco walls. The colorful timber houses in this part of town remind me of the houses my children used to make from Lego blocks. I vividly remember walking through a similar neighborhood on another misty summer evening with my young family. Then as now, clouds scuttled across the sky and the sound of seagulls pierced the air. Hoping to distract myself from the swell of melancholy, I walk along the pedestrian-only main shopping street, stopping to browse in a bookstore. Upstairs, I find a café with deliciously moist cakes, fruit teas and strong coffee, and magazines to peruse in both English and Icelandic. Most of the books on the second floor are in English, Iceland’s second language, a good many of them imported from England. Although several of the dozens of British cookbooks look tempting, the prices are on the high side. I do, however, buy a small book of gorgeous photographs of the island as a souvenir.
By this time, I’m ravenous. On that first trip, we ate at the Hard Rock Café, which had just opened a Reykjavik branch, where I had a plate of grilled salmon that tasted amazingly fresh, as though it had just been caught. I have eaten quite a few salmon over the years, but that was perhaps the best, the freshest. Tonight, I pass a quaint restaurant with puffin on the menu and go inside for a lackadaisical lobster dinner. (Puffins are too cute to eat if there are other options.) Next trip, I will go straight for the Italian restaurant and order spaghetti Bolognese.
Despite the jetlag, I sleep most of the night. Like most lodgings in Scandinavia, the hostel offers a hearty breakfast buffet of cold cereals, yogurt, boiled eggs and sandwich fixings: breads, cheeses, pickled fish, ham, and sliced cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers, along with strong coffee, black tea, milk and orange juice. I toast a slice of rye bread, spread orange marmalade on one side, top it with mild cheese and cucumber slices and eat it between sips of tea. The sky is bright but cloudy, and I wish that I had brought a warmer sweater. If I decide that I need one, at least I am in the right place to purchase one; sweaters seems to be one of the country’s major products, judging from the plethora available in the shops on the main street.
The first time I came to Iceland, I was the only one in the family who didn’t get an Icelandic sweater. Instead, I was cold, rationalizing my choice not to take care of myself by telling myself that I wouldn’t have any use for it back in Los Angeles. Later back home, I had to cajole the kids to put on their itchy woolen pullovers and caps to pose for that year’s Christmas card photo.
After breakfast, I stretch my legs with another stroll around downtown, then drive northeast out of town towards an area that tour operators have named, “The Golden Circle.” Not that this place is teeming with tourists. In less than an hour of leaving the capital, I am in a landscape with few signs of human habitation. There are no billboards, no electrical towers or telephone poles, no factories, farms or houses, no barbed wire fences, no sheep. Only the mountain rising to my left, the road beneath me and the occasional passing car. The only other sign of life is the odd Icelandic horse, singly or in pairs. Short enough to qualify as ponies but stout enough to carry an armed Viking, these animals have a unique gait, called a tolt. Since my first trip, I have secretly dreamed of taking a pony trek into the island’s glacial interior, but the only move I’ve made in that direction was one summer’s worth of riding lessons, nearly a decade ago now.
In earlier centuries, Icelanders rode their ponies every two years to Thingvellir, a plain that includes the continental divide, for the Althing, the world’s oldest continuous parliament. Not only were laws passed at the Althing but also grievances were aired, cases tried and judgments carried out. As I walk the trail alongside the meadow of Thingvellir National Park, I try to imagine what it must have looked like with crowds of men and women, horses and tents. Off the main walkway, I detour to two small pools where women accused of witchcraft were drowned and pay my respects to these victims.
Not only is this plain a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is also where the tectonic plates beneath of continents of North America and Europe meet—and slide. No wonder there are so many earthquakes here. Walking under the shadow of the ridge of black rock, I remember one night during that earlier trip when we were staying in a tiny cabin a quarter-mile from the nearest farm-house, off a dirt road between the sea and a dormant volcano, and how I was too afraid to light the propane heater after an earthquake visibly shook the bunk beds. That night I understood intuitively how Icelanders could still believe in magic.
Leaving Thingvellir, I drive towards Geysir, the geological wonder after which all others geysers are named. In a field pocked with bubbling hot pots, Geysir sends a burst of hot water into the air at regular intervals. Nearby is Gullfoss, a huge double waterfall. On this cloudy summer day, there are a couple of dozen visitors wandering the path between these two, eating ice cream or a lamb sandwich (slices of lamb on soft flatbread, this is Icelandic fast food) bought at the kiosk. Inside the visitor’s center, another ten or 12 people browse the racks of Icelandic woolens or the shelves of books and tchotchkes.
On my first trip here, there was no visitor center and, on that late August day at the very end of the tourist season, no other tourists. Having been to Niagara Falls with its masses of visitors, shops and tour boats, I was stunned by the contrast. Not only were there no other people, stores, or boat rides, there wasn’t even a guardrail between the dirt path that ended in a rocky shelf and the edge of the falls. It was just the four of us and the roar of the falling water. There was a lone marker, a stone plinth with a engraving of Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a local woman who in the 1920s fought to save the falls from being dammed for hydropower. I took a photo of my little daughter, dressed in pink Icelandic sweater and cap, standing in front of the marker, and one of my son with his father behind him on the edge of the falls. Seeing these places again, I feel the bittersweetness of nostalgia and melancholy at the passing of time wash over me.
On the way back. I stop for a bit at Thingvellir Lake to sip some hot tea from a thermos cup and nibble on my lamb sandwich as I look out on this placid deep blue lake in the harsh hills, and the grass and tiny wildflowers at my feet, soaking in the serenity of nature and her healing power. I know that I will return here again another year, and that I will be yet again changed and the same.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
A Weekend in the City of Angels
Los Angeles is a city that many love to hate. If only it didn’t have so many people, so many cars, so much traffic, so much pollution. Whatever happened to the valley filled with orange groves, where the beautiful were discovered in soda fountains and transformed into stars? And yet this polygot city of angels still draws the young, filled with dreams of making their creative mark on the silver screen, as well as the ambitious poor from south of the border and beyond, hoping to make a better life.
What I love about Los Angeles is the visual creativity that permeates this metropolis from the major fine arts museums (LA County Museum of Art, the L.A. MOMA, the Norton Simon in Pasadena, the Getty in west L.A. and Malibu, to name a few) to the quirky vintage stores and hip fashion and interior design shops of Robertson Blvd., Los Feliz and Melrose Avenues, and the graceful Spanish-style stucco bungalows and apartment complexes that dot the city.
Now that my daughter lives in L.A., I manage to spend a weekend there every few months. The best time to visit is in the winter when the air looks the clearest and it is even possible to see the hills that ring the valley.
Arriving on a Friday night, I suggest dinner at Cha Cha Cha’s, a West Hollywood restaurant with Caribbean-inspired food (coconut shrimp, jerk chicken, vegetable-filled sopapillas). Over a margarita, corn tortilla ships, fresh salsa or guacamole, we catch up while taking in the festive surroundings: statues of saints, strings of Christmas lights, punched tin star-shaped lanterns, and floral-patterned vinyl tablecloths in a riot of colors.
This city has endless possibilities for night life, but one of my favorites is the rooftop garden bar at the Standard Hotel downtown, where classic movies like “Cool Hand Luke” are projected on the walls and the dance floor is tiny but lively. If the crowd seems too much, there are small pods, complete with waterbed mattresses, to escape to. Downstairs is a coffee shop that is worth at least a look-see for the 1960s décor.
Saturday morning, we head to the closest Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a local chain that makes the best honey bran muffins. To drink, I like the green tea ice blend, a creamy concoction made with matcha, the concentrated green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Or, if I’m off caffeine, I might have a tea latte with herbal Swedish berry tea. For brunch, we might go to Toast, a trendy place with delicious huevos rancheros (corn tortilla topped with beans, salsa and fried eggs). I find it sad and slightly ridiculous that so many of the patrons waiting to be seated have the same blonde hair, flawless tans, and surgically-enhanced busts. Other times, we opt for the organic and very French Figaro Bistro, for steamed mussels with French fries or a frisée salad with poached egg and a bowl of café au lait or a mimosa. I love browsing the fashion and interior design boutiques in the same neighborhood as Toast as well as the vintage clothing store next to Figaro. On my last vintage shopping spree., I found a Versace wrap dress for $119 for my daughter and a $14 cropped ladylike jacket in a lovely shade of blue with white top stitching for me. The latter perfectly matched the blue and white “Question Everything” button I found in the nearby independent Skylight Books, one of the best bookstores anywhere.
A trip to Los Angeles wouldn't be complete without at least a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean so in the afternoon we drive to Santa Monica, stopping first at the cupcake bakery Sprinkles for an afternoon pick-me-up. It might not be a quick stop, since there is often a line going out the door, but it will definitely be worth the wait for one of their red velvet cupcakes with vanilla icing, a Southern specialty, or any of the other dozen-plus flavors.
After we’ve on the beach or browsed the shops on Main Street in Santa Monica, I might suggest dinner at Raw, which serves vegan raw or “living” food. The term “raw” in this context means either uncooked or not heated above 118 degrees F., the temperature at which the food’s “living” enzymes die. Raw cuisine encompasses much more than green salads, gazpachos and fruit smoothies. Think Mexican pizza, pumpkin tortellini, spring rolls, cheesecake, apple pie, all made from such raw ingredients as nuts, seeds, sprouted grains, and coconuts, as well as fruits and vegetables, transformed by the low-heat of the dehydrator into reasonable facsimiles of the real thing. My favorite dish is the faux eel sushi, which has the same crunchy, meaty texture and salty flavor as the original. The chocolate parfait, made from coconut and raw cacao is also scrumptious.
Wandering around the farmer’s market is a fun way to spend Sunday morning. I like to check out the tables heaped with fresh produce and flowers and the booths with take-out food and drinks. We might try a strawberry lemonade or a bottle of sugarcane juice or a plate of Korean barbeque. Half a dozen or more artisans sell their wares as well, from handmade soaps to summer dresses to one-of-a-kind boxes and bags decoupaged with images ranging from Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits to Maxfield Parrish’s ethereal youths.
Sunday afternoon is a great time to explore the Getty, which now has two locations, the remodeled original Getty Villa in Malibu with the ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art collection and the Frank Gehry-designed Getty Center on the west side of Los Angeles, housing European art from the Middle Ages to the present. The former (which is free to enter but requires advance reservations) is the home of one of my all-time favorite pieces of art: a 4th century Sicilian sculpture of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans). Here in Los Angeles, a city permeated by a culture exalting youth and beauty, one might expect the usual image of the goddess as girlishly coy and scantily-clad. But instead, this majestic sculpture of Aphrodite, with one foot forward, her arms raised and her loose robes billowing, stands as an apt reminder of the awesome power of beauty, sexual desire, and love in human life, a power as unpredictable as that of the nearby Pacific Ocean.
A last glimpse back at Aphrodite, then the ocean, the freeway, the airport and then home again.
What I love about Los Angeles is the visual creativity that permeates this metropolis from the major fine arts museums (LA County Museum of Art, the L.A. MOMA, the Norton Simon in Pasadena, the Getty in west L.A. and Malibu, to name a few) to the quirky vintage stores and hip fashion and interior design shops of Robertson Blvd., Los Feliz and Melrose Avenues, and the graceful Spanish-style stucco bungalows and apartment complexes that dot the city.
Now that my daughter lives in L.A., I manage to spend a weekend there every few months. The best time to visit is in the winter when the air looks the clearest and it is even possible to see the hills that ring the valley.
Arriving on a Friday night, I suggest dinner at Cha Cha Cha’s, a West Hollywood restaurant with Caribbean-inspired food (coconut shrimp, jerk chicken, vegetable-filled sopapillas). Over a margarita, corn tortilla ships, fresh salsa or guacamole, we catch up while taking in the festive surroundings: statues of saints, strings of Christmas lights, punched tin star-shaped lanterns, and floral-patterned vinyl tablecloths in a riot of colors.
This city has endless possibilities for night life, but one of my favorites is the rooftop garden bar at the Standard Hotel downtown, where classic movies like “Cool Hand Luke” are projected on the walls and the dance floor is tiny but lively. If the crowd seems too much, there are small pods, complete with waterbed mattresses, to escape to. Downstairs is a coffee shop that is worth at least a look-see for the 1960s décor.
Saturday morning, we head to the closest Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, a local chain that makes the best honey bran muffins. To drink, I like the green tea ice blend, a creamy concoction made with matcha, the concentrated green tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony. Or, if I’m off caffeine, I might have a tea latte with herbal Swedish berry tea. For brunch, we might go to Toast, a trendy place with delicious huevos rancheros (corn tortilla topped with beans, salsa and fried eggs). I find it sad and slightly ridiculous that so many of the patrons waiting to be seated have the same blonde hair, flawless tans, and surgically-enhanced busts. Other times, we opt for the organic and very French Figaro Bistro, for steamed mussels with French fries or a frisée salad with poached egg and a bowl of café au lait or a mimosa. I love browsing the fashion and interior design boutiques in the same neighborhood as Toast as well as the vintage clothing store next to Figaro. On my last vintage shopping spree., I found a Versace wrap dress for $119 for my daughter and a $14 cropped ladylike jacket in a lovely shade of blue with white top stitching for me. The latter perfectly matched the blue and white “Question Everything” button I found in the nearby independent Skylight Books, one of the best bookstores anywhere.
A trip to Los Angeles wouldn't be complete without at least a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean so in the afternoon we drive to Santa Monica, stopping first at the cupcake bakery Sprinkles for an afternoon pick-me-up. It might not be a quick stop, since there is often a line going out the door, but it will definitely be worth the wait for one of their red velvet cupcakes with vanilla icing, a Southern specialty, or any of the other dozen-plus flavors.
After we’ve on the beach or browsed the shops on Main Street in Santa Monica, I might suggest dinner at Raw, which serves vegan raw or “living” food. The term “raw” in this context means either uncooked or not heated above 118 degrees F., the temperature at which the food’s “living” enzymes die. Raw cuisine encompasses much more than green salads, gazpachos and fruit smoothies. Think Mexican pizza, pumpkin tortellini, spring rolls, cheesecake, apple pie, all made from such raw ingredients as nuts, seeds, sprouted grains, and coconuts, as well as fruits and vegetables, transformed by the low-heat of the dehydrator into reasonable facsimiles of the real thing. My favorite dish is the faux eel sushi, which has the same crunchy, meaty texture and salty flavor as the original. The chocolate parfait, made from coconut and raw cacao is also scrumptious.
Wandering around the farmer’s market is a fun way to spend Sunday morning. I like to check out the tables heaped with fresh produce and flowers and the booths with take-out food and drinks. We might try a strawberry lemonade or a bottle of sugarcane juice or a plate of Korean barbeque. Half a dozen or more artisans sell their wares as well, from handmade soaps to summer dresses to one-of-a-kind boxes and bags decoupaged with images ranging from Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits to Maxfield Parrish’s ethereal youths.
Sunday afternoon is a great time to explore the Getty, which now has two locations, the remodeled original Getty Villa in Malibu with the ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art collection and the Frank Gehry-designed Getty Center on the west side of Los Angeles, housing European art from the Middle Ages to the present. The former (which is free to enter but requires advance reservations) is the home of one of my all-time favorite pieces of art: a 4th century Sicilian sculpture of Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans). Here in Los Angeles, a city permeated by a culture exalting youth and beauty, one might expect the usual image of the goddess as girlishly coy and scantily-clad. But instead, this majestic sculpture of Aphrodite, with one foot forward, her arms raised and her loose robes billowing, stands as an apt reminder of the awesome power of beauty, sexual desire, and love in human life, a power as unpredictable as that of the nearby Pacific Ocean.
A last glimpse back at Aphrodite, then the ocean, the freeway, the airport and then home again.
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