Later, when I was a private chef, I worked for some of his clients and would speak to him on the phone from behind the scenes, giving him my observations and taking his suggestions to tweak the food.  During those phone calls, I got to know him just a little better. 

Around the same time, I read Bill's book Feng Shui Made Easy .  I had never really gotten into Feng Shui, considering it too mystical and complicated.  In his book, Bill takes the view that the art of placement is goverend both by external laws but also can be generated from a clean, inner condition of the body.  When we eat whole, unprocessed foods, we tend to make better decisions… guided by our intution.  And intuitive Feng Shui is very powerful.

I have never read any other Feng Shui books.  Bill's book gave me enough to re-arrange my apartment, to furnish my office, and to even help others with their spaces.  His take on Feng Shui made perfect, and refreshingly satisfying sense.  Yay.

So I was growing in respect and admiration for Bill, but still felt a certain distance.  He was a big-time teacher.  Around since the Michio days.  Kickin' it Old School.  I was just a goofball.

During a Kushi Institute Summer Conference in the late 90s, I picked up the mic at the cafe.  I had been dabbling in standup comedy, doing a whole schtick called "Zen Comedy", which meant: Sometimes I'm funny… Sometimes I'm not.  Stupidly, but sometimes with the blessings of the standup gods, I would just stand up in front of audiences and riff… talking about this, that and the other thing, hoping to be funny. 

It wasn't until I had been up there for about ten minutes that I noticed Bill was in the audience.  Before I could feel self-conscious, I saw that he had melted into stupid laughter, tears rolling down his face.  He–longtime macro, Feng Shui dude, worldwide counselor–was a totall goofball too.

Since then we have been close friends and, a few years ago, I took The Passage.  Without saying too much about it, it was a transformative experience.  With his wisdom and compassion, Bill helps people move through the very real tunnels we get ourselves stuck in during life.  He has a HUGE heart and I am beyond grateful to have a place in it. 

Just last week, Bill launched a gorgeous new website about his macrobiotic counseling, his end-of-life counseling as well as the relief work he does around the world.  Oh yeah.  And there's an awesome new edition of Feng Shui Made Easy.  Pllease check him out. 

I’m not going to name names. It freaks me out to go public with something so private. Neither Facebook nor my blog are appropriate for that. Plus, he was one of the few internet holdouts… preferring to connect face-to-face with the rest of the world… when he wanted to connect.

And frankly, his name only matters to those of us who knew him.

But let’s put it this way; this person didn’t fit too well in life. I mean, life wanted him—he was loved by his family, and many friends. He was good-looking, charming, funny and fit. And even more than that, he had a special soul-level quality that was unstoppably loveable… inexplicable, really, considering he could also drive us all nuts. But at the end of the day–and usually somewhere before noon–we loved him, and extended our hearts and hands to him with ease.

But it wasn’t enough. Not because we didn’t try, but because he, and life, were just not a good fit. It’s as if the limits and rules of 21st century existence were just too much. As if duality had too tight a squeeze on him. No matter how hard he tried, a strange and ugly foot would emerge from beneath him and trip him up until he fell, again and again. It was more than addiction. More than stubborn pride. I’ve seen those things trip people up before. It was as if a deep wiring… perhaps from a childhood brain injury… just kept zapping him from the inside, striking him down, again and again. And falling doesn’t feel good after a while. Because people notice. And he couldn’t help but notice… and he began to judge himself. And it is that awful, final, human judge—the one inside—whose gavel hits the hardest.

About eight years ago, I drove him to a hospital because he wanted to hurt himself. Before getting in the car, I said I understood what it was like to want to fall asleep and never wake up again. It would be like going back home. Like taking The Big Nap. I didn’t think it was crazy to feel the pull to go back to that peaceful place—the Big Yin– but that I wished he would stay with us and try to figure it out. That I would try to help him touch The Big Nap from this side without hurting himself.

I was thinking: Meditation. Eating better. Maybe going to a meeting.

But those just weren’t his things.

M tried for eight more years. He duked it out with duality, while holding in his chest a secret, dark desire to get the hell out. He was a brave, brave man for simply fighting that battle for such a long time. It must have been brutal. It was so easy for us—for whom life fits comfortably five days out of seven—to watch him from the outside and feel his unstoppable loveliness coming at us. To be the recipients of his jokes, or his tenderness, or his photos of funny dogs he saw, or little kids he knew. It was easy for us to say “it’s gonna be okay”.

But it wasn’t okay for him. It just wasn’t. For whatever reason, his drive to get out—to take that Big Nap—finally won.

I know we’re supposed to abhor a suicide. That’s just the Judeo-Christian way. But this lovely, lovely man… who touched my life in such beautiful ways… and whose struggle I was privy to… I refuse to judge his choice. I just refuse. Judgment was his problem on this side.

I love him. And I will miss him terribly. And I’m glad he's finally free.

So George, my two-year old Tabby  and only remaining pet, had not been seen by his lovely petsitter, Natasha, since the day her duties began… roughly the same day I left for the East Coast.  Needless to say the cruise and all other away-from-LA activities were pretty stressful for me, knowing that George had gone AWOL.  He had never spent even 14 hours away from home, let alone 14 days. 

I kept hearing from people that cats can do this.  Freak you out.  Make you think they’re dead.  Give you a flipping heart attack.  But it seemed like George… gone 14 days?  He’s a fat cat that likes nothing more than to hang around the house all day chillaxing.  It didn’t fit the profile.  But I figured the spring, and a surge in whatever male hormones he still has, could propel him on a walkabout.  Weirder things had happened, according to the internet and various positive-thinking cat lovers. 

So Natasha walked around the neighborhood calling "George!" and phoned the local shelters (thank you!). Christy put out fliers in the neighborhood (thank you!).  She also put out articles of my clothing all around the house to help G pick up my scent if he’d strayed afar.  I even had a couple of good Samaritans call me after they’d seen the fliers asking what color George’s paws were and how they could help. 

People are good.

When I finally got back to LA, I felt slightly better and felt a modicum of control, just being back in the neighborhood.  I put out more stinky socks and smelly sweaters to "entice" George home. But it had been 14 days, and I only felt a 50/50 chance of a happy ending.  I scoured the internet for tips and stories about finding lost cats.  Which, in retrospect, was a really smart thing to do.  Many sites said to go looking between 1 and 5 a.m.–the feline witching hours.  I had thought to pay more attention in the evening, but not really in the middle of the night.  So I set my trusty iPhone for 2 a.m. and went to bed, determined but not entirely hopeful about my own walkabout.

The alarm went off.  I touched snooze.
It went off again.  Snooze again.
And again.         
Finally, at 3:30, I got out of bed, saying out loud "Okay George, let’s do this". 

That was sort of weird, to say it out loud. 

In the few hours I had slept, I had a dream about George being the father of a large and happy litter about 4 blocks to the east and north of my house.  Never mind that George is neutered, in this dream, his new territory felt like 28th street and  Pearl.  I wanted to cover that area tonight, just in case dreams mean something.  But I also got a strong sense to simply check our back alley… the one closest to the house.  A place where, were I a cat, I would hang out and shoot craps and smoke stogies with the other locals. 

So I walked down the alley, feeling like an idiot, shaking a bag of treats, half-whispering "Georrrrrrge".  I call his name in this weird pretentious Mid-Atlantic Madonna-esque accent.  I have no idea why. 

I walk by one back yard fence.  Then the next.  "Georrrrrrrge!"

"Meow!"  Holy crap.   "Meow! Meow! Meow! MEOW!"  These meows are persistent. Urgent. LOUD.  And they’re coming from inside someone’s corrugated metal shed.  Behind a tall fence.  Regardless of the obstacles, I am overjoyed.  It sounds like him.   He’s definitely responding to me and most important, his voice is strong.   Which means he’s not that close to Kitty Heaven.

I go home.  Call the police because animal control isn’t answering.  They say to call animal control in the morning. 

I figure out which house he’s behind and google who purchased that property.  I then search for them on a people-finding site to get a phone number.  Turns out my neighbor is a hoity toity producer!  Not bad.  I have visions of cat-induced networking.  Oh wait.  That’s 25th street.  I live on 23rd.  Turns out I’m not so sharp at 4:30 a.m. 

Then I tromp over to the house to make sure of the address.  I see 2504 at 4:35 a.m.  Turns out it’s 2524, but Mister Haber, who lives at 2504, was very nice when I called him at 7 a.m. to report that I was sure my cat was inside his garden shed.  It’s hard to see in the middle of the night!

Finally, I figure out who lives at 2524 by doing a property-sale search.  It’s important because they’re not answering the door.  And there’s no car in the driveway.  And it’s a holiday weekend.  I then go to the good old White Pages (the actual ones) and get their number.  I call and leave a message.  Their voicemail is cute, which a little kid leaving the message.  I figure they don’t want their daughter finding a cat skeleton in the garden shed when they get back from Easter weekend and may, if contacted, give me permission to break the lock.  Fingers crossed.

At 8 a.m., Animal Control picks up the phone.  They send out a lovely lady (also named Jessica) who tells me she can’t break into someone’s property, but suggests we go look in the alley anyway. 

Behind the house, I yell "Georrrrrge" and she also hears him in the shed, behind the tall, locked fence… clearly beyond the line of the law.  She says to leave a note… that the family should be coming back soon.  I say he might have been there for up to two weeks… I pull the quivering lip.  She’s not buying it.  And then…

AND THEN

She notices that it says on the fence "2602".  Not 2524 (I know the numbers make no sense, but that’s how my street rolls).  2602???  I peer between the slats of the fence, and sure enough, it seems that this shed sits on a totally different property than I had first thought.  God, I can be a numbskull!  And not only do I know the owners of said property, they are old, never leave the house and we’re on very friendly terms.  GEORGE!!! YOU’RE COMING HOME!!!!!!

So I knock on Virginia’s door.  She’s sweet.  Gives me a hug.  Within 30 seconds, she reminds us that she’s 86.  And when the animal control officer and I tell her that my cat’s in the shed, she tells her husband, Joe.  Now I’ve met Joe and he is a lovely guy.  Also getting up there.  And God bless him, Joe is totally blind.  The animal control officer asks if she can go out back and open the shed.  Seems Joe has a certain pride of place that won’t allow that.  We follow Joe out to the yard and upon saying "Georrrrge" to the shed, it meows back.  Joe doesn’t believe the cat is actually in the shed, but it’s clear he is.  Joe fingers through a huge key chain to find the key.  He says he put some stuff in the shed a while ago, "way more than a week ago" he says with concern.  It takes Joe a few minutes to find the key to the lock, but when he does… abracadabra… George is back. 

Now most of these stories end with skinny cats who look a little dirty.  Well, somehow George doesn’t seem to have lost any weight at the Garden Shed Spa, but he does smell a little musty.  When he first ate, he made a weird moaning sound, but I guess… after 14 days, I would too.  

He’s stressed.  Meowing a lot in a hoarse little voice.  But he’s finally settling down a bit.  We’ve had our first cuddles and head butts.

I’m in shock that he’s back.  A wonderful shock. 

Thanks to every single one of you who held my hand over the last two weeks.  Who prayed.  Who listened to me cry. Who visualized George and I being together again.  Your thoughts are powerful.

He’s on my lap and my heart feels whole. 
Jessica

Of course, this wonderful yin force we are governed by loves to talk, to bond, to love.  It’s damn good at nurturing and picking one kid up from school before dropping the other one off at soccer practice.  But what we used to called "feminism", the active acknowledgment of female power, has become a weird and tangled issue of late.  First of all, the word itself has become sort of icky in our culture.  Like "liberal" it has somehow made the weird slide from sunlight into shadow, as the media machine has churned it up and spit it out. 

It’s too bad.  I guess we need a new word.  Or to take the ‘F’ word back.  Because there is a ton of female power in this country today.  And, paradoxically, that’s part of the problem too.  We’re DOING REALLY WELL, LADIES!  Human history has never seen so much freedom, wealth and power among its high-heeled set.  We can earn enough money to compete with the Big Boys, buy low-carb snacks with the click of a mouse, and have sex without ever getting pregnant!  We are in Congress, on the Supreme Court, in the boardroom and just barely missed the White House.  This time. 

So why even talk about it? 

Well, first of all, we need to avoid complacency.  This freedom was hard won.  Lest we forget that Suffragettes were imprisoned so that you and I could vote.  That thousands and thousands of women were burned as witches because…well… just because.  You see, it seems that the shadow of world’s psyche has been regularly projected onto us, my fellow hip chicks, and since the shadow never goes away entirely, we need to stay on our toes.  This lovely, upward, outward, yin force we channel needs to be honored and protected.  Just because women are "free" doesn’t mean there aren’t countervailing forces doing push-ups, in the dark, to bring us down.  And that’s not paranoia.  Poverty affects women more than men.  Although it’s slowly getting smaller, the wage gap between genders is alive and well.  According to the Riley Center in San Francisco,  a woman is battered in the U.S. every nine seconds, 95% of all domestic abuse is suffered by women, and domestic violence is the single most major cause of injury to women, outnumbering car accidents and muggings. And let’s not forget the malignant monster which is pornography, now just a click away from every modern brain. 

So are we really doing so well?

It was wonderful to spend a weekend in a place honoring our girl-ness.  Our wo-mojo.  The Yin.  Marianne Williamson, who wrote A Woman’s Worth (among other great books–check her out), gathered a bunch of strong ladies as Sister Giant to help us figure out what we can do with this delicious, hard-won freedom and power.  We were reminded that the Great Yin has a moral rudder the world needs very badly right now.  That an awakened female conscience would never knowingly let a child starve to death.  She gave us permission to feel the female power that says "Not in THIS house" in the face of an immoral, crazy, 1-in-4-American-children-goes-to-bed-hungry world.  She hooked us up with a group called RESULTS whose mission is to create the political will to end poverty.  Because that’s what’s missing; not the money.  Not the food.  The political will.  RESULTS regularly lobbies Congress on Foreign and Domestic Aid issues with the goal of getting real and badly needed help to the hungry here and abroad.  She had us role-play talking to our representatives.  She reminded us that we vote.  That we matter.  That people around the world right now need some compassionate, loving, fierce yin. 

Marianne calls it a national security issue.  She says that where there are desperate, hungry, hopeless people, there is a petri dish for pathological behavior, crime, war and possible terrorism.  Happy, educated, well-fed people don’t tend to blow things up.  At least, not as much. 

We didn’t have time to talk about girls’ schools getting terrorized in Afghanistan.  And no one mentioned female circumcision in Africa or the phenomenon of Bride Burning in India.  That’s the stuff that makes me crazy.  But, of course, there are too many problems facing women in the world for just one weekend.  So we focussed on the solution.  We recovered and re-affirmed the great loving, mothering, yin which steers our female souls.  And for us, lucky enough to be free and empowered, it can be our currency in the world.  Let’s awaken the Sister Giant and use her power.  

It’s only been recently that I developed a taste for grapefruit.  As a little girl, it just seemed bitter.  And even though the bitterness came with some serious sweetness, my young tongue couldn’t appreciate that dance of taste.  And the fact that the bitterness and sweetness sat on either side of sour…? Well, that just seemed like God doing drugs or something. 

But I appreciate the miracle of it now.  The grapefruit wins the Triple Crown of fruit by somehow combining sour (Springtime energy), bitter (Summer energy) and sweet (late summer energy).  And in so doing, it produces the most fantastic range of taste and satisfaction.  Biting into a wedge of grapefruit on a hot, summer day is like letting my head be blown off by fireworks.  When I close my eyes and just let my tongue and my brain receive it, the grapefruit delivers a punch perfectly reflective of the sexy, out-of-control, sun-drenched excitement of summer.  And I don’t need a lot.  Just a few bites does the trick. 

Yes, I live in Southern California now, so grapefruits have become local to me.  For those of you reading this in a more temperate climate, pick a fruit that’s at its peak right now and let it be that lovely exclamation mark to your day.  Close your eyes and hear it speak to you.  And if you’re in good health, and the thermometer creeps up into the "holy crap it’s hot" zone, blow your head off with some grapefruit!

FYI: Here’s a radio interview I did recently on Breaking Through with Georgiann

I’m all about iceberg lettuce these days.  I know, I know… it’s a throwback to salads from the 70s, and maybe that’s why I’m so attracted to it.  Just gimme a summer Friday evening, schooldays but a fading memory, with "I Dream of Jeannie" following "The Brady Bunch" on the boob, and the iceberg lettuce with the Kraft salad dressings goes down like a dream. 

Of course, as a sophisticated Grown Up Lady, I treat my iceberg with a little more respect.  Here’s my latest dressing:

1/2 a really ripe avocado

1/2 a bunch of fresh cilantro

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon organic dijon mustard

1 teaspoon umeboshi vinegar

1/2 teaspoon shoyu

1 teaspoon maple syrup!

Whiz all the ingredients in a food processor or blender.  If it’s too thick, just add more olive oil until you have a nice creamy consistency.  Adjust seasonings to taste… (you  might need more ume vinegar). 

Toss into salad of chopped iceberg (I like chopped it into squarish bites, not shredded), fresh red onion and cucumber slices… mmm… and stay cool. 

To squinch like Lyla, download The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics audiobook right here.

Anyway, fun was had by all.  I gave a talk called “Macrobiotics for Vegans” because veganism is JUST SO COOL these days and there is about a 95% overlap between the two practices–at least potentially.  If you’re vegan and eating only white pasta, tropical fruit, diet soda and sugary desserts, you’re not macro.  BUT, if you’re practicing macrobiotics without eating fish (which is only a tiny part of the diet), you’re vegan.  And if you’re in the former category, it’s easy to be vegan and end up sick.  Ironic that a person makes a lifestyle decision to end the suffering of others and ends up suffering herself.  That’s neither good nor necessary.

You see, macrobiotics is not organized around a “no suffering” stance; instead, the macrobiotic diet is geared at helping the individual harmonize (on a cellular level) with nature, which reduces or ends unnecessary suffering on many levels.  Many macros eat fish occasionally, but the diet can be followed without it as well.  So, considering so many people are choosing to go animal-product free these days, I figured it would make sense to help them learn how to stay in balance while they do it.

So here’s a summary of the lecture (without the jokes):

If you’re practicing a vegan lifestyle:  “YYAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!”  You are doing an enormous thing; helping your body, helping animals and helping the planet.  You are reducing your carbon footprint SUBSTANTIALLY.  Being vegan is good for your soul.

However, by cutting out meat, you are taking a lot of the yang out of your diet.  Remember, meat, salty cheese, baked flour and salt are all really yang.  That leaves you messing around on the yin sides of things: sugar, fruit, white flour, soy “milks” and “ice creams”, chocolate, and if you’re a partier, alcohol and drugs.  Without the yang, and with too much yin, vegans can get weak, anemic, depressed and isolated.  Not everyone, but some.

So, it’s important to keep some good quality yang-izing foods in the diet.  They are:

Whole grains.  Nice and tight and compact, whole grains deliver a very stabilizing and centering energy.

Sea vegetables.  Yes, seaweed.  Soooooooo rich in minerals.  They keep your blood strong and alkaline.

Miso:  Try making your own miso soup a couple of times a week. UNBELIEVABLY FREAKIN’ GOOD FOR YOU! (p.s. Japanese restaurant soup is not)

On the yin side of things, try to use rice syrup and maple syrup instead of white sugar or cane juice.  Try whole grain breads and pastas.  Eat fruits that are grown locally.  This will help you to stay more centered.

If you have no clue what I’m talking about with the yins and the yangs, time to read THE HIP CHICK’S GUIDE TO MACROBIOTICS!!!

Cool-looking trees.  I love how they mingle with each other:

I’ve been swimming lately in the Pacific ocean.  Even writing those words, I sigh…

My friend Lou and I go down to the beach a couple of times each week.  When we get there, we talk on the sand for a while, downloading our respective days, and then one of us says “Shall we?”

Lou has a certain way with the water; he runs straight at it, yelling “it’s warm!” to himself–and anyone nearby–before plowing headfirst into a wave.  The yang approach.  I, on the other hand, let the cold sting of the water electrify the soles of my feet first.  In that moment, when my nervous system shouts its first of many “Holy Crap!”s, everything becomes wonderfully still.  I smell the salt.  I feel the suck of the undertow at my heels as I tip backwards in the sand.  The glitter of the sun on the water almost hurts my eyes.  And then I see the foam.  The lovely foam.  A smile fixes itself on my face like I’m five years old.

I approach, excited yet cautious. The legs aren’t hard to submerge, until the mid-thighs.  That’s where the fat is tender and sensitive.  And the crotch–oh God–what is it about hitting the Lady Mound with cold water?  It’s almost nauseating, but once it’s done, it’s done.  All good.  My midriff offers little argument, but by the time I’m negotiating some medium waves, and my chest is their prey, I resist again.  It feels so wrong to have the breasts and heart slapped with icy, angry walls of water.  Lou yells from far away “get your head in!  It’s not good until you’re under!”  And he’s right.  Once I’ve surrendered it all…I’ve surrendered it all.  And it is good.

The ocean doesn’t know about Lehman Brothers.  She hasn’t heard George Bush’s warning of imminent economic collapse.  She has absolutely no interest in the price of oil and she certainly won’t be watching the debates.  I love that about her.  She’s just there, bigger than all of us; bigger than any baseball stadium or skyscraper we could dump in her… bigger than all the countries we are standing on, freaking out.  Although she might seem like a cold, moody bitch at times, she’s really just setting the rules.  Setting the real rules.

The ocean is a place of weightlessness.  Isn’t it nice to have a place to float, when everything feels like it’s sinking?  Do something free today.

Here’s a picture of Lou:

P.S.

My friend Christy is a macro cook here in Los Angeles and she’s giving a series of cooking classes coming up.  If you live in the area, check them out at: http://vivalagreens.com/cookingclasses.html

Here’s one her recipes:

Sweet Polenta Porridge

Ingredients:
3 cups filtered water
2 pinches sea salt
1 cup organic yellow polenta, washed
1/3 cup organic soy, rice, or almond milk
1 Tablespoon organic sweetener, more or less to taste
1 Tablespoon organic raisins
Dash of organic cinnamon

1 cup organic walnuts, chopped

Directions:
1.    Bring water and polenta to a boil in medium saucepan with sea salt.
2.    Simmer, stirring frequently for about 10 minutes until polenta gets thick and creamy.
3.    Stir in almond milk, raisins, cinnamon, and sweetener to polenta.
4.    Stir over low flame for a few minutes to incorporate the ingredients.
5.    Toast walnuts in skillet over medium flame until fragrant. Be careful not to burn the
nuts. Sprinkle over porridge.

I was frothing at the mouth at that point, due for my rabies shot.

I don’t wear my cat-love on my sleeve for fear, being single these days and over 22, that I will be perceived as a pathetic old cat lady.  AS IF HAVING 79 CATS IN A SMALL APARTMENT IS WRONG!!

Just kidding.  I have two.  As of last week, I introduced 3-month old George to 5-year old Pepper.  He’s a rambunctious tabby who doesn’t know yet that an ankle is neither a chew-toy nor a scratching post .  Pepper, needless to say, has been pretty ticked off by this interloper.  She finally relaxes when he takes a nap, as below, all upside down with his legs in the air:

All the stress of becoming a second-time cat-mom has made me crave peanut butter cookies.  Although I’m not the most original chef,  I have a knack for stealing recipes and adding my secret je ne sais quoi.  In this case, I’ve stolen a peanut butter cookie recipe from Meredith McCarty (an amazing chef and cookbook author in Northern California–check her out) and added Vegenaise to insure maximum fat and yumminess content.  This recipe is NOT for those on the healing diet.  Sorry!!

Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 to 1 cup unbleached white flour
1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup light vegetable oil
1/2 cup peanut butter, crunchy or smooth
1/4 cup Vegenaise
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment or brush with oil.  Mix dry ingredients, adding lesser amounts of flours and baking powder for small drop cookies and more for bigger cookies that hold their shapes.  Whisk wet ingredients together and add to dry to form a smooth batter or dough.  Transfer wetter dough (less flour) to baking sheets by heaping teaspoons or, for perfect shapes, roll that amount in your palms to make balls and flatten somewhat.  For firmer dough (more flour), measure in 1/4 or 1/2-cup portions with ice cream scoop or measuring cup and shape into balls.  Either way, press tops with a fork in classic crisscross design.  Bake until bottoms are golden, 12 to 15 minutes.

Down, George!!  Ow!!!!

It just didn’t seem like I had much to say this summer, between double espressos and white pasta dishes. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour, dashing from irritation to resentment. And when the intensity faded and the race track cleared, I was left with grief… the stinking hot tar of grief. And I didn’t feel like sharing.

In the last weeks of her life, my mother and I spoke about my future. I told her that, although I was very glad to have moved back to Toronto–that it was full of valuable, often painful lessons–I felt like a square peg in a round hole there. No matter how much I tried to wrestle Canadian culture into what I needed it to be, and no matter how much it tried to pack my childhood neuroses back into my psyche, it just wasn’t working. I didn’t fit anymore and it felt bad. My mother gave me her blessing to leave our hometown. She understood.

When I was little, I remember my mother saying, on more than one occasion “if I were ever to live anywhere outside of Canada, it would be in England. I’d like to be near the sea.” Now, it’s important to understand that my mother was a very practical person, not disposed to staring out of windows, misty-eyed, pronouncing her dreams and visions. None of us ever thought she’d actually end up in England–as far as we were concerned, it was just something that she said, like “you can’t modify the word ‘unique’” and “will you get me some chicken McNuggets?”.

But Mum was tuning into was her dream. She was receiving little flashes of it many years before it manifested fully, but it was there. And at the age of 55, after a few midlife crises and a some fruitful years in therapy, my mother–much to the amazement of her friends and family–left smug and snug Toronto and headed straight for the sea. She bought a flat in Cornwall, in the west of England and pronounced that she would spent six months of every year there from now on.

I’m only beginning to realize the courage it took for her to leave. Yes, it was an English-speaking country and yes, she had the financial resources to do it comfortably, but as I age, I understood more deeply how yang and contracted we become over time. To bust out of a safe, respectable and familiar environment and expand into the relative unknown–at 55–takes some balls. But something inside of her was pushing and pushing, and it wasn’t going to stop.*

Within a year, my dear mum, who hadn’t been in a relationship for fourteen years, met the love of her life and her plans to return to Toronto became a joke. Clearly, by following her intuition, she had put herself in the right place at the right time. The last fourteen years of her life she just got happier and happier. She discovered macrobiotics, her spirituality and her life became a dream infused with love from every direction.

So I landed in California two weeks ago. It’s the place that’s been calling to me for the last five years, but if I’m really honest with myself, I’ve had a fascination with it since I was a child. I’ve lived here once before–for a few months–and every time I’ve been here I have felt more myself, and more aligned with my work in the world than I do anywhere else; macrobiotics and hypnosis are practically mainstream in Southern California, and a huge percentage of hits on this site come from this hot, shaky, celebrity-dotted desert. It’s not where I’m from, but it’s home. I’ve moved into an apartment in a magical bamboo forest, owned by some macrobiotic friends, Eric and Sanae, who live just next door. I’m very, very happy. Listening to that little voice inside produces a happiness nothing else can match. Although I miss my family and friends in Toronto deeply, I can hear my mother somewhere, cheering.

*For a great example of having a dream and acting on it, see Man on Wire.

RECIPE:

It’s the time of year for settling foods–foods that help stabilize blood sugar and tonify the stomach, spleen and pancreas. As summer lays down like a panting dog, our bodies need to settle down from all the expansion, in preparation for autumn’s contraction. This time of year is known as Late Summer and its foods are sweet vegetables, sweet rice and millet. Its taste is (you guessed it) sweet. The harvest is coming in and life is very sweet and abundant. So here’s a squash soup recipe by my friends, from their book, Love, Eric and Sanae:

Butternut Squash and Kidney Bean Potage

Makes 4 servings:

For the Kidney Beans:

1/4 cup kidney beans, sorted and rinsed

2 cups water

1-inch strip of kombu

For the squash soup:

1 butternut squash

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 brown onion, finely diced

2 carrots, finely diced

2 cups water

2 pinches sea salt

2 pinches curry powder

1 tablespoon white miso

1/2 cup rice milk (unsweetened)

To make the kidney beans:

1. Soak the beans in ample water for 4 to 6 hours. Drain.

2. In a large pot with a lid, combine the beans, water and kombu and bring to a boil.

3. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes, or until beans are fully cooked and still retain their shape.

To make the squash soup:

1. Using a vegetable peeler, peel the squash, slice in half, and remove the seeds. Coarsely chop the squash and set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan, warm the oil. Saute the onions lightly for a few minutes.

3. Add the carrots, squash, and water, and simmer for a few minutes.

4. Add the sea salt and curry powder. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.

5. Transfer vegetables to a blender. Add the miso and rice milk and puree until creamy.

6. Transfer to a large bowl or pot, gently stir in the whole beans and serve.