Peas or beans?

I have been making some changes to the design of this blog today, and I'm wondering what other people think. My most reliable design team -- my sister and my husband -- are neither one around, so I just have to go with my gut, unless I get some response from you.

Mainly, I changed the title from a picture of sea peas (all very beautiful, yes) --


-- to cranberry beans --


-- which I think are a more appropriate introduction to my blog, to reflect the alimentary themes found within.

That, and I have been known at times to be the "bean lady."

Lunch today was a case in point: I made the garbanzo bean recipe that has won over many friends and influenced people in unusual ways in the last few months. These beans came from the can, but what food item did I bring back especially from Italy? -- you may ask. Olive oil? Aceto balsamico di Modena? Prosciutto? No, no, no! Beans -- this year's crop of little white beans from Lake Trasimeno. And I'm already planning all of the beans that I am going to order from Rancho Gordo as soon as we move into our new apartment at the end of the month. Good beans are worth it. And I'm not even vegetarian! But I digress...

Yay or nay to the beans? If you have trouble deciding, I can give you a recipe...just ask.

avidalegria@gmail.com

Good governance, bad governance, and health insurance

I have spent the morning puzzling over my health insurance options for the upcoming year, comparing various plans offered by my new university. Choice is good, right?

Choice is good, except when you're trying to simultaneously compare the labyrinthine language of three different health insurance plans. There's no doubt in my mind that such confusion is intentional on the part of the insurance companies; who wouldn't rather just sign on the dotted line and be done with it? That's what the companies hope for: that we'll assume they are taking care of us, and waive our rights away.

Not this time.

I've gone in and out of enough insurance plans over the last four years to be somewhat wary of starting over again with a new plan. In my case, I have been very fortunate: I have never been hospitalized; my health is good, overall; no serious medical conditions to look after, etc. My only real health concern, this time around, has to do with starting psychotherapy again, this time without meeting DSM-IV criteria for an eating disorder, and I'm hoping that I can get at least some coverage from my health insurance to do so.

The reasons that I want to start psychotherapy have little to do with what brought me into treatment seven years ago for an eating disorder, and are more like the everyday things that bring most folks into psychotherapy: life stresses, career changes, family problems, etc. These, and the fact that I'm starting a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology, and would relish the chance to be in therapy again myself before I start to see patients. So in this situation, I ask myself, is it even ethical for me to seek coverage for psychotherapy for the condition of "eating disorder"? Conversely, might I consider these life stresses as possibly related to the eating disorder I once had -- as risk factors for a possible relapse -- and thus justify my treatment?

Regardless of whether it is ethical or not, I am left with a lot of uncertainty about whether I'll even qualify for coverage under the best of these plans. On the one hand, it offers coverage equivalent to other medical illnesses for "biologically-based mental illness," including "anorexia and bulimia". It is wonderful that this plan offers parity for mental health care, especially given the attention that the issue has received in the news recently. But I wonder how far such parity will go: if I am presently asymptomatic, does that mean I can't receive coverage? Or does my one-time diagnosis of an eating disorder last a lifetime, if it were? (Once a bulimic, always a bulimic?) Additionally, as this is a "pre-existing condition," though one not treated in the last six months (as they define pre-existing), will I be excluded from coverage for another 12-months (as the plans threatens)?

I can hardly get my mind around whether or not I'm eligible for treatment, so I can only anticipate the problems that will ensue once I actually sign up for the plan and attempt to get the coverage that I feel is due. It is dishearteningly for me, both as a patient and as a future mental health professional, to see all of the obstacles that are put in patients' way as they try to get treatment. I am reminded of Franz Kafka, of Jorge Luis Borges, of Ambrogio Lorenzetti's frescoes of Good and Bad Governance that we saw in Siena this summer.

One side of Lorenzetti's fresco (the first image of the post) depicts the effects of good governance: the exercise of justice; profitable businesses; happy and healthy citizens. The other side of the fresco (detailed to the right) shows the effects of bad governance: persons unjustly imprisoned; crop failures; violence; poverty; plagues and pestilence. These murals were intended to teach the rulers of Siena the importance of good governance for the health of town and country.

If the state of our health care system in the United States is any indication, I would say that we are erring on the side of bad governance. If not, why do we put the burden on the ill to know their rights and insist on receiving their benefits? Why is it left up to me to try to understand whether or not I should be covered for psychotherapy? Why do we seem to be hurtling ourselves head-first into the scene depicted below, a desolate countryside full of starving and sick individuals? I am concerned for myself, but I also recognize that mine is not a severe case; whether or not I get coverage, whether or not I'll get treatment, I'll basically be all right. But what of the thousands of people who won't be all right? Who have never been "all right"?

I can only hope that these strangers, other Americans with mental or physical illnesses, can find some clause in their insurance allowing them treatment; that they have family members willing to make phone calls when they are too sick to care; that they have considerate doctors who choose appropriate, economical, humane forms of treatment; and that we see some shift towards "good governance" with the elections in the fall.

I'm voting for better healthcare. And you?

Urban body

The day before yesterday I went to a beach on the outskirts on Barcelona, in a small town called Sant Pol de Mar. The water was such an intense, powerful blue that there wasn't anything to be done except throw myself into the sea and meet the waves head-on. I haven't swum in the ocean in a very long time, and as I bobbed up and down I thought how interesting it is that "sea" in Catalan, mar, is just one letter away from "mother," mare. Mother-sea, mare-mar, the sea that holds us, rocks us, sustains us. We enter her nearly as naked and wet as when we were born.

Afterwards I lay on the sand and looked around. Barcelona and its beaches lend themselves well to people-watching: on the streets, the pedestrians are stylish and handsome; on the beach, they are, in the most part, suntanned and lithe. Seeing all of this brown flesh might have made me feel ashamed of my pasty skin, or regretful for the parts of my body that don't live up to my fantasies, or angry for having not been born a Spaniard. But the spirit of the mare-mar had got to me before I had time for any of those scornful thoughts, and I merely felt peaceful, languorous and sensual, another body on the sand.

These moments when I truly inhabit my body are rare, but the sensation hasn't left me these last few days, as I frequent Barcelona's museums and wander the streets of the Barri Gótic. I am a temporary flâneur in this city, a position which forces me to be aware of my surroundings and how I interact with them. The line of the street marks the path I must take; my eyes follow the lay of a wall or the glare of a mirror, and I am there, too, a body in a city, a body marked by the city.

I feel compelled to respond to this city, to shout out "¡Presente!" like a Spanish school-child during morning attendance. Here I am, Barcelona, Barkeno, Barcino, Barchinona, BCN, whatever you preferred to be called. Your walls are thick and millennial; my skin is thin and transient, but this body allows me to greet you, to know you. I am one more body come to join in the fray, to crawl in and over your most intimate arteries, to partake in your feasts and smile at your frenzies. Here I am.

Simplest of meals

I made myself a simple dinner tonight at my friend Benji's apartment here in Barcelona. What could be easier than pasta with tomato sauce?

It reminded me of high school track dinners, a pleasant memory. Pasta can be such comfort food, and after our stay in Italy I came away with so many ideas for primi piatti (first courses). This time I threw in a can of tuna for a variation on the basic red sauce.

I bought the vegetables from a Chinese family running a little fruta-y-verdura place not far from this apartment. My friend had told me that there is a lot of hostility directed towards Chinese immigrants here in Spain because of the impression that their businesses are trying to undercut the market. So I wasn't too surprised when the woman at the cash register refused to ask any of my questions about where she came from in China, pretending she didn't understand me when I said that I heard her speaking Mandarin. It was only when I explained that I was from the U.S., and that my husband was Chinese, that she began to smile and offer me a few words in Mandarin. We ended up laughing at my poor Chinese, and I left the store feeling the small satisfaction from having made the connection with her over something. How hard it must be to move to a country, and then have to pretend that you're not from the place you came from!

To the grocer's credit, the tomatoes were firm, the lettuce was fresh, and I pulled together the meal in no time. Though I love trying new food around Barcelona -- I had a tortilla espanola for lunch -- there's nothing as grounding for me as cooking for myself in a foreign city. Even tonight, with only a ramshackle kitchen at my disposal and a calico cat to keep me company, I was happier eating my own food, made with my own hands, than eating yet another mediocre tapas plate.

Barkeno

I am in Barcelona, Spain.

This is my first time on the Iberian peninsula; odd, for someone who has so diligently applied herself to learning the ins and outs of the Spanish and Portuguese languages. I am here for a week, on a whim of sorts -- my original destination was Rome -- and am still somewhat amazed to be here at all.

For many years I saw Spain through South American eyes, as a distant place, separated from América by so much time and nostalgia, impossible to recover or re-live. South Americans have a homesickness for the Peninsula in a way that North Americans rarely feel for Great Britain -- perhaps because the Northern colonies have never failed as spectacularly as the Southern ones, and those of us in the United States who are decended from immigrants generally recognize that our lot is better than it might have been, had our people stayed where they were. Not so in South America, as the increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants here in Spain attest. It is a sad state of affairs when the New World cannot provide for its own and the empire's children come home to roost.

Barcelona was never quite Spanish -- or Castilian, I should say -- so being here means that I am still lurking at the margins of hispaneidad, of what it means to be Spanish. If all that is required to be Latino in the United States, as some say, is to speak Spanish -- the lowest common denominator among Chileans, Cubans, Mexicans and Spaniards -- then I certainly qualify. If one adds a requirement of "shared cultural heritage" to that label, then I would also belong, by virtue of having studied the poetry and art and music of these lands. Thirdly, I could belong by cultural affinity, the sense that something in Hispanic culture resonates well with whom I am as an individual: the manners, the warmth, the openness, the traditions of Spanish America fit well under my skin. Yet, like this city, I too am at the margins of lo hispano (that which is Hispanic), a position which is simultaneously delightful, and isolated.

Barcelona delights the traveler, with the winding streets of the medieval Barri Gótic; Antoni Gaudí's playgrounds and sanctuaries; the old haunts of Picasso and the Spanish avant-gaurde; the numerous cafés and bars sprinkled throughout; the shops of the Rambla; the democracy of the Mediterranean beaches.

Yet Barcelona also isolates the visitor who does not speak catalán and who does not understand the politics of Spanish regional integration; Barcelona is not always friendly to the traveller with a South American accent (as I have), demanding proof of identity for even the smallest transactions; and Barcelona, as all port cities, is more of an island than not, determinedly facing the infinite sea.

I'll come back to Spain again some day, to resolutely face the center of the empire in Madrid, or examine the Moorish influences in Andalucía, or ride the road to Compostela on my bike. This trip, I tell myself, is a sort of scout's mission, as I skirt around the edges of Spain and hispaneidad remind myself of the feel of Spanish in my mouth. Barcelona gives me enough of a taste of Spain to remind me that I want it, and that it is mine already, an adopted heritage that I needn't fear shaking loose.


*This photo comes from shapeshifter's photostream on flickr.com.