Pink of Perfection

Granted, it flies in the face of my chatter yesterday about autumnal melancholia, but the thing is, it’s very hot here right now. Every morning I go into the living room and aim a fan straight at myself. Ice coffee is made. Brows sweat. And when a friend is coming over for lunch, the last thing I want to do is heat up the apartment. It’s time for a cold, assembled lunch.

I pretty much stole this menu from Lisa when she had me over on one of the most sickeningly steamy nights of the summer. Nothing could have seemed more appealing than the platter of deviled eggs and pile of cold radishes that waited for me on the coffee table. Except, perhaps, a beer float.

Anyway, it was all so perfect that I replicated the meal for a friend with a few riffs of my own: guacamole, deviled eggs, heirloom tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with chives, a plate of nectarines. It’s the perfect picking food when you’re hungry but it’s so dang hot that mostly you want to sit across from your pretty friend on the floor, the fan whirring directly at both of you, plotting big plans from the comfort of the living room.

The bad news is, I killed a plant. A couple weeks ago, I went on a plant buying spree. Green plastic pots filled with pink polka dotted leaves and viney tendrils were two for $5 at the farmer’s market. Then later, walking home from a cafe, a flower shop had a tray of long-armed, spiny aloe plants for sale, and a tall, proud looking green thing. Of course, I had to have them all.

Ever since I visited my friend in Los Angeles in the spring, I have realized that my dream life has a lot more green things in it than my actual life. Jenny had plants hanging from the rail of her balcony, and a terracotta pot filled with succulents and a bed of stones. At night, she might have snipped buds from white rosebushes and slipped then into the narrow neck of a tall bottle back in her apartment.

I came home wanting more green on my windowsills and fire escape. And it’s why, when I ran into a jade plant at Trader Joe’s, I swooned. There’s something about jade plants that so speaks to me––they don’t need much, and they hold what they need, in reserves, inside of them. Yet despite the lovely symbolism and my ability to instantly make reality an element of my dream life right there in the grocery store aisle, I had to stand, weighing the pecuniary ramifications of a $10 plant for several minutes. Then finally it hit me: I’ll spend $10 on a sushi lunch but I can’t drop the same amount to make my ideal life vision a reality? So I got my priorities straight and happily carried that jade plant home, where it greets me every morning from my bedroom windowsill. An important lesson: it’s always worth it to spring for the things that really bring you deep delight, especially when they cost less than $20.

I killed the pink polka dotted thing. I think, perhaps, it was more delicate than it looked. It might have been the rain or the wilting heat. But I still have the jade plant, the aloe plant next to it, and two unidentified green things in the living room: one low and long-armed, one tall and proud.

Here’s the good news: I’m pretty into these cookies. In fact, would it be wrong to say my favorite thing about these cookies was the raw dough? It was the best I’ve ever tasted. Some of their magic seemed a little lost in the baking, but they came out of the oven soft and have stayed that way for days. Plus, while I would not go so far as to call these cookies “healthy,” they do have a number of good-for-you items in them, like whole wheat and oat flours, canola oil, and agave nectar. This is not reason enough to eat them for breakfast, but all the same, I did. Let’s just call that my other piece of bad news.

Continue reading “Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Almonds” »

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. ––Agnes Repplier

I’m not usually one to share the bizarro holidays that pop up on the calendar, but this is one I couldn’t resist. Today is Lazy Day, the kind of holiday I can really get behind. That we are in the dog days of summer, the kind that almost feel like a rut, makes it even more apropos. Who wants to do more on August 10 than sip a glass of iced tea, anyway?

When I was in college, a speaker came and gave a talk in the little chapel about the importance of leisure. I didn’t know then what real day-in, day-out work looked like, so I’m surprised what he said so affected me I had to scribble it down in my notebook: we reveal ourselves in our leisure as much as our work. The idea that downtime could somehow play a role in identity––that leisure could somehow be important––was an intoxicating idea to me. And now that I have daily work that consists of slightly more than “Read this novel; think about it; write paper; meet someone for coffee,” it’s an idea I can appreciate even more.

Especially after coming off such a fun weekend. My daily life is so much in my head: sitting, writing, writing, sitting. But this weekend on a bare Iowa horizon, I was in my heart and my body. Dancing, sweating, swimming. Smiling like a goon, and laughing till I ached. It made me think about physical fun, about being present in form, fully inhabited. Not talking it out, not analyzing, but relaxing into the summer heat, twirling skirts on the dance floor, leaning in for a kiss.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with being lazy. But it does have to do with fun. The pure, unadulterated bliss of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. And that feels related to a holiday about kicking back and doing nothing at all: il bel far niente.

And yet, I’m a little embarrassed of the word lazy. I certainly don’t want to be seen as such, despite how well I can nap and spend the better part of an hour in the bathtub. I’ve been known to wile whole Saturdays away in bed. But lazy seems so judgy; perhaps it’s just my Puritan roots shining through. I’ll be doing my best today to shirk off any ancestral guilt and find an hour to just sit and stare out a window. Consider this your invitation to join me.

image via LIFE

After such a lovely weekend, Monday morning could have felt like a major bummer. But the truth is, I’m still feeling glowingly lucky to have the funnest, greatest friends, to have danced with them in a driveway in Iowa and celebrated love, to have gone midnight swimming, and to have slept in a giant California King-sized bed. “It’s really great to know people for a long time,” I said to Katie while we were dancing to Michael Jackson. “It’s the best,” she said.

And then I spent this morning looking at Meg’s blog, which always makes me feel really happy. And I drank my coffee. And thought about adventure, and which one we should take next. You know that feeling, when you just want to set out for somewhere new, hop in a car, or start from scratch somewhere new? How do you scratch that itch?

And I thought about these scones that I made last week, which were truly quick and studded with lusciously ripe raspberries.

All in all, not a bad way to start the week.

Continue reading “Fast Raspberry Scones” »

I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back here.

There are some vacations that see you crying on the plane when it’s time to come home, the ones that open up, as my friend said a couples of years ago, “a vortex of disappointment in your life.”

And then there are the ones from which you return eager to slip into your own bed, to flip through magazines to find new dinner possibilities, to settle into the couch that’s your own. Vacation begins to feel heavy (maybe it’s all the red meat and ice cream). And rather than feel pinned down by the prospect of settling back in to your daily routines, the day-in day-out of living as you do, you feel quite happy to return to them. The refrigerator vegetable drawer. The walk to the gym. The hiss of the coffee pot in the morning, and the quiet turning down of the house at night.

This is one of my favorite by-products of vacation: that we’re able to get that rare perspective on our lives, and to feel rested enough to want to reshape them in new ways. Vacation reminded me of how much I love fancy lunches, and how badly I need to reinstate them. Vacation introduced me to new flavors, and made me––for what I think is the first time in a long time––excited about cooking. Not the rote mechanics of getting dinner on the table, but the artistic fun of experimenting with recipes and embracing the unknown.

And perhaps most of all, vacation reminded me of a lost love. We were hosted with so much generosity and thought by Sebastian’s best friend. Greeted with gift bags and sparkling wine. Drawn maps. Served endless cuts of meat. Months ago, at my last dinner party, I walked into the kitchen and cursed everything. The guests. The meal. My freakin’ 900 degree kitchen. I had become the kind of host that, well, I hate. The one that’s lost sight of the joy and generosity of providing the occasion for loved ones to put on their party clothes, talk about their favorite books, drink too much and confess things they’ll regret in the morning. At the risk of embarrassing our host terribly, he does this all beautifully, all while still managing to cook the kind of meals that make the heart sigh and head spin.

In this way, vacation made me come back to my own life wanting to make it more vibrant. To not so blithely take for granted the people and things I’ve wanted my whole life to have and now, miraculously, do. And to open my doors again, to my home and even to this site, and remember the delight of inviting people in and having them stay awhile.

tasting :: lisa’s perfect 100-degree dinner of salmon salad, radishes, deviled eggs, and cherries

hearing :: dear nora

smelling :: the cinnamon in kim’s coffee

seeing :: my amazing, life-affirming jade plant

feeling :: ready for a weekend in the Poconos!

What are your senses this Friday? Hope you all have a really restorative, relaxing, and possibly rambunctious summer weekend.

image via LIFE

Can you imagine, for a moment, the way the light through the window was dancing its patchy pattern across the table this morning, and across these cherries? It scatters still, across my cup of coffee and keyboard; it seems a fitting thing to bring up for what I’m about to try to say.

Which is: There are days when you burst into your own life. Your sense of self fills every bit of your body: the round tips of your fingers, your elbows, your earlobes. Suddenly, you are fully present in your form and in your life. You are dashing across the street like Mary Tyler Moore, twirling in your skirt, every synapse open and firing.

I am waiting, knowing this moment will end. It began Friday night with the surprise of love and support at the premiere of Colin Hearts Kay (which won Audience Choice for Best Feature!). And then it slid into Saturday when I was wearing a cute outfit and feeling quite lovely, sitting alone at the bar of one of my favorite restaurants with a glass of cold white wine, reading As They Were.

These are some of the things I love: friends, wrap skirts, chilly wine on hot days, M.F.K. Fisher. But for whatever reason, sometimes we turn to the things we love and they fail to stir in us that expected delight, the longed-for pleasure. Instead it is just a glass of Albariño, just a curled paperback.

But every once in awhile we find our lives transformed by joy for an afternoon or a weekend. These are days when we are so fully alive in our bodies, we feel like the stars of our story. Should it be any other way? But, inevitably, there are those other days. The necessary downturns, the going-through-the-motions, the sleepwalking in our own lives. And that’s fine too, if not because melancholy can serve a purpose, then because they make the slow, rapturous intake of pleasure even more satisfying. Too bad there’s not a valve we can switch on and off; but then, I suppose, that would be all too predictable.

I have been on my own personal cloud 9 since Friday at about 8:30pm. And it’s not because of any good news or career triumphs of my mate. It’s because, as someone close to me said, of a transformation. It’s sounds a little heavy or sci-fi, I know, but isn’t that a lovely word? It’s something humming in me, a gear that’s clicked into sunny, quiet place of wholeness. A group of girlfriends brought it on, then more friends, more family, a sewing project free of frustration, an iced latte or two. And now, after a slow wander through the bookstore and a dash to the farmer’s market, these cherries will sustain it. If only for a few moments more.

print by William Dohman on Etsy

I am learning how to decorate, and it’s not skill that comes naturally. For someone so drawn to beautiful things, with strong opinions about lighting and furniture shapes, you’d think this would be a snap. But there’s some aesthetic intelligence that’s not native to me. It’s related to the way my dad could pack the trunk on a camping trip so compactly, but with a dash of the artistic eye thrown in. It’s about putting disparate pieces together in space and making them cohere. And then somehow, also managing to make it beautiful. People who have this intelligence astonish and inspire (and, okay, intimidate) me.

When I was in IKEA recenlty, getting pulled in 1,000 different pretty directions, my mom offered up some helpful advice. “What’s the mood you’re trying to create?” Spatial relationships might not be my forte, but moods I get. Knowing that I wanted my bedroom to be airy and relaxing helped me nix items that, though beautiful, didn’t jive with the feeling I was after.

This is not unlike my friend’s Alison’s advice to shop for clothes with code words in mind. Instead of feeling utterly overwhelmed at Anthropologie, I now go through a somewhat ridiculous-feeling yet effective mental exercise as I hold up an item. Is this chic? Does it seem like something Anna Karina would wear? Is it a little tough? Does it have a vintage vibe?

And this leads me to the real topic at hand: envisioning one’s ideal life. This is a daydream game I have long loved to play, but I consider it to be more vital than idle imaginings. Because if you don’t know what your ideal life looks like, how will you begin to create it? And how will you recognize your own triumphs when you get important pieces to fall into place?

Here are some pieces of mine: I imagine sunlight and white bedding, mornings spent writing, colorful latte bowls, and dinners with friends. By many accounts, I have a lot of what I have always been after. But something is also amiss.

Continue reading “Imagining Expansiveness” »