Getting Older

I turn 40 this year. Surprisingly I'm not as fussed about it as I was when turning 30. I guess I've had a decade of becoming used to being in my thirties...and so the forties do not seem all that bad. In some ways, I like me better now. In some ways I don't. But then if I were perfect there would be nothing to strive for. Or fall into. Or merge with.

Feelings rise and fall. Maybe not with the same breathless intensity but I'm far from dead.

I love my dogs. Arnold is stretched out on the floor next to the cupboard, post-bath. He is keeping me company. Maggot is stretched out in the hall. He is a sensitive doggie and senses that Arnold doesn't like him in the room.

The two of them are getting on surprisingly well, in any case. Better than I expected. And that's always good. I need to go out soon and do some shopping. I want to take Arnold for a walk but it's too hot. So I'll do the other stuff first. Dog hair covers everything. I'm scruffy and dusty and I need a shower. But then I think...this is what the living do. This is how the living live.

Today, I want to share with you an essay by one of my favourite authors, Anne Lamott. About getting older. I think it's relevant. For me. And for some of my bestest friends. I can't believe I've gone all these years without reading Lamott. Thank you Patti Digh for introducing me to her.

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I was at a wedding the other day with a lot of women in their twenties and thirties. Many wore sexy dresses, their youthful skin aglow. And even though I was twenty to thirty years older than they, a little worse for wear, a little tired, and overwhelmed by the loud music, I was smiling.

I smiled with a secret smile of pleasure in being older, fifty plus change, which can no longer be considered extremely late youth, or even early middle age. But I would not give back a year of life I've lived.

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it was given me me. It has provided time and experience and failures and triumphs and time-tested friends who have helped me step into the shape that was waiting for me. I fit into me now. I have an organic life, finally, not necessarily the one people imagined for me, or tried to get me to have. I have the life I longed for. I have become the woman I hardly dared imagine I could be. There are parts I don't love - until a few years ago, I had no idea that you could have cellulite on your stomach - but not only do I get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.

Left to my own devices, would I trade this for firm thighs, fewer wrinkles, a better memory?

You bet I would. That is why it's such a blessing that I'm not left to my own devices. I have amazing friends. I have a cool kid, a sweet boyfriend, darling pets. I've learned to pay attention to life, and to listen. I'd give up all this for a flatter belly? Only about a third of the time.

I still have terrible moments when I despair about my body - time and gravity have not made various parts of it higher and firmer. But those are just moments now - I used to have years when I believed I was more beautiful if I jiggled less, if all parts of my body stopped moving when I did. But I know two things now that I didn't at thirty: That when we get to heaven, we will discover that the appearance of our butts and our skin was the 127th on the list of what mattered on this earth. And that I am not going to live forever. Knowing these things has set me free.

I am thrilled - ish - for every gray hair and sore muscle, because of all the friends who didn't make it, who died too young of AIDS and breast cancer. I'm decades past my salad days, and even past the main course: maybe I'm in my cheese days - sitting atop the lettuce leaves on the table for a while now with all the other cheese balls, but with much nutrition to offer, and still delicious. Or maybe I'm in my desert days, the most delicious course. Whatever you call it, much of the stuff I used to worry about has subsided - what other people think of me, and of how I am living my life. I give these things the big shrug. Mostly. Or at least, eventually. It's a huge relief.

I became more successful in my forties, but that pales in comparison with the other gifts of my current decade - how kind to myself I have become, what a wonderful, tender wife I am to myself, what a loving companion. I prepare myself tubs of hot salt water at the end of the day, and soak my tired feet. I run interference for myself when I am working, like the wife of a great artist would - "No, I'm sorry, she can't come. She's working hard these days, and needs a lot of down time." I live by the truth that "No" is a complete sentence. I rest as a spiritual act.

I have grown old enough to develop radical acceptance. I insist on the right to swim in warm water at every opportunity, no matter how I look, no matter how young and gorgeous the other people on the beach are. I don't think that if I live to be eighty, I'm going to wish I'd spent more hours in the gym or kept my house a lot cleaner. I'm going to wish I had swum more unashamedly, made more mistakes, spaced out more, rested. On the day I die, I want to have had desert. So this informs how I live now.

I have survived so much loss, as all of us have by our forties - my parents, dear friends, my pets. Rubble is the ground on which our deepest friendships are built. If you haven't already, you will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and you never completely get over the loss of a deeply beloved person. But this is also good news. The person lives forever, in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through, and you learn to dance with the banged-up heart. You dance to the absurdities of life, you dance to the minuet of old friendships.

I danced alone for a couple of years, and came to believe that I might not ever have a passionate romantic relationship - might end up alone! I'd always been terrified of this. But I'd rather not ever be in a couple, or ever get laid again, than be in a toxic relationship. I spent a few years celibate. It was lovely, and it was sometimes lonely. I had surrendered; I'd run out of bullets. I learned to be the person I wished I'd meet, at which point I found a kind, artistic, handsome man. When we get out of bed, we hold our lower backs, like Walter Brennan, and we laugh, and bring each other the Advil.

Younger women worry that their memories will begin to go. And you know what? They will. Menopause has not increased my focus and retention as much as I'd been hoping. But a lot is better-off missed. A lot is better not gotten around to.

I know many of the women who were at the wedding fear getting older, and I wish I could gather them together, and give them my word of honor that every one of my friends loves being older, loves being in her forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. My aunt Gertrud is eighty-five and leaves us behind in the dust when we hike. Look, my feet hurt some mornings, and my body is less forgiving when I exercise more than I am used to. But I love my life more, and me more. I'm so much juicier: And as that old saying goes, it's not that I think less of myself, but that I think of myself less often. And that feels like heaven to me.

And Now For Something A Little Tart

OK, so I've shared with you all of two chocolate-based recipes. Don't you think it's time for a little lemon? Well, I do. And this is a favourite. Try it, if you don't believe me, and see for yourself.

Ingredients
grated zest 1 lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
6 oz (175 g) self-raising flour, sifted
1 level teaspoon baking powder
6 oz (175 g) butter at room temperature
6 oz (175 g) caster sugar
3 large eggs

For the lemon curd:
grated zest and juice 1 large juicy lemon
3 oz (75 g) caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 oz (50 g) unsalted butter

For the icing:
zest 1 large lemon
2-3 teaspoons lemon juice
2 oz (50 g) sifted icing sugar
Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 3, 325°F (170°C).

Method

Just measure all the cake ingredients into a mixing bowl and beat – ideally with an electric hand whisk – till you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Then divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and bake them on the centre shelf of the oven for about 35 minutes or until the centres feel springy when lightly touched with a little finger.

While the cakes are cooking, make the lemon curd. Place the sugar and grated lemon zest in a bowl, whisk the lemon juice together with the eggs, then pour this over the sugar. Then add the butter cut into little pieces, and place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently till thickened – about 20 minutes. You don't have to stay with it – just come back from time to time to give it a stir.

When the cakes are cooked, remove them from the oven and after about 30 seconds turn them out on to a wire rack. When they are absolutely cold – and not before – carefully cut each one horizontally into two using a sharp serrated knife. Now spread the curd thickly to sandwich the sponges together.

Then to make the icing, begin by removing the zest from the lemon – it's best to use a zester to get long, curly strips. Then sift the icing sugar into a bowl and gradually stir in the lemon juice until you have a soft, runny consistency. Allow the icing to stand for 5 minutes before spreading it on top of the cake with a knife, almost to the edges, and don't worry if it runs a little down the sides of the cake. Then scatter the lemon zest over the top and leave it for half an hour for the icing to firm up before serving.

And I Would Say Goodbye

Today I'm thinking of those no longer with us. Addy spoke of our friend Mals, recently. She said she met someone who knew her, who used to go visit her in hospital every day. Mals had leukemia. She died in a very short time of finding out. Two strokes from the chemo, the loss of her ability to walk, and even, for the most part, to talk...and then she was gone.

I never saw her after she was diagnosed. I didn't get to see her before I left for Australia and when I came back, she said, wait, no, not yet (probably not wanting me to see what she looked like now, probably wanting me to remember her as she was, which I do, Mals, I do) and then she was gone.

It happened so fast, like a picture, fading from a screen, like this mists of dream scattering into wakefulness. I had a hard time dealing with it. And so I do what I always do.

I wrote.

I wrote her an obituary, the only one I've ever written...and today, as I remember her, I share it, with all of you:

It's the strangest things that remind me of you. Driving up ramps. Shopping at Isetan, KLCC. The backview of a blue Proton hatchback.

You gave me love and laughter.

And then you went away.

I cannot cry for you. I cried when Addy told me you were sick. I cried when Sree told me there wasn't much time left. I cried when I heard your voice, thin and tired, saying, Jenn, you have to let me go.

But when I got that text: Mala passed away at 6.15 this morning... I didn't cry then. I couldn't.

You were getting better. You were home from the hospital after so many months.

When I got back to Malaysia, I asked, when?

You said wait. You said, not yet. You were not strong enough for visitors. You said you'd tell me when.

You didn't say I'd never see you again.

So I wait for the phone call telling me you want to meet up for coffee. At Delifrance. Or Coffee Bean. Maybe Starbucks. We will talk about things that matter. Like your new job. Or my new book. And then we can stroll through Kinokuniya and thumb through a few books. We could try on a few clothes at British India or Padini and snort derisively at the fact that they seem to only cater for anorexic teenagers. We'd comfort ourselves with cinnamon buns. Or chocolate eclairs. Then we'll catch a scary movie (I'll peek out behind half closed fingers and you can stopper up your ears and we'll compare notes after and try to figure out what it was all about).

And then when it's time to go, I'll hug you tightly and tell you I love you.

And I would say goodbye.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

This is one of my favourite children's stories of all time. I can't think why more people haven't read it and adored it the way I do. It was difficult trying to figure out just which excerpt to pick, and I finally settled for the one where we meet Mali, the Floating Gardener and Goopy and Bagha, who are Plentimaw fish. Iff and Butt are already in the picture - and together, the form Haroun's army - to go and fight Khattam Shud who is attempting to destroy the source of stories and bring the whole world into silence. And endless night.

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Haroun had not forgotten what his father had said about Khattam-Shud. "Too many fancy notions are turning out to be true," he thought. At once Butt the Hoopoe answered, without moving its beak: "A strange sort of Story Moon our Kahani would be, if storybook things weren't everywhere to be found." And Haroun had to admit that that was a reasonable remark.

They were speeding south to Gup City. The Hoopoe had chosen to remain on the water, zooming along like a speedboat, spraying Story Streams in every direction. "Doesn't it muddle up the stories?" Haround inquired. "All this turbulence. It must mix things up dreadfully."

"No problem!" cried Butt the Hoopoe. "Any story worth its salt can handle a little shaking up! Va-voom!"

Abandoning what was clearly not a profitable line of conversation, Haroun returned to more important matters. "Tell me more about this Khattam-Shud," he requested, and was utterly amazed when Iff replied in almost the very same words that Rashid Khalifa had used: "He is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of Language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. At least", and here the Water Genie abandoned the somewhat too sonorous tone of the preceding sentences, "that's what they say. When it comes to the Land of Chup and its people the Chupwalas, it's all mostly gossip and flim-flam, because its generations since any of us went across the Twilight Strip into the Perpetual Night."

"You'll have to forgive me," Haroun broke in, "but I'm going to need a little help with the geography."

"Hmf," sniffed Butt the Hoopoe. "Poorly educated, I see."

"That's totally illogical," Haroun retorted. "You're the one who's been boasting about how Speed has hidden this Moon from people on Earth. So it's unreasonable to expect us to know about its topographical features, principal exports and the like."

But Butt's eye was twinkling. Really, there were major difficulties involved in talking to machines, Haroun thought. With their deadpan expressions, it was impossible to know when they were pulling your leg.

"Thanks to genius of the Eggheads at P2C2E House," Butt began, taking pity on Haroun, "the rotation of Kahani has been brought under control. As a result the Land of Gup is bathed in Endless Sunshine, while over in Chup it's always the middle of the night. In between the two lies the Twilight Strip, in which at the Grand Comptroller's command, Guppees long ago constructed an unbreakable (and also invisible) Wall of Force. Its goodname is Chattergy's Wall, named after our King, who of course had absolutely nothing to do with building it."

"Hold on a minute," Haroun frowned. "If Kahani goes round the Earth, even if it goes very fast indeed, there must be moments when the Earth is between it and the sun. So it can't be true that one half is always in the daylight; you're telling stories again."

"Naturally I'm telling stories," Butt the Hoopoe replied. "And if you have any arguments, please take them up with the Walrus. Now excuse me, please, while I pay attention ahead. Volume of traffic has dramatically increased."

Haroun had plenty more questions to ask - why did the Chupwalas live in Permanent Night? Must it not be very cold indeed if the sun never shone at all? And what was Bezaban, or a Cultmaster, come to that? - but they were evidently nearing Gup City, because the waters around them and the skies above were filling up with mechanical birds every bit as fanciful as Butt the Hoopoe: birds with snake-heads and peacock-tails, flying fishes, dogbirds. And on the backs of the birds were Water Genies with whiskers of every possible hue, all wearing turbans and embroidered waistcoats and aubergine-shaped pajamas, and all looking so much like Iff that it was a good thing, in Haroun's opinion, that the colours of their whiskers were different enough to make it possible to tell the apart.

"Something most serious has occured," Iff commented. "All units have been ordered back to base. Now if I had my Disconnecting Tool," he added sharply, "I would have received the order myself, because, as of course Thieflets do not know, there is a highly advanced transreceiver built into the handle."

"Luckily, however," Haroun came back, just as sharply, "since you half-poisoned me with that dirty story, you worked things out; so there's no harm done, except, perhaps, to me."

Iff ignored this. And Haroun's attention was distracted as well, because he noticed that a large patch of what looked like a particularly thick and tough type of weed or vegetable of some sort was actually racing along right beside them, keeping pace with Butt the Hoopoe without apparent effort, while it waved vegetable-tentacles inn the air in a most disturbing fashion. At the centre of the mobile vegetable patch was a single lilac flower with thick, fleshy leaves, of a type that Haroun had never seen before. "What's that?" he inquired, pointing, even though he knew it was impolite to do so.

"A Floating Gardener, naturally," said Butt the Hoopoe without moving its beak. That made no sense. "You mean a Floating Garden. "Haroun corrected the bird, which gave a little snort. "That's all you know," it harrumphed. At that moment the high-speed vegetation actually reared up out of the water and proceeded to wind and knot itself around and about, until it had taken something like the shape of a man, with the lilac-coloured flower positioned in its 'head' where a mouth should be, and a cluster of weeds forming a rustic-looking hat. "So it is a Floating Gardener after all," Haroun realized.

The Floating Gardener was now running lightly over the surface of the water, showing no sign of sinking. "How could he sink?" Butt the Hoopoe interjected. "Would he not be a Sinking Gardener in that case? Whereas, as you observe, he floats; he runs, he walks, he hops. No problem."

Iff called across to the Gardener, who at once nodded a brief greeting. "Got a stranger with you. Very odd. Still. Your own business," he said. His voice was as soft as flower petals (after all, he was actually speaking through those lilac lips) but his manner was somewhat abrupt. "I thought all you Guppees were chatterboxes," Haroun whispered to Iff. "But this Gardener doesn't say much."

"He is talkative," Iff rejoined. "For a Gardener, anyhow."

"How do you do," Haroun called across to the Gardener, thinking that, as he was the stranger, it was his business to introduce himself. "Who are you?" the Gardener asked in his soft but abrupt way, without breaking his stride. Haroun told him his name and the Gardener gave another curt nod.

"Mali," he said. "Floating Gardener First Class."

"Please," Haroun said in his nicest voice, "what does a Floating Gardener do?"

"Maintenance," answered Mali. "Untwisting twisted Story Streams. Also unlooping same. Weeding. In short: Gardening."

"Think of the Ocean as a head of hair," said Butt the Hoopoe, helpfully. "Imagine it's as full of Story Streams as a thick mane is full of soft, flowing strands. The longer and thicker a head of hair, the knottier and more tangled it gets. Floating Gardeners, you can say, are like the hairdressers of the Sea of Stories. Brush, clean, wash, condition. So now you know."

Iff asked Mali. "What's this pollution? When did it start? How bad is it?"

Mali answered the questions in sequence. "Lethal. But nature as yet unknown. Started only recently, but spread is very rapid. How bad? Very bad. Certain types of stories may take years to clean up."

"For example?" Haroun piped up.

"Certain popular romances have become just long lists of shopping expeditions. Children's stories also. For instance, there is an outbreak of taking helicopter anecdotes."

With that, Mali fell silent, and the rush to Gup City continued. A few minutes later, however, Haroun heard more new voices. They were like choruses, many voices at a time speaking in perfect unison, and they were full of froth and bubbles. Finally Haroun worked out that they were actually coming up from beneath the surface of the Ocean. He looked down into the waters and saw two fearsome sea-monsters right beside the racing Hoopoe, swimming so close to the surface that they were almost surfing on the spray thrown up by Butt as it sped along.

From their roughly triangular shape and their iridescent colouring, Haroun deduced that they were Angel Fish of some variety, though they were as big as giant sharks and had literally dozens of mouths, all over their bodies. These mouths were constantly at work, sucking in Story Streams and blowing them out again, pausing only to speak. When they did so, Haroun noted, each mouth spoke with its own voice, but all the mouths on each individual fish spoke perfectly synchronised words.

"Hurry! Hurry! Don't be late!" bubbled the first fish.

"Ocean's ailing! Cure can't wait!" the second went on.

Butt the Hoopoe was once again kind enough to enlighten Haroun. "These are Plentimaw Fishes," it said. "They acquire their goodname from the fact that you have no doubt registered, viz. that they have plenty of maws, i.e., mouths."

"So," thought Haroun, filled with wonder, "there really are Plentimaw Fish in the Sea, just as old Snooty Buttoo said; and I have travelled a long way, just as my father said, and I've learned that a Plentimaw Fish can be an Angel Fish as well."

"Plentimaw Fishes always go in two's," Butt added without moving its beak. "They are faithful to partners for life. To express this perfect union they speak, only and always, in rhyme."

These particular Plentimaw Fishes seemed unhealthy to Haroun. Their multiple mouths frequently spluttered and coughed, and their eyes looked inflamed and pink. "I'm no expert," Haroun called to them, "but are you both quite well?"

The replies came swiftly, punctuated by bubbling coughs:

"All this bad taste! Ocean starts to hurt!"

"Call me Bagha! This is Goopy!"

"Excuse our rudeness! We feel droopy!"

"Eyes feel rheumy! Throat feels sore!"

"When we're better, we'll talk more."

"As you correctly guessed, all Guppees love to talk," Iff said in an aside. "Silence is often considered rude. Hence the Plentimaws' apology." - "They seem to be talking okay to me," Haroun replied. - "Normally, each mouth says something different," Iff explained. "That makes plenty more talk. For them, this is like silence."

Whereas for a Floating Gardener, a few short sentences are called talkativeness," Haroun sighed. "I don't think I'll ever get the hang of this place. What do the fish do, anyway?"

Iff replied that the Plentimaw Fishes were what he called 'hunger artists' - "Because when they are hungry they swallow stories through every mouth and in their innards miracles occur; a little bit of one story joins on to an idea from another, and hey presto, when they spew the stories out they are not old tales but new ones. Nothing comes from nowhere; new stories are born from old - it is the new combinations that make them new. So you see, our artistic Plentimaw Fishes really create new stories in their digestive systems - so just think how sick they must be feeling now! All these filthied-up sagas passing through their insides, front to back, top to bottom, side to side - no wonder they look green about the gills!"

The Plentimaws surfaced to utter one more wheezy couplet:

"Things are worse than we've ever known!"

"And the worst place is down in our Old Zone."

On hearing this, the Water Genie clapped his hand to his forehead, almost dislodging his turban. "What? What?" Haroun insisted on knowing; and so a now-even-more-preoccupied Iff grudgingly explained that the Old Zone in the southern polar region of Kahani was an area to which hardly anybody went any more. There was little demand for the ancient stories, flowing there. "You know how people are, new things, always new. The old tales, nobody cares."

So the Old Zone had fallen into disuse; but it was believed that all the Streams of Story had originated long ago in one of the currents flowing north across the Ocean from the Wellspring, or Source of Stories, that was located, according to legend, near the Moon's South Pole.

"And if the Source itself is poisoned, what will happen to the Ocean - to us all?" Iff almost wailed. "We have ignored it for too long, and now we pay the price."

"Hold on to hats," Butt the Hoopoe interrupted. "Hitting the brake now. Gup City dead ahead. Record time! Va-va-va-voom! No problem."

"It's amazing what you can get accustomed to, and at what speed," Haroun reflected. "This new world, these new friends: I've just arrived, and already none of it seens very strange at all."

Molly Smiles

I watched this clip over and over again the day before she died. And even then, I felt a little sad, because although it's supposed to be happy, it's bittersweet. Look at her eyes...there is heartbreak there...but all in all, it's joyful enough to include here. The next day I heard she had died.

I thought of Brittany Murphy today.

And this is the result.

Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/9ODkVeaNn2g

Sorry you have to click through if you want to watch it. All embedding has been disabled by request...every single one!

Daddy's little girl paints the world with her magic wand
Daddy's little child breathes new life to the morning time for me
Though we're apart, her thoughts follow me
When I come home , Molly smiles with the dawn
Molly smiles , and she radiates the glow around her halo
When she plays , Molly smiles
On a summer day , Molly smiles
A new day , Molly smiles

The Ruthless Furnace of This World

The markets went to hell today. Which is why I thought it appropriate to share some of Jack Gilbert's wisdom via Martha Beck. (I read it in this month's O magazine):

We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.

Martha Beck: The more you defy your innate negativity bias, building from your strengths, finding relief, and embracing delight wherever you can, the more you become a walking cyclone of peace. The repercussions of one person living in stubborn acceptance of gladness are incalculably positive. Become that person, and you'll find that in spite of everything, there is music. It won't necessarily be a choir of angels. A schnoodle will do. Go to your computer, google "dog sings and plays piano" and see what I mean. As you watch the dog howling his heart out, you may find laughter rising in you, bringing peace, optimism, and joy, opening for you all the doors of life.

Like Shining From Shook Foil

Natalie Goldberg used to read this poem and swoon. I can see why.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.