The .Plan

The Swell Season (band formed by Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova, the two novice actors who star in the movie “Once“) are now touring the West Coast.

Upcoming tour dates:

Nov 5: Moore Theatre, Seattle
Nov 6: Crystal Ballroom, Portland
Nov 8: Regency Center Grand Ballroom, San Francisco
Nov 9: Regency Center Grand Ballroom, San Francisco

East coast tour dates posted on their MySpace page…

When you are on a 12-hour plane ride, the last thing you want to do is watch something serious. Bring on the brain-numbing “Pirates of the Caribbean 3″, “Die Hard 4″, and “Harry Potter 5″ instead. It has been years since I’ve deliberately watched a movie like this; even romantic comedies have been discarded (and that time KJ made us watch “Hitch” doesn’t count; I was just too tired to get up from the couch).

But “Once” catches you by surprise.

He works in his father’s vacuum cleaner repair shop by day, singing himself hoarse over his battered guitar in the evenings for spare change, trying to forget about the woman who broke his heart and left him for another man.

She sells flowers in the street, works as a maid when she can find work, and is trying to make sense of her life with her two year-old daughter after her husband left them.

When they meet, their interactions are awkward. It is clear they have nearly nothing in common besides their common ability to wail their repressed feelings through music. But maybe that’s all that matters — this one non-negotiable — and that gives you all the more reason to be drawn in to notice everything about their aching romance: the first ‘no’, the first disclosure, the first time she cries on his shoulder.

When she listens to him play one of his original songs, adds the background keyboard, and then tentatively joins him in harmony, it may as well be a first kiss.

Take this sinking buoy
and point it home
we’ve still got time

Neither he nor she are even given names in the movie. When, in part due to her insistent prodding, he finally gets around to recording a demo, they invite some random guys off the street — nobodys who are also not given names. The signature song starts off as a nondescript whisper, and the jerk sound engineer (the only guy in the movie who does get a name) is talking on the phone in the sound booth to his girlfriend complaining about how he’s stuck in the studio for the weekend making a CD for some “losers”.

And then the drums kick in. You start experiencing goosebumps when you realize this is the understated climax of the movie — and at that moment the sound engineer also begins to realize the beauty in what they are creating in the studio, perks up, and starts making adjustments on the mixer.

So
if you want something
and you call, call
then I’ll come running
to fight
and I’ll be at your door
when there’s nothing worth running for

“Once” is a wistful film. Easily the best movie I’ve seen this year.

Symptoms of anxiety, check. Symptoms of depression, check. Cravings, check. Side effects and sexual dysfunction, check. Smoking cessation, check. Time to see the next patient.

I paused. We had some time to kill. My next scheduled patient probably wasn’t going to show up anyway, and I had heard from one of the guys at the methadone clinic that he was on a run.

“Mr. Smith[*], how long did it take you to make amends with your family?”

He was 53. His last happy childhood memory happened 48 years ago, during a quiescent period when his alcoholic father was in prison and before his mother remarried his alcoholic step-father, and before his oldest sister started getting into heroin. He himself had been strung out nearly continuously for 40 years on a $400-a-day crack habit, as well as methamphetamines, alcohol, and benzodiazepines.

How in the name of the merciful LORD do you repair that?, I wondered.

The room was quiet and still but for the occasional involuntary myoclonic jerks that animated his right arm. He looked down at the floor.

“I been clean and sober for 7 years, doc. But in the beginning, they didn’t believe me. Why would anyone believe me? I been running the streets since I was 13.”

“But I have an older sister who finally came around after I stayed clean 3 years. I basically kept showing up to see her and she basically kept kicking me out and saying ‘go to hell’ until she finally realized I was serious.”

He looked at me, stony-faced.

I could feel a slight burning at the edges of my eyes. I alternately furrowed my brow, opened my eyes wide, blinked, and swallowed, hoping to delay the impending tear.

Fingering the silver cross around his neck, he said, “My youngest sister still doesn’t talk to me. But I try. That’s all I can do, right?”

–
[*] All names, dates, and other HIPAA non-compliant details have been confabulated.

The ping, the green light — the buzz (even the “silent” mode provides no relief) — who could that be?, is it important?, my curiosity is instantly piqued. I have no difficulty stuffing it in my pocket at work, simply because of the demands of professionalism. But at home, it sits on my desk. During dinner, it sits on the table. While we are watching television, it sits on the couch. Wherever it is, in plain sight, always an invitation for me to let my attention wander.

If I am honest with myself, then I have to admit that long before the Treo came into my life, I had already succumbed to the practice of alt-tabbing through people, projects, and life.

Henri Nouwen writes in his book, The Prodigal Son,

The question is not ‘How am I to find God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be found by him?’ The question is not ‘How am I to know God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be known by God?’ And, finally, the question is not ‘How am I to love God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be loved by God?’… God is the shepherd who goes looking for his lost sheep. God is the woman who lights a lamp, sweeps out the house, and searches everywhere for her lost coin until she has found it. God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs out to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.

The capacity to give one’s attention to prayer is not one that is developed easily. But you can start by turning off the Treo sometimes.

I.

I wonder what he’ll think of me, he thought, nervously pacing the ground in the dampness of early morning while waiting for the shuttle bus to bring him to his next interview.

He was about to meet the program director for the first time. And this was his first interview in several weeks. He was out of practice.

Picking a residency program can be such a strange process, he thought to himself, taking another long drag on the cigarette he had rolled with his own yellowed fingers. He knew what he was looking for in a program — after all, he had been thinking about this particular program ever since his second year of medical school, and now here he was, two years later — but there was something about actually standing outside waiting for the shuttle bus that caused all of his insecurities to surface.

What if they don’t like me? What if I bomb my interview? What if they can smell my anxieties? What if I end up being one of those interns who can’t hack it? What if they don’t renew my contract in January? …What if I’m not even in the right specialty?

He remembered standing in the grand entryway to the departmental offices for the first time. Reading the bold lettering of the departmental mission statement firmly graven into the granite flooring, he felt like it clicked. No. The mission is there, he told himself. This is the kind of place where he wanted to train, where he wanted to be formed as a physician.

He tapped the wilting cigarette lightly, and several ashes fluttered to the ground.

And the fit is there, he thought. Although he really hadn’t meant to engineer it that way, he was currently rotating on a subspecialty consultation service and had actually seen the program director around. And sometimes he attended didactics with the residents. His opinion of the program was much more grounded now compared to those fleeting thoughts he had had as a second year medical student.

But what about that time…? He shook his head, berating himself under his breath. He had attended a grand rounds — impetuously opened his mouth when he should have known better to keep quiet — blurted out an answer — one that came from his gut, not his head — and, receiving a quizzical look from the presenter and hearing several snickers from the residents in the audience, he hunched over, embarrassed, and slunk back into his corner.

Another drag, the temporary glow of the cigarette illuminating his weathered face.

But still. I think my presentations in rounds have been decent since then, he thought. Over the past several days he found himself needing to repeat this mantra to himself over and over again.

And, he was gradually getting to know the residents in the program, who all seemed pretty cool. One of them was gorgeous, in fact. Even if she could be a bit bossy sometimes. She was going to be chief resident next year, and she seemed like the kind of chief resident who would teach him a lot. And it helped that she was easy on the eyes.

Maybe they didn’t even remember the grand rounds incident.

Two years, he said to himself. This is it. Not everyone gets an interview here–

He heard the slow squeak of well-worn breaks and looked up. The shuttle bus was here.

II.

Tomorrow my program begins its season of courtship with the first of several interview dinners. My program director is bringing our A-Game by lining up myself and Mele Mel as the first two residents up on deck to sell the program.

This is going to be interesting.

I.

Lavender is one of my favorite scents. If I didn’t live in fear of a giant Milwaukee’s Best beer can falling from the sky and crushing me into the dirt, I might be inclined to use more lavender lotions, drop lavender oil into the bubble bath, or scatter a few dried lavender buds in my closet.

Drying lavender buds is a time consuming process. You have to cut the stems just when the flower buds are starting to open, which is the time when the lavender aroma is at its strongest. Hang the stems upside down to dry. They may dry completely within a week or two, but it’s probably best if you give it a month.

It’s a lot of waiting.

II.

During my intern year, I realized that one of the best ways to stay on the nurses’ good side is to bake for them periodically. One morning, Megan[*] and I were having a conversation about using unique spices — like lemon thyme, or green cardamom seeds — to imbue foods with a touch of fragrance. My favorite inpatient attending had given me a recipe for the purest, crumbliest, butteriest shortbread — it doesn’t even call for salt — so the next morning I showed up with a few trays of cookies.

INGREDIENTS:

8 oz. unsalted butter
2 tsp. dried lavender buds
1/2c. sugar
2c. all-purpose flour

PREPARATION:

1. Leave butter out at room temperature for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 300F.

2. Grind the lavender buds with 1/4c. sugar. Toss in the butter, add the remaining 1/4c. sugar, and beat on low speed until the mixture is smooth. (Do not beat it until fluffy — as long as there are no detectable lumps of butter when you roll it between your fingers, that will be fine.) Add flour and mix until you get a crumbly dough.

     

3. Roll the dough into a thin sheet 1/4-in. thick, and cut however you want. You can cut rectangular shapes with a pastry knife, or make circular shapes with a rice cup. Place cookies on a cookie tray lined with parchment paper 1/2-in. apart.

4. Let cookies sit for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

5. Bake cookies for about 20-25 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely before transferring to a plate.

With most cookie recipes, once your cookies are in the oven, you set the timer and you wait. Not so with these lavender shortbread cookies. You have to tend to them constantly, because they can be very easy to overbake. You check at 18 minutes. Sandy-colored? No. 19 minutes. Sandy colored? No. And you check and you check and you check until you see that they are the right shade.

It’s worth waiting on — the perfect, delicate, fragrant marriage of butter and lavender.

III.

Maggi Dawn has written, “Repeated, habitual prayer gradually tests and sifts what you believe is really important and what is of ephemeral value. If something doesn’t matter that much, the momentum for prayer will diminish. But if it does matter, an unanswered prayer becomes like grit in an oyster — something that worries and annoys you until you are determined not to take no for an answer.”

Your promise is well tried,
and your servant loves it.
–Psalm 119:140

–
[*] All names, dates, and other HIPAA non-compliant details have been confabulated.

Waiting for my next clinic patient. 75 degrees and sunny. I can see Ocean Beach from here.

This afternoon is going to be great.

This is pretty hard core.

Ms. Fecske’s furniture foraging is the ultimate expression of one of Germany’s favorite pastimes: saving money. Even when Germans do spend it (they need to eat, after all), they aren’t looking to pay full price. Flea markets pull big crowds every weekend. Used goods are so popular that Germany is eBay’s biggest market outside the U.S.: Surfing the site accounts for nearly a fifth of the time Germans spend online.

Regular retail stores have a tough time. No-frills discounters such as Aldi dominate the supermarket sector. Even Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was too upscale for Germans: The U.S. giant finally gave up on the country last year, after failing to make a euro cent.
–Marcus Walker, “Dumpster Divers Go Mainstream In Thrifty Germany”, Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2007

One of my fondest memories from childhood is when my dad would cook breakfast. Mom’s breakfast involved healthful foods. Dad’s breakfast did not, and more often than not involved eggs. Crispy and over-hard.

When you cook eggs in polite company (say, for brunch: with bacon, hash browns, mixed berries, and hand-whipped cream — and Irish oatmeal if you want to be healthy), it’s fashionable to make omelets. Then you can have an impressive, if pedantic, discussion about how the making of omelets is an activity fraught with problems. So fraught that Alton Brown has an entire episode devoted to scrambled eggs. Just a few seconds’ worth of too much heat can render the eggs dark and rubbery; if you don’t cook them long enough, the cheese in the interior doesn’t melt completely before the omelet leaves the pan. And so on and so forth.

Not so with dad’s over-hard eggs. They were crispy and rubbery in all the right places.

I suppose that is the nature of comfort food. I associate the food with beautiful memories, and when things are not comfortable, the food, and its associated memories, somehow makes things more comfortable.

Memory is important. Maybe that is the profound wisdom in the Biblical injunction to remember, to write, and to proclaim. In all the details of life, our memories of God’s graciousness and lovingkindness have a way of reminding us of the past when we need help in anchoring our hope for the future.

‘Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
–Deuteronomy 6:4-9

My over-hard eggs have since become a little more sophisticated. But still unhealthy as ever. I probably shouldn’t eat any more eggs for the rest of the week.

INGREDIENTS:

few slices of stale ciabatta bread
1 oz. parmesean cheese
1 clove garlic, finely diced
few pinches of thyme
pinch of salt
extra-virgin olive oil
Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning

PREPARATION:

1. Throw the bread, cheese, garlic, thyme, and salt into the food processor. Process.
2. Mix 1 tbsp of this crumbly mixture with some olive oil.
3. Set in skillet on low heat. When crumbly mixture begins to toast, crack two eggs on top. Break the yolk. Dust with Tony Chachere’s.
4. When eggs are done cooking, slip off skillet. Dash some sherry vinegar into the skillet while scraping up the toasty, crumbly bits still left. Drizzle over eggs.

This has been making its rounds of the Internet for the past week or two:

If you focus, you are supposed to be able to make her spin the other direction. I have been trying to do this for days, and still I cannot.

So apparently, despite my best efforts, I am incorrigibly right-brained. Which means I am impetuous and guided by feelings, try to see the “big picture”, think about possibilities, and take risks. Even in situations where Robot is yelling, “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

Were it only otherwise.