Josh is my favorite living American poet. This one was written on the road after a trip to Nikko, a haven in the mountains just far enough away from Tokyo to be really green, and near enough to be easy to get to from town. It has historical temples, gardens, a bridge that will take your breath away over one of the many streams, mountains, volcanic hot springs, and hiking trails through the mountains.
If I can remember to
Hold still
Listen
I want to be the tree
I want to feel the dirt
Left right sunlight
black
Left right sunlight
black
The long ladder legged trees open to hard golden sun
and I want to sit
What if I could stay,
40 days and 40 nights,
or one year,
or one hour,
could I stay an hour, and gather up my colors,
break myself open
cast out my seeds,
fall all my leaves
and lie bald upon the earth,
sink in
dissappear
I'm sitting on the train,
holding tightly to my ability to get off and stay
all the way until it's gone,
and we arrive.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Musings on Autumn in China
Musings on Autumn in China
Autumn in China begins around August 7 according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This is hard to understand from a Western point of view because the temperatures are still brutally hot in most places except the far north. More of a “turning point” than a change in temperature, the beginning of autumn is a marker of hope and expectation for cooler weather.
Crickets are said to reach maturity when Autumn begins. You can hear their singing in the evenings, even in the cities. You can also hear their songs in the cricket markets, where cricket aficionados gather to appreciate the songs of the singing crickets and debate the merits of the fighting varieties. Bringing a cricket into the house is a wonderful way to extend the fall season as winter approaches.
The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is a major autumn holiday in China. Families gather and spend the evening eating together, especially “mooncakes”, dried fruit and nuts wrapped in a pastry shell, often with hard boiled egg yolks in the middle to represent the beautiful autumn moon.
Red Leaves begin to appear in the mountains, and are deeply appreciated. Whole cities can turn out on autumn weekends for mountain climbing and hikes through local hills. Watch out for mountainous traffic jams! If you are from the northern part of the US or Canada, it won’t be as spectacular a show. But red leaves are exciting no matter where they are.
Fall Fruits also bring the flavor of Autumn to the table. In China the summer ends with juicy Honey Peaches, but autumn brings sweet chestnuts which you can find roasted in woks full of hot stones on street corners, huge yellow and red pomegranates, and crisp red Fuji apples with their delightful fragrance and flavor.
Sweet Osmanthus blooms in the Autumn in the south, and you can take the blossoms and put them in sugar to make a perfumed syrup to use in sweet soups during the winter months, an aromatic reminder of warmer days.
Fall is considered a melancholy time in China because the harvest is finished, the days are shorter, and many of the green trees and plants are in the dying period of their cycle. Because there are these feelings associated with Autumn, it is considered a good time to write poetry. Take a glass of wine out to share with the moon and you may get struck with writer’s muse !
Autumn in China begins around August 7 according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This is hard to understand from a Western point of view because the temperatures are still brutally hot in most places except the far north. More of a “turning point” than a change in temperature, the beginning of autumn is a marker of hope and expectation for cooler weather.
Crickets are said to reach maturity when Autumn begins. You can hear their singing in the evenings, even in the cities. You can also hear their songs in the cricket markets, where cricket aficionados gather to appreciate the songs of the singing crickets and debate the merits of the fighting varieties. Bringing a cricket into the house is a wonderful way to extend the fall season as winter approaches.
The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is a major autumn holiday in China. Families gather and spend the evening eating together, especially “mooncakes”, dried fruit and nuts wrapped in a pastry shell, often with hard boiled egg yolks in the middle to represent the beautiful autumn moon.
Red Leaves begin to appear in the mountains, and are deeply appreciated. Whole cities can turn out on autumn weekends for mountain climbing and hikes through local hills. Watch out for mountainous traffic jams! If you are from the northern part of the US or Canada, it won’t be as spectacular a show. But red leaves are exciting no matter where they are.
Fall Fruits also bring the flavor of Autumn to the table. In China the summer ends with juicy Honey Peaches, but autumn brings sweet chestnuts which you can find roasted in woks full of hot stones on street corners, huge yellow and red pomegranates, and crisp red Fuji apples with their delightful fragrance and flavor.
Sweet Osmanthus blooms in the Autumn in the south, and you can take the blossoms and put them in sugar to make a perfumed syrup to use in sweet soups during the winter months, an aromatic reminder of warmer days.
Fall is considered a melancholy time in China because the harvest is finished, the days are shorter, and many of the green trees and plants are in the dying period of their cycle. Because there are these feelings associated with Autumn, it is considered a good time to write poetry. Take a glass of wine out to share with the moon and you may get struck with writer’s muse !
Friday, August 22, 2008
Cinnamon - good for what ails you
Did you know that cinnamon has some reputation as an aphrodesiac? Well, sort of. They did a study where they gave various fragrances to men to see their reaction, and asked which fragrances "turned them on". Cinnamon won hands down. I am not sure if that qualifies cinnamon for the "aphrodesiac" catagory, but it is an interesting fact! There has to be something to it, though, because in the days of the Dutch East India Company (1600 - 1800) cinnamon was their most profitable spice.
I am not sure which I like better - vanilla or cinnamon. They are both dreamy. The fragrance researchers say the smell of vanilla is calming and reduces stress and anxiety. No wonder I like it. But cinnamon is serene too, and I think of applesauce, pies and cookies. Of the two, cinnamon is definitely a spice with seasonal ties, and it is the smell of Christmas, so it seems like it should be eaten in the cooler weather of fall and winter. Vanilla is more of an all season smell and goes well with summer in the form of vanilla ice cream.
Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees that belong to the same family as Laurel, a common shrub in the US. The variety of cinnamon that the Dutch East India Company brought back to Europe was this one, now called "true cinnamon" by some. This cinnamon is especially noted for its medicinal qualities, and comes from the Zeylanicum cinnamon tree. Zeylanicum cinnamon is more delicate in flavor, and probably isn't the one your mother used when you were a kid to put in applesauce or cinnamon buns. They now cultivate it in the Myanmar, the Seychelles Islands and in Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, South America, and and the West Indies too.
The "other" cinnamons are actually relatives, but have a different scientific name:
-Loureirii cinnamon, or Indonesian cinnamon
-Cassia cinnamon, called Chinese, Saigon, and Korintje cinnamon.
Cassia cinnamon has a stronger flavor because it has a higher level of oil in it, and is probably what you find in the shakers at Starbucks.
Scientists have now discovered that Cassia cinnamon has small amounts of coumarin, a blood thinning phytochemical, in it. Of course, that started a minor flap about whether it was dangerous or not, but apparently as long as you don't eat it by the handful, you won't get enough to make a difference unless you have some unusual sensitivity. There are quite a few studies out there that show that 1/4 to 1 teaspoon of cinnamon a day (in tea, not dry) can help keep blood sugar stable, but the Ceylon version called "true cinnamon" is the one you want if keeping your blood sugar down is your aim.
The best cinnamon treat I ever ate was in the vicinity of Kyoto, Japan. In the 1600s some really intelligent person invented a cinnamon cookie made of glutinous rice flour and a little sugar and cinnamon. The kind we bought were shaped like roof tiles, and that is what we called them. The bakery was brilliant - they piped the cinnamon exhaust from the ovens out into the street and no one could resist going in to get some. They were sold cooked and as dough, and their base was glutinous rice, not flour. I can remember that they were both outrageously delicious, although the baked ones were really hard, and the soft ones were elastic and squishy. They are called yatsuhashi in Japanese, and I think they are only sold in Kyoto. Such a pity. Some day I will go back and try them again.
I am not sure which I like better - vanilla or cinnamon. They are both dreamy. The fragrance researchers say the smell of vanilla is calming and reduces stress and anxiety. No wonder I like it. But cinnamon is serene too, and I think of applesauce, pies and cookies. Of the two, cinnamon is definitely a spice with seasonal ties, and it is the smell of Christmas, so it seems like it should be eaten in the cooler weather of fall and winter. Vanilla is more of an all season smell and goes well with summer in the form of vanilla ice cream.
Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees that belong to the same family as Laurel, a common shrub in the US. The variety of cinnamon that the Dutch East India Company brought back to Europe was this one, now called "true cinnamon" by some. This cinnamon is especially noted for its medicinal qualities, and comes from the Zeylanicum cinnamon tree. Zeylanicum cinnamon is more delicate in flavor, and probably isn't the one your mother used when you were a kid to put in applesauce or cinnamon buns. They now cultivate it in the Myanmar, the Seychelles Islands and in Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa, South America, and and the West Indies too.
The "other" cinnamons are actually relatives, but have a different scientific name:
-Loureirii cinnamon, or Indonesian cinnamon
-Cassia cinnamon, called Chinese, Saigon, and Korintje cinnamon.
Cassia cinnamon has a stronger flavor because it has a higher level of oil in it, and is probably what you find in the shakers at Starbucks.
Scientists have now discovered that Cassia cinnamon has small amounts of coumarin, a blood thinning phytochemical, in it. Of course, that started a minor flap about whether it was dangerous or not, but apparently as long as you don't eat it by the handful, you won't get enough to make a difference unless you have some unusual sensitivity. There are quite a few studies out there that show that 1/4 to 1 teaspoon of cinnamon a day (in tea, not dry) can help keep blood sugar stable, but the Ceylon version called "true cinnamon" is the one you want if keeping your blood sugar down is your aim.
The best cinnamon treat I ever ate was in the vicinity of Kyoto, Japan. In the 1600s some really intelligent person invented a cinnamon cookie made of glutinous rice flour and a little sugar and cinnamon. The kind we bought were shaped like roof tiles, and that is what we called them. The bakery was brilliant - they piped the cinnamon exhaust from the ovens out into the street and no one could resist going in to get some. They were sold cooked and as dough, and their base was glutinous rice, not flour. I can remember that they were both outrageously delicious, although the baked ones were really hard, and the soft ones were elastic and squishy. They are called yatsuhashi in Japanese, and I think they are only sold in Kyoto. Such a pity. Some day I will go back and try them again.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The act of remembering
Today there was a new helper and keeper of the towels at the swimming pool. Her English was delightfully wrong. I love that. When I came up to the desk with my wet towels to get my card back, she was helping someone else. She gave me a clear glance and with a very precise pronunciation she said, "Wait a minute," and then after the slightest pause, added, "ago." As I was standing there imagining how to wait a minute ago, she took my towels with a big smile. I told her that I was an English teacher. We started chatting about how hard English is, and I suggested that she leave off the "ago" since it wasn't needed, and added a "please" instead, since English speakers love the word "please" more than anything else. She nodded her head, and said it perfectly.
Then she handed me my card and said, "Here is your re-member card." Sweet. Just enjoy it.
Sometimes you just remember something. For me, it often happens when there is an ache in my heart. I will feel that ache, and then I will remember. Of course, there are other times when I remember things, but those times with the ache last for years.
My daughters will remind me about the first time I told them they should remember something. It was just before Christmas the first year we were in China. We had almost nothing to our name since our container of things (mostly their toys and books) had not arrived. We had two rooms and a kitchen that looked out on pine trees along the street next to the "foreign experts" building at Southeast University in Nanjing. The kitchen was laughable. The refrigerator was padlocked and the gas stove didn't work. No one knew why. But it was a kitchen. At least there was a sink.
I bought the day's worth of food at the farmers' market down the street, vegetables straight from the fields with their roots covered with soil, a big hunk of random meat from the butcher who had sides of pork hanging from hooks, greasy and full of splinters from his huge cutting board. Making the day's meals took hours since everything had to be washed and cleaned. No cereal. No mayonaise, no ketchup. No pasturized milk, just milk that had to be boiled before drinking it. What we had was meat and vegetables, straight from the farmer.
We also had no plastic bags, so we used baskets to carry everything home, even dofu dripping a trail of water like Hantzel and Gretel all the way home. There was no butter, flour, salt, sugar, or oil, since we had no ration coupons. These things were brought to us by David who lived in Hong Kong and worked with Peter at the press. These precious treasures were treated with extreme respect. We rejoiced at his arrival - and not just because he brought us these goodies. David was a saint. But he also brought the things we needed most, like a pound or two of butter and a jar of cooking oil.
Christmas had rolled around. It was time to make Christmas cookies. David had brought us an oven from Hong Kong on the last trip, and we had all we needed, so we began our yearly Christmas cookie party. As I used up a pound of butter on the dough, feeling a little faint at the very thought of such excess, the ache feeling began. There was no table on which to roll the dough. More ache - but the coffee table had a glass top, and was big enough, so we scrubbed it to a fare thee well.
I had brought the cookie cutters from the US. Bringing them out reminded me of "home" - more ache. The girls dove into the box of cutters and found all their favorites. Especially the dog bone. But also the Christmas star, a heart, a boot, two tree cutters, and a santa. Maybe a donkey. And all of a sudden, I realized that we were making cookies of light and love in what amounted to a kind of darkness, so I said to my daughters - "My dear ones, remember this day. Isn't this a wonderful smell? Look at the colors. Let's remember this room and who is here." They looked around brightly, taking it all in, and returned to their cookie cutting.
For me, the memory had just risen above my ache. The cultural cues of Christmas were missing - but we were able to have this present moment. For the girls, it was just as good in Nanjing as it was anywhere else. They had no idea of how hard it was to get all the supplies from Hong Kong. They just enjoyed that precious moment when we were all in the kitchen, smelling the delicious smell coming from the oven, working together on the happy project of putting together plates of cookies for Christmas. How much better could it be?
Then she handed me my card and said, "Here is your re-member card." Sweet. Just enjoy it.
Sometimes you just remember something. For me, it often happens when there is an ache in my heart. I will feel that ache, and then I will remember. Of course, there are other times when I remember things, but those times with the ache last for years.
My daughters will remind me about the first time I told them they should remember something. It was just before Christmas the first year we were in China. We had almost nothing to our name since our container of things (mostly their toys and books) had not arrived. We had two rooms and a kitchen that looked out on pine trees along the street next to the "foreign experts" building at Southeast University in Nanjing. The kitchen was laughable. The refrigerator was padlocked and the gas stove didn't work. No one knew why. But it was a kitchen. At least there was a sink.
I bought the day's worth of food at the farmers' market down the street, vegetables straight from the fields with their roots covered with soil, a big hunk of random meat from the butcher who had sides of pork hanging from hooks, greasy and full of splinters from his huge cutting board. Making the day's meals took hours since everything had to be washed and cleaned. No cereal. No mayonaise, no ketchup. No pasturized milk, just milk that had to be boiled before drinking it. What we had was meat and vegetables, straight from the farmer.
We also had no plastic bags, so we used baskets to carry everything home, even dofu dripping a trail of water like Hantzel and Gretel all the way home. There was no butter, flour, salt, sugar, or oil, since we had no ration coupons. These things were brought to us by David who lived in Hong Kong and worked with Peter at the press. These precious treasures were treated with extreme respect. We rejoiced at his arrival - and not just because he brought us these goodies. David was a saint. But he also brought the things we needed most, like a pound or two of butter and a jar of cooking oil.
Christmas had rolled around. It was time to make Christmas cookies. David had brought us an oven from Hong Kong on the last trip, and we had all we needed, so we began our yearly Christmas cookie party. As I used up a pound of butter on the dough, feeling a little faint at the very thought of such excess, the ache feeling began. There was no table on which to roll the dough. More ache - but the coffee table had a glass top, and was big enough, so we scrubbed it to a fare thee well.
I had brought the cookie cutters from the US. Bringing them out reminded me of "home" - more ache. The girls dove into the box of cutters and found all their favorites. Especially the dog bone. But also the Christmas star, a heart, a boot, two tree cutters, and a santa. Maybe a donkey. And all of a sudden, I realized that we were making cookies of light and love in what amounted to a kind of darkness, so I said to my daughters - "My dear ones, remember this day. Isn't this a wonderful smell? Look at the colors. Let's remember this room and who is here." They looked around brightly, taking it all in, and returned to their cookie cutting.
For me, the memory had just risen above my ache. The cultural cues of Christmas were missing - but we were able to have this present moment. For the girls, it was just as good in Nanjing as it was anywhere else. They had no idea of how hard it was to get all the supplies from Hong Kong. They just enjoyed that precious moment when we were all in the kitchen, smelling the delicious smell coming from the oven, working together on the happy project of putting together plates of cookies for Christmas. How much better could it be?
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Earthquake Slideshows
First slideshow:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeSlideshowNew
General photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeGeneralPhotos
The state of churches in the earthquake zone:
Jiang You Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/JiangYou
An Xian Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/AnXianChurch
De Yang Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/DeYang
Du Jiang Yan church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/DuJiangYan
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeSlideshowNew
General photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeGeneralPhotos
The state of churches in the earthquake zone:
Jiang You Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/JiangYou
An Xian Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/AnXianChurch
De Yang Church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/DeYang
Du Jiang Yan church
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/DuJiangYan
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Slide show site
I created this blogspot to try to get a slide show of the churches in the earthquake zone in Sichuan online. I think it might have worked - it took me until 3 am!
I can't seem to get the slide show on the right to hool up properly. Sigh. You can try this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeSlideshowNew
With love - and happy that you could see a little of what it is like here. I will add more later.
E.
I can't seem to get the slide show on the right to hool up properly. Sigh. You can try this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/elynmac/EarthquakeSlideshowNew
With love - and happy that you could see a little of what it is like here. I will add more later.
E.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)