Flowers and men

Flowers and Men

Flowers achieve their own floweriness and it is a miracle.

Men don’t achieve their own manhood, alas, oh alas! alas!

All I want of you, men and women,

all I want of you

is that you shall achieve your own beauty

as the flowers do.

Oh leave off saying I want you to be savages.

Tell me, is the gentian savage, at the top of its coarse stem?

Oh what in you can answer to this blueness?

D.H.Lawrence

I have just found for the first time, this poem by D.H. Lawrence. I arrange flowers as a spiritual practice, so when I see the title of the poem, I am drawn to it. I assume it is dealing with gender, and I think this will be about the relationship between the divine masculine and flowers, but it is not. Once I read the entire poem, I realize that the title means men in the universal sense, including women, as is clear by the third line. I love the poem but I don’t agree with it. I don't think it is a miracle for flowers to achieve their true nature. Flowers have no free will, they cannot and do not make choices that are out of alignment with their nature. Perhaps the ease with which nature becomes is not a miracle, but a reassurance. The more we relax, the more we nurture ourselves, the more we fully become.

I also come to different conclusions than Lawrence. I think there is a way in which human beings can answer the blueness of the gentian. We have all met someone who is stepping fully into their own identity, who is intensely alive. That vitality is our answer to the fullness of nature. Our job is then to note what is conducive to our own vitality, and what is not. Rob Bell instructs, “We always go toward the life.” By this, he means that we should always make decisions in a way that move us deeper into communion with life. Sometimes this is difficult or painful, and sometimes we are not sure until we are on the other side. Just yesterday I had an intense longing to go walking around the Tidal Basin. When I got outside it was so blistering cold, the wind burned my skin and my body contracted. I thought of turning back. A quick analysis might have concluded that what is best for me is not to allow my skin to get burned. Instead, I trusted the initial longing for the walk and I pushed on further. As a general rule, I have been interested lately in what happens when we push through periods of difficulty, uncertainty, pain. What happens when we keep going?

And I do keep going. Halfway around the basin a bench seems to be illuminated by the light of day, and I take a moment’s respite there. There are geese in the water before me, and I decide to focus in on just one of them. What can I learn by looking at just one goose? The goose stays in one place, gliding on the waters. It barely moves. Geese around it are honking occasionally, and I begin to wonder about the honking. What is being communicated? Then I hear honking over head, and small groups of geese start to fly above me, and land in the waters. They too are listening deeply. I realize that they are not talking to one another, floating on the basin, but to their fellow geese in the distance; they are drawing them to the water.

I am resting by the water and the geese are resting in the water. Most of the geese are quiet but there are a few who draw others to the basin. I start to feel a kinship with the honking geese. So that is what I have been doing, all of this time, with all of my writing. I am trying to draw my traveling partners to this place of rest that I have found.

When I return home I look in the mirror and my eyes are bright for the first time in a long time. Wild, even. I linger at the mirror, looking in my own eyes. There is something ferocious and kinetic and I don’t want to look away. I want to remember what I look like when I have communed with something larger than myself, when I did not turn back, when I kept going.

I am still thinking about the poem that I read this morning, and the poem makes me curious about the gentian, a flower that I do not know. When I Google it, this is what I find:

“The botanical name, Gentiana, is derived from Gentius, king of ancient Illyria (modern day Bosnia) (180-167 B.C.E.), who discovered its therapeutic values, according to a history written by Pliny the Elder (ca. 23-79 C.E.)”

And just like that, I know what to do next: order some gentian for the garden. I want it there, challenging me. What can you answer to this blueness? The process of figuring out what was next seems paradigmatic. There was no striving, no anguish; there was just a longing, a following, an obstacle, a choosing to keep going, a deep communion followed by a ferocious beauty, and then, as if gifted from somewhere outside of myself, the next step.

City Guide: Cape Town in 2015

[Here is another post I found in my draft folder from 2015. Cape Town is one of my favorite cities on earth. Here are a few of my favorite places. The first in many city guides to come.]

For a fascinating excursion from the city, take the train south to St. James. Round trip train tickets are less than five dollars from many stops in CT. The views of False Bay are exquisite.  There are many small eateries at Kalk Bay, one more stop south. There are also swimming beaches.

False Bay, South Africa, view from the train in 2015

Near the University of Cape Town, the Hussar Grill serves excellent steaks. The atmosphere is dark-Amsterdam-library. They even serve bitterballen. If you don't want to sit at the bar, make a reservation--even on Monday nights! In business since the early 1960s, this brasserie has a loyal clientele.

If you are downtown and hoping for lighter decor, have lunch at Giulio's [note:permanently closed], where exposed brick walls, large windows, white iron furniture and colorful salads rule the day.

Giulio's- note the hanging wreath

The salad’s at Giulio’s

Nearby, the coffee is up to your high standards at Yours Truly on Long Street. So is the decor.  Also don't miss the Just Cruizin Corner boutique full of light, cotton clothes made in South Africa.

For magnificent views of the city, interesting entrees (such as Ostrich) and good espresso head to the Rhodes Memorial Restaurant. 

Shady seats at Rhodes Memorial Restaurant

If you still haven’t had enough coffee, visit Bean There Coffee Co, a gorgeous spot in the middle of the city.

The interior of Bean There Coffee is perfect.

Barista aggressively suggested I get my photo taken with the sign… LOL

I’m a sucker for a good coffee slogan.

I don’t remember what this place is called but you should definitely go there. LOL. I had Calamari at the fancy restaurant across the street and gawked at all of the beautiful people.

Bonus: Cute cameo of Thurston at the end

For accommodations, I strongly recommend the Little Scotia Guest House near the University of Cape Town.

Every space at Little Scotia Guest House in Cape Town is divine

Little surprises around every bend at the Little Scotia Guest House

Book Review: Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

[Note: I found this unpublished blog post in my drafts file. It is from November 13, 2015. It was fascinating to see my writing from five years ago. While I found the writing somewhat clunky, with too much narrative, I decided to leave it in its original form.]

I didn't have a choice about whether to read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new book Americanah. NPR did not give me one. For, if one happened to be listening to the radio the day Terri Gross interviewed Adichie on Fresh Air, as I was, then he or she would have heard her read the first few pages of the novel--about the lack of hair braiding facilities in Princeton, NJ. And if one heard Adichie's lyrical voice reciting those at times searingly short sentences ("She was fat." p. 7), then one soon found oneself reading Americanah, as I did.

The entire novel is a joy. It tells the story of a Nigerian woman's life as she grows up surrounded by others who desire to leave Nigeria and live in Europe or America. Her high school sweetheart, Obinze, most exemplifies this desire. He knows everything there is to know about America. Ironically, she is the one who has the opportunity to live in the US. The book narrates her experiences of despair, of being defined by her skin color for the first time in her life, her relationships with boyfriends, friends, other Nigerians abroad and her family. But ultimately the book is a love story, and the reader is left to wonder for a good part of its nearly 600 pages whether she and Obinze will ever reunite.

Adichie addresses painful issues with a refreshing directness. Racism is called what it is. Both subtle and not so subtle experiences of it punctuate Ifemelu's life in America and Obinze's time abroad. But the most effective commentary on race is the frame for the book: "I only became black when I came to America," Ifemelu explains.

Adichie is such a careful observer of human conduct and motivations that the insights of her characters are at times hard to believe. In particular, the two main characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, understand other people's intentions with such certainty that I found myself wondering if there was something wrong with me. Should I understand the motives of another at the exact moment in which he or she is insulting me? or snubbing me? or belittling me? Adichie's characters not only know why other characters do what they do, they know in the exact moment of the slight. Are there human being so lucky that they understand without a moment's reflection what is going on in the mind of those around them? Or is this what makes these two characters remarkable, why we ought to read a novel about them, because of their ability to see their own experiences with such clarity? These are questions that each reader must decide for him or herself. For me, it was the characters' perception that made the novel worth reading.

I reflected most on these questions in the sections that describe the relationship of one of Ifemelu's American boyfriends, Blaine, to his sister, Shan. I knew I did not like Shan immediately (even though I promised myself years ago that I would abandon the idea of liking or disliking other people). There is something so needy about Shan, so cloying, that I dismissed her almost immediately. But Ifemelu could penetrate a layer beyond me in her analysis of Shan's behavior: "Shan glanced at Ifemelu and smiled and in that smile was the possibility of great cruelty" (p.418).

This is the also the first novel in which I have seen an author successfully incorporate blogging as a means of experiencing a character's thoughts. Ifemelu maintains a blog on her experiences as a "non-American black," during her time in the US. Between the blog and the references to Barack Obama, one feels that this is a very contemporary novel, that will be read decades from now by those who want to know what America was like at this time. The novel certainly merits such a designation. I highly recommend it.