Share #8: Homemade soup, artisan breads, sliced pear and kiwi, cheese and salami

Jean jean o thank you Jean. I haven't seen you in forever! You were busy. Sick. I was too. Me too. We broke bread, some of hers and some of mine. She toasted hers. I arranged the salami and cheese. She cut the kiwi and served two bowls of magnificent, memorable, creamy soup made with chicken and beef broth and root vegetables.

There was so much to say that the coughing got worse, so Jean talked and encouraged me to drink water. We talked about the work we are doing and Jean loaned me a book, Basic Self-Knowledge by Harry Benjamin. Benjamin believes Krishnamurti and Gurdjieff were saying the same thing in different ways. In his book he explains why. He begins with a quote: "This work is beautiful when you see why it exists and what it means. It is about Liberation. It is as beautiful as if, Zonked for years in a prison, you see a stranger entering who offers you a key. But you may refuse it because you have acquired prison-habits and have forgotten your origin, which is from the stars."Maurice Nicoll, 1952.

Jean says she gave up wanting recognition long ago. She just want this. Life. The dance. As I was leaving, Jean said her life was about gratitude. She's living a life of gratitude. "If we're lucky, we've got 30 summers left. Or maybe one? That puts things into perspective." She told me about a practice she does when she goes to bed. Five and five. She folds one hand over the other and laces her fingers together. On the first hand, she counts five things from her day she is grateful for. On the other, five people she is grateful for. Five and five. Simple. Easy. Leaves you with more positive than negative.

Share #7: Hot toddy, happy hour.

I'd hardly eaten. It was nearly dinner. I was getting really hungry, but still coughing, a series of short dry coughs every few seconds. Funny, the sorting one goes through when one needs something from someone, when one must ask of another. Who can I see? Who do I want to see? Who wants to see me? Who have I bothered too much already? Who lives near? I looked into community and church dinners. Maybe the Ballard Senior Center was having a dinner tonight? I looked to see where Community Dinner was having their meal this evening. I could go to Fremont at 5:30pm for a church dinner. Hmm.

Then I got a message from Mylinda, who was at a meeting in Ballard. Close by! She said she'd be out of her meeting soon and would me for a hot toddy. Might be good for my throat. I walked the dogs and drove to meet her. Salmon Bay Eagles Aerie Club is the 1st branch of the F.O.E. (Federation of Eagles) in history. I'd heard about the F.O.E. Blues nights, but wasn't a member. Now, after wanting to peer inside for so long, Mylinda is a member and can sponsor me. Horray!

Dark inside. Heavy wood door. Taxidermy eagle in a glass case. Carved cherry wood bar. Pull tabs. Wood tables and chairs. Pool table. Dim lights. Didn't take long before I knew everyone at the bar. Nora, Christy, Steve, Mark and Gerald. Lots of history in this place. Wonder if they have room for an artist here? I later read that this F.O.E. was started by six theatre owners, gathered around talking about a musician's strike in 1898.

I ordered a hot toddy with whiskey. I was coughing. They gave me another. Two drinks is a lot for me. Still coughing. After a thoroughly enjoyable time, Mylinda, Nora and I went across the street for happy hour. Food! We split everything--ribs, tots and a hamburger. Thought about going to one of the ritzy new spots. Found them to be glassy and cold. Agreed to go to the hat (Hattie's Hat). This is what I've been missing. Society! It was an altogether satisfying evening and we ended it with a street hug.

Share #6: A hot drink & an aperatif

Friend and artist, David Traylor, invited me on a tour of Union Street this morning. He picked me up at 9am and drove us deep into the city. David is a potter, a visual artist and an expert on Union Street in Seattle, having spent a year and a half making art there, with long time collaborator Susan Gans--drawing, photographing and lifting inspiration from this route across the city.

David is curious about the errors, the places where city planning and reality meet up and fail to meet up, the things we experience on the ground as mistakes, as strange differences, as jogs in the road, roads that suddenly narrow or widen, cross streets that fails to match up. Union Street offers many such examples, where grids meet and seams stretch. The first is on Profanity Hill, where the grid that is oriented to the waterfront meets with the grid that is oriented to north. The buildings at Summit and Union are triangular and the streets vary in width. It is a transition zone.

David is trained in landscape architecture. His drawings hint at this. I saw, in his sketch book before we began walking, a series of graphite drawings, one per page. Each with a double image, on the top half, an aerial view of a city section, with Union Street and several cross streets and adjacent buildings and trees, in the lower half, an arrangement of dominoes. Each drawing highlighted a unique location on Union Street. The dominoes offered insights into many things, the forces at work on the landscape and in the community, what is happening, what has happened and what will happen, the course of the sun and hence time and all of its effects.

We began our walk where Union Street intersects with Alaskan Way, right The Great Wheel sits on the waterfront. Above the viaduct. Tunnel construction all around. We walked east across Western and Post Alley. We climbed the steep stairs to 1st Ave. There, between The Four Seasons and Pike Place Market, we looked back beyond the Steam Plant and ferris wheel to the harbor traffic and West Seattle and the islands. This cul-de-sac, where Union Street picks up, is a restful perch.

Continuing east, an array of cultural institutions, entertainment spots, schools, churches, commercial businesses and residential homes. Among them, SAM, Benaroya Hall, Seattle Symphony, The Triple Door, the post office, ACT Theatre, Washington Convention Center, The Northwest School, Seattle First Baptist Church, The Polyclinic, Gilda's Club, Seattle Academy, T T Minor, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Central Cinema.

We went as far as 22nd Street and back. Later I looked at the second half of the walk, a walk we'll take in the future, and I see Union Street doesn't go all the way to the lake. It ends at 38th Ave. From there, a stair and several streets will take you to the water.

Many stretches of our walk were familiar to me. I've spent a lot of time getting to and from Capitol Hill on foot from Fremont and Ballard. A few of the segments were new to me. I was surprised by two of the stairs and by an office park entrance to the convention center.

David suggested we stop in the Convention Center for a hot drink. He took pity on my poor sore throat. I was glad for the warm salve. We sat in a glassy corner of the convention center above Union street drinking tea and coffee. I offered a little bag of mixed nuts and cheddar cheese. This time here, floating above Union Street, was at the heart of our share. When starting our walk I asked how much time he had spent on the street, in any one spot. Had he sat on the benches and eaten meals there? He said he and Susan had moved along slowly, changing focus, discussing their work, meeting various business and property owners.

David led me out of the convention center to Pike and down Hubble Place to a set of stairs surrounded by ivy that rose abruptly to Terry and Boren. I was delighted to find, east of Boren, a new SDOT pedestrian greenway in a street triangle. From a distance, the bluish-green on the pavement looks like a pool. Across the street we found a model spaceship in pieces.

We talked about the differences we experienced along the walk, the distinct segments and how we define them. We talked about the word gentrification and the ways in which it is both welcomed and fought against.

Share #5: Pot Roast with Some of My Extended Surrogate Family

Kathleen and Lee are housesitting 10 blocks from where I am house-sitting and invited Scott and me to dinner. Kathleen is a gourmand. I don't remember a dinner with her that wasn't particularly savory, hearty and plentiful, to the extent that it warranted photographs and some stomach rumbling and some long gazing before at last sitting down to eat. Luckily, Lee is a photographer so many of her meals have been captured for posterity. We accepted, of course.

Kathleen made a pot roast with potatoes, carrots, onions and foraged mushroom in her new crock pot. Perfectly cooked. There was gravy, a green salad and beer. I offered a half loaf of dark Desem bread from Tall Grass.

There were pleasant distractions during dinner. Lee told stories. Kathleen talked about the book she was reading. The doggies were there, scurrying through the house avoiding the new kitten intent on hunting them. And, though less pleasant, I struggled to breath without coughing. I have the cold that's going around. In spite of this, I did my best to be present for and savor the meal. Seconds. O yes!

Outside of the very few times I have followed a recipe and made a fancy meal or put efforts into a special event, cooking was never my thing. Some years ago, having been required to give it some thought by a disgruntled boyfriend, I came to realize the kitchen is, for me, a hostile, stressful place. For many it is, I think, a warm, safe place. I still enjoy providing for others and like cooking for myself, but when I cook in the company of others, I'm often occupied r unavailable and am easily upset. Realizing this has helped me avoid some stress in relationships, but I still get in trouble as was evidenced by my time in the kitchen with my mother this spring and summer. O I got a healthy dose.

How is it that I still love good food, am still a romantic about freshly baked bread, fruit off the tree, grapes from the vine? And why do I long for fresh produce from the farmer's market? I can easily taste the difference in value--physical, emotional and spiritual--between store bought food and farm fresh food, between frozen, packaged, processed foods and local, organic, real foods. Why then do I not make more of an effort to eat in a way that is nourishing?

Thirteen years ago, I met a man named Antonio who invited me to dinner every night for many days. Every night I accepted and we sat on his boat with a glass of boxed wine and a plate of aperitif (nuts, olives, sardines, crackers) followed by a meal of pasta with long simmered sauce or fresh caught tuna in a cold salad and then sat talking below or above decks, in community. Rarely have I had this, wanted this, been drawn into it, a meal with community, readily given, hungrily accepted, a living sense of family.

It's been a long time since I've had regular access to a kitchen, but that's not enough of an excuse. Kathleen has no more access to a kitchen than I and makes great efforts to plan and execute meals, and does. How much of an obstacle is my instability, my transience, my continual desire to purge? How is this purging any different from any other? Why is my mind so skinny?

I want to spend my efforts elsewhere. But then, I want to share the meal. I want the company. I want the deep connection, the nourishment community brings. I have the desire to offer this to others. I don't think it's a case of admiring those who make the effort. It's more of a fantasy about the time when I, myself, will (choose to) live this life, make this effort, prepare this meals, harvest this garden, spices in my drawers, condiments for every occasion, a system of heating, cooling and storing that works and a community to share it with. What kind of reconciliation will this take?

Perhaps this is just another version of the search for home--love, community, relationship? But perhaps community requires just a bit more stability than I currently have?

It is not only the homeless who lack community. There are many people, in little and large homes, without community. How does the nomad, the world traveler, fulfill her need for community? Last year I experienced a loose, but palpable sense of community on the Pacific Crest Trail and was all alone and covering many miles a day. What makes a person plan a meal with care? Approach another person? Sit with them? Open up? Are we not all born with a care-giving gene that sharpens sense of our connection between good food and mental health?

Why do I have the urge to make bread? To make soup? To make cream-based sauces? To use a pressure cooker? I don't do any of these things. I could learn to do them, but my focus has been elsewhere. What am I saying, that I wish I cared? That I wish my caregiver was more creative? I'm creative in other realms. Why not there, in the kitchen, where it counts? Or was my culinary creativity discouraged at a young age? Has it, because of this, over time, atrophied? Or is it just a dis-inclination of mine? Or not a big deal? It feels like a big deal. Food. Nourishment. Health. Home. It feels big.

I remember reading about the French paradox in an article one day. It called into question the link between a high fat diet and heart disease. It revealed a surprisingly lower incidence of heart disease correlating to a higher consumption of saturated fat across Europe. Why then, in the U.S., is there a higher incidence of heart disease with the same amount of fat? Is  lifestyle, they asked, a contributing factor? How we eat? When we eat? With whom? Under what stress? After what amount of sleep? The connection made perfect sense to me and is why I now begin every meal with a pause and gratitude.

I love butter. I love bacon. I love simple meals, where everything is separate one plate and cooked up whole. One, two, three ingredients. I cook and eat quickly so as to get back to work quickly. I work long hours. I have an erratic schedule. I get into food habits. I eat the same thing over and over. Hot cereal with butter and brown sugar is a current affair, but not since starting My Share. Who will eat breakfast with me? Now that I'm alone I am without this nourishment. Since beginning My Share, I have missed my hot cereal every day and that feels significant because it is my only current routine. This leaves me with no routine.

I am remembering seeing signs for Community Dinners when I was living in Fremont. Though curious, I never got around to attending one. I remember seeing those same signs in different parts of the city. Who put the dinner on? Who attended them? Now that I've done a little bit of research, I see that Community Dinners hosts one dinner every night in a different part of the city. They are described online as "dinner churches, modeled after the Agape Feasts of the first century." Now that I need this service, a place and people with whom to share, I may, at last, be taking part.

Ah, but tonight I am blessed with Scott's mother, Kathleen, and her partner, Lee, who came to my aid this summer. When everything was falling apart (the apartment I'd been working on for months with Scottie and had brought my mother across the country to live with me in), they were my safety net and helped me fill in the gaps, though it wasn't particularly easy for anyone involved. For that, I am eternally grateful.

It was they who I called when I got into my bike accident. They were living close to where I'd crashed and I thought maybe, with their help, I could avoid the ambulance ride, but the bystanders and firefighters and police convinced me to take the ambulance ride, which didn't seem to matter in the end. After being triaged, I was wheeled into the waiting room and sat there for hours swelling in the face and lip and neck. I didn't mean for them to, but they came to the ER anyway to be my advocates, to sit with me til Scottie came to relieve them for the next 9 hours until I was released.

Share #4: Bacon & Eggs & Brown Bread, Chicken Soup, Chicken Sausage & Steamed Vegetables

I have a head cold. I'm coughing ad sneezing and my throat is stinging and my head is aching. I'm lucky enough, in this condition, to have a dear friend who will visit me and share meals with me. I met Scottie on the Wonderland Trail in 2011 when I was performing Tahoma Kora. Since then, we've climbed and worked together and, last year, biked to Mexico together. Scottie lives in a suburb of Seattle so I only see him every few weeks for a few days before he's off again to work and I'm back in the art world or the work world. I'll count our short run of meals as one share, because I feel it constitutes one concerted effort and I want there to be more and more shares to draw me out. All weekend, while I was sick, Scottie provided me with an opportunity to eat and I provided him with food. We shared the cooking and cleaning and watched a scary movie for Halloween. I am grateful for Scottie's generosity and sincerely and for his openness and ever pre-forgiveness.

At first, for now, My Share seems easy, constant. I don't think it will continue this way, but I'm delighted to take it in, this wave of friendship and food. I let it wash over me and am grateful.

Share #3: Fresh Fried Wilapa Oysters, French Bread, Red & Green Pepper Salad, Baked Pears, White Wine

I was invited by two dear friends to watch a meditation talk on health attachments and the Buddhist teachings of non-self given by Larry Thornton Jones and Robert Beatty, founder of Portland Insight Meditation Community. It was streaming live from Portland. I sometimes sit with Laura in the kalyāṇa-mittatā or sangha group she organized from attendees of Robert's first retreat in Seattle. Laura and Clinton are generous, creative people with a passion for life and a skill for living that few possess.

Clinton had brought fresh Willapa Bay oysters back from the coast and Laura had brandied pears. Her brother brought gravy fries and I offered fresh baguette. We sat on the couch, eating from our laps, watching and discussing the talk. Afterwards, I read a few pages from the book Christian loaned me, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment. I'd found it to be both light and useful, so I wanted to share. It got us into a discussion about language and how our language, or lack of language, hinders or aids our ability to talk about spirituality. Then we shared our experiences of expanding.

Clinton and his son Hugo have been friends for years. I watched Hugo grow up, from age 5 to age 13. They are an amazing duo. Now they, together with Laura, seem like family. They are non-stop people, always creating, surrounded by clutter, but open and engaging and alive in so many ways. My time with them never feels anything less than enriching and stimulating. I am so grateful for them and was glad to have them as an early share. Deep bow.

Share #2: A Roger's Pilsner

On Friday night I joined Kevin and Ann and their shepherd/greyhound mix Lily (who happens to be pub dog of the year) at Sully's Snow Goose Pub in Greenwood. I've taken care of Lily twice while they were on vacation. Lily is a lean, lovely, sweet dog with a sense of humor, but shy. She hid under the table most of the night while there were several other large dogs cycling through the place, looking for affection and treats.

Kevin and Ann go to Sully's on Fridays after work. If I wanted their company, they wouldn't be hard to find. I used to be in that space, in one place, where people could find me. Now I move around too much, every week or two. I should keep that in mind. If you want to be found, you've got to get on the map.

I ordered a Roger's Pilsner, a local beer brewed in Georgetown from Yakima grown Czech style hops. A very good beer. Ann offered me a piece of halloween candy. I don't care for candy, but here I was being offered a holiday share and I thought I should take it so I did.

I learned a few things from my time at the pub: (1) I could watch the final game of the Rugby World Cup between New Zealand and Australia at The Market Arms in Ballard the next morning. (2) There's a sell-out event every February at the Boeing Museum of Flight called Hops & Props, celebrating craft brews with open admission, beer tasting and buffet food, but unless you have a connection it's unlikely you'll get a ticket. They sell out in November. (3) Election day, next Tuesday, is also election day at Sully's, for the new pub dog of the year. Each beer you buy awards you one vote. The place is packed with dogs on election night. Dog owners bring their friends to drink and to sway the vote away. Sounds a bit rigged, but then you can only be dog of the year once, so I suppose it works out.

15 years ago, when I lived in Boston. I hung out at pubs with friends and was a regular at a wine bar in Cambridge. I had work friends, college friends, roommates and Irish friends from Nantucket. We'd all go out dancing or drinking or to a house party Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. There was live music many nights and I knew people in garage bands.There seemed to be a lot of overlap between worlds--climbers, entrepreneurs, musicians, artists, publishers, doctors, engineers.

Seattle's never been like that, for me. No overlap. Climbers hang with climbers. Artists hang with artists. Every world seems separate. When I came to Seattle in 1999, I was a climber, then I was a sailor, then an artist. The only group I ever drank with, a bit, were the sailors. The climbing world and the art world never offered me the time or money for that kind of socializing. As a climber, I worked a day job all week, stayed up 'til midnight Friday, packed for the weekend, got up at 4am on Saturday and drove north or east to the mountains where a small party of us would hit the trailhead at 9am, climb all day, sleep in a tent, climb again the next day, up and off the mountain, then fight traffic home on Sunday night. Mondays I'd recover at work. Later, as an artist, I was just too poor to drink and I worked all the time anyway so there wasn't the time. Seattle sounds awful in ways, but maybe it's my choices, my change in focus. Over the past 10 years, I've spent most of my time making endurance work, or in a cafes fleshing out proposals, or in a little office documenting my work or writing grants.

My Share is bringing me out again. Forcing me into relationship. I need it, which is why I'm making it. There are times, sometimes, when I feel real. When I feel alive. Times when I've got a task to do, I'm standing in a work of art, I'm researching or reading, writing or in dialog with an artist about something that seems important, I'm moving outside in the world, exploring, walking, journeying. I know what it feels like, yet I sometimes evade it. Why? Am I just contracting as Thaddeus Golas suggests in The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment? It's nice to know, if I am, I may, whenever I want, expand again, just by letting go, by wanting to. That's a releasing thought. I'm not out of air, or lost forever. I'm just contracting.

I've come up with reasons, over the years, for why I am avoiding life. It's a hiatus. A hibernation. Every dream I ever had, every faith system, everything I ever devoted my life to, fell through, dissolved when I got close. Have I been wrong to put my focus outside of myself? Should I look for that faith inside me, that kernal within? I feel I've been searching within and without. Being an artist, or being the artist I am, I find I'm lost between works. I make works to live and then I live in them. Then they end and I struggle to find other ways to live.