by tashmcgill | Oct 5, 2018 | thedaily500
I’ve had plenty of good food in my life. I’m lucky enough to have wonderful chefs as friends, fellow foodie lovers and plenty of restaurants to visit in almost every city I’ve visited. I’ve eaten handmade dumplings with native herbs in New Caledonia, slow-cooked Merino lamb on the side of the mountain, wild venison I shot and butchered myself cooked into a lemon myrtle and chocolate venison pie. I’ve devoured Mark Southon’s pork and puha, along with anything he’s ever made – all delicious but nothing compares to the fresh made habanero mustard on smoked BBQ. Fraser Shenton’s treatment of seafood still inspires me after a single lunch in 2016. Matt Lambert’s degustation at The Musket Room in New York remains a highlight, particularly eating off the green egg in the backyard garden of the restaurant. And in November, I can’t wait to taste more of Sid Sahrawat’s magic now that he and Chand have taken over The French Café. Travel to a city in the world and I’ll give you my list of recommendations compiled from the travellers, cooks, food writers and food lovers I trust most.
But a good dish and a good meal are not the same. I’ve eaten baked beans on toast with melted cheddar on top and felt the joy of laughter, simplicity and friends. I’ve sat cross-legged for the Passover Seder and eaten the maror; the bitter herbs and overcooked lamb but smiled and taken my fill of the sincere prayers. There is an element of ritual in a good meal that you cannot find in food alone.
The sacred ritual of a good meal means a spacious table with cosy seating; a place people can be comfortable to sit and take their time over a meal. There are copious glasses – for water, wine and aperitifs. There is noise, perhaps the pre-requisite; either a table full of people or a room full of strangers or simply a noisy heart, but there must be noise. Scrape of knife on plate, clink of glass against glass, laughter and the dull swoosh of a napkin and crumbs falling to the floor. More laughter. Silence in between mouthfuls, followed by an intense volley of eye contact, smiles and chewing around the table; when food evokes another layer of pleasure on top of pleasure derived from the company. Finally, the ritual is complete when plates are surreptitiously swiped clean with fingers that meet lips and then stacked. The table cloth splashed with wine; that final special bottle opened from the cupboard.
Sometimes, you look up from the best meal you’ve ever had and realise the restaurant has closed around you and the chefs are sitting at the table with you. Sometimes you realise it’s 2am in the morning and your dinner guests are going to need to sleep in the guest room or scattered over the couch. Occasionally, after the best meal you’ve ever had, you clean up after breakfast and start preparing ribs for the slow cooker because someone else is coming for dinner.
There’s no such thing at the best meal, it’s just one that follows on from the next – it’s the always accessible magic of bringing together the elements of table, space, time, food, attention. The best meal I ever had and that I dine from frequently is the way my heart feeds on the intentionality of nourishment with people I care about.
by tashmcgill | Oct 4, 2018 | thedaily500
Current events? These are the words I’ve been wanting to speak for twenty years. 1995 – I remember. 1998 – I remember. 2003 – I remember. 2008 – I will never forget. 2017 – I remember. 2018 – I will tell everyone the truth, my anger will be righteous and bright like the dawn.
I’ve been angry this week and swallowed it a dozen times. An hour. I think you know that feeling. The coil of anxiety in your stomach, the fluttering heartbeat and the tightness rippling across your chest. The burning behind your eyeballs. It’s more than sadness or disappointment. It’s the palpitation of rage. It’s what rises up in us; when we feel deeply, when we are treated unjustly or face betrayal. When what we held to be true is proven to not be true.
I have swallowed that feeling again and again and rushed to my knees to find a way to forgive and move forward from my anger. Because I have been taught to fear what happens if I do not forgive and forget. Because I am a woman and anger is the forbidden emotion. Only the innocent are entitled to justifiable anger and since women have been guilty since the Garden of Eden, we are never considered innocent.
The myth of woman was that of sacred innocence, a vessel of purity until she ate the apple. Then she succumbed to her sensual power and since then, a woman is paradox. She is both the Madonna and the Madgalene. The virgin and the whore; but from that moment never innocent because she has a sensual power within her. A woman can bring a weak man to his knees and therefore a woman can never be innocent for she has the ability to seduce. And a man seduced is innocent; he was only deceived, only foolish, just a boy.
Women are not permitted to be innocent and angry, we are barely permitted to be angry at all. To be angry is to reassert our innocence, to reclaim justice. To be angry is to be powerful and to call someone else to account – something women have hardly ever been given permission to do.
I learned it as a child – ours is to accept what is and simply move on from what angers us. We are taught to find another way as if that is the higher path. Adults make rules and we follow them. But as a young adult in the church I learned not only do adults make rules for children to follow when it comes to self-expression, men make rules for women to follow when it comes to emotion, in particular when it comes to anger.
I learned as a young woman in church and business; the fastest way for any woman to be labelled emotional or lose her authority in a room is not to cry but to express anger or frustration. You can cry or tremble and your emotion will be chalked up to the softness and femininity. Don’t believe men who say they hate it when women cry. They prefer tears to anger every time. And so do women from other women. We don’t give each other permission to be properly angry either. We don’t know how because we’re scared of how powerful our own anger can be.
I have watched vitriol explode in newspapers and social media and seen that women who express their anger are either crucified or humiliated.
And here’s why: anger is always a matter of truth, justice or pride. So anger is powerful. Anger demands you pay attention and answer the question of what is right, what is true and what is good. Even if we learn we were wrong, anger is part of our pathway to truth. It is brave and beautiful work to be angry, especially on your own behalf. It is brave and beautiful work to be angry with people you love. It is brave and beautiful work to be angry in a way that facilitates truth-telling, in our relationships, our work, our churches, our world. But still it remains; forbidden. Do this at the risk of being wrong, being humiliated, of losing what you care about.
Here’s what I’ve learned: I should have expressed more anger in my life. Instead, I turned my anger on myself. I spent an extraordinary amount of time being angry with myself for not being able to fix it, to be better, to find a way to forgive. But now I realise how beautiful and sacred anger can be. Previously my angry outbursts were futile because I was trying to be angry in a man’s world, designed to silence my anger. But when I am angry in my world, in this new world – there is plenty of space to be angry and to be compassionate. To be full of righteous fury and full of love. To forgive what can be forgiven and to call to account everything else.
In order to be angry, you have to tell the truth more often.
by tashmcgill | Oct 3, 2018 | thedaily500
When I arrive in a new city or return home from weeks away, people ask, ‘how were your travels?’, but that is never what they mean. They don’t want to know how you navigated from the train station to the airport in the falling snow or what it was like to sit underground during a tornado, forced to leave your worldly possessions behind on aircraft while being evacuated. When people ask how your travels were, they mean ‘tell me a story about where you went’. They never mean to ask about how you got there.
But if you like, I’ll tell you a travel story. I woke up in the morning and wrote a letter to an old lover; saying goodbye because there was nothing left to say. I had examined all the corners of it until there were no lessons left unlearned. So I wrote a letter in an email and said I was heading far away. I don’t remember if I sent it, but that wasn’t the point.
I pulled my suitcase from under the bed and considered the exact number of days I would be away, all the places I might go. I had travelled before, I knew the cadence of packing light and keeping an eye out for lessons and memories along the way. I was travelling from the last stalwarts of summer into the first creep of autumn. It’s easier to carry heartbreak in the winter, there’s an excuse for holding yourself together in scarfs and coats. But I remember thinking I didn’t need to pack vanity this time. There was nothing left to admire in myself. I travelled like a shell of a woman, waiting to be full again.
I can tell you now, that travelling is best done with a broken heart. You will encounter people in airports that cut in front of your line and take your seat, even dare to encroach on your armrest but you’ll find compassion when your heart is loosely tied together. That is the travel story I can tell you. Me, climbing onto a plane, stowing my suitcase overhead and my bag under the seat in front of me, brokenhearted with not much of a plan but making plenty of space for those around me.
On the first leg of my flight, there is an empty seat next to me and my grief fills it entirely. It is a relief to not carry the weight of it for just an hour or so. Before the second leg, I carry myself to the lounge and fuel up on coffee. Airport coffee has always made me sentimental. I like to think I can taste the aviation fuel in the coffee and it reminds me I am moving forward from this moment. I choose to forget what it felt like to travel towards someone with anticipation. I focus instead on what it is like to be moving, travelling, to be in motion. When the moment is painful, it helps. For the second hop, I stop listening to sad songs and pull my journal from my bag. I am a cliche but a necessary one as I write down the things I believe to be true. I am worthy, I am loved, I am already moving towards something new. Sitting in an airplane at 30,000ft gives perspective like no other to the smallness of life. That’s enough to begin my healing. I have four hours to go and nothing but horizon to look at.
Within a few hours, I’m landed on the other side of the country from where I started and more than 15,000 miles from my turangawaewae, my home place. But here in Boston, I sit at a hotel bar and someone asks me,’how were your travels? You’re a long way from home.” I answer in a steady voice, ‘they were healing. I found my way back to myself all the way here.”
He says, ‘Well, why don’t you tell me who you are?’
For a moment, I stopped travelling and landed for a while. I told him who I was and I pulled pieces of myself back together as I did.
by tashmcgill | Oct 2, 2018 | thedaily500
We grew up in a house full of books. Almost every bedroom had built-in bookshelves that were double-stacked and full to bursting. In our household, the rule was you can spend frivolously on books, so long as you choose good ones because there were always be at least four people to read it. My mother and sisters and I grew up nourished on serif fonts and paperback newsprint. Even now we have to check and double check who has purchased which new release from our favourite authors so we don’t double up too much. I carry this habit with me; like the shopping habits of an overweight woman – books and shoes never let me down. In fact, because of books and shoes it has never occurred to me to consider anything else normative. I grew up listening to my mother read Tennyson and Longfellow to me in perfect meter.
Did you ever see the sound of a word carving out space for you to live inside? I did. The way my mother could roll her tongue into the rhythm of Hiawatha’s song, painting a word picture of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon and her wigwam is perhaps my most treasured sound of childhood. I wait eagerly to hear her speak it aloud again to my niece and nephew.
Of the few places we called home in my youth, it wasn’t until we arrived in Patey St that I think we truly made ourselves at home again. After leaving Hau Moana, our green square house overlooking the Manukau Harbour, we finally found ourselves again in the early 1900s bungalow within walking distance of the best schools. There was little romance in the position of the house, just the earnest love of a woman determined to give us every launch pad she could into the world. But slowly, as we peeled back linoleum from native hardwood timber floors and as Mum sanded and then painstakingly painted every architrave and doorframe in enamel paint; Patey St became a love story to what is possible.
In the bones of that bungalow are the built-in bookshelves I now crave and the stories we learned within her walls. We fought and screamed and cried and pushed our way into adolescence and adulthood in those walls.
In the height of our romance with Patey St, as we knew her, the formal living room boasted deep pink fuchsia walls, a Regent style carpet and floral curtains. You had to stand in the space to understand how perfect it was and if you did, you would see two pink Edwardian armchairs. This room, with an explosion of colour was always heaven to me.
My mother, finally independent, had created rooms in a house that was entirely her own making. In my memory coloured by fondness, everything about it was luscious – from the English rose garden to the floral wallpapers and the Edwardian chaise lounge. My mother made an escape from the world, where Tennyson, Browning, Keats and Longfellow made sense. I would arrive home from school, discard my bag and books and disappear into the world of poetry and novelists she gave me, sinking into one of those pink velvet Edwardian chairs.
When the time came for fuchsia to yield to beige and the onslaught of real estate agents began, my desire to keep the pink armchairs matched my mother’s reluctance to let them go. My stepfather – kind, gracious, a little bit naughty, had always preferred one of those armchairs by the fire. My own home had a fireplace less full of poetry but just as warm. I will not let them go, even now when I travel thousands of miles from home. When the time comes to bring my pots and pans and books to fill shelves here in the Continental United States, there are two pink chairs that will find their way back home to me. Where there is poetry waiting. A chair without a book to read is no place to rest.
by tashmcgill | Oct 1, 2018 | thedaily500
The rhythm of our seasons is by now so familiar to me that I forget to notice the nuances. There are four acts to the calendar year, just like there are four acts to life. This ancient rhythm coerces me til I see the world in the four lenses; in parallel to summer, autumn, winter and spring.
Birth, growing, fading, dying. Living out our years is as if we stand at the centre of expanding concentric circles, season after season layered on top of the other. We live through eighteen cycles of the years but call it all the Spring of youth, before we are finally finished being born. Everybody likes that idea. Another 18 we spend in the idyllic Summer of adulthood, blooming as our fully-realised selves. Eighteen years in Autumn revealing a glorious show of colour as we begin to fade, saving our beauty for the very end. We remind ourselves what can be found in the final moments of every season. Still, no one likes the idea of a long death, no one wants eighteen years of dying. We try to rob death of it’s quarter-share, we give it the passing of a single breath. We try to live long and die quick. We stretch out and manipulate our seasons by how we count time. We fly away from winter.
If you are standing in the right place on earth, a season can change in a single breath. The Japanese recognise twenty four ‘small seasons’ where the earth pauses in place to gaze at the moon. They acknowledge each of the 72 breaths that form those micro seasons where the heat approaches, the heat sticks and the heat subsides. They count the earth breathing in and out three times and then turning her body slightly forward. Twenty four resting places and three deep breaths in each, always moving.
I think this is how we live and die; in equal, perfect measure. Balance. But it is not the seasons that change to keep the earth in balance in cycles of decay and rebirth. The earth moves herself to stay in balance with her life-giving and her dying. The seasons do not happen to her but Earth steps into them, breath by breath, back towards the moon and on towards the sun.
When the moon is high, I rearrange furniture and sleep with the curtains open, drenched in moonlight. I reorganise spaces in my home and in my mind for the work that needs to happen next. I choose to make new rhythms and practices so I can resist any temptation to get stuck in the previous breath. The temptation is heavy,
Sometimes, like yesterday, I find myself stepping into the rain that falls in the last breaths of the Autumn Equinox. First the thunder of the last twelve months began to ease, and the rain signaled me to adjust my sight to the next bend, to step into the next breath of the Earth. This rain is my final cleansing, a deep long breath after the heat of Summer.
