Tag: bibliotherapy

Imaginary Tea Party

March 9, 2018
Posted by Sharon

In my memory, a significant part of my childhood was spent in imaginary play.  From a quick review of photographs, I spent a lot of time in a leotard with a tutu.  I was either dressing for the job I wanted or I just liked the fancy feeling that comes along with wearing anything tulle.  Since it is also itchy, my guess is that I REALLY wanted to be a ballerina.  I also liked to have tea parties.  This week, for bibliotherapy Friday (if you read my blog regularly, you will soon realize that there is never just one day of the week to enjoy book therapy), I’d like to invoke both my imagination and the spirit of planning parties I will likely never host.  Will you be my guest?  Better yet, I highly recommend checking out these cookbooks and planning your own imaginary feast.

The ultimate tea party cake is most definitely the Coconut Princess Birthday Cake with Almond Filling, a 3-layer cake that looks like something I’d LOVE for you to bring over for tea at my place.  We would need plates and forks and, lucky for us, I have those.  In addition, I would provide some Earl Grey tea as I believe the bergamot scent would complement the almond filling.  You can’t buy this cake, but you can make it by following the three-page recipe starting on page 107 of “Tasting Hygge: Joyful Recipes for Cozy Days and Nights” by Leela Cyd.  I have to be honest with you that just the idea of trying to make this cake causes a bit of anxiety to arise in me…..especially the little “note” on page 109 about making my own marzipan.  But, in my heart, I feel how delightful this cake is.  In my mouth, I can feel how the soft white frosting would shock my mouth with sweetness on the first bite.  Then, I can feel the flavor develop as the almond enveloped the initial sugary sweetness and I know I’m going to giggle.  I’m going to sit back and enjoy that bite.  Sip some tea.  If  frosted three-layer cakes aren’t your thing, then delight in all the other treats in this fabulous book that is perfect for your next tea party—-real OR imagined.  Some of the other recipes that caught my attention were the Swedish Tea Ring with Berries and Crushed Cardamom (pg. 60), Pea Dumplings with Mint Sour Cream (pg. 26), and Avocado Yogurt Dip with Vegetables (pg. 75).  So, put on your tutu, gather the fairies, sit down with this sweet little cookbook, and have the best little tea party your mind can imagine in the most beautiful garden you can conjure.

Tea party not your thing?  No problem!  Meet me at the Chinese night market of our dreams where the scent of five spice and curries mingle with noodles and mysterious meats (don’t ask, don’t tell).  There isn’t much I don’t want to learn to make and nothing I wouldn’t love to eat right now in Danielle Chang’s “Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts and Family Tables”.  As if the food and sweet treats weren’t enough, Chang also has some very unique alcoholic drink ideas including the “Afternoon Gin Tea” which includes anise, Kaffir lime leaf, peppercorns, smoky Lapsang Souchong tea, ginger, honey, and gin.  So, I guess I’ve come back around to the tea party theme after all.  But, how can you resist the Nasi Goreng (Indonesian Fried Rice, page 157), Chicken Tikka Masala (page 135), Zha Jiang Mian (Spicy Pork Noodles, page 104), or Chanko Nabe (Sumo Wrestlers’ Stew, page 86)?  For some reason, many of us lose our ability to imagine or dream as adults, or it makes us feel foolish or silly—-what a waste of time!  But, a cookbook like this offers eye candy and I can smell the deep aromatics of these delicious meals.  In my mind’s eye, I can wander the night market, alone or with other adventurous friends and experience a wonderful evening under the stars with a belly full of my favorite Asian comfort foods.

The soups and stews are what appeal to me in “The Easy Vegan Cookbook” by Kathy Hester……but, I have to admit that the only reason I pulled this one off the shelf is that the title made me think of my best childhood friend from Brooklyn, Jen……because, as pre-teens, we both enjoyed and were perplexed by a pop song at the time called “Easy Lover” by Phil Collins.  Memory can be an important part of imagination because we can pull from the remembered to make a collage of an experience in our mind that brings the best of the past into this present imagined moment.  Now imagine Mr. Collins singing about his “Easy Vegan” and then think of being 11-years old and hanging out with your bestie listening to the radio and trying to figure out song lyrics.  There is a lot of giggling.  In this cookbook by Hester, there are also some variations on common vegetarian favorites that are worth a glance and likely worth eating too if you are inclined to take these imagined parties out of the mind and into your kitchen.  For example, check out the Pumpkin Hummus (pg. 152), Black Eyed Pea Quesadillas (pg. 143), or the simple, yet flavorful Cauliflower and Rice Soup (pg. 50).

If you need a bit of help with your imagination muscle when it comes to tea, dinner, or other gatherings, then look no further than that fantastic “Salad for President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists” by Julia Sherman.  Sherman travels the world to have delicious salads crafted by amazing artists that we can only imagine having meals with.  Have a leftover salad breakfast taco with Alice Water, Persimmon Caprese with Master ceramicist Yui Tsujimura in Nara Japan, and enjoy dipping fresh garden herbs into Laurie Anderson’s Roasted Eggplant Dip……It’s easy to imagine because these fantastical gatherings actually happened and Sherman provides the pictures to prove it.  Close your eyes and imagine yourself there, with the people in the picture.  It’s not cheating, it’s like using a block when you practice yoga….just a visual tool for sparking your imaginative power.

Meet me in the woods at never o’clock for some pea dumplings with mint sour cream and a hundred bites of frosted almond cake….I’ll be the one in the turquoise tulle tutu with a flower crown and the fairy entourage.  Just follow the song birds.  You can’t miss me!

Unicorn in the Sky and Other Magic

February 24, 2018
Posted by Sharon

Hello there dear!  It’s Bibliotherapy Saturday  and I decided to start today’s exploration with a magazine I don’t usually read.  Ever.  I decided to start with February 2018 issue of Astronomy magazine.  Why you might ask?  Good question!  It’s because there was a hook on the cover that suggested that I could “TOUR Monoceros the Unicorn” on page 60.  I love unicorns.  How could I resist?  Monoceros the Unicorn is the 35th largest constellation out of the 88 constellations and the figure lies within the “Winter Triangle: the stars Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Procyon.”  The short article then has some pictures of and features of the area around the constellation and notes what is special that you can see either with the naked eye under a dark sky or what kind of telescopic enlargement is required.  This kind of night sky exploration is what I had been hoping for when I signed up for a basic astronomy class in college.  Instead, I got a whole lot of physics and math that I didn’t have the background to do and wasn’t sure what any of it meant.  I don’t know about you, but I feel kind of excited about this Unicorn dancing around the Winter Triangle of our night sky!   Recently, I have also come across a number of books and articles that refer to star bathing, which is just like sun bathing, but under the night sky.  While it may be difficult, or even impossible, in urban areas to isolate from other light sources, I have to believe that, with intention, one can go outside in the night to absorb the light of the stars and receive some of the benefits.  And, if those stars happen to be in the shape of a unicorn……..that HAS to be some extra special and nourishing star bathing.

When I was designing the curriculum for my new Buddhist meditation and nature focused yoga teacher training program, I felt called to pull ecospirituality into my yoga and meditation practice and work.  I also read an article in the November 2017-January 2018 Womankind magazine today called, “The Gardening Effect” by Lucy Treloar that quotes a biologist by the name of E.O. Wilson:

“…nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.”

Wow!  Go ahead and read that a few times and think about how much time you spend outdoors, about the quality of water and food that you consume and make a part of your body. I love an essay/memoir in this magazine by Katherine Scholes about her time as a child following her father, a physician, on his travels through Tanzania before independence when it was called Tanganyika.  The memoir is called “Home in the Open Savannah” and there are fabulous pictures of the author and her siblings as children.  In many of the pictures they are holding up dead birds with huge smiles on their faces.  I think of my children all stressed out about school schedules and homework packets and spending too much time on their iPads and how different their lives will be for not having had this kind of adventure in childhood that the author describes, but also how different they will be for having the ones that they are having.  Because, it’s all an adventure.

Also in this magazine, Womankind (11/17-01/18) on page 93, there is a Tanzanian proverb:

“A wise person will always find a way.”

This proverb is interesting to me, especially completely out of context, as it brings to mind my knowledge of the Tao….which is a certain kind of “way”.  Perhaps a wise person always finds a path to the flow of spirit?  Finds a way to a path, any path that will accept their feet and they walk it until the path unfolds and things seem more clear.  Or, maybe it is an invitation to the power of intention, that once we are determined, we relax around that determination so that we can be creative about how to manifest our desire?  It would be interesting to use this as a positive affirmation when I feel like something is impossible to remind myself that there is, in fact, a way.  There is always a way.

Here are some other books that made it to the reading pile:

Attracting Songbirds to Your Backyard
By Sally Roth

Did you know that some songbirds won’t ever consider a bird feeder, no matter how well-stocked, to be a food source?  This book is filled with interesting projects for making and providing food sources for song birds to diversify the birds that come and serenade you in your yard.  I also learned a lot about birds that are native to other places other than the Eastern parts of the USA where I am most familiar with bird populations.  Invite the birds to sing to you this spring and summer!

The Art of Stopping Time: Practical Mindfulness for Busy People
By Pedram Shojai

I like this meditation book a lot. There are lots of little tricks and exercises for finding ways to be mindful through your day.  I especially appreciated the suggestions on learning how to relax your neck, learning animal tracks, and taking five deep breaths every thirty-minutes throughout the day.  Sometimes, a little shift in attention can make a huge difference in your quality of life.  This book offers a lot of suggestions on how to make little shifts.

The State of Mind Called Beautiful
By Sayadaw U Pandita

Well, this is a vipassana meditation book with a very interesting name.  But, the perspectives and techniques offered are inspiring and a great way to either begin a personal meditation practice or to inspire and enhance an existing practice.  I find that this book has a very unique discussion on the challenges that come up during practice, such as pain in the body and a wandering mind.  The suggestions offered for working with obstacles within and around practice are very helpful and creative.

Flavor: The Science of Our Most Neglected Sense
By Bob Holmes

Just fascinating!  I’ve always thought that flavor and taste were synonyms, but, it turns out, they are not the same thing at all.  This is a very easy to read book and I found the discussion on what gives vegetables their flavor, or makes us believe them to have flavor, especially interesting.  It turns out that sometimes, what we taste as being a very sweet tomato isn’t sweet because of sugar content necessarily—its the hundreds of volatile aroma molecules.  And, cheap wine tastes better when people are told it is expensive even when, in a blind taste test, most will think the cheaper wines taste better anyway.  So, pour that $10 bottle of wine into a carafe and tell your guests it’s a $90 bottle of wine…..to enhance their enjoyment!

What’s in your reading pile this weekend?  Please comment below.

 

Hiding in Public

January 17, 2018
Posted by Sharon

It is only recently that I have learned that I am an introvert.  More precisely, I am an extroverted introvert.  I don’t not like being around other people and do not have trouble in crowds or social situations.  I can introduce myself to strangers and make friends with relative ease.  But, being with other people doesn’t nourish me the way that being alone is soothing and refreshing.  I don’t just LIKE being by myself……I NEED to be by myself, probably a lot more than many other people do.  I have no fear of loneliness as the idea of being all by myself is rather enticing.  But, as an extroverted introvert (or is it introverted extrovert?), my favorite place to be all by myself is the library.  It’s how I go and be all alone with others.  Perhaps it is because I grew up in an urban environment, but I like to have people “around”, but not engaging with them.  Combine being alone in public with unlimited access to books?  Heaven.  Perfection!  And so,  every Tuesday I give myself the gift of bibliotherapy in heaven…..the Carnegie Public Library in Oakland.  I’m here to meet Chinese students in Oakland who might want some help with language and culture issues, so don’t be shy if you see me and want to chat…….but in between, I’m enjoying all the nourishment that hiding in public has to offer a book lover like me.

So, what’s on the bibliotherapy pile today?

Crochet Taxidermy: 30 Quirky Animal Projects, from Mouse to Moose
By Taylor Hart

Ok, how could I resist this cutie pie of a book?  While I may never actually crochet the sweet cuttlefish, adorable crocodile head, or magnificent hen and rooster duo, it kind of made my day to look at these little projects.  Because, it’s just too easy to get too serious about things sometimes.  This book reminded me today that it’s good to play, that having a crocheted squid dangling from your wall might not be such a bad thing, and that taking the time to imagine the possibilities is as good an investment of time as anything.  Don’t take my word for it.  The next time you are feeling like a stuck in the mud cranky pants, go ahead and browse in the craft section of your library and either find this lovely little book or grab another and just allow yourself to enjoy the colors, the silly things you can make, and imagine what it would be like to have your living room walls transformed into a collection of colorful crocheted animal heads.  Sure, your kids would come home from school and know for certain that you had finally truly lost your marbles, but…..uhmmm….so what?  Sure beats coming home to find you in your cranky pants (another word for yoga pants that you’ve never actually done yoga in) with that crease across your brow and bad attitude.  Make a purple elephant head and staple it to a board and hang it on your wall instead!  Then, invite some other people over to have chips and salsa and enjoy your elephant.  That sounds like fun!

Cats I’ve Known: On Love, Loss, and Being Graciously Ignored
By Katie Haegele

If you’ve known me from the years when I was, oh, say, 23-43, then you know that I had two cats that I “rescued” in Philadelphia that were my constant companions—Mushuk and Guzel.  If you can do math and know anything about cats, you know that 20-years is a long time to be blessed with two magical and unique cats and you also know that they are no longer alive.  Through some strange twists of fate, having lived in Philly, Seattle, and Brooklyn….they are both burried in a backyard in Pittsburgh, PA.  Knowing this about me, then you know that I couldn’t NOT read this book by Haegele about the Philadelphia cats that she has known and cared for.  If you are a cat lover, then you will appreciate how these stories highlight the different personalities, behaviors, and presence of the many cats that Haegele has related to in her life.  I especially like the story of the cat that belonged to the nun that was the librarian at Haegele’s elementary school.  But, all the stories are a reflection on how we are inspired and connected to many living beings and that we can allow ourselves to be enriched and nourished by the animals that we come to know in surprising and significant ways.  If you like cats, then this is a gem that will bring you into the world of another cat loving kindred spirit.

I Hate Everyone Except You
By Clinton Kelly

I scooped this one up because it has a colorful bird on the cover and the title made me laugh when I read it.  I had no idea who Clinton Kelly was, but it turns out that he is the former cohost of the makeover show What Not to Wear.  His bio says that the show is “wildly popular”, but I’ve never heard of it.  This likely says more about me than it does about this television program, but maybe not. For the most part, I didn’t find anything particularly unique here and thought for the first 100-pages or so that the best part of this book was the title and cover image.  But, there was one part that was so insightful, almost painfully so, that I did read the whole book and it seems my initial feeling that it wasn’t unique diminished the view of life that Kelly quite artfully reveals in his personal stories.  It happens on page 103, at the start of a chapter called “The Switch”.  In this chapter, Kelly talks about how there are times in our lives when we recognize that nothing is the same, that something significant has changed, but that it is impossible to put our finger on exactly when the switch happened.

“…click–the track you’ve been traveling on is no longer your track.  The old track just disappears behind you, as irrelevant as yesterday’s train schedule.  Click.  You’re going somewhere else now.  Click.  There’s no reverse. Click.  Your reality will never be the same.”

On page 104, Kelly talks about the “switch” in his life when his parents divorced and he became a new kid in a new school.

“My track had changed.  My parents changed it, obviously, but when?  I can’t pinpoint the precise moment–and the moment had to be precise because one person can’t ride on two tracks simultaneously.  At one point, I was a ten-year-old boy in a two-parent family.  At another point, I was not.  The switch occurred, but I missed it.  Perhaps if I had been a little older, more attuned, less sad, less frightened, I would have felt it.  But I didn’t.  I had felt no switch, but I knew I was headed in a different direction.”

This really made me think about transformation in relationship to a yoga breathing practice that has always been my most successful way of bringing complete focus to the in and out quality of my breathing.  Go ahead and try it, it’s impossible, which is why it is such a great technique for full focus.  The idea is that you become aware of the precise moment when an in-breath becomes an out breath and an out breath becomes an in-breath.  It’s not hard to know whether or not you are breathing in (inhale) or breathing out (exhale), but it is very difficult to identify the exact moment when the switch occurs.  Maybe it is because the exhale is inherent in the inhale?  And perhaps this is what is missing from Kelly’s concept of the “switch”….that being a child in a two-parent household is inherent in being a child in a single parent household.  It was there all the time.  His parent’s divorce was there in the marriage, the whole time.

Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, A Drunken Mary Kay Lady & Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert
By Michael P. Branch

As someone interested in nature, the environment, and who would like to believe I have a relatively good sense of humour on most days, this collection of essays provides some creative reflections on the relationship between humans and their environment.  This includes the complex relationship between humans and other humans in their shared environment.  I randomly opened to a chapter called “Lawn Guilt” (starts on page 63), which I loved because, in my estimation, lawn care related noise polution is pretty much the worst thing about living in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh.  From spring to late fall, the sound of blowers makes it impossible to enjoy any time with the windows open.  Each person, with their postage stamp sized lawn, hires a landscape company that arrives with enough equipment to manage the lawn at Versailles—and they arrive every week.  The blowers, weed whackers, the lawn mowers made for acres create sound polution so profound that we might as well be living in the New York City Subway  station at 42nd Street at rush hour when the Peruvian wood flute bands compete with the plastic can whacking percussionists as the subway roars in and out of the station and thousands of people yapping on their phones whiz up and down the corridors.  It drives me so crazy that I consider it a good reason not to live in Pittsburgh, even with all the other amazing things about this City.  In this essay, Branch quotes an 1862 essay by Henry David Thoreau that he wrote on his deathbed, called “Walking” and, apparently, in this essay, Thoreau refers to the American lawn as “…a poor apology for a Nature and Art.”  I like these essays.  I like them more for what they aren’t than what they are.  I don’t mean that in a bad way.  Actually, it’s an amazing skill on the part of the author……he finds a way to tell a relatively short story, but pulls in quotes or references or personal introspection that makes the idea big and dynamic even if he doesn’t use a lot of words to explore it.  Most of the exploration happens in the reader after being “sparked” by the essay.  It’s really a thought-inspiring book and while I’m glad I don’t live in a place where mud season occurs, or I don’t have to worry about my kiddos finding scorpions and rattle snakes while doing cartwheels in the yard……I do see the value in becoming aware of how all the small things and events of our lives are genuinely the big things that make up the quality of our lives.

Rhett & Link’s Book of Mythicality: A Field Guide to Curiosity, Creativity, & Tomfoolery
by Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

These guys are “YouTubers”, which is a profession that was developed while I had my back turned and I’m not really sure what it is.  My son wants to be one.  So, I picked up this book because I thought it might help me understand, but I’m still confused.  It does seem that these two men spend their lives coming up with ideas of things to do on camera, or do off camera and talk about it later, or do on a live web feed and then they wrote a book about their “process”.  I guess the truth is that I don’t find much of what they are doing or thinking amusing or entertaining or even very thought provoking.  I guess you could make the argument that it is art because it has caused me to have a reaction.  All this to say, maybe if you are a twelve year old boy, then this book would be amusing to you or help you understand more about how to become a YouTuber when you grow up, if, in six-years when you are “all grown up” this profession still exists and hasn’t gone the way of Laser Discs.  But, you know, there is something very endearing about these guys…..there is a whole section on how they met their wives, which they did a long time ago, and they did some very sweet things to seal those deals.  The name of this chapter, which is hands down, my favorite in the book (or, the only thing I really liked about this book), is “Say ‘I Love You’ Like It’s Never Been Said”.  Cute.  It’s really CUTE!  It’s so adorable and sweet that it makes me really glad that this otherwise confusing book made it into the bibliotherapy pile today.  I just hope it didn’t give me a cavity.

Checking Out

If I’m not careful, I’ll check out hundreds of books at a time from the library and then no one will ever see me again.  Part of the genuinely therapuetic process for me on library hiding days is that I just enjoy all that I can read while I am there and leave everything at the library.  I allow myself ONE, singular book to check-out each Tuesday.  Lately, they have been science leaning non-fiction that comes home with me, or a cookbook or global fiction gem.  Keep reading to find out what book made the “check-out” cut this week……..

What did I end up checking out?  I checked-out a book titled “Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean” (2017) by Jonathan White.  I started to think more about “waves” while lightly reading through a book about the discovery of “SuperWaves” by Irv Dardik.  Also, I’ve been pulling the “Ocean” oracle card out of my angel deck quite often in the recent past and it seems that my guides would like me to be thinking about water, the ocean, and waves.  I intend to read these books side by side to think about waves, in general, from a physics perspective and tides, of the ocean, specifically.  What I come to understand, I will share with you in a future blog post.  Until then, I will share with you a small tidbit of information that I randomly opened to in White’s “Tides” book (page 152) that was all that I needed to read in order to know that this book was THE ONE I was going to take home from the library for Bibliotherapy Tuesday.

The bottom of the page talks briefly about Pierre-Simon Laplace who called the tides “the throniest problem in astronomy” (White 152):

“In Laplace’s five-volume masterpiece, Mécanique Céleste, he introduced equations to address the complicated interactions of tide waves on the real earth.  He recognized that there was more to the ocean tides than a simple wave progressing around the planet.  Instead, he described how each ocean might have its own response to the tide-generating forces and that that response might be defined by many factors, including the size and shape of the basin, the depth of the water, the ruggedness of the bottom, temperature, and so forth.  Using calculus and trigonometry, he developed several highly sophisticated equations to account for this, equations that turned out to be nearly impossible to solve without modern-day computers, which wouldn’t be in use for another 150 years.  He never fully solved them himself.”

It is nice to be reminded that having questions can be just as important as having answers.  When we think about how our lives can have infinite inspiration into the future, long after our physical bodies have gone to dust and even if no one knows our name, it is interesting to think that it may not be the conclusions we arrived at in this lifetime, but the questions we asked that are our most lasting contribution to humanity.

Written by Sharon Fennimore, MA, E-RYT, RPYT, YACEP
Please note that I am not a therapist of any kind and my  reference to “bibliotherapy” is a  cheeky reference to open stack browsing at the library that I do on a weekly basis as a way to choose joy, relax, and expand my creative boundaries.  If we do work together, I’m likely to suggest that you read a book, because I am constantly reading and can’t help but make recommendations to my clients and friends.  There IS such a thing as Bibliotherapy and I find it fascinating!