The sun, hot and bright in a cloudless sky. The walls bleached white or whispering versions of brighter colors by light or salt and all I wanted was a bit of sun and the possible retreat of shade. Shade, the great gift in southern Portugal where the sun feels amazing until it doesn’t. Where the breeze is a better air conditioner than any environmentally degrading contraption human’s have created.

I sat on the roof of my hostel, a place designed for just such a lounging. bed/couches line the walls on the roof. Wrought iron tables and succulents and other plants coveting and receiving the sun. the only thing missing is a hammock. Short of that, the fig tree offering a smattering of shade based on the position of the sun and the clothes line waving a collection of colorful clothing items, flags in the wind.

I wanted to want to go to the beach.

I wanted to want to sit on the sand and when the heat overcame me go running with abandon into the frigid blue water.

I hadn’t expected the chill of the water. I expected a gentle cooling. A cooling that after a few moments recedes in the memory and is simply the temperature. I was expecting the water off the coast of Croatia. Water where I had to be brazen to submerge myself but once submerged, I could mock myself for all of the theatrics it took to get me in. but no, this water reminds you it is cold even once I've dunked myself. The huge waves splashing carelessly against my torso. It felt a bit like floating in a glass with wayward ice cubes.

I wanted to want that. I wanted to want to gaze at the magnificent cliffs that are said to dot the shore here if you walk in the right direction.

I wanted to want that.

But all I really wanted was to sit and read and lounge in the sun and eat and sleep.

I wanted to want to write. I'd been so diligent in the last weeks, writing in the morning before marching off into the streets of whatever city I'm in. but yesterday wasn’t that day. Yesterday wasn’t a day of doing any thing I “should” do. Yesterday was not a day where I could convince myself to be responsible or guilt myself into “proper” behavior.

That is the beauty and the challenge of traveling alone. The freedom to do just exactly what I want to to do. The absence of any judgment save my own. I remember arriving in Cappadocia, Turkey and excitedly planning for a pre-dawn balloon ride over the strange and phallic rock formations that are famous in the region.

That was it.

That was all I had planned for the day. And when I returned to my hotel only a short time after the sun had escaped the horizon and shone still gently on the city, I didn’t come up with any other plans. In that case, I didn’t even want to want to do anything else. I had my eye on a hammock and I had a book I was more than ready to pretend I'd be reading.

Yesterday was a day like that. A day where as I sit here trying to recount what I accomplished or what memorable thing I experienced, leaves me with my head cocked to the side and nothing of interest for anyone.

Except…

Except, I think there is a place for a day like yesterday. I think there is a place like a string of days like yesterday. Days where I am not doing anything. Not even wandering. Days where I am replenishing my stores in a different way. In a sloth-like way.

My hostel roof...where I napped, wrote, and read

So yesterday was a day like that. It isn’t my first and it won’t be my last.

Sometimes it is health that demands such a day of rest. But that isn’t exactly the same thing. The body demanding its due...pay unto Caesar what is Caesar's and all of that. The body isn’t one to let debt accumulate for too long before demanding payment in some form. So spending a languishing day in bed when my body demands it isn’t the same as spending a languishing day in bed when my brain demands it...or my soul. Their demand is less tangible. Easier to ignore. Easy to talk myself out of.

But, yesterday I lay about the hostel napping and reading and gazing out into the horizon of buildings and hills and ocean and sun.

And each day I'll see what the soul demands. And as much as I'm able, I'll give it.

Sparklebright

She had the brightest smile. Bright like whites in the summer sun. Bright like kittens purring against your hand. Bright like nothing bad had ever happened. 

It has been so many years I can’t tell you how we started talking, or what mental or physical state I was in when we did. It was after my accident. My head was bandaged but I don’t know how far into the AZT I was. I don’t remember how sick I might have been. Only that when I remember it now, through the gauzy haze of nostalgia and toppled into the memory pit of a time, I can see her smiling as bright as anything, laughing as lightly as dandelion fluff. 

My trauma was obvious. Written all over my face with bandages, spiky stitches, and the constant nausea for my post exposure prophylaxis (a precaution against the unknown origin of the hospital needles). And if it were later, and the stitches were already gone, then my trauma was still obvious, with a raw jagged line running through a patch of shaved scalp. 

Her ailment was her secret to tell. 

We sat on a bench I think, waiting for appointments? Lingering after appointments? Sharing the same bed and breakfast? I can’t recall details; only that we talked and shared and laughed.

I have a memory of her joyful description of her house in Malawi. Her washing clothes in the doorway. Even talking about the mundane chores of rural Peace Corps life seemed pleasant with her, not in the obnoxious way where you want to shove a sponge in someone’s face, but in the…hmmm, I should try it her way, kind of way.

We talked about her travels. About making friends and keeping in touch. We talked about the difficulties of having no shared language. This was before google translate or babblefish. This was us sitting in a country whose internet, I was sure, was run by a lone hamster dying of thirst on a rusted out wheel.

I don’t remember exchanging addresses. How could I remember that when I can’t remember where she fits between the first time I threw up (from the smell of dinner -it didn’t matter that I was starving -my body heaved in revolt and I remained famished) and lying on the floor of my assistant Peace Corps Director’s office, under the air conditioning for 8 hours at a stretch for the sake of cooling my nausea. She is in there somewhere- a shining beacon, a moment when maybe I wasn’t fixated on sickness or pain.

I returned to my village a moth after my accident. Thinner. Weaker. Skittish of loud noises and sudden stops. I made my rounds in my village. Reacquainted people with me, attempted to find my place in the now strangely foreign place that until weeks before, had been my home. 

Sometime later – in my head it is February but that isn’t right because I’d been home barely a week by that point- I got a package in the mail. Inside were bath salts “for my bucket bath” …sweet smelling reminders of home. Beneath those envelopes wrapped in plastic bags, was a bag of marshmallows. 

Sitting in the Peace Corps doctor’s office, comparing Malawi to South Africa, sharing the yearnings of youngish people so far from home tangled in with adventures and lamentations…she remembered. She remembered what I said I longed for so far away from familiarity and the comforts of home. 

Through the mail, across the miles, her so removed from the sub-Saharan life we had discussed and shared…she remembered me. She remembered me and mailed me a piece of home.

Fifteen years later, the thought of her still makes me attempt a smile as bright as hers.

An almost chef

The almost chef. It fits on multiple levels. No formal training beyond a fierce reliance on google to figure things out, I’m almost but not quite, a trained cook. But the almost applies for my adherence to recipes.

My respect for cooks and chefs is less their ability to follow a recipe. A recipe is simply instructions, and people follow those all the time. Instructions allow us to put together Ikea furniture, to get to a new restaurant, to take care of a new plant. Instructions are simple. The artistry of food comes not in recipes, but in the ability to deviate from recipes…or at its height…to never consider a recipe to begin with. To look at a heap of potential ingredients and to see a masterful plate there. The culinary version of Michelangelo lore –Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.. The meal is already in the ingredients so to speak.

To that end, it seems I am calling myself a chef or an artist, but more accurately I am someone who rarely has all of the ingredients on hand, or who has a distaste for a particular ingredient being called for. Up front, anything calling for asparagus is immediately replaced with…well, almost anything. I loathe asparagus and there is no disguising the taste, smell, or texture. Most things I’ll try out but I’m most reticent to put asparagus anywhere near me. But I digress. This isn’t about asparagus. This is about my almost recipe.

My CSA box arrived on Wednesday filled with dill. Dill? My only experience with dill was back in high school when I tried to make a potpie with a dill crust. I over-measured not understanding that unlike other seasonings that a little is good and a lot just as good, dill, in its dried form, is strong. I don’t remember what was in that potpie but I sure as hell remember the dill. 

So potpie crust rushed to my brain when I found the willowy stems of dill in my box. What the heck was I going to do with that?

Google of course. I google any ingredient and add recipe to the end all the time, a useful trick my sister shared with me. Of course I scrolled through pages of pickle recipes but finally I landed on this recipe for Persian rice. It called for a fair amount of dill so that was a win, but it also involved rice…and I don’t really deal too much with rice. Mostly I use quinoa these days, versatile enough for rice and bulgur dishes, as well as cous cous dishes. Still, skimming through the recipe, it called for jasmine rice – a rice that has a subtle aroma and shape. 

I did a fair amount of shopping and scrounging for this recipe – even as I didn’t purchase everything on the ingredient list. For starters, there was no zucchini and I don’t like it enough to warrant purchasing some. My box did have dino kale though, a darker healthier green and readily available. Double score. I sautéed it quickly with some garlic and set it aside. 

I had, oddly enough, an abundance of cinnamon sticks but not cardamom. Cardamom had been on my mind for a while though, given how much Indian food I try to cook so I purchased that. The pistachios I almost substituted for cashews (boy am I glad I didn’t, the texture would be all wrong). I bought goat cheese, a lemon, and a can of chick peas. Most everything else I pillaged my pantry for, even managing to scrounge up a packet of dried apricots from my Machu Picchu hike some months ago (dried apricots are like $12 a packet!). 

I followed the instructions…mostly. There was no roasting of zucchini of course because there was no zucchini, but I did throw in the sautéed greens. There was no parsley because…who really misses parsley?

When I finished, what I was left with was pure and vibrant deliciousness. Already I am plotting to recreate it, a handful of fresh dill remains, as does an extra lemon and half a thing of goat cheese. Really, the pistachios and apricots are the only thing that would require replenishing. 

Of course I’m also thinking about how I can step it up a notch…stuffing the rice into raw sweet peppers seems the perfect complement (although it might fight too much against the sweetness of the apricots) but I’ll have to try that out next round. For the moment I have to be contented with anticipating lunch…I love it when I anticipate lunch.

Fatigue strangled a great deal of my weekend, I didn’t do nearly as much cooking as I had intended. I discovered late today that I didn’t have the whole cumin seeds necessary for my roti recipe so that will have to wait but I did have beets idling in my fridge. Beets, something I eat when presented but never seek out. The original plan had been to make a carrot beet and ginger soup…but that made me nervous for some reason I can’t exactly explain. Instead, I allowed myself to be persuaded by my sister to pickle the beets instead. Apparently pickled beets count as a fermented food and fermented foods are good for you. 

Once again I found myself without the complete ingredients for any one recipe. Some called for actually canning (never gonna happen!) some, special vinegars, some special seasonings. What I settled on was a relatively simple recipe, but even in its simplicity I was missing ingredients. Still, I roasted my beets, skinned and sliced them. I soaked the steaming root in a mixture of apple cider vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard seeds, and fresh dill. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with the recipe but I did what I could. For the moment they taste like..well…pickled beets. Nothing particularly special. I am curious to see how they fare as the days progress.

Next up…dhal puri roti and some kind of carrot ginger soup and fresh bread.

Rape-y

*trigger warning

We are a country of technicalities. We want to know the letter of any law so that we can summarily break it or skate the fine edge of it- a hair’s width from stepping over the line, gleeful at our success either way. But rules aren’t everything and just because something is legal – or rather, isn’t illegal- doesn’t make it right.

This article in The Guardian works through complicated feelings about a sexual encounter. Far from the narrative some people try to paint of the air quotes rape survivor flinging false accusations, the author chooses her worlds carefully, measuring the full weight of the rapist label on both her and the man involved. She lays bare where and what she consented to, when she feels herself complicit and also where she believes fault lays at her then-partner’s feet. It is a nuanced perspective I have never read before, a perspective that moved beyond the legal definition of rape and even the general accepted understanding of what rape is. Laws about rape, while necessary, only address the obvious and odious result of rape culture; a brutal and penetrating act. Laws don’t even hint at the underlying issues.

I don’t understand the underlying psyche of serial rapists, for this discussion I am referring to the “rape-y” type behavior the guardian article focused on. I’m talking about the rape culture we nurture and feed without realizing that manifests in muddled consent, confusion, and fear. I’m talking about the gray areas that women find themselves in where they haven’t said yes exactly but haven’t said no and leaves a partner feeling violated.

We shorthand violation to rape, there is shock value there. There is rawness and brutality there. No sane and moral person wants to be on the side of rape culture.

But we also limit ourselves with that language. We limit ourselves. We set the bar for disdain at one level and ignore anything below it…even though violation and humiliation and degradation can and do exist below that line. In our world of absolutes- of living by the rules – if there are no rules against something than it must be ok.

More rules aren’t the answer. I understand the cumbersome nature of too many rules. I understand the pushback from affirmative consent rules/laws. But it isn’t about the rules…or rather, the conversation shouldn’t end at the rules. It shouldn’t be that people must ask “Can I kiss you on the lips?” “Can I kiss you on the neck?” “Can I slide my hand down your pants?” the point is permission. The point is consent. The point is communication. Sometimes we make rules for things and miss the point all together- I fear we have done that with sex. We have done that with relationships. We have “ruled” ourselves out of an ability to connect with another person. That doesn’t mean every sexual encounter has to be filled with love and marriage, only that engaging with another person’s body- even if your only interest is in their body – does not abolish their humanity.  

John Hughes movies are cemented into my brain from my youth– complete with soundtracks and quotes. But re-watching those movies as an adult I am dismayed by what I was consuming without realizing it. Sixteen Candles showcases rape culture. Washed away by her after-the-fact consent and the assurance that she liked it, the truth is that her trusted partner “gave” her, in her inebriated state, to another teen. Gave her to him and told him he could do whatever he wanted with her.

And therein lies the problem. We have raised our boys and our girls to view violation only through a lens of violent rejection of advances. We have molded the definition in such a way that it almost doesn’t exist in any way removed from holding someone down and penetrating them. But violations happen every day. Violations of trust that lead to violations of body. I ended up in a conversation about consent with a student once a. I don’t remember what led to the conversation only that his face changed when I talked about power dynamics and socialization. I mentioned the different reasons that people sometimes say yes to sexual activity. He stared at me as I talked about the desire to please, feeling as if you can’t change your mind, that you owe someone something, I mentioned fear of repercussions – emotional and physical, I talked about being “liked”.

“I never thought about that,” he said quietly, his burger resting uneaten in his hand.

I don’t believe he was a rapist- but willful or by accident, I do believe he, and almost everyone, is capable of violation. Capable of walking up to the state-declared line never dreaming of crossing it but crossing it just the same. If we don’t dare to have conversations about that than we are destined to have rape-y experiences populating women’s (and men’s) lives. If we don’t have conversations about what consent means and why it is important, how can we expect to have anything but pain?

Some people are assholes.

The truth is some people hurt people because they are hurt, because they are horrible people.

Others…others make bad decisions never having thought through their actions and the repercussions of them. And we must hold people responsible - bad information or not. But oh how I wish we could have better information, better communication and less violation.