Ice Cream from a Truck!

A red ice cream truck makes its daily rounds through West Newton, its telltale jingle alerting anyone who is home and craving a cold treat that help is on its way. This truck has a low profile, like a small pickup, in contrast to the large white ice cream vans that strategically station themselves at various hot spots (such as the parking lot at Walden Pond). The driver's side has white lettering, and I believe it said "_______ Farm". I wish I could remember whose farm was mentioned, but in my haste I wasn't focusing. After hearing the truck circulating for weeks, yesterday I decided to give into my urge for ice cream and I ran outside in the hopes of getting the driver's attention before he had moved too far down the street.


Because it was an unusual truck with So-and-So's Farm inscribed on the side, I had a flashing fantasy that the driver was carrying a haul of premium ice cream flavors that he would carefully scoop into a cone and present to me with a fluorish.


"What do you have?" I asked eagerly, my fantasy still intact.

"Oh, the usual," he said, gesturing to the far side of the truck which was pasted with labels of all the usual ice cream truck offerings: Hood ice cream sandwiches, creamsicles and assorted ice cream configurations (with flavored centers and crunchy objects on the surface) on sticks.

My bubble thus burst, I had to make a selection. Fast. I was the only customer he had lured outdoors and I didn't want to make the man linger all that long while I mulled over a purchase that turned out to be less than $2. I hoped he was getting a decent wage, rather than relying on commissions.

I chose the so-called Sports Bar, a rectangular block of ice cream covered with a thin but rich chocolate coating.

It was delicious, all the more so because it came from a truck.

Iced Raspberry Mochaccino

As far as "i" words go, "iced" is pretty generic, if not completely lame, but it was prominent in my consciousness this past weekend during a very successful, and very hot, folk festival where I was selling my jewelry.

A large coffee establishment, whose name I will not mention but which you can probably guess, and which normally I do not patronize (favoring instead independently owned cafes), had a van at this festival, filled with college-aged people who were making free samples of iced raspberry mochaccinos. These came in little cups, which one young lady filled with the chilled chocolatey coffee liquid before passing them to her colleague who topped them with a squirt whipped cream, followed by a squiggle of raspberry sauce. To complete the preparation, a short green straw was inserted into the cup.

On Saturday, the husband of one of my fellow artists made a run to the van and returned with handfuls of these little caffeinated delights. I had barely slept the night before (not because of pre-show nerves, but because my body goes a bit berserk at certain times of the moon cycle), and this wee cup of colorful cold creamy sweetness gave me the jolt I needed to stay attentive to my many customers. My neighbor at the show shuns caffeine (wise woman!) and offered me hers, so I enjoyed a double portion.

On Sunday, shortly after 12pm, I abandoned my booth and dashed over to the aforementioned van and asked if I could get several samples for the artists nearby.

"Sure, how many do you want?" a young lady asked me.

"How about a tray of them?" I suggested.

"No problem!"

She and her colleague got to work, and within minutes produced a tray of seven mini mochaccinos, which decorated with their straws looked like caffeinated cocktails. Off I went, navigating through the crowds to return to the art festival, where I distributed the loot.

Aah!

Irritation

I am looking for a place to live.

I hate looking for a place to live.

I don't hate looking at places, I hate dealing with so-called real estate "professionals".

They advertise an apartment. It looks appealing. I call to inquire about that particular apartment.

"So, what are you looking for?" they ask, wanting to know the neighborhood or town I want to live in, the number of bedrooms, the rent I am willing to pay.

"I am looking for information on the apartment you advertised," I reply, trying to keep my irritation in check. "Is it still available?"

"Can you tell me what you are looking for?" they persist.

"I am looking for something that matches the description of the apartment you advertised," I seethe.

We are at a standoff.

A friend has loaned me a tape about "going with the flow", and clearly I am not doing that with these rental agents, whose help I need unless I can find someone to rent from directly. I hate the bait and switch tactics they use, advertising one apartment only to show you others, and the fact that many apartments are listed by several agencies, each employing a different highly creative writer to describe these places, making it hard to figure out what you've already seen. For example, I was shown an absolute cave of a 1-bedroom apartment on a ground floor of a brownstone on Beacon Street, across the street from my synagogue. The location, location, location was perfect, perfect, perfect, but the unit itself was dark and smelly with paint chips dangling precariously from the living room ceiling. A few days later I saw another ad for the same place touting its "retro screen door" (e.g. piece of crap on hinges that needs to be replaced!). I have to admit, part of me admired the genius of the 20-something year old rental agent who coined that phrase; at least this person was thinking outside the box and possibly having some fun.

My irritation occasionally extends to myself for forgetting about the "art" of renting and selling real estate, of which I've done both, and how you can't believe anything that you read about a piece of property. Except, of course, that everything I ever wrote about the apartments I used to rent, and then sold, was accurate, and my naive self wants to believe what it reads.

But my irritation turns to wrath when I encounter incompetent real estate agents, grown ups - not recent college graduates - who have licenses and, me thinks, are supposed to know most things about the properties they are listing and showing. Earlier today I drove over to Brookline to check out a non-astronomically priced 1-br condominium, just to see. The agent who hosted the open house was very attractive and pleasant yet wasn't able to tell me what similar apartments in that building rent for. Considering that most of the units in the association are rented out, I figured she might have done her homework. But she, and many other agents who do open houses, are like gameshow hosts and hostesses who look pretty while pointing out the features of the property or giving suggestions on how to renovate it, as if you'll have extra money on hand after closing. If you want the facts, you have to follow up with a phone call, during which time they'll ask you what you are looking for......

Instant Equilibrium

I am not the same person each day.

Some days I feel open and expansive, filled with optimistic confidence about life in general and my life in particular. And other days I feel constricted and small, convinced that my life is permanently stuck in a tiny hole with no escape possible, that how I've conducted my life until this point has simply been a series of mistakes. And then there are days where I am somewhere in between.

Today I found myself in a highly constricted emotional space, practically unable to breathe and feeling very paralyzed. If you were to ask why, I could list a few plausible sounding reasons for it, but I'm learning that the particulars are largely irrelevant, because the particulars change each time I find myself in such a state. What is more relevant for me is to be able to notice what is happening and to do something to shift out of it. Sometimes taking a few deep breaths works, as might going for a walk.

But today I needed something more, so I put on my bathing suit, packed a towel and went to Walden Pond. It was a hot summer Sunday afternoon and the pond was filled to capacity when I arrived close to 5pm, the parking lot closed until 6pm. But I was determined to swim, so I parked in a small lot on the other side of Route 2, about half a mile away, and walked back towards the pond, following some wooded trails until I was on the far side, away from the main beach. Picnickers and swimmers dotted the shore, and I walked and walked until I could find my own little spot for my towel and shoes.

I entered Walden's healing waters and stood there for several minutes, the water up to my thighs. I had gotten this far, but I was still somewhat paralyzed, unable to simply plunge in, even though I knew it was exactly what I needed to do. Finally, I started to move, and experienced again the miracle of swimming there. Simply being immersed in the water, surrounded by pine trees and under an expansive sky, immediately restores my mental and emotional equilibrium, quieting whatever thoughts had been tormenting me before. As a child, I was not a strong swimmer and I hated the opaque water of ponds and lakes. I never would have thought that one day I'd seek refuge smack in the middle of a body of open water.

Infinite Possibilities

Infinite Possibilities is the title of a set of CDs I listen to occasionally, to help reprogram some of the buggy software that runs between my ears, replacing ingrained thought patterns with something new. The basic message of the entire series is, "Thoughts become things. Think the good ones."

I live in an urban area where parking can be tough to find and it is something that many people complain about. Worse, many people will curb their plans out of the belief that finding a parking spot will be a hassle, if not altogether impossible, so they decide to stay home or do something less tantalizing, but where parking is ample. For awhile I fell for this line of thought, and often talked myself out of going to certain places during peak travel times, but these CDs helped me to challenge my mindset.

I decided to adopt the belief that I would always find a parking spot, that parking was something I would never have to worry about again. Since making that decision, I have always found a spot. Not only that, I frequently find an extremely convenient, if not perfect, spot. About two years ago I had to bring a dozen packages to the post office, and somehow I chose to get in my car around 5pm, just when traffic starts to get particularly thick and people are doing errands at the end of their day. The post office is on a crowded main road, with fewer than half a dozen spaces out front. As I pulled up, someone pulled out, and I found myself smack in front of the post office door.

Today, a similar thing happened. Driving to my yoga class, I noticed a car pulling away from a spot that was practically across the street from the studio. I slid into it the space, turned off the ignition, and took some quarters to feed the meter. But the meter had 34 minutes left on it, which was exactly how much time there was before 6pm, when parking becomes free. I like to believe that serendipitous events such as this one are more than just coincidences, that there is a benevolent force at work on our behalf, if only we can think about it and activate it.

Impatience

This will likely be the first of many posts on this subject. I am trying to cultivate more patience (I seem to have been endowed with a very short supply), but even when I am making what feels like extreme efforts to be patient, I often seem to lose patience long before others do.

Except this morning, when I had an experience that showed that I have actually been able to grow a teeny weeny patience plant in my emotional and spiritual garden.

The scene: I was stopped at the intersection of Mount Auburn Street and Aberdeen Avenue, which has a large sign indicating "Left Turn on Left Arrow Only". I was in my car, patiently waiting for the green arrow that was pointing straight ahead to be joined by the green arrow pointing to the left. A car behind me started to honk, as if I were in the way. Well, I guess I was, but I was also respecting the law. I wished I had a sign that I could project onto my rear windshield that pointed to the words, "Left Turn on Left Arrow Only". Lacking such a sign, and lacking any desire to otherwise confront these people, I sat there and waited while listening to a tape about going with the flow (in this particular case I aligned with the "flow" of the traffic law and decided to wait for the light to change) .

The person behind me quickly ran out of patience, and swerved around and in front of me to make the turn. This driver was followed by two others, who also rather angrily swerved around and in front of me. Perhaps they "saved" 20 seconds out of their day, if that, by taking matters into their own hands. Interestingly, I often find myself the first in line when stopped at that light, and this is the first time that other cars passed me, giving me the opportunity to observe, at least with this particular situation, that my patience plant has established some roots.

Off to yoga, where I will water it some more.

Inversions and Inspiration

In yoga we practice inversions, postures where our bodies move into upside down positions. Inversions include headstands, handstands and shoulder stands, the common theme being that the head is below the heart.

The point of standing on our heads is to invert our view of the world and, with that, to get a handle on how the way we normally view things might not be the most effective or productive. Being upside down does give you an entirely different perspective and headstands in particular leave me with a biochemical high that allows me to view the world through slightly rosier lenses.

But the practice of yoga itself is an inversion, a turning upside down of many of our assumptions about how life works and how to experience fulfillment. On Saturday morning, in an intensely heated studio, our teacher urged us to tune into our bodies and our breath, allowing what we discover inside to inspire us to action in the world, rather than having our behavior be motivated by external stimuli or expectations, as mine as been for much of my life. Another inversion is the idea that if you relax into pain or difficulty, rather than resisting, it will cease to be painful or difficult. "Pain" is the label that our mind gives to strong sensations, and once we identify something as "pain", rather than curiously exploring what the sensation actually feels like (is it a dull thudding? sharp tingles? a burning feeling?), we are likely to intensify that sensation, rather than ease it. Ditto for strong sensations caused by difficult emotions; do we repress our fear and anger or do we go into it, and see what is really going on? Easier said than done, but worth attempting all the same.

This particular instructor, a dark haired man in his 30s, has a strong regional Boston accent and occasionally mixes up words, but he is one of the more inspirational and passionate teachers I've encountered. He is not there to strike a pose, wow us with medically accurate descriptions of our anatomical workings, or lecture about the eight limbs of yogic philosophy while strutting his yoga butt. He's a very real person, with real problems, and he brings all of himself to the class, exhorting us to do the same. It is refreshing to have an instructor like him in the exceedingly cerebral Boston area, where intellectualism and accuracy rule.

Had I taken this person's class six years ago, I probably would have dismissed much of what he had to say because he's a regular guy wearing baggy shorts and a crucifix around his neck, not an impeccably attired and well spoken expert. I'm glad to observe that, since beginning my practice six years ago, my attitudes have inverted enough to allow me to not only appreciate people like him, but to seek them out.