Why I Love Mad (Wo)Men

It's a good show! It's a great show.  I am totally addicted right now as I catch up on Season 5 since I finally made it to the top of the wait list at the library.  It had been quite some time since I watched it (I finished season 4 when I was still in New Orleans!)  But starting in again, I was reminded of how good it is.  I think some people have their feelings that it is trashy or just perpetuates stereotypes, etc but I kinda think they're wrong and even if they're not it's ok to like something because it's entertaining.

The basic plot backdrop is an ad agency in New York City in the early '60s.  At this time the field was mostly men who drank on the job, smoked a lot of cigarettes and cheated on their (house) wives.  This show takes a particular agency and uses it as a lens to look at a thick layer of social issues.  The most in your face issue is the rising presence of women in the work force and the glaring widespread consequences of a gender power imbalance at home.  As you can guess the agency is full of men, some dashing, some rich, some are both and some are not quite there but want to be.  The agency is also full of sexy secretaries.  So let your mind wander to the expected relations between these two groups.   Then look further and you see one secretary, Peggy, who shows talent and gets promoted and then continues to have to prove herself.  Every day.  And having to put up with overt degradation under the guise of humor because she's one-of-the-guys.  So she has to pay dearly for being good at her job and one of her losses is her sense of being a "woman," she cannot both be one of the guys and a sexual, attractive human being.  We watch her fight with this in superbly acted and written scenes.  She also proves to be the main male character (Don Draper)'s sole
confidante or at least the one person with whom we see him be most himself, often providing the only moments where we see his vulnerable side, the side that makes him human and worthy of compassion.

Another main female character is Joan, the office manager.  The girl is deep.  She's highly sexualized

(beautiful, super curvy and plays it up), she is regarded as almost untouchable or out of every man in the office's league but also has a quiet affair with one of the partners, she is the master of subtlety, highly regarded for her paramount tact in pretty much any situation and she's smart.  It almost gets buried under her sexiness but it shows itself in such subtle ways that most of the men don't realize they are being played or manipulated by her.  Not malicious manipulated but...I can't quite put my finger on it.  She also kicks her young good looking husband out after a final straw.  And she does it so calmly with no room for being bullied or sweet-talked, careful not to fall victim to the "crazy emotional woman syndrome" that makes it so easy for the men to dismiss them.

Finally, a new lead female character is Meghan.  She started out as a secretary, moves up a little to copy editor AND marries Don Draper, the handsome, charming and emotionally messed up lead character.  His story runs deep, no spoilers but his past is dark and he has done much to "make" himself into the man he is (ie. he's got some skeletons in his closet!).  Pre-Meghan, he was married with three kids and it sefl-destructed and you see his current marriage in danger of going that same way.  There is love but he is not ready for a liberated woman even if he is sorta thrilled by it.  Meghan stands up to him but also acts out (check out the Howard Johnson scene with the orange sherbet), she's young and doesn't have the same maturity of Joan so it's painful to watch the emotional disconnect between her and Don.  You (meaning me) really want it to work out!  There's a glimmer of hope that she can show Don another way to be, to learn how to share feelings and for god sakes to stop being aggressive when he gets angry/defensive.  

Just like Meghan at Feminist Current says "just because you like it doesn't make it a feminist show" and that is totally fine.  These women aren't feminist icons but they are women who could be like many women of the time trying to find their place.  Trying to find some self worth outside of the home.  And trying to figure out how to meet their husbands and children in a mutually satisfying and emotional way.

This show doesn't glorify the good old days when women were home cooking and waiting for their man while the men are out earning the money and going on jags.  This show depicts the ugly affects of patriarchy on both men and women and the difficulty breaking patterns that have been building for generation and the stress of hiding emotions and repressing it all.

Are those conventional or ultimate genitals?

The subject of transgender politics is really hot right now, at least in some circles.  Now, I don't pretend that I am in any way on the forefront of understanding all that is politically correct in the dialogue of trans rights, experiences and terminology but I do have some ideas about how it presents itself in my sphere of life.

There is a radical environmental group called Deep Green Resistance (DGR).  Their efforts are geared toward looking at (and stopping) the industrial civilization that is killing us all because it depends on the exploitation of the earth's natural resources as well as the backs of "the 99%."  One of their primary discussion points is that this out of control and out of balance way of living is deeply embedded in patriarchal structures that reward competition, oppression of women, emotional numbness, an unhealthy power dynamic that allows for exploitation, etc.  In this vein, some female members of DGR hold women-only meetings to discuss issues as they are experienced by women.  They made a decision not to allow transgender women (men who became women) to attend because they had grown up socialized as men and receiving said privilege and could not speak from the perspective of a 'woman'.  This sparked a forest fire of reaction that has divided the group, elicited a level of violent response that is pretty much unacceptable in any circumstance but especially this one, and has at best led to a lot of discussion of gender politics.

So where does the buddhism come in?  Derrick Jensen, founder of DGR, eventually chose to respond when he felt that the "truth" of the situation was being misrepresented.  The gist of his response was that trans rights groups are fighting for the continued support of a gender binary (that there is male and there is female with qualities associated with each) and he feels that it is the existence of this binary, that is purely socialized, that is creating the unhealthy society in the first place.  You can read more here but I will continue.  What I think he means is that there is a catch-22.  Trans people want the right to be recognized equally as the gender that they feel they are and the right to achieve the body (or 'sex') that society recognizes as fitting that gender.  They want to feel whole.  This is totally legit.  We all want that.  As a buddhist, I am trying to study my self and find my true self in order that I will some day feel whole, love myself exactly as I am, warts and all.  So one might ask, if we are fighting to get to a place where people can feel comfy in their own skin, then isn't changing your body to a different sex just supporting the gender stereotypes that are wreaking havoc on us all?  If patriarchy is making demons out of men and victims out of women why fight to be recognized as one of those when you could just be who you are with the skin you were born with?

So seriously, here's the buddhist part.  The conventional truth (the world our human minds can see and that language describes it) is that we are not in a time where we love each other unconditionally for who we are regardless of appearance, etc.  We live in a time full of aggression and socially accepted masculine and feminine traits and behavior, style, expectations and experiences.  The ultimate truth is that Derrick Jensen is right, there is no man or woman or masculine or feminine, there are people or sentient beings that co-create the world and our very existence depends on the presence of every other thing.  That WE ARE NOT SEPARATE.  We are all shimmering mirrors reflecting and expressing the perfection of existence.

But we cannot pretend and live like ultimate truth is all there is.  That would be like saying, I can take whatever I want from whoever I want because there is no separation so it's all mine or it's no one's.  There is both the conventional and ultimate truth and we have to hold both at the same time.  We have to live in the world where maybe someone is happier when they have a body that matches what they feel inside because they have no choice but to see themselves reflected in the eyes of society.  So while we may know there is a flaw to the logic that someone feels that they were born with the wrong body in the first place, we cannot invalidate their experience and deny them their attempt at finding wholeness.   I might go so far as to argue that the decision for some women's DGR meetings to exclude trans women may have a thread of logic to it but it will probably cause more harm than good to exclude people.  And finally, the Real truth is that we don't know.  We don't know whether the harm/good from any one decision is bigger/smaller than the outcome from a different choice.  We are all doing our best and deep down hurting people is something no one wants to do.

For the record, this issue is something Green Gulch hasn't really had to face yet (as far as I know).  So DGR is taking the bullet for many other groups that will indeed have to face this situation.  There has been the briefest of discussions about what would happen if a transgender individual wanted to come here as a resident.  One person of the older generation didn't really understand the problem.  Maybe they thought the individual would just use the bathroom of whatever sex they were.  This is assuming that they have fully transitioned and look like the gender they feel.  But what if we have a young person who identifies as a woman but still has a body that looks very "male"?  Which bathroom would they use?  Who would they share a room with?  It's like we'd have to choose who we want to make uncomfortable.  The trans person could room with who they want and use whatever bathroom that feels appropriate but what about the other people they share with?  How will they feel? Will they understand?  There's the interpersonal and community side of things (like we have to explore these issues and talk about our feelings) and then there's the practical side of things (do we need to build a new bathroom that is unisex? should a transgender person just have their own room?  do we have the space for that? is that isolating? fair?)

Stay tuned.  And in the mean time ask yourself, is buddha a man or a woman?

Poem for Summertime

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

- Li-Young Lee 

Your Flowers Are Talking - What Do They Say About You?

I just finished reading this book called The Language of Flowers.  It was lent to our garden manager who passed it on to all of us gardeners and ex-gardeners.  We loved it and read it in a day or two.  It's addicting and dramatic and tugs on the heart strings (reading the summary on the back is almost enough to make you put it down because of just how cheesy it sounds, try to overcome).  It is simultaneously light and intense at the same time.  Light in the sense that the structure is simple and not so subtle.  But it deals with heartbreaking topics like homelessness, foster care, single parenthood and basic human suffering, all with parallel experiences of natural beauty.

Yellow Rose - infidelity or jealousy
(this is a recurring image in the book)

              We first meet the central character, Victoria Jones, as she is leaving her final group home in San Francisco at the age of 18.  We quickly learn that she has anger and violence issues and has had no easy time since birth when her mother abandoned her.  The story follows her as she tries to figure out what to do with this new life, while having no high school diploma, no family, a case worker she evades when possible, and her only "skill" is a love of flowers, a scientific understanding of their growth and a thorough understanding of the ancient "language of flowers."  This relationship with flowers adds a beautiful tone to the novel as they often serve as a mode of communication or at least a time of respite from a world she cannot always handle.
              The novel is told in alternating chapters of present time and past episodes of her life and slowly brings them closer together to explain how she learned about flowers and what went to so wrong at a time in her life when she almost had a home.  There is a love interest too and he is related to her past, which makes it all the more juicy and ripe as an opportunity to explore reconciliation.  While she struggles to find her place in a world that has been hostile, she is lucky enough to encounter several supportive figures who love her in a way she was never able to love herself.  Great read!
              Seeing that I live next to a most amazing garden myself, I thought I would explore what our flowers say.  The book comes with an appendix of a flower dictionary.  I took to the garden with my notebook and a camera and here's what I found.

Iris - Message & Foxglove - Insincerity

Sweet Pea- Delicate pleasures

Peony - Anger

Camellia - My destiny is in your hands

Calalilly - Modesty

Poppy - Extravagance

This bouquet graces one of our altars.  Now of course, just because this language of flowers exists doesn't mean a flower or bouquet can't be appreciated simply for its magnificence.  This bouquet is beautiful and also could mean something very particular.  Orange roses mean "fascination," Dianthus (the red flower) means "make haste," and the Love-in-the-mist (blue flower) means "perplexity."  So perhaps if you had a flirtation going on with someone but the signs were confusing and you didn't know where it was going, this bouquet could say "I am fascinated and perplexed so please tell me your intentions." Or, "you're giving me mixed signals so 'shit or get off the pot'!"

Summer is Here!

Dazzling temperatures and sunny skies fill the valley this week.  Mid April starts the "summer" or "growing" season here at Green Gulch.  Farm and garden apprentices arrive, flowers start to bloom, practice periods are over, planting, harvesting, and visitors abound.  The general feeling is to give ourselves over to the natural schedule provided by longer days of sunlight, warmer temps that encourage action, and the overall excitement we feel living in one of the most beautiful places ever!  See the "selfy" to the right depicting me, my new sunglasses, and the Green Gulch private pool.

 The weather this week has been amazing, in the 70s all day.  Several swims and lovely evening walks to the other watering hole, The Pelican Inn.  Of course, like last year, we simultaneously enjoy the warm beauty and worry about the lack of rain (it's probably done for the season and we got about 2-3 inches this year.)  Not much, but the iris below sticks out her tongue and says "I'll be ok."  

So as the high season mounts, I work to find a balance between rest and play.  It's funny how quick I can forget or forsake the early mornings I pull 4-5 days a week.  Yes, tonight will be my third night at the Pelican in a week and a half, yes I will be going to Slide Ranch to see music Monday night, the Muir Beach Community Center for a GGF/Slide Ranch mixer and CSA signup Friday, my Grandma's 93 (94?) birthday at the Russian River the day after.  I really could fill every day with something fun but every soul needs a little quiet time too.  We'll see how it goes.
Come visit this summer!

Holbox Island: Your Travel Guide

Here is a link to a bit of the scarce historical information I could find about Holbox, yes there were some pirates back in the day.

General Travel Tips

• Holbox is pronounced like: hole-bosh (if you want to be super cool drop the 'h' altogether and the second 'o' is not an "ah" sound but an "oh" sound)
• ATMs are scarce, two functioning ones (maybe 3) on the island but they are unpredictable.  One at the central bank (which is a bit creepy and upstairs from the central lockup or drunk tank) and the other at the Hotel Tortugas (although the receptionist didn't seem super keen on my repeated visits even when thinly disguised as an interest in spa treatments.)
• The island is 26 miles long and narrow.  On one side it is the beautiful gulf and on the other it is lagoon inlets, so there can be a decent amount of mosquito action.  Only about 6 miles is developed.  A huge portion of it was recently purchased by Coca-Cola...yikes, stay tuned and see the end of this post for some discussion of the politics.
• You don't have to wear shoes pretty much anywhere.
• Mostly no one takes credit card
• The island is visited mostly by Mexicans and Western Europeans and we met an amazing mix of both.
• Good coffee is scarce if not totally unavailable; at the supermarket the only choice was Nescafe Instant coffee.  So either deal with mediocre coffee or bring your own and do single drip.
• You do not need to book boat trips ahead of time as far as I could tell

Food

We did not drink the tap water anywhere.  We did eat street food.  There were no GI issues.

1. Cariocas (not the one on the beach but a few blocks up, little hole in the wall). Truly good Italian food, hella authentic pizza, slightly higher end dining.  Run by Roberta, rad Italian woman with a buzzed head.
   
2. Empanadas from a little place with a restaurant above it.  I can't for the life of me remember the name but it's in a bright yellow building and has a white board sign advertising hamburgers too; it's across the street from Luis Ocho's liquor store (one of the few places you can get cases).  There's another empanada place, owned by a local, it's called Empanada Conquista, close to the central square.  I didn't think the empanadas were quite as good but you did have more choices.
3. Le Jardin, the best french bakery I have every been to.  Stefano, the owner was the sweetest man ever.  We loved chatting with him and hearing about how he built his bakery to be able to attain just the right conditions for authentic french baking.  He also did his baking training in Louisiana!  We tried pretty much all the pastries (brioche, chocolate croissant, roll, banana muffin with nutella) and had a prosciutto pannini, quiche, fresh squeezed oj.
4. Tortilla shop, locally owned, cheap, delicious tortillas.  It is around the corner from the central bank and has a sign that says Tortilleria.  We would indicate how much we wanted by using our fingers to show the height of the stack.  I think there is another place called Tortilleria but this is different; this one isn't a restaurant, just a one room shop with a window onto the street.
5. At night next to the central square on the beach side there is a place where many locals and others hang out.  There is a great food truck that sets up tables just outside the square with amazing tacos and more at $1+  There were several other street vendors out at night by the square. Also delish.
6. I just found this list on Trip Advisor of locally owned businesses on Holbox, it would have been cool to check out more of these places but I have heard that some of them aren't that good.
7. Tipping: Some places include an automatic 10%.  So I'd say tip at least that if not a little more.  

Accommodations

• Hostel Ida y Vuelta (Coming and Going) is where we stayed and LOVED it!
• Run by David(a Swiss) and his partner Sasha (an Italian), Private bungalow with private bathroom for $35/night and we added a little extra to use the A/C cuz it was getting hot.  If you were in one of the cabanas, it is open air (with screened windows) and a lot of breeze so less need for A/C.  David was super helpful.  Told us lots about good food, helped us order cases of beer for our party (delivered on golf cart!), let us throw a party, helped arrange the boat trip with local captains, was just plain chill.
• It is pretty easy to find upon arrival, even without a taxi (golf cart) ride.  Just start walking down the main road towards the centro and follow the little signs for Ida y Vuelta.
• While staying at the hostel, which is not on the beach, we had easy quick access to the beach and you could walk down to Tortugas and for the price of a drink have access to all their beach lounging equipment, it's helpful when you want some shade.
• There are lots (relatively speaking) of hotels to choose from.  Many are very nice and on the beach.  Tortugas, Casa Sandra, El Paraiso, Xaloc, Los Nubes, nice and a little pricey for our budget.  There are not a lot of options as far as nice and locally owned places.  

Politics

       The island is running into the classic problem of poor but beautiful places.  People from all over the world have discovered its beauty and laid back culture/vibe.  It's mostly a fishing community and of course being an island, making a living can be tough.  So when people from around the world want to live there and maybe have a small business, they offer locals good money to buy land so they can build a little place.  Locals may have been offering modest rooms in their houses or built a modest rooming house but the new people often have been attracting more visitors.  This is also an island community that gets hit by hurricanes (Wilma) and survives on modest trades (fishing), these struggles lend them to exploitation or at least susceptibility to shady business deals.  For example:
     A bigger issue often develops when HUGE companies like Coca-Cola come and offer people large sums of money to give up rights to their ancestral land (which often contributes to a further breaking down of ancient culture).  Here's a great write up in the LA Times about the current dispute that could result in an approval of "three boutique-style hotels with up to 195 rooms, and as many as 872 residential units, including villas and condominiums."  This article is from October 2012, I'm not sure what is happening right now.  Things to consider.

Highlights of Our Mexican Vacation

Kogen (my husband is generally going by his dharma name) and I just returned from 11 days in Mexico.  I don't think I have take a trip for the sake of just vacation-ing since the honeymoon.  The trip started as attendance to my brother Vince's wedding in Cancun just a few days ago.  We figured if we're going all the way to Mexico we should definitely go for longer than 3 days.  On the 'google' we stumbled across an island off the Yucatan peninsula call Holbox Island (the Yucatan having Mayan roots, 'x' is usually pronounced 'sh').  At first glance it seemed to be exactly what we were looking for: small, quiet, not much to do, fishing village.  We went for it!

We stayed at Holbox Hostel Ida y Vuelta.  A hostel that offered private rooms too.  At first I didn't think I was wanting the "hostel" experience of meeting lots of people, etc. but quickly I realized there were amazing people I couldn't help but fall in love with.  Before we knew it, over lunch in la cocina with Diana and Steven (2 Dutch 30-somethings) we got to talking about the environment and politics and global culture and spirituality and living simple and we just clicked.  They finished up their work for the day and we took a bucket of beers to the beach, watched the sunset, the power outage, the pelicans, listened to a variety of world music, and talked more about life and dreams. We went for tacos and found a local party in the square celebrating one of the saints.  I learned about the drink "Palomita" or Paloma, tequila with Fresca (grapefruit) soda and we danced to crazy music.  Walked home happy and tired.


Another highlight, the cast of friends quickly grew wide: Esli and Alan (2 young Mexican brothers), Julie and Pol (couple, she french, him spanish), Elena and Jeremy (her Mexican, him French), Yentz and Mahali (quiet and cute German couple).  Kogen and I arranged a rager of a party and they helped us celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary.  We grilled 6 pounds of beautiful pork, made guac and pico, got a huge stack of fresh tortillas and made bomb-ass tacos.  We also had a bottle of tequila and a lot of beers.  (I must sadly confess I pooped out way too early and missed so much fun!) Drinking games, dancing (yes there's a video) and a visit from a mapache (raccoon)!  As an anniversary gift Diana and Steven arranged a boat trip for our group of 16.  We fished (yes some Buddhists fish, I did quite well as a fisherwoman), took the boat to the mainland where we swam in a cenote (deep natural sinkhole resulting from the collapse of rock that exposes groundwater underneath) and while we swam, the boat captains made the best ceviche I have ever had (did you know that the fish in ceviche is not cooked but the lime juice that is used sorta "cooks" it?)  One more teaching opportunity.  Given that many people partied 'til the break of dawn, the open waters were a bit rough on the system and a few friends ended up a little green in the face.  The lovely Diana suggested that getting into the water may help and it did!  

My little brother! The boy who used to
say "I don't know how to smile!"

Onto Cancun the next day.  I was sad to leave all my new adventuring friends.  But I was on the way to see family.  HUGE change of pace from quiet island to the hustle of "Hotel Zone" Cancun.  We were to join up with the wedding festivities at Sandos Resort an all-inclusive package deal.  We walked in and were immediately offered beverages and a red rose.  Somehow we lucked out and we shared a suite with little brother Brian and his girlfriend Gabrielle.   Slowly the party just gathered and grew at the pool (heated to bathwater temp).  My cousin Jenny and her husband John soon joined us and the 6 of us were something of a Dito-force.  Maybe out of excitement everyone got REALLY rowdy the first night.  Voices got louder, discussions were prone to passion (go figure, politics and the environment had to come up), then moved from dinner to the dance floor.  The energy was irresistible even to those who thought they were tired.  At one point Brian and Vince traded shorts (in the bar) and they 'teen wolfed' beers, luckily they had the sense to do it outside.  We finished the night ordering room service (4 cheeseburgers).  This fun continued and we all overate and overdrank and figured "when in Cancun."  The wedding on the beach was sweet and we danced until our feet carried us to bed.

We left the Mexican vacation for a return to the cool forest, early mornings and the sound of bells.  "Weaving the ancient brocade," as they say in Zen.  All these different strands of life and people and experiences, none of them better than the other, they just are what they are as they present themselves.  What a delight.