Woods Walk. . .

In learning to use this camera, I am finding that the world, the natural world in particular, is revealing itself in all manner of new ways.  Revelation, evidently, requires one to see differently than before, to be willing to lie on one's belly, to look closely and touch with both eyes and skin, to smell and taste and risk new visions.

We took a walk in the woods this past weekend.  I now automatically take the camera.  Its technical abilities expand my own and allow the sharing. This planet's natural world is Paradise.  We humans bump around in the midst of astounding wonders which, for the most part, we do not witness.  I risk sounding like a babbling idiot, or worse, the teacher, but if I'm willing to see just a little more carefully. . .there is the swirl of bark, the mosaic of the turtle shell, the light reflecting off the creek, or streaming through the big maple in the back, furry with new growth:

It seems to me that we humans are the tiniest bit addicted to an expanded view of our intelligence.  To keep this illusion requires a lot of effort, for to look around even the slightest will bring you to your knees. Humans have been having this love affair with the mind for quite some time now, convinced that slicing up reality into smaller and smaller bits is the only way to get to the truth.  It seemed to work for awhile, but now we are down to GMO's and nanotechnology, and it seems we have forgotten our way back home.  GMO corn, soybeans and now alfalfa are not working as well as homemade bread crumbs to mark the trail.  

We're going to have to find our own way, which I suppose was always the case, each of us, holding hands, maybe walking in the woods.

The boys send their love. . .

FGO's

I'm in the middle of another FGO - friggin' growth opportunity - the kind of screw-up that makes you imagine that  Kettle Salt and Pepper Chips are medicine, and the whole bag is prescribed.  And multiple dark chocolates filled with caramel, maybe even with a little salt on top of those as well. . .

What couldn't possibly help is keeping up with my exercise routine, or making sure I take those vitamins while I worry about this, or going to bed early, or watching a funny movie, or drinking lots of water or taking a nap.  Surely none of those things would help. . .

In the Really Fortunate Department, I have some honest friends, the kind you call when you need to hear the Bare Bottomed Truth, the kind of truth that makes you want to la la la la la la la put your fingers in your ears. And they are the best kind, these friends, the kind that, even if you have been here before, in this particular nasty corner with all the same grunge, and the darkness and that smell (you know the one- don't pretend you don't), they gently point out your return visit with a bit of elegance, a bit of compassion.  Because maybe they have been there too, in their version of this corner, or maybe their nasty corner is decorated slightly differently, but they recognize the smell.

I can get so lonely in an FGO, primarily because in the midst of one, my focus gets pretty narrowed down, and if I don't watch it, and call one of these friends, that focus brings in The Jury.  My jury is composed of puckery-faced ugly people (P-FUG's) with superb memories.  They remember every transgression of my long, long life.  If questioned carefully, I'll bet their lists would go back before my birth, the vindictive ways I kicked my poor mother.  And some of them believe in past lives.  So you can imagine.

These friends, not the P-FUG's but the dear long-suffering people I call are focused on something else, which is beyond my view from Cage FGO.  They remember, these sainted ones, that maybe I haven't spent my whole life doing things that, as Anne Lamott would say, would make Jesus want to drink straight gin out of the cat dish.  That there was that time when I shared my crackers in second grade.  And that maybe I am being ever so slightly overdramatic.  Maybe this FGO isn't quite as big to anybody else as it appears to me, that in fact, if I didn't keep calling them to talk about it, they wouldn't think about it -  at all -  or even know about it - at all.

Well, that seems impossible.  But because I love them, and they love me, warts and all, I'm going with their assessment.  I'm going to have some more potato chips and then take a nap. . .

Brioche. . .a love affair. . .

Brioche dough is the sumptuous queen of bread-making, unapologetically resplendent with eggs and butter.  And the beauty of it is that it accepts all manner of cohorts:  dried fruits, chocolate, lovely cinnamon, nutmeg and other fragrant spices.  And if you cut back on the bit of sugar, you can add savory fillings as well: cheeses, meats, sundried tomatoes and herbs.

Bread-making in general is a means of connecting, any bread baker will say so.  Making bread is to be involved.  And there's no happier kitchen than one with the aroma of freshly baked bread. . .

Here's where we start:

This particular dough was aged in the refrigerator, a new experiment.  The rich color comes from the eggs and the butter.  What's not to like?

Gently forming. . .

Dough divided, a three-ounce portion gently flattened, ready to receive a filling of cinnamon caramel slices. . .

Gently formed, ready for a restful rise

. . .washed with egg and cream, ready to rise for a bit before going into the oven. . .

And here we are:

The children. . .the one in the middle is studded with blue cheese.  It is surrounded with siblings with dark chocolate, some have dried cherries, some with a cinnamon, brown sugar filling. . .

Emergence

As with the garlic, planted last October, there is emergence, slow re-engagement.  I’m beginning to move into pieces of my basic routine again, trailing used Kleenex.  The essential core of the cold has dissipated, leaving in its wake drippy congestion and a luxurious fatigue, drawing me under from time to time.

The quiet is magical, when I let it be.  There is a wave-like sense of time and space that comes only from having disengaged from the “regular” world for a while.  I am temporarily unhinged from my internal overseer and his demands of proper productivity and attendant schedule.  It is not the time to increase muscle mass; I’m not guilty that I’m not at the gym.  My brain power is diminished; urgency around decisions fades away. The winter garden is slowed to self-sufficiency, and besides that, we have no critical eye for the winter garden.  And my live-in partner is out of town.

Without an external scaffolding of engagement and commitment, time itself seems to shift.  It seems to open and expand somehow, softening. Despite the quiet, or perhaps because of it, there is a vitality here, a nourishment. I can rest here, for the moment, perhaps  heal within it, and through osmosis, come back with some of the silence.

From Mary Oliver:

Sunrise


You can
die for it - 
an idea,
or the world. People


have done so,
brilliantly,
letting 
their small bodies be bound


to the stake, 
creating
an unforgettable fury of light. But


this morning
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought


of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun


blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?


What is the name 
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us?  Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

From: New and Selected Poems, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992),  pp. 125-6.