Return

We’ve passed the nadir and are swinging back toward the light. The light is lasting longer, even if it’s imperceptible right now.

One of my Twitter pen pals, Lou Knight, asked the other day what our one word of the year might be. At first I thought mine was focus, but as I’ve thought about it more, I’ve decided it’s actually return. Because my focus wavers, I wobble and wibble (hee hee), but every moment I have the opportunity to return to the object of my focus. I get to practice this in meditation, gently drawing my mind back to my breath or my mantra. Likewise, there are a myriad of distractions, and I get pulled by them, and then I notice and return my attention back to the work at hand, whatever that might be.

So, in the spirit of return, I’m taking up my friend GG Silverman’s challenge to embrace your fears for total writing awesomeness. GG shared her fear:

I told her my deepest, darkest fear: I was afraid that when I fully came out of my shell as a writer, that I’d be a scary, ugly spider instead of a beautiful butterfly, and that people would hate me.

Her response changed my life:
“It’s okay to be a scary spider. The world needs spiders, too.”

And the challenge:

Your assignment: take ten minutes to make a list of things that scare you the most, then the next time you have ten free minutes, write about one of them, and go deep. I guarantee it will be some of your most powerful, emotional writing. For extra credit, post the results on your own blog, and tag me with your link on Twitter (I’m @GG_Silverman) using the hashtag #FearlessWriting, or let me know if this exercise inspired an amazing story. I’d love to hear from you.

This challenge nearly sets my teeth on edge and turns my innards to liquid, but what the hell, it’s probably not going to kill me. Ha! Would love it if anyone else wants to join me in “hugging some spiders” this week. I don’t know that I’ll post what I write, but I may share a snippet. Who’s in?

52 Photos: 21 & Over | No Firearms

This week’s prompt was “First Day. The only requirement was that the photo had to be taken on New Year’s Day.

Sometimes a picture speaks for itself, and sometimes there really are no words. Let me just say that this is the front door of an establishment in my neighborhood that styles itself a tavern. A tiny, tiny tavern.

Fuji-san Appears on Time

This past September I traveled through Japan with my parents. My mom and I were heading back to Tokyo for our last few days. My mom was very excited by the possibility of seeing Mt. Fuji from the train, the closest we would get to this famous and sacred mountain.

We loved riding the Shinkansen, which is an elegant and efficient mode of travel. A little trivia: the seats are designed to swivel on their mounts, so you can turn them around. I loved knowing this. We even availed ourselves of this feature a few times, so we could face each other while we zipped through the landscape.

This was our last ride on the Bullet Train, and we are zooming past everything. It feels like we’ve reached the future. My mom gets more and more excited about seeing Mt. Fuji until she overcomes her own sense of propriety and asks a group of 4 women traveling together when we might see Fuji-san. They confer with each other and stop the conductor to ask him as well. Finally they arrive at a consensus: 2:45 p.m.

We continue to stare out the window, as if our eyeballs fixed on the horizon could make it materialize. At 2:32 (more or less), I catch a glimpse of what appears to be a volcanic dome, rising from the ground. I stand up and wave my arms at the demure group of ladies, pointing out the window. “Fuji-san,” I say to them. “Fuji-san.”

“No,” they tell me. They point to their watches and shake their heads, disappointed that I do not seem to understand how things work in Japan. Everything runs on its schedule, and the mountain will appear when it’s the right time. My mom and I continue to press our faces to the window, catching our breath as the mountain grows larger and larger. There are hills that occlude our sight, so it comes and goes. And finally, we reach the plain with an unobstructed view.

We turn to our Japanese travel companions and they smile at us, assured that it is now the proper time and Fuji-san has made its appearance. All is right with the world.

One Year Ago

Happy blog birthday to me. I’ve posted 53 times in the last year, averaging once a week. I started this last year with the intention of it helping me find my voice. I wasn’t sure where it would go. It still feels very nascent, and I’m fine with that. There’s lots of room for me to go where I want. A lot of my focus has been on the 52 Photos Project, which has been really fun – combining my love of photography with my love of language and words.

Today I just wanted to share this photo I took on Christmas Eve (above). The light felt so thick, as if it had heft, and I had no idea when I pointed my camera in this direction that it would capture that honeyed sky.

You can get the idea here:

And here:

Thanks for coming along with me on this ride. I’m looking forward to what 2014 will bring!

52 Photos: Holiday Traditions

This week’s prompt: Holiday Traditions.

Last week a man asked me how my Christmas preparations were going. I cringed, took a deep breath, and confessed to him that I don’t celebrate. I told him I don’t like telling people that, because I don’t want to ruin their enjoyment of the holiday. He took it with good cheer and I felt okay, this time.

I was struggling with this prompt, because Hannukah was so early in the month, it feels like it was in another season. Besides which, I can only seem to muster up enough effort to light candles. And this year we got gelted into buying some chocolate coins.

For the second year in a row, there has been a small holiday event at the park down the street from us. We are quickly coming to love this tradition, which includes the fabulous Beaconettes, a choral group from Beacon Hill in Seattle, who take familiar songs and add their own twist for extra enjoyment.

I don’t have any pictures of my own, but we cap off our festivities every year by going to the show Homo for the Holidays. It really does feel like family, and every year we return to laugh ourselves silly.

I hope you all are enjoying the day and holiday, no matter what you find yourselves doing. Thank you for reading, for cheering me on, and for being who you are. That is the greatest gift I could ever receive.

52 Photos: Polka Dots

This week’s prompt was polka dots. I roamed far and wide, spied with my little eye and finally came home, to this:

Which, I might add, in addition to be fantastically polka dotted, is a great spatula. Since I’m not feeling full of verve, let me direct you to this lovely piece: A Brief History of Polka Dots. Especially this:

“Polka dots need not be emasculating,” said Anna Akbari, wardrobe consultant and founder of the styling business Closet Catharsis. Akbari, who teaches a course entitled “Fashion and Power” at NYU, added that men wearing polka dots “demonstrates that they pay attention to fashion, that they’re fashion-focused.” Other renowned male advocates of the polka dot include Marc Jacobs, with his “Dotty” collection and Dot perfume (jasmine, orange blossom and honeysuckle), and the artist Damien Hirst, notorious for his sterile, vertigo-inducing dot paintings.

52 Photos: Dessert

This week’s prompt was dessert.

If you give me the choice between a chocolate dessert and a fruit dessert, I will almost always choose the fruit (har har). Even within fruit, there’s a hierarchy, and the citrus sits at the top. Since I only cook/bake vegan at home, home made lemon bars are a treat I’ve gone without for a Very. Long. Time. I have always loved them, and have tried making a few vegan recipes over the years that just disappoint me. I was ready for my heart to be broken again with this one, particularly since the lemon topping uses agar agar flakes, which can have a strong and distinct flavor.

I’m happy to announce that this one wins, in every way. Flavor, texture, and even visually, it is all appealing. There is the added bonus of the lack of egg flavor, the one thing I actually don’t like about the regular lemon bars.

I bake pretty regularly, and despite what I say about the fruit, most of what I make has chocolate in it.

Chocolate thumbprint cookies:

Chocolate crinkle cookies:

And my favorite rich treat, vegan peanut butter cream cheese brownie with chocolate chips:

And sometimes I just like to buy someone else’s treats:

What’s your favorite dessert? What do you like for someone else to make for you? What do you like to make for others?

Vegan Cookery

Heh. I love the word “cookery.” It just sounds so … bad-ass and blasphemous. Last night I was asked to share some of my favorite vegan recipes. Since I get this question often enough, I figured it was time to do a blog post. I’m going to rec some of my favorite cookbooks and then point out specific recipes that I love from them. This is in no way comprehensive, but just what came to mind. If the cookbook is out of print and you can’t get it, let me know and I will share the recipe you would like.

Without further ado:

Cooking with PETA
You can say what you want about the organization, but if it hadn’t been for this cookbook, I don’t think my girlfriend would have stayed vegan very long.

Crispy Tofu Cubes (we add green bell pepper)
Golden Vegetable Noodle Soup
Beefless Stew (we use seitan instead of TVP)
Tofu Scrambler

Vegan With a Vengeance
Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero really changed things in our house. We particularly love:

carrot bisque – add a squeeze of lime juice!
make your own seitan!
raspberry blackout cake
scones
I make a pesto recipe that is very close to the one here, except mine has a little bit of miso in it instead of nutritional yeast
gnocchi
peanut sauce

Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen

Make your own garam masala!
broccoli with garlic and mustard seeds
spicy kebabs (we use seitan instead of lamb – serve in a wrap with baked yam, squeeze some lime on top, yum yum

Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian

Mock Lamb Curry (I just sub soy sour cream for the dairy)
A chickpea curry recipe from Trinidad and Tobago

Sundays at the Moosewood:

Ethiopian Lentils
Veggie Pot Pie
Biscuits (to make buttermilk, I just put ~1tsp of apple cider vinegar in the soy milk)

The Candle Cafe Cookbook has THE BEST spanikopita recipe, vegan or no.

And we have one recipe that we LOVE from Ron Pickarski’s Eco-Cuisine – seitan burgers. Do yourself a favor and skip the hazelnut cheesecake with the whole wheat couscous crust, though.

We also have all three dessert cookbooks by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero: Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and Vegan Pie in the Sky. You can find all three here: Post Punk Kitchen: Vegan Baking and Cooking.

I have a few recipes that I just acquired. This is one of my favorites. It’s fairly easy and will wow your friends: Green beans and tofu in a Thai coconut sauce

Would love to hear what some of your favorite cookbooks and recipes are. Please share!

Week 30: On My Way

This week, for 52 Photos, the prompt was On My Way.

One of the things I observed during my trip to Japan was the groups of school children taking trips. We often came across them in the train stations, where they would sit quietly in the middle of the floor. Sometimes we saw them on the platforms, waiting for a train. There was even a group of high school students at the airport the day I left. Turned out, they were on my flight!

But my favorite picture that I snapped was this group of children with their bright yellow hats the day we went to Miyajima. They all had buddies and walked in neat rows. This small bunch had gotten separated, and they looked like ducklings to me. They were on their way.

I thought I’d throw in some actual ducklings:

And the famous Make Way for Ducklings in Boston:

Passion and Suffering

Last month I saw someone ask on Twitter, “What are you willing to suffer for?” My knee-jerk response was, “Nothing. I’m not willing to suffer for anything.” But let me unpack this more.

The root of the word “passion,” from the Latin pasi, means “to suffer.”

After I returned from my 3-month trip to SE Asia in 2011, I realized that I wanted to change my orientation from alleviating suffering (which is predicated on the notion that suffering has to continue) to increasing joy (there can never be too much joy). This was profound for me. I started a “more joy” project, to increase my own awareness about what created more joy for myself.

And in the couple of years since I started exploring this idea, I’ve discovered something along the way, which was made abundantly clear to me when I was walking around Kamakura, Japan last month. I was beyond exhausted, and yet, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep experiencing what there was to see. And it was one of the best days I spent in Japan.

When there is something I feel passionate about, when I am enjoying myself, even though there is discomfort, I am not distracted by it.

I have been searching for a long time, looking for my place, my people, where I might fit in, where I might lose my self-consciousness, but I’ve also been hiding. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve started to be honest about what gives me joy, to say it’s okay to enjoy life, and to follow the things that bring me joy. Other than my relationships, the only other things I’ve lost myself in is the process of writing.

I have a long way to go to improve my craft, and there are definitely things that are difficult and challenging, but always, always, is the feeling of enjoyment. And now that I think of it, anything that is sustainable and long-lasting for me has to have the element of joy. Otherwise, what’s the point?

What brings you joy? What sustains you through the dark times?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Slow Bloom Blog

Embrace YOUR pace. No one yells at a flower to bloom faster.