The Go Fug Yourself Girls are running their annual Fug Madness and this year they are gunning for Tilda Swinton to be the hands-down winner.

Normally I think these GFY girls are right on the money, but where Tilda is concerned, they seem a bit confused. With their usual list of celebrity targets and horrendous clothing, I can see their criticisms are spot on; but when it comes to Tilda, I’m not sure they “get” what they’re seeing–and I’m not sure they’d deny this, either.

a nice little crochet number

It’s because Tilda makes you wonder about how she’s put what she’s wearing together–who made it, what the intention and effort could be behind the design, how it all works and, more importantly, how it all works on her alone. Here she is, at almost 49 years of age, showcasing innovative British clothing design in a spread for AnOther magazine–she’s beautifully lit in these photos so her skin is luminous, and her height and structure perfectly showcase the concepts behind the fabrics, textures, and shapes created in the clothing. She’s iconic, and clearly she’s communicating the ideas behind the clothing she’s modeling–she’s not about the lure of the brand name for its status potential, nor is she using the brand name as a means of marketing herself.

(I hope those are actually her shoes)

Tilda’s what we all wish we could be–puzzling and provocative, never the “typical” idea of pretty or beautiful, but always stunning. And always the one you go home to think about for a long time, afterwards.

Tilda in Prada, Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Gala

There’s something about her colouring, height, and bearing that makes Tilda look great in a beige dress that would make anyone else look like an even more matronly Queen Elizabeth II if they’d dared to put it on (the brooch and flat shoes aren’t helping matters). I’m partial to the palette, though; and the shoes are undeniably beautiful, but the look stops there, for me (unless I can grow another six inches and lengthen into someone slender, and much more like David Bowie). I always get the feeling that Tilda’s dressing for some future Costume Institute collection at the Metropolitan, herself–that’s not something any old girl could pull off with ease.

Of course I have an opinion on the matter of the dreaded “Political Crisis” in Canada and the matter of the Coalition in the House.

And my opinion is: the vast majority of Canadians who talked themselves past the known futility of the election process in this country did not vote for Harper. Despite what Harper wants to say about Stephan Dion’s weakness as a leader, despite what he says about the Quebeçois and their insistence on having the nerve to be heard in Parliament, and despite Harper’s fondness for whinging about Separatists and Socialists destroying the country (after trying desperately to form a coalition with the very same “separatists” himself, unsuccessfully, not six months ago–who says Harper has no sense of humour?), 65% of Canadian voters did not want a Harper government of any kind, regardless of the leader of the opposition in question.

Because our voting system isn’t actually representational, we’re stuck with a Harper minority government (truly, no one voted for his party outside of his own riding). More accurately, we’re stuck with a Harper government shored up by Mike Harris’ former Goon Squad. Let’s everyone in Ontario remind the rest of the country how much good Harris did for our economy here, shall we? From the fact that we’re still counting up the death toll, literally, from the closed hospitals and gutted public health system that failed when SARS hit the city, to the thousands dead from poisoned water when Harris privatized the water quality monitors, and to the Harris-orchestrated assassination of Dudley George when he protested the theft of his peoples’ land, contrary to a signed treaty.

A Coalition aligned against Harper’s minority government is not only not a “crisis”, it’s actually the government most Canadians elected to power. If this is the way we have to go about getting what we want in this country now (until we get to work on fixing the enormous problem we’ve got with actually representing what voters want in their ridings) then so be it. I’m all for it.
On top of that, this is what is supposed to happen in a minority government. Forming coalitions is the opposition’s job, especially if there is no confidence in the government’s agenda.

And there is no confidence.

Do I use this blog as a place to rant? No? Maybe I should.

I have had a hell of an August, after one mind numbingly frustrating July. It’s not the weather (maybe it’s the stars, though) but I’m definitely confronting my share of obstacles these days. I’ve not yet figured out if I’m supposed to clear them, like hurdles; or if I’m supposed to turn back, rearrange my plans, and take an alternate route that doesn’t involve collisions at every turn. All the sensible thoughts lead to “abandon plans, abandon plans”, but I just press ahead, punch drunk. I certainly am stubborn (mostly because it will probably make me crazy to figure out what else to do, should I abandon the plans for real).

I’ve been trying to set up a practice office nearby in St. Catharines. The location’s ideal, it’s in the charming old section of town, and the older business offices around me have become re-inhabited with the city’s business stalwarts, right in the midst of the city’s gorgeous old homes, the old Carmelite abbey, and right across the street from the Olmstead-designed Montebello Park. I’m surrounded by old trees and roses, an architectural legacy that covers the last 150 years of building design, a quaint little fountain corner where you can sit and play chess on the stone tables, and doctors, alternative health care practitioners, lawyers, and accountants of every stripe. Right next door there’s the old Used Books store. I plan to spend some time distracting myself in there.

That is, if I ever get myself in there. Technically, I’ve been “open” since August 1. In actuality, I’m struggling to get my phone line in, digging myself out of the mass of unnecessary stuff I’ve moved over just because it was all part of my business office at home, trying to locate items I desperately need there (but didn’t realize I’d need till I got there) and I’ve been hit with a variety of “setbacks”. Let’s just call them that. They include a cell phone Telus email software has destroyed (which held all my contacts and all their information) plus appointments I’d set up until the end of the year. The cell phone has also been my lone source of business contact, since the land line will still be weeks in coming (oh my, yes, phone companies in Canada are lousy), and the pda features on the phone were supposed to substitute for an actual computer I’ve yet to move into the office (since there is no phone). I’ve been driving to and fro, moving things in, throwing things out, coordinating printing and marketing supplies, and generally running my practice via mobile, in exactly the same way I was before I got the office, just because it’s not ready yet.

So I’ve been driving extra long kilometers these days, the one thing I decided I no longer wished to do. And that has resulted in a car accident, to top everything off. A four car one, commuted to three cars, because the last one in the line up said “no damage here!” and pulled away, quite happy to be free of the waiting-for-the-cops nonsense I had to endure for three hours. One overly helpful participant, however, volunteered the information on that fourth car’s spectral presence to the police officer when he finally arrived–something I stressed was Absolutely Not Necessary, goddamn it–and she even passed the PC the fourth car’s license plate number and car model information. So because he opted to help me out, that man will probably be charged with something asinine too–such as “Leaving the Scene of an Accident”, even if he swears the accident did not happen for him.

There is such a thing as being too perky, and too helpful.

Anyway, I got the charge on that one, so I’m going to fight it because who could pay that fine anyway? It’s added another “to do” to my list of growing errands in futility. I’m feeling quite a lot like that hamster on the Habitrail these days. More so than ever before, and I felt like that much of the time, before.

The cell phone is my latest peeve. I was supposed to have it replaced, finally, by a new unit last night, and after spending three days of forcing the phone to try and stop freezing while “booting up” so that I could successfully get to my contact information and my appointment schedule (there is no way to reset the phone without losing this information for good) the sales staff at the Telus store immediately did the absolute wrong thing, and while I was explaining that they should not take the battery out of the phone as it would force the phone to shut down again, they took the battery out of my unit to put it into the new one (instead of just getting the new phone’s battery out and using that instead). They were feeling a little lazy about not having a battery pack for the new unit, something they’d need so that they could transfer my contact information from my broken phone to its replacement, so they ignored me and ruined my last chance of saving my business vitals. That immediately shut it down, which meant they would now have to reboot it to start it up so that it went to the screen where I could get the data. When I explained that it took me many days of doing that repeatedly to get the phone to stop freezing, they went ahead and rebooted it anyway, smiling at me like I was just so silly. When the phone froze as I’d predicted, they looked at me like I didn’t know, and said, “It freezes at the Sync page–did you try and sync it with your computer?”

My heart sank, probably because it was so full of a raging desire to start slapping people until they started to cry. I desperately kept that phone under watch when I got the phone to finally open up to me, and I’d have fully written out the contact information if I’d known these people would have destroyed it for me….but they weren’t interested in actually listening to me about saving it. They had me sign up a bunch of papers for the new unit and they were ready to push me out the door but I finally said, “Look, reverse all of this paper work right now. I have to take that phone home and just keep trying to reboot it over and over again until I can get to that screen again. It literally took me two days of solid shutting down and booting up over and over again, and playing with buttons that might force the phone to stop freezing instead of starting up, and you just ignored me when I asked you not to take the battery out”. She looked at me like the inconvenience I’d become, and said, “Well, get it back to me in two days, or we can’t replace your phone.”

What? Those are fighting words.

So now I’ve been wrestling with the phone again, trying to get that screen to come back up again, and that’s been very difficult and frustrating. I want to be convinced to stay on as a customer, and they’d better convince hard. I’m not leaving that store without a much better phone that can sync to my computer with no effort, immediately. Why? Because this phone was destroyed by Telus’ software–and this phone can crash because it runs on a Windows system. This phone doesn’t sync to a Mac unless you download some specific Mac patches for it–but they cost extra money, and they don’t always work, as I’m finding out. But the reason I’m getting a new phone (on top of the $300 credit I received as a consolation, which now has not become quite enough consolation for last night’s stupidity) is because now the battery on this phone won’t hold a charge, so even if I do manage to get to the contact screen, I’ll have to hand write every one of those names and addresses out by hand before it runs down again. And that doesn’t leave me much time to save my ass. This cell phone company’s cost me some time, and some money.

And that’s just not damned acceptable.

Nor is the time I’ll have to spend emailing the company’s president and marketing director, their customer placation people, who’ll put up a fight I know, and the weasels at the Telus store who’ll shoot evil eyes at me when I go and get the replacement set up. Once again, instead of getting on with things, I’m working like a bastard at trying to save my livelihood because Telus and their people don’t think it’s a good idea to just pay attention to me when I’m there to do business.

I’m arguing and pressing the point and gathering my evidence for my arguments all the bloody time these days. In a past life, I was a lawyer, I know it: one of the many condemned to a specific Hell in the Inferno, the one which mimics being on earth yet again and doing the thing you “do best” against your will and only in unpleasant circumstances from which you can glean no benefit, eternally, no matter what else you think you’re meant to accomplish in the world. Funny, the only other place in my life where I can “build a case” is in my practice, treating patients–and that’s exactly what I’m not able to do right now.

For over ten years now I’ve made my living in alternative medicine. It doesn’t really matter what kind of experience you collect, what kind of working relationship you build with your patients, what kind of hit-or-miss scenario you encounter along your particular journey, nor does it matter who “teaches” you anything, no one wants to tell you about or discuss one constant in our work: every couple of years, like clockwork, we alt-med practitioners find ourselves scrambling to mobilize against some well organized, well funded threat to our livelihood–a threat that can be local or national, and is now often international in scope. And every time it happens, people in our professional communities think that somehow “things will work out for the best” if we just go along with what’s happening, consider the attack to be some kind of “constructive criticism” we could use to our advantage (and then try to change what we’re doing because we think we can become “more acceptable”). Sometimes, we take the government and conventional medicine at their word for what they’re trying to do with us, if the “attack” ends up leading (coincidentally!) to some time consuming, money sucking “process” initiative.

That’s the best case scenario, one that, in my experience, has yet to end well. The worst case, the most evident reaction, includes an automatic factioning process. Various alternative medical system “regulating bodies” (societies, associations, colleges, and boards) all claim to be working “right alongside the government in a “process”–the only valid process–that will make us all “legal” (or acceptable, or legitimate…whatever it is we’re told we’re not, by everyone except our patients). “Everyone else” not in the “chosen” and involved body is just “doing the wrong thing”. Somehow, we always fail to see how it is we’re all lured off to take part in these ongoing projects that lead nowhere but effectively tear us apart. I wonder how we keep missing this, every time it happens.

It’s difficult to think we’re ever going to be united on anything any time soon when so much paper and ink are wasted in international and local one-upmanship endeavors, which quite literally show us up to be politically retarded. Easy to manipulate, we still think it’s all about what we’re supposedly doing wrong, and who we have to blame and ostracize in our communities for creating the “bad name” with which we’re all labeled. It’s like we assume the position of the powerless, every time. We are quite literally the unwitting instigators of our ongoing demise. This is never more evident than when we’re confronted with the kind of challenges we never seem prepared to face, whether they come at us from a local source, or from some huge force far outside of the confines of our own state laws.

This year’s big challenge in Canada is Bill C51–it’s full of massive restrictions regarding access to all natural substances–herbs, vitamins, medicines, and just good old real food–to which we’ve idiotically allowed Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Medicine to control access. It will also dictate choice and behaviour, with severe repercussions to individual citizens who opt to use alternative medicines, and to practitioners alike. It opens us all up not just to these transgressive laws, but also laws made in other countries which previously did not affect our own behaviour–such as the Codex Alimentarius, which many natural health physicians believed would never apply here in Canada. Under C51, they’ll become law in Canada and we’ll be subject to those laws, without their having to undergo the parliamentary process in to become law in this country. There won’t be any recourse then, in terms of protest–elected officials will have no say in the matter, and they’re our one tiny link to power in this country.

It will mean the end of alternative medicine as we know it here–that is, it won’t be available to the public through well trained, educated, and skilled practitioners, only through conventional medical doctors (who are not required to undergo this education process in order to prescribe). To add insult, the bill is intended to be the “thin edge of the wedge”. It will be one of the first which will override any legislative sovereignty we have as a country. And that will open the door to plenty of other such bills, not necessarily ones which affect alternative medicine alone. It’s meant to be a real Trojan horse of a law, the potential for abuse is staggering.

And yes, the repercussions include seizure of property–homes, practices, files, medicines. They include incarceration, asset seizure (so it will be impossible to defend yourself, should the law be used against you), and the imposition of very heavy fines (these will be applied to manufacturers of natural products primarily–the idea is to shut them down, eliminate their access to plants, seeds, genetic materials for the manufacture of natural products; but the fines will also be levied against individual practitioners, consumers, people like parents who choose to treat their children with real food or herbs, too).

Two years ago, when Homeopaths were being suckered into yet another “self-regulation” scheme that we were never allowed to devise ourselves, I remember having one hell of an ongoing argument about the process with my own doctor, a Naturopath who trained me quite well in my own studies in classical Hahnemannian Homeopathy. But he’s an exception as a Naturopath–for his accreditation, the DHANP, he was required to study Homeopathy in school to the same basic extent that I was: five years of conventional medical sciences following a completed university degree, combined with a full three year Homeopathic medical science training course, and two years of supervised clinic work in classical homeopathic medicine. This is an American accreditation, one we don’t have in Canada at the moment–mostly because NDs here have succumbed to demands made by conventional medicine that they prove themselves to be “science based” practitioners. As a result, the “ND” designation here allows you to claim that you are a Homeopath even though you’ve never studied homeopathic medicine. When the NDs got that little plum, they were also given quite a political pedestal, which raised them far above the Homeopaths and other alternative medical practitioners below. Suddenly NDs were the authority, their patients could seek out help and receive repayment for their expenses from private insurers…while the NDs ensured that Homeopaths, Traditional Chinese Medical doctors, and others would no longer be covered under those policies. Divide and conquer, effectively implemented, part one.

Divide and conquer part two came along when the “self-regulation” process became an opportunity to destroy both NDs and HDs (homeopathic doctors) by attempting to create a regulatory “college” board which included them both. The first clue that this was to be a destructive idea was the fact that the NDs were under fewer practice restrictions, would not fulfill education and ethical standards set by Homeopathic medical societies, and finally, held a great deal more political clout in the conventional medical community than their Homeopathic counterparts, and nothing was being done to fix that inequality on this proposed college. That should have been a glaring clue we could not overlook: and yet, I remember my own doctor thought this college would be a great idea. When I protested that he wasn’t thinking about the poor training most NDs have in Homeopathy, and how so much of our future as homeopaths will be compromised because of the lack of priority that has been placed on the need for full training of homeopathic medicine as opposed to it’s opposite paradigm, conventional medicine…he pooh pooh’d my concerns as if I couldn’t understand what was going on. I insisted: I pointed out to him that the very school in which he used to teach student Naturopaths classical homeopathy, the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, no longer employed a classical homeopath on its teaching staff. He no longer taught there himself, and the full extent of the school’s courses on homeopathy were now being written and taught by a pharmaceutical company selling polypharmacy patent medicines mislabeled as “homeopathic” to untrained physicians, all looking to practice lucrative homeopathy as if it were the same as conventional medicine. He agreed there was a problem there, but couldn’t seem to understand that this would put us all at a disadvantage. He couldn’t see that this pharmaceutical company, now the sole Canadian-based lab making the Homeopathic remedies Hahnemannian homeopaths use, was poised to reach into a promising new market of untrained MDs, who’d be far more inclined to use their rote prescription patent medicines under the guise of treating patients with Homeopathic medicine. After all, alternative medicine is a huge growth market right now, our patients have all tried conventional methods and those methods have failed. Over 70% of the population now uses some form of alternative medical care–that’s a big chunk of the marketplace that’s up for grabs to Pharmaceutical companies looking for even bigger profits. And that fact puts all the bona fide alternative medical physicians in a disadvantaged position.

He meant well, he was idealistic and completely bamboozled by the lure of “scientific legitimacy”, the kind conventional medicine approves of, the kind that keeps pharmaceutical companies humming. He protested that not enough Homeopaths were familiar with the basic medical sciences, even though he knows full well that those courses are handy in terms of reference, and of knowing about the conventional medical paradigm and how it differs significantly to Homeopathic medical science, which requires a completely different perspective in which to practice effectively. I argued then, and still argue, that a Homeopath had better understand Homeopathic medical perspective and method thoroughly–or stay away from the medicines and the practice of homeopathy all together–choose a modality that’s a lot easier, closer to conventional methods, instead. It would be more useful for us to know what diagnostic tests are available here, so that when our patients bring their results to us we can interpret them effectively, and act accordingly (send them out for even more tests, or use the information in our own differential diagnoses for finding the similimum). But that information’s only taught to MDs–and they’re not willing to share that knowledge. Another fact that should alert everyone concerned that the last priority in this “protective measure” is our patients’ care, that public health and consumer protection are definitely not on the agenda for these regulations.

This conflict was the greatest disappointment I’ve ever felt in my teacher, and in my doctor: to me it was mystifying that he would be willing to argue a point even if it meant we would both be compromised in the end. When I told him this, he told me not to worry, and said, “The government can never take away your right to make a living.”

I couldn’t believe such a capable and learned person could be so politically naive, so gullible. And so thoroughly unaware of our shared history as physicians in North America. They damn well can take away our right to make a living as practitioners away. They could, and they have in the past. Using very similar tactics. Successfully.

When I think of the foods my mother used to make, it occurs to me that almost no one takes that amount of time to prepare anything anymore. It was a long time before I realized that foods most people think of as “Italian” were foods my mother rarely made–hers was a cuisine that involved a great deal of preparation that started outside of the kitchen, a discriminating taste for the very best ingredients, no matter how rare. I took a lot of this for granted when I was a child, it often made me impatient when she would scour the city’s live markets, or forests in parkgrounds, looking for exactly the right herb, or mushroom, or animal or vegetable for a dish my mother had decided she would make. I wondered how it was my mother seemed fixated on these ingredients, when everyone else’s mothers around me seemed far less concerned, and never seemed to make the same foods as she did, even if they too were Italian women from Italy. To me she seemed like a witch: particularly in an age where everyone’s children were fixated on “astronaut” foods, stuff that was packed up and created in labs and sent off to the moon with the spacemen. She’d buy us the peanut butter in tubes and the Tang so we’d leave her alone when she gathered malva blossoms on the neighbour’s lawn to make tea only she would end up drinking. But she’d shake her head at us. Rightly so.

My mother’s village was quite small. There were a limited number of families there, and she grew up on a property in the hills outside of Teramo, a place settled by what I’m told were seven families, formerly named after their seven homes–Le Sette Case. Seven is a big number in Abbruzzi, I’ve learned: there are entire feasts prepared on the first of May based entirely on that number’s prominence in the mythos of these people. Up to 30 courses can be served on that day’s celebration meal, and every course’s primary ingredients are also arranged in terms of sevens. So I don’t know how much of my mother’s retelling is the truth, or a simple example of local mythology, passed down even to her from its ancient source. What I remember of her land is that it’s surrounded by mountains, green fields, rows of corn leading up into the sky and vineyards throughout the lands closest to the house. It was a large stone farmhouse, like nothing I’ve seen here. An elevated main floor built above what used to be the stables and barns, presumably for heat. What I remember of the place was its massive elements: a tall staircase leading up to the main great doors; polished stone floors throughout the first floor, and marble on what we’d call a veranda here, exposed to the elements (and therefore very surprising); a focolare, that thing we might call its hearth, so large it could be entered standing, surrounded by stone. It was oven, fireplace, central heat, the preferred seat, the focus of the household (and the origin of the very word itself). It was never left to go out; it was never left alone.

My mother had her own house on the property too: a little stucco farm house with a couple of rooms and some land. She’d bought it from her uncle when he decided to stay in the States. It was her intention to go back to that house at some point, it was never her intention to marry my father and live in a city like Toronto. From her family home’s entrance, you could see the Gran Sasso and the Miale mountains, the lights of the city below us, and the family’s own contributions to the little town they built: a small church, a school house, a very large retail store (what they called the “Sale e Tabacchi”, “salt and tobacco”; a place where they sold food, wine, supplies of all kinds, dry goods, milled grain and other produce they’d grown, and animal feed), and their relatives’ houses. Remote and seemingly isolated, as cold as hell at night and as hot as hell during the day.

My mother had a knowledge about plants that made her seem almost magical–the doctor, lovely as he was, was never called on at our house unless my mother couldn’t get the plant she needed to get us out of our illness. We were careful not to tell the doctor anything about my mother’s doings, but on the occasions she offered her information, he listened very carefully in a way you never see MDs do now, they seem so intimately defensive, even around chamomile tea. She was uncompromising about what she gave for our pains and we often seemed powerless to do anything about it unless our strength returned. By then we’d be feeling better and we’d let her off the hook, anyway: no big thing. It wasn’t until I ran into the character of the friar in Romeo and Juliet that I recognized what she’d actually been doing in nurturing and gathering the odd herb, the strange root, the full bloom at the precise hour. It wasn’t until I’d invested the time in the lure of this kind of medicine myself that I “got” my mother’s fixation, and understood why she was like no one else I knew. For the longest time I didn’t even realize where my own interest came from, even though it seemed limited to an interest in scent and its sources. But even there, it was my mother’s fixation before it was mine. One of my earliest memories with her is a streetcar trip to the Simpson’s department store for an engraved gold atomizer of Miss Balmain; another is her “finishing touch” of Le Galion’s Sortilège whenever she got “dressed”. I still remember her favourite perfumes and their presence in our home, I now know my own choices lead directly back to those mixtures, though the specific bottles and labels will never be sold here again. I wear their “offspring”; the same themes, reinterpreted.

I remember the day when I learned the meaning of her name: Palmarosa. Not its literal meaning, that was always obvious. It has a significance and a significative form that is unique to my mother, unique to us. I’ve always thought of it as a strange name, it still is, I’ve only met one or two other women with it and all of them seem to be related to me. It’s always been very pretty, in my opinion, but for some strange reason I missed (again!) it’s connection with the plant world. It is a grass, a palm, after all: one used in the creation of perfume because of its proximity to the scent of rose oil. It grows in South America, Argentina and Peru. My grandfather travelled there as a young man and very possibly came across the plant while he was there, as it doesn’t grow in Italy where he lived as a child, and returned to live as an adult. I’d never seen the plant mentioned before, and my interest with plants and medicine was there, but untapped. I’d found a bottle of the oil in Michigan, at a vendor’s stall in a market, and asked if a sample vial was available…then asked where it came from, what it was used for, how it was gathered, what it looked like…as if the curiosity flooded from me all of sudden. South America resonated with me and I remembered my grandfather; images of my mother in the garden, in the forests, in the markets all flashed back to me. I lost my grandparents early, one of them even before I was born: all I remembered about her father was his extreme height, his very gentle voice, and his brilliant blue eyes, his elegant face. I could imagine him sailing across the ocean, and wandering through the jungles as a young man. It was part of the story of him I’d been told–the part that was so much less my mother’s experience of him than her own myth about him, something less terrifying about him than the man he actually was to her, and to the rest of her siblings. Suddenly it was as if all those experiences linked us together, across time and space and even life and death. I remember the hair at the back of my neck standing, the gooseflesh. So out of nowhere, out of the ordinary, out of the extraordinary.

I knew where the wild thyme grew, where bolete mushrooms could be found (not the false ones, though, that grow under spruce trees–leave those ones there), when to pick dandelion leaves for salad (and where) and why basil has to be grown near tomatoes. Carnation petals have a thin end–pull them out of the cluster and that part of the carnation tastes sweet and peppery. Lilac flowers taste of honey; violets and pansies as well. Nettles and black malva and chamomile are everywhere around us–though the leaves of sunny chrome yellow coltsfoot blooms, everywhere around us too, contain enough cyanide to kill. Tiny artichokes small enough to fit into your fist are a staple in my mother’s cuisine, as are crêpes, made by the hundreds and combined or wrapped or filled in thousands of dishes; chestnuts as well, for the flour, paste, and roasted nutmeat they yield; peppers with an intensity to rival the hottest Indian cuisine. Before I was five she’d made me notice the difference between the saffron that came from Spain, and the saffron that came from Aquila, not that far away from where my mother was born. It was slight, but it was there in colour and fragrance, in the intensity of the finished flavour. She had a fixation for Bertolini essences, glass bottles with little metal covered stoppers, sold in tiny boxes bearing the turn-of-the-century typography and the depiction of an aquiline-nosed crone. She made liquers with these: Millefiori, Vermouth, Rhum, Caffe Sport, Triple Sec, Amaretto, Banane, and the essence that defied description, Alkermes. As deep blue-red as garnets and beets, it stained everything magenta and tasted of red currants, rose, pomegranates, heat, and spun sugar. Actually, nothing really tastes like it; nothing has its perfume. It’s unmistakable, and it went in every one of our birthday cakes, soaked through the Pan di Spagna until every golden inch was as pink as rubellite tourmaline. Colour, texture, aroma, and the ability to chemically alter your state: my mother’s birthday cakes took longer than a day to make, a labour of several steps, an assembly of various flavourings and extracts and techniques. Clouds of egg whites, their “reds” (my mother’s word for yolks) beaten to the ribbon stage; a baking powder drenched with the essence of vanilla; lemons juiced, peeled, zested. Then, as filling, a thick, cooked cream, flavoured with the tart lemon peel, its quantity halved, and that half flavoured again with cocoa as black as coffee. There was nothing juvenile about these sweets–each thin slice we were allowed on our special day was its own allure of layered sensations, until finally it wasn’t just the alcohol content that made our heads spin. It was as if she wanted us to use every part of our ability to sense as we grew older, not just the dessert but everything else; like her intention for us was that we be perceptive enough to know where we came from, know who made us. Know what was involved in the effort. And since there was a lot of effort involved, she seemed determined that we begin to figure this out early.

It didn’t register quite so easily, of course. What we loved about her traditions, our traditions, we often gave up in the name of being like the other children around us. It made it easier for us to be the “translators” we were, the facilitators between her and the outside, foreign world–because we had to fit into both in order for us all to thrive. My mother was frustrated with us, but patient. We would recognize it one day, we would be made to understand her point, she’d worked hard enough, she knew.

It was decades later, in a remote trattoria in Reggio Emilia, that I was offered a dessert that instantly brought me back to my third birthday, the first time I realized what she’d made especially for me, the memory of the flavour of the brilliant liqueur flooding back so quickly I could barely name it. I knew it right away as my mother’s birthday cake. When I asked the waiter for the name of what I was given, he answered, “Zuppa Inglese“–what translates literally into “English soup”–an Italian metaphor that teases the English for their supposed and lingering affection for cakes in general (Victorians and their “tea time”), and their savvy predilection for making use of dry cake in trifles. The Alkermes, the waiter told me, was really the most English thing about the dessert, since it could only be obtained, for the longest time, from the English herbalists who’d retained all the secrets of its creation.

It’s only in times of stress that I start thinking about all the things I’d like to have, and all the impossible projects I would love to complete. Sometimes I find some strange “prizes” on craigslist, particularly in the “free” sections, and they become all I need to set the dreaming in motion. Spring is coming and the levels of stress, like sap in the sugar bush, rise easily. So I want to indulge in a small amount of hedonistic desire.

To top things off, everything at this point is exactly upside down and up in the air and looking very damned precarious. I am, sigh, once again in the seams between the proverbial rock and the hard place. I am @#$%!*@!!! tired of it, too. While driving around today I contemplated bridges in that old familiar way no one wants to hear about anymore–then realized the only way out is through. Consequently, everything is irritating me, everything is an agitation. All my thoughts naturally turn to consumption. The timing is perfect then: desire, consume, create.

The antique gas range, above, makes me want to convert the fruit barn on our property to a functional, compact loft studio apartment, something I feel it’s been yearning to become since I first set foot in its pineplanked haven. I love its open space, the fact of it being a relic from some other time. It looks out over seyval blanc vines and oak forests on one side; on the other, it opens out to a gravel parking area (where a balcony might certainly come in handy, as well as another staircase to create another entrance). In my mind, that old farmhand’s sleeping space would easily make a home for a single person. It has enough light, height, and room for antique technology to make living in it almost cost free (save for electricity, but it won’t use that much–and this kicks in the other big fantasy of solar panels for passive photovoltaic, and passive solar water heat as well. And ultraviolet light water purification! And a cistern to collect rainwater from the metal rooftop! Or a rooftop garden! Sigh).

When pieces like these are just being given away…well, then I can let my imagination get the better of me. This old stove to the right would never work as a woodstove, which would make heating the old loft that much easier, come winter. Bu it looks much lighter than an AGA, which would fill that demand easily enough except for one thing: I have a fear one of those would go right through the floor, splintering the pine right through to the old fruit refrigerator directly underneath. Of course, that fruit refrigerator could take on another use, I might even revive it’s fruitwood lined pastlife by removing all the odd changes put in to convert the room into a barrel cellar/still closet for the alembic. Yes, that’s what’s there now. Please don’t ask.

Maybe I could use each of the stoves in two different places: the fruit barn, as a means of converting its loft; and the old livestock barn, to convert the entire space into a two storey apartment structure, suitable for one person or two who are willing to share the same sleeping space. There are so many unused outbuildings on this property it would drive an architect to tears. It drives a frustrated architect wannabe like me to tears, or at the very least to distraction. Distraction feels damn good, at the moment, I’m pretending I’m anything but what I am while I design not just the structure but the rooms and the entire building scape–like a frenzied little rural planner! And just who would inhabit these new living spaces, so functionally advanced and green? Who?

More shock happens as some old patterns resurface, and financial stresses increase. I think about tucking all those renovation plans away in favour of the increasingly irrational options, consumption with no real goal other than accumulation. Suddenly the wish list includes things such as:

A reasonable time limit (2 hours should do it, not a nanosecond more) and an unlimited expense account at John Fluevog on Queen Street, since sculptured heels have been a reality in his design for quite a while now (and I’m not sold on the ugly Prada “blossom” heels, or the hideous Fendi stumps). Copper’s good against my skin, the heels aren’t that high (fine: yes they are) and Fluevog knocks off no one. The time limit is just to keep the greed level down…after all, a man should be paid for his work, and my appetite for pretty things can be insatiable.

The red “Madly” (from the “Truly”, “Madly”, “Deeply” series) shoes speak for themselves. Though I think they’re a tad on the understated and conservative side, until you picture them being worn with clothes not strictly meant for the outdoors.

Pink? Gold? Okay, these are pretty and they’re chic Bally Switzerland shoes. They’re also a puzzling choice and they don’t really suit me. But for some reason I think I might just clean up real good if I chose something natty and feminine to go along with these. Natty, feminine, pink: it’d be like assuming another persona. No one would recognize me until I let that first curse word slip into my conversation. On second thought, those shoes just don’t look safe anymore.

The Yamaha Virago coordinates with none of the items pictured above.

It always comes in my size, always comes in my colour.

Driving down the escarpment on Grimsby’s Mountain road last night, I saw shadowy figures just ahead in the distance, in the road in front of me. They turned out to be a row of skateboarders, wearing wind/motorcycle gear, lined up to skate all the way down the hill’s winding road.

It was just about to become the end of dusk. The lights of the town below, along the lake shore, and across the lake, from Toronto, glittered as the last shade of inkstained blue left the sky during their descent.

At first they annoyed me. Just for a split second. But then I slowed the car and followed carefully, and watched the one in front of me: he appeared to be floating down the hill, poised in the middle of the lane in the roadway, his arms out to the side, like birds hold out their wings. Like the raptors who live around this mountain all year now, circling their way up and down the thermals that spiral over the trees. He never took his feet off the board, never veered from dead centre in the lane. The road was free of ice, free of potholes, smooth and black and steep. When he got to the end of Mountain road, he passed a group of other skaters, all dressed as he was, all cheering him on. He maneuvered his way around a car turning right, then slipped back into the middle of the road again, finally stopping his descent on Highway 8, turning to face me with a look of pure exhilaration on his face, waving to thank me for keeping my distance, giving him his space; running back up to his friends. Watching him, I imagined he felt like he was soaring, just like the eagles and hawks. He was looking at the same sparkling light, the same growing darkness, but he was also feeling the wind against his body, the effect of every one of his movements on his speed, and his control. You could tell he was ecstatic. In his eyes you could see such joy.

Tilda Swinton

A long, cool woman in a black dress.

(A strangely designed black dress, and an unfortunate, lopsided pose.  And yet, still magnificent)

My husband has a woman friend in the city. A confidant. He tells me she confides in him, she’s a divorced woman with a child and a lover who lives in another city, who has a child and family of his own. She gives my husband many little gifts: appointments for manicures and facials at the men’s spa, outings to interesting restaurants together, an hour or so with a Shiatsu masseuse who tries to iron out the snags, physically (but also brings up all the old emotional stuff). He had a massage last Saturday, and told me about the experience the next day.

He said the masseuse said, “How’s your grief?” as he started his consultation, not even giving him a chance to settle in yet.

All his aches and pains reveal him: sadness held deep, halting the lungs; sadness never expressed, made succinct, in the skin; frustration and denial, as heavy to bear as an anvil, hard against a back it makes weak.

(We can’t help but reveal ourselves clearly. No matter what effort we think we make to the contrary).

The baking is done. Well, except for some cookies I really should whip up. And I will, as soon as I get a free moment.

I’ve been wondering how it is I’ve spent so long avoiding every possible means to get out of where I am. Oh, sure, I could have sought out ways to learn how to write, years ago, so that I could be published somewhere (anywhere) until I had some body of work to show for my efforts. I’m wondering how it is that I kept hearing the critical voices in my head, when I have other voices–encouraging ones!–coming from all angles around me as well. I wish I’d found a way to ask someone to help me to do this, instead of let myself be convinced that I’d never be able…that what I could do was irrelevant in some way, worth nothing to anyone. It’s not. I’ve been led to see how wrong that is. And I feel so angry about everything that’s brought me to this stagnant and deadly place. But mostly I feel so angry that I never believed I could do something to escape it.

Until now.

I hate resolutions. They are doomed, by nature. But the New Year is coming and this is the time to turn this around and re-imagine myself as whatever it is that lost girl wanted to become. Why is it I’ve never been to places I’ve made myself stop wanting to see? What have I put into place to paralyze me?

I feel like I’m on the verge of pulling that whole construct down. It’s such a happy possibility to contemplate over sliced finocchio as the year ends.

In anticipation, and in celebration, of all the revolutions to come, here’s my recipe for stuffed figs for Christmas:

You’ll need:

1 package of dried figs (I like to use the ones from Cosenza–since they’re from the place where this Christmas sweet originates).

1 package of fresh walnut halves or pecan halves (your choice. If you use pecan, roast them slightly first).

100 grams high cocoa content chocolate (I’m going to use one with lots of cocoa, lots of cinnamon and cardamom, and lots of chili pepper).

(chocolate chips are optional)

1. Flatten and then slice open the dried figs, cutting from the base of each fig to the fig’s “stem”. Don’t cut through that, but open the cut figs up like butterflies.

2. Place a nut half on one side of the sliced fig, and, if you like, put some chocolate chips into the dried fruit as well. Other ideas for stuffings include using real chocolate nibs that you’ve chopped up.

3. Fold the fig together again, so that the nutmeats are sandwiched inside the fig’s halves. Arrange them in one layer on a plate or tray lined with parchment paper; cover the layer with more parchment, then use a weight on top of the paper to “press” the figs flat for an hour or so.

4. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. According to your preference, hand dip each fig in the chocolate to coat it thoroughly or in part; if you prefer that the chocolate just serves as a bitter counterpoint to the sweetness of the dried fruit, drizzle the melted chocolate over the figs until they’re coated to your preference. Place them on parchment and allow the chocolate to set.

You can vary the kind of chocolate you use: black and white chocolate swirled together looks pretty; or you can use a spiced dark chocolate (such as the one with cinnamon and chili pepper) to add extra nuances of flavour to the dried fruit and nut mixture.

A little prosecco, a late harvest wine or an icewine made from Cabernet Franc would make a perfect cold weather ending to a long, long year.