168 Days: To Everything, There is a Season

I have not blogged in over a week.  This is unusual.  And it’s not been the best week.  In fact, it’s been a highly puzzling week.  Dublin was an amazing trip.  Since I’ve been back, I’ve had a lot on my mind, and I’ve found myself semi-comatose, in the stay-caged-at-home-eating-crap-and-watching-reruns-of-West-Wing-in-order-ceaslessly, kind of way.  And I can’t blog.  Found myself putting it off, almost in fear, every day.  What’s thrown me off?  Well, back to reality from the high of vacation is always difficult.  And I do have a strong melancholy streak.  But there is something else on my mind.  Some important issues, ignited by events and people in Dublin, but brewing for a while.  Brewing for over a decade.  And I just haven’t known if I could blog about them.

So, I’m asking for input.  This blog is, in theory, anonymous.  However, I have added the URL to my facebook profile, and have made it visible to most people, with the exception of work colleagues and some relatives.  This has boosted my readership.  It’s been valuable to me to know that people who know me, and who are interested, can know a bit more about my life.  And it’s important to me that my name, my immediate contact info, not be out there for all to see.  I don’t, however, want a closed “friends and family” blog.  Originally, I wanted a place to rant, to write creatively, and to keep myself working, truthful, and sticking to my goals, because someone could be watching my progress.  I liked the anonymity and the global community WordPress provided.  Now, I think I have a decision to make.  Or not.  But the things I’ve been thinking about trouble me so much personally, that I’m not sure I want people I know-know to all know about it.  But it would really help me to throw out these things onto the blank page and maybe, just maybe, have someone respond, have someone help, or at the very least, contribute to a larger conversation out there on these things.  And I’m speaking so vaguely now, how could any of you know if this is minor minor or major major, or anything in between.  I guess all that’s important is that these things are distressing me a bit, and it’s caused me to be paralyzed this week, at a time when I really need to be on the ball, in the game, designing websites, making calls, creating budgets, doing research, or at the very least, getting up to speed on editing my novel, now that I have a ton of feedback to work with.  And here I sit, watching Season 2, Episode 22…which means I’ve watched 44 episodes this week.  Which is about 2 days.  2 days out of 7, and I’ve slept a bit somewhere in there, and somehow dragged myself out of the house for a day to give my sister a “day of fun” for her birthday.  So, any comments about the nature of blogging, any links to articles, and anecdotes of your own, would be appreciated.  Of course, it’s my decision.  And I’ll probably end up ranting anyway.  I feel really alone right now, even though I’m not necessarily depressed.  Just stuck.  And I need to get myself unstuck.

Therefore — starting tomorrow, Sunday, February 15 (which is like a Monday in Israel, lest you think I’m some sort of crazy person who willingly forfeits a weekend), I am experimenting with a Week of Health.  Yes, indeed, a week of health.  I am the holder of a membership card to a gym, a really good one, and I’ve not been in months.  Exercise is really good, I could use some, and if not for toning and weight loss, etc, on the short term, I really need the energy and endorphins this is supposed to kind of pump you up with.  Plus, I am usually able to grab the treadmill in front of TV #8 that has non-stop BBC and BBC-esque documentaries, and I adore learning about medieval monastic orders, courtly love, weird science, and the bizarre eating habits of Britons.  I am also pet sitting for a friend with a nice apartment in the center of town, and because I will have to visit daily anyway, I will use it as an office.  Taking the laptop to a quiet place that is not my home or a cafe (that will cost me a ton of money in lattes and lunches, cumulatively speaking) will be good.  I will force myself to work on my book, or create my new business website, every day for a week.  And I will eat one green meal.  This is not a chore.  I genuinely like healthy food, it makes me full, and I don’t eat a ton of crap even when I am not eating healthy (powdered soup and toasted whole wheat bread with tahini…it’s just kind of carb heavy and a bit fattening…but not like chips and fries and cola and ice cream).  It’s just that when you cook professionally, you do not like cooking for yourself.  And cooking for one is depressing.  I cook more when I know that I’ve got someone to eat with.  Or someone coming over.  And I am the type of person who just forgets to shop for groceries, and even when she can’t afford it will go out for lunch (and even budget lunches add up), and late at night will scrape the cabinets, eating stale crackers, and powdered soup (that I discovered has MSG recently and scared the crap out of me) and things like that. But I’ve done the grocery shopping tonight for the week.  I’ve got a decent amount of greens and things that I think will be reasonable that I’d like to eat.  Including a large tub of powdered soup (the only brand with no MSG — my God we must all be swimming in chemicals).  So there.  If I can stick to the plan, I’ll be OK.  And if I can throw a tiny bit of housekeeping in there, like sweeping the floor, putting clothes back on the hanger immediately, and doing laundry more than once every two months, cleaning the cat box when it needs it, I’ll be golden.

Again, if you’ve done me the enormous honor of reading this far, any input on blogging and privacy would be greatly appreciated.  Love to you all on this day of love.

176 Days: Johnnie. Walker. Blue

Amendment to the earlier post.  Yes, I just got back from my day at the Guinness storehouse.  Yes, it was, again, fabulous.  Not AS fabulous as the day that began at the Four Seasons that kept on giving and giving in so many fabulous intoxicating ways.  But nearly.   And yes, today was another first.  My first taste of Johnnie Walker Blue Label.  It is everything you could hope it would be, and more.  I did an entire nearly hour-long tasting of whiskey and whisky (that be Scotch to those of you who don’t detect the spelling nuances), double malts (Irish), single malts (Scotch), and some superior blends.  Yes, today again had some lovely Champagne and Proseco.  And some other decent finds.  But not as many interesting finds as before.  The wine was much more “industrial/commercial,” and one company even brought in wine in a can (like a beer, can you believe it…ugh…couldn’t chance that).

The whiskey.  Oh dear.  So here is what I tasted, in order:

1. Bushmills Malt 16 year old – aged in Bourbon, Sherry, AND Port casks, which gives it a gorgeous almost cherry color.  Very nice indeed.
2. Bushmills Malt 21 year old – Bourbon, Sherry, and Madeira casks.
3. Bushmills 1608 Reserve – a very special edition, celebrating the 400th anniversary of the distillery.  It’s the oldest place in the world to have a license, I think, over 300 years or so.

The Scotch whisky.  Oh me oh my, the single malts:

1. Glenkinchie 12 year old – made by a woman, light peat, sweet, gorgeous, quite light.
2. Cragganmore 12 year old – less smokey, less woody, much more fruity, bananas, nice and accessible.  But not for me!  I want the smoke!
3. Royal Lochnagar 12 year old – the smallest distillery in Scotland.  Very smooth.  Not my fave, but very very good.
4. Talisker 10 year old – MY FAVORITE!!!  Amazing.  The amazingly adept man who was leading us through, the “spirit ambassador” of his company, had us pour a drop into our hands, rub into both hands, let dry for a second (evaporated in a heartbeat), and then cup our hands, and breathe out of them.  Leather.  Wood.  Ocean.  Peat.  Amazing.  The taste is very rich and smokey.  It’s the only distillery on the Isle of Skye.  If you like whiskey, and haven’t tried this, DO!
5. Caol Ila 12 year old – Also an exquisite whisky.  Higher on the peat scale than Talisker, I’m told, but I’m not as big a fan.

Enter the fancy blends:

1. Johnnie Walker Black Label – Very respectable.  I’m not  blend drinker.  But it’s OK.
2. Johnnie Walker Green Label – here’s where it got interesting.  The Green label is a pure malt.  It’s a blend of single malts only, along with a grain malt.  Our Spirit Ambassador reckoned that this was a perfect blend for single malt drinkers to introduce them to blended, and a perfect drink for blend drinkers, to introduce them to single malts.  It’s really interesting.  See, they take the best of the best, including Talisker and Caol Ila and Lochnagar and mix them up.
3. Johnnie Walker Blue Label – the king of blends.  It is a blend of 42 single malt scotches.  It mixes every region in Scotland.  You have the sea and peat of the islands, the heather of the highlands, and the good solid flavors of the Speyside.  AND what I didn’t realize is that Johnny Walker kind of acts as a librarian of Scotch.  They collect from distilleries all over the place for years.  The blue label might have some scotch that is over 80 years old, some that’s 60, and a good deal that is 30-40 years old.  Some of what goes in there doesn’t exist anywhere else, because the distilleries have since shut down.  How cool is that.  See, I’m not for the blends, usually.  I like the nuances and color of the single malts.  But, if and when I have the chance to drink a Green or a Blue label, I’d absolutely jump at the chance.  And so should you, if you’ve read this far!

(And another whisk(e)y review if you’re interested)

Other highlights of today’s tasting included an amazing Cognac table from Leopold Gourmel.  It’s extremely accessible cognac.  They label the bottle with the exact flavors you can expect to find in it.  Charming man who presented them, Olivier.  Urged us to become, “Cognac Intelligent.”  They have names such as Cognac Age du Fruit, and du Fleurs, and des Epices, as the years go by, so change these flavors.  Of particular interest was the Cognac Bio Attitude, the world’s first 100% organic Cognac,  from beginning to end.  And finally, the finest I’ve ever tasted, something special indeed — the Quintessence (Lot 31) – the 30 year old Cognac, this from 1971.  It was so smooth.  So beautiful to drink.  No spitting this one out.  Thank you to these wonderful folks.

The lovely Miss S and I ended up drinking quite a bit of Champagne Laurent-Perrier, of which they had an interesting unsweetened “Ultra Brut,” a Brut Rose which is made in the traditional winemaking way (most champagnes make white wine and red wine separately, then mix them before the bubble-making process, but not these folks!), and a really really fab “Grande Siecle” their flagship, a multivintage wonder (always 3 years together), 50% Chardonnay, 50% Pinot Noir.  We had some good Proseco as well, but chose to end the day with a second glass of the Grande Siecle before turning tail and going to eat…

OYSTERS!  That’s right.  Straight to Bentleys right on St Stephens Green for a lovely spread of 12 raw seawater wonders, all local, all fresh and gorgeous.  All the champagne and proseco sort of made us want them, and I said, why not, I’ll treat, we’re on vacation!  Wonderful!  And we had another glass of proseco to go along with them.  Ha ha!  We met another uni friend there from way back, another lovely Miss S, had a great chat, and then the second Miss S took off, and the first Miss S and I went off for Thai food to finish off the night.

And here I sit.  Writing for way too long.  Giddy from this great day.  And I have a taxi coming in under 6 hours to take me to a pre-dawn flight out of here.  We’ve had so much snow in Dublin this week, half of me is hoping to get snowed in so I can have another fabulous adventure with the sainted Miss S, to whom I am so very indebted for helping make my week in Dublin fantastic indeed.

Read more fun stuff about whisk(e)y from a tasting I did in Tel Aviv.

176 Days: Irish Contentment

The Winding Stair Overlooking the Ha'penny Bridge

Today is my last full day here in Dublin. I’m a bit sad to leave tomorrow, but not heartbroken.  It’s given me energy and a bit of peace of mind being here.  It’s really exciting to be “going for your dreams.”  Life can be stressful, but goodness gracious, there is indeed so much to look forward to.  A lot of things are hard (publishing a book, building a company, making ends meet, creating a lasting mark on the world…), but it can be fun, exciting, joyful, and good to simply be going for them.  Putting in a strong effort.  This simple optimism is missing from my life on a day to day basis, quite often.  And it’s something that was essential in my life when I was in uni, and especially when I lived in Dublin 9 years ago.  I’ll have to find a way to remember this.  To make it mine, daily, again.

Yesterday, I had a “day of decadence,” I think I’ll call it.  Got up quite late, went to The Winding Stair, an old independent bookstore that has a cafe above it.  Well, it’s been completely redone, and the cafe is a gourmet restaurant in the best liberal Irish tradition — local fare, local ingredients, organic produce, imaginative yet wholesome menu — and just a lovely bright room, lots of wood, overlooking the Liffey right at the Ha’penny bridge.    I ate lamb liver, streaky bacon, mustard mash, and whiskey sauce, with an interesting amber beer from Italy I’d not had before.  Really lovely.  Liver was more cooked than I liked, but still a good meal.  Very warm, smart, attentive staff.  I’m so glad I went back there.  In college, I used to hang out there a bit.  The cafe then was “literary themed” which I do kind of miss in the place now.  You could get sandwiches named after famous books, and I was quite looking forward to a “Watership Down,” or an “Anna Karenina,” or something like that.  Lamb’s liver was more than fine, of course, but it would be fun if they’d included more books in the decor, and added back some of the whimsical which made the place so special before.

I then rushed up to one of the main cinemas in town off of Parnell Square, and I saw the much praised Slumdog Millionaire.  It was fun to see a film in the middle of the day.  It was a feel-good experience.  Nice story.  Having just been in India, I actually wasn’t too keen on “being back there” so soon.  But everyone’s been raving…  Thing is, as good as it was, it wasn’t anything to write home about for me.  It was fun, it was romantic, it was a nice glimpse into India.  But it doesn’t seem like Oscar calibre to me.  It was average-good.  A box office hit, sure.  Nice color, nice young people, hard work triumphing, a deserving youth.  But I don’t think I saw any stellar performances.  We shall see…

Then, I went to Kilkenny, not the place, but the design shop on Nassau Street.  There is a jewelry designer I am absolutely smitten with, and I was told I might be able to find his stuff at this shop.  Sure enough, a whole case of Alan Ardiff.  His works move!  They do!  It’s like gorgeous clockwork in miniature hanging on your neck.  Ducks bob on water, stars rotate, doors open…it’s amazing.  And so very pretty.  All silver, all cute, and so unique.  Problem was, I didn’t have a spare 200 Euro.  I think I’ll have to create a list of birthday requests for my family…it’s cheeky, but I would really love to have one of those pieces.  It’s art.  And it would make my day.  Here is one of my favorites, called, “Follow Your Star.”

Follow Your Star

I then dashed over to The Market Bar on Fade Street where I met some old friends from Trinity.  Such fun.  Munching on tapas (well, I got a cheese and meat platter and they barely ever pecked!), drinking wine, and catching up with such good people.  One is a filmaker who I pray will make it big.  The other a director and arts administrator who basically runs the Dublin theatre Festival.  A great evening.

And now, now, now, I must get offline, get dressed, and get out of the house!  I’m going to another wine tasting extravaganza with the lovely S, this time at the Guinness storerooms.  Hurrah!  I love Dublin.  Should I find a way to move back?  Should I find a way to export my friends to be near me?  Start an Israeli-Irish winery?  Perhaps, perhaps?  Ah life.  It’s good right now.  We’ll see about tomorrow when I have to be on a 6 am flight out of here…

178 Days: Cristal Serendipity

How does the world do it?  The gods and the cherubs and saints and dead Israelite forefathers have conspired to make my Dublin trip bizarre and incredibly amazing.  I have spent the entire day with a brand new friend S, a gorgeous ridiculously intelligent woman, a mutual friend of my friend who turned 30, for whom I came to Dublin in the first place.  And we have been swilling world-class wines!  All day!  And to top it off, I have had my first glass of Cristal!  Amazing.  And Tokaji, and 10-year old and 20-year old Portos, and climax-inducing Muscatos, and Reislings to change your world, and more and more and more (including a local cheese spread, the best ham I’ve ever tasted, and a smoked fish selection — tuna, mackerel, wild salmon, and kippers — that I thought were the absolute best).

How did this happen?  S’s parents own an off-license (Irish for liquor store) and pub in a nice Dublin suburb, and she’s in business with them.  This wine tasting?  A wine distributor she works with sometimes had this amazing array set up at the Four Seasons.  And they welcomed me with open arms.  And we met more and more people, one of whom was a weird-ish Maltese guy who’s been living in Dublin for 15 years, being a chef and restaurant manager, who latched on to us.  We ended up closing the tasting with some Proseco, then moved on to the hotel’s bar, drinking a Rioja and a Reisling (spent 80 Euro, goodness), some horrifically overpriced bland fish pub food, and then moved on (well, we crashed…) the post wine tasting dinner event.  See, S had never heard of these happening, but when we got there, we just snuck happily in and had a huge free meal — black pudding and rocket salad atop some stewed apples (I think), veal and mashed potatoes, lemon tarte and brownies, cheese platter (!!!), and coffee and tea.  With, of course, a huge amount of great great great wine.  Our bizarre (socially awkward) Maltese friend with us the entire time, and joined by my birthday girl friend after she got out of work, it was just one of those evenings that dragged on and on, but didn’t drag.  It unraveled and unwrapped itself like a gift.  The Maltese man ended up inviting me to Italy to plant grapes at a new vineyard that he was going to be investing in as soon as he’d raised 75,000 Euro, insisted I take his number, and did all but beg me to get together later in the week to, “have the finest glass of wine you’ll ever have in your life.”  AND the gorgeous manager of this upscale wine bar cum gourmet Irish restaurant who I’d been eying and who may have been eying me at the wine tasting earlier in the day asked for me number!  Yay!

I’m more than a bit frazzled, giddy, and delighted to have made new friends, spent time with old friends, and I’m currently being horribly anti-social by typing away at this blog while my two girlfriends are chatting around me at 12:30 am.  Life is lovely.

And for your viewing pleasure, a film you MUST all see.  My friend’s original show.  That’s right.  She wrote and directed this funny gem, and she’s touring to Abu Dhabi tomorrow.

182 Days: Half-Birthday, Uncertainty

Tomorrow is my half birthday.  Six months.  The midway point.  I’ve kind of been working up to it all month.  I’m proud it’s been a rather productive month.  But I’m certain I could have been more productive than I was.  Methinks I have several lazy bones in my body that need purging.

I’m off to Ireland tomorrow, on my half birthday.  I’ve achieved not a bit of what I needed to achieve, namely, a clean house.  I did a load of laundry.  Stuff I’ll need there, stuff I’ve not washed in a month, kind of thing.  And I did buy enough cat food and kitty litter for a month.  But I’ve not dusted (hah! dusting, what an exercise in futility), swept, anything.  The kitchen isn’t horrible.  Neither is the bath.  But I’m counting on my sister and various friends to look in on the cats and keep them happy.  And this requires me to cat-proof the house.  I could do it now.  Or I could wait until after dinner, about a moment before I head to the airport.  Oh, decisions.

See, it’s nice to come home to a clean house.  With me, that’s nearly impossible.  I think I need to come to a level that’s just slightly more productive than I am now (more immediate dishwashing and hanging of worn clothes).  And then when I can afford it, hire people asap.  Because I will never be clean.  I just won’t.  I love clean.  I get it.  I will clean for others.  I will clean much better when faced with roommates and peers.  But for myself?  I cannot.  Perhaps this has something to do with not valuing myself enough?  No idea.  But I’d value myself enough to spend 200 shekels to pay someone to clean for me, which is pretty much a huge valuing-of-myself.

And Ireland.  Ireland.  I haven’t even said the word so many times in about 9 years.  I expect it to be loads of fun.  Absolute loads.  But some fear has blown in through a seam.  Have you heard the expression, “don’t go back” or “you can’t go back” or even, “Forget Paris”?  Well, Dublin was a magical fairyland for me 9 years ago.  Drinking, cigarettes, friends who loved me, art and culture, an amazing university that was fun as well as extraordinarily challenging, like meeting smart people at Trinity who weren’t completely dysfunction like at my alma mater the UofC.  I could read dozens of books, rattle off amazing essays, direct plays, and go to parties and pubs with such ease over there.  It was a pivotal year, almost as much as when I lived in Paris as a 12 year-old.  Paris at 12.  Dublin at 20.  I lived with a family that had 6 children, ranging from 1 year-old to 16.  And I can safely say it was the first time in my life I saw close up for an extended period, a non-dysfunctional family.  Sure, they had problems.  But you could also feel the love and affection and warmth and humor just oozing out of every one of them.  It was a house of compassion.  Squabbles and conflicts, yes, but there were united parents.  Stern at times, ultra-liberal at others.  It was so safe.  And they adopted me for the year.  Sure, I was a paying tenant.  I even paid extra for meals.  But I sat around with the kids and watched TV.  They had me at all the holidays.  And I was grateful.  I learned so much, and I hope that I contributed even a hint of a bit of a something to them.  I loved them.  It was so different from my screaming, competitive, put-down-filled, bullying home.  God, I sound like I was raised in foster care or something.  No, my parents loved us, but they were pretty absent and had a ton of their own issues.  These Irish parents were devoted.  Absolutely devoted to their kids.  It wasn’t smothering (how could it be, there were six?), but they knew it all.  They knew these kids’ lives, what they cared about, what they were sensitive about, what their strengths and weaknesses were.  They accepted them for who they were.  There was pressure to do well, but it was clear that whatever happened, it would be alright.

The last image of them I have is of the mother and the three or four younger kids waving to me and almost crying as I was driven away by a friend, rucksack in tow, as I left to find my ferry to being my backpacking adventure across Europe.  They gave me a present for my 21st birthday.  In a box.  I think it was from Brown Thomas, a nice Dublin department store.  It was elegantly wrapped and had two satin ribbons tied around in brownish hues.  They made me promise to wait until my birthday to open it.  It was a lovely simple silver bracelet.  They said silver was the gift of a 21st.  My parents weren’t so thoughtful.  I cannot even remember if they gave me anything.  I think they said in retrospect that the trip to Europe was their big present, even though my father transferred me all my high school summer job money in order to pay for it…which kind of made me the provider of said trip.  Whatever.

Now, I’m back to Dublin.  And I haven’t phoned the family yet.  Part of me is very scared.  What became of them?  Are they well?  Did any tragedy strike?  Will they remember me?  Will they remember me fondly?  Or not?  I would love to see them.  But picking up that phone is proving more than difficult.  I’m not even sure if the number is correct.  I kept in touch for two or three years.  Mainly it was me.  For the first year I sent elegant and rather extravagent packages for Christmas and Easter.  Christmas cards and some birthday cards for a couple years.  I got an occasional email from the dad, as the mom was not yet online, there was no internet at home, and there was also no land line phone.  But it stopped.  Will they remember.  Would they want to see me.  Part of me feels like they’re also my parents and family.  Would they approve of my life.  Some of the kids will be well into adulthood.  Maybe even married with kids of their own, it is Ireland after all, and they were devout Catholics, despite being cool and liberal on the surface.  And me.  What have I accomplished.  Will they remember.  Will they want to see me.  I need to pick up this phone, but I’m not sure how.

185 Days: Dublin Bound!

Dublin's Temple Bar

I have great, great friends.  I do.  I’m maybe, potentially, perhaps warming up to the concept that I have really great friends who are my family.  It’s taken place, miraculously, since the summer.  But when the boy broke it off, I knew who to call, and she was there on the phone, and I cried, and it was OK.  And the next day another friend picked me up and took me on a short drive out of the city to a village that had an organic store and nursery where I bought a Melissa plant.  And that night, another friend took me out drinking, and the next night, yesterday, a good, good friend surprised me by showing up out of the blue from Haifa, and took me and another friend who had already planned on coming over to drink it up with me, to a brand new wine by where a vague acquaintance was having a birthday.  It was fantastic.  An accordion, a guitar, Georges Brassens music, practice at flirting, excellent wine (had a whole bottle of Flam), delicious food (lamb ravioli and sheep cheese gnocchi).  Good friends.

And today I bought a plane ticket to Dublin.  It’s my Irish friend’s 30th birthday bash.  And I cannot afford to go.  But the ticket was so cheap ($430 return, thank you British Midlands), it was a crime not to.  I mean, tickets to London are running upwards of $500, and I’m going to Ireland with a London stopover for significantly less?  So, I’m off for about 6 days.  It’s far too far a destination to go for simply a weekend.  And despite the fact that I’m unemployed or self-employed or “writing” full time, I can’t get out of the groove for that long.  The money is dwindling.  I need a plan.

But first, Dublin.  My plan for Dublin: have a brilliant time at my friend’s birthday festivities, totally pamper her the following day (her real birthday), see old friends (did I mention I lived in Dublin 1999-2000 for a year?…it’s the first time I’m going back), hopefully smooch a gorgeous Irishman in a dark pub corner (who knows, maybe a quaint little affair is in order), work on my writing (thank GOD for laptops), redesign my website, sight see, go to the theatre loads to see friends’ shows, and see the family I lived with 9 years ago.  I want to let loose and have fun.  And I think Dublin is the perfect destination.

But before…ah before…love, love, you need to work for it.  Indeed I do.  I have promised myself here and now, that my apartment must be as close to spotless as I can manage it before I leave.  This means significant work every day for the next four days.  It really does.  Perhaps a load of laundry.  Or five.  Dusting, sweeping, and mopping.  Rearranging books.  Shelf organization.  It all gets done.  And of course, I have to do my reading and critiquing for Friday’s workshop.  It’s a fun job.  Just one I’ve been procrastinating on.  Especially now, by writing about it instead of getting to it already.  There I have it.

I am Dublin bound.  Indeed I am.  Now go to it, boobie!

And just think, you’ll be here in just a few days…