ColumnRead a book. Sustain your mind.

I’m torn, often and about many things, including protests in the street. Make no mistake; I do support the movement(s) and those souls who hit the pavement (hello, Occupy) to make a newer and better world. I understand and have seen the power of dissent and today, with the issue of moving forward or backward once again looming large, I know I should be out there.

Yet it’s not unreasonable to ask, “Does it matter?” The world is an absurd place of cruel whims and monstrous scope, and finally, as the great humorist George Carlin once observed, “the planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.” Given that the deck is by definition stacked against us (a delightful afterlife aside, if you wish), what can one really do and why, in fact, should we do anything at all? Go ahead and cue the snarky guffaws, but here’s the question: To be or not to be? It’s a good one, right?

Among other notables, Albert Camus (1913-1960) gave the query quite a go. In his Nobel Prize winning novels (along with his numerous short stories, plays and essays), the great (and oh so cool) French writer-philosopher examined authenticity and rebellion in the face of the power, the potential of the individual in an absurd and painful world, and the choices we all face about how (and if) to play the hands we’re so arbitrarily dealt. Good stuff. Serious stuff. Stuff that we would do well to revisit every once in a while as we watch the news and try to decide, “What is to be done.”

What’s special about Camus’ timeless stories is that they’re unafraid. Unafraid not only to present and confess our flaws in the context of life’s Sisyphean nature (his characters tend to be human, as opposed to traditionally heroic; some kind, some indifferent, some truly awful), but also unafraid to have us somehow march bravely on, albeit into a relentless wind of frigid and life-numbing “abstractions” (to Camus, generalizations rob the world of its humanity and nuance, and distort reality on the ground).

The three novels published during his lifetime (tragically cut short by a car accident) were The Stranger, The Plague and The Fall. Staples today in both literature and philosophy departments around the world, each has its own angle, coming at the Big Question(s) as different thought experiments staffed by particular personality types. The Stranger is the story of Meursault, an honest yet indifferent and unemotional man who finds himself accused of murder. The Plague tells us of Doctor Bernard Rieux’s work and life in Oran, a city decimated by death and cut off from the outside world. Finally, The Fall is the confession of Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a well-respected citizen whose unflinching self-reflection leads to his own demise. (More on these titles below.)

The novels could hardly be called a triptych (though on a recent read I did notice a reference in The Plague to events in The Stranger), but together they circle around a single maypole of life’s hardest facts – events are often beyond our control, and absurdity, pain and even horror are part of the human experience – and beg the question of how to behave in light of such truths. The challenges of empathy, compassion and, ultimately, action are not easily met, of course, and it is in the stutter step between thought and deed that Camus finds his – indeed, our – drama. It’s a drama I recalled when I watched Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen on television as he lay bleeding in Oakland last October, a victim of rubber bullets unleashed by police during an Occupy rally.

Today, the Left and the Right do battle to the degree where progress (or even ideology) no longer matters as much as winning. Science deniers are at war with environmentalists as the ice caps continue to melt. Totalitarianism, racism, sexism, class warfare—all continue to draw our blood just as they did in Camus’ day and throughout history before him. And worse still, all of these events are simply absorbed (if not partly orchestrated) by a corporate class so dominant that we don’t even know what the light of day might look like anymore. I don’t mean to be a buzzkill, but just as Camus’ characters were challenged, the question continues to be begged: Beyond even what to do—why do anything at all?

Camus’ fiction offers us two essential lenses through which to view the problem. First, the stories somehow stir up a compassion for ourselves and our existential dilemma that has us so torn about taking action given Carlin’s irritated dog observation. (Sorry, but you knew the “ism” was coming. For the record, Camus denied being that particular “ist.”) It’s not easy to jump into action every time your head tells you to, as life is not, it turns out, abstract. (Indeed, Camus himself entered a self-imposed intellectual exile during the last years of his life when he could not bring himself to side with the anti-colonialists in his native Algeria. His mother still lived there, he explained.)

Second, and most important, Camus refused to accept the question in terms of party or politics (Camus famously broke from his friend Jean-Paul Sartre when he took issue with the Communist Party’s approach to world changing), or “winning” (a fool’s quest) or even some objective good versus evil (Camus was an atheist). Rather, he dares you to act from your best lights, for no reason that can be known aside from what’s between you and you. The answer, he wants us to consider, is to be. For its own sake.

(Re)read Camus when you can. His novels are accessible and eloquent masterpieces, presenting big ideas and brimming with allegory. And here’s the good part – they’re totally entertaining. Riveting, even. And they’re guaranteed to get you asking the Big Question.

The Stranger (1942)

The story of Meursault, a French Algerian who tells of the events in his life with an emotionless indifference to, among other notable happenings, the death of his mother, The Stranger was Camus’ first novel. The main character’s mater-of-fact narration and tone present a man functioning only with the most coldly perceived understanding of what’s going on around him. Almost completely void of feeling, his detachment leaves him an outsider, or stranger, in his community, at once free from societal rules and yet helpless as a bobbing cork, as the storyline washes him this way and that. The novel pivots around his seemingly inexcusable murder of a local man and his inability to process responsibility or defend himself against those seeking to punish him for his actions. An exploration of free will and responsibility, The Stranger is spare and quiet, allowing fundamental philosophical ideas to appear in high relief while at the same time revealing Camus’ great storytelling capabilities.

The Plague (1947)

The Algerian coastal city of Oran is occupied (as wartime France is by Nazi Germany) by bubonic plague in this tale of human resilience in the face of an obscene and powerful enemy. Under this basic yet wildly intense premise, the city becomes Camus’ laboratory for an exploration of human behavior in the framework of life as possessed by random and cruel forces, requiring resistance in any possible form. The story revolves around Dr. Bernard Rieux, who helps lead the fight against the plague for no reason other than it’s his job to reduce human suffering. As abstract forces ranging from bureaucracy to religion saddle others around him, Rieux surfaces as driven by his own personal compact, unencumbered in his efforts to do the next right thing. A rich and gripping read, many consider The Plague to be Camus’ greatest masterwork.

The Fall (1956)

Camus’ last novel to be published during his lifetime (two others were published after his death), The Fall is the confession of self-appointed “judge-penitent” Jean-Baptiste Clamence. He tells his story to a stranger in a bar in post-war Amsterdam, beginning with his background as a successful and honorable defense lawyer (working on behalf of widows and orphans) in Paris. Through a series of random events, Clamence is exposed to his own hypocrisy and thus initiates what becomes a purposeful self-undoing as he attempts to bring his world into alignment with his own deep and human flaws. The once-great man pulls at the string of his inner failings to surely unravel his world and take charge of his own expulsion from his false Eden. As we listen in astonishment, we are confronted with the price of hubris and challenged by the weight of personal responsibility in a dark world where innocence is lost and rules are nonexistent.

Editor’s note: News & Culture contributor Scott Adelson’s biweekly column, InPRINT, reviews and discusses books new and old, as well as examines issues in publishing.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

InPrint: 10 Novels that Make You Want to Play Outside

InPrint: Gatsby, Paradise and the 1% – F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Pre-Occupation

InPrint: Not for Kids Only – 10 Young Adult Novels You Need to Read

InPrint: On the Road, Again – Revisiting Jack Kerouac

Top image: Mitmensch0812

The post InPRINT: Albert Camus and the Biggest Question of All appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnBecause sometimes ingredients are meant to go together.

To say that I am obsessed with sea salt could be an understatement. In fact I recently made a commitment to tweak any recipe that I come across to incorporate sea salt, because when it comes down to it, just like cardamom, food sounds sexier when there is sea salt involved.

Although sea salt and table salt have the same nutritional value, when it comes to taste, for adding flavor to many dishes, sea salt is superior and has become the darling of food lovers. It’s flakier, crunchier and has a larger surface area which means you need less of it to flavor your food.

Sea salt’s popularity is nothing new, it has been making the food trend lists for the past several years, but what we’re doing with it is. No longer a simple seasoning, it’s now the finishing touch to everything from your appetizer to your dessert. This much was clear to me when a couple of friends and I topped off a foodie-centric dinner [note to self: always put arugula on pizza] in San Francisco last fall with a panna gelato topped with olive oil and sea salt.

In a food induced haze I remember hearing something along the lines of “we should put sea salt on everything,” come out from someone’s mouth. The path to sea salt obsession is a very slippery slope. One minute you’re gingerly crushing some sea salt on to your salad and the next minute you’re putting it into cakes.

Somewhere in between the salad and the cake situation lies flavored salt making. Because nothing says, “I’m fancy and I love food,” like whipping out a small jar of homemade Sriracha Salt. Citrus Salt, Roasted Garlic Salt, Lemon Salt with Fennel and Chili… you can make just about any type of salt that your heart desires. Feeling extra crazy? You can even buy Merlot Infused Salt. All of which got me thinking about chocolate sea salt.

There’s no doubt that chocolate and sea salt is the food pairing du jour. Chocolate and sea salt bars grace the shelves of even chain supermarkets. Just type in “chocolate sea salt” into Google and see what happens. I can assure you that you won’t leave your computer for hours, and you’ll come out with a weird hunger pang and 18 recipes bookmarked in your “Food” folder. What you won’t find however is a recipe for chocolate sea salt itself.

If chocolate and sea salt are so good together, why is nobody combining them into one delectable seasoning? Someone should do something about that.

So I did. Because there’s nothing difficult about chopping up a bar of chocolate; that would probably make it into chapter 1 of Intro to Foodieism.

Enter an afternoon of chocolate sea salt brainstorming that resulted in asking, “do you think you can sprinkle chocolate sea salt on kale chips?” Laugh all you want, but let’s remember two things about cooking in the Foodie Underground kitchen:

1. We’re here because we love food. Chances are you love kale chips, sea salt and chocolate. Why not put them together?

2. This is not Julia Child’s kitchen. “Quick and classy” is my motto – if it can’t be done in under an hour, it’s probably not worth doing (macarons obviously being the exception).

Given that criteria, if you can whip up a batch of kale chips and douse them in chocolate sea salt you obviously should. Just like you should quickly blend together some hazelnut butter with sea salt, otherwise known as “homemade Nutella that will impress your friends.”

As I have quickly come to learn, sometimes the best way to come up with a recipe is to start with a problem. In this case: if you make Chocolate Sea Salt, what are you going to do with it? Yes, First World Problems are easily found in the kitchen.

The beauty of it is that Chocolate Sea Salt already combines the sweet and savory worlds, meaning that you can use it on pretty much anything. Sprinkle it atop Rosemary Walnut Scones? Yes. Raspberry Almond Tart? Yes. Arugula salad? Yes.

Chocolate Sea Salt might just be the foodie dream seasoning. Bottle it up and give some to your friends, because you’ll want to have some on stock from now on.

Chocolate Sea Salt

Ingredients

• 100% cacao, unsweetened baker’s chocolate
• Flaky sea salt

Directions

• Finely chop the chocolate.
• Combine equal parts chocolate and salt and store in an airtight container.

Rosemary Walnut Scones 

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour (make this a gluten-free version with 1 1/4 cups all-purpose gluten free flour and 3/4 cup coconut flour)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons dried rosemary
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled + cut into cubes
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup walnuts

Directions

• Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and rosemary. Add cold butter and mix together until it resembles coarse meal. [Easiest way to do this is in a food processor, but using your hands to do the job works just fine]
• Whisk egg in small bowl and pour half of it into a measuring cup. Add milk until you get 1/2 cup. Add to flour mixture and mix until dough forms large curds.
• Make two round balls and flatten on greased pan. Cut each round into eighths. Add a tablespoon of milk to other half of egg and brush over scones.
• Preheat over to 450F, bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven, sprinkle with Chocolate Sea Salt and let cool.

Hazelnut Spread with Sea Salt (adapted from orginal recipe on The Kitchn)

Ingredients

• 1 cup roasted hazelnuts
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Chocolate Sea Salt
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 4 tablespoons canola oil or hazelnut oil

Directions

• Put all ingredients in food processor and mix until a spreadable consistency – note that it may be slightly runny but will firm up when you put in refrigerator.
• Pour into an airtight container and store in refrigerator.

Raspberry Almond Tart

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups almond meal
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup raspberries

Directions

• Beat together eggs and sugar. Mix in dry ingredients. Melt butter and add to mixture.
• Pour batter into a greased 9.5 inch round baking pan.
• Evenly place raspberries on top of batter.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 F, or until golden brown.
• Let cool and sprinkle with Chocolate Sea Salt

That’s only the beginning. Chocolate Sea Salt on panna cotta? Yes. Chocolate Sea Salt on Coconut Ice Cream? Why not. I’ll let you take it from here.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Adventures With Chocolate and Sea Salt appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe Awamaki Lab returns with a Season 2 collection featured at the Textile Arts Center in Manhattan.

Fashion designers Andria Crescioni and Courtney Cedarholm both knew from a young age that designing was integral to their composition. Each grew up with an individual attraction to the tactile and hands-on approach to creative expression. Cedarholm was always especially drawn to fabrics and yarn, and by third grade, had already proclaimed her desire to be a fashion designer.

Crescioni, on the other hand, lived out her early days in the suburbs of Southern California, spending her weekends reconstructing vintage finds from thrift stores and flea markets.

“The process of seeing something go from a vague idea in my head to a tangible piece drives me to continue creating things and exploring new ways of doing so,” says Crescioni.

With the collaborative effort of Awamaki, a non-profit weaving project that works for sustainable community development in Ollantaytambo, Cusco, Peru (and empowers young indigenous women), these two fashion students from Parsons were given an opportune design residency to explore their own garment genesis amidst the Sacred Valley of Peru.

Cedarholm and Crescioni were off on a journey into unfamiliar lands and unknown textile territory. That adventurous spirit subsequently permeated into the depths of their design inspiration.

“The clothing was inspired by the idea of a vintage explorer, especially Hiram Bingham,” says Cedarholm. When reviewing pictures of Hiram Bingham exploring in the 1900s, Crescioni was instantly taken by the garments featured. “I decided to juxtapose the Andean textiles with more casual and tailored sportswear, inspired by vintage explorers, to make them feel more unexpected and modern.” adds Crescioni.

In their own collaborative format, the designers decided to each embrace a particular angle for the collection; Crescioni developed the woven pieces, while Cedarholm concentrated on the knitwear.

“One of the main focuses of the collection is to showcase the traditional hand-woven textiles from the Patacancha Valley,” Crescioni explains. She was also intent on incorporating an element of hand-woven textile into every design, whether it be the entire pattern or an adorning trim.

For Cedarholm, her knitting became an extension of her everyday existence.

“I was quite a fan of carting my knitting everywhere, walking and knitting is my new favorite skill.” As Cedarholm explains it, creating the garment sample was necessary before any of the next steps in production could be tackled. So, for both designers, developing their patterns was key to moving forward in relaying their design framework to the Quechua women weavers for production.

Rooted intentions of showcasing the authentic artisanship of the weavers vibrates throughout Cedarholm and Crescioni’s garments. Cedarholm says: “We did not dictate designs to them [the women weavers] but instead observed them weaving and began to learn it to really understand how much goes into one textile and that turns into a great respect for the material and a true questioning of design to make sure the textile is showcased in its best form.”

The collection’s evolution unfolded atop a table of collaboration in genius and resourcefulness – designers and artisans learning and sharing with each other along the way. As Crescioni says, “This hands-on experience really gave us the opportunity to design pieces that compliment the way they [Quechua women weavers] work, rather than hinder it.”

The cultural exchange of working with the women weavers of Awamaki undeniably affected Crescioni and Cedarholm’s design process. “I think the limitation on materials in terms of diversity was the biggest challenge, yet at the same time helped narrow things down,” Cedarholm says.

As the saying goes, less is more sometimes. For Crescioni, this idea of reducing the options almost calmed her creative process. “When you are working in a city like New York, there are no limits, which can sometimes be overwhelming for me. In Peru, you are forced to simplify, to be creative with less, not only when it comes to making clothing but in day to day life.”

Crescioni’s own reaction to the differing lifestyles of these locations inadvertently comments on the consumptive culture of the U.S. Through the art of the Sacred Valley of Peru’s local culture, themes of simplicity and necessity simply surface. Design in this context could potentially symbolize larger lessons and reflections of the societies in which they are harbored.

Experiences from the Awamaki Lab relationship fosters rewards that extend far beyond an exchange of creative innovations. For Crescioni, one of the most rewarding parts of the project is the direct relationship that one gets to have with the weavers at Patacancha.

Cedarholm reflects on her time spent working closely with the women.

“Beginning to know them more has given me such a curiosity and respect for those who are behind the actual making of a garment. And in thinking about who made a garment you also think of who designed it. They are usually on the higher end of the food chain, but this collection attempts to disregard any mention of food chain.”

For her, the intention of the Awamaki Lab Season 2 collection was to just work together to create something fresh and new.

Due to the way Crescioni and Cedarholm approached their adventure abroad, they were able to absorb authentic and intimate connections. Their openness allowed for true dialogue outside of the daily design activities, such as time spent in the homes of the Quechua families, learning their crafts and sharing meals with them. Crescioni reminisces about one weekend in November when a weaver in Patacancha taught them her age-old methods. “It was an intimate experience, walking through the surrounding hillside with her and her children while their sheep grazed. As we walked, we would take a seat, set up our back-strap looms and weave, enjoy the view, and chat. It was an incredible example of life and craft coinciding together.”

For Cedarholm, the garments largely represent that comfortable, content, and serene atmosphere. “We want the clothing to feel like home, you can just climb into them and live.”

Meditating on the process, Crescioni says, “I have a deep respect for the artisans that create the textiles and I hope the garments we’ve created allow the weavers’ unique vision of life to be appreciated in a new context.”

The Awamaki Lab Season 2 Collection will be unveiled in its entirety on Friday, January 27th at the Textile Art Center‘s Manhattan location. Featured alongside the garments will be a backpack collection; Brooklyn-based pattern maker Hannah Flor volunteered with the Awamaki Lab this season, developing a project with the sewing co-op in which each weaver designed their own backpack.

The post THREADED: The Awamaki Lab Places Peruvian Handwoven Textiles Front & Center appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe connection between the clothes we buy and the clothes we are already wearing.

Julia Ramsey is intent on sharing an awareness about textiles with others. “I think it’s important to know the connection between the materials and the end product and the human and how it all comes together; a lot of times, I think it’s taken for granted.”

In a recent event at The Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, Ramsey unveiled her freshest fashion endeavor: Pelt. Textiles and their individual stories are integral to the inspiration and creation process for Ramsey. Pelt reveals an experience that weaves together raw materials, innovative construction, and an intimate relationship with your clothing and shelter.

Grounded in ideas of estrangement, Pelt sought to deconstruct society’s tendency to disconnect from the clothing on your back. “Normally, when you’re wearing a sweater, it’s completely devoid of an origin; since I’m inspired by materials that I work with, I think it’s really interesting to make the materials the center of attention.” Each piece of the creamy, cloudy, milky, and comfort-driven collection harbors the potential to perform as a second skin. “They kind of take on a life of their own, and when you’re wearing them, you feel like you have this second skin; it makes you take on another persona and they almost speak for themselves.” For Ramsey, your “pelt” can serve to shelter you or to give you additional strength. Evolved from observations of animal skins, animal hides, and furs, the cozy pieces make you want to curl up in them and hibernate for a long winter ahead.

While Ramsey seems clearly comfortable in her own skin, being a “fashion designer” wasn’t something she could always easily identify with. Growing up, she loved to sew and make dresses, but fashion wasn’t really part of her life. “When I went to school, I couldn’t look anyone in the face and say ‘I’m going to be a fashion designer’.” In turn, early in her journey as a designer, she contemplated and analyzed the question of what truly makes a garment special. For her, the fabric is key; even if the design is simply cut, an amazing fabric can elevate a piece to another level. Through studying textile design with a specialization in knitting, Ramsey’s curiosity in the fabric behind her fashion has taken her even deeper into an investigation of the naked elements beneath: the raw material.

Pelt was constructed from a collection of unprocessed sheep’s fleece from around the globe. Ramsey’s design exploration led her to discover wool sourced from a little girl who raises sheep on her parents’ organic farm in Connecticut as well as an organic line of super fine merino wool imported from South America by a U.S. trader company. Wherever the sheep were raised, Ramsey’s wool comes practically direct from the animal’s back to yours. The wool is carded and the fibers aligned, but it’s raw and in a sense, that still maintains its connection to the animal. “It’s animalistic, and wild in a way, because it is so close to the sheep.”

By feeling and touching each pelt, it’s possible to realize that it came from a sheep. “You don’t think about that all the time and I think it’s important to be conscious of it.”

Organics go far beyond the materials for Ramsey. Designing is an evolution that unfolds before her in a very free-flowing and intuitive way. “I like to keep it really hands-on and I like to be making with my hands. I think that’s important: to be close to it.” In Pelt, she began working with a Barbara Walker knitting swatch book and let the shapes develop naturally. “Just putting rectangles [of the knitting patterns] onto the form, they kind of take on a life of their own and I can visualize how to build them out.” Guided by the body and a mixture of the material and the body, Ramsey’s work pairs an interesting balance between emotions of strength and femininity.

Drawing upon the embedded concept of skins, animal hides, and fur, Ramsey’s romanticized photo shoot for the collection took an even further look at the significance of coverings and the meanings behind their expressions. The true model in the images exists behind a styled facade, as in reality, she has long red hair. In addition, her freckling from head -to-toe covers her skin and creates a pattern upon her own body. Layers of coverings – animal and human – overlap and almost become entangled in a merging of raw and wild, comfort and spectacle.

Ramsey’s Pelt undoubtedly connects human with animal; the shearing from a sheep’s coat is woven into a covering to shield a human from the cold. We may not generally think so directly about the origins of the fabrics draped upon our shoulders, but Ramsey’s exploration reminds us that our garments contain stories that have already been written before they reach us. Questioning those stories and pondering their intricacies could aid in reestablishing true and authentic connections with our body coverings.

“I think it’s important to have things that people would love to wear, and are actually wearable, even though they stand out and make an impact.” Ramsey says this collection was potentially her Fall 2012 preview. We hope to soon see her creations available at a nearby boutique; whether it be to shield, shelter, or take on a distinct persona, these coverings are utterly covetable.

The post THREADED: Julia Ramsey Sheds Her Skin About ‘Pelt’ appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnPlace matters nothing. It’s all about what you house in your head and heart.

Nine months ago and on something of a whim, I threw down roughly $300 for a one-way Air Berlin flight to Europe. I never issued proper goodbyes or otherwise indicated that I wouldn’t come back to San Francisco, and yet some small, reckless part of me already knew it was foregone. Now, I have under my belt nearly a year abroad and, even better, a German-issue work and residency visa affixed to my American passport.

This week, I’ve popped back into the States for the first time since my departure and am currently holed up at a friend’s little flat in Brooklyn. New York energizes and animates me like no other place in the world, but Berlin is a magnetic and beautiful beast that compels me to splash right back across the pond. Europe isn’t exactly home to me but, at this juncture, neither is the United States – returning to my country of origin has only confirmed for me what I already suspected: I will not remain and cannot return here with any permanence.

The absence of home, conceptually, isn’t a lack – but rather a liberation. Because I don’t chiefly belong anywhere, I by default belong everywhere. Girdled by my journalistic impulse to indulge curiosity and bolstered by my professional prerogative to document culture in real time, I don’t quite feel like a citizen of the world: Not, at least, in a blasé cosmopolitan sense nor with a corny “global village” sentiment to validate my existence and experiences.

It’s the people we meet who give us license to continue. Without them repelling or attracting us – indeed, without the mere presence of people as placeholders, markers and signposts – we cannot be free to hack off our roots and sally forth into new and unfamiliar terrain; we cannot be free to contribute our song to the universal chorus. Our allies and enemies alike provide us with belonging – whether they be present in a corporeal sense, like a lover curled in bed in slumber, or whether they be the fodder of imagination, like the memory of a lover long lost. While he might never surface again in the flesh, he remains just as real in the adventures of the mind. Within you, his is an existence of eternal return.

Home then is a notion. It’s as much an idea as a place. The figment is no less real than the physical expression – in the end, won’t both come to dust? Maybe home isn’t what you carry on your back at all, but rather what you house in your head.

Psychological projection is a powerful agent. It’s why we reflect on what has come and harness these experiences to inform what will. If you can make it up, you can make it so.

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a contributor to The New York Times and National Public Radio. ‘From an Ex-Pat…with Love’ is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad in Europe.

Author Image: Alina Rudya

The post From an Ex-Pat…with Love: Global Lessons appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA Vaclav Havel memorial in Prague, photographed hours after the announcement of his death Sunday.

Vaclav Havel, the prolific and politically-incendiary Czech writer and intellectual cum 1989 Velvet Revolution leader, died last Sunday at the age of 75; a decades-long devotee of tobacco, he passed due to respiratory complications in the privacy of his country home in Bohemia. Havel’s works – including 22 plays, nine non-fiction books, and the Charter 77 human rights manifesto – galvanized not only the disfavor of the Communist government, who imprisoned him on multiple occasions because of his texts, but conversely the esteem of his countrymen, who elected him as the first democratic ruler of then Czechoslovakia.

Havel’s creative output spans the gamut from absurdism to children’s stories, and he leaves behind an impressive oeuvre of books and letters rich with imminently quotable passages. Over the intervening days since his departure, I’ve been rolling around certain Havelian turns-of-phrase – cold, dark marbles on my tongue.

With quiet but ruthless exactitude, Havel called out of hiding small, hard secrets about the human condition. He of course exposed and documented systematic abuse and civil rights violations in former Communist Czechoslovakia, but also delivered a fair share of reckoning with our species’ systemic frailties and follies.

He wrote that people “are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary master plan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”

To form a bridge between his quote and this weekly column’s core theme – love and intimacy – doesn’t require elaborate architecture. While Havel is talking here about the nation-state and body politic, the principle of self-propagating defeatism also holds fast in romantic pairings. He implicates not only the government, but also the governed; in doing so, he examines macro structures and also micro figures within a system – both of which inform, and feed, the other. The whole is a reflection of its sum parts. The major movements and themes of a piano concerto sound not without the harmonization of individual ivory keys pounding the chords.

Relationships – whether you’re like me exploring the sublime nuances and also sour notes of being a single woman after a lifetime spent otherwise or, like my little sister in the United States, married to the very boy you met and fell for in junior high school – are an inalienable, inexorable feature of our existence. Pair bonding’s resultant transcendence is illusory, albeit recurring, giving way at times to tedium, pointlessness and a rot of existential rubbish.

Havel wrote his own way out of it: “Isn’t it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.”

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a contributor to The New York Times and National Public Radio. ‘From an Ex-Pat…with Love’ is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad in Europe.

Author Image: Alina Rudya; Article Image: Megan Ouellette

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ColumnThe capital city’s own mayor puts it best: “Berlin is poor, but sexy.”

In Scott Roxborough’s How Berlin Became the Coolest City on the Planet, he writes that the 3.45 million-person city is everything Germany is not: spontaneous, open, cosmopolitan and exciting. While Roxborough’s summary dismissal of Deutschland might be ungenerous, his synopsis of its capital is unerring. The metropolis defies easy definition – dynamic and polymorphous, Berlin is in perennial state of becoming.

Pop-up restaurants, shops and galleries are the norm; sprawling former warehouses cum all-night dance clubs featuring pulsating electronic beats are open every day of the week; the city streets are a menagerie of graffiti and street art; and internet start-ups are in such abundance that Berlin has been dubbed Europe’s “Silicon Allee.” Young internationals from the creative sector flock here for the cheap rent in the East, allowing them to set-up studios and storefronts at a low cost in a globally-relevant urban center. From an all-vegan supermarket to a remarkable, Finnish-style sauna that literally floats on the Spree Canal bisecting the city, Berlin is a place where radical, even seemingly preposterous ideas have room to germinate, take root and flourish.

Mayor Klaus Wowereit – who, incidentally, happens to be gay, but whose sexual preference is a complete non-issue in this tolerant locale – provided the city with its unofficial motto when he described Berlin as “poor…but sexy.” And it is so. While the country of Germany’s staid, export-driven economy is propping up the euro zone from collapse, Berlin’s unemployment level exceeds 10-percent. It’s not a place for industry, but rather a cultural capital. Its very financial malaise is what makes it a tenable global destination for artists who might have a slim pocketbook, but whose straits energize their creativity – this is where the sexiness comes into play.

Berlin isn’t for everybody. Of all the European cities, it certainly doesn’t place first as one of the most beautiful. Far from the posh digs of Paris, Rome or London, Germany’s capital isn’t a center of high-end fashion or epicurean eats, which is precisely what makes it so attractive. It’s Berlin’s tenuousness and frayed edges that make it sparkle. After The Wall fell, there was a mass exodus from the former Socialist enclave; derelict, care-worn buildings were abandoned and young, downwardly mobile people sought out the empty shell as a playground of their own imagining.

In two intervening decades, Berlin continues to discover its own vicissitudes, to be carved out by ex-pats and Germans alike. Poor and sexy sure, but also touched with no small dose of both madness and magic. It’s a city of those who are willing to stand on ground that’s not quite solid, but that is rich with the ferment of do-it-yourself derring-do.

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a contributor to The New York Times and National Public Radio. ‘From an Ex-Pat…with Love’ is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad in Europe.

Berlin Image, Roland Anton Laub; Author Image, Alina Rudya

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ColumnStaving off depression during a dark Berlin winter sometimes means a communal sauna and a cold beer.

In the popular American imagination, Western Europe is still a bastion for in-the-buff recreation. The mere mention of the Mediterranean, for many of us, calls to mind glorified, sun soaked stretches of impossibly beautiful coastline crawling with tan-line-free bodies. Yes, Europeans exhibit a comparatively relaxed approach to sexuality, but for a current generation, nudism is on the downswing – a past time relegated to the territory of grandfathers influenced by hippie zeitgeist now past.

While the growing disinclination to disrobe in public holds true in many countries across the pond, the phenomenon hasn’t fallen out of favor in East Germany – especially not in Berlin. In this former Soviet stronghold, plenty of culturally-enshrined opportunities exist to enjoy oneself sans cumbersome clothing and, oddly enough, this is perhaps best evidenced during winter.

Here, the sauna – in import of the historic Finnish variety – reigns. Typically co-ed, these clothing non-optional environments help stave off the depression that attends not only the grisly German winters, but also dearth of daylight at such a northerly latitude. At the season’s height, daybreak doesn’t come until late morning, and the sun again sets before the end of the work day. With winter comes a world of bone chilling cold and a smothering cloak of darkness seeming without end. The antidote? Frequent trips to one’s neighborhood sauna, where a multi-hour visit costs mere euros – about the same price as a decent bottle of red wine.

In the U.S., saunas are usually a costly luxury and in same-sex company; in Germany, it’s not only a quotidian luxury that comes at little expense, but also one that proffers a mild, mixed gender thrill. Far from the terrain of socially inappropriate lechers, sauna culture is so commonplace that families come with their children, groups of university students gather and hang out, and even business people (although typically groups of men) converge to talk shop and sweat it out together.

And, of course, the body’s fluids must be replenished after subjection to such extreme heat. While an uptight doctor might classify a post-sauna beer as ill advised, rest assured the Germans aren’t wary of its indulgence and, in fact, consider it a tidy closure to the evening. In a land where the average life expectancy is long; the men, brave and strong; and all of the women beautiful – well, they might just be on to something. The sauna isn’t just a recipe for enduring the long slog of winter, but also the crux of enjoying a good life and aging well.

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a contributor to The New York Times and National Public Radio. ‘From an Ex-Pat…with Love’ is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad in Europe.

Bio Image: Alina Rudya, Article Image: thomaswanhoff

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ColumnJane Austen’s tomes on relationships are revisited with 21st century reading glasses.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

These words mark the opening passage of British author Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride & Prejudice. Although the conclusions she draws about love and intimacy are starkly insufficient for contemporary audiences, Austen continues to be fiercely relevant because of her lightning-hot investigative process and sharp social commentary. With a forked tongue pointed directly at the landed English gentry, it’s not so much her what, but rather the derring-do of her how.

For post-modern women, Austen’s world view – with its codified rules and wax seal of matrimony – isn’t so much suspect, but simply quaint. We welcome and also balk at today’s ever changing guard, asking what will become of us in an era defined by what sociologists herald as the End of Masculinity. Boys and girls both are bereft of a compass for navigating the variegated topography of gender, pair bonding, and progeny.

In our era, plurality reigns – rendering outcomes open-ended and unhinged, rather than foregone.

For Jane Austen, the terrain of dating and desire was not simple. Austen, for instance, spurned a suitor once marriage became the relationship’s only inevitability; consequently, she spent the rest of her life alone, but transformed her solitude into a gift – harnessing her time to author Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Emma. The socially-sanctioned options at her disposal were few, but she certainly gave the finger.

For many women, it’s the sheer abundance of choices that threatens to paralyze momentum; porous lives with few boundaries have their own attendant shortcomings. The introductory statement to a current-day Pride & Prejudice would require radical revision, not least because the very concept of a “universal truth” is an untenable antiquation. Instead of staking out a man of means in want of a wife, I might re-write the text to read as follows:

“That you are wholly and utterly alone is unavoidable; that everything is causal and that we’re all in this together is also inescapable; the rub, whether it be between boys and girls or whatever relationship between two humans, is to harmonize your ultimately abject triviality with your responsibility to change the world, in ways big and small, on a daily basis.”

Berlin-based Abigail Wick is a New York Times and NPR contributor. From an Ex-Pat…with Love is her weekly EcoSalon column about cultural dislocation, romantic relationships and lifestyle choices – filtered through the lens of an American woman living and working abroad.

Image by Kameron Elisabeth

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ColumnConscious life, hear me roar.

The night before Thanksgiving, my family was safely tucked in their beds all under one roof. With my parents visiting for the holiday, we play a little bed scramble: My mom always takes my daughter’s bed upstairs, my daughter and I sleep in my bed, my husband sleeps on the couch, my son in his own bed and my dad, down in the guest room where he can snore his nostrils off in the peace of a well-insulated room.

At around 4 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, my mother came rushing into my bedroom and whispered that there was an ambulance out front. My room had become a carnival of lights swirling round. I jumped out of bed, threw on my winter boots and jacket, and ran out the door into the dark cold with tears already streaming down my face.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know what was going on.

My neighbor, Imelda, is 91 and is at that point where sometimes she forgets our names, will tell the same story after five minutes and likes tight hugs where she never once did. This is a woman who has been a surrogate great-grandmother to my children for 13 years, has babysat, given me cups of flour and sugar and listened to me over coffee when I felt no one else would.

She is most certainly my friend, but fears for my life in the ever after as I have different beliefs from her. In fact, we’ve had a secret pact for years that whoever dies first has to do something like knock a book or a glass off a ledge to prove there’s an after life. She always laughs and says she knows she’ll go first but I tell her life is pretty random. You never know when a safe could be falling out a window…

In the cold, I stood at the foot of her gravel driveway, a place where we often meet and chat; moments later, her son (visiting from North Carolina) came out to brief me.

A basic need to use the bathroom had resulted in her falling, hitting her skull on a side bed table, striking open an artery and her son walking in to find his mother lying in a pool of blood – still trying to press her necklace that alerts people somewhere, that a 91-year-old woman needs help and might just die if they don’t come quick.

“They’re taking her to the hospital now,” he said looking at me for an answer.

If you’ve ever stood at night bathed in ambulance light, you might know that feeling of how fleeting life is – that we are always at the mercy of fate.

In that moment of cold, being half-asleep and looking from the outside in to her home, I felt such remorse for how busy I’ve been with work and family that I couldn’t have visited with her more the past six months just to sit and have coffee, bring her something hot to eat, play a hand of Gin Rummy and tease her that there’s no god.

Helpless, I walked across the street, kicked off my boots, hung my coat and snuggled back in with my daughter who was still sweetly sleeping and sighing in her dreams.

Later that morning, Imelda’s son came in to tell us that she was going to be all right, but remain in the hospital for a few days. That she was lucky. That she was as feisty as ever and wanted to go home.

When she does return, I will visit with her by her wood stove and make fun of her as she drinks whiskey from a styrofoam cup, while she deals me a weak hand and waxes passionately about why I need faith, need to stop leaving my family to go to New York City so much, need to put a new coat of paint on my house.

In the ticking of the warm room, I can look into her eyes knowing a secret. You see, one of her biggest dreams has always been that someone would find her interesting enough to write about; to know that she made an impact in this life that surpassed a girlhood in Grand Falls, New Brunswick where she married young, had five kids and “did her best.”

In this life, she has been everything to me, has never cared about my life as a fashion writer or editor, just that she matters to me.

This week’s column is dedicated to Imelda Morin, a 4’8″ woman from Canada who hates swearing, blasphemy and loose women.
Who I gave thanks to on Thursday at dinner, along with my entire family, that she’s still alive as you read this.

Between the Lines, is a weekly column navigating the sometimes-sharp, sometimes-blurred lines of life and culture between city and country.

Image: Horia Valdan

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