entrevista

So, Nicole over at Go Nicole Yourself! has been rocking an interview series for a while now, wherein friends and blog buddies of hers ask her interview questions, which she answers candidly and beautifully. She recently turned the tables and interviewed her friends.

So in lieu of a post about what is happening in my life right now (a lot is happening), I present to you my replies to her questions. May you be entertained.

What are your three most disgusting habits?

I am a paragon of ladylike virtue and have no disgusting habits.

What quality of mine do you wish you had? What quality of yours do you wish I had?

I wish I knew you well enough to answer this question. If I could bestow one of my qualities onto you, or onto anyone really, I think it would have to be the dimple. It is such a good conversation starter! Everyone's life would be more interesting with a dimple in their cheek.

Whose heart did you break the worst? What happened?

This is cheesy, but as far as I know the worst broken heart resulted from a summer camp romance. Matt and I had been flirting all summer out on Catalina Island at our little camp. On the night of the camp dance, one of the last nights, we sat together on the blue plastic picnic table and held hands. And on the boat ride back to the mainland, he fell for me. He said all the right 14-year-old-boy sweet nothings, and I swooned. But he went back to Phoenix, and I went back to LA, and I thought that was that. Matt, however, did not.

He commenced to sending me Hemingway-esque one page stories about love and loneliness; usually the envelopes were taped shut with duct tape. We would have these long, tearful late night conversations, him trying to convince me to love him, me feeling no such stirrings in my heart but not knowing how to extricate myself from the drama. (OK, sure, maybe I enjoyed all the attention, just a little bit.) The last straw was when he pledged to come to the same beach in Mexico that my family was going to over winter break, to give me diamond earrings. I called it off (whatever "it" was) pretty firmly at that point, although I was still nervous that I'd find him skulking around every corner on my vacation that year.

Anyway, I don't think I really broke his heart, truly -- I think he invented me in his mind, and fell in love with the girl he'd invented. Either way, somebody broke his heart.

Of course we found each other about ten years later on Friendster, and I think we're cool now.

What were the circumstances of your first real kiss?

I was maybe 15 or 16, and my boyfriend E was visiting me from Irvine, where he lived. (The first in a fruitless series of long distance relationships.) He was a surfer, his eyes were perpetually bloodshot, and he made fun of me because I used big words. But he was cute. And, I kinda stole him from my arch-nemesis at the time. (Well, not really stole him. But she was obviously crushing on him, and he liked me. And I felt just fine about that.)

So there we were on my bed, rolling around, doing God knows what. I knew it was about to happen. I was so excited, so nervous, so ... very unprepared for the slimy appendage that began probing my tonsils. I think I actually pulled back in shock and disbelief. We kept going for a while, but I couldn't wait for it to be over.

And that was the last time we hung out.

Do you feel strongly about the election this year? How has that changed from years prior and why are you voting for the candidate you support?

I voted for Obama in the primaries. I also, however, am deeply annoyed at what seems to be the fundamental basis for most people's aversion to Hillary: "she's a bitch," or other variations on that theme. Hillary is a strong, empowered, smart, tough woman. I don't know about you all, but those are the qualities I want in my president (to the extent that I believe that a national president is even a viable or useful office, which to tell you the truth, isn't that much).

I thought Obama's speech on race was one of the finest orations ever delivered in modern political discourse, and I admire him very much. However, the Jewish shtetl instinct in me is recoiling at the Jeremiah Wright/ Louis Farrakahn situation. I know Obama is distancing himself from that relationship, but still, lately I have been feeling uneasy about it. Moreover, I haven't heard any of the candidates say anything that actually moves me regarding environmental policy. 'Cause if we're all burnt to a crisp in 20 years, none of the other stuff matters much.

So, yes, I feel strongly about the election, in all kinds of ways. Obvs I'm not voting for McCain, but who knows; I might write in Bill Richardson, who was my candidate of choice to begin with.

Is there a moment in your life you'd like to take back or do over? What about it would you change?

Not one moment, really, but there are so many things I've said "no" to because of fear of failure. I'd like to go back to every single one of those moments -- whether it was a game of volleyball on the beach, or the time my college rabbi asked me to read from the Torah during Rosh Hashanah services, or any number of beautiful people who've wanted to get close to me -- and really assess the situation from a place of strength and courage. If I said no, I'd want the no to be coming from a place of confidence and belief that it was truly the right, healthy choice to say no. From that standpoint, I hope I would have said "yes" to a lot more moments.

Is there anyone in your past you wish you could say something to? Who would it be and why?

One time when I lived in New York, I got on the subway into a pretty empty traincar. I think it was in Brooklyn. I was wearing a long purple skirt and a black hoodie. You know how right when you walk into the train, there are two sets of seats that face the center of the train, while the rest of the seats are in rows? Ok, well, I sat down at the first seat in rows and put my feet up on the empty seat that was facing center. Can you picture it? I was kind of tucked into a corner.

There was a dude sitting in the center-facing seat across the way. He might have been the only other person in the car, or there might have been some other people at the far end. I don't remember. Anyway, this guy was wearing a black baseball cap and grey sweatpants. I didn't really pay too much attention to him, 'cause I was looking out the window (the train runs above-ground in Brooklyn sometimes). But soon enough I caught his reflection in the window, and I saw that he had his hand down his pants, and he was looking at me and masturbating.

I was horrified, so I got up and walked to the next car. I kind of looked at him disapprovingly, but I think I was too shocked to say anything. Actually, the feeling I felt was something like shame. As if it was my fault that this guy was basically violating my space. Classic victim mentality, right?

Well, I wish that I would have walked up to this guy, let myself feel some righteous rage, and said "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE."

Why I would have said that? I would have said it to reclaim my space, to let this kid know that he can't disrespect women this way. But mostly, I would have said it so that I could hear my own voice, protecting me, knowing that what he was doing wasn't right and saying something about it.

I like to think that I'd have the strength to do that now.

What blogs do you read regularly and why?

I actually have about 30 blogs on Google Reader that I get excited to read. Nicole's, of course! And I've also become a regular reader of the other ladies on your list like Lori (way to get published!), Abby, Greenie, Amy, and Samantha. I can't get enough HippieChyck. I love to read about my oldest friend the Girly Auditor, when she posts. Simon Metz makes me laugh out loud. And of course, I wait for news from my dear high school homegirl who brought me into this bloggy universe, my darling Meeks.

I also read a lot of food blogs and a lot of enviro blogs.

Probably my favorite blog of all, though, is Gluten Free Girl. I wrote about that blog in my first post of this blog:

Shauna Ahern's Gluten-Free Girl is a paean to the overflowing deliciousness of existence. She discovered that she has celiac disease in 2005, and since that discovery her life has undergone an utter transformation -- as soon as she removed gluten from her diet, she gained a level of health and vitality previously unbeknownst to her. Since that pivotal moment, she has gone on to write a book (which I am about to read), connect with the love of her life, and continue to help and inspire thousands of people to find their own equilibrium through food.

I love reading Shauna, because Shauna loves. She adores the taste of food, and describes her culinary adventures with mouth-watering specificity. With her words, she brings each bite to life, conjuring up so vividly the mosaic of sensate delights which makes up her days. She also adores her husband Danny, "The Chef" -- the openness of their hearts, the freedom with which they utterly relish one another, the clarity of their twin souls together, is breathtaking. She adores her community, her craft, her world, her life, and that love is woven through every essay she composes and is evident in every photograph she takes. Shauna, to put it in a nutshell, says YES, and her blog has inspired me greatly.

What television shows do you watch that you won't admit to your friends?

I'm one of those obnoxious hippie-types without a television. Favorite television show of all time would have to be My So-Called Life.

What celebs are on your "list"?

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie come to mind.

Have you ever internet stalked? Who were you looking for and how did you do it?

Now that every single person I have ever known in my entire life is my friend on Facebook, internet stalking has really lost its magic.

If you're a blogger, what do you think is the best post you've ever written?

I just wrote one that, in a roundabout way, is on toxics in cosmetics, and I'm pretty proud of that one. The connections between reproductive health and environmental justice are starting to become more and more compelling to me, so my words on that topic are very passionate.

Fin!

it would have been enough

Each year on Passover, Jews worldwide partake in a millenia-old ceremony called a seder. In Hebrew, seder means "order," which is an apt moniker for this lengthy dinner that centers around the ritualized re-telling of the exodus from Egypt. We use earthy, tactile symbols to represent each of the aspects of our bondage and liberation -- parsley and saltwater for the bitterness and tears of slavery, horseradish and sweet charoset for the mortar we used to build the structures we were compelled to build by the Egyptians, dry matzah representing our hurried departure from Egypt -- as we fled, we didn't have time to allow the dough to rise.

We touch and taste these talismans to evoke, viscerally, year after year, the dark times through which we have passed. Yet there is another element that is powerfully present at the seder, that dances a balanced dance with our ritual re-entry into and through enslavement: freedom, of course.

Freedom is the sweet, miraculous promise already fulfilled, the fullness of being -- unfettered energy coursing through us, shimmering, even, just past our skin -- that we know is our home, that guides us and has always guided us through the narrow places. Freedom, the seder reminds us, is inherent, and our yearning for freedom can take us on astounding journeys which our minds never expect but to which our hearts quiver excitedly, knowingly, full of yes.

At the seder table we sing many songs, encapsulating our fears and our joys into melodies we release into the world and into one another. One of the songs we sing is called "Daiyenu," which means, roughly, it would have been enough. In this song, we sing out our appreciation and gratitude for the abundance of the gifts we've received. Daiyenu, it would have been enough if God had only brought us out of Egypt! Had God only given us the Torah, it would have been enough! Had God only given us the sabbath, it would have been enough! And so on.

The sky showers us with cooling, golden rain and the sun dances feathery flickers of light in our path, and our eyes widen -- this, too! We stand in awe. One blessing, any blessing, by itself would have been enough, but we learn again and again that life loves us too much to withhold any morsel of its love.

And so, after a three-day course last weekend called Arete and a retreat this past week at Mount Madonna called Reflections and Revelations, I am moved to say: had I just been able to come to the Bay Area five years ago, and make my life in this beautiful place with all of these people striving playfully towards personal and planetary transformation, it would have been enough.

Had mindfulness meditation only introduced itself to me during law school, once a week on Tuesday evenings at the school's meditation society, it would have been enough.

Had I only realized the peace and invigoration of walking deep into the forests and mountains of this region, it would have been enough.

Had I only have had the time and resources to crack through one or two of the frozen, painful places in my being, it would have been enough.

Had my community of friends only loved me so joyfully and unconditionally, it would have been enough.

Had I only discovered, through dance and yoga and play, the pleasure of inhabiting my body, it would have been enough.

And had I only been blessed to be in the same place at the same time as masterful, brilliant people who have answered Life's call and devoted their lives to serving the healing and transformation of others . . . oh, it would have been enough.

And yet here I am, and all of these blessings have converged, and I feel myself to be alive in a way that I have not felt before. I think I've said "oh!" a thousand times about a thousand different remembrances that bubbled up to the surface during the past ten days, but I tell you this: really, it is so very simple. None of it is outside of me. Freedom, it seems, is simply a matter of gently turning towards myself, of occupying my own belly, my own heart.

Nothing foreign or esoteric, just a clear and resonant yes, this too is welcome, this too can be. This, too, is me, and so belongs to life; and so is beloved on this earth.

All of these things would have been enough; and yet, at 9 p.m. last night in a quick pass through the grocery store, I gasped at the unmistakable yellow streaks and the gourd-like irregularities of a small pile of organic California heirloom tomatoes. Could it be? Is summer here? Does the earth gladden at our burbles of joy when this sweet, savory, multi-hued fruit-vegetable graces our mealtimes once again?

I am in such gratitude for this existence.

even the tiniest bit

My mom visited me over the weekend to celebrate mother's day a week early, since I'm going to be out of town for about 10 days starting this Friday. As has been true for us for some time now, we had an absolutely marvelous time together, savoring every moment and showering one another with love. The adventures, of course, were myriad. A craft fair, a trip through the parallel universe that is Neiman Marcus in Union Square -- would you, dear reader, ever think of paying $2,500 for a green sweater, even if it was cashmere? I wouldn't -- a walk through Rockridge, a visit to my synagogue. She even gamely abided the unseasonal chill in my apartment. (Heater's fixed now, ma!)

And we ate very, very well together. Each of us has her own journey with food, but this weekend we revelled wholly in the abundance and variety available to us. Saturday morning I went around the corner to the bakery, La Farine. Per my mother, who grew up partly in France, a true French boulangerie would simply never be entitled "the flour;" but this very gauche moniker didn't stop us from heartily enjoying a fine spread of raisin loaf, raspberry-walnut scones, and baguette, plus my first-ever tub of soy margarine (about which I can only advise, don't make the same mistake I did, gentle reader), Straus plain yogurt and organic strawberries. We laughed, our mouths full, as we tried to get most of each morsel into our mouths, despite the drips and the crumbs we lost along the way.

From there we went to the Ferry Building farmer's market. Those of you who have been to San Francisco, or who live here, are smiling knowingly right now; for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of visiting this most beautiful of cities, I'll tell you that the Ferry Building is like an amusement park for foodies. High, rounded ceilings shelter an airy hall filled with light, once surely filled with the shouts and chatter of thousands of travellers, and now lined with tantalizing, gourmet specialty shops. A caviar bar! A wine merchant! A purveyor of local, wild-harvested mushrooms! (When I asked the clear-eyed young man behind the mushroom counter if he had any kombucha mothers available, he told me he didn't but offered to bring me some if we wanted to make an appointment. Can you imagine the calendar entry for that day: "10:00 a.m., meeting; 12:00 noon, lunch with friend; 3:00 p.m., retrieve fungus for effervescent tea beverage." It's a good life.) You can buy extraordinary local cheese, tantalizing local produce, savory local olive oil, and of course, fresh-caught local fish.

My mom and I bounced from store to store, turning cheeses over in our hands, drawing in long, awestruck breaths of fragrance from bars of oatmeal-cinnamon soap, gawking at elaborately-decorated pastries. The salty bayfront air wafted in now and then, tickling our senses and tempting us with thoughts of the sea.

Later we walked through a craft fair, and then onto Union Square where we marvelled at a different kind of array of wares. We paused in one of my favorite hideouts, Cafe Bellini, enjoying its black laquered tables and red walls. We spent some time and some dollars in Sephora, a store I hadn't been into in years but wanted to visit, to spice up my cosmetics collection.

And then we made our way to Millenium. Touted as one of the best vegetarian restaurants in California, if not the U.S., we were both excited to enjoy a fine dinner -- especially my mother, who has been a strict vegetarian for most of my life. (But she has been known to eat an anchovy once or twice a decade. Don't tell her I told you.) So we were a bit surprised, and had to do a double-take or two, when we saw its unassuming yellow awning beneath the Best Western Hotel on Geary Street -- in an area bordering the Tenderloin, no less, which is not the best of neighborhoods.

But all of our bewilderment was put to rest when we entered the restaurant, and even more so when we tasted our meal. Oh, the food at this restaurant. It is the sort of food whose flavor causes each bite to elicit an involuntary groan of pleasure. And those groans traverse a couple of octaves over the course of the meal. My mom had an Ethiopian-inspired dish of teff injera, garbanzo wot, and sauteed green vegetables.



I ate a stuffed, truffled roulade, made of french lentils and black chanterelle ragu, roasted chestnuts, black truffle butter, smoked pimenton cream, and a host of other unimaginably delicious components. And we washed it down with some fine, dry red wine, which was, of course, biodynamically farmed.



For dessert? Fresh lime and strawberry sorbet. A perfect ending to a perfectly delicious, perfectly local, perfectly organic meal.



Oh, how I wish I could end the story here.

How I wish I could just wrap up the story of my mother's visit, her love-filled generosity on Sunday when she helped me clean my apartment and stock my bachelor-pad-esque refrigerator with the best that Whole Foods Market has to offer. How I wish I could describe to you the way we devoured the falafel on Sunday night at Holy Land restaurant, and the way my mom beseeched the sparkling-eyed Israeli owner to take good care of me. (He agreed.) How I wish I could tell you that after our tearful goodbye on Monday morning, I went off to work and all was simply well.

But I can't.

Don't worry -- nothing bad happened. We really did have a wonderful, precious, priceless time together. I really did drop her off Monday morning and she really did make it safely back to LA; I saw the hawk, our totem animal together, making lazy circles over I-880 on my drive back from the airport to my office.

Instead, I have to break the sweet spell of this story with BHT.

(Three little letters! Couldn't be that bad, right?)

BHT is butylated hydroxytoluene. Wikipedia tells us it's commonly used in jet fuels, rubber, and embalming fluid. It has been shown to have carcinogenic, mutagenic, and endocrine-disruptive effects. BHT, in fact, is one of the ingredients in CheckMate, which is the semiochemical that our state and federal governments want to spray on us here in the Bay Area, to combat the supposed threat of the light brown apple moth.

When BHT, along with 10 other so-called "inert" ingredients, plus the two active, pheromone ingredients in CheckMate, were sprayed onto Monterey and Santa Cruz last fall (pursuant to no environmental or toxicological review whatsoever), over 600 people reported illness -- respiratory impairment, skin irritation, loss of energy, digestive trouble -- symptoms which are consonant with classic pesticide poisoning profiles.

Long-term effects of these chemicals haven't been tested by either of the governmental agencies involved in the spraying, but there is an abundance of peer-reviewed scientific literature about each of the spray ingredients suggesting that they are simply not safe for human populations, much less for fetuses, developing children, the elderly, and other sensitive populations.

So many of the studies I've seen and that have been cited show that these chemicals, including BHT, can cause severe damage even in the smallest amounts. 1, 10, 20 parts per billion of some of these substances can throw our exquisitely sensitive hormonal and neurological systems out of balance. Have you noticed that autism has been in the news a lot lately? It's one of the many childhood neurodevelopmental disorders that is on the rise in the past couple of decades. And, with increasing frequency, the medical community is starting to connect the dots between the 80,000 chemicals present in our ambient environment, and the health issues that we are facing as a society.

I have an endocrine disorder. Did my mother or my father, simply by the act of breathing or drinking water, ingest some tiny bit of foreign substance that was somehow transmitted to me, and that sent the wrong information to my rapidly-dividing cells? I will never know.

What's worse, I have no choice, nor do any of us, about the toxic substances that I take into my body on a daily basis, substances that abound in the environment because of the way we have chosen to treat our planet, our home. I breathe city air, I drink city water, I walk through wireless signals. I am part of a food system which involves the use of pesticides, which pays people from other countries very few dollars to apply pesticides on crops in Californian fields. People who become sick, whose babies are sometimes born disfigured.

I also take many actions about which I do have choice. I eat food in restaurants, often meat. I wash my hair and body, I buy and use cookware, I launder my clothing. And I put on makeup.

Disclosure: one of the unfortunate symptoms of my health situation is that I have had acne for most of my life. That's really its own story, one I don't know if I'll share in this space. If you've had skin problems, you know what it's like; the rest of you are fortunate, but you may be able to imagine. Suffice it to say, I'm an avid consumer of foundation and concealer. So at Sephora on Saturday, I purchased a few new products -- one from a cosmetics line called Tarte, and one called Amazing Cosmetics.

I tried the Amazing Cosmetics concealer in the store and was surprised to see how well it worked -- it went on thick but blended in, just like magic. I was excited about it, so much so that I decided just to buy it, without looking at the ingredients list. So as you can imagine, dear reader, I was a bit taken aback on Monday morning when I did finally read the ingredients and discovered BHT featured prominently.

As it turns out, BHT is a common cosmetics ingredient and food additive. In fact, that's one of the ways in which our government justifies its presence in the CheckMate formulation -- it's perfectly safe! We eat it and wear it! But BHT has also been banned by the US as an ingredient in baby food; many European countries have banned its use entirely in consumer products. We know what it is, but we just don't want to admit it.

Maybe I've been putting BHT on my face for years, now, with all my drugstore-bought makeup. But now that I know about it, I can choose whether or not I want to use it, and I choose to reduce my body burden by returning that product to the store. And I'll probably pay a visit to Elephant Pharmacy pretty soon, to pick up some mineral make-up by Zia cosmetics or Dr. Hauschka.

It's true that one way we learn is through our mistakes. That's a good thing. But this is one lesson we can't keep bungling, if we want to keep being alive, to keep tasting delicious food and gasping at the brilliant sunset and walking in the forest and loving each other. If we want seeds to still take root and new life to still grow, inside of our bodies.

I really, really want all of that to keep happening here.

So it might be just a few microns, a few molecules that I'm sparing myself. But I'm coming to learn more and more that even in the most infinitesmal amounts, a toxic chemical is still a toxic chemical. And in a toxic world, it is still my choice to avoid eating chicken of unknown origin from the lunch-rush cafe close to my office, or to stop transporting water in my old hard-plastic bottle, or to get rid of my old Teflon pans even though stainless steel is more difficult to clean. It is still my choice to decide what I put on my face. This is my body; these are my reproductive organs; this is my life.

We have a long way to go, as a polity, towards a sane, sound, coordinated policy around sustainable agriculture, toxic chemicals and public health. Me, I'm trained as a lawyer, and called as a healer, so I'll do what I can to help us move in that direction. But in the meantime I can make tiny choices, and so can you. We just can't underestimate, anymore, the great impacts of the tiniest things.

******

For more information on what's in your makeup and other products:

http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/
http://www.safecosmetics.org/
http://www.ewg.org/