Saturday, March 18, 2006
S-L-O-W down
I am impressed this month by how much we run. I am reminded of the saying “even if you win the rat race, you are still a rat!” With cell phones, car phones, land lines, wireless computers and email, VOIP and more… Watching family and friends running all the time with “I don’t have time, I don’t have time” always on their lips makes me think of a poem I had to memorize as a child, along with many other nineteenth century lines.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind (The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson 1859-1907)
There is a movement to S-L-O-W down. I’m not just saying this because I’m nearing my dotage. I’m finding it alright to slow down once in awhile, to stop and think, remember friends, write a friendly email to family to let them know I am thinking of them, pick up the phone to call. It only takes a minute but it has rich rewards and positive consequences both for our own hearts (physical and emotional) and to those we reach out to. Try it.
It Italy, Carlo Petrini started the Slow Food movement in 1986. That was when Sheila was ten and Natala turned twelve and I was still picking up and dropping off and waiting in cars for programs to end. Then I went back to work a few years later, after a divorce and moving house and moving again. I’m still sorting my books. The concept of small bytes of time is one that I’m just starting to comprehend. Fifteen minutes to check email, a half hour of AM/PM Stretch yoga, a 45 minute walk with Brizzie, a home cooked meal. Slow is having lunch at the Madras Cafe where all the food is vegetarian and made from scratch and the garam chai awakens your senses for the rest of the day. Or, eating fish curry to improve brain-derived neurotrophic factors (BDNFs), too Science News, March 4, 2006 p. 136.
A "movement in which some people choose to deliberately preserve and cultivate the values they consider threatened by the insistence on doing everything ever more quickly" is the Slow Cities movement. Aptly, its logo is the snail.
Hersbruck in lower Bavaria is a Slow City in Germany. The market town of Aylsham in Norfolk,England (where my grandfather joined the Norfolk Rifles before WWI) has joined Slow Cities. Brtonigla in Croatia. More than 30 small Italian provincial towns including Greve in Chianti, Orvieto, Bra and Positano. The University of Urbino is the movement's official think-tank.
There are Slow travel tours but they seem more like the movie:If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), which I loved. Don’t rush this tour, you’ll miss the point. No car alarms, no loud noises, organic food, yes, wireless is okay. It’s the best of both worlds.
This is not about watching the paint dry on the wall or arguing about two flies climbing it. This is about living a rich life and knowing it, being aware of it, participating in it without becoming a sanyasi or an ascetic. Just say NO to fast food. Try observing a Sabbath, if not every week, maybe once a month. A book about the movement by Carl Honore is In Praise of Slow Unfortunately, the American press translated the title as In Praise of Slowness.
S-L-O-W is not about saying no to innovation and new ideas. Just put on the brakes, don’t raise your child to be an over-scheduled hothouse flower. Remember watching the rain drops? Listening to the wind? Last week Bill and I saw a double full rainbow. Aaah!
If you find a moment to go S-L-O-W, give us a call, send an email. We promise to only check email twice a day (not frantically every hour) and to answer promptly. If you use GoogleTalk or Skype then we’ll interact, too. Love you. XOX.
Happy Birthday, Joslyn. Can't believe you are t-w-e-n-t-y!
Jasmine enroute to Australia via Bali ~ thanks for the pc from the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. Beautiful country!
Natala in Las Vegas at MIX06. Keynote: Bill Gates, who else? Don't work too hard, Natala.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind (The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson 1859-1907)
There is a movement to S-L-O-W down. I’m not just saying this because I’m nearing my dotage. I’m finding it alright to slow down once in awhile, to stop and think, remember friends, write a friendly email to family to let them know I am thinking of them, pick up the phone to call. It only takes a minute but it has rich rewards and positive consequences both for our own hearts (physical and emotional) and to those we reach out to. Try it.
It Italy, Carlo Petrini started the Slow Food movement in 1986. That was when Sheila was ten and Natala turned twelve and I was still picking up and dropping off and waiting in cars for programs to end. Then I went back to work a few years later, after a divorce and moving house and moving again. I’m still sorting my books. The concept of small bytes of time is one that I’m just starting to comprehend. Fifteen minutes to check email, a half hour of AM/PM Stretch yoga, a 45 minute walk with Brizzie, a home cooked meal. Slow is having lunch at the Madras Cafe where all the food is vegetarian and made from scratch and the garam chai awakens your senses for the rest of the day. Or, eating fish curry to improve brain-derived neurotrophic factors (BDNFs), too Science News, March 4, 2006 p. 136.
A "movement in which some people choose to deliberately preserve and cultivate the values they consider threatened by the insistence on doing everything ever more quickly" is the Slow Cities movement. Aptly, its logo is the snail.
Hersbruck in lower Bavaria is a Slow City in Germany. The market town of Aylsham in Norfolk,England (where my grandfather joined the Norfolk Rifles before WWI) has joined Slow Cities. Brtonigla in Croatia. More than 30 small Italian provincial towns including Greve in Chianti, Orvieto, Bra and Positano. The University of Urbino is the movement's official think-tank.There are Slow travel tours but they seem more like the movie:If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), which I loved. Don’t rush this tour, you’ll miss the point. No car alarms, no loud noises, organic food, yes, wireless is okay. It’s the best of both worlds.
This is not about watching the paint dry on the wall or arguing about two flies climbing it. This is about living a rich life and knowing it, being aware of it, participating in it without becoming a sanyasi or an ascetic. Just say NO to fast food. Try observing a Sabbath, if not every week, maybe once a month. A book about the movement by Carl Honore is In Praise of Slow Unfortunately, the American press translated the title as In Praise of Slowness.
S-L-O-W is not about saying no to innovation and new ideas. Just put on the brakes, don’t raise your child to be an over-scheduled hothouse flower. Remember watching the rain drops? Listening to the wind? Last week Bill and I saw a double full rainbow. Aaah!
If you find a moment to go S-L-O-W, give us a call, send an email. We promise to only check email twice a day (not frantically every hour) and to answer promptly. If you use GoogleTalk or Skype then we’ll interact, too. Love you. XOX.
Happy Birthday, Joslyn. Can't believe you are t-w-e-n-t-y!
Jasmine enroute to Australia via Bali ~ thanks for the pc from the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. Beautiful country!
Natala in Las Vegas at MIX06. Keynote: Bill Gates, who else? Don't work too hard, Natala.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Cocooning
It seems we are staying in more this month. Is it because we traveled so far in January and February? Is it because we’re already close to the beyond? Or, are we just cocooning? I think the latter. We still walk the dog* twice a day.
We do go out. Last Saturday we went to a very interesting charity event at The Tech Museum in San Jose with gaming tables, free martinis and chocolate desserts. We danced and got sore feet (from cocooning too much and not dancing enough).
Cocooning means we watch Netflix (even though we don’t have little kids) and cook at home (Bill’s pork curry was good!) or do Sudokus (one after the other) and read India Currents and catalogs in bed (and then order stuff online). Yoga is okay when you’re cocooning. So are big fluffy omelets with mushrooms and spinach and marmalade on toast. Milo with hot milk. Writing on your computer all day in your pjs. Balancing your checkbook at your own pace and not thinking about Academic Senates or Resolutions or Diversity or Democrats and Republicans or obligations and necessities. Not to mention reptilians and intergalactic visitations. This is what cocooning means to me.
Sunday, we leave the cocoon to go to Berkeley to visit friends. Monday, its back to work and the 8-lane 101. Today, it actually hailed and Natala gave Brizzie a bath at the Country Pet Wash. Thanks, Natala. Brizzie thanks you, too.
*Brizzie as a puppy—“was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?”. That’s from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus referring to Helen of Troy not from Shakespeare (and not from the Iliad)!Well, I never...
Hope you can get some cocooning in this month.
We do go out. Last Saturday we went to a very interesting charity event at The Tech Museum in San Jose with gaming tables, free martinis and chocolate desserts. We danced and got sore feet (from cocooning too much and not dancing enough).
Cocooning means we watch Netflix (even though we don’t have little kids) and cook at home (Bill’s pork curry was good!) or do Sudokus (one after the other) and read India Currents and catalogs in bed (and then order stuff online). Yoga is okay when you’re cocooning. So are big fluffy omelets with mushrooms and spinach and marmalade on toast. Milo with hot milk. Writing on your computer all day in your pjs. Balancing your checkbook at your own pace and not thinking about Academic Senates or Resolutions or Diversity or Democrats and Republicans or obligations and necessities. Not to mention reptilians and intergalactic visitations. This is what cocooning means to me.
Sunday, we leave the cocoon to go to Berkeley to visit friends. Monday, its back to work and the 8-lane 101. Today, it actually hailed and Natala gave Brizzie a bath at the Country Pet Wash. Thanks, Natala. Brizzie thanks you, too.
*Brizzie as a puppy—“was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?”. That’s from Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus referring to Helen of Troy not from Shakespeare (and not from the Iliad)!Well, I never... Hope you can get some cocooning in this month.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Rain
It has been raining off and on for the past week. Yes, even in sunny California! Some of it has been good, strong rain…the rest of it the usual drizzly stuff. Some stormy, windy days with our palm fronds blowing over the house and clear to the other side. Must call the city for a special pick up soon. The city will not allow us to put them in the trash can as palm fronds are virtually indestructible. Not that they would fit.
Rain. Monsoon rain. Good hard rain that goes on non-stop for days. Rain that gets into your soul and fires up your adrenal glands—that’s rain. Rain like we get in India. I remember a time we took a boat out to see the backwaters in Kerala Nowadays you can take an “adventure cruise” but this was back when…. My dad hired a boat and some men to navigate and out we went. The rain came when we were in the middle of the waterway. Cats and dogs! We all got soaked through and through. We stopped at a smallish village and got shelter from an old woman who had a hut. The women (us) went inside to dry our clothes by her small fire. She made us chai. It was another time, another place, another adventure.
They have almost real rain in Brisbane which is just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropics, as you may know, is the area of the world that lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. It runs through Queensland.
India, you guessed, is almost completely below the Tropic of Cancer. The Equator runs through the middle of The Tropics. None of the United States is in The Tropics although sometimes we experience tropical storms. I LOVE tropical rain. That’s what I call REAL rain.
These two pictures were taken in my mother’s backyard in Queensland of almost tropical rain.
Somerset Maugham said in Rain that “Pago Pago is about the rainiest place in the Pacific…It swept in from the opening of the harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred.” Last night, Bill and I went to hear the crystal bowls played by Maxi Harper. She played five bowls and a Tibetan Gong. Very much like rain but even more soulful.
Till the next time…I hope you get a chance to experience some real rain…Jasmine in Malaysia and Jessica in Singapore. Enjoy the feel of that warm rain!
Rain. Monsoon rain. Good hard rain that goes on non-stop for days. Rain that gets into your soul and fires up your adrenal glands—that’s rain. Rain like we get in India. I remember a time we took a boat out to see the backwaters in Kerala Nowadays you can take an “adventure cruise” but this was back when…. My dad hired a boat and some men to navigate and out we went. The rain came when we were in the middle of the waterway. Cats and dogs! We all got soaked through and through. We stopped at a smallish village and got shelter from an old woman who had a hut. The women (us) went inside to dry our clothes by her small fire. She made us chai. It was another time, another place, another adventure.
They have almost real rain in Brisbane which is just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The Tropics, as you may know, is the area of the world that lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. It runs through Queensland.
India, you guessed, is almost completely below the Tropic of Cancer. The Equator runs through the middle of The Tropics. None of the United States is in The Tropics although sometimes we experience tropical storms. I LOVE tropical rain. That’s what I call REAL rain.
These two pictures were taken in my mother’s backyard in Queensland of almost tropical rain.
Somerset Maugham said in Rain that “Pago Pago is about the rainiest place in the Pacific…It swept in from the opening of the harbour in sheets and the opposite shore was all blurred.” Last night, Bill and I went to hear the crystal bowls played by Maxi Harper. She played five bowls and a Tibetan Gong. Very much like rain but even more soulful.
Till the next time…I hope you get a chance to experience some real rain…Jasmine in Malaysia and Jessica in Singapore. Enjoy the feel of that warm rain!
