On Meals, Wheels, and Indoor Entertainment

The subject that seems to be of unequivocal interest to my friends and family is "Jordan's food ingestion," a subject that, until now, has not been thoroughly discussed in a blog entry. Unfortunately, my eating habits are not particularly adventurous. Each of my meals consists of one of the following: salad, yogurt, eggs, cheese, pickles, fruit, bread. Sometimes I buy frozen pierogis (the kind with ricotta cheese, not with cabbage & mushrooms) and dress them up with honey or salt or sour cream. And when I feel like pampering myself, I buy a package of smoked salmon which gets devoured in less than 24 hours. Regardless of her dietary restrictions, my vegan flatmate eats far more exotically than me. She makes lemongrass-seasoned vegetable stir fry with whole wheat couscous, sesame-marinated beets with steamed bok choy, gazpacho, pesto, spinach-garlic puree, vegan chocolate cake, and lentil-walnut paste. She also grinds up her own peanut butter and hummus since neither product is particularly accessible in Poland. Sometimes I go out to eat but only on rare occasions when a special person treats me to an extravagant Thai dinner or a fancy Mexican lunch. Sometimes I get invited over for homemade carrot-apple-ginger soup, pumpkin pie, yogurt smoothies, and ginger beer. One time I ate kebab in an underground "tunnel" and concluded that it would have tasted much better had I been alcoholically or herbally enhanced. One time a wildly eccentric middle-aged American ex-pat took pity on me and gave me an H&H bagel in a zip-lock baggie as a culinary "gift" ...

"It's been in my freezer for, like, six years! But, I mean, I thought you'd appreciate it anyway! You do like bagels, right?"
"Sure. Thanks. That's, um, very thoughtful of you..."

I've always wanted to have a six-year-old freezer-burnt H&H bagel for breakfast. Haven't you?

And then, of course, there are my weekly dinners with Renee, my 90-year-old friend. She usually makes broiled chicken or tuna salad with soggy peas and potatoes. But last week when I arrived at her home she explained that she'd cooked "something special" for me, a "real treat."

"Really?" I asked, "What did you cook?"
"Cow liver!" exclaimed Renee.

Occasions such as these make me wish I had more of the carnivorous Rachel Isaacs in me, the relentless non-discriminatory Butch Woman hunger for nearly every Divinely Inspired creature under the sun. And yet I actually *did* eat the cow liver; not all of it, but enough to convince Renee that I found the treat to be "quite tasty." One must always be at the mercy of her table manners.

As for traditional Polish food (sorry if this is old news for some of you), the only delicacies that strike my fancy are borszt (beet soup), nalisniki (crepes), pierogis and szarlotka (an apple strudel-ish dessert). I do, however, adore the Polish outdoor markets. They stay open all year round and have some of the most delicious produce I've ever tasted (not to mention gorgeous colorful arrangements of reds, greens, purples, and yellows – all *natural*). Last week I bought Asian pears and a persimmon for about 50 cents.

* * *

One of the more meaningful and unpredictable aspects of my job is my meals-on-wheels adventures (or in many cases, it's medication-on-wheels). When the Welfare Commission social workers are either out of town or unavailable, I assume the responsibility of delivering food and medication to welfare clients in Warsaw. I obtain the clients' addresses (sometimes with great difficulty) and then, with my little map in hand, march across the city to deliver the goods. I usually have no trouble finding the street but locating the exact address and figuring out how to enter the building is more trying than one would expect. Addresses in Poland are not what I'd characterize as logical. On a given street, the number 92/35 might very well be followed by number 47/51. Last week, when trying to locate 24/82B, I successfully located 82A and 82C. Naturally, 82B was not sandwiched between its two A and C counterparts. It was situated elsewhere. Once I finally managed to locate B, I then needed to locate flat number 79 which required me to circle the building five times and approach six different entrances (yes, *six*) before I found the door that read "24/82B: 61-84." I finally buzzed number 79 and was greeted warmly by a little old woman in a housecoat who thanked me for bringing medication to her ailing husband and promptly invited me in for tea. She acknowledged that "ten adres jest bardzo trudne!" – yes, this address is very difficult. Since I was already drinking coffee out of my Tanner Conference mug, I passed up the opportunity for tea and engaged in a brief conversation. The woman's husband (who was resting in bed) inquired about my mug so I earnestly tried to describe the Wellesley College Tanner Conference in Polish. My description must have sounded something like this:

"students women of american university call itself 'wellesley' talk projects interesting in cities different in world. projects nice. very."

* * *

Now that it gets dark in the middle of the afternoon and the color of the sky is rarely anything other than GRAY, I've resigned myself to indoor entertainment. I recently joined a "Health Academy" where I have the luxury of running in place while watching Kelly Clarkson music videos, Polish soap operas, German reality TV (which might as well be marketed as an info-mercial for sexism), the "Strong Man" competition, and women's handball tournaments (yesterday I watched Norway play Russia in the quarter-final). Occasionally, someone flips the channel to BBC News but that only lasts for about ten seconds before the chick on the elliptical machine insists that we find out if Martina will choose Reinhard as her German Prince.

When I'm not at work or having meals-on-wheels adventures or running in place in the "Health Academy," I'm either contemplating the trials and tribulations of love, talking about myself in third-person (so says my flatmate), reading a book (slowly), doing laundry, snuggling, playing Othello, or sipping cheap Bulgarian wine in the bathtub while humming Hebrew songs and meditating on candles.

So there you have it. A glimmer of Jordan's dietary/recreational life in Poland (void of the usual Jewish-existential-spiritual musings).

London Haikus

[in the wee hours]

I.

In London at dawn
Soothing foggy sky of gray
Speaks in native tongue

II.

Tate-bound, theatre-bound
Forgot my swimming "costume"
But not my chapstick

III.

Sweet little chicklet
Dreams of art and loose-leaf tea
Stirring, stirring, stirred

IV.

Silly wee word-nerd
Seeking freedom in fresh air
Walks along the Thames

Islands In Time

Autumn in Warsaw is especially magical this year; more so than in years past (so I've been told). We have not yet had a frost so the leaves are still fluttering on their branches casting lace-like shadows when the sun shimmers down at the right time of day. Yellows, browns, and reds blanket summer's remaining green making comfortable naptime beds for nature-dwellers and their playmates. But with lingering splotches of color comes Poland's infamous season of darkness. The days have gotten shorter and soon the sun will set by 3pm.

* * *

One time after dark, I tried to describe the smell of Halloween to my grandmother. I don't remember which words I used but I do remember my "preparation." I marched around the neighborhood as a California Raisin (clearly this was in my youth) stopping periodically to arc my neck to the sky and breathe in the night. I intended to know the smell well enough to bring it back whenever I wanted; I intended to give it a name. My grandmother did not celebrate Halloween; neither does the Polish nation. But my ex-pat posse and I had our own special festivities in Warsaw. We carved jack-o-lanterns and drank hot honeyed wine while listening to Loreena McKennitt (to honor the inner-Wickan in all of us). After carving, we baked pumpkin pie from scratch and roasted pumpkin seeds in the oven. Then we slept. Ah, how rich life is in scents and senses!

* * *

November 1st was "All Saints' Day," a holiday that has been celebrated in Poland and in the rest of the Catholic world for many centuries. In the days preceding the holiday, families spend hours cleaning graves to prepare the souls of the deceased for their journey toward the living. On the holiday itself, people travel great distances to place candles in colorful tinted glasses beside the graves of their loved ones so the departed souls can find their way to life through the darkness. After sunset, I went to the cemetery in Warsaw to visit the graves of a friend's family. I lit candles at the memorial sites for those who'd died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and in concentration camps. Unlike the manicured grid-like cemeteries in the States, Polish cemeteries are lush and overgrown, hugged by pine and oak trees whose roots curl under tombstones and nuzzle into the grass. Once I arrived in the thick of the cemetery, my spatial perception was entirely transformed. Dots of glimmering color-tinted light seemed to stretch into eternity. They had no particular arrangement but seemed strangely ordered against the black night sky. For a moment, the world was a series of directionless spiritual corridors void of pain and anguish; glowingly transcendent.

Twenty-four hours later was the Catholic celebration of "All Souls' Day." This year it coincided with Rosh Chodesh, the Jewish celebration of the New Moon which marks the New Jewish Month. Perhaps ironically, the new Jewish month of Cheshvan contains the yahrtzeits (annual commemorations of a person's death) of several significant Jewish women -- Rachel Imeynu (our foremother), the poet Emma Lazarus, and Zionist war hero Hannah Senesh. The month of Cheshvan is often referred to as Mar Cheshvan or "bitter" Cheshvan as the month contains no holy days and often coincides with the arrival of colder weather. "Mar" can also mean a drop of water and, commensurate with its meaning, Cheshvan is the "wet" month during which the biblical flood occurred in the time of Noah. On the evening of this new month, a group of women reflected upon Water and all of its varied energies as sources of life, destruction, healing and renewal. Water is so powerfully elemental, so integral to our existence, so much a part of the earth and the human body; yet how often is it something we acknowledge or celebrate?

* * *

"Turn me like a waterwheel," writes Rumi, and thus I turn from one thought to the next – from darkness, to death, to water, to life. The passing from life to death is a theme not so foreign to my work at the Welfare Commission. At the end of the month, the Welfare Commission will host a conference on "Death and Dying" in connection with Jewish living. Judaism is known as a "portable" tradition and in nearly every respect -- from keeping Shabbat, to making a dish Kosher, to menstruation rituals -- it is a tradition centered upon sacred time rather than sacred space. In a world so concerned with material comfort, artificial environments, and stymieing the aging process with surgical "enhancements," I often wonder how we can sacralize time. Space, beauty, and comfort are fleeting phenomena; but time is always inherent. It shapes our memories, tells us when to eat, marks the sunsets and the snowfalls. Irrespective of circumstance, time travels with us. And so, as Abraham Joshua Heschel explains, we must make for ourselves "islands in time" and dwell in them before we pass.

* * *

"It shall come to be from one month to the next
That your hearts will rejoice
and your bones will flower like young grass."

* * *

- Isaiah 66:23, 14

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:

To love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;

And, when the time comes to let
it go, to let it go.

- Mary Oliver