A Loaf of Bread, a Bottle of Wine… et Toi?

My Spanish friends and I had been stomping around the mountains outside Madrid all that cold day, collecting wild mushrooms. The last of the mushrooms now rested in pools of garlic-scented olive oil, next to the torn-off end of a loaf of pan rustica and more than a few bottles of red wine.

“What’s more attractive, a drop-dead gorgeous woman or a normal woman who feels good in her own skin?” Alfredo asked the rest of us, as we sat back in our chairs and drank in the warmth of the fire.

It had been, in the eyes of most of us, a perfect day – laughing and arguing boisterously as we hunted for the mushrooms, and then, back in the warmth of Alfredo’s house in the sierra, cooking and eating the earthy, garlicky mushrooms and drinking wine.

I was probably the only one who didn’t think it was the perfect day. All this eating and talking was fun, but shouldn’t we be DOING something? This was ten years ago and I’d already been living in Spain for several years. I loved Spain, but often had the sense that I should be Doing Something More Important.

My Spanish friends, on the other hand, seemed to believe that doing less could lead to more fun and enjoyment of life. They were masters, as on that day of the mushroom hunting, at having more fun with less. Alfredo had at least ten people over for dinner that night, but there was no spending the day stressed out, shopping and cooking. Instead, we had fun tramping through the countryside and then more fun cooking and eating together.

The “less is more” idea seemed to work with a lot of things – Spanish women were a lot more elegant than I was, and their closets were far less jam-packed than those of my friends at home. Spanish parents went to restaurants with their friends and held adult conversations, rather than trying to entertain the kids all the time… and the kids seemed relaxed and happy.

I admired what I saw as a sense of spaciousness and ease in many Spaniards’ approach to time and to life. There was a sense that you didn’t need a lot of stuff, just good friends and good conversation.

Alfredo’s attempt to start a controversy with his question about attractiveness fell flat. All the Spaniards at the table – both men and women – agreed that a normal woman who feels good in her own skin would be far more attractive than even the most beautiful woman.

I, however, sat looking into my wineglass and wondering what the answer to that question would be in the US. I mean, I could see that a lot of men are interested in women who seem natural and true to themselves. But still… a lot of the messages I’d heard growing up in the US had been around some version of “more is better.”

And it wasn’t just “work harder to have more stuff” (but a lot less time to enjoy it). “More is better,” when I was a teenager anxious to learn how to be a woman, meant firmer thighs, bigger breasts, better clothes, shinier hair, whiter teeth, more vivacious conversation, even acting “more natural”…

And for all of this, I had to exercise more, smile harder, “work” on my personality… not to mention working harder to make more money so I could spend it in the constant hunt for better hair conditioner and the perfect sweater (all with the intention, later, of having the perfect car and perfect family and perfect house).

Phew. When I write about it, it all sounds like a lot of work.

In contrast, Alfredo’s question, and the response of that table full of friends, seemed to fit into the “less is more” idea. To “feel good in your skin” is really just to be who you are and to be deeply comfortable with that, isn’t it? And when you have that, how much other “stuff” do you really need?

I think this applies to everyone – whether your “stuff” of choice comes in the form of a better car, or a really great meal, or more money in the bank. Not that any of those things are “bad,” just that… Are they additions to lives that already seem spacious and full of joy and love and all the other things we long for? Or are we using them to fill a space inside of us that seems empty? Are we using them to convince ourselves that we matter, that we are loveable, that we can command respect?

Last week I was in Paris, a place that offers all sorts of chances to consider these questions. For instance, is it really the cheese and wine that matter? Or is it that I have such a beautiful memory, from the last time I was in Paris, of sitting at a table in the springtime, drinking cheese and wine and talking for hours with a friend?

Is it possible that I’m trying to match that memory through the cheese and wine, rather than realizing that what mattered was the spaciousness and freedom and connection I felt – talking to a friend for hours and sitting bare-shouldered in the balmy air of spring?

Along with pondering these questions, this week I took the risk to:

1) Speak French (my French is rusty-on-top-of-bad-to-begin-with).

2) Extrapolate, in French, on a long-winded thought of mine, while aware that the two people listening might be gritting their teeth in agony.

3) Climb some very tall boulders in the Fontainbleau Forest.

4) Cook dinner for a French person (and therefore risking being considered evidence of stereotypes about Americans being terrible cooks…).

5) Think about the ways I spend my time and life energy that seem life-serving, and the ways that don’t. (Haha… it hasn’t escaped me that “spending my time worrying what French people think of my cooking and language skills” falls in the latter category).

6) Consider how my use of life energy affects my relationships (this was “scary” because the break-up I wrote about last week was due to his perception that I wasn’t investing enough time in it. How well do the things I choose to invest my time in reflect what I value? – that may very well be next week’s question).

**

It was ten years ago, now, that I sat at that table at Alfredo’s house in Spain and thought about the questions of feeling good in my skin, and of “less is more.”

One of the women sitting around the table with us that day was the daughter of a Marquis, though she would never tell you that. I’ve been thinking a lot, this week, about the way she looked when I saw her last – probably five years ago now. I bumped into her in a little park near her house in Madrid, in the springtime. She had one of her young sons in tow and the other in a baby carriage. She was wearing a well-worn pair of jeans, and she was just – enjoying the park, enjoying the flowers beginning to bloom, enjoying her sons. She looked like she felt good in her own skin.

But it was more than that. There was a sense of spaciousness, of enjoying the moment, that I long for – a spaciousness that I want to bring into my exploration of how I use my life energy, today and every day. 

As I step out into the day here in London, where life finds me this week, I will try to remember that.

Escape

Nothing gives you more perspective – after a couple of weeks in which many thousands of people have died in Japan, and the term “radioactive plumes” has become a part of your vocabulary, and your boyfriend has broken up with you – than to stand in the dining car of a train with a glass of wine in your hand and watch a part of England, and then the Chunnel, and then a part of France zoom by.

Old cathedrals, new gas stations, miles of green fields that have been tilled for centuries, all against a gentle lavender-colored sundown… The weight of history, the weight of modern life, and the weight of the past two weeks all seem to blur together with the speed of the train.

This blog post has had three incarnations over the past two weeks, but I’ve posted none of them till now.

I’m calling it “the courage to not post when your heart is breaking”: Breaking at the sight of a fat-cheeked toddler in Japan being tested for radiation exposure on the news. Breaking for the white-capped Pacific Ocean, the backdrop to my childhood, to my whole life, and the way it may be affected by those radiation plumes. And breaking for a love lost after many attempts to keep it alive.

I wrote the first version of this post to the tune of evacuation sirens, as the Oregon Coast was on tsunami alert. The second version was a rant against consumerism, the way that our drive for more “stuff” also drives the operation of nuclear power plants on earthquake fault lines, not just in Japan but all over.

But I notice that my response to those multiple heartbreaks was to bring myself here to Europe, to a place that reminds me of ease, and peace, and hope. And yes, I consumed quite a lot of resources to get here. So I sort of had to take back my rant.

Maybe it’s more complicated than just “don’t consume.” Maybe it’s about being aware of what we consume and the way that it fits into the world, and also of what makes us feel most alive, brings us the most joy. It’s not that I plan to eat cheese and drink wine and reconnect with old friends in France for the rest of my life. But somehow it seems just the right thing to do, right now.

All of the things I did to “scare myself” in the week prior to the earthquake and tsunami seem insignificant in comparison to what nature and nuclear facilities have caused. Reducing the clutter in my life, looking at what I have to show for the past 20 years of life energy spent at work… these are nothing compared to facing the question that has come up for me since then.

It’s a question that I want to keep at the very front of my mind every single day, a question that I’m trying to address with this year’s experiment of stepping into my fear. But it seems to be a question that really only has urgency when something shakes us to our core and reminds us of how fragile our lives really are. The question is this:

What haven’t I done yet, that I long to do before I die?

I don’t know the whole answer yet, but I do know that I want to ask myself the question now, today, rather than waiting until it’s too late.

And while I’m asking myself the question, I want to remember to breathe in the view outside this train window – to watch as the lavender strip connecting sky to trees to land turns dark purple and lights begin to speckle across the horizon like low-lying stars. 

Cinderella Kicks Me in the Face

What’s a little motor oil to a self-sufficient lass, right?

I noticed, as I read the book I wrote about last week, Your Money or Your Life, that something jumped off the page at me in that sort of itchy, uncomfortable, tenacious way that Things I Should Pay Attention To seem to have. You know, like the reading equivalent of a scratchy wool sweater, which turns your skin pink and itchy no matter what you do, as you go about your day?

The book calls into question an “unspoken assumption” about fixing cars, namely that “if you are a woman you do not and cannot fix your own car.’”

I had a funny feeling, while reading those words, that they might be talking not just about cars but about money as well. Not that there aren’t many, many women out there who are very good at dealing with money. But I’ve thought for some time now that if I had a daughter I’d want her to learn a martial art, just so she'd have a back-up against any old ideas about not being able to protect herself.

And in a way, knowing how to handle money is as much about protecting yourself as learning a martial art.

I was surprised to even have that thought – the one about there also being an old unspoken assumption that women don’t or can’t deal with money.

I mean – what?? I’ve always been able to support myself just fine, thank you very much. And I was brought up in a family where we girls chopped wood and hammered nails and dug ditches (quite a lot of wood and nails and ditches, actually, as we acted out my dad’s dream of building a “homestead” in the wilds of Oregon). And my brothers all did dishes and cooked. One of my brothers, I’m proud to say, is an incredibly strong mountain climber who sews his own climbing gear. On a sewing machine.

Still, there was that thought, hanging on me like an itchy sweater while I tried to pretend it wasn’t there.

I thought, first, that I’d tackle the more literal idea, the one about fixing cars. So I started the week by checking and filling the oil on my car myself, for the first time ever (well, at least since I was a teenager and my dad tried to teach me how).

This was scary because I’ve always wanted to know as little about cars as possible. My relationship with cars, come to think of it, has been a lot like my relationship with money. I’ve always wanted both to be sort of “seen and not heard.” That is, so reliable that I never have to think about them.

So, after twenty-four hours of feeling proud that I’d taken a small step toward learning to do basic stuff for my car, I thought, “You know what else has an edge of fear? How about having a really frank conversation with my boyfriend about money?”

And – I froze.

Believe it or not, I still haven’t started to talk to him about it. Instead, I’ve been having a conversation with myself about it for most of the week. The conversation (in abridged form) has gone something like this:

Q: “How about writing him an email now?”

A: “Do I really have to have this conversation with him? What about the mystery, what about the romance, what about reading Neruda’s love poems and writing each other haiku?”

Q: “Who are you, Cinderella?”

That’s right, Cinderella. Did all my parent’s work, to make sure I knew I could do anything my brothers could do, fail? Am I some 1970’s-born, feminist-raised, Barbie- and TV-abstaining version of “Cinderella Ate my Daughter?”

I’ve always had decent earning power, luckily. But the more I think about this Cinderella question, the more I notice that while earning power has its perks, it’s never been something I got particularly excited about. So (cold hard truth here) – is there some part of me that thinks being able to make a living is handy but would still love to have a wonderful man come along and say, “Hey, that’s a heavy burden you’re carrying all by yourself. How about if I take care of it?”

Or is it maybe just that I long for a world in which the poetic, mysterious side of life counts as much as that thing called “making a living?”

I love how the world can be so literal sometimes: On the very morning that I started to wonder about all of this, I was struggling to light a fire. The wood was wet, and I tried to start it several times before it finally got dry enough to stay lit.

So I was spending a lot of time blowing on the embers, that morning as I pondered Cinderella. And when I saw myself later in the mirror, there were ashes stuck in my eyelashes, in my hair.

Come to think of it, Cinderella did get swept away by that prince. But she was a hard worker too. And I’m guessing it took some courage to sit there amongst the ashes – which, in a way, could be a good metaphor for sitting with the realities we’d prefer not to see in ourselves.

I wondered, this week, if I should be doing a different “thing that scared me” each day, or if I should just stay with these questions. I decided that sitting amongst the ashes was enough. And I have the ashes in my hair – in the form of this somewhat embarrassing story – to show for it.