a message in the spiritual in-box

It's our capacity to sit with the uncomfortable — not how many to-do items we can check off in a day — 

that circumscribes the boundary on how much we are able to move forward. 

– Tara Mohr 

After a respite of several months you deserve a better opening line than this, but here we are again, end of October in Toulouse, happier than ever to be puttering in the pre-dawn hours, fixing a pot of coffee from my new favorite roaster, and planting our tush down to continue this ongoing project of love. 

In accordance with my stern resolve to keep it simple, or at least not-too-complicated, let’s dive right in to this month’s topic. When considering what to write about, I usually begin with a kind of loose inventory of what’s been happening, and notice what resonates. This time, a knock on the door came in the form of an e-mail from Tara Mohr, author of Playing Big. She shared a recent blog post, which struck a chord and continued to sound. It began: 

"When you are stuck, procrastinating, or perfecting…"

. . . and I was like, who, me?

Think of something, she suggested, in your work life that you want to do but are not taking much action around.

OK, you got me.

Because there are a few things — admittedly, more than a few — in my life where I am unable it seems to move forward. I see it there, right in front of me, accessible, available, inviting even; and yet I can’t quite get my arm to lift up and reach for it. Intellectually I know it’d be Good For Me! But something’s stopping me, something I can’t seem to get past.

Often, she says, what prevents us from moving on things, from taking action, is that we don’t want to feel the uncomfortable feelings that might arise — that almost definitely will arise — if we do them.

She goes on to say that this avoidance of what we don’t want to feel “is the invisible drive that shapes our lives, often unconsciously”. We can tell ourselves it's about lack of time, or knowledge, or tools, but often it's simply this: there is something we don't want to feel.

Then she suggested picturing yourself doing that thing, and all the feelings that arise. But it’s not the you-in-five-years-who-has-her-shit-together you, but you now — overtired maybe, young child, too-small apartment, insecurities and hang-ups. Notice the uncomfortable feelings surfacing.

Within maybe fifteen seconds of reading, I thought of twenty things that this could apply to. I started out with the arena of work, and then spilled over into life in general. There’s a lot of overlap. Things like: 

- engaging with/posting on Instagram
- responding to person who wrote me on Instagram
- spending time drawing in the studio
- spending time drawing in the street
- painting
- responding to guy about artwork
- sharing my blog with more people
- texting anyone in French
- looking for a studio space
- contacting JD about possible exhibition
- taking any steps toward organizing next exhibition
- making an appointment with PE
- making a haircut appointment, and going
- making a dentist appointment, and going
- contacting P and meeting for French conversation
- speaking French around the house
- looking directly at my financial life
- going to the seisin
- learning new tunes
- … and pretty much anything related to me playing an any arena that’s bigger, or unfamiliar. 

I noticed, as any reader might, broad themes. Each contained the possibility of growth or expansion. In many cases, there’s a potential consequence I anticipate, and that raises fear.

What Tara then says is that we can tell ourselves it’s about lack of time, or knowledge, or tools (or, in my case, money); but often it’s simply that there’s something we don’t want to feel.

So imagine yourself, she suggests, doing those things. “Live into what it would be like if it was you just as you are now — you with all the difficult feelings and nerves and fear that would show up for you as you do that thing”. Again, this is not some ideal version of you who’s thinner or prettier or less tired or more organized or whose desk is clear, but right now today. And notice what arises. What are those uncomfortable feelings for you?

When she spoke with women, and when I imagined my own feelings arising, these surfaced:

Feeling lost    Feeling unskilled    Feeling small and incompetent    Feeling unsure    Feeling exposed    Feeling foolish after having made a mistake    Worrying that the quality isn’t high enough    Feeling out of control, without a map    Feeling the fear of being ‘not nice’ or selfish   Feeling the confusion of being accused of selfishness    Having to experience the familiar tape of second-guessing and self-doubt about whether it’s good enough . . . 

For me, the biggest is the uneasy feeling that arises when it’s a matter of trusting my decisions. Out into the vast boundary-less universe of not right and not wrong, where the guideposts are internal, or nonexistent.

Fortunately, Tara says — phewf, as le petit garçon might say — there is good news: we are actually capable of experiencing these things, we have the capacity to sit with them, and survive them. We can actually decide that it’ll be OK.

It gets better: we can even be students of the feelings themselves. Explore them, with humor and gentleness. Because the idea, behind this blog and all of it, isn’t to give ourselves 30 lashings and make ourselves feel like shit. It’s to say, gently and kindly, what can we explore here?

As she says: “We can decide it will be okay to feel that thing. We can choose to experience it, and breathe through it . . . what is this feeling about? What earlier feelings in my life does it connect back to? What happens if I sit here through it for a few moments?”

Inspired, I decided to focus on two, Instagram and drawing, on the streets of Toulouse. And as I do, seeing what feelings arise, and agreeing to just feel them.

As predicted, the self-doubt and second-guessing arrived, in spades.

I don’t know what I’m doing    Cringing: Is it any good?    Feeling I am muddling around in the dark, lost at sea alone    Hearing the incessant voices questioning my judgement    Doubting: It could have been better . . . 

I steeled myself. I’m just going to feel what I feel. A little foolishness. A lot of inadequacy.

Maybe she’s right — these are survivable feelings, aren’t they? So first, there’s the willingness to experience them, and finding I can actually weather them. Second, the curiosity — looking around with wonder, and gently opening myself up to those situations and exploring the assumptions behind them, maybe even working them into something new.

Living in France, like any new place, is riddled with the potential to avoid situations where I don’t want to feel uncomfortable things. So many new situations, accompanying awkward feelings. An abundance of items on my list had to do with scheduling appointments. Can it really be that difficult? I mean, c’mon, Una. But also — argh, the intense discomfort of feeling lost, incompetent, unsure, small.

Of course, Life in General is like this, and Pema Chödrön says it really well — that there is this innocent, naïve misunderstanding we have, that we’re supposed to avoid the life that’s right in front of us, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that that would somehow make us happy. She instead encourages us to see clearly what is, with gentleness.

Avoiding uncomfortable feelings seems like a logical idea. But in doing so, am I also blocking progress, preventing myself from accessing something higher, deeper and richer? Is it like Tara says — that “It's our capacity to sit with the uncomfortable — not how many to-do items we can check off in a day — that circumscribes the boundary on how much we are able to move forward”?

Sometimes I worry that I’ve forgotten how to learn. How to go about it, whether to be organized and deliberate, or more open and fluid. Can I just allow things to unfold, without knowing what the final outcome might be?

There is also the idea of should — which never turns out well for me. Not only that I should do it, but that there is a particular way it should be done, a rulebook to follow. I was listening to a talk recently, and the speaker remarked that tools like social media are ours to shape. While we use them, we also actively create them.

I could shift my thinking and attitude, and made it a kind of gift. What do I think it could or should be?

And so I am posting, I’m drawing, I’m feeling uncomfortable feelings as I bob around in this ocean, unmoored. Not rocket science to many of you, I’m sure, but I so needed an apt and unfussy reminder.

How I Do Love Thee, Pruneaux d'Agen

torture.

This time of year, I get the vague sense that I am busy and also doing nothing at all, nothing pressing or of great import. If you were to ask me what I’m up to, my answer would be unclear, my voice might trail off and I’d point up at the building we’re passing and marvel at the integration of classical architectural elements. Subject deftly changed. 

We’re just after a two-week Easter break and it's May in France, which means little gets done, or you just begin to get into a rhythm and then there it is, another national holiday in the middle of your week, and so we close maybe just for the day but actually let’s go ahead and take Thursday too, and while we’re at it Friday, because that’s just logical, I mean if we’re going to Provence it makes no sense to spend just two days there. 

And although I am peering at the world through a haze of late springtime allergies — tortured, and taunted, by every cruel blade of grass and attempting to scratch my eyes out — my taste buds are still firing on all cylinders, thank the gods. 

In the spirit of the season, then, let’s lighten the load a bit. Turn to pleasures of the flesh. And humor. 

exhibit A: Why do they call you the Picasso of Boxing? You just have to ask my opponents! Ha!

You know your French is progressing when you get a good pun. It’s why I always love visits with my belle-famille, Mamy and Didier: I really feel immersed in the culture and language, and my French seems to reach another level. For example, I understood why we all laughed recently when I happily reported, on returning from an adorable bookstore in the little town of Minerve, that I’d bought a romain. My albeit slight error in pronunciation meant I was going to read a Roman. (These novels are crazy.) 

But when I’m by myself, like at the market, I know something’s really clicking. It happened a few weeks ago as I stood next to my favorite prune monger, sometimes the sole reason I navigate the crowds of the Sunday farmers’ market at St. Aubin. 

I’m standing there, the market elbow-to-elbow with people as usual, and there’s this character hanging about, chatting people up. He’s yakking away to the world in general, waxing on about prunes (I assume) and their health benefits (I think?). 

Bonjour, he introduces himself. Je m’appelle Bruno. Bruno d'Agen. 

I smiled: Brilliant. Right at my level. Not bad, sir; not bad at all. (If you didn’t get it just hang tight. You will in a moment.) 

It’s a nice segue in fact, because I’ve been wanting to introduce you to these prunes, the world’s most mouth-wateringly luscious. 

Prunes? you protest. But aren’t those for the old and infirm, for when things aren’t (ahem) running right? Oh dear me no. Non, non, et NON, as one might say here. These are different. These alter lives. 

Before we go further then, a word of warning. Fortunately (I suppose), our medium is digital and your life won’t yet change in the permanent way mine did when my lips touched these for the first time; but if you live in Toulouse, or when you visit (ahem), you will try them and you might end up falling in love with the first person you meet thereafter, they’re that good. Your standards will soar, and all other prunes will wither in comparison. You might even misplace your affection and fall in love with me. At any rate, you’ll never look back. 

Let’s backtrack and use the aforementioned pun as our guide, pick it apart a little. First, the name Bruno. I hear the name and I kind of want to giggle — who the heck is named Bruno?! Never in the US have I met an actual person named Bruno. As I’ve mentioned to French friends, Bruno for an American is a caricature, the boxer who’s all might and no brains, the tough-on-the-outside bulldog in a comic strip. But here, it’s common; everyone knows a Bruno. The owner of l’Anartiste. The father of a kid at school. 

our favorite Bruno.

Then of course there are the prunes. The word prune in French means plum, versus pruneau, which means prune — the plural of which is pruneaux. Pronounced “prune-o”. Rhymes with Brun-o. See where we’re going? 

The prunes with the protected label of IGP — Indication Géographique Protégée — are called Pruneaux d’Agen. Agen lies along the Garonne river about midway between Toulouse and Bordeaux. I personally know it best as the town I like to gaze at as I temporarily bid farewell to my wifi en route to Bordeaux or Paris by train. But it is also the heart of the region which officially produces the Pruneaux d'Agen. 

This basin provides the climate and soil necessary for the Ente plum orchards to produce these gorgeous babies. It includes portions of six départements in the southwest: Lot-et-Garonne (the largest, accounting for two-thirds of total production — and where Agen lies), Dordogne, Gironde, Tarn-et-Garonne, Gers, and Lot. As with wines with certain appellations and protections, only the prunes from this region (all processing must take place here also) and which follow strict standards get the privilege of calling themselves Pruneaux d’agee. 

Yes, there is an official site; yes, it is called pruneau.fr. There is even a quiz there you can take. Here’s my favorite question: 

What time of day should one eat Agen prunes? 
a) only at midday 
b) only in the evening 
c) any time one feels like it! [exclamation point mine] 

Agen prunes must be made from plums harvested when fully ripe, and the trees must be pruned annually following a specific set of standards. After an elaborate drying and sorting process, the plums are then rehydrated so that they are soft and supple and ready to eat. They’re looking for a water content of 35% max. 

I personally have a weakness for the prunes known as mi-cuit — I’ve also seen them called demi-sechée, or half-dried — which are mouthwateringly moist. For them, the drying process is halted at the final rehydration level for normal prunes, so rather than dry them to 23% or less, they’re stopped sooner. 

And my farmer at the Sunday market is a specialist, based in Moissac, which is in the Tarn-et-Garonne département. They are friendly, and generous, and they concentrate their efforts on just a few crops throughout the year, and those they do really well. They go from prunes in the winter to cherries, starting now, then plums all summer and later, grapes. 

The possibilities for how to eat these prunes, as the website will tell you, are endless. Sweet, savory, all by themselves. Hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, main dishes, baked anything, snacks, desserts. A bunch of famous chefs weigh in with their favorite recipes, like “dombes quail with Agen prunes stuffed with foie gras, wild herbs, and a prune jelly sheet”, “bulgur and gorgonzola risotta with Agen prunes”, or “smoked eel emulsion with Agen prune crumble”. This is serious business. 

I cook with them, I eat them at breakfast, I bring them to coffee with my friends so they can be seduced and transformed like I was. I make desserts with them, like this beautiful gateau from smittenkitchen; I put them in muffins as a kind of puree. I brought them to my figure drawing group and watched my friends’ eyes widen with surprised pleasure as they popped them into their mouths. I’m going to soak them in Armagnac soon; just watch me. 

an interpretation of SK’s magic apple plum cobbler

I’ll leave you to your exploring, because I have to get going — the pharmacy’s closing soon and tomorrow’s another holiday, and I’m desperate for eye drops. 

Before I go, a parting gift. Bruno at the market inspired me: I adapted his joke into one of my own, which I hereby officially enter into the lexicon. Accessible only perhaps to the cross-culturally aware such as yourselves — I prefer to think of it as a joke with terroir — but no matter. Off we go. 

A. Knock-knock 
B. Who’s there? 
A. Bruno. 
B. Bruno who? 
A. Bruno d’Agen! 

Cut to roomful of laughter. 

And curtain.

Robert Roubelet, our hero from Moissac

Points of Interrogation

Have you ever been dealt a problem which you thought was a terrible, terrible problem — and it was, even — but later you discovered that it was actually a doorway, to a whole world of subtlety and self-love you really needed to uncover? 

That’s how I feel about food, with which I struggled for, oh, fifteen years easy and then way more after that, though later the dial turned down considerably. I’m grateful almost daily for this particular challenge, whose profile has changed from problem to more like question, or puzzle. 

It continues to be an unpredictable, daily journey of ups and downs and, finally, a reminder to listen to and honor the feelings and the inner landscape. Where am I on, and where am I off, and what is my own middle way? 

One thing I did which, phewf, as le petit garçon might say — what a relief — was to stop dieting. That was around age 17 when I discovered the work and writings of Geneen Roth, in a furtive and desperate visit to Waking Owl books, where I found her book Feeding the Hungry Heart and, at last, someone who got what I was going through. The relief of dismounting the roller coaster of restriction was like exhaling after holding my breath for fifteen seconds too long. 

But alas, rather than eating in a balanced way I kind-of misinterpreted that as a green light of sorts, and instead swung in the other direction to an extreme, and therein lay my struggle for years to come. 

I swear I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Another story for another time. Twenty years hence I feel like Geneen and I are enduring pals: I’ve stuck with her and dug deeper with her as she — as we — investigate the ways how we are with food reverberate, wider and wider into all aspects of our lives. 

Take Rules, for example. 

Turns out, the following-of-rules is deeply ingrained in me. For years I hunted for a set to follow, along with the right label to describe myself. Maybe, I subconsciously figured, if I found them I’d finally be able to relax. I'm good at following rules, at being good — or at least trying to be good, and then knowing when I’ve been bad, so I can feel bad, and then try to be good again. I’d be OK. 

But as It turns out I hate rules, even when I agree with them. The problem is that beneath the surface is the implication that without them we are not to be trusted. If left to our own devices, particularly around food, we will devour the entire box, our appetites are too big to manage, we are fundamentally bad. 

It begins with food, but then it extends to other areas of our lives: don’t trust your ideas. Some outside arbiter knows better than you. 

I much prefer the line of self-trust, as scary as it is. So on this journey with food I found a path of sorts which is not about following rules but rather listening closely and respecting what my body wants — which is what I wanted all along anyway. 

I vividly remember seeing Danny Kaye direct the Utah Symphony when I was about twelve years old. The first half of the concert was the regular conductor Maurice Abravanel; and then, written on the program for after the intermission, was simply this:

That one question mark thrilled me, visually stamped itself onto my memory. 

Danny Kaye, Tanglewood 1961

It strikes me that my relationship with food is more like that now: rather than a regimen to follow, it’s more like a daily question mark in relation to food. What’s right for right now? 

Roth — Geneen, since we’re old friends — talks in one of her books about permitters and restricters, about how we’re often basically one or the other, kind-of fundamentally oriented that way. Of course someone with anorexia would be the classic restricter, and someone who compulsively overeats might be your classic permitter. I am a permitter all the way who once wished she were a successful restricter, because she imagined they were more disciplined and thus morally superior. 

But (sigh) I guess I am a rebel at heart. It’s not the law of the land, obviously, but rather a tendency. I prefer these days to think of myself as a listener, as opposed to a blind follower of rules. I need the freedom of choice. 

Choice: definitely an option here.

Apropos of everything, I read just this morning in the philosophy book I found in the children’s section: Quand un acte est libre, il a plus de valeur pour nous et pour les autres qu’un acte forcé. When one does something of one’s own free will, it has much more value than the same thing done under duress. 

One thing Roth offers, as a counter to all this, is a set of eating guidelines. Unlike rules, there’s no feeling shitty after if you don’t adhere to them perfectly. They’re more like loving offerings. If love could speak, this is what love would tell you is helpful. Maybe you focus on one for a while, and see what happens when you follow it, and what arises. 

Sit down when you eat, don’t stand there because we all know that when you stand things somehow don’t count or they’re forgotten or we don't really taste and experience them. Eat without distractions, so that you really taste and savor this food you’re putting in your beautiful body. Eat with pleasure and enjoyment: relish the gift of this food. Eat as if other people could see you, as if you were in full view of the world. There’s no hiding here. And eat when you’re hungry. Trust the messages this body sends you. 

Savorer-in-Crime

Some say that how you eat is how you live. How you eat is the messages you send to yourself about what you deserve and what you value. For me, eating mindfully, without distractions, is deeply challenging. I often do it on the fly. Or I’ll make a beautiful meal, and then I’ll think about other things and whip through it like the Queen is waiting on me, and then I’ll wonder, where did that beautiful meal go? Does that say something about what I think I deserve and how much time I deserve? 

So much to savor

I'm still working on that one. 

I do love the subtlety of it, even while the lack of confirmation makes me deeply uncomfortable. Am I fat? Am I ugly? Vegetarian? Good, bad? Straight, gay, bi? Turns out in most cases it’s somewhere in the middle. 

Maybe those kinds of questions are unanswerable anyway, so it might do me well to disengage from them as much as try to answer them. Weight, another example: for me, better to turn my back, toss the scale, and trust the inner guide on that one. 

(I can hear The Voice mocking me now: Trust your feelings. Inner guide. Ha! Look how far that got you! I put her in a little jar, so she doesn’t sound so intimidating, but jeez already.) 

Perhaps it’s no accident that I am now in an expressly secular country which celebrates food to a kind of religious extent. I get the irony: good food is plentiful and even amazing, and I’ve the ability and luxury and good fortune to daily eat according to what feels right. The éclairs will be there tomorrow, and the next day, so there’s no rush to consume it all in one go. 

No, seriously: we’re only scratching the surface here.

This whole damned blog could be about food and body image, really, since the topic is so deep. And constant: it’s a daily effort to meet these questions, and to treasure both food and this body. 

I don’t know about you, but some of us around here might have just turned 47. How did that happen? It’s a prime number, 47; prime seems the perfect word to describe the juicy pulpy marrow of life at this age. Besides, what is age, anyway? As a wise person once said to me, we’re all kind of the same age, really, at this moment, aren’t we? 

Mid-life is such a personal journey. How much longer? How will it end? What do I do with this accumulation of mini experiences and traumas? What’s it all for, and who is the final judge? IS there a gold star at the end? Who the f is issuing the gold stars? Wait, there ARE no gold stars? Oh merde, hold on a minute: who the hell am I living this life for anyway? 

I mean, so I’ve heard. You probably already knew this. I had a hunch, but it’s finally sinking in. 

Once again, Mary Oliver steps in to issue a nugget of wisdom and perspective. News flash: What you’re looking for is who is looking. That person, that final arbiter and distributor of the stars? That’s you, m’dear. 

We’ll let her drop the mic once again, with a poem that makes the rounds frequently, and for good reason. The first three lines alone. Words to live by.

Pause Visuelle

That last post took so damned much effort to assemble that I decided, this round, to focus on something straightforward, easier. Isn’t that a lovely word, ease? Perhaps easy doesn’t mean lazy, after all; perhaps it steers us toward what’s natural, what’s genuine. 

I scoured my list of possible topics to see what resonated. Anything that opened my eyes a little wider or made me sit up with attention, unexpectedly, even momentarily? 

All of them seemed just too cumbersome in an already unrelentingly cold January. 

One thing I for sure didn’t want to write about was how in December I attempted in the world’s worst French to guide a gaggle of 6- and 7-year-olds into the world of portraiture, when I ‘volunteered’ for le petit garçon’s class. It took so much energy to just do it, let alone write about it. Suffice it to say that I and 26 kids, together with one maîtresse and my American college student assistant, drew a bunch of portraits, and at moments it wasn’t pretty, but then again nor was it ugly, and we all learned from it I think. 

What struck me more than anything was how much these children loved blind contour drawing. Dessin à l’aveugle, I think it’s called in these parts. I had temporarily forgotten that I love it too. 

Stephanie, the young opera singer, ca. 2010

Adults kvetch a little even within the first two minutes of a blind contour drawing. Their minds wander, they begin to squirm. But these little people did not kvetch. They focused. 

They loved having two rules to follow. One. You MAY NOT look at your paper, not once, during the five or so minutes in which we are drawing. Two. Once you start that line, you keep going, you don’t pick up your pencil or drawing tool. You imagine that you are an ant, you believe that you are this ant, crawling across the surface of whatever it is you’re drawing, and you let your mind quiet, and you DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR PAPER.

I saw you — ah ha! Resist the urge!  

They also loved the results, the funny-looking-yet-recognizable drawings that magically emerged. I showed them one I did recently, how fun they could be. 

The other thing I definitely didn't want to write about was the coffee-making competition I attended in late November. Those of us who know Café Cerise know it is among the best in Toulouse: attention to and passion for coffee combined with atmosphere and overall conviviality. Valentin recently installed his own roaster; he’s the one who generously gave me that list of coffee houses to visit when I went to Paris, entirely spot-on. 

I wonder where people get their distinct preferences for roasting time, because their beans, and roasting in general here, strikes me as a bit on the light side, I’ll call it an impressionist roast, whereas I prefer something more bold and intense and grounding, maybe something more expressionist. I bravely face this battle daily. 

… but I digress.

Valentin’s been hosting these cuppings and competitions recently, first for the Aeropress European championships would you believe, this time for a pourover contraption called the Hario V60. I confess it was a bit over-the-top even for this enthusiast: as competitors weighed their grounds to the fraction of an ounce and fussed over the best way to pre-moisten their filters, I kept thinking, a possible delicious cuppa is sitting there getting cold! You serve it lukewarm, and it may have subtle toffee or ruby notes, but that whole component of the coffee-drinking experience went down the proverbial drain. 

But both these events inspired me, woke something dormant. I thought, you know, why not just embrace these recent reminders of things I love, scramble them together, and take a break from all those words? So — here we are, with a pause visuelle you might say, of blind contour drawings inspired by daily life. 

. . . starting with coffee, of course

I hope you enjoy them. 

Winter, I'm told, is secretly preparing treats for us, but they won’t be ready for a while — something called spring I think it is? Hang in there. I will too.

We begin rough, with whatever's at hand . . . 

. . . and continue with leftovers from tree-decorating

The kaki trees — persimmon to you and me — which have generously agreed to wear their fruit a little longer, brightening otherwise stark surroundings. They’re everywhere; yet few people I've met seem to eat or cook with them…

Tools of the trade

Winter will not last forever, little grape vine