The passage of years can change a person’s opinions on most anything. So it came to pass on the subject of beans. That shift was a long time coming. Beans were an infrequent visitor to the tables of my younger days. Kidney beans sometimes joined us under cover of chili. Bean soup brought navy beans or their kin. I do remember enjoying those dishes, even though I have no clear memories of the taste of those beans. They were never considered with the same enthusiasm reserved for fried chicken or spaghetti with meatballs or my mother’s (via her mother) potato salad. Those dishes made me happy to see them on the table at dinnertime.
Not so with the beans. Have you ever made pleasant small talk on an elevator, or in line at the grocery store? Beans seemed the gustatory equivalent of that chatter: it made the encounter enjoyable but unlikely in the long run to take up residence in the warehouse of imagination. Beans were okay but my palate focused its attention on the matrices that supported them. Matrices of salty broth or spicy sauce. In fairness, the household of my youth was no hotbed of bean culture. The olla of Mexico, the bean pot of New England, these were strangers to our kitchen. It was simply a pot. Cans were the delivery method. Such reality explained my long belief that little was to be done with beans.
The years would prove me wrong. Happily, happily wrong.
In terms of taste memory, the first major shift in thinking was triggered by a dish that was neither chili nor navy bean soup. It was refried beans. Where I had them is lost to the mists of history. The effect on my palate was not. Beans, simple and good. Another door opened in the mind’s kitchen. I finally had an inkling of the possibilities inherent in a food that, to date had not captured the imagination. Eating beans ceased being incidental and became a purposeful activity. True discovery began.
True discovery requires commitment. Commitment eluded me at first. Bean possibilities were unearthed but not pursued. The acquisition of new knowledge, in my mind, appeared low in relation to its costs. Consequently, enlightenment was slow. I recognized the laziness in myself. It carried with it a faint, sour whiff of prejudice: that beans were still too humble to take seriously. Later in life, this would be a source of culinary shame.
The second major shift in my thinking occurred after an encounter with charro beans. It was in a restaurant in Washington, D.C. The name of that establishment escapes me now, but the charros? They delivered a heartfelt (bellyfelt?) message. Swimming in a spicy broth laced with chorizo and jalapeno chilies, these beans were well-made, delicious, an exemplar of the style (as I later discovered). That happy congruency of place and food would lay in my subconscious for decades. Curiosity took the reins to lead an on-again, off-again relationship with beans.
Fast forward about a baker’s dozen set of years. Curiosity reawakened. I embarked on a research program that has lasted into the present day. I was, as Thoreau put it in Walden, “determined to know beans.”
Thoreau also posed a great question, asking “What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?” One of the most important lessons for me also took the longest to sink in. The lesson was of the time involved to respectfully cook beans. While cooking beans at a basic level is simple, time and attention are key to crafting a good pot. A hard head and impatience kept me from properly fulfilling those criteria. Consequently, excellence in beans constantly hovered just out of reach. Serendipity leant a hand one fateful Saturday afternoon. Circumstances conspired to push me. In my pantry were pinto beans. On the clock, there was plenty time. Fortune favored my hunger in that onions, garlic, and dried chilies were on hand, too. All the earmarks of good, basic pot beans. Cooking them slowly was not a conscious decision on my part, but it was meant to be that day.
Dozing off in a chair certainly contributed to the slowness. The heat was down very low. Everything simmered undisturbed while I slumbered.
It is grand to awaken to a home redolent of the good earth. What a blessing we should all have! The pot, low on water, needed a good stirring. If the color and aroma were any indication, dinner that night was going to be good. Really good. The pintos did not disappoint. I reckoned it was the best pot of beans I ever had the good luck to cook. I finally understood the importance of time as an ingredient. The lesson sank in. I know it is true because in some subsequent batches of beans when I succumbed to impatience, the quality suffered. The mistakes get eaten, though, because so far mediocre beans have always been better than no beans. Time plus patience equals goodness.
Time investment in cooking is not the sole arbiter of goodness. Time investment also extends to the prepping of the beans before they even grace the pot. Sorting, rinsing, and soaking the beans are all key steps. They may not have as much say in the taste of the beans but they have high gravity in deriving satisfaction from the process. I did not understand this until relatively recently, much to my chagrin. It was not that those things were not done, it was that I was blind to their value in creating a flow state of cooking. A state where even the so-called drudgery of such actions is performed mindfully, with focus, and knowing they all give energy to a savory, satisfactory outcome.
So it came to be. Sorting is now a favorite part of the process, one to look forward to rather than sighing at with impatience. Sorting serves the practical need to check for pebbles, dirt, and other interlopers. It has the spiritual value of a simple thing, done well, from love.
Sorting, as with many things in life, is not immune to bias, benign or otherwise. This truth I did not understand until earlier this year. Prior to that revelation my sorting had diligently followed the prevailing wisdoms and voices I trusted. Ridding one’s beans of pebbles and dirt is, and always will be, sound advice for anyone determined to know beans. But the voices went further. They urged me to check all the beans carefully. Be on the lookout for the floaters, the shriveled that surely would not cook right. Discard the fragments, the cracked-skinned ones, to stave off the uncertain sin of mediocre taste. I did, faithfully.
Too faithfully, perhaps. Faith serves as an anchor in many things, but it often short circuits the ability, or desire, to ask questions. It was not that some of what I was advised to follow was without merit, it was that I had never asked why, conceptually, I should follow it without considering what it meant to me as a cook. Perhaps I sorted too diligently. Pebbles and dirt were out, no doubt there. With such concentrated scrutiny, I considered every odd fleck, every off color, or broken bean to be suspect and therefore not worthy of consideration. Doubt fed the fear that if such oddities were not removed the bean pot would be embarrassed and sullied, slightly shamed to cook such a mess.
In my ego-besotted cook’s mind, such interlopers would not be tolerated. I did not spare the rod when it came to removal. A lot of beans and fragments thereof went into the rubbish bin.
Continuance of this state of affairs was a given, maybe, if the dual-headed beast of Disease and Brutality had not slipped its leash to threaten the world. “Sorting the beans” took on a new dimension. A soft clicking as they pour onto a towel, with cool, glass-like tactility greeting the palm and fingers. In the soft light of a spring morning these sensations became meditation. A prayer, of sorts, for some respite from daily waves of selfishness, hatred, and death.
They are called cranberry beans, these beans that turned on the light. I was sorting them for an overnight soak. In my palm fell a half-bean, split right down the middle. I made to put it in the discard pile. Doing so, it landed skin side up. Looking at it from the other side, as I did, it was hard to tell it was only half. I nudged the other pieces, wondering where the problem lay.
That’s when I knew. There was no problem with what amounted to was another spoonful of beans. Over the years I had willfully thrown away mouthfuls, to my detriment, and disrespecting that which would nourish me. The half-piece and its neighbors went back in the keeper pile. The next day, the pot cooked up nice and fed three people for dinner. The pieces, well, they belonged.
Not everything falls among the shapely or comely that we have been led to believe are the only recipients worthy of our attention and affection. Misshapen, broken, or simply just different, they are all beans. Be kind when you sort them. Each has a story to tell. Welcome them. The pot is all the better for having listened.
*Writing this piece began in April of this year. Two months ago seems a lifetime now. The world overtook it by events, changing the tone, direction, and length I set out to write. I hope it speaks to you the way it did to me.
Showing posts with label human being. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human being. Show all posts
22 June 2020
06 May 2019
Essence, Volume Zero
Memory and longing grabbed me by the nose on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon, putting a tiny stutter in my step. The tourists may have thought I was tipsy, but I knew better. The sway of abrupt dislocation was triggered by an amalgam of scents wafting from a doorway. The drawing of a breath snatched me out of myself and into a memory palace far from my feet on the ground. A quick turn of the head to verify the source, a shake thereof for clearance, and then continuing on my way down to the harbor. This was break time. I would have no truck with ghosts, within or without me.
In the town where I work there is a spice shop around the corner from my office. It is on literal Main Street. I pass by it nearly every day during the work week. Good weather in the warmer months leads to a door often propped open. It is their custom to place a folding sign on the brick pavers in front, adorned with photos of the wares offered within. Aromas heady and alluring spill out into the sidewalk air. Most days I stroll past without much of a thought for it. But this Tuesday was different. The aromas hit hard and fast.
A different time. A different place. A different me. That person is not here now except in his own amber memories. I am reluctant to think of him now. How often does an island think of departed tsunamis, or a mountain dream of past earthquakes? I have no claim to the solidity of of such geographic stalwarts. but in our shared concerns it feels that we are brothers. Remembrance of the past does not equate to a desire for reliving it.
Mountains and beaches speak of singularities. In the collective memory of humankind, such features are “essential” in an ancient sense. They possess spiritual gravity. In our lives we know this because their proximity pulls at our hearts and minds. The great naturalist John Muir understood this, famously saying “The mountains are calling and I must go.” Substitute “ocean is” for “mountains are”, in particular, and it becomes supremely illuminatory.
The light was strong, the call was loud that ordinary Tuesday. I stood surrounded by both, with a nose full of memories. My heart beat slow. My pace matched it. I wandered off in search of an essence just beyond the edges of recall, wondering if it was written in Volume Zero.
In the town where I work there is a spice shop around the corner from my office. It is on literal Main Street. I pass by it nearly every day during the work week. Good weather in the warmer months leads to a door often propped open. It is their custom to place a folding sign on the brick pavers in front, adorned with photos of the wares offered within. Aromas heady and alluring spill out into the sidewalk air. Most days I stroll past without much of a thought for it. But this Tuesday was different. The aromas hit hard and fast.
A different time. A different place. A different me. That person is not here now except in his own amber memories. I am reluctant to think of him now. How often does an island think of departed tsunamis, or a mountain dream of past earthquakes? I have no claim to the solidity of of such geographic stalwarts. but in our shared concerns it feels that we are brothers. Remembrance of the past does not equate to a desire for reliving it.
Mountains and beaches speak of singularities. In the collective memory of humankind, such features are “essential” in an ancient sense. They possess spiritual gravity. In our lives we know this because their proximity pulls at our hearts and minds. The great naturalist John Muir understood this, famously saying “The mountains are calling and I must go.” Substitute “ocean is” for “mountains are”, in particular, and it becomes supremely illuminatory.
The light was strong, the call was loud that ordinary Tuesday. I stood surrounded by both, with a nose full of memories. My heart beat slow. My pace matched it. I wandered off in search of an essence just beyond the edges of recall, wondering if it was written in Volume Zero.
29 April 2019
Middens, Part 5 (At Rest)
Night air with its aroma of pelagic iodine brings with it a heightening of the senses. Hearing, touch, and sight in particular undergo an increase in their gain akin to dialing it up on a stack of amplifiers. Crickets in the dunes chirp with an intense clarity. My forearms rest on the desk. The burnished raspiness of the wood comes through as mild, electric warmth. By such solidity I can reassure myself that I will not plunge into the earth. I have an anchor as I continue to gaze out the window.
There is joy in bearing witness to magic. A silver ribbon bedecks the wine-dark sea as the moon begins its languid ascension into the sky. Breakers atomize into argentine drops, Poseidon casting coins onto a waiting shore. The scene spurs me to move. I am overwhelmed by the urge to walk the waterline and scoop up the bounty. The scraping of chair legs over planks ricochets around the cottage when I push back from the desk. Prickles of something akin to pain grind through the knees, the back, popping the joints. The sensation reminds me of stepping from the ocean into the embrace of a scratchy cotton towel. Slightly rough but offering tactile satisfaction. Standing feels good. I grab a flashlight from the shelf by the door and make my way outside.
Heat of the day clings tenuously to the siding and the sand. It is quickly being replaced as the night breeze swirls about. I know the path to the shore well enough to walk it on the dark, but moonlight makes a worthy accompaniment to the trek. Footsteps make their own music from the crunch and rasp of shells, sand, and dry grass. The sound is a balm, perhaps best enjoyed in the silence of a solitary walk when the mind can be fully present. As I approach the strand this current rendition is subsumed into the studied cacophony of the waves. It is a dialogue worth hearing.
I am at the tide line. The sand has that peculiar heaviness that comes from saturation. Density underfoot, with gravity. Seaweed scribes the beach with calligraphy untranslatable but intuitively understood. The vegetation is another shield, I find. A green rampart redolent of iodine, bedecked with remains of tiny creatures that did not survive the surf. There are pebbles, bits of wood, and shells. Clam shells in particular, with the odd fragment of whelk. The shells remind me of the oysters I had for dinner. Appetites come to mind. A shard of history surfaces in my mind.
Native peoples by the shore knew where to find sustenance. Ancient humans knew a good thing when they saw it. The consumption of oysters and the like over time led to the creation of huge mounds of shells, as we have discovered. Middens created by the survival imperative. Standing by the wrack, looking out over the moonlit sea, I am surrounded by the water, the walls of the cottage, the oysters in my belly: the middens between me and the world, keeping me alive and sane.
There is joy in bearing witness to magic. A silver ribbon bedecks the wine-dark sea as the moon begins its languid ascension into the sky. Breakers atomize into argentine drops, Poseidon casting coins onto a waiting shore. The scene spurs me to move. I am overwhelmed by the urge to walk the waterline and scoop up the bounty. The scraping of chair legs over planks ricochets around the cottage when I push back from the desk. Prickles of something akin to pain grind through the knees, the back, popping the joints. The sensation reminds me of stepping from the ocean into the embrace of a scratchy cotton towel. Slightly rough but offering tactile satisfaction. Standing feels good. I grab a flashlight from the shelf by the door and make my way outside.
Heat of the day clings tenuously to the siding and the sand. It is quickly being replaced as the night breeze swirls about. I know the path to the shore well enough to walk it on the dark, but moonlight makes a worthy accompaniment to the trek. Footsteps make their own music from the crunch and rasp of shells, sand, and dry grass. The sound is a balm, perhaps best enjoyed in the silence of a solitary walk when the mind can be fully present. As I approach the strand this current rendition is subsumed into the studied cacophony of the waves. It is a dialogue worth hearing.
I am at the tide line. The sand has that peculiar heaviness that comes from saturation. Density underfoot, with gravity. Seaweed scribes the beach with calligraphy untranslatable but intuitively understood. The vegetation is another shield, I find. A green rampart redolent of iodine, bedecked with remains of tiny creatures that did not survive the surf. There are pebbles, bits of wood, and shells. Clam shells in particular, with the odd fragment of whelk. The shells remind me of the oysters I had for dinner. Appetites come to mind. A shard of history surfaces in my mind.
Native peoples by the shore knew where to find sustenance. Ancient humans knew a good thing when they saw it. The consumption of oysters and the like over time led to the creation of huge mounds of shells, as we have discovered. Middens created by the survival imperative. Standing by the wrack, looking out over the moonlit sea, I am surrounded by the water, the walls of the cottage, the oysters in my belly: the middens between me and the world, keeping me alive and sane.
22 April 2019
Middens, Part 4
To be at rest in the present day is becoming a luxury. Technology is convincing us that not only should we be connected, but we have to be connected. All access, all the time, as evidenced by our anxious search for recharging stations in public spaces. I marvel at the growth of my own disquiet while the battery percentage drops. Retreating into the dynamic serenity of dunes and breakers affords ample space to realize the disquiet is symptomatic of an affliction, one that is a creeping corrosion of peace of mind. Another weighty breaker pummels the shore. Emphatic maritime punctuation to my belated realization.
The horizon is the next nearest barrier, and it is far away. Its arc is faintly limned by the silver light of a moon yet to rise. My thoughts a mirror to the glow, I can feel a revelation creeping in on little padded paws. The hearth smolders. I will wait and see what the currents bring.
To Be Continued
The horizon is the next nearest barrier, and it is far away. Its arc is faintly limned by the silver light of a moon yet to rise. My thoughts a mirror to the glow, I can feel a revelation creeping in on little padded paws. The hearth smolders. I will wait and see what the currents bring.
To Be Continued
15 April 2019
Middens, Part 3
Sand, in the form of dunes, is the cradle here. I feel them swaddling the cottage. The day is on a gentle glide into night. Stars reveal themselves as burnished dimes embedded in a firmament of deepening indigo. I have lost track of how long I have been here in the chair by the window. Cool air redolent with aromas of iron and salt drifts though the casements. This is the scent of the world, of threads that bind me to it. It is an olfactory blanket which serves in part as shield against “dry land and its bitter memories”, to borrow a phrase from a favorite song.
The notion of shields has been hovering about my mind as of late. The world as it is seems to be on fire. Every day brings some new fresh hell of political chicanery, social disruption, or environmental chaos. The Internet alternates between being a crucial source of information and a digital dumpster. Having shields means having the means to preserve sanity and optimism. It means being able to endure. Satisfying our appetites, the hungers we feel, becomes it own form of shield. Eating comforting food, reading an engaging book, or laying eyes on a beautiful vista are all shield-building exercises.
Make no mistake here. These are shields, not walls. They aren’t meant to be permanent or static. Shifts occur as circumstances and needs evolve over time. It would be worrisome if this were not so. But what is true is the periodic need for protection, and thereby respite. Through a combination of temporal and spiritual means we seek and can find that respite when the world becomes too much and our minds overflow. Such is the appeal of this place by the sea, where the walls of civilization are not so close and the mind can expand into quiet, to actually hear itself.
It is getting dark. The line between the sea and the sky is near imperceptible. There is a lack of “something” there, yet that "nothingness" tells me here, I am safe. I am at rest. The profane is beyond the circle of light.
To Be Continued
The notion of shields has been hovering about my mind as of late. The world as it is seems to be on fire. Every day brings some new fresh hell of political chicanery, social disruption, or environmental chaos. The Internet alternates between being a crucial source of information and a digital dumpster. Having shields means having the means to preserve sanity and optimism. It means being able to endure. Satisfying our appetites, the hungers we feel, becomes it own form of shield. Eating comforting food, reading an engaging book, or laying eyes on a beautiful vista are all shield-building exercises.
Make no mistake here. These are shields, not walls. They aren’t meant to be permanent or static. Shifts occur as circumstances and needs evolve over time. It would be worrisome if this were not so. But what is true is the periodic need for protection, and thereby respite. Through a combination of temporal and spiritual means we seek and can find that respite when the world becomes too much and our minds overflow. Such is the appeal of this place by the sea, where the walls of civilization are not so close and the mind can expand into quiet, to actually hear itself.
It is getting dark. The line between the sea and the sky is near imperceptible. There is a lack of “something” there, yet that "nothingness" tells me here, I am safe. I am at rest. The profane is beyond the circle of light.
To Be Continued
08 April 2019
Middens, Part 2
My hands are dry. Stillness compels me to hold them out before me, quivering under the influence of nerves and pulse. The unkindness of desiccated air has roughened the skin. Across the fingers is a skein of tiny cuts brought about by the raggedness of shells. Wavelets of pain flare across them as I flex my hands, calling attention to debts paid in order to eat. There is a clarity to this pain. It is a pain that I understand. Pain, hunger, joy: among the interlocking gravities exerting actions at a distance on the bodies we call home. They can take us out of ourselves but ultimately they bring us back. We ignore them at our peril.
Dinner settles in my belly. To experience such fullness is to experience modest grace. What matters is that we do not abide in ignorance of manifest hunger and the satiety which slakes it. I ponder this while watching a squadron of black-backed gulls tussling over the corpse of a fish down by the waterline. Sometimes the line between a gull and myself is nearly nonexistent, crossed as it is in the assuaging of hunger. In this way the gull and I understand each other.
The cottage needs room. Opening the casements ushers in the balm of salt water and warm sand, zephyrs like wee cats’ feet riffling the papers atop the desk by the windows. Papers. Journals. A smattering of pens. These too are tools used in the satisfying the appetites of mind and soul. The frequent exhortations of the page, as inscrutable as they are sometimes, bring me to the desk over and over again. This is imperative much like the need for an ocean view with time to contemplate the breakers in their infinite variety. Words and waves, the DNA of new stories using familiar elements.
A seventh wave thumps the strand. Vibrations from the impact work their way through the floorboards of the cottage to shiver my legs. The sound nudges me out of reverie. The afternoon is on its way to evening. Aureate light intensifies around the headland to paint the cottage in a warm gold sheen. This is precious time out here. The atmosphere is of a sort to have photographers scrambling for their cameras. Ordinarily I would do the same. But not today. Today the sea quietly suggests that today is not the day for the capturing of beauty, it is a day for experiencing it. This logic shall not be quarreled with.
If beauty has a purpose in life, surely it must be as a bulwark against the brutality and despair of the world outside ourselves. This thought puts its hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me down into the chair. Gulls call, shrill piercings that crack the sky and dissolve in the static of foaming water. I follow the fading cries into the sand.
To Be Continued
Dinner settles in my belly. To experience such fullness is to experience modest grace. What matters is that we do not abide in ignorance of manifest hunger and the satiety which slakes it. I ponder this while watching a squadron of black-backed gulls tussling over the corpse of a fish down by the waterline. Sometimes the line between a gull and myself is nearly nonexistent, crossed as it is in the assuaging of hunger. In this way the gull and I understand each other.
The cottage needs room. Opening the casements ushers in the balm of salt water and warm sand, zephyrs like wee cats’ feet riffling the papers atop the desk by the windows. Papers. Journals. A smattering of pens. These too are tools used in the satisfying the appetites of mind and soul. The frequent exhortations of the page, as inscrutable as they are sometimes, bring me to the desk over and over again. This is imperative much like the need for an ocean view with time to contemplate the breakers in their infinite variety. Words and waves, the DNA of new stories using familiar elements.
A seventh wave thumps the strand. Vibrations from the impact work their way through the floorboards of the cottage to shiver my legs. The sound nudges me out of reverie. The afternoon is on its way to evening. Aureate light intensifies around the headland to paint the cottage in a warm gold sheen. This is precious time out here. The atmosphere is of a sort to have photographers scrambling for their cameras. Ordinarily I would do the same. But not today. Today the sea quietly suggests that today is not the day for the capturing of beauty, it is a day for experiencing it. This logic shall not be quarreled with.
If beauty has a purpose in life, surely it must be as a bulwark against the brutality and despair of the world outside ourselves. This thought puts its hands on my shoulders and gently pushes me down into the chair. Gulls call, shrill piercings that crack the sky and dissolve in the static of foaming water. I follow the fading cries into the sand.
To Be Continued
01 April 2019
Middens, Part 1
The counter above the sink is disappearing under a Lilliputian scree of natural detritus. A crab shell. A pine cone. The dessicated corpse of a monarch butterfly. An ever increasing collection of oyster shells which echoes a trio of clam shells. In their turn they speak of the butterfly wings. All crowding up an earthenware bowl cradling a pair of silvery, greeny looking onions. Bulbs of garlic nestle up to the onions like penguin chicks. A scattering of garlic peels, snippets of allium papyrus, adorn the onions and the bowl. Doing the dishes, one cannot escape the sight of these gleanings from field, farm, and sea. Soft light reflecting from water and dune turn the cottage into a vitrine. I am among the objects on display.
I dry my hands on the rough cotton towel that hangs down the cabinet face. The hook from which it hangs was fashioned from a smallish cleat I excavated from the sand years ago, in the wake of a ferocious storm that had walloped the headland. Howling winds and horizontal rains ceding overnight to a stiff breeze scrubbing an azure sky punctuated by dandelion puffs of clouds. Walking the beach that day I spied the dull chrome tip jutting out of a ragged wreath of dulse. Brushing the sand off revealed the clear to be in good shape, so it came home with me.
Afternoon light fills the cottage. My hands wrap the towel around themselves as my peripatetic mind ponders the remains on the counter. I am reminded that the origin of the collection is fuzzy in my memory. The pine cone has been on the ledge for nearly two years, a curio brought back from a visit with family. The crab shell, perhaps from that trip as well. The clam shells I vividly remember saving from a particularly good batch of chowder I made in the fall, a brace of years ago. The butterfly? Date and time of collection is lost to history. But it is all a collection. A faded inspiration catalyzed the beginning of it. The intent, if it were ever to be coupled with action, was to create a series of still life photographs. Fading daylight reminds me that the intention has yet to be fulfilled. Another idea flitting away like the butterflies themselves.
Silence inhabits the cottage. It is not the aural sterility of anechoic chambers. Rather, it is the quiet of blankets and morning forests. There is the murmur of the waves, subdued. Accompanying them is the occasional cry of a kittiwake frisking about down by the waterline. The sounds reach me through a layer, gauzy on the ears. In this silence I recognize that my need to collect these avatars of nature has roots in a resting state denied me by current events, anxiety, and an addiction to information. The absence of input is a gentle reminder to step back from the chatter. It is not a theft of time to cradle a shell in the hands, trace the contours with a fingertip, and consider the threads that tie you to it.
Shell as tool. Shell as totem. Shell as container of food. These are the states by which I know them. The gathering and gleaning of these things is relief. The contemplation of these things is meditation. Either state is a frame of mind worth inhabiting. I know this having received revelation in the shucking of an oyster, and in the placid track of sunlight across the antediluvian scales of a pine cone.
To Be Continued
I dry my hands on the rough cotton towel that hangs down the cabinet face. The hook from which it hangs was fashioned from a smallish cleat I excavated from the sand years ago, in the wake of a ferocious storm that had walloped the headland. Howling winds and horizontal rains ceding overnight to a stiff breeze scrubbing an azure sky punctuated by dandelion puffs of clouds. Walking the beach that day I spied the dull chrome tip jutting out of a ragged wreath of dulse. Brushing the sand off revealed the clear to be in good shape, so it came home with me.
Afternoon light fills the cottage. My hands wrap the towel around themselves as my peripatetic mind ponders the remains on the counter. I am reminded that the origin of the collection is fuzzy in my memory. The pine cone has been on the ledge for nearly two years, a curio brought back from a visit with family. The crab shell, perhaps from that trip as well. The clam shells I vividly remember saving from a particularly good batch of chowder I made in the fall, a brace of years ago. The butterfly? Date and time of collection is lost to history. But it is all a collection. A faded inspiration catalyzed the beginning of it. The intent, if it were ever to be coupled with action, was to create a series of still life photographs. Fading daylight reminds me that the intention has yet to be fulfilled. Another idea flitting away like the butterflies themselves.
Silence inhabits the cottage. It is not the aural sterility of anechoic chambers. Rather, it is the quiet of blankets and morning forests. There is the murmur of the waves, subdued. Accompanying them is the occasional cry of a kittiwake frisking about down by the waterline. The sounds reach me through a layer, gauzy on the ears. In this silence I recognize that my need to collect these avatars of nature has roots in a resting state denied me by current events, anxiety, and an addiction to information. The absence of input is a gentle reminder to step back from the chatter. It is not a theft of time to cradle a shell in the hands, trace the contours with a fingertip, and consider the threads that tie you to it.
Shell as tool. Shell as totem. Shell as container of food. These are the states by which I know them. The gathering and gleaning of these things is relief. The contemplation of these things is meditation. Either state is a frame of mind worth inhabiting. I know this having received revelation in the shucking of an oyster, and in the placid track of sunlight across the antediluvian scales of a pine cone.
To Be Continued
25 March 2019
Tumble
Oceans perchance can be forgiven for unawareness of their own power. Such pelagic giants have concerns far larger than humans and animals. There is some suspicion that marine giants such as blue whales have insight into the machinations of the deep, but are notoriously silent in the relation of that knowledge. Silent, that is, if humans have not yet learned to listen and understand. As a species humanity has vast distances to cross before viewing even the outer walls of true understanding. In the interim humans have no need to comprehend titanic unself-consciousness in order to understand its effects. Look no further than the tide line, with its jetsam and wrack and faunal remains.
Freed from the shackles of economy and utility, beach combing is more about meditation than acquisition. Serenity can be found along the tide line while executing a patient search for that which is of interest, interest being defined as “you’ll know it when you see it.” The flotsam of ships afloat and under the waves. Natural curiosities. Shiny things. Strolling along the scalloped edge of retreating waves, a curious mind cannot help but be entranced by the leavings of the tide. The stories that could be told by shard or shell!
Stories are the root of the exploration. Every rounded lump of glass is an essay. Every man-made object is a codex. Every animal carcass, large or small, is a tome. All await the eyes and mind of the reader. What do we want to know? When his students were stuck for inspiration, the architect Louis Kahn advised them to ask materials for advice. “What do you want, brick?” was his famous question (the answer: “I like an arch”) and it was pointedly about creating engagement. To encounter a faded crab carapace or burnished chunk of driftwood is to be graced with an opportunity for wonder. Surely the sight of pearlescent fish bones fading into sand makes one pause, ponder, and ask “What brought you here?”
The tide line intrinsically serves as catalyst for the asking of that question, which in turn acts as mirror and reflection. Lying amongst the calligraphy of cast up seaweed are chapters and verses, tales of creation and life. The hummocks came from somewhere to end up here in the now. This state of affairs is the human condition writ large. People are not lumps of seaweed, obviously, but we know more than we can say about being carried along by currents we cannot fully perceive only to end up in places we may not have expected to inhabit.
Wandering along the laminar edge of the breakers’ last hurrah, there is much to be seen that is unremarkable. The homogeneous grit of sand interspersed with drab pebbles and uncountable shell fragments represents “beach” to many of us. This is ordinary. This is as it should be. The ordinary is crucial as it serves as backdrop to the extraordinary, those bits of glitter and opalescence that beckon fitfully to the eye as they are rocked by the waves. Especially in the sunlight the fragments call out. It is nearly impossible to resist the urge to bend low to pick such treasures up. We see them. We know these irregular shards as shells and as pages, cast up from books not written by the hands of humans. But they tell stories. Stories of long journeys and hard experience. Once they were whole, now echoes of something larger. The form is still here, different from the “used to be” which existed in that time referred to as “ago”. Different, but beautiful all the same. A pearly fragment in the surf is not so distant from us, tumbled as we are by circumstance and fortune, to emerge from the chaos with burnished edges and wondrous tales to share.
Freed from the shackles of economy and utility, beach combing is more about meditation than acquisition. Serenity can be found along the tide line while executing a patient search for that which is of interest, interest being defined as “you’ll know it when you see it.” The flotsam of ships afloat and under the waves. Natural curiosities. Shiny things. Strolling along the scalloped edge of retreating waves, a curious mind cannot help but be entranced by the leavings of the tide. The stories that could be told by shard or shell!
Stories are the root of the exploration. Every rounded lump of glass is an essay. Every man-made object is a codex. Every animal carcass, large or small, is a tome. All await the eyes and mind of the reader. What do we want to know? When his students were stuck for inspiration, the architect Louis Kahn advised them to ask materials for advice. “What do you want, brick?” was his famous question (the answer: “I like an arch”) and it was pointedly about creating engagement. To encounter a faded crab carapace or burnished chunk of driftwood is to be graced with an opportunity for wonder. Surely the sight of pearlescent fish bones fading into sand makes one pause, ponder, and ask “What brought you here?”
The tide line intrinsically serves as catalyst for the asking of that question, which in turn acts as mirror and reflection. Lying amongst the calligraphy of cast up seaweed are chapters and verses, tales of creation and life. The hummocks came from somewhere to end up here in the now. This state of affairs is the human condition writ large. People are not lumps of seaweed, obviously, but we know more than we can say about being carried along by currents we cannot fully perceive only to end up in places we may not have expected to inhabit.
Wandering along the laminar edge of the breakers’ last hurrah, there is much to be seen that is unremarkable. The homogeneous grit of sand interspersed with drab pebbles and uncountable shell fragments represents “beach” to many of us. This is ordinary. This is as it should be. The ordinary is crucial as it serves as backdrop to the extraordinary, those bits of glitter and opalescence that beckon fitfully to the eye as they are rocked by the waves. Especially in the sunlight the fragments call out. It is nearly impossible to resist the urge to bend low to pick such treasures up. We see them. We know these irregular shards as shells and as pages, cast up from books not written by the hands of humans. But they tell stories. Stories of long journeys and hard experience. Once they were whole, now echoes of something larger. The form is still here, different from the “used to be” which existed in that time referred to as “ago”. Different, but beautiful all the same. A pearly fragment in the surf is not so distant from us, tumbled as we are by circumstance and fortune, to emerge from the chaos with burnished edges and wondrous tales to share.
11 March 2019
Overturning the Bushel
Lux. Corpus lux! A folly of a translation, in service to the idea of we are but bodies of light. Or is it homines lumine, humans of light? Our bodies become an amalgam of stardust and intentions. Language itself becomes light. The gravity of Latin is ancient, its pull irresistible in the search for essence. These words! How far back must we travel to grip the soul of light? The gap between the experience of light and its description may never be closed. Words weep under duress of inadequacy, but they must make do. I can only blink my eyes and gape in wonder when it fills the around me, the sky above me, the heart within me.
Light all around. What was it like before humankind learned to paint it as it is known to modern man? Before electric light? As a teenager I camped one night under an unsullied canopy of stars. It was was enough to still my voice. My head filled with awe, dumbstruck by this highway of diamonds I never knew existed. A faint film of jealousy occluded my heart to know that long ago humans had experience of light never tainted by clever inventions. Jealousy because I wanted to know that, too. Such desire awakens to know these disappearing night skies because the universe turns fittingly. It is not due to artificial impositions of creatures who do not fully understand what they do.
Light all around. What was it like before humankind learned to paint it as it is known to modern man? Before electric light? As a teenager I camped one night under an unsullied canopy of stars. It was was enough to still my voice. My head filled with awe, dumbstruck by this highway of diamonds I never knew existed. A faint film of jealousy occluded my heart to know that long ago humans had experience of light never tainted by clever inventions. Jealousy because I wanted to know that, too. Such desire awakens to know these disappearing night skies because the universe turns fittingly. It is not due to artificial impositions of creatures who do not fully understand what they do.
Light reflected by water into sky. I laugh to myself. My fellow patrons in the coffee shop where I write don't notice my humor, or are polite enough to not stare. Do they know I dream here in the window? While I cannot see the water nearby, directly, it is visible in tiny slices if one looks carefully through the windows of the market cross the street. Some days there is no certainty if what can be seen is real, or just a figment. My mirth arises because I take comfort from the water in reality and in imagination. Water presents the light in an ever-changing familiarity of mien that we have never seen before but will always recognize.
Light. Where is this light we seek? How does it find us as it leaks through the slats, shines in the spaces between the leaves, illuminates our skin as we stand gaping under a sky so blue it makes the heart swell? This light, lovelies. This light that arrives and vanishes without warning. It fills the dreams and wakes us from the same, only to leave us confused and bereft but with comfort and hope. It will be back. Our light is fickle as we constantly hide it from ourselves. The soul can be a basket or a candlestick. To know in our lives the difference is a universal struggle. We are our own bushels, struggling to be overturned, that we may bring about the sharing of light.
29 July 2018
Still Life
For most of us, we don’t know much about art, beyond being able to say we like what we like. As a consequence it is puzzling to feel we know too much about still life. Not the painting type, unless it be that life imitates art. No, the still life I refer to is ours. Ours in all its inelegant, awkward, and erratically composed non-glory. That is the nutshell version. Luscious fruits in a golden bowl will not be confused with the thin broth of our daily existence.
Whose fault is it that the broth is thin? It can only be ours. It is a poor cook that blames only his pots and pans. Quality of ingredients bears some of the burden, but a thoughtful and careful cook makes the most of what they get. Arrangement is paramount. Whether we cook or paint or compose with our lives it is up to us to maximize the good in our circumstances. By such endeavors the stillness of a life can be made as a snapshot, a slice of time, and not the rule. Stillness can thereby be a temporary rest and not permanent stasis.
This is what we tell ourselves when stillness becomes stasis. Yes, yes, it is not necessarily stillness that should worry us, it is stasis. Stasis can be defined as “the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces” and “stagnation in the flow of any of the fluids of the body”. Certainly there are times in all of our lives where either description fits the measure of our days. Consider the pressures generated by the singular matrix of life in which each of us is embedded. The quest for love. Looking for the cure for pain. Freedom from debt , financial or otherwise. How we exhaust ourselves seeking to escape the “sheer hellishness of life”, a phrase so eloquently coined by Jim Harrison in his essay Meals of Peace and Restoration.
Yes, yes, pressures. The external world generates far more of them than any of us want to confront in our lives. Let us not be so hard on ourselves in the rush to keep up. By some lights, we only get one life. By others, we get other chances. Either path could use more kindness to ourselves and others, so that those lives may not fade in stillness.
Whose fault is it that the broth is thin? It can only be ours. It is a poor cook that blames only his pots and pans. Quality of ingredients bears some of the burden, but a thoughtful and careful cook makes the most of what they get. Arrangement is paramount. Whether we cook or paint or compose with our lives it is up to us to maximize the good in our circumstances. By such endeavors the stillness of a life can be made as a snapshot, a slice of time, and not the rule. Stillness can thereby be a temporary rest and not permanent stasis.
This is what we tell ourselves when stillness becomes stasis. Yes, yes, it is not necessarily stillness that should worry us, it is stasis. Stasis can be defined as “the state of equilibrium or inactivity caused by opposing equal forces” and “stagnation in the flow of any of the fluids of the body”. Certainly there are times in all of our lives where either description fits the measure of our days. Consider the pressures generated by the singular matrix of life in which each of us is embedded. The quest for love. Looking for the cure for pain. Freedom from debt , financial or otherwise. How we exhaust ourselves seeking to escape the “sheer hellishness of life”, a phrase so eloquently coined by Jim Harrison in his essay Meals of Peace and Restoration.
Yes, yes, pressures. The external world generates far more of them than any of us want to confront in our lives. Let us not be so hard on ourselves in the rush to keep up. By some lights, we only get one life. By others, we get other chances. Either path could use more kindness to ourselves and others, so that those lives may not fade in stillness.
15 July 2018
Plumb The Swell
It may be known by the pelicans, this wreck that lies not far offshore from the low tide line. The spray-flecked birds roost upon the crossbars in a display of maritime avian inscrutability. They seem comfortable perching on the rusty wet iron. Such a tableau piques the interest. It invites one to come investigate, to see what the pelicans see. Who would not want to commune with such creatures, perhaps divine some insight into a life spent in symbiosis with the sea? No one. The swim to the roost should be an easy commute. Yet it is the swell, vitreous and undulate, that holds one back.
Of course the swell makes the sea seem alive. A huge, peculiar beast seeking to swallow those daring enough to depart the safety of the strand. Ripples on the surface bear more than a passing resemblance to scales on a serpent or a dragon. Such an image cannot help but evoke nervousness as a swimmer wades into the surf. The roil and tumble of waves is exhilaration embodied in tidal energy. They curl in a jade opacity, and it is this opacity that strums the nerves with anxiety.
What the eyes cannot see the mind fills in with abandon. In the full light of day, no less. The surf becomes a medieval map. Here there be monsters, maybe, or at least very large beasts of unknown intentions. They stand between desire and fulfillment thereof. The blank space between that to be known and the actual knowing of it. Shipwrecks have a way of grabbing the imagination form an early age. The reality of seeing one in the world is very different than those seen in photographs. There is no filter or remove.
Waves roll. Pelicans rustle and flap. They seem a genial coven of witches, magistrates conferring in the square, as they dip and bob their heads while shuffling on the crossbar. What could be learned from such chatter? How to approach them at their party? If only we could know the witty banter of seabirds, perhaps we could join them at their leisure.
First, we must cross the water. Overcoming fear is the first step. Eventually we must dive into that which cannot be divined beforehand. There is no other way in this life. To connect is to invest, and treasures will not unearth themselves.
Of course the swell makes the sea seem alive. A huge, peculiar beast seeking to swallow those daring enough to depart the safety of the strand. Ripples on the surface bear more than a passing resemblance to scales on a serpent or a dragon. Such an image cannot help but evoke nervousness as a swimmer wades into the surf. The roil and tumble of waves is exhilaration embodied in tidal energy. They curl in a jade opacity, and it is this opacity that strums the nerves with anxiety.
What the eyes cannot see the mind fills in with abandon. In the full light of day, no less. The surf becomes a medieval map. Here there be monsters, maybe, or at least very large beasts of unknown intentions. They stand between desire and fulfillment thereof. The blank space between that to be known and the actual knowing of it. Shipwrecks have a way of grabbing the imagination form an early age. The reality of seeing one in the world is very different than those seen in photographs. There is no filter or remove.
Waves roll. Pelicans rustle and flap. They seem a genial coven of witches, magistrates conferring in the square, as they dip and bob their heads while shuffling on the crossbar. What could be learned from such chatter? How to approach them at their party? If only we could know the witty banter of seabirds, perhaps we could join them at their leisure.
First, we must cross the water. Overcoming fear is the first step. Eventually we must dive into that which cannot be divined beforehand. There is no other way in this life. To connect is to invest, and treasures will not unearth themselves.
24 June 2018
Call You Home
The call is felt in the blood. A tidal surge in the veins that ghosts the heart with gravity. When least expected, the surge will lift the feet off the floor and leave the urge to be out the door. On the road to the water in all its nervous-making grandeur. The heart fears the swell, and needs it to survive. Dreams tell it so.
A maritime song perhaps first heard in the womb. Blood rushing, swirling through the cataract of the umbilical to percuss the nascent tympani of a budding creature. A glorious song shared between the mother and the child. It would be the child’s first experience of the rhythm of the tides as expressed in heartbeats and phases of the moon. It would be fifteen years or more until a day came when the youth stood on the shore, dumbfounded, without understanding why the sight and sound of the waves was bracingly new and shockingly ancient. He felt it without comprehension of the reasons.
It could be that this illumination was the young man’s first real glimpse at the Mystery of life. There could be no forgetting of that energy and electrification in this first experience of synchronization between the heart, blood, and consciousness. The youth could not know then just how similar the feeling would be when, years later, he made love for the first time. The congruency would be sweet and shocking.
But that was in the future. The shore was the Now. Of course, the Future is the Now at some point. This realization came home to roost years later, experiencing the same sensations in different circumstances. It reminded the man of comedian Brother Dave Gardner, heard decades ago on a vinyl record, who quipped that you can’t do the same thing again but “You can do something similar!” Brother Dave was referring to people who had a good time at gatherings, but the sentiment applied still. A beatnik comic channeling the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, as interpreted by a young man who woke up in middle age.
Today that man stood with his toes in the surf and fingertips wet from the sea. The taste of that water lay lightly on his tongue. It was the taste of something similar, a different river, but realized anew in the heart. It tasted like home.
17 June 2018
On Not Acting My Age (Because I Don't Know It)
I don’t get it, this getting older thing. Chronologically, yes. But state of mind? Personal aesthetics? Outside interests? No. Rather, I’m not sure. I don’t know how I am supposed to act, or exactly what it is I supposedly like now that I have survived five decades on Earth. My head and heart are caught in a tug of war between the dorky punk I used to be and the curmudgeon into which I am morphing. The tension is real and bizarre.
Routines are much more part of life these days. It is an afternoon habit of mine to have a tea or coffee break at this coffee shop near my office. I do not recall how it started, but almost every day I am there, hopefully perched in a window seat. People watching, daydreaming, writing such follies as this. Near to this shop is the campus of a liberal arts college. As such, the place has its share of students as customers and quite likely as baristas. This shop does not have Muzak or programmed piped music. Proof that there is mercy in the universe, sometimes. But what happens is that the employees typically hook up their smartphones or MP3 players to the shop speakers. Consequently I get to hear a broad spectrum of music, much of which I either know little of or have never heard.
The other day in the shop I was sipping tea and listening to the music. It was otherwise quiet so I was getting a good earful. Deciding I liked what I was hearing I opened the music identification app on my phone and let it cogitate. The result came back for a band of which I had heard the name but not the tune. Cool, I’m thinking I might have to get it. I research it only to find out that the song is an album that was released in 1992.
1992. Twenty-six frickin’ years ago. Blood rushed to my head, then swiftly drained out. Twenty six years is half my life ago.
See, herein lies the problem. I love music from the standpoint of an enthusiastic listener. I used to have a strong sense of time and place when I listened to it. I could orient myself quite well. But these days music is not so much bound by context and location. Also, between having listened to music for decades, the ubiquity of listening devices, and the widespread distribution of music wherever I go, I am simultaneously bored and fascinated by it all.
A consequence of that is I hear old stuff that sounds new and new stuff that sounds old, to my ears. I honestly don’t know what I am hearing sometimes. I just know I like it. Mostly. Recent adventures in music have taken me into rap, hip-hop, a little dub, neo-psychedelic rock, and even electronic dance music. There is much undiscovered country in music, for me, most of which is far away from my formative years in becoming a music lover.
On any given day the music I hear makes me feel old, young, and ageless. That can be a good thing. It can be dizzy-making, too. It feels odd to me to realize I am fan-boying over music that people much younger than me are considering to be the shit. Music is music, right, and age don’t matter to the ear of the open-minded listener, right? So why this mixing up with the issue of my years on earth?
This is a problem in that the onset of summer already has me disoriented and detached from life. My dizziness is only increasing from the influence of this musical curiosity of mine. Music has been by turns exhilarating and exhausting, uplifting and depressing. My head is unable to give direction and my heart is feeling oh so lost. Consequently I am at a loss as to how to behave in my life. “Act your age” is a shopworn bromide I have heard before. But what do you do when you cannot pin that down? The music is helping me to feel something, at least, even if it isn’t helping me think. That might be a good thing.
Routines are much more part of life these days. It is an afternoon habit of mine to have a tea or coffee break at this coffee shop near my office. I do not recall how it started, but almost every day I am there, hopefully perched in a window seat. People watching, daydreaming, writing such follies as this. Near to this shop is the campus of a liberal arts college. As such, the place has its share of students as customers and quite likely as baristas. This shop does not have Muzak or programmed piped music. Proof that there is mercy in the universe, sometimes. But what happens is that the employees typically hook up their smartphones or MP3 players to the shop speakers. Consequently I get to hear a broad spectrum of music, much of which I either know little of or have never heard.
The other day in the shop I was sipping tea and listening to the music. It was otherwise quiet so I was getting a good earful. Deciding I liked what I was hearing I opened the music identification app on my phone and let it cogitate. The result came back for a band of which I had heard the name but not the tune. Cool, I’m thinking I might have to get it. I research it only to find out that the song is an album that was released in 1992.
1992. Twenty-six frickin’ years ago. Blood rushed to my head, then swiftly drained out. Twenty six years is half my life ago.
See, herein lies the problem. I love music from the standpoint of an enthusiastic listener. I used to have a strong sense of time and place when I listened to it. I could orient myself quite well. But these days music is not so much bound by context and location. Also, between having listened to music for decades, the ubiquity of listening devices, and the widespread distribution of music wherever I go, I am simultaneously bored and fascinated by it all.
A consequence of that is I hear old stuff that sounds new and new stuff that sounds old, to my ears. I honestly don’t know what I am hearing sometimes. I just know I like it. Mostly. Recent adventures in music have taken me into rap, hip-hop, a little dub, neo-psychedelic rock, and even electronic dance music. There is much undiscovered country in music, for me, most of which is far away from my formative years in becoming a music lover.
On any given day the music I hear makes me feel old, young, and ageless. That can be a good thing. It can be dizzy-making, too. It feels odd to me to realize I am fan-boying over music that people much younger than me are considering to be the shit. Music is music, right, and age don’t matter to the ear of the open-minded listener, right? So why this mixing up with the issue of my years on earth?
This is a problem in that the onset of summer already has me disoriented and detached from life. My dizziness is only increasing from the influence of this musical curiosity of mine. Music has been by turns exhilarating and exhausting, uplifting and depressing. My head is unable to give direction and my heart is feeling oh so lost. Consequently I am at a loss as to how to behave in my life. “Act your age” is a shopworn bromide I have heard before. But what do you do when you cannot pin that down? The music is helping me to feel something, at least, even if it isn’t helping me think. That might be a good thing.
10 June 2018
In the Quiet Box
Silence expands to fill the available volume regardless of the total. This is knowledge gained as a collateral effect of living. It could take decades before one notices what is happening. Different cities, different containers, different boxes all experiencing the same result. The silence is loudest in the night, in those moments before another bedtime. Silence haunts.
Amusingly enough the silence is not without a soundtrack. The noises heard tend to be generated in places other than the throat or head. The click of a kitchen light switch morphs into a rifle shot. An air conditioner fan takes on a near corporeal presence, a machine-age analogue of a waterfall coursing over a brim of rocks. Low hum punctuated by the pouring of rain outside the windows that surges in when the conditioner unit cuts off. The abrupt absence of a sound like that tricks the mind into thinking it is losing its balance. Living in a quiet box it is an easily acquired habit of leaning into sound because it offers support.
Support in the form of distractions from the vacuum of a life unrealized. Absences. Connections not formed, or frayed to the point of unviability. Projects uncompleted, or worse, never started because the attention was absorbed by some other thing in life and the mind failed to grasp the threads it should have followed. Funny how the hollow clattering of a butter knife into a sink (which was cleaned earlier in a fit of anxiety-induced housekeeping) can knock the mind from one track into another. A metallic thud serving as an accidental rin chime signaling the beginning of involuntary meditation in the temple of the head.
The knife lies still in the sink. Stillness broken by the hum and whirr of domestic machineries within, wind and rain without. The body reacts by pacing around the quiet box of its apartment. It cannot be helped that the mind is flooded with memories and regrets and the helplessness wrought by the realization that not enough has been done to find security in an unstable universe. In the stream of silences the head and the heart cannot escape the notion that so much potential appears to have been wasted or unrealized. Picture the tap on the barrel of water that was supposed to have enabled the successful crossing of a desert. Unbeknownst to all this tap was not secured before embarking. Miles of trudging through the heat and sand engendering thirst beyond measure, not to be slaked because the water dripped away.
Desperate discoveries occur in the silences of the quiet box. The stomach knows because it drops. No amount of pacing truly eradicates the gnawing sensation, but the motion can ease some of the discomfort. Discomfort? Do we really mean fear? Fear of having missed out on a cosmic scale and now not understanding how to get something back? Ah, this is it. Of course it is fear. A nipping at the heels brought about by a late-night revelation that you may not know what you are doing. Ever.
But you should know this by now. If you do not, surely that would be irrefutable evidence of the ineffectuality that you believe to be your shackles. It is this ineffectuality that howls the loudest in the midnight of the quiet box. Ineffectuality is the diamond-eyed beast that prowls the undergrowth just outside the dying circle of light. Growl and moan, rustle and snort, the impression is one of power that does not care how bright the fire you build. It will get what it wants. It will feed.
Living a life of balance is draining, in the face of knowing the universe does not need an excuse to eat you alive. The prime directive of that life is to find something, or better yet, someone with whom to share the quiet box of life. By such good fortune the beast will be kept at bay.
Amusingly enough the silence is not without a soundtrack. The noises heard tend to be generated in places other than the throat or head. The click of a kitchen light switch morphs into a rifle shot. An air conditioner fan takes on a near corporeal presence, a machine-age analogue of a waterfall coursing over a brim of rocks. Low hum punctuated by the pouring of rain outside the windows that surges in when the conditioner unit cuts off. The abrupt absence of a sound like that tricks the mind into thinking it is losing its balance. Living in a quiet box it is an easily acquired habit of leaning into sound because it offers support.
Support in the form of distractions from the vacuum of a life unrealized. Absences. Connections not formed, or frayed to the point of unviability. Projects uncompleted, or worse, never started because the attention was absorbed by some other thing in life and the mind failed to grasp the threads it should have followed. Funny how the hollow clattering of a butter knife into a sink (which was cleaned earlier in a fit of anxiety-induced housekeeping) can knock the mind from one track into another. A metallic thud serving as an accidental rin chime signaling the beginning of involuntary meditation in the temple of the head.
The knife lies still in the sink. Stillness broken by the hum and whirr of domestic machineries within, wind and rain without. The body reacts by pacing around the quiet box of its apartment. It cannot be helped that the mind is flooded with memories and regrets and the helplessness wrought by the realization that not enough has been done to find security in an unstable universe. In the stream of silences the head and the heart cannot escape the notion that so much potential appears to have been wasted or unrealized. Picture the tap on the barrel of water that was supposed to have enabled the successful crossing of a desert. Unbeknownst to all this tap was not secured before embarking. Miles of trudging through the heat and sand engendering thirst beyond measure, not to be slaked because the water dripped away.
Desperate discoveries occur in the silences of the quiet box. The stomach knows because it drops. No amount of pacing truly eradicates the gnawing sensation, but the motion can ease some of the discomfort. Discomfort? Do we really mean fear? Fear of having missed out on a cosmic scale and now not understanding how to get something back? Ah, this is it. Of course it is fear. A nipping at the heels brought about by a late-night revelation that you may not know what you are doing. Ever.
But you should know this by now. If you do not, surely that would be irrefutable evidence of the ineffectuality that you believe to be your shackles. It is this ineffectuality that howls the loudest in the midnight of the quiet box. Ineffectuality is the diamond-eyed beast that prowls the undergrowth just outside the dying circle of light. Growl and moan, rustle and snort, the impression is one of power that does not care how bright the fire you build. It will get what it wants. It will feed.
Living a life of balance is draining, in the face of knowing the universe does not need an excuse to eat you alive. The prime directive of that life is to find something, or better yet, someone with whom to share the quiet box of life. By such good fortune the beast will be kept at bay.
03 June 2018
Heliotrope
Earth pirouettes in black velvet. The terminator glides over the crust like God’s inshave scraping the face of the world with light. Whether high or low, all things, all creatures acknowledge the presence of the light. Not all themselves are noticed or remembered when the darkness comes again, but they continue to hope. It is that, or cloak themselves in a shroud of numbness while waiting. This is the way of the world.
Growth often stretches out over years before the connection between the presence of love and the presence of life become clear to the heart. With light comes energy and awakening. The numb darkness is forgotten (or better, never having been known) when the terminator crosses the line of the soul. A certain voice, a phrase, a face seen across the room sets the soft machineries in motion. It is bliss. It is joy. Circulation returns and the limbs infuse with warmth. In the heady scent of a new spring, it is no surprise that the arctic winter fades from consciousness. What veins would not desire such rebirth?
The proof is reaction in the presence of love, of kinship, and connection. To experience the triad is to know great blessings down to the level of the cells. Watch what happens when love walks into the room. A body twists while the face leans towards the light. Suddenly, all is warm, all is light. What a sensation to feel the abrupt lightness of limbs when the shackles fall away!
The living know this intimately, the gadabout perhaps more so than the recluse. Does one know it more keenly than the other? That may depend on the voluntariness of their choice to be out there or undercover. A recluse may not want to be a recluse, but lives under the belief that life is too contrary in its rewards. Tolerance for pain is not infinite, even amongst the most optimistic.
A recluse can know the joy of light, though. Memory knows what it is to feel the surge of electricity in the nerves upon witnessing the sunrise. Or love walking into the room. There can be doubt. The heart thrums. The body awakens. Witness the turning of the face to the source of life, cheeks aglow from the scraping passage of the terminator bringing about a rebirth of the human inside us all. The fields rustle and hum when life turns towards the sun.
Are those fields fallow or sterile? Darkness renders this knowledge difficult to obtain. If the eyes cannot see the ground, they cannot see that which may sprout from it. From the darkness comes the sorcerer Unknown and his familiar, Unease. The first plays tricks on the mind and heart. The second figure-eights around the ankles in the guise of seeking affection, but really is there to trip the body up. Falling down is distressingly easy when the ground is unseen.
Hope and the memory of warmth lead the heart to believe the fields are merely fallow. This belief is necessary for survival. Sterility would mean the death of hope, of blood ceasing to flow, and humanity leaching away into the alkali fields of a mind that has lost its way to connection. The task is thusly defined as the need to hold on until the light returns. Keep the heartbeat going, however feeble, even if it means emotional stasis. It is in this way that love can be rediscovered.
Time dilates. Earth pirouettes, it is clear. The body follows along a highway of diamonds, strewn along the sable cloak of the universe. Battered hearts cross the terminator into light, scraped anew, and the soul awakens. Faces feel the warmth as they turn to a new source of life. This is love.
Growth often stretches out over years before the connection between the presence of love and the presence of life become clear to the heart. With light comes energy and awakening. The numb darkness is forgotten (or better, never having been known) when the terminator crosses the line of the soul. A certain voice, a phrase, a face seen across the room sets the soft machineries in motion. It is bliss. It is joy. Circulation returns and the limbs infuse with warmth. In the heady scent of a new spring, it is no surprise that the arctic winter fades from consciousness. What veins would not desire such rebirth?
The proof is reaction in the presence of love, of kinship, and connection. To experience the triad is to know great blessings down to the level of the cells. Watch what happens when love walks into the room. A body twists while the face leans towards the light. Suddenly, all is warm, all is light. What a sensation to feel the abrupt lightness of limbs when the shackles fall away!
The living know this intimately, the gadabout perhaps more so than the recluse. Does one know it more keenly than the other? That may depend on the voluntariness of their choice to be out there or undercover. A recluse may not want to be a recluse, but lives under the belief that life is too contrary in its rewards. Tolerance for pain is not infinite, even amongst the most optimistic.
A recluse can know the joy of light, though. Memory knows what it is to feel the surge of electricity in the nerves upon witnessing the sunrise. Or love walking into the room. There can be doubt. The heart thrums. The body awakens. Witness the turning of the face to the source of life, cheeks aglow from the scraping passage of the terminator bringing about a rebirth of the human inside us all. The fields rustle and hum when life turns towards the sun.
Are those fields fallow or sterile? Darkness renders this knowledge difficult to obtain. If the eyes cannot see the ground, they cannot see that which may sprout from it. From the darkness comes the sorcerer Unknown and his familiar, Unease. The first plays tricks on the mind and heart. The second figure-eights around the ankles in the guise of seeking affection, but really is there to trip the body up. Falling down is distressingly easy when the ground is unseen.
Hope and the memory of warmth lead the heart to believe the fields are merely fallow. This belief is necessary for survival. Sterility would mean the death of hope, of blood ceasing to flow, and humanity leaching away into the alkali fields of a mind that has lost its way to connection. The task is thusly defined as the need to hold on until the light returns. Keep the heartbeat going, however feeble, even if it means emotional stasis. It is in this way that love can be rediscovered.
Time dilates. Earth pirouettes, it is clear. The body follows along a highway of diamonds, strewn along the sable cloak of the universe. Battered hearts cross the terminator into light, scraped anew, and the soul awakens. Faces feel the warmth as they turn to a new source of life. This is love.
20 May 2018
Divine (or Something Akin To It) Intervention
The rain poured down as a fitting tenor for the day. I pulled my car into the parking garage just like I do most days of the week. The distinctive voice of Matthew Sweet pealed from the radio, with lyrics I already knew but could not help but feel as needles under my skin.
In the space. I hesitated before killing the engine. I had no real desire to hear the next verse, yet could not bring myself to turn off the radio. It was going to start with that line, you know the one, where Sweet sings “Does he love us? Does he love us?” Gets me every time. The question haunts me often, as it has starting in particular about fifteen years ago. That was the time when I lost my first two children. It seems cool, rainy days have a penchant for resurrecting memories.
I toughed it out through the end of the song. For what it’s worth I actually do like it. Matthew Sweet has pulled off the rare trick of writing a song about God that is neither cloyingly adoring nor furiously critical, and thereby appealing to me. The approach and the style I find interesting. I can listen to it with no eye rolling or agitation.
Certain days, however, with their combination of mood and weather in conjunction with a certain song can really land a punch on me. Rainwater slid with languid grace down the windshield as I waited. The parking garage had the feel of an aging mausoleum. Grimy surfaces, dim light, cold echoes of traffic and machines. The song ended, the engine sputters out, my head sags to the wheel under the peculiar weight of my five-plus decades on earth. I was having trouble breathing.
The steering wheel was cool on my forehead. I held it there for a few moments, listening to my breath while I meditated on the necessity of exiting the car and walking to the office. Rain continued to fall. The world continued to turn. Memories swirled together with weariness over a life gone akimbo, a little dizziness took hold and I wondered if maybe I should just turn around and go home, go back to bed.
But I didn’t. Work to be done and the need to eat got me out of the car and headed for the street. The song echoed in my head, lyrics messing with my heart. I did look around, and what I saw was far from destruction, yet I could not help but wonder how much longer any one of us can keep counting on divine intervention.
Lyrics from "Divine Intervention", from Matthew Sweet's album Girlfriend, released in 1991. 1991, damnit!
I cannot understand my God I don't know why it gets to meOne day my life is filled with joyAnd then we find we disagreeAll depending on hisDivine intervention*
In the space. I hesitated before killing the engine. I had no real desire to hear the next verse, yet could not bring myself to turn off the radio. It was going to start with that line, you know the one, where Sweet sings “Does he love us? Does he love us?” Gets me every time. The question haunts me often, as it has starting in particular about fifteen years ago. That was the time when I lost my first two children. It seems cool, rainy days have a penchant for resurrecting memories.
I toughed it out through the end of the song. For what it’s worth I actually do like it. Matthew Sweet has pulled off the rare trick of writing a song about God that is neither cloyingly adoring nor furiously critical, and thereby appealing to me. The approach and the style I find interesting. I can listen to it with no eye rolling or agitation.
Certain days, however, with their combination of mood and weather in conjunction with a certain song can really land a punch on me. Rainwater slid with languid grace down the windshield as I waited. The parking garage had the feel of an aging mausoleum. Grimy surfaces, dim light, cold echoes of traffic and machines. The song ended, the engine sputters out, my head sags to the wheel under the peculiar weight of my five-plus decades on earth. I was having trouble breathing.
The steering wheel was cool on my forehead. I held it there for a few moments, listening to my breath while I meditated on the necessity of exiting the car and walking to the office. Rain continued to fall. The world continued to turn. Memories swirled together with weariness over a life gone akimbo, a little dizziness took hold and I wondered if maybe I should just turn around and go home, go back to bed.
But I didn’t. Work to be done and the need to eat got me out of the car and headed for the street. The song echoed in my head, lyrics messing with my heart. I did look around, and what I saw was far from destruction, yet I could not help but wonder how much longer any one of us can keep counting on divine intervention.
Lyrics from "Divine Intervention", from Matthew Sweet's album Girlfriend, released in 1991. 1991, damnit!
06 May 2018
Short Circuit
Circlets of pale jade and verdigris white shimmer up the sand sloping out before the headland. The warmth of the day fades as the sun eases down the bell jar of the sky. Ebb and flow, the tide knows the shore like the blood knows the veins. Whispers fill the air. Barely heard, the words unclear, but meaning is known in the heart. The sea speaks of connection. The hands, the mind, the skin knows this is belied by the distance between the water and the flesh. All feel keenly an ache that growing inside at the speed of trees.
The ache is not dominant. Not yet. It can be displaced. Lungfuls of air seem therapeutic in that regard. Drawn in deep, exhaled to the beginnings of collapse, the pain is muted and pushed back. The soul gains respite in that slice of infinity. Do this again. Repeat.
Between the pulse beats the mind extends its paws yet again, reaching out to pat and pull at the thoughts and fears laying near motionless in the night. The paws retract, bearing with them the singularity that occupies a central position in this life: how to endure such an asymptotic relationship with human connection?
The program seems simple. Reach out, break out, go beyond yourself to make it back to the land of the living. Learn that it is possible to overcome the jagged-edge damages of the past. Fear exists. Anxieties sprout like thistles in the meadow. Prickle and burr are unavoidable. As with many simple things, the program is difficult in its implementation.
Therein lies the rub. Overcome the self and its hand-made chains, step into the light despite your shortness of breath! It is exquisitely hard to cast ones’ self out of the nest. The hope is for an easy victory, or at least a guaranteed one. But life will show you that is very rarely the case. The universe cares little for your particular hardships.
So it is out of the nest for a brief taste of flight, pure joy to soar, enough to engender belief that perhaps the odds, the self, will be overcome. There is a surcease of fear until the ground rises up yet again. This seems cruel if unsurprising. The breaker trips again, the clocks slow and stop. The house of the heart grows dim again at the lack of power.
The sun is kissing the horizon. Green waves begin to fade into indigo and purple-black streaked with fire. One can feel the urge to reach out. Stand up, perhaps. Walk the weary bones down to the tide line and dip both hands into the cool sea. It is by such short journeys that a path can be found back to connection. If only weariness could be overcome, with the memories of loss and disconnection expunged. If only the breakers could be reset and the circuit be short no longer.
The ache is not dominant. Not yet. It can be displaced. Lungfuls of air seem therapeutic in that regard. Drawn in deep, exhaled to the beginnings of collapse, the pain is muted and pushed back. The soul gains respite in that slice of infinity. Do this again. Repeat.
Between the pulse beats the mind extends its paws yet again, reaching out to pat and pull at the thoughts and fears laying near motionless in the night. The paws retract, bearing with them the singularity that occupies a central position in this life: how to endure such an asymptotic relationship with human connection?
The program seems simple. Reach out, break out, go beyond yourself to make it back to the land of the living. Learn that it is possible to overcome the jagged-edge damages of the past. Fear exists. Anxieties sprout like thistles in the meadow. Prickle and burr are unavoidable. As with many simple things, the program is difficult in its implementation.
Therein lies the rub. Overcome the self and its hand-made chains, step into the light despite your shortness of breath! It is exquisitely hard to cast ones’ self out of the nest. The hope is for an easy victory, or at least a guaranteed one. But life will show you that is very rarely the case. The universe cares little for your particular hardships.
So it is out of the nest for a brief taste of flight, pure joy to soar, enough to engender belief that perhaps the odds, the self, will be overcome. There is a surcease of fear until the ground rises up yet again. This seems cruel if unsurprising. The breaker trips again, the clocks slow and stop. The house of the heart grows dim again at the lack of power.
The sun is kissing the horizon. Green waves begin to fade into indigo and purple-black streaked with fire. One can feel the urge to reach out. Stand up, perhaps. Walk the weary bones down to the tide line and dip both hands into the cool sea. It is by such short journeys that a path can be found back to connection. If only weariness could be overcome, with the memories of loss and disconnection expunged. If only the breakers could be reset and the circuit be short no longer.
15 April 2018
You Are Born of Dark Matter
Notes from the desk. The evening is cool and comfortable here in this cottage by the sea. Something from the archives unearthed this weekend. It would have been better written in ink on scratchy paper, but here it is. A missive written for someone else by someone else (figuratively speaking). It was strangely comforting, and surprisingly illuminatory in perspective for the person who read it today. Text has been altered slightly from the original.
Mothers, fathers, they all know the singular anguish of their offspring crying out in a time of hurt. It is in the bones, the blood, the DNA. We cannot help but feel we must do something, knowing full well that in some events, the pain is not ours to assume but only for the child to endure. It is an unavoidable fact of existence in this universe.
To watch the suffering of a child is a most peculiar pain. The burden is magnified in knowing some of that hurt arises from the interior of the mind. We can see the distress, we can perhaps imagine a bit of it, but we cannot simply find a switch to turn it off.
We grieve for your struggle to cast off a past that has been unkind to your inner peace. Thoughts of unworthiness, of blackness, circling in the mind like hamsters caught in an iron wheel. We see the thorn bushes of anxiety prick and tear at the skin of your soul. We understand and hold our breath, wishing fervently for the thicket to part and for you to stumble free.
On those days when the curtain descends and the voices inside hiss and moan to defame you, slander your self-worth, we have heard you call out. You have shown us your pain. You have told of your fears that you are nothing and undeserving of the kindnesses you have been offered. It is as if gravity itself has reached inside of us all and wrapped our hearts in a crushing grip.
But know this, child. You are not unworthy. You are not unloved. The demons that seek to lead you astray are woefully misguided in their attempts to make you believe such lies. What you face may affect your personhood, but it does not define your personhood. To deal with a mind bent on eating you alive along with a body that rebels against you does not disqualify you from being a human worthy of love.
Never forget that you are loved. You are you, and what you are is beautiful. You are born of dark matter, child, without which the universe cannot exist. Remember too that the universe exists in light.
Mothers, fathers, they all know the singular anguish of their offspring crying out in a time of hurt. It is in the bones, the blood, the DNA. We cannot help but feel we must do something, knowing full well that in some events, the pain is not ours to assume but only for the child to endure. It is an unavoidable fact of existence in this universe.
To watch the suffering of a child is a most peculiar pain. The burden is magnified in knowing some of that hurt arises from the interior of the mind. We can see the distress, we can perhaps imagine a bit of it, but we cannot simply find a switch to turn it off.
We grieve for your struggle to cast off a past that has been unkind to your inner peace. Thoughts of unworthiness, of blackness, circling in the mind like hamsters caught in an iron wheel. We see the thorn bushes of anxiety prick and tear at the skin of your soul. We understand and hold our breath, wishing fervently for the thicket to part and for you to stumble free.
On those days when the curtain descends and the voices inside hiss and moan to defame you, slander your self-worth, we have heard you call out. You have shown us your pain. You have told of your fears that you are nothing and undeserving of the kindnesses you have been offered. It is as if gravity itself has reached inside of us all and wrapped our hearts in a crushing grip.
But know this, child. You are not unworthy. You are not unloved. The demons that seek to lead you astray are woefully misguided in their attempts to make you believe such lies. What you face may affect your personhood, but it does not define your personhood. To deal with a mind bent on eating you alive along with a body that rebels against you does not disqualify you from being a human worthy of love.
Never forget that you are loved. You are you, and what you are is beautiful. You are born of dark matter, child, without which the universe cannot exist. Remember too that the universe exists in light.
01 April 2018
Sleep Well The Heart (A Fragment)
There is no accounting of the sleep for which one yearns. The hours unknown, the effects measurable. To sleep. If only. The ticking of a clockwork heart pushing slow blood through veins become tunnels under a glacier. The whispery rush of it lulls one into drowsiness yet grabs the belt before a fall into the sea of dreams. Hanging there, yearning, anxious. Some night soon, it will come? Enrobed in soothing, dark water with no fear of the deep?
This is the heart’s true dream.
This is the heart’s true dream.
04 March 2018
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