there’s a lot to be learned

from listening. take from that what you will. in a situation born out of luck and determination, i am able to exorcize (pun intended) some of my demons in my basement. lest you picture me practicing some cultish behaviour, it’s much simpler than that. i’m able to exercise in my basement. it’s not a beautiful basement but it’s private. (a reminder, that i live in brooklyn, new york…so a basement or private space to spread out is not a given but a luxurious joy.)  for the past week or so, i’ve started my exercise as usual: earphones in; ipod on. but rather than belting out whatever harmonic line suits my fancy, i’ve been purposefully quiet. i’ve forgotten how hard it is to just listen. so i have been working at it – just as i work at being disciplined at actually getting down to my ‘routine’. i have to stop myself from singing along and let myself hear the lyric and the arc of the song and the pitch of the singer. on another pass, i listen to the structure of the notes and the intervals playing off each other. the lyric. no matter how good the singer, a bad lyric can’t be saved. even just melting into the beats … a form of listening.  sometimes i feel the rise of my breath wanting to move along with the line of music and work to settle back and just hear.  i’m working on listening. 

in for a penny

yes, in for a pound.  i’m jumping off the virtual cliff next week and heaven help me.  i am switching from being a die-hard palm user (palm pilot, tx, treo and a bunch in between from the very 1st to the very last) and next friday will become an early adapter on the new verizon droid.  i’ve been waiting a long time.  and i was waiting for verizon to get the new palm pre – even tho i recognized that this new palm software was completely different in every way than what i had used for years.  once i wrapped my head around that, i started thinking about really switching systems altogether.  but i would not go to at&t or sprint – both have horrible coverage and/or service and if you’re complaining about these things here in new york city, then you’re really in trouble once you leave the land of cell phone nirvana. 

i am very very very picky about my technology.  i spend a lot of time thinking about just what i need and how to find the programs to make that happen.  i have an extensive and well-organized selection of memos from my palm desktop that i will need to rethink – how to get them on my new phone and with what program?  i have to get used to outlook – always been on a palm desktop.  luckily the program pocketcopy did exactly what it was supposed to do (as i held my breath) and transferred years and years and years of contacts and calendar and notes to my new outlook.  (i refuse to use my company’s exchange/calendar.  there is simply no reason to have any corporation know that much about you.)  and this phone has a real keyboard.  try as i might, i cannot type on a virtual keyboard.

so i’m jumping into the android pool.  except i’m expecting it to be an ocean.  my head is swimming – ha ha …i guess pun intended! 

the new droid

4 years behind me.

and tomorrow, 4 years and 1 day.  today is my 4 year ‘anniversary’ of the sad and awful day i was diagnosed with breast cancer.  i won’t dwell too much on that day except to say that it was a surreal nightmare that seemed to go on and on.  of course, that might have been the copious amounts of xanax i ingested in order to find some way to keep breathing.  that xanax.  that was an eye-opener for a girl who didn’t take pharmaceuticals!  (actually, more like an eye-closer because even 1/2 a tiny dose put me right to sleep.)

i’m a little nervous to even ‘talk’ about it but then i reasoned that it is simply a fact.  and tomorrow, i will be 4 years and 1 whole other day away from that stupid fucking day. 

i’m 29 pounds lighter and have immeasurably improved my cholesterol and ldl’s and hdl’s and whatever other dl’s there are to improve.  i have hair.  i have stuff.  i have the most wonderful husband and am utterly in love with my quirky teenage daughter, no matter how many times she rolls her eyes at me.  i let myself sing at the top of my lungs (and, i promise you, that is inconceivably loud) when i’m in the basement on my wonderful elliptical.   for the moment, i’ve stopped compulsively eating between meals.  brooklyn is still one of the coolest places to live.  we have plans to travel more.  i have friends i like.  i feel here. 

happy anniversary?

i slipped up today.  i was at an early morning appointment with a customer who i have been working with for a long time now.  we were discussing when his husband was returning from a long out-of-town trip so that we could schedule some showings in a few weeks.  standing on the street as people hurried past us toward the subway, we were filled with a little exhilaration about the possibilities of what we had just seen and the good feeling that we would all together be able to put ‘boots to the ground’ for a push in showings once his husband returned.  i turned on my treo and went to my calendar and flipped the date forward two weeks to october 26th – the first date we could all go out together – and said, without thinking: “oh, that’s my anniversary!”.  instantly the response came back: “how sweet, congratulations!”  and i found myself saying: “oh no, not that anniversary; my cancer anniversary.”   

pause

looking into his eyes i realized that he did not know.  i always think everyone knows.  i thought it was written across my face and my psyche for the past almost-4 years.  leaving behind the memory of my reflection sans hair in every store window i passed for a year doesn’t fade quickly.  i am only just catching up to processing the acres of time i spent laying in bed willing time to go by: sometimes so that i could get to the next anti-nausea pill or sometimes so i could get to the next pain killer (oh that taxol!) or sometimes so i could get to the end of the day just to put that day behind me.  i had to become a new person – not necessarily a better one…just a different one – to be able to talk to people while i was ‘in the process’.  the new one looked fragile but tried to not act it.  looked sick and tried to find a few funny lines to help shrug off the visuals and the assumptions.  moved like a frail old woman and tried to replace fitness with slowly lunking along my brooklyn streets and coming up with potential cancer song-parody lines. 

i know, you’d think that almost-4 years is a long time.  it is and it isn’t.  it’s just enough time to start to come out of the shell-shock of it all.  i’d say that happened for me around three years – and remember that 10 months of the 1st year were taken up with surgery then chemotherapy then radiation then a month of essentially sleeping all the time.  for the past year i have highs where my heart can’t remember for a few fleeting moments that any of it ever happened and then deep lows where i am reminded that i learned the real lesson and cliche that life truely turns on a dime.  it all changes in a moment with no notice.  those are moments of deep terror both in anticipation of what might come and to try to come to terms with the precipice on which i found myself standing.  the possiblity of losing my family and them losing me. 

i looked straight into his eyes.  ‘breast cancer.  almost 4 years ago.  i thought you knew.’  ‘no, i didn’t realize’ came back the reply as his eyes tried to find a focus on me that i saw changed what he had seen up til now.  ‘it’s a good thing’, i said.  ‘that was 4 years ago.’  i smiled.  ‘here i am!’

wok me up

i don’t know why it has taken me so long to actually use the carbon-steel wok bought over a month ago. ok, backing up the story, there was a HUGE carbon-steel wok bought as a gift from my brother-in-law in chinatown – he who could stir-fry your recycled computer paper and make it taste like a gift from the asian gods – but it became quickly apparent that this behemoth of a wok was not appropriately sized for our stove. gas stove tho it may be. and, heaven help us, no exhaust hood. (our stove is from the 1940’s – in many ways a killer cooktop because it has 4 burners with a big open area in between the 2 sides but a pretty small oven..i’ve had thanksgiving turkeys skim the top.) so it took about 4 months to come to terms with the giving away of the mega wok and then we found ourselves in manhattan chinatown about a month ago and we went to the same housewares store and the extremely nice owner (happy to sell us our 2nd wok) helped us pick a suitably-sized wok and suitably-sized scraper.

i did what i always do with new cooking equipment in our house – i circled it for a while. i guess most people rip the appliance or pot or skillet out of the packaging and plunk it down on the stove for immediate use but i have never been that person. i like to live with it for a minute. i look at it. theoretically, it looks at me. not to sound too new-agey – which i am not – but i get it’s vibe. then, for some unknown reason, it’s time. i just know.

i took great care seasoning it. i’m afraid our house walls paid the price…some pork fat methodically slicked across every bit of extremely heated surface – 4 passes over 4 days and i had a seasoned wok.

then i circled it for a while.

tonite there was lift-off. i bought a passel of green beans – and, sans a recipe, did a little mise en place…made sure verything was at my fingertips. heated the wok and when i saw the smoke rise, put in some sesame/canola oil. in they went…and the scraper was the perfect size – flip flip flip flip; a few cloves of finely minced garlic; flip flip flip flip – letting them settle a lot to get lots of good black wok-roasted goodness on them; a little soy sauce; a 1/2 teaspoon of garlic chili paste (i cannot remember the name of the company but it’s that magnificent company that has a rooster on the bottle and makes the chili sauce found at all really good vietnamese restaurants) and a small amount of water because the green beans needed a little moisture – just a little – wooosh…and then a 1/2 tsp. of sugar at the end. soooooooo crunchy and spicey and good. it may take some work for me to get used to this style of cooking. i’m a braiser. all things slow and adjusted. this is all things fast and adjust right then and there on the fly. and i’m trying to be careful and aware of too much extra oily stuff in my food as i work on keeping my daily diet healthy and lowfat.   oh, and my house is smokey!

how will i cook?

i deeply mourn the news that conde nast will stop publication of ‘gourmet’ magazine.  this iconic magazine has been publishing for over 70 years and has over 1 million subscribers.  many of whom would have, i am sure, paid a little more to offset the loss of ad revenue.  gourmet has been an inspiration to me and often a confirmation of the solid culinary ground i always felt working in the kitchen.  i was once inspired to write to them over an article on pies.  pies.  so perfectly basic and so perfect.  they are keeping bon appetit…a magazine so subpar that it is often given away as a bonus subscription with purchases of other stuff.  feh.  life has truely changed and, this time, not for the better. 

count into the middle (and then count back out again); or how to get through most anything

 

i am almost 4 years out from my initial diagnosis of breast cancer.  i have several ‘anniversaries’ where that is concerned:  the day i was diagnosed (and i’m so competitive that i was diagnosed during ‘breast cancer awareness month’…i became very aware!); the day i finished treatment; if truth be told, the day earlier that summer when i have very very faint memories of perhaps feeling something odd but chalking it up to the usual little bumps that any 47 year old woman feels; and the amorphous date that i wonder was the conception of this particularly nasty lump.  in the past year, a few people that i know as friends or colleagues have been diagnosed and have looked to me for some advice and support.  on a good day, i’m flattered.  on a paranoid-i-still-feel-in-the-midst-of-this day, i feel emotionally fragile.  i often remind myself that someone else’s illness is not a predictor of the future of my health.  am I odd that way?  do other people find themselves feeling that way? 

for the past year, i’ve worked very hard at pulling myself out of the emotional and physical hole i was in.  i’m not a joiner of groups (though i do like to join virtual groups …oy, let’s not go there!) so i worked out changing my eating habits and exercise habits – well, not solely by myself but not by sitting in meetings.  i needed to step up to those goals on my own.  i have grown through trying to open up to some friends and immediate family about my efforts so that i’m not too shut off.  but it’s me i need to reckon with and it doesn’t help me if i stretch myself too thin talking about goals rather than doing them.   Sometimes i wonder if i’m shortchanging myself by not joining but this is the way it is at the moment…the way it has to be.

surgery; chemo; radiation; stabilizing on tamoxifen; starting my exercise routines with baby steps and working on building that to routine; 24 hours each day of making choices for food; 30 minutes on my elliptical every other day even when, on that particular day, 30 minutes stretches in front of me like a prison sentence….all these things i have found that i work through with the same method.  it took me a while to figure it out. i was able to make it take shape when i was called upon to talk a few friends through the beginnings of their journeys of diagnosis, treatment and moving forward with life.  try not to see the whole thing stretching in front of you like an endless line.  take it in pieces.  count into the middle.  Look, you’re there!  then count out to the end.  look!  you’re at the end! then to the next.  turns out it works little and big.  what will i eat today and not destroy my efforts becomes count into the middle of the day with good choices and don’t worry about dinner.  get through lunch ok?  great.  count out to the end of the day and enjoy the well-earned fudge pop.  radiation for 5 long weeks?  too long a stretch.  count into the middle of all those weeks – you’re halfway done!  then count out again and you’re really done.  still too much?  Subdivide  whatever it takes to get through.  but here’s the real answer .. and it’s taken me almost 4 years to find it:  you can get through. 

calling all commentarians!

 

 

it’s evolving.  and shaping.  more than a few people know it’s me!  me!  and a whole lotta you just know me from these mini-essays.  which i happen to like.  i like to let something ruminate for a while and then i sit down and it just comes easily out.  sometimes the topic…not so easy.  but usually the writing is.  who knew i’d be the queen of the 4-paragraph-essay-format?!  (in this particular entry, just 2 short paragraphs).  a little new suede boots; a little cancer; a little obsession with all things braised. 

since i started this blog, someone – many or a few with a nervous compulsion to repeatedly view singular pages – well, there have been 1,341 hits to this site to date.  certainly more than i anticipated.  and a few dear friends cheerily throw a few commentary-bones my way when it looks particularly quiet.  but i’d love to hear from those i don’t know…and may never know.  here’s your invite.  come on out.  talk. kibbutz.  vent.  i’m interested in what you have to say…unless you’re one of the 94 spam hits that were hoping to let everyone know about levitra and pepcid ac.  ironically, i do use the pepcid.  C’MON IN…

 

 

 

where to now?

 

i heard my lovely teenage daughter telling a friend how i called her at camp to discuss where to go for ‘mom’s next big trip.’   it’s true.  and it’s not.  and today, on our way home from school and work, i took a moment to talk to her about it.  i wanted to find a way to tell her that we weren’t going once a year to some wonderful foreign destination because i needed a big vacation, but because one of the lessons of cancer – indeed – one of the lessons of any major personal trial – is that we need to have our lives NOW…who knows about later.  as i climbed out of the pea-soup fog of all my treatments, i found a glimmer of ‘oh yes i will and you can’t stop me’.  and then a little more.  it wasn’t a steady growth of determination or resolve but each day brought a little more.

i turned 50 right before my 2 year diagnosis anniversary (yes, it’s so lovely to get diagnosed right near your birthday – NOT).  i was asked what i wanted to do to celebrate and, without a single moment of hesitation, said that i wanted us to go to paris.  no party, no dinner.  just paris.  i had never been to paris and i was going.  and we did!  the city was so spectacular that i could ignore or at least put aside giving in to feeling tired.  on a bell clear late-novermber night i stood directly across the water from the eiffel tower as it came alive just exploding and dancing with lights – daughter and husband by my side.   sometimes you get something and you have it but you already want something else.  i remember standing there thinking that i was utterly satisfied.  i was where i wanted to be.

 since then, i’ve insisted on a big trip a year,  it’s easy to make excuses and find reasons to not go, not spend the money, not make the time.  but i feel an urgency that i try very hard to not make feel like a fear.  i feel an immediacy.  i want to see the world with my beautiful daughter before she’s gone off to college and other obligations.  i want to have those memories with her and, if i’m being really truthful here, i want her to have those memories of me and of us as a family.  our little family.  i traveled the world many times when i was singing but this is so different.  she sees through my eyes and my husband’s eyes and we see the world now through hers.   

 

Paris: Thanksgiving 2007

 

pretend you don’t know me

 

 

i have always worked best with an anonymous audience.  i thought this only applied to my (past) career as a professional vocalist but it turns out, it applies to many aspects of my life!  in the old gig-laden days, i loved the gigs that took me out of town because no one knew me at those gigs and i could be anything i wanted to be:  funny, acerbic, serious, over-the-top, under-the-piano…whatever.  and having that leeway allowed me to reach and explore and to actually *be* funnier or that much more acerbic – more focused when i was stretching toward something that was just forming that much beyond my reach.  my worst shows were when the audience was peppered with those people who knew me: moms and dads and aunties and cousins and neighbors.  i felt boxed in.  and they knew all my jokes.  i couldn’t riff.

two days ago on facebook, i friended and was friended by a guy that i used to date in highschool.  although i’m not even sure it was legitimate dating – but i remember a little kissing and a visit to his university our freshman year out (said visit simply reinforcing that we were at the end of any possibilities).  last night, i couldn’t sleep.  i was totally weirded out by my long-ago trapped-in-the-past past invading the possibilities of my unexplored future. 

i think that most people – ok, many people – want to get their lives very established and then have emotional and professional and artistic (if we can agree that all people have artistic reach in their lives even if they don’t see it in that way) flux only in a limited way.  and i can’t blame them…and i am that way in some things.  the wild roller coaster ride of emotional upheaval has lost some of it’s charm as i get older. 

but i hold out for the possibility.  i hold out with the hope and the secret knowledge that, under the right cirumstances, a big loud new riff is just there at my fingertips.