what you know

Sometimes you need to deliberate before reaching a decision. But there are instances when the choices are clear and you know at once what to do. Trust yourself; you are wise, indeed, when you decide...

... to start from scratch

... to wait till morning

... to eat fish at night

... to keep a secret

... to ask a question

... to let it go

... to be quiet and listen

... to stay home because you are tired

... to go the distance

... to dress up for the occasion

... to keep a low profile

... to get a massage

... to reread a book

Veronique Viens "The Art of the Moment"

Image by Miranda Lehman via Feaverish Photography

Ça ne va pas être de la tarte

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Each week, Chocolate and Zucchini features a French idiomatic expression that relates to food. An expression I learned earlier this summer is, "Ce n'est pas de la tarte." Approximately translated as, "it's not pie," it means that something is tricky, difficult to do or to handle. Because it is a colloquial expression that is mostly spoken, it is usually elided to, "C'est pas de la tarte."

I'm thinking of this expression tonight as I try to learn French in earnest. Ça ne va pas être de la tarte. It won't be pie. Especially with a three-year-old riding in the back of the car correcting your accent...

photos from moscow

Enough fretting. Friends help with these heavy feelings. Riding one's bicycle helps. So does a new dress. Also, Sasha Nikitin's photography makes my mood lighten. So sweet and so Russian.

More from Sasha here

feeding the hungry ghosts

Last weekend was my community's O-Bon festival. O-Bon is an annual mid-August festival for commemorating our ancestors. Following Buddhist traditions, ancestral spirits are believed to return to the world during this season, and the purpose of the O-Bon festival is to unite the living with these spirits. For three days, the spirits of the ancestors are invited home to spend time with their families.

I don't attend this festival every year, and I missed the festival last weekend. I probably should have gone, just to lay some things to rest. Instead, I've been thinking about hungry ghosts. In traditional Buddhist belief, a hungry ghost is a being who has a very big belly and a throat as small as a needle. Hungry ghosts can never satisfy their hunger.

If you think about it, hungry ghosts are not just beings of Buddhism. Our society creates thousands of hungry ghosts every day. We see that they are everywhere around us. These are people without roots. In their family, their parents did not demonstrate that happiness was possible. They do not feel understood or accepted by their church or community. So they have rejected everything. They don't believe in family, society, or religion. They don't believe in their own traditions. But they are still looking for something good, beautiful, and true to believe in; they are hungry for understanding and love.

Even if you have love to offer them, however, they cannot accept it. They are suspicious, not ready to believe in anything. A friend of mine once described this state as being like a stray dog, always unsure if you should wag your tail or bite.

Ancestors are not supposed to be hungry ghosts. They are supposed to have children and a place to come home to. But sadly, I know that there are a few hungry ghosts in my family. I'll put something out for them. At the same time, I'll try very hard not to behave like a hungry ghost myself. I'm going to try to trust and believe.

out to the hazel wood

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread...

Just a little over a week until we leave for vacation. Stay cool in these late days of summer, I'll be reading your poetry.


Image via Feaverish Photography

evocations of childhood

It has taken me a while to pick up my copy of Le Grand Meaulnes. The story of the book is simple and myth-like, set in the bleak Sologne, in central France, around the turn of the last century. I'm glad I finally got around to it. It's a book that casts a spell, even in the late days of summer. It is a powerful evocation of childhood, particularly the magical nature of some of our experiences in that period. I've often thought that these experiences color our entire lives with a sweet feeling of nostalgia. Here is a passage:

The whole morning is mine, to explore the outskirts of the wood, the coolest, most hidden places thereabouts, while my big brother is on a journey of discovery. It is like a dried-up riverbed. I am walking beneath the low branches of trees that I do not know by name; they must be elms...

Sometimes, for a few steps, my feet are resting on a bank of fine sand. And in the silence, I can hear a bird; I think it's a nightingale, but I must be wrong because they only sing in the evenings... This bird relentlessly repeating the same phrase; voice of the morning, a recital in the shade, a delicious invitation to a journey between the elms. Invisible and obstinate, it seems to be accompanying me through the leaves.

For the first time, I too am on the road to adventure... I am looking for the passage that they write about in books, the one with the entrance that the prince, weary from travelling, cannot find. This is the one you find at the remotest hour of morning, long after you have forgotten that eleven o'clock is coming, or midday. And suddenly, as you part the branches in the dense undergrowth, with that hesitant movement of the hands, held unevenly at face height, you see something like a long, dark avenue leading to a tiny circle of light...

image found here

bon weekend mes amis

August has been a month of unpredictable weather, short blog posts, birthday parties, and sand in beds. All of it has combined to make me think of one of my favorite films, "Pauline à la plage." Delightfully boyish and remarkably discerning, Pauline is the best.

The film opens with a quote from Chretien de Troyes, the 12th-century French romantic poet: "A wagging tongue bites itself." So true, we all know this, but we always forget. The wisdom and humor of the film is based on the folly of self-deception. Each character argues and acts with what he or she thinks are the purest of motives, attempting to convince someone else why he/she should/should not love her/him. Pauline is the only character that is steadfast and discerning. The entire film is set against a backdrop of late summer weather and bracing, breezy beaches.

I would love to have been as remarkable as the fifteen-year-old Pauline. But I suspect that at fifteen I would have gone for the roguish thirty-something character that "likes to be free" and is not bound by emotional or moral baggage. Sigh. Part of the pleasure of the film is watching Pauline navigate around all of these seductions.

Bon weekend mes amis. I hope you find sand in your shoes and socks and beds. May you be as delightful and discerning as young Pauline learning to love and windsurf on a breezy beach in France. I'm looking forward to making waffles with Przemek, driving Tadzio to his French lesson with pretty Mlle Nour, and reading the stack of materials I've collected over the week.

family photo

This hauntingly beautiful family picture has been with me all week. It's not your typical book cover image, and turns out to be a photo of the author's family. The beauty of the photo combined with the book's title And Darkness Was Under His Feet fill the reader with a feeling of poignancy and foreboding. I'm looking forward to hearing the voices in these stories.

quiet, fragrant summer

Today was spent chasing something quiet and elusive.

Here's a little piece of a poem for the evening

Oh, sheer blue oxygen, in perfect calmness, you create
These forms, and make
My heart sing, sing
Of the thin moon, sing of the summer fragrance.

-Fragrant Summer
Zheng DanYi

Image via Audrey Hepburn Complex

quiet night thoughts

In the eighth century Li Bai looked at the moonlight and wrote:

Before my bed, the bright moonlight
I mistake it for frost on the ground
Raising my head, I stare at the bright moon;
Lowering my head, I think of home.

Ages later, many of us still see the bright moonlight and think of Li Bai, homesick in his bed.

Tonight there is a bright moon
This was said by Li Bai
When Li Bai said it,
he was still lying in bed
He raised himself halfway
And gazed out the window
Then he again said
My village home
How I miss you!

He Xiaozhu

sister

August has brought me my sister. She has been away for nearly ten years.

Memory is an oscillating thing, separating many other things, like stars beyond the sky. I realize that I no longer know the person she is at this moment.

I'm so surprised at her arrival. I find myself checking the calendar to see if it is a full moon. Almost, tomorrow night...


Image via Audrey Hepburn Complex

after months of sitting

after months of sitting
and working with the children
the blonde seductress has a sunburnt nose
she lopes over the hills in a tank top & cutoffs
her real beauty begins to shine through.

diane di prima



image source