Zumba

Tuesday and Thursday, late afternoon, I go to a Zumba class. It takes place on one of the gym's three basketball courts, glassed-in, but I think soundproof, since the folks passing by look in, perhaps surprised by all the jumping bodies, but I have the feeling they can't hear the music which is, well, loud and latin. 

We're a mixed bag of participants. Last quarter there were a couple of game men, but this term we're all women, backgrounds Latina, African-American, a large Asian contingent and the Caucasians. In general the Latin-Americans are really good at the Twerk, the rest of us, it depends, partly on age, ethnic background, possibly also marital status...  And the instructor, male, Latino, is amazing: he can move every part of his body separately, starting, say, at the shoulders and working down. It's fluid, it's like waves moving down his body. Me, I just try to get the footwork and occasionally, if I can, add in some arms. A woman who's new this term, from Guatamala, who is an interpreter at the Children's Hospital, says I should come with her to another zumba class, where the instructor pays a lot more attention to detail which, she says, is good for the form of it, but perhaps less aerobic. "Do you like dancing?" she asks. "Oh yes," I say, "but I'm no good." I don't add that once I could do a mean Twist.

I could editorialize: about how the Latinas are so much better at this than most of the rest of us. There's one younger woman from Latin America somewhere, originally, who hardly seems to move at all, but still manages to be incredibly sexy, from her Nikes to the aloofness of her head in a turn. It's definitely not a Anglo thing (nor, based on the evidence of a few participants in one class, Chinese) and it makes me really envious. I Imagine households where everyone is dancing all the time, noisy, joyful--and then I remember how I like quiet corners, stillness and books.

Gardening/'Farming'

 I stood for a couple of hours at a high shaded table, pricking out tomato seedlings from tiny containers into slightly bigger ones. The seedlings--half a dozen different varieties, for cooking and eating, red, yellow--are a healthy size, and it felt good easing them out of one container into another, centering them, sifting potting mixture around them, tucking them in, labelling them, moving trays of them into another plastic-wrapped greenhouse till they are the right size to slip into the ground. 

When all the tomatoes had been done, we--me and a bunch of student volunteers putting in their required time at the 'farm' for a class in earth sciences--switched to peppers, frailer subjects, mostly just a tiny leaf or two trailing roots, but same process. 

The thing about tomatoes is the smell of the leaves. I squeeze them and then I sniff my fingers, revelling in it. It's as good as the tomatoes themselves, though tomatoes off the vine are pretty terrific too.

My reward for my labour is two fat leeks, a visit to the chickens that netted three fresh eggs, a bag of strawberries, some fresh oregano, and a bouquet of orange and yellow flowers that look like marigolds but aren't. Their petals are edible. Dinner: leeks (I wrote leaks) with olive oil, an omelet, strawberries.

Cooking

For some years our evening meal has been spaghetti and tomato sauce made at the last minute with a couple of egg-shaped tomatoes, a lot of freshly chopped parsley, garlic, salt and pepper and occasionally a sprinkle of thyme. It was easy, we both like eating it, with some olive oil and cheese maybe added at the end. But now that we have our own--as opposed to a rented--kitchen again here in California, I've been making soups: leek soup, turnip soup, lentil soup, broccoli soup, all just as easy as spaghetti and tomato sauce, and I have acquired a neat little gizmo to blend the ingredients (potato + veg + cream) to a smooth finish. 

In France, we still make spaghetti, but given the variety of the food, cooking dinner in France is a different proposition. Grocery-shopping here in California is a little like shopping for books: you have to get in the car and go somewhere big, and a lot of it is pre-cut and pre-wrapped. I've been thinking about "economies of scale." Sure, for groceries, I like being able to get everything at one store, but I also like the neighborhood fabric of small stores in France. I like the small meat market, the small cheese store, the corner pharmacy where the owners know you and the salespeople are part of the extended family. I like buying the newspaper from a kiosk. I dislike supermarket pharmacies intensely. France is trying to rationalize its small businesses, perhaps just as the US is starting a movement to bring them back, by not allowing chain stores to take over Main Street, by thinking about global trade's effect on employment, as well as the stock market.

The Farm

So last Monday I went to the weekly volunteer orientation at the farm. There were two of us, a student in her third year, switching to a major in earth sciences and me, and we ended up weeding a patch of onions, then cutting back some kale, a very satisfactory way to spend a couple of hours, what with the chickens clucking contentedly in the background and the free produce at the end (three leeks I made into soup that night and lots of strawberries, all organic). I'll go again tomorrow.

I've always enjoyed weeding. It's another of those mindless, domestic tasks, like ironing, that leave you feeling the world is a tidier place, that you haven't messed it up with any stray thoughts. But I'm going to need to be more diligent with the sunscreen if I keep up, which I plan to.

Tuesday and Thursday volunteers harvest--for the university dining halls and the odd "farm to table" local restaurant. But that's in the morning and I like to think I 'work' in the morning, meaning putter around on my computer, playing with Baudelaire or my own little eggs of poems.

Late Saturday afternoon

A peaceful afternoon, with sunshine and a breeze. We visited the community garden (lots of abandoned plots) and the "O'Donahue Family Farm"--wonder who the O'Don0hues, who preferred to have their name on a farm with chickens and leeks rather than a big fancy building housing gym equipment or computers, are.

I could move into the chicken coop--it would be a squeeze, but a bed of hay and a nice weedy field to peck in, and companions whose political opinions are limited to cut-cut-cut. We had a conversation leaning over the electric fence, which fortunately wasn't plugged in. Anyway, half the chickens had escaped to the surrounding field, and after we wondered if we should get them back, we saw a sign: "Don't worry about us, we can get ourselves back in. We are at Stanford after all."

This is my sort of place, with a bench in the shade of an old, spreading live oak tree, and stink of manure, and the little sounds hens make when they are foraging.  A few bikes off in the corner of the field, a shed covered in a sheet of  plastic with tools and seedlings, some wheelbarrows (none of them red) and a densely-planted band of orange and yellow marigolds. I could have settled down with a book.

Coetzee, "Diary of a Bad Year"

I've been rereading "Diary" this past week, for a Spring Term seminar on "The Contemporary" that I've been given permission to audit--perhaps the principle joy of living next door to a university is the chance to audit an endless variety of classes and fill in some of the gaps in my education.

I read the Coetzee soon after it was published back in 2007. My copy then came from the library of the British school I was working in, in Chatou, along the Seine in the Paris suburbs. It is a provoking book: the top part of each page is the diary: short polemical, essayistic entries on a variety of topics, such as the state, democracy, Machiavelli and the bottom of the page contains the story of a man who sounds a lot like Coetzee (lives in Australia, writing a book, maybe this book, aging, horny) who meet a sexy young woman in his high rise laundry room (lots laundry room details), ruminates about the stereotype of horny aging men, endeavours to strike up a relationship, etc. There are two or three problems that interest me: 1) what is the point of this structure? 2) how to bloody read the book: a) a bit of the top of the page and a bit of the bottom, page after page; b) read the top or the bottom (a narrative, makes more sense) straight through, then come back and read the other part straight through? (Kundera, in his mingling of essay and narrative makes this easier; Coetzee doesn't provide any transitions; c) would either part of the book on its own be sufficiently interesting? It's getting under my skin. I suspect that's what Coetzee intends.

It's very well written, somewhat abrasive, like someone you meet at a party who makes no attempt whatsoever to charm you and seems to be smirking at your discomfort.

Elena Ferrante, "La Figlia Oscura"

from the beginning of Chapter 2, quickly translated:

'When my daughters moved to Toronto, where their father had been living and working for years, I discovered with embarrassment and delight that I didn't feel sad at all, in fact I felt as light as if I had finally brought them into the world. For the first time in about twenty-five years I no longer felt the anxiety of having to look after them. The house stayed as clean as if no one lived in it, I was no longer plagued by expenses or laundry, the woman who helped me with the cleaning found better paid work and I felt no need to replace her."

[Translation problems:

"messe al mondo" = "mettre au monde" in French = put [brought] them in the world, deliver.

imbarazzo = embarras = not really embarrassment, but a mixture of shame, botheration and embarrrassment.]

I've run out of Italian novels for the moment, so I'm rereading this one, which I have on the shelf.

I'm finding I can't quite face up to the next installment of Knausgaard. I brought it home from the library, I read a little, it sat around for a while, I took it back. 

Rainy Day

I'm sitting here looking out at sheets of rain, falling into the creek that separates our town from the next town, and wondering what the creek, which is usually dry, looks like. Not going out to see, though. The trees along the creek are all waving and drowning. Guess I'll go do a little cooking for dinner and hope it stops before too long because I have stuff to do and I'd rather do it on bike than in a car.

Just finished the first final draft of a review which I must now stop tinkering with and leave on the back burner for a few weeks till I can see it again and decide if it's ready for the publisher. Which also means it's time to think about finding something else to review or translate, or maybe I'll just watch reruns of House of Cards. 

I like the sound of rain on the roof.