Success!

Since enjoying langar at the Sikh gurudwara during the Parliament of World's Religions in Barcelona earlier this month, I've been on a mission to make my own dal shorba (lentil soup).

Tonight's result was a culinary miracle whose flavor transported me to that white tent at the shore of the Mediterranean again.

Making dal shorba is a labor of love that shouldn't be undertaken if one has less than a full afternoon to spare for its preparation. But the result is delicious and surprisingly filling.

Here's my recipe:

1 cup red lentils (rinsed)
3 small onions (finely sliced)
4 garlic cloves (diced or crushed)
1/2 teaspoons chili powder
2 teaspoons coriander
3 teaspoons curry powder
2 jalapeno peppers (seeded and diced)
3 tomatoes (chopped)
6 tablespoons spinach leaves (chopped)
3 tablespoons cilantro (chopped)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 cup lime juice

Put rinsed lentils into stock pot and add 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer over medium heat until lentils are thickened (about 1 hour). Reduce to low heat.

Heat olive oil in wok or large skillet. Add onions, fry until translucent. Add tomatoes, garlic, chili powder, coriander, curry powder and jalapenos. Fry until tomatoes are soft.

Add the tomato-and-onion mixture to the lentils and add 4-and-a-half cups water. Put the whole mess into a blender and puree (you might need to puree in two batches ... my blender wasn't big enough).

Return soup to stock pot and boil for 15 minutes.

Add spinach, cilantro, salt and lime juice. Serve immediately in soup bowls or aside rice.

Serves 4.

Just like in the Department of Mysteries!

Tonight's Workout Accompaniment: Democratic National Convention (Again)

My heart is like a foyer, round with at least a dozen doors from which to choose. It's a deep blue room, and the doors have silver doorknobs. Four of them are marked with grotesque milagros.

The ghosts of my former lovers linger there, in the foyer, for a few months following the angry words.

I bump into them sometimes, on my way out or in.

They lurk around, scowling at me. They don't want to be there. I don't want them there. I scowl back at them.

They resist my attempts to force them to choose a door.

I'll trip over them at the strangest times: while doing my taxes or driving to work or working out at the gym. Or when someone says "Namibia" or "politics" or when it hails or when it rains.

Today I walked through the foyer, and the most recent ghost was gone. He chose a door, disappeared behind it, and nailed another broken heart into the deep blue wood.

Now there are five.

Usually, once they choose a door, I never see them again.

I feel stronger when they've gone, when my heart is blissfully empty and light, its marble floor polished. My collection of corazones sagrados gleams and reflects the light. They're beautiful in their savagery.

The woman whose reflection I catch in some of those tin miracles looks back at me and smiles and reminds me that, eventually, they all choose a door.

Now I'm free to come and go as I please, knowing there's no specter waiting for me.

Sometimes, I dwell outside their doors, dreaming of their evaporated kisses and my well of tears run dry.

And I wonder if I prefer my floor polished and my heartaches preserved.

The perplexing season

Tonight's workout accompaniment: The Democratic National Convention

A year and three months ago, I was having dinner with a friend and feeling extremely apolitical by comparison.

Fifteen months later, I'm listening to nominating conventions on my personal radio at the gym.

In a single week, I've simultaneously defended President George W. Bush against claims that he's a Nazi, and filmmaker Michael Moore against claims that he thinks George W. Bush is a Nazi.

In the same weekend I sat across the kitchen counter from my grandpa and tried to reconcile his support of a two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with his insistence that Islam promotes violence. (Islam doesn't promote violence any more than any other major world religion.)

In the last six months I've read -- for fun -- Madeline Albright's autobiography.

What happened? Have I changed? Or has my country?

I'd like to think that my (ahem) "useless" religious studies degree is beginning to show its worth.

The Dems, for example, just created a staff position relating to "religious outreach."

Perhaps my next job is in politics …

Smart is sexy

Two things I love about Alan Rickman:

1) His longtime partner is an economist/politician.

2) He originally wanted to be a graphic designer.

"See you later …"

"See you later," he said, as he left to catch the el, where his fiancee was waiting.

See you later, indeed. Goodbye was impossible. After sharing such an incredible experience, I couldn't believe we'd never see each other again.

We had an easy rapport. His smile radiant and my shyness overcome by the click of the camera. Instant friends, confidantes.

My colleagues gave me secret smiles over his shoulder when we spoke, accused me of adding him to my "little black book."

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I'll admit an attraction on my part, yes. But to quote a brilliant movie: "I don't have a lot of hangups, but monogamy is one of them."

Speaking of attratction, before I left for Spain, I had a chaperoned lunch with someone as the result of a weird workplace triangulation.

A very attractive, simpatico guy with a book in hand every time I've seen him. Not to mention an outdoorsy aura, sweet-but-sexy demeanor, nifty tattoos and (the clincher!) ponytail.

I missed my chance to give him my email address. I got all tongue-tied (really now, "mosquito"?) and cowardly. Resorted to (gasp!) shaking his hand and wishing him safe travels.

Ah, if only I'd been braver.

In the beginning was the airport.

And the airport begat the cross-Atlantic flight. And the cross-Atlantic flight was long and was hot and was filled with bad cinema.

And the cross-Atlantic flight begat the continental European flight. And the continental European flight was short and was turbulent and required the air-sickness bag.

And the continental European flight terminated in arrival in Barcelona, the city within which the travel agents had arranged the housing and the transportation and the registration. And lo, they had arranged them poorly.

Despite the travel agents, the weary would sleep and the hungry would be fed and the eager would learn.

And it is within the glowing city of Barcelona that the most high honor was bestowed upon this humble servant, the honor of accredited journalist and all its attendant priviledges and responsibility.

This humble servant has been anointed … it is my yellow, photo i.d. badge I wear as mark of my duty.

Ah, glory in the reserved seating, the prime photographic vista, the press room with its opulence of couches upon which to sleep and water to drink! (Let alone its famous elbows to rub: NPR and Chicago Tribune.) Reporter, your arrogance is condoned. Photographer, you may obstruct the view of the laypersons without regret. For yours is a greater good.

And the press pass brought great fortune upon this servant.

And there was pizza and there was nightfall, the first day.


On the second day there were morning observances and seminars and the Sikhs said: "Let there be a langar, blessed lunch, and let everyone who comes be fed."

And the masses consumed dahl and pasta and salad and french fries and yogurt and rice and chabati and fruit.

And 4,000 came every day for the langar.

And while they ate, the blessed dust of their shoes was wiped away.

And there was study and work and new friends and dinner on the shore of the Mediterranean and there was nightfall, the second day.

And the third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh days proceeded much as had the first and second.

There were photographs:

• An Australian Chinese Buddhist monk dressed in robes of yellow and scarlet, taking the photo of his fellow Buddhist nuns posing with two white-and-grey-habited Spanish Catholic nuns and a French Catholic monk in white-and-grey robes.
• Brian-who-broke-my-heart (just kidding, Brian, your fiancee is SO lucky) and Sandi-brave-and-brilliant, having their blue turbans wrapped tight around their heads.
• Two students and a professor from an Austin Methodist college interviewing two Buddhist nuns about epistemology.
• The long lines of people of all religions enjoying langar and fellowship.
• The Sikh man from Nairobi, Kenya, polishing shoes during langar.
• Sheva a rock and roll band of Jews and Arabs with a mission for reconciling differences, resplendent in white against the darkening stone of the gothic Sagrada Familia cathedral.
• Inaki -- who interrupts -- and who tells stories in his tentative in English and who brushes the dirt from my knee and tells me I'm "very pretty" and shows me how to leave all my pain in the dirt under a pine tree. We took pictures by the pine tree. He wants me to send him his photo. "Write me a joke," Inaki says. "Or a note or tell me something. Don't just send the picture."

And on the seventh day all those who had come returned to their homes.

There was the airport, and the airport transfer, and the pink toilet paper of Charles DeGaulle. And there was the open-mouthed sleep on the plane. And hugs for Brian and Leann and Duane and Sarah and Stacy.

And there was homecoming and there was sleep.

And it was good.

Want to see me?
Tonight's packing CD: Meg's 24 Mix - May 2003

Have a lot of free time? See if you can pick out the miniscule dot wearing the huge photographer's backpack here.

Yes, that's the Mediterranean.

Ode to a summer cold

Oh, how I hate thee, summer cold.
Let me count the ways:
your sapping of energy during
prime sunlight hours,
your muddling of my mind
and my speech,
your detritus of tissue and
tangled sheets from all-day sleep,
your headache that makes even
watching bad tv shows painful,
your slow driving reflexes,
your congested mis-hearing,
your phlegm and loss of appetite.

Summer cold, why have you
followed me home from work?
Why couldn't you have gone
to the Cubs game with your first victim?
Why couldn't she keep you to herself?
Why do you tease me with
improved symptoms only after
the cold medicine wears off?
Summer cold, I'm getting on a
cross-Atlantic airplane in three days.
Would you depart before then, please?
I'd hate to see you mature into
a sinus infection.
Summer cold, I beg you,
take your leave of me.