The Amish and a more genuine simplicity

Thirty years ago when I still drove around getting to know the country I stopped by Lancaster County in Pennsylvania to see how the Old Order Amish lived. Solid-color buggies with the color-glow orange caution symbol in the back, men, women, girls and boys all dressed alike in solid blue, gray and purple clothes, small, tidy farms and the lack of modern-day rush and clutter: there was a simplicity that bespoke bygone times of unadulterated joy.

Last night, reading Bob Brooke's The Amish Country for American Traveler ($1 at Half Price Books) reminded me why I was interested in the Amish. I probably would not have survived in an Anabaptist community where one size fit all. That's not what drew me to the Amish. Maybe it's what I've salvaged from growing up in the Philippines. By American standards we were poor in material goods but when I take away the subjective feelings of not fitting in (I didn't fit in back then either) the childhood memories shine with what today I perceive as lost down-to-earth simplicity.

In the 80s I drove around studying the alternative spiritualities that the American tenet of freedom allowed to sprout in tiny, unobtrusive pockets around the country. I discovered yoga and Buddhist meditation. On a trip to Yellow Springs in Ohio to attend a weekend vipassana retreat I met several people who influenced the lifestyle I was shaping. Paul, a psychologist at the Dayton VA, introduced me to the Buddhist center in Barre, Massachusetts where Buddhist practice became established. Buddhism drew me for being an Asian tradition of spirituality but like my attraction to the Amish and the early Christian desert hermits a more powerful draw was the aesthetics of simplicity and of "fewness of desires."

When I undertook a protracted sabbatical last year I was motivated by several factors. Among others I wanted to simplify my life in both its material and process aspects. Instead of chasing after material aggrandizement I wanted to deepen my inner life. How well have I succeeded? Not as well as I wanted. But I am recognizing that life is not so much about reaching the other shore as living each day as it comes. Goals provide us with set patterns when fate does not provide the surprises that energize and renew our spirits. Goals are default behaviors. More vital to a life of inner richness is the openness to what lies beyond goals and desires. To walk through life minimally encumbered with expectations: this is a more genuine simplicity.

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Gourmet Asian Restaurants in Indianapolis: Thai Taste

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Last night, our Thai friend, Usana, invited us to the Thursday night buffet at Thai Taste on the city's north side. My Chinese friends, Allen and Helen, had been urging me to check this out for many years but last night was the first time I went. I'd been too attached to Chinese food when I do go out to eat.
 
As it happened, Allen and Helen, were there, too, last night. They asked me where I'd been. They had not seen me at the usual restaurant haunts where we often meet. We're Asian buffet aficionados. They told me that the Saturday lunch buffet at The Journey is the place to go on Saturday, better than the dim sum buffet at 8 China Buffet. For Sunday lunch, they go to Mandarin House in Carmel.
 
The spread at Thai Taste was okay and most of the tables were occupied by six o'clock. Service was excellent. I do love Thai food but compared to Chinese food it tends to be a tad more expensive. Not as expensive though as Japanese food which is probably the top of the heap in terms of price, especially Japanese steak houses.
 
Outside the restaurant after the meal, I met a friendly Caucasian guy. The front of his white tee shirt was splattered with chili sauce for which he kept apologizing. He told us he discovered Asian foods when he lived in California years ago. There he had a Vietnamese friend who introduced him to Asian cooking. Thai Taste was his favorite but he also loved Korean food. For Korean he went to a restaurant (Ma Ma's Korean or Bando) on Pendleton Pike and E. Miracle on Allisonville Road.
 
The evening reminded me there is a small group of local people into East Asian food. Our party consisted of three Filipinos, a Thai and a Japanese. Yoichi loved the food. When eM invited him to join us, he was incredulous. He hadn't known there was good Thai food in Indianapolis. He was going to Golden Corral for dinner on the nights he didn't want to cook after work.
 
Maybe I should a food blog since food obviously is high on my value list. I can easily add a food blog to my new Duende Arts site. iMovie does not allow me to group the blogs together into an album page as it does photograph pages. I am still looking for how I can put my text products into the site.

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Images and words together may help us pin down memory

For years I have wanted to write what I remember about this challenging, rich, ever-changing panorama that I call life. Only a handful of novels and nonfiction books on life in the Philippines is available even today. The near vacuum begs for more content!

At our last visit to my parents' old hometown in Iloilo in 2007, my younger sister's daughter scanned photographs from the old family albums and gave us a CD copy of the images. I made my own copies using my Canon camera which are what you'll see when you visit the Family Photos page on the Duende Arts website (still hidden behind the current website).

As we grow older, more of our life appears in the past than in the unforeseeable future but I've had this idea for writing about life in the Philippines as I was growing up for at least two decades now. I remember the heartache I felt when I put together my first photo album in the early 80s. Here were pictures of places and people that no longer figured in my life. I was struck by the ephemeral nature of life. Without looking back, we get the feeling we are going to new places and creating new patterns. Going back we see the handful of themes that repeat like a looping filmstrip. The scenery changes, the characters change, but the energies stay remarkably unchanged. The life we live feels to me so much more fantastic than any fiction work can be!

The first pages of that album comprised photos that I took o f those last days in the Philippines in 1975. I bought a camera to document the upcoming adventure in the New World. I came to America to reinvent myself. I was not concerned about holding on to images of the past. I blamed these for my discontent with life. I was going to push beyond the known into the truly new.

In America, I took candid shots because everyone took pictures. I had no grand plan to use images to redefine personal growth. I discovered the world of photography when I bought my first SLR camera, a Minolta. The Minolta showed me that photographs did not just document memories but hint at something I'd like to think goes beyond the ephemera of our unstudied lives. 

As young adults we approach life purposefully. We are schooled to believe we map where we are going. Six decades into a life I find purpose comically wanting.  When we dig beneath the skin, we are not very different from each other. Perceptions, like clothing, lifestyle, and occupation, mask the underlying sameness with which we all must struggle to make sense of ourselves, and the lives we can live. In the sameness I believe lurks something awesome and grand that we might touch with well-considered words and images. With purpose we can only see so much. What is the world like beyond the designs of purpose and memory? Here is the stuff of creation, of marvelous tales and breath-pausing images.

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Tarragon in Later Summer Dishes

As summer comes to a close, my herb garden on the deck facing the lake morphs into everything I shall miss when the season ends. Tarragon, I discovered today, is wonderful in salads. I didn't even tear the leaves up so when a leaf is included in the mouthful the flavor and aroma stands out, pure gustatory sensation flooding the tongue and mouth.
 
Cauliflower is also underrated but its texture is priceless especially when simply stewed with fresh tomatoes and herbs and a few drops of extra virgin olive oil.

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Blueberry Rice

I have not done much cooking at home this past month. Quality Improvement applied to lifestyles is ongoing as it is in the corporate world. Unlike the Obama administration on the abusive interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects I must move on. Dukkha (in Buddhist practice, what we feel when we don't have something we want or have something we don't want) eggs us to make karmic changes in how we live our lives.
 
Last night's supper resulted in discovering how blueberries can add not only color but flavor to rice. The inspiration came from a book on Spanish foods featuring a simple recipe for rice cooked with fresh tomatoes and herbs. No sauces, just veggies sautéed in the lightest film of olive oil and cooked rice added to the pan. It's a gentler version of Chinese fried rice, the flavors at once fresher and more refreshing.

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Rethinking model photography in light of the forthcoming new website, and Apple's Snow Leopard upgrade

I have been reviewing my model shoots to see what photo images fit my idea of what to post in the new website. This time I am not going to post all the photos from the shoots that I have processed. The new Duende Arts website will have a specific objective: to post products to begin to move into a money-earning phase of the business of photography, videos and writing.
 
Even more than I felt before I started this review I find myself wanting to hone my image processing skills. The images are considerably better in terms of color correction than the images I have on my current website but now I need to work on making these images of striking quality.
 
As I contemplate reviewing Photoshop techniques for image-processing, I am reminded how I need to work on lighting and exposure techniques again. I also need to resume working on videos while dipping my foot in FCP again.
 
Meanwhile Apple has announced its new system upgrade, Snow Leopard, from Leopard. The slight change in name might reflect Apple's acknowledgement that this upgrade does not bring about major changes in the OS although full support for 64 bit should, once implemented by software developers, make for a significant increase in processing speed for those of us with multi-core computers.
 
I especially look forward to integration with Microsoft's core software so that using Apple's iCal and Address Book I automatically access the comparable data in my Microsoft business software. Apple takes an important step in making Apple software more attractive to business and corporate users!
 
But where's the Blu-Ray support?

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The new Duende Arts website takes shape

This is, so far, how the front page of the new Duende Arts website looks. I want a more modern look to the site. Black is elegant but I want change. I still want simple but not too simple, and not the elegant look many art photographers have on their site. I like a straightforward, simple look. I have learned from launching that first iWeb-created site. Less information, more white space, ease of use, presenting just the information I want visitors to have.

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