This Ain't No Stop & Shop... The Real Way to Shop for Food

As I tooled down the aisles of my local Stop & Shop

looking at the floor to ceiling rows of food choices and limp, exhausted fruit, and not being overly inspired by any of them, I drifted off momentarily to another grocery run that I did in a galaxy far far way… in a place called Paris. (Cue the dream sequence music and blurry camera views)

The last time I was in Paris was for my birthday, not this last one, but don’t get me started on that part of the story – no one wants to see a grown woman cry. Anyway, it was a great trip. I went to all my favorite places and saw all my favorite sites on the tourist track but not on the tourist track. Getting fairly close to my last couple of days visiting the city I love.  

I was winding my way street by street up and back from the Seine toward the Tour Eiffel from my hotel in the 5^th arrondissement. It was a soft June day and really is there any place better to be in June? The puffy clouds and slight breeze told me no, there wasn’t. It was then that I came upon Rue Cler in the 7^th conveniently placed halfway between the Tour Eiffel and the Esplanade Des Invalides. It was a market street.

Now everyone who’s read about Europe knows about these markets, but in my many trips there I had never truly bumped into one of them. I wasn’t really looking but it succeeded in ruining me for grocery shopping from that point on. It is basically one block long… probably about the same size as the average American grocery store now that I think about it. But it was gastronomical bliss. I’m not even a foodie. I mean I like eating but it’s not my raison d’etre.  However, if I lived here, maybe I would become one.

Along that one block was the makings of the most incredible picnic I’ve ever had. Literally a moveable feast but probably not the literary one that Hemingway was referring to.

It was the fruit that first caught my attention. Stacked boxes bursting with every kind of fruit you could think of and many that I had no idea what they were. The strawberries in their beautiful open containers. Perfect parcels of juicy red happiness ready to be plucked. Raspberries taste like raspberries. Snozzberries taste like snozzberries… whoops sorry for the Wonka flashback. Onto the shiny (but not too shiny) apples. Flawless pairs. Grape clusters wrapped in paper. And in that instant there went the grocery store produce section.

Then the fromage struck. Pungent and feety and tongue itchingly good. I’ll take that one, and that one, and that one, and hell throw in those two as well. They say that only a small percentage of cheeses are exported to the U.S. and I don’t blame them for hoarding them. The variety and flavor is unmatched and I’d keep it all to myself in my own little cave if I could! I didn’t even have to delete the shrink wrapped cheese case from my grocery store memory… it never found purchase in the first place.

It was about this time that the picnic idea hit… oh yeah baby, let’s keep going.

Hmm, what next? Oh, hey across the street is a butcher… where you find that you find … charcuterie.  Some smoked, cured meat would be just the thing to carry this home. A little bit of ham, salumi, sausage… skip the pate (told you I wasn’t a foodie), and poof! there went the standard deli case.

Then a whiff of something, warm and crusty floated by… baguette anyone? Two of those please… and a pain au chocolate for good measure, just in case I need a snack later. Yeah, right!

Two last stops left to make for the perfect pic-i-nic basket, BooBoo! A smidge of dark chocolate from madame chocolatier and then for une bouteille vin rouge to wash it all down with… cork removed of course. There was even the French equivalent of a five and dime with cheap wine glasses and a small plate at the end of the block to complete my vision.

I wandered two more blocks in a haze of sights and smells to make it to the green grass beneath the Eiffel Tower. Spreading out my prized possessions with no less enthusiasm than Gollum and his “precious” I finally sat back to take it all in… the one time I didn’t have my camera with me. (Note: camera fatigue is real and after 1,000 shots it does sink in even for the biggest shutterbug). Beautiful, and now I was hungry. I had denied myself even the smallest taste until my picnic was perfect.

Post-picnic orgasm -- laying spent in the grass, in the shadow of the Monsieur Eiffel’s radio bacon… I mean beacon, enjoying a mid-afternoon lull of red wine and a belly full of strawberries, cheese and baguette, et. al, I felt a deeper love for this city. One that came from the cockles, maybe the sub-cockles, of my heart. And one that made me profoundly sad when I shook myself out of my French daydream to find myself in front of the peanut butter in aisle 6 of the Pennington Stop & Shop. Sigh! Well at least I had it one day and man was I going back to Rue Cler the next time… until we meet again, Chere. Maybe this time I’d take my picnic to a bench along the Seine to watch the boats go by. 

Yeah, that’s a vision I can dig.

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other,” Hemingway wrote. “Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.”

Directionless in Edinburgh


Whenever I've traveled I am a planner. Not in every way, but I've never been one of those people who can just land in a city or town and not know where I will be laying my head for the night. I like to know where I'm going. However, once I know this, I am fairly free rein with where I end up going while there - seeking the path less traveled. Just wandering about. Thus, when I was in Florence, Italy I never went to the Uffizi or any of the other galleries. The weather was too beautiful and the city called for a photo safari in its own right. I've only been to the Louvre once, wandering the rest of Paris called me more. This has become my way of discovering a place in my own way.

When I was setting up my arrival in Edinburgh I didn't realize the endeavor it was be to actually find the flat that we had rented. My boyfriend was meeting me after Orkney in Edinburgh and I arranged the schedule to arrive the night before so I could have everything set up. My plan was to pick him up at the airport the next morning... that was until I actually drove INTO Edinburgh. Now had I paid attention to the first night I arrived from the states into Edinburgh and stayed out by the airport, I would have known that this city was literally a mystery wrapped in a cartographers enigma. Columbus would have given up on the new world if he'd had to go through Edinburgh first.

I had driven in UK "wrong side of the road" lands before. The stick shift on the left was a bit confusing, not to mention the penchant for roundabouts (traffic circles) that they seem to have - going the wrong direction. There have been many "Look kids, Big Ben and Parliament" Clark Griswold moments. God knows they can't find a simple left or right turn off a highway with both hands and compass. But getting to the Novotel "by" the airport was ridiculous. I somehow ended up on a private road -- with a gate that I could get into but couldn't get out of... huh? And the hotel was just over there. I could see it but damned if I could actually get there. I tried to sneak through the gate behind another car but the parking guillotine of Scotland was too fast and I nearly started the trip with a nice big dent in my hood. So after backing up a mile and finding a nice Scottish couple (the first of many kind and helpful Scottish people) to give me directions, I finally pulled into the hotel with jetlag and bleary eyes. At the time I attributed my unusual issues with direction to this... I was wrong, it's Edinburgh itself.

Fast forward to arriving in Edinburgh proper. By this time I had successfully navigated to and from Orkney with six hours of drive time each way through the northernmost reaches of Scotland on sometimes the narrowest of roads. City driving... no problemo. So I thought. I missed the first turn into the city and ended up back by the dreaded airport, but since I'd been there before I kinda/sorta knew my way around. But as I drove deeper into the city things got more and more confusing and by the time I hit the center I was stuck in the maze. The signs were in ENGLISH how difficult could it be? VERY! Finally it was a French student at the university that got me to the main section of town. Once I got there I found out, after many shaken fists and a firm berating by a bus driver, that this was an area where only buses and taxis were allowed to drive. So THAT'S what that sign means. Note to self. But once I was there what was I supposed to do, abandon the car on the side of the road? So I kept driving.


When I finally got to the right section of the city and found High Street I still couldn't find the road that the flat was on. I was practical I pulled over again and asked a postman. His answer was, "I don't know, possibly on the other side of the cathedral, but you have to go back and around three blocks to get there." Ok, backtracked and still couldn't get to it. I asked a policeman and he didn't know how to get there. He pointed out a possible way and then said, "Good Luck, Lass." You've got to be kidding me. I was texting Kevin back in the U.S. to help with directions and vent quite a bit of cursing when 1.5 hours after entering the city I finally found the street and the flat. The street ran UNDER the other streets in the area. That's what happens when you
visit a city that's 1,000 years old or so.


Even the winding staircase up to our 4th floor flat couldn't diminish the relief I felt when I finally dragged the last suitcase through the door. No way in hell I was driving out to pick up Kev at the airport... I could end up in Glasgow. I was parking the car and not moving it for three days. That's why God invited taxis.

And I give full credit to the taxi driver for giving us an experience we would never have had if I had managed to find the airport again. On the way over he told me how modern Edinburgh is made up of what used to be very distinct towns with their own personalities. He advised getting out of the center and heading out specifically to one called Dean.

Now my brother's name is Dean and I thought it was be fun to take a picture of a town and bridge with the same name. Once Kev was settled we headed out to see it and what a lovely discovery it was.

The village of Dean, within Edinburgh proper, winds along the "Water of Leith" with a walkway running alongside the river. A former milling town, the houses cling to the sides of the river with soft gardens and stone buildings with small leaded windows. Go around one bend and there's waterfalls. Go around another and you reach the town center looking very much like it fell out of a Harry Potter novel. It is tranquility itself in the center of a very busy city... one you couldn't hear over the babble of the river. The path led us by picturesque homes, and flats with fantastic gardens and eventually to an overpass leading us to the Dean Museum and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.


I have been collecting t-shirts from modern art museums for a while and of course had to stop in. The museums in Edinburgh are free so you can visit as many or little as you want. After passing the iron man half submerged in the sidewalk and seeing the "Everything's Going to Be Alright" message in neon over the entrance, I had a good feeling about it.

The thing I love about modern art is it has the tendency to bring out my worst cases of the giggles. Such as being doubled over at the MOMA in NYC after viewing the exquisite piece which appeared in every sense to be a canvas painted white. I know it's low-brow to snigger and not even try to understand the emptiness of life that the artist was trying to convey... at least I think that's what he meant. It could have been a portrait of his mother for all I know. Frankly I just always felt slightly annoyed that I didn't think of it before he did so I'd have a piece in MOMA and could call myself an "artist."


Going into Edinburgh's version of MOMA we weren't disappointed. Our favorite by far was the clear shower curtains that had been melted together and hung from the ceiling and painted with what looked like pepto bismol and toothpaste with candy and bathroom materials stuck to the bottom... this piece filled a 30 foot long room and gave us hours of laughter. Art can truly move people. Maybe not in the way the artist intended, but any reaction is a good one, right? Ok, so the staff of the museum was not amused with our reaction but hey I can't believe we were the first to fall out over that one.

Though we visited the areas more "on the beaten path" like Edinburgh Castle and the Royal Mile, our time spent wandering Dean gave us the chance to see the other side of Edinburgh. I will have to blame those confused city streets for making it impossible for me to drive and possible to meet our lovely taxi driver with his great suggestion.

Stoned on Orkney

When I told people on mainland Scotland that I had visited Orkney, they acted like I 'd gone to the moon. "Why in the world would you go there?" they'd say over their pints. There's a well evolved Scottish belief that the farther North of Edinburgh and Glasgow you go the more into the wilds you've landed... just around the corner from the end of the world. And all the way to the Orkneys? Well, you've just gone round the bend to full looney to go there.

So what brought me to this far off the beaten path location? Scotland was weird enough. No one went there except to play golf and then to go further North, what was the point?

It was a book. Or rather a series of books called the Outlander series that brought me to Orkney. Over 10 years ago one of my best friends recommended a series of books by an author named Diana Gabaldon about a woman who visits Scotland with her husband following WWII and time travels from 1945 back 200 years to 1745 by walking through a split stone in a stone circle. Not a big science fiction fan I decided to give one a try and was hooked on Gabaldon's telling of the history of the Scottish highland and fantastic characters she created. After reading them you can't help but think that every Scottish man is going to be a 6'+ something with long fiery red hair. I know that she has single-handedly increased Scottish tourism in the "women who want romance" column -- all in the mad pursuit of their own "Jamie." NOTE: I had already found mine by the time of the trip, and a good thing too, dudes of that description are light on the ground in Scotland. As bodice ripping as the novels are, the history she recounts paints such a vivid landscape that I had to see it for myself. I was interested in Scotland before but after that I had to see if there were standing stones with magical powers. Enter the Ornkeys. In my pre-vacation research whenever I searched for standing stones the Orkneys kept coming up. Ok, I'll go there! 6 hour dirve from Edinburgh and a ferry ride later, I was there.

On Orkney stone circles dot the landscape. Just like Stonehenge, we don't know what exactly they were used for - rituals, sacrifices, or just meeting spots. We just don't know. Turn a corner and you see the Standing Stones of Stromness and go a 1/2 mile down and you see the Ring of Brodgar on the left. Both are basically in the middle of a cow pasture. At Stromness you even share the space with a couple of sheep who get a regular show watching the tourists stare in awe at the 20 foot stones. So much on farmland, in fact, once people started going there regularly the farmer who owned the land where the Stromness stones are, a very religious fellow I'm told, thought he should blow them up to keep the pagans away. Luckily he didn't complete his destruction.

The morning after I arrived I found myself standing among the ancient stones holding my breath. I listened intently for the buzzing of the passage mentioned in the books. However, over the gale it was hard to hear myself think much less the buzzing of a time portal. I stepped through a split stone within the circle. When I got to the other side it was 200 years ago and I was surrounded by sheep... OR it was 2011 and I was still surrounded by sheep, eating their way steadily across the grassy field, barely giving me a glance. Oh well, I guess I didn't have the power.

I went back later that afternoon, closer to sunset and just after a storm had come through. I was rewarded with a perfect rainbow landing right smack in the middle of the circle!! And I even had my camera for it! For a photography nut like me, it would have been a particular taste of hell for that to happen without my trusty Nikon with me. It was truly a miracle moment among the ancients. I could almost feel them moving around me, smiling at this grown woman hooting and running around like a 5 year-old, snapping photo after photo, wind knotting my curly hair and trying to knock me over, with golden sunshine lighting the hills around me. THIS was ancient Scotland and it was blowing my mind... and everything else it seems!

Blown Away on Orkney

I remembered the Irish saying, "May the wind always be at your back" as I was nearly blown off the cliffs in Orkney, Scotland. I guess it just depends on the view you want on the way down into the drink. Calling it "windy" in Orkney doesn't come close. All the locals kept saying, "Oh you should be here in the winter. This isn't bad." Hmmmph (Scottish sound)! Isn't bad? It was a consistent 70 mph wind with higher gusts that really made you feel like you were going to be knocked over. Where walking progress was in spurts -- literally one step up and three back, or six steps up and one back, depending on the wind direction. You could literally jump up and catch wind. For those that don't know, that's on the same level as a Cat1 hurricane/F1 tornado... on a sustained basis (I looked it up).

I pulled into one parking lot where the owner of the store ran out and shouted at me over the wind to park my car the other direction so my door wouldn't fly off when I opened it. Huh? Took a second for that one to sink in. This was the stuff of legend on the island. As the story goes, a guy took his rental car out for a day of sightseeing and came back with not one, but BOTH doors gone. Went out with a coupe and came back with a Jeep. Good luck 'splaining that one to Hertz. And after trying to get my door open, even the other direction, I can see that there was truth to this legend. The only thing missing was a witch on a bicycle going by with a dog in its basket.

Orkney is one of a set of islands off the northern coast of Scotland that includes the Shetlands -- which everyone knows because of the "ponies." Billy Connolly, one of Scotland's great comedians once said of performing on the Shetlands that the people attach bits of string to their little kids, not to keep them from running away, but from blowing away. So you'll see them floating their kids down the street like balloons at the Macy's Day parade. He also said there's no trees in Shetland (or Orkney). "All Shetland's trees are in Norway." I so get it all now.

I've had friends comment on my holiday photos saying they were surprised I got a tan there when they had always heard about the rain and not the sun. It's not a suntan, it's windburn. The locals call it a Scottish tan.

The wind affects everything... the horses on these islands are not ponies. They are full-sized horses but the wind has made 'em short. The cows are short. The sheep are short. And depending on the strain of heritage you have, you're either tall and Nordic or short and square Orkadian. At 5' tall I felt I was amongst my people.

The "wee bit o'breeze" even affected the housing... for millenia. There are have been settlements, yes many of them, found on the Orkneys that date back 5,000+ years. As Americans, with a short history, we can't even fathom what 5,000 years is. If you're a creationist that's only 1,000 after God made the Earth... I guess just after those pesky dinosaurs died out.

All over Orkney archaeological digs are unearthing entire settlements on various parts of the island. And we're not just talking about a couple of walls here and there. We are talking about full housing developments and cairns (structures made of rock and covered with turf - the true use of which is still a mystery). In Skara Brae a storm in 1850 eroded the beachline and uncovered an entire village 5,000 years old that had been covered for thousands of years They built thick house walls and hearths and beds of rock that wouldn't blow down and gave them some buffet zone from the relentless winds.

I took an ecotour with Malcolm Handoll, of All Five Senses on Orkney for a local's perspective on the area. Our first stop was Rennister. It's on a farm, or more precisely, under it. As with most ancient places it was found when a large piece of farm equipment suddenly broke through the ground, the underlying structure entrance giving way. Malcom and I walked up to a fenced area about 10 feet around that had a manhole cover in it. So here I am looking around for a mound of earth that shows a cairn, like I've seen in other locations, and he point down... to the manhole cover.

Me: "Yea, what's that about?"

Malcolm: "That's where we're going."

Me: "Right!"

Malcolm: "Really, that's where we are going."

And he proceeds to life the grate and tell me to climb down. Ok, I'm game and feeling very Alice in Wonderland, down the chute I go... trying not to think of the MANY Law & Order SVU and CSI episodes I've seen where they've found women in such remote "tourist sites (only after they had started to smell). Once I got down the ladder and turned around I found that I was in a room. An actual room about 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide with pillars to hold up the roof, storage spaces for supplies and gain a break from that wind. Easy to see someone living here, if not permanently at least to use for storage. Hmmm, down the rabbit hole see what you find from several thousand years ago! I was stunned. But the surprises weren't over.

We pulled ourselves out of there and went to Cuween Cairn where the heads of 24 dogs and 3 humans were found in 1901 when it was opened. Obviously the dog people - there are eagle people on other parts of the island. This time there was a mound and we climbed a steep hill to get to it, braced hard against the wind. We got to the top and Malcolm told me to take everything out of my back pockets and then proceeded to Nestea plunge backward into the surrounding heather. I tried it and was shocked to find how soft and springy it was, not to mention a perfect windbreak. Hmmm, again, all about the wind. We laid there on the hillside watching the clouds zip over and could hear nothing.

When we finally dusted the heather flowers off our clothes and approached the cairn again, he said, "You go first. You'll get dirty on this one because you have to crawl through." Rain trousers in place, no problemo mate. I crawled into the pitch black and kept asking, "Am I getting closer?" Ok, I was squeamish that I was going to put my hand on a large varmint or squirming spider on each placement. And have I mentioned that I have a bit of claustrophobia? Never mind that.

After ducking through the entryway he told me to stand up. Thinking I was going to crack my noggin on that previous four foot roof at Rennister I stood up slowly and kept going. In the pitch black I could hear him but couldn't see a thing. So imagine my surprise when I took a picture of 6' tall Malcom and saw several feet of available space between him and the rock ceiling. It was tall, with three ante-rooms that were just as tall once you got through the openings. I was able to see these after he let me use the torch (flashlight). They don't know what these cairns were for. They are sound proof but have good acoustics for chanting and drumming. They're also a whole lot of fun when you turn off the torch when you hear people about to come in who don't know you're there... get it? Hours of fun there.

The stone work is so precise it's lasted thousands of years and will likely last as long going forward barring overuse by the current crop of humans. One of the best things I found was that these areas were open to anyone to come into and there wasn't one bit of damage, or graffiti, or trash left behind. And no restrictions because of insurance worries. It was refreshing. The new visitors had much respect for the ancient owners. And maybe because of that they will let us discover a new ruin that gives a further glimpse into their world. They have much to tell us if we will let our ears open to their stories.

Montreal is NOT PARIS

After a recent trip to Montreal for my 40th birthday, a good friend of mine said that her husband suggested they should go to Montreal because it's close and it's just like Paris. Ok, I'm prejudice here since Paris is one of my favorite places in the world, but with that said, I would like to dispel ANY possible rumors of this being true. Sorry buddy, you're not getting out of taking your wife to Paris that easily. Or to put it plainly, as my half-Texan side might say, Montreal ain't Paris. Not near!

Yes, they both speak French, have a Notre Dame, a Latin Quartier and a Metro. You will walk your ass off (literally) in both of them, but that's about it when it comes to the similarities between these non-twin cities.

This Notre Dame is not THE Notre Dame.. sorry!

Don't get me wrong, it is completely confusing when you cross the border from New York State and, Poof!, everything is in French. Some signs have English subtitles but for the most part, better brush up on your parlez Francais.

Speaking of parlez, I made the wonderful discovery that the French lessons I had been prepping with for months on the iTunes Earworms series did a wonderful job of teaching you how to ask for things. UNFORTUNATELY understanding the answer to those questions was a bit of a problem. For example, Ou' les toilettes, s'il vous plait (where is the toilet please), generally netted something equivalent to "blah bleeb bloob, we? (in a French accent). To which my normal reply was, "Um, parlez vous Anglais, s'il vous plait." Which would net a response in perfect Canadian inflected English of, "Down the hall on the left," only thing missing was the "eh?" Argh! Ok, so note to self, before I go back to Paris, make sure I get the Earworms version with BOTH the questions and the answers. Mon dieu!

Back to the discussion at hand, to compare Montreal to Paris actually does a disservice to Montreal. It's too high to reach for this lovely, significantly smaller, yet fun city. Montreal has a fantastic network of neighborhoods, all distinct in its own way. The Latin Quarter, where we stayed, had a good, funky bohemian/artsy quality to it, and tons of restaurants. The Village is a gay zone in both the noun and adjective definitions and even during the middle of the day there was no mistaking it for somewhere else. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Old Town Montreal has a historic, albeit EuroDisney feel to it, with a nice assortment of restaurants/street performers and artists. Just don't go to The Spaghetti House and expect a long meal. We ordered. I went to the bathroom and the food was there when I got back to the table. Huh? Now, I'm usually a very fast person in the bathroom, but I had the distinct feeling that I might have gone down the rabbit hole for longer than I thought. Turns out I didn't. However, I made sure the bottle of Pommery champagne lasted quite a bit longer at the Maske bar later that night. Probably a better trade off timewise.

Here's what you won't find in Montreal that is fairly common in Paris. There's more than three artists in Montmarte (where street artists are in Paris, but the prices are much steeper than the ones in Old Town). Nearly every corner has a cafe and boulangeries/patisseries for key refueling along the eight hour a day, Bataan Walking Death March you set out on at the start of every morning. The sidewalks don't roll up if there's a rainstorm. In fact you encourage rainstorms in Paris. As Audrey Hepburn said in Sabrina, "Get yourself a good rain, it's when Paris smells its sweetest," because of the chestnut trees.

On the other hand what you won't find in Paris but will find in Montreal -- people speaking French who are kind and helpful. No, not every Parisian is mean. That said, I like the French snotty attitude, it keeps you on your toes and it's part of the game to brace for condescending nose raising when you get there. In fact, I was so ready for it that my hands started shaking the first time I uttered a French phrase our the hotel (l'auberge...whatever!). Come on, I had been practicing for months and had some performance anxiety. So it was REALLY confusing to have people being nice when you decimate their language of choice or just look at them like a half-wit when they answer your precise question.

In Montreal, you can find real rollercoasters, THE circus (Cirque du Soleil is based there) and a summer Olympic facility right in the middle of the city (all accessible by Metro). You can also find rental bicycles all over the city -- a program called Bixi where you can pick them up and drop them off all over town. Of course this requires you to actually rent them -- which for some reason we never quite got the timing right on.

Montreal is a great city for a long weekend with a "touch" of France. But alas, it is not Paris, should not be mistaken as such and REALLY should be explored on it's own merits alone.

Bon Voyage!

9th Street Summer Deja Vu
In the song `Summertime,’ Will Smith says, “Isn’t it funny how the smell from a grill can strike up nostalgia.” I say the same with a couple notes of a song.

NPR has had a running series all summer about the song that reminds you of summer the most. And I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. They’ve already mentioned “Summer in the City” by the Lovin Spoonful and “I Get Around” by the Beach Boys. Now, I could go into listening to Kim Wildes’ “Kids in America” on my little pink box radio that we brought down to the shore, along with four of my friends, for my 12^th birthday, but as the summer starts to round itself out that’s not the soundtrack that’s been sitting on my brain lately.

The summer of 2000 was the first time I ever worked in the City (New York that is – for anyone silly enough to think any other place is the City) and the album Two Against Nature by Steely Dan had just been released. It was the first from the duo in 20 years or so. I knew every note from every other album of theirs so of course I would wear this one out as well. And while it wasn’t a blockbuster hit for them, there are several songs that carry me straight back to walking the sun dappled streets from the 9th St. PATH station to my office on Broadway for three short months. The rhythm of those songs just seemed to meld with the new rhythm I was discovering of what I like to call “small” New York. More of a neighborhood feel than what I was used to visiting up in midtown or uptown.

It was the first time I could really understand people “living” in the city. Here people actually walked their dogs instead of having them walked. Even though, unfortunately, it seemed they ALL went to this one wall to allow them to pee which just happened to be a quarter block from my office and on my direct route… every day. Welcome to working in New York – hold your breath and watch out for mystery puddles.

Just as the album didn’t have the thriving beat of “Reeling in the Years” – the city, on the 6-8 blocks surrounding my office, carried a slower pace than the city that I had known when coming in for a business meeting or day tripping with the family or friends. It was prettier, calmer. It felt like a cool oasis – maybe not temperature-wise but style-wise certainly and I was right in the middle of it all.

For example, the song “What a Shame” starts out with a guy who’s “grinding through his day gig, stacking cut-outs at the Strand. In walks Frannie from NYU…” The Strand Bookstore – which was only 4 blocks from the office was a regular lunch stop and NYU’s eggheaded funkiness was just 4 blocks South. See what I mean? I was right in the middle, literally, of that song. Not to mention the chord that the following lines struck... "I'm still working on that novel, but I'm just about to quit. Worried about the future now - well maybe this is it. It's not all that I thought it would be." I was divorced within a year of hearing that one and had started too many novels to even mention. The prophetic soul of Steely Dan strikes again.

Listening to “West of Hollywood” should conjure up visions of Santa Monica but for me I’m closer to “stompin on the avenue by Radio City” as the boys once said. I cue up the tune, close my eyes and see how the sun reflected an audacious golden color on the brownstones that I passed on warm nights after work as I walked back to the PATH station. And how through an open window you could hear the Yankees game playing in the background as someone made dinner. I’d cruise briefly through Balducci’s gourmet grocery store above the PATH station and then head downstairs holding tightly to my skirt while bracing myself for the blast of hot air to confront me at its entrance. This was my nightly ritual during that golden summer.

On my last visit to the City in May, I took a PATH train from Jersey City to the 9^th Street Station – forgetting until I stepped onto the street that it was my old stop. Immediately I proceeded to walk through a haze of déjà vu. As it always is with life, it was the same but different nine years later. As I mentioned earlier, it was only for three months that I moved through this oasis. My company had failed within 90 days, an early example of a company bleeding cash to the point of bleeding out. Balducci’s is gone and the Yankees are in a new stadium. But the dog pee wall is still there and part of me will always be grabbing the last train to Hoboken.

“Oh What a Goose I Am”

Cat Handcuffs and My Time at the Buddhist Temple

Some might find it strange that someone would be driving up to the Pine Mountain Buddhist Temple in Montecito, CA listening to the old comedy album A Wild & Crazy Guy by Steve Martin (yes it was an ALBUM in those days) when he was still doing stand-up. I hadn’t heard it in years, but I still nearly crashed the car laughing as I listened to his cat handcuffs skit where he has discovered that his cat has been embezzling from him.

The story goes, while he was away his cat would go to the bank disguised as him, including a little arrow through the head, and proceed to take out his money to purchase cat toys. NOW he had $3,000 worth of cat toys and he couldn’t take them back because they had spit all over them. Thus the need for cat handcuffs, just the front paws would be fine – or the four paws would work as well. For some reason this always gave me the funniest picture in my head. And I guess at that moment I needed to just remind myself not to take things so seriously – and to be happy that aside from all of us having green eyes, that my cats look nothing like me.

It was in this mindframe that I headed to points north of L.A. for enlightenment or just the chance to learn about this whole meditation thing I had heard about.

Every time I get on the open road for a trip, or the clogged roads surrounding L.A. as was the case, I always have prime time to think. I was preoccupied with thoughts about what this was going to be like. My mother’s cult thoughts ran through my head. Was I really just going to an outpost of ex-60s flower children who were worshipping a stick and looking for the pin number to my bank account?

Additionally, thoughts like, Would the monks speak to me? Am I allowed to speak to them? Would other people talk to me? Could Jen “Ants-in-her-Pants” Kamienski actually sit still and just think for a period of time without reading a book while music was playing and the TV was on? Is vegetarian code for eating bushes, bark and twigs? Would the Presidential campaign go on without me? For four hours, these thoughts ran through my head.

My brother, being the supportive soul that he is, did a wonderful job of putting a mantra in my head before I went. He said, “Whenever you start to chant a mantra think, “ohwhatagooseIam.” Yes – Oh What A Goose I Am. Which turns out is an old line from The Odd Couple (Episode: The Exorcists, Season: 4 – for any geeks). So, just like when he pointed out that the sign at the local organic grocery store named “Cream of the Crop” looked like “Cream Crap” and I can’t see it in any other way now, my first attempts at chanting were clouded with a desperate need to giggle. Not really a good thing to do in the meditation room. So I choked down my chortles as I had done in the Duomo in Amalfi when the priest at my friend’s wedding had a horrible stutter anytime he said the “k” sound. How do you go through a Catholic service and not stutter through 100 “kkk-christs!” I thought I was going to give myself a hernia that day or at least a bladder infection.

I digress. Thankfully with Zen Serenity Meditation there was little chanting and I settled into several hours of meditation over the weekend. Really, how often do you spend 4 hours staring at a wall to gain enlightenment... or a backache and blurred vision (as was frequently the case). But here’s the thing – it does work. The best way I can describe the feeling of what it does is to reboot the brain.

When you meditate in this style you keep your eyes open and you are supposed to just sit there. Don’t think. Don’t let your mind wander. Just actively look at the wall. See but don’t notice the nail heads coming through the wall or the fact that the reflections from the candles are making you kinda dizzy. Just sit. When your mind starts to wander you have to pull yourself back and just look at the wall.

It reminded me of a movie, like usual, called Shirley Valentine about a woman who’s not happy with her life and has an uncommunicative husband, so she decides to start talking to the wall in her kitchen. “Hello, Wall!” she’d say every time she was preparing the evening meal. Whenever I sat down for the next round of meditation I would address my wall, Hello Wall. This actually helped me focus back on the wall when my mind wandered.

I believe you stare at a wall so that you are less enticed to be distracted from your purpose and this really does help. For one session we faced inside the room and there was way too much to look at. I missed my wall.

As for the temple itself, the monks who run the temple are extraordinarily gentle souls but human ones at the same time. They do talk – actually they lend a good ear if you need it. And they give real life feedback. They have worries, anger, complaints, in other words human feelings, just like the rest of us. They are just better at choosing the response they have to any given situation. I would assume rather than being angry when someone cuts them off in traffic they would compassionately hope the person isn’t hurt by how fast they are driving. This is a different perspective. One that gives you less indigestion and chest pains, and one I hope to gain.

The time itself was not about lazing around and contemplating nature. This is a highly scheduled regiment, at least on the weekend of the retreats – I’m told it’s less so on regular weekends. We were up by 6:00. In meditation by 6:30 until 7:30. Cleaned up the various houses until 8:30 when breakfast started. 9:30 we went back to cleaning the grounds. It is a very clean environment, even with the finest dust from the surrounding mountains. Everyone contributes. It’s your offering. And it does feel good to just concentrate on sweeping the deck or patio. It’s another kind of meditation. You are focusing only on that activity. Not on work. Not on your love life. Not on your dwindling finances that are too closely matching the current Dow average. It’s just you, the broom and the hummingbirds. As I said, calming.

There is a mid-afternoon meditation, followed by rest periods and group meals, all very good vegetarian means from Rev. Leon, and you are on schedule right up until the last meditation session ending at 9:00 p.m. Lights out is at 9:45 and I don’t think I made it that long once.

As I mentioned this particular weekend was a retreat. The Segaki Retreat is basically the Buddhist version of Halloween. Rather than the All Hallows Eve that we all know where you put on masks and carve up Jack-O-Lanterns to scare away ghouls, the Buddhist celebration actually takes the ghosts and lost souls and makes an offering to help them from where they are stuck onto the next plane. The Gaki’s are represented as figures who have large heads and scrawny bodies with tiny necks who are unable to swallow love. Thus the phrase when you find things hard to swallow. The treats that are given during the Segaki ceremony are to entice them to accept the love and move on in their journey. The ceremony itself is followed by a celebration where the offerings are consumed by the participants – I’m still recovering from the sugar coma. But you can see the similarities - aside from the masks - it really is like Halloween, including the cool candy part, the end result is just intended to be nicer for the ghosts.

The Temple is 25 miles from the main highway and there are only a couple of houses in the surrounding area. It’s warm during the day with bright blue skies and cold at night with thousands of stars, but lest you think that they are totally removed from the world, they are not. I felt a million miles from the endless coverage of the Presidential elections that had taken over my free time with unending updates from the trail. But I wanted that. I needed an intervention.

The monks themselves were informed and even registered to vote. The voter registration might have been an hour away but they did it. It would make me angry with the lazy people who don’t even register eventhough they have passed the registration table at the local Trader Joe’s for months. However, after this weekend of beginning enlightenment and heightened compassion, I can only hope that one day they will awaken to the opportunity they are missing.

“I sometimes dance around in my underwear… doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will!”

So the lights are blinding you. You’re trying to remember the words or at least see them on the screen. Then you turn around and there’s a 6’6” drag queen in full gear, including a 12” pink beehive wig, being your backup singer. Huh? What funky Bali-Hai did I end up in? Nope, no one slipped magic mushrooms into your drink while you went to the ladies room… welcome to karaoke night in Provincetown.

I’ve always loved singing, as everyone who has ever driven in a car with me can attest to… good or bad as that experience may have been for them. It’s what I do when I’m in a car, or in the shower, cleaning the cat’s box or EEK!.. near a karaoke bar. No I don’t bring my own music or take it too seriously but it does create some fun stories along the way.

Now, at little background. I have the weird ability to recall the lyrics to almost any song that comes onto the radio… maybe a little less so with new-new songs but certainly up to about 5 years ago. Music from the 50-90s occupy a good deal of my long term memory. I’ve always said if I could wipe out song lyrics, movie lines, Brady Bunch and Bugs Bunny episodes from my mind that I could cure cancer. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. The Nobel Prize for Medicine will have to wait.

I did try to put that knowledge to good use by trying out for the FOX television show “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” and got to the semi-finals, but unfortunately life circumstances caused a flat performance and I didn’t get on… the first time. Believe me, I’m going back the next time they do an open call and I will get on that show… if nothing else but for the blog that’ll come from it. The money wouldn’t hurt either.

Anyway, back to karaoke. Once I worked through my stage fright issues with my opera vocal coach, there really was no stopping me from going on anymore. With all the dumb faces and noises you make when you sing opera, you move way past feeling foolish in front of anyone… whether at karaoke or in a jazz club in Paris.

Ah Paris, that one was probably the scariest. I was there with my friend Kelly in 2000, or so, it gets vague after a while, and we ventured into one of the many small jazz clubs by the Latin Quarter. Yes, we’d had a couple of cocktails, and I semi-jokingly mentioned to Kel that I had always wanted to sing in a jazz club just like this… to roll around on a piano top just like Michelle Pfeiffer did in The Fabulous Baker Boys. I had memorized “Making Whoopee” because of that performance. Well, we continued to talk and she said, “Why don’t you go up there and ask them to sing?”

“No way, this is Paris. This is real jazz. What if I freeze when I get up there...” Blah Blah Blah – she wasn’t listening.

She said, “This is the perfect opportunity. No one knows you anyway. I’ll go talk to them and set it up for you.”

And with that she left me, giving me no choice but to give it a shot. The only good thing I could figure out is that most of the audience spoke French so if I screwed up the lyrics, oh well. Singing on key on the other hand… well.

I remember being in the bathroom (le toilet) upstairs shaking. I had a black turtleneck on with leopard pants and motorcycle boots given to me by my maid of honor at my wedding (another blog one day). Not exactly the long, beautiful red velvet dress that I had envisioned… but I looked REALLY American. The American rocker look is a GOOD thing in Paris.

So I left the bathroom and had a broken French conversation with the pianist of the quartet. He gave me my Madonna moment, “Madames and Messeurs… `Jennifer’ from America!” Gulp! I was up on stage in a Paris café singing Making Whoopee in front of a crowd during Fashion Week on a cold January night. It was insane and I still thank Kel for getting me up there. I wasn’t Edith Piaf, but it didn’t matter. I had done it (and have the pictures to prove it - now if I can ever figure out my scanner I'll add them to the blog).

I’ve brought the vocal chords out in many places since Paris… New York, New Jersey, Florida Capri and Amalfi, Italy, Germany – all the hot spots… hmmm just realized I haven’t done it in SD yet.

Anyway, one of the best was New Orleans this past December while I was on a business trip. I went out with corporate partners of my company and we ended up at the Cats Meow on Bourbon Street. I knew better than to try and get onstage with the fine jazzmen and women in NOLA, but I could handle being on the karaoke stage in front of people who’ve had too many hurricane cocktails.

I sang my standard, “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar and it was a blast, but the best part was the next day. I was at Café du Monde for beignets and coffee with work colleagues who hadn’t seen my performance the night before… nor did I mention it. However, fate is funny and brings up things when you least expect them. I’m enjoying my breakfast and all of a sudden a guy comes up to me and says, “You sang Pat Benatar last night.” Oh My GOD! “Yes, that was me.” And of course I had to tell the table what all had happened. It was the only time I’ve ever been called out on the street after the performance so I felt like Britney Spears for a good 5 seconds. Then it was over and we had to head to the convention center to sell vending equipment and pay my bills. Fame is fleeting.

Karaoke in Provincetown is a whole different scene. The crowd is very enthusiastic and more prone to jumping up on stage with you to dance as background singers. Everyone gets applause and it really is a kind environment to sing in, but it’s a big crowd if you go to the Crown & Anchor on Hump Day Karaoke Night. About 1,000 people can fit in this venue especially in season. Its intimidating, especially because you realize you’re one of the few who haven’t “costumed” for the occasion. Oh wait, I left my sequined bellbottoms and sparkler t-shirts at home – what’s a girl to do? Really, to get everyone on your side, all you need to do is belt out a Melissa Etheridge song and you’re golden… at least with all the lesbians in the crowd. It’s probably the best party atmosphere for a night of karaoke, and there are many talented souls who jump up to give it a try.

I’ve always loved a song by Harry Chapin called “Mr. Tanner” about a guy who is a dry cleaner by day and dreams of being an opera singer. Everyone in town encouraged him to go to Carnegie Hall and give it a shot. And “shot” was the apropos word, the critics killed him in their reviews. He goes home and never sings in public again, but he would sing at night when he was alone.

The chorus goes,
“Music was his life, it was not his livelihood.
And it made him feel so happy and it made him feel so good.
And he sang from his heart. And he sang from him soul.
He did not know how well he sang.
It just made him whole.”

Well, I can’t sum it up any better than that. I may not do anything more than sing in a darkened karaoke bar… but it does make me whole. And there’s always, “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” auditions around the corner. ;-).