Mind Games

There is an upside to being suggestible. When I think about my suggestibility, I usually don't think about as a positive thing. Rather, I'm stymied by the countless ways I can arouse anxiety in myself. You see, I count myself among that special group of people who hears about one catastrophe or another in the media, and suddenly finds reasons to believe that I may be the next to experience it. It's not hard for me to imagine, after watching a horror flick, that some ghoul is creaking across the floorboards to strangle me in my sleep. Show me a sandwich that has a bite shaped like the Mona Lisa, and I'll see it, I promise.

Clearly, these are not the upsides to being suggestible. Of course, every cloud has a silver lining, and here is mine: I can play fantastic mind games with myself. I guess you could say that all of that self-induced anxiety is a game, but it's more of a torture. The real games are ones that always benefit me. Here are a few that make life easier for me:

Mindgame 1: Alarm clock

At times, I have terrible insomnia--the kind that interrupts a sleep in the dark hours and pesters endlessly until dawn. Over the years, it's lessened, thank goodness. I've developed a good bag-o-tricks to deal with it. Among my best is this little mind game.

Regardless of the time, I imagine, vividly, that my alarm clock is just about to go off. In the imagined scenario, there is no room for hitting the snooze--I need to be up and ready for some unavoidable obligation, and I need to be ready for a long, long day full of activities. No time left to languish in bed--time to get up, even though the day will be tediously long and full of obligations.

When I do this one right, with convincing detail, I am immediately exhausted. I long to stretch out in bed. My eyes fight staying open. And suddenly, I am back to sleep. Voila!

Mindgame 2: Sitting too long

If you travel, you are bound to have times of sitting and waiting that seem interminable. Being on a runway for hours is probably one of the worst, but even a good transcontinental flight can make you feel restless. Leg exercises may help, but getting relaxed is even more helpful. For situations like this, I call on this mindgame:

Years ago, my brother and I took a train trip across Sweden. As timing had it, we had chosen one of the busiest travel days of the year, and our tickets were for non-reserved seats. Essentially, we were forced to play musical chairs with the savvy Swedes who had reserved seats. Every seat was filled, and so we stood for nearly 6 hours. The only breaks we had were stolen moments when the train stopped to let more passengers on and off. What a relief it was to sit, even for a minute, on those just-vacated train benches. Of course, we were immediately tapped on the shoulder and asked to move by the rightful occupant of said seats. The train ride seemed endless! Being forced to stand so long was a perfect food for my imagination, though.

When I find myself in a situation where I have to sit, I conjure that train ride across Sweden, where sitting was impossible. To do it right, I have to vividly recreate that sense of frustration I felt, that sense of endless standing. Then, I imagine that suddenly a seat is made just for me, one I can keep for the rest of the ride! Oh relief! How I appreciate that seat!

Mindgame 3: too hot/too cold

I'm a Chicago girl by birth, where winters are legendary for their blustery cold. When the wind whips just so, you'd swear you're in the arctic. And the -20 degree reading on the thermometer only sustains that illusion.

Now I live in the northeast, where winter is a different shade of cold--not as biting as the midwest, but a deep-in-your-bones, damp kind of cold. The funny thing is, I sort of love the cold, on most days. However, there are a few times every winter when I feel as though I can't bear it for a second longer. This happened a few days ago after I took the girls to swimming lessons. The pool is indoor, of course, but it's also on a section of the island that opens up onto the bay, and it catches the most direct gusts off the ocean. BRRRR! As we trooped to the car, I pulled out another mindgame to share with my shivering daughters. Here it is:

I imagine that it is one of the hottest days of the year, and we are stuck, our will, inside a stuffy, sauna-like house. There is no air conditioning, no fan, no water to drink. The heat is so heavy it brings up strange smells from the wood and walls, and I don't want to breathe in the sticky air. Suddenly, I discover a hidden (and forbidden) door, a door that leads into a cool room, where the wind is almost icy, and the cold is clear and bright. I step into the room, and the cold feels lovely...such a relief.

This type of imagining works for times that are too hot, too. I reverse the settings, and I can replicate a similar relief in the opposite direction. When I described the scenario to the girls and asked them to make-believe with me last week in the freezing parking lot, the whining (mine too) had stopped altogether, and we found we were all actually feeling grateful for the cold by the time we made it to the car.

If I shrink my own head a little bit, I notice that each of these scenarios involves a sort of bucking of authority to meet my needs. The relief is that much more pronounced because it's a little subversive. Hmmm.

Essentially, what these mindgames seek to do is to force me to appreciate the moment as something pleasurable, not torturous. They only really work if I am really starting to feel tortured by the present situation.

Plato connected pleasure with meeting an intense need. His classic example was the quenching of thirst--how wonderful that first sip of water is after being thirsty. Indeed, these little scenarios of mine do seek to "trick" my mind into feeling that the current state actually does "quench" a need. Instead of seeking to control the situation, I seek to control my perception of the situation. Psycho babble, mindgame, call it what you will--it works.

What mindgames do you play?

One little word for 2010: May it be a year filled with Delight

Inspired by my friend Irene Latham, last year I chose a single word as a theme for the new year. My word for 2009 was enjoy. It was a great focal word for me, and having chosen it publicly, I thought of that word a lot more in 2009 than I usually would have. Forming the word in my thoughts was like a call to attention, and it forced me to see the happier side whatever situation I was in. Just thinking "enjoy" made me enjoy life more, and that made my one little word take on a significance I hadn't expected.

For my one little word for 2010, I started mulling over choices early, back in November. I take everything so damn seriously, and of course, this was no different. I actually worried, "What if I choose the wrong one?" Ugh. I amaze myself with my own capacity for melodrama.

Fortunately, I let myself relax into the process of considering individual words. Many words stopped by for an audition: focus, dream, here, play, invent, see. Some even had a callback. But the right word was still out there, until it was literally whispered in my ear one evening in early December. Robert Krulwich, of the amazing podcast Radiolab, mentioned how the word "delighted" is woefully underused. It stuck in my head, and I thought of the word the next day as Esme and Ada were grinning with excitement about their new advent chocolates with star shapes stamped on them. A square of chocolate, not even half an inch wide. It was such a small thing, but clearly it produced so much delight. Exactly.

So delight it is, my one little word for 2010. Krulwich is right to say it's woefully underused. I can't think of the last time I heard someone say, "I'm delighted!"

It feels a little old-fashioned, but it's all the more appealing to me because of it. I think it's hard to use the word delight in a time like ours, where campiness and mockery set the tone all too often. Delight is innocent in that it's unabashed. If you are delighted, it's obvious. It floods out of you, into your expression, your posture, your voice. Such clear expression is a gift, to the person feeling it, and to everyone else around as well.

For 2010, I want to be that person, who delights, who is delightful, who feels unabashedly delighted. I want to be in the presence of people who shed their skin enough to feel that, too, to just be filled with it.

To start, I'm leaving the Christmas tree up a few more days, which is a few days later than we would normally leave it up. Yes, the house is chaotic with decorations and new toys and old toys. The crisp clean feeling of a tidy house is still out of my reach. But the tree, which my husband carefully grew for us over the past four years, and which has a sweet little open spot that is perfect for the big straw stars we hang--ah, the tree is delightful. It sparkles against the snow, and it still fits the room, it still feels right there. Frankly, I am still delighted by it. Choosing delight--it stays. I hope to choose such little delightful things again and again over the next year, and notice that flood of feeling that comes each time. I send those wishes to you, too.

What word will you choose for 2010?

2009 flounced out in a flurry of snow and ice. In its wake, a rush of ideas has been flooding into my mind. I'm welcoming it as much as I'm welcoming the new year.

Like the snow, our holidays were soft and lovely, quiet and restful and--best of all--full of moments where my husband and I would look at each other and feel grateful to be in the moment of such magic. Ada and Esme are at the perfect ages to savor the anticipation of Santa, to wonder at the miracle of how he brings just the right thing, and to enjoy the simple gifts we share during Advent. Ada literally cheers when she gets to eat a candy cane!

This year was perhaps the first that I did not feel overwhelmed with the should-have-dones. I scrapped my big "make a perfect Christmas" list, and decided that just being calm might be the most important ingredient for a good Christmas.

A few years ago, I found myself in a puddly mess on December 17 or so, crying because with my overblown expectations--handmade doll clothes, perfectly wrapped gifts, 20 kinds of cookies to be baked and given to neighbors--there was just no way to do it all. Honestly, my mid-December breakdown was a repeat performance from the years before, too. So, to avoid the personal heartbreak, I decided in November to get ahead of myself and just cut the to-do list from my routine for the month. Things that could be done on a small scale--a candy cane for Advent, a new puzzle, or an afternoon spent making salt dough creatures--these were things I could swing. But with Esme in full-on curious 3-year-old mode, baking cookies by the dozen is beyond me at this point. I give. Say it with me: Kirie is not Martha. In fact, Martha is not Martha. She is Martha plus the legion of staff that is Martha Stewart Omnimedia.

The scale-back experiment paid off, and the holidays were as calm as they could be. And still, I found that the day after Christmas I was exhausted, my mind almost blank. It's a strange sensation for me to be without a plan for some new thing to do, something to work on. I took it for what it was: a rest. A time of going fallow for a little while, to just be.

And you know, on New Year's Day, I woke to the snow and the wind and the great sensation that a new and exciting year was blowing into the world. And like the snow-filled sky, my mind swirled, full of new ideas once again.

Happy 2010! May yours bring you delight.

Remembering my friend

Remembering, always, my dear friend Kim, who died a year ago today.

Our family had a lovely few days with her family this past summer. At one point during the visit, D. was looking through one of my favorite collections of poems, and it fell open to this one. We all shared an emotion-laden pause, and then read the poem. Ah Kim, I miss you.

Caroline

She wore

her coming death

as gracefully

as if it were a coat

she'd learned to sew.

When it grew cold enough,

she'd simply button it

and go.

Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening

Panna Cotta inspired by Top Chef

For some reason, panna cotta appears to be the next go-to dessert on Bravo's Top Chef lately. A few seasons ago, it was the "scallop," whether actual an mollusk or an imitation made from bananas. But this year, chef after chef seems to be making variations of panna cotta. Or attempting them. They mostly seem to fall drastically short of the mark, garnering criticism along the lines of "tastes like a hockey puck."

Having never eaten a panna cotta, much less cooked one, I was nonetheless inspired to make one last weekend. Maybe it was a craving for dairy, or maybe it was just the appeal of such a short list of ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, gelatin, vanilla. Following on Thanksgiving, making something simple and cool felt like a good idea.

Because I've had no experience with it, my notion of panna cotta comes from what I've heard, and some idea that, when done right, it's nourishing in that primal way milk and honey are when mixed together. As for texture, I had the sense that the end result should be a hybrid of gelatin and pudding, with more subtle flavor.

I'll tell you how I made it, and how it turned out. But the most notable thing about cooking this was the peace I found in doing so.

Such a simple thing, stirring milk and cream together. Everyone else was lost in a mid-afternoon nap, and so it was just me and the soft burr sound of the spoon scraping the pan as I babysat the mixture.

I don't often give myself permission to have nothing to do. It's a self-imposed state of frantic, I know. The upside to that is that I am incapable of being bored. One of the downsides is the frenetic thought pattern I make for myself, even when I am supposedly at rest. Ideas, fears, plans, and obsessions flood my mind constantly, often overwhelming me with insomnia. During the day, I feel as though I am constantly moving from one thing to the next. The end result is not a model of productive energy. It's sort of a muddle somedays. Most projects I start never get finished in one sitting, and some never get finished at all.

So finding myself at the stove with a rare quiet around me was a real treat. Even rarer: that silence spread into me, and my mind stilled. I was there, and there alone, just breathing in the cloud of creamy vanilla that rose up around me. The southern window over the stove was filled with winter sun, angling off the glass in a such a way that it fell on half of the saucepan, and made the whorls of milk seem lit from within.

I hypnotized myself into that little pool for the time it took to watch it come to a boil. The watched pot does indeed boil, I thought to myself as I stirred. Leaning on one elbow, I just let myself just give into the whole bliss of doing one thing at a time.

At some point, the milk boiled, and I went into motion to finish it. A stir of vanilla and orange extracts, a quick pour into ramekins, and it was done.

A few hours after dinner, I unveiled the little pots for my family. Ada loved it, which I took as high praise from someone that regularly proclaims "I hate cow milk." My husband and I also agreed it was worth making many more times again, and vied for Esme's abandoned ramekin. (Esme was not a fan--but I'm discounting that, as she is not a fan of most food besides chocolate.)

Top chef or not, I made this version of panna cotta well enough that it is going on my own go-to recipe list because it hit my imagined ideal balance between gelatin and pudding. The cream was neither tough nor runny, but loosely gathered to consistency slightly thinner than a yogurt. It held its shape if you tipped the cup upside down onto the plate and served it that way, but Ada and I both relished scooping it from the little bowls ourselves.

That fragile texture was even better because of the subtle flavor. The orange had cooked off a lot, and what was left was like a whisper. It was hard to place whether it was orange or vanilla I was tasting, and I loved that.

What I liked most was that the whole dessert seemed like a metaphor for the process of making it. How simple it is to imagine taking a few moments to "just be." And how hard it is to do. There's not much to those moments--some sunlight, some stirring--but the subtle flavor of being concentrated on something is something I savor when I give it a chance. And the big thing: it's fragile, it's delicate--like moments themselves. A little something to remind myself...

Here's the recipe I adapted, using a few slightly lighter substitutions from a traditional version:

1 cup 2% milk

3 cups half and half

2/3 cup sugar

3 teaspoons unflavored gelatin (like Knox)

1 teaspoon orange extract

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

pinch of salt

Butter 6-8 ramekins and set aside on a tray. Set aside 1/4 cup milk in a small bowl, and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. Let it sit, with the gelatin floating on top, for 5 minutes.

Mix the rest of the milk and half and half together with the sugar in a large saucepan. Bring it just to a boil, then take 1/2 cup of the hot mixture and add it back into the bowl with the gelatin and milk. Whisk it until it's dissolved, then pour it all back into the saucepan. Stir it all together, add the vanilla, orange and salt.

If you want, you can run the whole mixture through a fine-meshed sieve. I skipped this step, and it turned out fine.

After you strain it, or if you choose not to, divide the mixture evenly among the ramekins. Put them into the fridge for at least 5 hours, or better yet, overnight.

When you're ready to serve them, either leave them in the little bowls or turn them upside down onto little plates. If you do plate them, it sometimes helps to run a sharp knife around the edge to loosen them first. Don't set them into hot water to loosen them--they are too fragile.

That's the basic how-to of it. If you do make it, tell me about how yours turned out. And if you got to sneak a quiet moment for yourself in the process.

Grateful for what might not have been

It's a time of reflection and thanksgiving, and I remind myself again: it might have been otherwise. I wrote this poem at a time when I was almost consumed with longing and anxiety. Among my desires then: to have a child, to transcend my own childhood and be a grownup, to find some way into what I dreamed my life could be.

Doppelganger

We meet between the glass of frames
And photo paper
And the thirty years
That separate us.

And mostly, you seem
transparent--
Blue eyes looking out
from plans and details
and preoccupations with, premonitions of
long and good
days to come.

In your winter coat and muckluks, you are
bright with snow light
on your cheeks and in your eyes.
And I--
I am there, too.
on my sled,
small and red, veloured and fat-fisted,
not yet a miniature you,
not yet aware of the camera
or the spring that follows.

2
There is a chemistry of shadow and light
on certain nights
when the fan above my bed starfishes
itself across the ceiling,
past the rattling cage of
minutia mind
to the rocky beach
of memory.

I stand on the shore
skipping thoughts along the flashing lake
singing in clean strokes across the water
until they sink
like obsidian into oil.

And here you are again,
but opaque to me
This time.
And it's clear to me that
those captured, auspicious moments
left a world of questions
out
of the frame.

What must you have thought,
worried over, as your own night-
beach tumbled into your room
and roared you awake with its waves?


3
I have learned that
if I touch the glass, or
ruffle through papers
or sing stones over water 30 years deep,
I can imagine you as
Another me.
And for a moment,
I can see the world outside the lens.

And as for the me that was then, well,
She
is lost at the bottom of the oily lake,
Waiting
(for now)
for a tide.

K.R.

originally published in Red River Review

Purple and green

Spring this year hang on well into the summer, and, in a fitting symmetry, autumn is doing the same thing.

That translates to some really beautiful surprises in the garden, like the few handfuls of supersweet raspberries and strawberries.

And in wandering around the yard, I've discovered some gorgeous and unexpected color, especially purples and greens. Sometimes the purple is seems just a natural bleed out of the red of the summer color, as it does on the setum flowers. But look at the lamb's ear below, and it's hard to pinpoint the season: it seems almost springlike, the delicate blossoms just peeking out from the leaves like a glimpse of a petticoat.

The combination of green and purples resonates with me, maybe because it's got an interesting complexity--not all sweetness and light, but some beautiful shadow, too. I get an almost tactile feeling thinking about them---they just feel good to carry around together, don't you think?

In a nice coincidence, I've had purple and green on my mind lately. My cousin is getting married next year, and she is contemplating using all sorts of purples and green tones in her plans. What lovely ideas she has! She's started a blog called Bridalhood to document her inspirations--and it in turn inspired me.

So I grabbed my camera, and started looking more intently for purple and green--and found it everywhere this fall, in all kinds of interesting contrasts.

The lavender unfurled yet another crop of stems, too, which my husband brought in for me in sweet little vases yesterday. Smelling fresh lavender in the room in November is a little secret thrill.

The thyme flowers bloomed again, too, in tiny violet whispers on the wiry stems. I love the contrast of the glossy green leaves, the spiky stalks, and the almost orchid-shaped flowers which, individually, are tiny enough to fit onto the heads of pins.

Hydrangeas blend the purple and green so perfectly--not only in their blooms, but in their leaves.

I see these fanning out from the hydrangea stalks, and the word varigated swims into my thoughts and sticks there like a little tune.

In fact, I start noticing purple in all sorts of leaves in our yard:

These mates of our pachysandra (I forget their names) are normally a dark green, with cornflower blue flowers, but they've faded out to a fantastic shade of purple/brown.

The blueberry leaves with some raindrops are even more tenderly purple--maybe catching the color of the sky.

And as the sleepy rhododendrons go dormant--their leaves get dusky as over ripe plums. And it's surprisingly beautiful.

So with all this purple foliage and flowers, I felt inspired to make a flower of my own. Here is a paper hybrid of some sort which I fiddled with recently.

I enjoyed shaping the paper, incorporating different papers and inks. I found some old maps of my cousin's home state, and a few pages of interesting text to add to the petals. Finished with a few beads, some wire, and some ribbon--ta da.