Monthly Archives

November 2010

Separation (or, some big changes ahead for our family)

One of my favorite parts of my garden was my climbing rose. I’d dug this plant out of the flowerbed in our old apartment. The gardeners kept whacking the rose to the ground (it wasn’t part of the landscaping) and it just kept growing back. Whack-grow-whack-grow. Finally one day I took a trowel and dug up as much of its root system as I could, and took it to my garden plot. It thrived and soon became a beast of a bush with runners everywhere. I tied them into a column and trained them over to a post on the other side of a path to form an arch. During the summer that I was sick, it was this rose bush that I thought about most often. It brought such joy to me. I’d decided that when John and I re-married (which we planned to do given that our Mormon temple marriage was so meaning-less to us after leaving the LDS church), I wanted to stand under that arch.

So a few weeks ago when our community garden was slated to be demolished, I left that rose arch as the last thing I dug out. It was so big, I figured there was no way I could extract it from the soil and put it into a pot. Some friends who were helping me with the garden said that they would try to rescue it for me, because they knew how much I loved that plant. They dug away at that thing for well over an hour, we had to cut some of the roots with a hacksaw to get the main plant out. But it seemed well-worth the effort for such a special rose…

When I took pictures in my garden, I nearly always used the macro setting. I liked to get close and see the details and patterns. The veins and textures. To spy small insects. To lose myself in a flower. I never did very well with pictures that showed the entire garden. They were too complicated and messy. The showed the tools and the weeds and the plants that hadn’t been watered well enough. Instead, I made my images close and tight and narrow. I saw what I wanted to see. That’s the PollyAnna in me, I suppose. I have an astute ability to shape the world into something that matches my expectations. While I don’t think that’s always a bad thing–and it’s certainly an excellent coping mechanism that I’ve honed after years of pain and discouragement–I am quickly learning that it has its downside.

All of my plants have stories. If you point to one and ask me about it, I’ll tell you who gave it to me, how long I’ve had it, and lots of other details about its growing habits. I especially love to tell the stories of my roses. It wasn’t until I was watering all of my rosebushes this morning that I realized something I hadn’t thought of before. Not one of them was given to me by John. In fact, I didn’t have any plants from him in my garden. I’m not saying that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that–John is not a garden person and he rarely visited my plot. But I think that’s part of this big picture that’s sort of hitting me between the eyes right now. Our priorities and passions are so different. I’ve seen what I want to see for so long. Made assumptions. Framed stories a particular way. Molded my interactions with my spouse to fit a rosy narrative in my head.

Perhaps its enough to say that I don’t even know if John knew that I wanted to marry under that arch. Perhaps its enough to say that I was so wrapped up in what I saw through the lens of my camera, that I wasn’t aware of what he saw through his–although over time I had noticed that we were no longer pointing our viewfinders in the same direction. Perhaps there really isn’t anything to say now, except that I am sans garden and sans John. He’s chosen to leave our marriage. As of a few days ago we are officially Separated, with plans to divorce.

I don’t think I’ve intentionally killed a plant before, but I’m realizing that I can’t continue watering the climbing rose. However, I don’t actually think it matters. The plant is nearly dead already. It couldn’t stand the shock of being uprooted and transplanted.

Note: I’m closing comments on this post. If you are tempted to discuss my family’s situation on Twitter or Facebook or blogs, please keep in mind that our children also follow their parents online. Please respect our privacy. You may contact me directly at janaremyATgmail.

November 30, 2010

songs/poetry

as far as was needed…

With Kit, Age Seven, At the Beach

We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.

Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.

Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.

“How far could you swim, Daddy,
in such a storm?”
“As far as was needed,” I said,
and as I talked, I swam.

~William Stafford

November 28, 2010

Random

Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2010-11-26

My home smells so yum right now :) #
Done so many new things the past few days…am now grateful for the familiarity of holiday cooking: rotkohl, pumpkin pie, turkey, etc #
Cuppa & cupcake powering my afternoon (thanks Doug & Anna!) http://brizzly.com/pic/3WB8 #
Just passed my belay-certification class & test at the #UCI ARC. Woot! #
Such pretty flowers! #ihavethebestestfriends #
Feeling humbled by my beautiful and generous friends. Thank you so much. #
Another view of the @TheHuntington rose garden, in the rain http://plixi.com/p/58386350 #
RT @johnremy: Family dinner at Taco Mesa: http://twitpic.com/38p8b9 #
Roses in the rain @TheHuntington http://plixi.com/p/58131088 #

November 26, 2010

make me smile

Simple pleasures

IMG_0824, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

With all of the busy-ness of this week, I wanted to record just a few simple pleasures from the past few days…

–walking in the Huntington Gardens in the rain, the vanilla-y smell of heliotrope filling the air

–a spontaneous wine & cheese picnic with friends, after a leisurely soak in the hot tub

–cooking a hearty soup that I used to make way-back-when, sans recipe, letting my memory be my guide

–the loan of a warm soft sweater from a friend, when I’d forgotten my own (it’s actually been sweater-chilly in SoCal this week!)

–hearing Catgirl and GameBoy’s excitement about the SNOW that they’re playing in on their trip to Utah.

–moving through a tasklist of must-do items and checking them off, one-by-one.

–climbing on the rock wall, feeling myself support my entire weight on my own two arms. Knowing my own strength.

November 23, 2010

poetry

I cried…

peach blossom, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

Autumn Movement

by Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman,

the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things

come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go,

not one lasts.

November 20, 2010

Random

Twitter Weekly Digest for @janaremy, 2010-11-19

Am going off the social media radar for a few days. See you on the other side. #

November 19, 2010

garden

dreaming…

Last night’s dreams were the most vivid that I’ve had in a long while. It was one of those times when you know you’re dreaming, but you’re also very immersed in the world and letting it thrill you. I went to my garden and found it untouched, the blue gate still hanging a bit crookedly on its post. The moon was full and I was simply there, greeting each little nook and cranny. It’s similar to the dreams I have after a loved one dies–often I’ll spend a long night with them, saying good-bye.

Then when I went out to greet the myriad of rescued garden plants on my porch, I found the first two roses blooming since the move:

And then there was this bright burst of oranger-than-orange saying “good morning:”

November 18, 2010

garden make me smile

orange

I’ve been thinking about orange this morning. How about you?

[flickrslideshow acct_name=”pilgrimgirl” id=”72157625285746649″ border_width=”5″ border_style=”solid” border_color=”#cccccc”]

November 17, 2010

amputee body

Love is fading

Love is fading, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

Well over a year ago, punk rocker Amanda Palmer signed my foot. Now, her “Love, AFP” signature is fading, and I’m debating whether to try to refresh it with a permanent marker or to just let it fade away…

On a not-really-related note, I spent some time at the beach this weekend watching the waves and thinking deep thoughts, my feet buried in wet sand. Times like these I realize just how lucky I am to live in southern California, where I can escape to the ocean nearly any time.

November 17, 2010

classics simplicity

pilgrim classic: Our House

It seemed time to run this post again–it was orginally published on October 20, 2006. A lot has changed in our home since this video: we’ve moved to a slightly bigger place, we now have a couch, and we no longer own that big table. But a lot has stayed the same (i.e. BOOKS)…

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve created a brief house tour video. This is for all those folks who are shocked/amazed/mortified that our family lives in ~750 sq ft of space. Of course, if we were in Japan, we’d probably have half this space and call ourselves lucky. But here in SoCal, our ‘living small’ lifestyle is definitely an anomaly.

The tour is limited to half of our home, so you’ll miss about five bookshelves (primarily the kiddos’ books and our magazines and journals). TobyJoy decided not to make an appearance in the show (EllyCat is the star) and John, CatGirl and GameBoy were at school during the tour, so the house is pretty quiet. One note: I mention that the table in the LR is “my desk,” well it’s also the heart of our home. We eat meals, watch movies, play games, read books, pray, and entertain guests around this table. Even as I type this post, John and I are working on our laptops at the table, and CG has a whiteboard that she’s drawing on at the table.

Our home is my very favorite place. There is a lot of love within these walls. It’s not fancy, but it’s home. :)

PS: kudos to John for helping me to compress the video for youtube!
PPS: Did you notice my oh-so-vintage-cool record player?? I’ll play some of my 80s record collection for you the next time you drop by for a cup of tea :)

November 16, 2010

food garden

a complete protein

I couldn’t decide between a picture of beans or a picture of squash*, so I decided to do both–a complete protein in a post!

(*Note: both pics taken the day before our community garden was bulldozed)

November 15, 2010

body food

Temptation

I’d been planning to write this post for awhile, and then Chandelle’s recent conversation about meat-eating inspired me to actually sit down and pound it out…

In the late afternoon my Mom would often set some meat on the counter to defrost for that night’s dinner. It was usually some chicken or ground beef. From that she would cook all kinds of typical American dinner foods. When I was little I thought those packages of thawing meat were beautiful and I loved to scrape a line of frost off the top of the package and then suck the crystals off of the tip of my finger. For some reason I was particularly attracted to the valu-paks of ground beef that she would thaw. More than once I snuck nibbles of slick red meat off the corner, thinking that was a special treat. That my Mom had told me pointedly not to eat raw beef made it all that much more sneaky-special. Sort of like licking a bit of frosting off of a cupcake, I suppose.

Of course now I’m amazed that I didn’t get any major intestinal diseases from licking meat packages and ingesting raw ground beef. Ugh.

About 16 years ago I gave meat eating. The impetus was my father’s death. Seeing his body turn from a living breathing thing to a slab of “meat” was one of those life-changing moments. I’d always struggled with death (yes, I cried in bio labs when we had to kill the animals), and this was such a potent reminder to me of our own fragility. Every time I’d start to eat meat I would feel a repulsion–as if I were eating my own flesh. The world felt so violent and cruel that I didn’t need to add my eating habits to the weight of violence that already existed in the universe. Though this is a bit of a tangent, I believe that era of my life is also when my pacifism solidified into something that began to lead my everyday actions, and I also had increasing difficulty with the necessary violence of the Christian atonement. But back to my main story….

About two years ago when I started experimenting with locavore eating, I realized that I could tolerate small amounts of humanely-raised and slaughtered meat. And since then I’ve occasionally indulged in meat if I was having one of those very-anemic days or if I happened upon an eatery where I was comfortable with the source of their meat. It felt good not to be dogmatically vegetarian (having shed my dogmatism about nearly everything else in my life).

So now, due to a variety of health issues, I’ve begun to eat a high-protein low-carb low-fat diet. Nothing as extreme as Atkins, but I’m more than doubling my protein intake. And in doing so I’m eating meat nearly every day. It feels weird to look at a slab of red flesh and cook it into something that I will put in my mouth. Walking by the meat aisle isn’t exactly appetizing to me. But I am enjoying my forays into meat-eating, and the variety of options that are available to me now that weren’t when I vegetarian. And, quite honestly, I’m feeling better physically than I was when I eschewed meat altogether–I suspect this has to do with the roller-coaster effect of blood sugar highs and lows that accompanied my mostly carb-based vegetarian diet.

I continue to have concerns about the meat-packing business and the mostly unethical practices of those who raise American livestock. I’m not shoving those concerns aside, I’m letting them sit with me as I figure this out and experiment with new ways of doing things. I feel sure that many of my vegan and vegetarian readers will feel offended by my choice to eat meat, and I’d love to hear your side of this–I’m still weighing the evidence and considering the various possibilities. And for those of you who eat meat, I’d also love to learn about how you approach this decision.

And, for the record, I’m no longer tempted to nibble on raw ground beef. Though sushi does give me a bit of the transgressive raw-meat rush that I remember as a child.

November 13, 2010