The 'Slow Blog' Movement

Yuletide Blessings

flaneuse — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 22:06:38 GMT

To my friends on Tribe (whom I've missed in my absence!) ~ warm wishes to you on this shortest day and longest night. I'm so appreciative to have met all of the great people here, and I'll look forward to seeing more of you in cyberspace in 2008! Be safe, jolly, and well. ~Flaneuse

Moving to a new 'hood

flaneuse — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:08:07 GMT

This Saturday I'm moving from Dupont Circle, where I've been living for about 15 months, up to Adams-Morgan. It's probably about a mile away as the crow flies, and a 20-minute walk, but it feels a world away. Very different in character from Dupont. Each has its charms. I'm excited, but moving is awful. It's amazing how much stuff one can collect in a year, without meaning to!

I turn my collar to the cold and damp

flaneuse — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 01:01:58 GMT

For the past week or so I've been in a bit of a funk. No large thing is wrong -- life is pretty good actually -- but little things add up: I came in second for a job I'd applied for. The last time I saw my sweetie we fought. Educational debt is bumming me out because it feels like I'll never be able to save enough for retirement and I worry I'll be eating dog food when I'm old, or have to take the pill like Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude. My period is late (no, I'm not pregnant, just irregular and moodier because of it). I just learned from Lori's blog that Jessa has died. Those students were gunned down at Virginia Tech today. And the sun hasn't shown its face for more than a moment for the past two weeks. If only the sun would come out everything else would seem manageable...

Cherries Jubilee

flaneuse — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:40:51 GMT

After years of wanting to see the famous DC cherry blossoms, I finally got to -- no excuse now that I live here! On Friday after work I went down to the tidal basin. The festival officially began on Saturday, and my thought was to get a "sneak preview" before the teeming hordes arrived. It was a good call; there were lots of people there Friday, but it was a relaxed vibe just before sunset, and not overly crowded. There were lots of lovers--scruffy 'emo' teen couples, middle-aged couples, gay couples, the works. A lot of people were wearing pink, or pink accents. (The blossoms are not all pink; many are white). Cutest of all were the Japanese babies, in particular one chubby and rosy-cheeked one wearing pink socks. The dominant sound was the clicking of camera shutters. Biggest surprise: Remembering the orange groves of my Arizona youth, I was anticipating delicately perfumed air, but the cherry blossoms have *no scent*! In one area there are old, gnarled trees that have not only branches but lots of tiny sprouts and seedlings coming out of the trunk and roots: even these are producing flowers on stalks less than an inch high. I don't have photos of my own to share, but there are many good images on the site below, including some nice shots of the area in fall and even in winter: http://www.dcphototour.com/WashingtonDCEventsPhotoTour/WashingtonDCCherryBlossomFestival-06.shtml Happy spring!

Got the Red Velvet blues

flaneuse — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:42:34 GMT

Today's New York Times has an entire article about Red Velvet cake, and how it is rising from its tacky status to become a sought-after comfort food. The accompanying photos made me drool and crave; I wanted to dive into a massive, sweet, pillowy slice. Hadn't I just seen one of these cakes somewhere? After work I went on a mission, battling the slush and cold wind in search of Velvet. I went to Afterwords Cafe, the Marvelous Market, and the Firehook Bakery, all to no avail. Where had I seen the darn thing?? In the end I had to content myself with a vanilla cupcake from Starbucks, which I'll savor after I log off tonight. Hope you're all having a great V-Day, however you are spending it!

Valentine "polyamory"

flaneuse — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:03:31 GMT

Valentine's Day is usually touted as a holiday only for couples with romantic/sexual involvement, and as such it's often reviled by single people who feel left out, and by others who resist the manipulation of commercialized holidays that would have us express our affection according to the calendar (and of course with pricey gifts). But I was reflecting on this and remembering how in elementary school we'd buy big boxes of cheap valentines with silly rhymes and cartoony images and give them to all of our classmates. I remember sitting at the dining room table with my mom, trying to match the card to the personality, and stuffing & addressing the envelopes. Then I got older and became too cool for such things. But the early memories are fond ones, and this is the kind of holiday I want to have this year: a democratic, populist Valentine's Day! Lots of love and affection for everybody! Shopping for Valentine cards, I was initially determined to avoid the classic, cloying imagery of red and pink hearts. But as I looked at the alternative designs, I felt they were just working too hard to overturn the paradigm. The attempt to be slick, innovative, or ironic seemed to telegraph a fear of being frivolous and silly and soft and lighthearted. This prompted a change of heart -- so to speak! -- and I decided to embrace the whole thing, kisses and hearts and icky-sweet colors and all. Eye candy, indeed!

Among the Godless

flaneuse — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:03:12 GMT

What does it mean to have a spiritual life without religion – specifically without creed or Deity? As I attempt to articulate my emerging theology, this is the question I begin with. As I’ve explored inwardly, I’ve noticed two aspects of my spirituality: the first is an ethical dimension that concerns itself with “doing the right thing” according to a moral code: not lying, cheating, stealing, killing, wasting, and so forth. Love thy neighbor; turn the other cheek. I recognize religious figures like Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed as super-righteous beings that humankind created as archetypes of our best possible selves, and concepts such as the Divine and the Most High as ideals one may reach for. But Spirit reaches beyond the realm of moral philosophy; I don’t feel Spirit coming out of many philosophic tomes, treatises, or debates. The second aspect is harder to pin down, but it has to do with acknowledging the Source, and showing some humility and gratitude in the face of something larger than ourselves, which transcends our narrow personal and even societal concerns. It’s also related to the Buddhist notion of the interconnectedness of all things; when we do violence to others we do violence to ourselves, and vice versa. It’s this aspect, combined with an ecological perspective, that has led me to explore paganism. The natural world – earth, air, water, sun, moon, stars, planets – IS the Source, and that thing larger than ourselves. The cosmos dwarfs us; geologic time shows us to be short-lived as a species, let alone as individuals; we came somehow from the primordial ooze and we return to the earth. Whether this is disturbing or comforting is all a matter of one’s perspective. None of this explains my relation to Meeting for Worship – who or what is being worshipped? – or my desire to take a moment before each meal for a sort of secular grace, acknowledging my good fortune at having delicious, healthful and plentiful food. To whom or what am I grateful? It doesn’t explain my growing conviction that it’s important to know the places where we live and to tune in to the natural world: daybreak and nightfall, solstices and equinoxes, moon phases, native species, frosts, migrations, watersheds. I’m more clearly seeing the flaw in a totally human-centered perspective, reflected in terms like “natural resources” and “land use”.

To market, to market

flaneuse — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:30:55 GMT

As a little Francophile raised on Madeline books, I always idealized shopping the way the French purportedly do, carrying little string bags on a series of stops: the charcuterie, the boulangerie, the patisserie, the greengrocer, where each shopkeeper was master of his or her domain and each customer was a regular. This ideal was reinforced in planning school through the clear desirability of the “walkable urban core” offering easy access to amenties and services within a small radius, interspersed in residential areas. Now I lead some semblance of that life, in a city bearing some resemblance to Paris, étoiles and all. A handful of food markets are within easy walking distance from my apartment. But they’re all American-style grocery stores, each offering an almost ridiculous selection of foodstuffs, from the standard meat-and-potatoes to more exotic (and pricey) imports and specialties. So, does one-stop shopping eliminate the need for the urban meander? Mais non! Grocery shopping has become an exercise in logistics in which I may choose to weight time, aesthetic pleasure, or cost. Where is soy milk the cheapest? At Giant. Safeway is good for basics, but it doesn’t carry *mini* whole wheat pitas. Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) is overpriced and crowded, but it offers excellent prepared foods when I’m too lazy to cook and don’t want the hassle of a restaurant, plus it offers free samples and sometime I get a yen for one of their oatmeal scones. Trader Joe’s has inexpensive and satisfying veggie tamales and potstickers, and is my only known source for Almondina cookies. The locally-owned Yes! Natural Market carries things I can’t find elsewhere, like coconut water and my favorite face cream (CamoCare). And Dupont Circle even has its own farmer’s market on Sundays – where a dozen eggs cost $3.20! Sacre bleu! I take a lot of pleasure in making these rounds. Carrying my canvas shopping bag through the city (sometimes with the emblematic baguette sticking out), I feel part urban sophisticate, part granola-head, and totally in my element.

'Tis a gift to be...silent

flaneuse — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 17:32:26 GMT

For seven months now I’ve been attending Meeting for Worship with the Quakers, not missing it unless I’m out of town (and then I look for local Friends). The silence there feels like a calm pool in which I immerse myself. On the best days, I sink deeper and deeper till I’m still as a smooth stone at the bottom. I ascend refreshed, balanced. Each week I look forward to this. Sometimes I employ techniques I learned from Buddhist texts: following or “riding” the breath; deep listening to all sounds in the surrounding environment; or noticing sensations in the body. Sometimes I wish good things for the people I love, or think of all the things for which I’m grateful. Sometimes I simply give my mind permission to roam to whatever feeds my soul. Why is silence so undervalued in our society? There is always the TV or radio on somewhere, and Muzak in restaurants and offices. People always have to be SAYING something, putting their agenda out there, arguing, proselytizing, opining. Being human, I have this tendency to verbalize and intellectualize too, which is why turning it off, making a different choice, is so revolutionary. The silence is not an absence – it’s full and rich! With all the talking in the world, why didn’t anyone tell me THAT? Sometimes Right Speech is choosing not to speak at all – what a previous generation called “holding your tongue.” There is a quote I saw from some eastern guru called Sai Baba that expresses this perfectly, and I reflect on it regularly: "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true? Does it improve on the silence?"

39 Cents' of Love

flaneuse — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:23:42 GMT

Since my move last June, I've been writing a lot of real cards & letters to my friends, having made a commitment to bring more of that quality of communication into my life. Almost no one writes back in the same medium. I realized I may be in the last generation of people who actually recall a time of writing letters. The habit has deep roots: when I was in eighth grade my best friend moved away, and we stayed in touch in the early years by writing big, fat letters to each other, longhand, two-sided, on notebook paper. I've never been much of a phone chatter; I get restless after about 15 minutes and want to un-tether myself from the physical phone, even though it’s cordless. My new pleasure is correspondence cards. They’re like the I.M.s of the snailmail world, in their brevity if not their instantaneousness. A single card will only hold about five or six sentences, so one can’t ramble on – nor can one feel pressure to spend a lot of time writing. And they come in so many appealing varieties! Dupont Circle is close to three stationery stores, which I browse regularly to look for new and seasonal designs. My favorites are letterpressed. Sending them feels like giving small gifts, because they are so beautiful. We all like to get things in the mail besides bills and catalogs, right? My heart leaps on the rare occasions when I glimpse a colored envelope addressed in handwriting I recognize. During the holidays I wrote nearly 60 cards, and crowned myself “The F-ing Queen of Christmas”. And I don’t mean just signing my name – that’s F-ing cheating! It’s the most pleasurable ritual of the year. I’m already planning for Valentine’s Day…

Bloggin' in the weary land

flaneuse — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 02:50:41 GMT

When I said "slow blog" (as in "slow food") I wasn't kidding; three months between entries! Actually I wrote something about a month ago, and lost it among technical difficulties. My 2.5 year old laptop is behaving erratically, sometimes glacially slow, but not all the time.

A death in the family

flaneuse — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 22:59:49 GMT

My mother died last Sunday in hospice after a long decline. No single cause of death; she was old and her body was giving out. In recent months she'd had some falls and hit her head a few times, and things got very difficult for her. When she was sent back to hospice my sisters (one of whom has power of attorney) and I decided to let things take their course. It felt wrong and cruel to force her body along with medications and machines. I had always hoped to be with Mom when she died, but things moved too quickly and none of us outside of Phoenix got there in time. Hard moments pop up unexpectedly, like when I find a piece of paper with my mother’s handwriting, which would become jagged when her meds weren’t right. She had made all these notes to herself as she struggled to remember things. And the other night I was walking home and saw a man walking along with his elderly mother, she sort of tottering and he supporting her but also maybe a little impatient with her slower pace. Suddenly my eyes were stinging and I was holding back tears, standing there on the street corner. Our parents become like children again; the Great Circle. This is okay, and expected, but our culture treats it as though it is not, and we push it away rather than accept it gracefully. Given that death is natural and ordinary, I've tried to locate where the sadness lies. Not so much in her absence, though I do miss her. It's more difficult to think back on my mother's decline and loneliness in her elder years. Especially the loneliness. My family is geographically scattered, each of us caught up in our own lives. I know Mom wanted to see more of us. Did she know how much I love her? Does the sentiment, transmitted in phone calls and cards, mean as much as the comfort of our presence? Peoples’ kindness really does bring comfort. I’ve noted there’s a palpable difference between the sentiments of others who have lost parents and those who have not. People with two living parents approach me awkwardly, and usually preface their remarks with “I don’t know what to say” or retreat into a stilted formality. I remember being on the other side, not having had much experience with death and fearing I’d say the wrong thing. But the others, who have lost one or both parents, engage me more readily. It’s as though there’s this extra reservoir of human compassion that goes untapped until some universal, like the loss of a parent, brings it to the fore.

Further adventures in spiritual tourism

flaneuse — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 01:05:42 GMT

The universe seems to be guiding me toward the Quakers, despite the fact that I have taken to describing my spirituality as "quasi-Buddhist eco-pagan", and the last thing I expected was to be drawn to any sort of Christian denomination. The test of Christianity is accepting Jesus Christ as the son of God, right? I suppose he was...but we ALL are the children of God...and I don't believe in 'God' in the usual sense. Not even in a higher consciousness. But there are little things, signposts that keep pulling me down the Quaker path. A woman who attends meeting was reading the Upanishads last week, and I was glad to see this sort of breadth. When I introduced myself and spoke about my interests, the fellow who convenes the early Sunday meeting said, "Oh, you really need to meet Hayden." Hayden, it turns out, is a kindred spirit: a flaneur who has spent hours walking the uncelebrated nooks and crannies of the city, just as I have sought to do. He has a few decades' head start on me, but is willing to share everything he knows--and I've been places he hasn't, like the Squished Penny Museum! And then there are the pamphlets. At Meeting I saw one on the table entitled "God's Spirit in Nature," which appealed to my eco-Pagan side. I learned that these small booklets are published six times a year by the Quaker publisher Pendle Hill, and there are nearly 400 of them to date. The other title that grabbed my interest was "A Quaker in the Zendo" by Steve Smith. That name seemed familiar...hmm, wasn't he the guy who...compiled the book that first led me to Buddhism some ten years ago? Everyday Zen: Love and Work by Charlotte Joko Beck. Yep, same guy! He was raised a Quaker. And he lives in Mount Baldy CA, the same tiny mountain town where my oldest friend (from 2nd grade) lives with her husband. I had just been writing to this friend about my spiritual explorations. My explorations aren't over. I'm quite excited about attending the monthly circle of a pagan group this coming Sunday, and I still plan to open myself to Baha'i and Ethical Culture, both of which have local weekly meetings. And of course I'd like to get up to Paint Branch UU and meet PaganPaul in person. But every week I look forward to that oasis of silence on Sunday at 9am, and I expect that any other traditions I embrace will be in addition to, rather than in lieu of, the Friends meeting.

An atheist goes church-shopping

flaneuse — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 00:27:52 GMT

For the past couple of Sundays I've been doing a bit of church-shopping, which is admittedly unusual for someone who does not believe in God. But it is the religious community that is engaging with the questions I find most essential, about the quest for meaning and a good life, well-lived, in accordance with a higher purpose. My spiritual life has taken place in solitude, and I have been wanting to experience a spiritual community, so I've attended services with the Friends (Quakers) and the Unitarian Universalists, each of which has their own appeal. The Friends meetings are similar to Buddhist meditation, but without the Eastern cultural trappings that feel ill-grafted onto me as a westerner. There is silence, but no robes or zafus, and it's okay if you want to change position or scratch your nose. The Quakers speak of sitting in “expectant listening” and people may speak if they are moved to do so (though I have detected a note of disapproval among some Friends who clearly prefer no oration). All Souls Unitarian has a much larger & more diverse congregation. I’m drawn by their strong tradition of social justice activism -- and incidentally their services have *great* music: jazz, gospel, old spirituals, piano ballads. There is a lot of human warmth, and the whole affair is more extroverted than the Quaker scene. It’s a more conventional churchlike experience with readings, hymns, a sermon, and of course the plate passing. I'm ambivalent about the scriptedness of the service, but am attracted to the broader social possibilities. Neither place pushes any dogma--I don't think anybody used to G-word or even quoted the Bible, and people were unfailingly polite. So far, the silence trumps the sermon for me: the Quaker meeting is like an oasis of calm, and there’s no pressure to “join” anything, which is subtly present with the UUs. Although I like the idea of having a spiritual community, ultimately I prefer to find my own meaning.

The Honeymoon Phase

flaneuse — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 01:25:50 GMT

So I wanted the urban experience, and I'm getting it, in a big way! DC offers up all kinds of delights, indoors and out. Its boulevards and architecture easily rivals those of Paris and Montreal, in my opinion; by focusing on the government and memorials, the city downplays its greatest charms. Each weekend I go out exploring in a new place or part of town. I've been to the Textile Museum, the National Building Museum, the Renwick, the Decatur House and the just-reopened National Portrait Gallery and Museum of American Art. The other week I went to the Cathedral and sought out the Bishop's Garden and Olmsted Woods. At my company picnic I even got a glance of Tai Shan, the baby panda at the National Zoo. He turns one on July 9. Despite all my pre-departure separation anxiety, I can't say I miss Ithaca, exactly--maybe because its spaces and places are so imprinted in my mind that they are always with me, within me.

Devil in the Capital City?

flaneuse — Mon, 22 May 2006 15:48:24 GMT

A friend from school recently turned me on to the David Ovason book The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital : The Masons and the Building of Washington, D.C. Many of the founding fathers were freemasons, and the author contends that they modified L'Enfant's street plan and incorporated masonic symbolism in many buildings and landmarks. In particular, they purportedly consecrated the city to the celestial sign of Virgo, which is my sun sign. Is THAT why this move is working out so well? I've never understood the thing with masons; I always thought they had a heavy Christian rap, and certainly I never associated them with the zodiac or the occult. Rumor has it that Dan Brown's next book is about the freemasons.

Separation anxiety

flaneuse — Thu, 18 May 2006 13:00:03 GMT

In about two weeks' time I'll be leaving the town that's been my home for most of my adult life, like the small-town mouse leaving for adventure and excitement in the big city. My way of processing this has been to get wildly sentimental about all aspects of Ithaca: the public spaces and private places, the years of memories, the sunlight on East Hill, the campus, the gorges, the apartment I've lived in for a mere year, the neighborhood cat, and the people -- not only friends, but the "fixtures" whose faces have become familiar over the years. Though I am thrilled to be making a move, the departure is bittersweet. This is how it should be; I am glad to leave with a deep affection and connection to place. My friends have consoled me, reminding me "This will always be your home" and "You can always come back!" Sometimes I think to myself: Get a grip. You are not dying, or leaving the galaxy. You'll be six hours away by car; many of your student friends are half a world away from their homes, and sometimes their spouses. Ah, but they know their separation from beloved people and places is temporary. When I was a kid, the song Leaving on a Jet Plane made me so sad, but I didn't understand the line "don't know when I'll be back again." To my child's mind, airplanes were associated with vacations, so how could the singer not know when she'd be returning? (Later I heard that the song was about going off to war.) My circumstances are far more pleasant, but the emotional tone of open-ended separation has a strong resonance. Oh babe, I hate to go...

The "heroic pedestrian"

flaneuse — Sun, 14 May 2006 14:57:42 GMT

Flâneuse: female variant of flâneur (no, not someone who eats flan) ---------------------------------- From Wikipedia: A flâneur is a detached pedestrian observer of a metropolis, a 'gentleman (sic) stroller of city streets', first identified by Charles Baudelaire. The word has no exact equivalent in English...[ ]... in Baudelaire's phrase, 'a botanist of the sidewalk', an analytical connoisseur of the urban fabric....Designing for flâneurs is one way to approach issues of the psychological aspects of the built environment. ---------------------------- "This figure who derives pleasure from the hustle and bustle of the city streets, who moves among the urban crowd with the eye of the artist, is the flâneur. The flâneur is the stroller, the pedestrian who finds delight and pleasure in ambling contentedly and unhurriedly through the city. To promenade without purpose is the highest ambition of the flâneur. Walking in the city is its own reward. "Benjamin observes: 'an intoxication comes over the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets. With each step, the walk takes on greater moment'." Baudelaire writes: "the crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the middle of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite." "For [Walter] Benjamin...The flâneur is not merely a pedestrian, he is the 'heroic pedestrian'. "

Commuting across the circle

flaneuse — Tue, 09 May 2006 22:43:10 GMT

By the end of the month I'll be living, working, and working out all within a quarter-mile radius of Dupont Circle! Urban living at its finest. Must decide whether I'll give up my old beater Geo and try car-sharing with ZipCar.

Last academic hurrah

flaneuse — Mon, 08 May 2006 15:06:29 GMT

Recently a couple of brief, ambitious road trips helped me to engage my academic interests while I prepare to rejoin the workaday world. First, an overnight to Boston for an evening session, Introduction to New Urbanism (because I don't have the time or money for the full conference in Providence in June). NU is something that city planners and designers tend to be passionate about, whether they are admirers or detractors, so I wanted to learn more and decide its merits and shortcomings for myself. Five days later, another overnight to NYC to attend the one-day conference on "Searching for the Just City" held at Columbia U. in honor of professor Susan Fainstein and her work. Attendees listened to panels of academic luminaries--folks we all had to read in grad school--debate notions of justice, planning and politics. For me it was worth spending a day indoors to reconnect with what originally excited me about the study of planning and urban issues. The first panel discussed the visionary role of planning and how notions of that constitutes "the good city" are presupposed, if not actually articulated, by most theorists. Planners speak of concepts like equality, justice, and fairness without attempting to define them, whereas philosophers aim for rigorous definition but do not concern themselves with implementation. Related issues: does economic development necessarily work against social justice?; dimensions of diversity, including the relative role of race and class in the early 21st century; supporting cultural diversity in public space; can the just city be achieved in an unjust society?; what a progressive urban agenda might look like, and what it would take to move such an agenda forward.

Geocache outing

flaneuse — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 17:57:53 GMT

I've wanted to try geocaching for a long time now, and finally got a friend to show me the ropes today. For those unfamiliar with the activity, it's a sort of high-tech treasure hunt in which one "uses a multimillion dollar satellite system to find Tupperware in the woods", as one aficionado put it. (It's a updated version of a much older activity called letterboxing). Using a handheld GPS unit and coordinates posted on the web, you seek out the caches, and when/if you find them, you sign the logbook, take something, and leave something. The GPS might seem like cheating, but being in the vicinity of a cache and actually finding it are two different things. Once we were close to the site, I was flummoxed by all the potential hiding spots in the wooded area, but my friend's experienced eye spotted telltale signs in the landscape. We signed the log book and left a small memento. What's great about geocaching isn't the swag in the cache, and it's not necessarily the thrill of discovery, but the idea that a bunch of strangers all over the country have graciously cooperated in creating the game for the amusement and delight of all. Like playing in a giant sandbox with other pals.

But enough about me...

flaneuse — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 17:30:18 GMT

You don't need to read lengthy dispatches from my life, because you're busy living your own. But I'll post news news and musings here infrequently as I transition from Ithaca to DC. Kinda like those holiday form letters, but briefer and more than once a year.