Mirrorball - Critical Reflections on Everyday Life

A month of new food

German food doesn't go for spicy heat or decadent richness, but it is no less intense for being delicate.  If you know German beer, you'll recognize the subtle balance needed to marry the sweetness of barley malt and the pungency of hops.  If you know their bread, you'll recognize the hearty and sensuous way they can combine the nutty crunch of sunflowers or pumpkin seeds with the tangy bitterness of rye.  This has been a month of light and suprising flavors, precisely selected, prepared simply.

The prize of the farmer's market Saturday was fresh porcini - Steinpilze - gathered from the forest nearby in somehow rustic but fussy baskets, and sold according to quality at between €10 and €16 for a half kilo (aka a pound).  We picked ourselves out one of the better baskets at the most expensive stall, and are still laughing about the excited middle-aged man who looked at our haul, muttered "Steinpilze" excitedly under his breath, as though he'd spotted them himself at the foot of an ancient chestnut tree, and hurried back to the sales clerk from whom we'd just come.

We made risotto.  The fresh mushrooms are very different from the dried ones, with a delicacy of flavor that explains their privileged place in the German palate. The dried ones are funky, rough and murky. The fresh ones are far lighter and friendlier. Yet the fresh mushrooms explode with the same earthy richness that is so pronounced with their dried cousins, and force you to distinguish between the intensity of flavor, which these mushrooms assuredly possess, and mere strength of flavor, which these mushrooms do not aspire to.  Fresh porcini are, indeed, delicate. They want only the mildest of accompaniments. Even the onion, garlic, wine, stock and cheese of a risotto must be finely measured against the evanescent pungency that is their charm.

We've started to infuse all our meals in Germany with this modest sense of the little things we can do to accentuate the rightness of the flavors with which we start.  Here's today's lunch: bauernbrot mit oliven (wheat and rye sourdough bread, farmer style, with olives), räuchermakrele (a whole smoked mackerel), garden tomatoes and a shallot - served up with a little butter on open-faced sandwiches with a chardonnay from Pfalz.  The tang of the smoke, and the echoing sweet-sour-sharpness of the bread, tomatoes and shallots serves to accentuate the healthy fishy flavor of the mackerel; the wine gives the fat of the fish an indulgent, melty mouthfeel.

And I flatter myself, that I start to see, how my first impressions might be supplanted, as I embrace the insights that shape this place: to start, that there is no shame in doing something small, exactly right.

Two soups

Dinner tonight was two soups at one of the many little Japanese restaurants packed around our place in NYC.  I found the contrast between them instructive enough to share.

The first was tofu, mushrooms and scallions, in a mild, clear broth.  On the side came a scoop of pureed radish and a little bowl of ponzu (lemon soy).  Very Japanese.  An easy preparation, with a surprising but complementary mix of flavors.  Tons of food, for $8.50.

The second was soba, thin buckwheat noodles, served in hot soup with duck breast and scallions.  This bowl was smaller than the first, with six delicate slices of duck and three grilled slugs of scallion.  $18.  Steep.

But I taste.  And I realize: what I've seen so far is all just garnish for a bowl of full-on, top-notch broth: incredibly rich with slow-cooked duck, and soy, and a vague, hinted profile of subtler balanced flavors.  Mellow, unassuming, inescapable, perfect.  I've made my own broth, know the importance of quality and time.  The soup is a steal.

Another reminder - as if we ever need them - that we can guarantee our happiness, just by taking a step back from what calls our attention, and savoring what we know we have.

Year of compassion

Last week right after Christmas, I was walking along the north side of Tompkins Square Park. I noticed I was feeling sad. So I asked myself, why am I feeling sad? I waited, and listened to the troubles coming up from the depths: the difficulty of connecting with people, my failures at listening, the pain of suffering around me, the futility of existence.  I thought to myself, "Oh, that's just the part of me whose job it is to be sad.  It's working.  That's good." This was the kind of sadness I should appreciate, but not act on.

Normally, you take a moment as the New Year rolls in to let go of the bad feelings from the year before.  Bad things have happened, and you need to put them behind you.  I was ready, two nights ago, to do the same.  Lately I've seemed to need it.  It didn't work this time though.  I look back at 2008, and I remember spending a lot of it scared and sad and angry and frustrated and confused.  But, as far as I know, nothing bad actually happened to me.

It is a hard lesson to think of your feelings as a kind of crazy family: always chiming in, ready to hijack your reactions and deliberations; always around, never right, but connecting you inextricably with yourself all the same.  The realization is a prompt for balance, criticism and reflection in yourself, and for sharpness and nuance in how you engage others.  It is a reminder of the distance between the play of your emotions and your deeper sensibilities for how things are; a challenge to connect with and act for your whole self, and others'.

My resolution for 2009, then, is not to shed my sadness, but to transcend it: to be grounded in all I feel and know and do; and to relate to others compassionately, but insistently, towards the wonderful, real people I love, and not the passions that move them.

Saying no well

I've been in a bit of trouble because of J- at Burning Man, and it's made me reflect some more about what the episode meant for me.  As I excavate my memories, it's easy to fixate on the unimportant details I rediscover - the goofy, tawdry orgy tent and the disappointing ugliness of its not-quite-fantasies; the familiar, ordinary pleasures J- played on my body, and I on his.  These incidental circumstances have rightly faded.  But something moved me there, disappeared from view, triggered this search. I miss it not because it's gone, but because it's everywhere: I've freed it from its beginnings, embraced it, and absorbed it for my future self.

J-'s lying on top of me.  We've already gotten to talking, and I've already marked the respect, generosity, attention and aplomb that is his style.  He's promised me with a little smile to narrate anything new he does to me, and has kept his word with grace and precision.  He's not just hot, but impressive, unfamiliar. We're naked by now, kissing full on, grinding, groping.  I've lost myself.

In fact, though, we're on the floor of the orgy tent, and putting on a show.  A nameless invisible stranger moves to join in, caresses the long arch of my thigh and hip.  I share my brute reaction, sharply felt, and push the touch sharply away.  J- pauses, props himself up, looks at me blankly, draws my hand to his thigh. "Why would you do that?" he says. "You can say no gently." And demonstrates, lifting my hand off again with a firm tenderness that hints at the sensuality of touch, acknowledges the spirit of shared pleasure behind it, but communicates, without blame or doubt, that there will be no more.  I see how out of touch I have been with myself, how needlessly difficult, how callow, and I am ashamed.

I hate how often since this I keep catching myself in the same mistake with boys: at M-'s party, scolding a kid whose play has crossed my limits, rather than renegotiating; shoving back at D-, half-asleep, as I fail with smaller adjustments to give our spooning comfort.  But not just there - in class, in meetings, in the kitchen, at the market.  I've missed something important, indulging so readily in this bad habit, cutting myself off from those who would share in making my life better, if only they knew how.

The correction is a difficult conversation, begun at Burning Man, continuing in myself, for as long as I live, most likely: working to listen past what I feel to what I really hear, to challenge those first feelings as I learn from listening, and not simply to reject an offer when things get rough, but to counteroffer towards shared interests, leaving myself open to the efforts I already attract to help me live and love, and grow and share.  The project now shapes my understanding of my time with J-, and suggests a deeper meaning even to the openness and engagement we enjoyed together physically, and the crazy place we found ourselves - as the necessary set and setting for what really mattered.