Last call...

This is the last time I update the ether with the progress of my guided tour until my next birthday.  This place I love so much has served it's purpose. You cannot serve two masters or two blogs. Actually,  in my case, it's
three, thanks to these lovely ladies..  I grieve, but I have to confess that I wouldn't even care except that  I just ordered business cards for A Guided Tour so that I could feel more official when I asked if I could take photos.  I'm going to get another set for Cooked Heads. It could be that I'm reading Jane Austen right now, and what is a business card if not a calling card for someone with an official purpose.

Until February...   to deep love, to perpetual bliss, and to "drinking stars"

It's not Paris, but...

...it's still travel.  I booked my flight today.  I'm going to see my family in Houston, a city that has a bad rap. In some respects it's deserved, but Houston is also something other than strip malls, congested sprawl and

the very high pressure system that moves in and squats over the city all summer, every day between mid-March and late-October, which is why I'm going the first part of November.  It also home.

The art of the "doodle"

Almost ten years ago, I bought my husband a leather bound journal because, for a while, he thought he wanted all the grief that being a writer brings.  He never once cracked the back, so eventually, in a moment of deep need, I did.   In the years that followed I'd filled it with menus and notes, drawings and groceries lists, wine labels and the thin strips of linen paper the clerk at Jo Malone's gave to me after she'd sprayed them with Blue Agave and Cacao and 154.  They kept falling out and I kept insisting they stay within the creamy yellow pages to remind me of that day, a particularly nice one.
A few weeks ago, I lost it.  I mourned and moved on to the point that I'm on the lookout for another, but I hope somewhere, someone is enjoying that coffee stained book bound in caramel colored leather.
Maybe it will end up here:

Just lovely

I went to the place that made this:

because I'm reading Emma for the first time and found C.E. Brock's watercolors from the late 19th two volume release of Austen's book.

In case you'd enjoy:
The rest of them

Beautiful things...

...for a certain happy people, and you know who you are.

While ( bargain=true) Shop here;

Take off your shoes..

The place is so surreal sitting as it does in Malibu, California, that I don't mind the broad expanse of blistering marble on my bare feet in the August heat, though I was grateful for the cool water I used to clean my feet before I put them back in my shoes.  I can't imagine it being any cooler in the heat of Mumbai, or Agra, unless it is by moon light.  

Malibu Hindu Temple
1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Rd.
Calabasas, CA

I don't realize it at the time, but my traveling companion and I unknowing crash a ceremony of some sort. We enter a small building in the center of the complex where a young Hindu couple are holding their days old baby in one corner and in a very different corner an Indian grandmother scowls at the interlopers. I didn't see her, because I was so determined to absorb the experience of it all.  My traveling companion told me we'd been given the "stink eye", my words, not hers.  I use the expression because I suspect the grandmother was giving us the Hindi equivalent.  For all my heartfelt intent to show only the respect I felt, I made a mistake of oversight. I lay in bed that night and I feel bad, but only for a moment.  I've been clumsy. I've offended her in the place where she and her family mark birth, life and death, but I also realize I really have traveled and have committed the unintentional offenses one makes when one is out of place.  I forgive myself, hope the grandmother will and think,  "Namaste,"  in her direction, in the direction of her grandchild, and in the direction of all the other people who at least tolerated us for the afternoon we spent trying to see the world through their eyes

I've often quoted E.B. Browning's take on "seeing".  Those who see take off their shoes in reverence for all that is.  The rest sit round the common bush that is afire and pluck blackberries. I should have paid more attention at breakfast because the blackberry syrup I poured on to my pancakes that morning was trying to give me a heads up. 

Lust

I have pined for India since I sat in the The Clay Oven while a man named Pravine talked about his home country. As he talked, I could see the whole of the Western hemisphere, including his own restaurant, retreat from his awareness.  His body was in Irvine, California, but the parts that matter were in Mumbai. It was as inspirational to hear as the yogurt and rose petal jelly was to eat. Pravine’s wife makes it from the flowers that grow in their garden and each tiny spoonful was an orgy of exotic floral sweetness bathing my tongue.  As deserts go, it was a little obscene now that I think about it.

The pining only got worse after a recent dinner during which a man who was both born in Tamil Nadu and has such a deep love for his home country that he has every intention of returning to India with his family next year, told me that there wasn’t much to see in Agra other than the Taj Mahal.  Like you’d need more.  He’s Indian. His expectations are a lot higher than mine, but he did say  I should go anyway. 

     “When you go to Agra, time your trip so that you can see the it during the day, but wait until night fall and go back.  You need to see it by the light of a full moon.”

 I would have kissed him on the mouth for saying that, but I’d just met him, my husband doesn’t like that sort of thing and in fairness it really is bad form. Still, I’ve had enough foreplay.  I’m taking a day trip to India.

          That is much easier to do if you live close to Artesia, California than say, Winnsboro, Texas, but I suspect it’s do-able even then.  The internet, the library and your local grocery store make it so.   Do a google search for images of India to fill your mind with what your feet can't experience. Go to the library and check out every single beautiful book you can find about the place. If you haven’t already, read Kipling’s The Jungle book, or as I’m doing now A Passage to India, though it’s a little dark unless you like cultural misunderstanding as a plot.  For something lighter, read or at the very least go see Eat Pray Love

Go to the store and buy a bottle of curry powder and throw more than you think you should into a pot of browned deboned chicken thighs and onions, cook it until the curry releases its story and your house smells like not your house Add some whipping cream ( you’re on vacation here, just do it ), vegetables of your choice then simmer until it marries. Spoon it all on top of basmati rice, or heck plain rice and lavish it with chopped cashews or peanuts, flaked coconut, raisins and if you can find it, a jar of chutney.  

If that’s too much, boil some cinnamon, ginger and cardamom in some hot tea, strain it and add milk to taste and you get Cheating Chai.  Download Pandora (it’s free and I promise it won’t eat your computer ) and find some Indian music. 

Or, if extraordinary laziness is your forte, you're like me, so just buy the tea, then toss the spices into a pot of simmering water.  You do it for the holidays. Why not for Fridays?

Point is, travel in place. 

Seeing beyond the inner and outer

 I write for my sister  whose wild life can be summed up well by the photo of her middle child. Writing with her as the intended audience was an idea suggested to me by my husband and it has made writing a lot more fun than trying to write for an anonymous reader or a publisher and thus my checkbook.  I relate this because of something she said about this blog. She told me she liked Guided Tour but she preferred my other blog because she “liked to read about ‘life’ stuff”. We were talking online and though I didn’t tell her at the time, when she said that, I laughed out loud, and not the polite cyber messaging type either. It was the kind of laughter that brings your husband from the other room to investigate..  This blog is really about my sister’s life or at the very least, inspired by it because she traveled a lot when she was younger and doesn’t so much now.  I want to travel and can’t presently get reality to settle into a workable pattern in that regard.

My sister, L, lived in Jamaica as a teenager and speaks fluent Spanish because she lived in Mexico as a young adult, where she met her beautiful Argentinean husband, who won’t let that adjective rest if he ever reads it.   She spent summers in Italy and tragically only on one occasion, did she and I go to Europe with an aunt who still travels the world with wild child abandon and a cousin, who speaks fluent French not to mention teaches Italian.  I think her English is pretty good too, but she lives in Australia now and the Aussies might not agree.  I’d have to hate all these women if I didn’t love them. 

Marriage and children will reduce the flow of passport ink down to a trickle and here is the point of inspiration:  L still travels but she does it within her current life, and more locally on a regular basis.   She goes out into her world and experiences it.   If you happen to have three children all under the age of ten, you know how remarkable that is once you know she hauls them with her.  Maybe that’s just me. I only had one and she was the child people see and say, “Don’t have another. You only get one easy child.”  They didn’t tell me the easy child might lose their mind at 15, but that’s okay..  She found it a couple years later and left home, but when that happened, I found myself sitting around waiting.  I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but my sister unknowingly pointed me out the door.  I like to think it’s possible to work a day job and see the world. She certainly is.

“You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?”

It’s plagiarism and it’s expedient.  The title of this entry was originally written in a book by Terry Pratchett, a great and odd writer of fantasy books as well as the creator an entire universe , and Discworld.

Every thing that has come in to being, was at one point, not, and thus could not have been true.  A person, or a group of people  began to believe in whatever great thing, or sadly whatever, evil thing there is and thus it became.  I cannot think of a single better explanation for what I am trying to do, make something that is as yet not true, true merely by investing my belief in it.

Most moments, I feel tired, and unmoved to belief by my surroundings until I insist that my mind see more clearly.  All the things that are true, because I have believed they are true haven’t changed, but new things are beginning to grow from mist and wish into sailboats and water fountains, pretty dresses and plastic kayaks on cool summer mornings.  So, I grit the teeth of my consciousness and will another reality to manifest…

Three Wines

I’m having a dinner party this Thursday and being lead by a guide on my own travels, I’m using what is to get me where I’d love to be. In this case, it’s three bottles of wine that sit in my kitchen, unfinished, only partially loved and in need of a purpose, thus coq almost vs. coq au vin.     

 

 

 

Coq au vin is of course made with red wine, but the trinity of wines on hand are neither red nor are they French.  Still, I can think of no better use for them than for them to be shared with friends after they’ve spent the day coaxing the flavor into a meal and the week coaxing me to imagine being in Paris by Being in southern California, where I happen to sit.

 

Three Wines Dinner

Shaved Saucisson with Grainy Mustard

Brown Bread

Radishes in Sea Salt with Butter

Kronenbourg Beer

 

 

Coq Almost

Wilted Asparagus in Browned Butter

with

Balsamic Glazed Slab Bacon

White Truffle Roasted Potatoes

Baby Carrots with Lemon Thyme

White Wine of  a yet to be determined variety

 

 

Berrys under “Brulee”d Crème Fraîche

French Pressed Coffee

The stone we throw..

This one is simple. What do you leave and what do the people you leave do with it.  I'm certainly not certain about the cosmic plan, though I like, Einstein believe that deciding whether the benevolence of the universe is fact or fantasy is a driving question, perhaps as ol' Al said, THE driving question, which brings me to my grandmother. Not directly, today, on a social network,  my family and I inadvertently stumbled onto a moment of her life that remains unexplained.  A human skull…

We were cleaning out her barn after she died and my cousin Frank found it.  It was a barn full of her grandchildren gathered together for the sad and joyous occasions when we all came together to the same place as adults where we’d played as children to divide the objects of her life between our parents but as these things do, some of the material objects trickled down to our own hands through our parents and I began to wonder what we all use them for, how we remember her with their use and how my own children will remember me if they use objects for which I acted as temporary care taker, because the objects we collect are a story of who we are, whether they’re functional or more closely aligned with form.

We still don’t know who the skull was or where my grandmother acquired it, but Frank uses it to delight and horrify his beautiful daughters and in that, my grandmother delights and horrifies them.  She is still with them. 

For me, it’s so many things, but what sent me here was a cut glass perfume bottle which I filled months ago with sandalwood oil after being horrified myself at the cost, and delighted with the sensual experience of it in the air when I wear it.   It deserved a cut glass perfume bottle, and thus my grandmother lives each time I take a small portion of oil from that bottle and carry it with me through the day on my skin.

I’m not sure my grandmother would have said she lead a beautiful life, but I do know she left beauty in her wake, the same way a great ship does as it leaves the known of the port for the unknown of the openness. We'll all do that.  Our lives are stones tossed carelessly into a still lake, rippling outward to tiny corners we’ll never see, but we leave souvenirs of our travels.

Fearless Sistahood

My sister is so much younger than me that there was a time when people would ask if she was my child, so, of course, I'm old enough to look like her children's grandmother.  We are at very different stages in our lives. My children have all left to begin lives without me.(Hah-lur-lear-yer ) Hers need her every single day for thousands of things and yet, we're stilling doing the same dance with ourselves, cramming as much heaven as we can into our daily lives while keeping the people we love close to and nurtured by us. “Dancing with the Stars” has NOTHING on normal women going through their daily lives to the music of their own joy.

I'm reading Rumi right now and he actually uses the metaphor of music, or more specifically, a flute in talking about how we can best live our lives, where we, in this corporeal bag of bits, are the flute and the air that moves through us to create Music is God. Rumi was a Sufi mystic and I'm not religious, but I don't believe I made myself and I do feel guided in my life towards love and away from all the misery fear has brought me, thus the blog. My sister on the other hand is devoutly Christian, a model mother, a loving wife, delightfully silly and afraid much more than she wants to be, but there are thousands, billions of women just like us at their core, trying to make better lives for their children and grandchildren.

Ultimately fear is responsible for every shortage, failure, disagreement, attack and tear ever shed. This is my observation and I have yet to be convinced otherwise. (I'm willing to discuss btw ) And what this exercise is about if nothing else is to demonstrate that fear is the enemy. Not the guy in the expensive suit walking up Wall Street getting into a limo, not the beautiful woman hidden behind a black swath of “burqac” anonymity or the man who "made" her wear it. The enemy isn't malaria, wrinkles or trans fats. Nor are carbs, CO2, Islam, the morally bankrupt West, your abusive parents or your ex. The enemy is fear and I don’t believe in it any more. If it’s true that what an individual thinks alters the physical universe and according to Heisenberg, if not Buddha, that’s more factually than philosophically true, then what the world thinks, the world becomes. Not original, just observed and I’m making it a goal to do one thing a day that is based in love for something or someone but scares the hell out of me just to prove the powerlessness of fear when it’s met with love. Then again, that’s a lot of personal growth, so maybe I’ll start with just once every seven days, though this made me very nervous and I’m counting it because these are the girls that inspire me. Every day. For all my girls and any who wish to live their lives bravely in love against fear: (photo’s welcome)

Nurturing a peripatetic nature

My favorite way to travel is to wander.  Deadlines, goals, lists of places I must see so I can tell other people I did  et al stress me.    Where after all do I really want to be?  If you’ve ever given this any thought at all, you know you want to be where you are, otherwise you would be somewhere else.  Yes it’s a mobius answer, but if you don’t like where you are, then you’d better start deciding where else you’d like to be, metaphysically speaking as well.    For me, the first day of spring is spent as a day by the Pacific masquerading as one spent on the Irish Coastline which makes me think the weather and the universe are conspiring to gently move me in the direction of the Emerald Coast.

Not overly crazy about green beer and surfers in kilts who confuse Ireland with it’s neighbor across the North Channel, we went to our not so local pub last night to  hear Trooper Thorn and belatedly honor St. Patrick over a few too many well poured pints.   I say this having no empirical data as to what really makes up a well poured pint if you’re drinking them in Dublin but the ones I had last night in Long Beach, CA as well as the corned beef  probably account for a lot of what I’m reading into the marine layer but I looked at it as atmospheric bones being thrown on to the blanket of the day.  

Travel is as much a state of mind as it is an activity.   Would I prefer to have a pint of Guinness poured in a pub in Dublin? Probably.  Do I need to be in Ireland to enjoy some of the things that make me want to wander there?  No.   Not really.

  

 

   

 

“The great affair is to move.”  R.L. Stevenson. 

b

It's cool and wet in california at the moment and it's winter, though "winter" is really something that happens in places where they cut holes in the lakes to fish. people in southern california put on sweaters and panic when it's damp and chilly. not exactly a robust hearty people. this could be projection. i do have on a sweater and i am feeling a little like i'm falling.
the past few days i've been compiling my now list and when I held it up against the trip I want to take i was beginning to think my guide was telling me to scrap the whole project. go home. you're not ready for the big time. find a tour company that does trips for seniors. bingo night on the bay. indian casino day trip. the rose show weekend. then I realize that's not the Guide. it's the sack of story bits i call "my life" that i've collected over the years then made into a blow up bitch buddy who whines a lot, is scared shitless and likes pretend she's the boss. the envelope that lays out the now is thick and full of her complaints. I say this while feeling tired, aching and ..have i said tired? Tired. it's exhausting to take inventory and do it accurately, but i'm tired from years, not from days and if I get all the things I'm asking for, it will be more appropriate to give a thank you card to whatever powers sent it to me. Which leaves my birthday gift for myself. The card has one simple thing handwritten to myself under the preprinted greeting. b. That is the gift I give to myself.

Good-bye, feet!

Things have evolved beyond the scope of the original project, which sounds a little bit like something Alice might have said after the tea cake started to kick in, but that would have been more of a confirmation than a new developement. I mean, the guy with the pocket watch was a rabbit, and honestly, after the "Drink me" thing didn't she really have to know "Eat me" was questionable advise? In any case, what started as one card that lays out where my life stands now and a gift I thought to give myself on my milestone birthday has clearly turned into a treasure hunt where the first clue is the card and the treasure is..well, the treasure. It makes sense though because what is a treasure hunt if not a guided tour.

I've never actually been on a treasure hunt before and I've been a little bitter about that until now. But I've forgiven my mother for teaching me the joy of warm chocolate pudding eaten right from the pan while you sit in the middle of your bed, WHICH I might add, is a really good time I don't recommend, so I don't see why I should hold a grudge over the treasure hunt thing. Besides, I have a feeling the ones she planned for my spoiled and evil younger brothers and sister would have paled in comparision. It's bad karma to say this, I'm sure, but I hope they would have paled because the loot at the end of them certainly would have, and for the record,my siblings are not evil,nor are they spoiled though I have no idea who pod peopled my parents by the time the younger two came along aaaand I happen to love them. Stuart, dude.. call me.

A program update seems in order for those of you keeping score, and well look! Oh my goodness, there are just none of you!! (Before, back when I wasn't taking the Guided tour, because I din't need no stinkin' guide and I'd also decided that maps, money, id, shoes and a clue were also unecessary overhead, you know, back when I was a crazy person, I would have never started until I'd done something goofy, as in "Hark! Now, I must plan me for the web server to handle the load of mine GIANORMOUS following that must surely become my adoring public." I'm better now. Now I listen more than plan.)

Er.. yes.. The program.

One truth in advertising declarations: the "now" as of the next post sealed in an envelope. Semper veritas.
One birthday present in the form of the treasure: A list of what would truly be a miracle should it manifest, given the starting point.
One treasure map that will document the path TO the treasure: This bit of binary benediction

Clue number one: The envelope that holds a description of my present reality as I see it, which I'm not sharing until I've found the treasure, but it's the only clue I won't share. I know all none of you are white knuckling your keyboard in frustration, but this card, into which I'm placing the description, pretty much says it all and I don't wanna talk about it...



Arnold Palmer, meet Ben Hogan

4 part Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon
8 parts sweet tea
juice of two lemons
1 part agave nectar
lemon twists


Add agave to tea and lemon juice until the agave is disolved. Pour tea mixture, crushed ice and bourbon into a shaker. Shake and pour into four martini glasses or one quart mason jar. Add a twist and enjoy.

I feel it's only fair to blame all this on my husband.

Several months ago he became concerned that I was spending my life hidded in either a computer screen or a book. The problem was, and to some extent still is, that I'm happy enough not to want to fight for anything different. I'm just slightly bored. That's fine for me, but boring was beginning to become an issue. Not that Flynn told me a I was boring, he enjoys breathing too much, but he did suggest a ) I should get out of the house more often b) I should do something with my time. I came up with law school and bought some books to prepare for the lsat at which point he let it be known he wasn't thrilled with the notion of being the husband of a lawyer. Though he didn't get all Shakespearean and talk of killing them all, he did say,

"I'd hang myself."

I'm quoting.

Needless to say this was hyperbole, and he only felt that way about being married to a lawyer not a law student but I didn't have a such driving passion to practice law that I wanted to cause my husband to take up knot tying just in case, though the idea of arguing all day had appeal, no pun intended. Bottom line, the end result was that I was back to square one. At this point I figured I'd make a game of it and tell him what I really wanted. Serves him right. They ask. We tell. You almost feel bad for them.

To lay out the parameters, I am preparing a birthday card and a gift for myself. The card will contain a few pages of truth about my current life and photos to verify that I am in fact a mess who's very far from where I'd ideally like to be at this point. The gift will contain detail description of my desired destination, a prayer if you will or maybe a san serif pair of ruby slippers that will show me I did have it all along. I'll either open them on my milestone birthday or I'll cringe as I throw them both away someday and think of what I never was been able to bring myself to do. That sounds so fatalistic I might have just depressed my own damn self. I will tell you, I haven't even fleshed out point B and there's already a lot of ground to cover from point A. I just don't want any passenegers to jump off the train. (*hides the rope)

The story...

...is more of a huge life experiment that may end badly or it may simply fizzle, but the question I'm going to attempt to answer is: Can an ordinary human being change their life radically by living as though it were already changed. All the great sages, not to mention Glinda the good witch, teach that wanting something is a result of not seeing you already have it. I do not see the life I want and after having realized a few months ago that I really am going to die at some point, I've decided to do something about it. Living, not dying. I don't expect death to come from a terminal disease, unless you count aging as an illness. It is pretty sick if you ask me, but that's another philiosphical discussion. The point is, I'm NOT dead and unless I want to get that way with my only thought being, "That was rather disappointing." I'd better do something. My plan is to see if I can alter my reality by the time I reach a milestone birthday, several years away.

Honesty or humility or good vision require me to admit that while I'm not terrifically fulfilled and my life is a spam sandwich with mayo on white bread, no crust, cut into neat little rectangles served with a juice box and a moist towelette, I'm very lucky.

I do have plenty materially, because it's morally irresponsible to whine about not being able to shop at Nordstroms when there are people dying because they cannot get enough food to feed themselves. Nor can I complain about where I live. I have a roof over my head and have never been forced to write a prayer on a piece of cardboard paper hoping someone I don't know will be moved to answer it. I have a loving family, an enviable marriage, caring friends and THE dog. So why change anything and what would I change if I did?

Don't forget the story...

Several months ago I knew I wanted to tell a story. In telling it I wondered how much about myself and what brought me to this story was important. Context, I decided wasn’t important at all if the point was to tell only truth because truth binds uncommon experience into a shared understanding. Suddenly, the value of my small history was minimal and I understood what the real point is. Eventually the truth will always be apparent and we will all always have the same reaction.

"Of course…"