And so the weekend begins
Can I get an amen and a hell yeah?!
I didn’t sleep in too long, up by 7:15 to pay some bills and get thinking on the week’s menu/shopping list. A small pot of oats is simmering on the stove with chopped almonds. I’ll add blueberries from the freezer and a spot of the last container of maple syrup from the farmers’ market. Listening to the Into the Wild soundtrack on itunes and letting some ideas percolate. They’re loosely connected bits and I’m going to toss them up here so I won’t lose them in one of my twenty three notebooks.
I’m working my way through Derrick Jensen’s books and enjoying the hell out of the conversational tone and the balls-out pronouncements about how unsustainable our society and culture are by their very nature. At the same time, he weaves a thread of light and love for relationships, for the shrinking populations of creatures on the planet and for the land on which we all play out our lives, throughout the work. I’ve read a lot of gurus works on kindness, empathy, compassion, being here now and they all had this backdrop of hope that I just don’t feel. The world has felt hopeless to me for as long as I can remember. I’m not calling Derrick a guru, I’m just noticing the level of consciousness he has in his writing and one can presume in his living. He doesn’t talk about hope for the future. I’m reading and questions arise. Some asked directly, as in: “How do you want to live?” Well, free, of course. Then he shows me how much of a pipe dream and illusion my ideas of freedom are—how we’re all caught in the mouse trap of our culture.
Yet, there are all of these stories of human connection that are used as examples of teaching and learning. He never comes out and says “Hey! Loving each other is the way.” But the spark in his writing lights up these examples of him experiencing or facilitating or witnessing his or another person’s moments of awakening. It makes me want to be more awake. It makes me realize just how far off the path of critical thinking I have wandered in my pursuit of a comfortable lifestyle. Would you believe me if I told you that in recent weeks I have felt areas of my brain tingling? Spots on top and in the back of my head that I wouldn’t have any awareness of unless I cracked my skull on an open cabinet door or on the door frame of the truck while lifting out sacks of groceries. But it’s not the surface, it’s way inside, this tingling. Interesting that I’m reading these books while detoxing and cutting out sugar. It feels as if a layer of sludge has peeled away and I can see myself and my surroundings more in focus. No idea what it all means other than recognizing that I’ve been hibernating for a long time and that waking up feels terrifyingly fantastic.
Dang, this oatmeal is delicious.
So my cast-iron Lodge wok finally arrived. Jeeze-oh-man, it took three weeks. See? I’m such an American. I almost left negative feedback on Amazon, but really, I got free shipping and when I contacted the company two days after the projected delivery date to ask for an ETA, they wrote back to say that they were waiting for a shipment and would send it out as soon as they had it on hand. And I thought to myself, well, I should have bought it direct from the manufacturer or sourced it in a local store instead of trying to save seven bucks. And providing the machine with more information about my habits.
My credit card statement arrived the other day and while I did quite a lot of Etsy purchasing for the holidays, I still managed to rack up some serious amazon mailings. While looking the statement over for inaccuracies, I noticed a credit at the top of the month from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Now, I had never noticed a charge from them and haven’t subscribed since we lived in the old house. Looking at that $5.75 credit, I saw this vast web of connected threads of digital information about me running all over the country criss-crossing with the same kinds of threads belonging to (no, not belonging to, but about) most of the other people in this country. The information belongs to corporations and the government. And I give it away every day.
But hey, I’ve only had one cup of coffee and I’m not ready for quite that much awareness this morning. Baby steps and all that bullshit.
So! A wok—seasoned cast iron with loop handles and deep enough to fry if I’m feeling like saturated fat is the way to go! My big Teflon coated Calphalon sauté pan is going out to the garage for Chris to use sorting parts while he rebuilds that motor for the Datsun. Dinner tonight? Stir fry!
Oh, and Cheril gave me a great faux snake skin covered journal that has lined pages on one side and blank on the other. I’m going to use it for a garden journal. The only real notes I kept last year were on this blog, and while it’s nice to know it’s recorded somewhere, it wasn’t very well organized and is beyond impractical to try to extract the facts from the narrative. I’ll use the blank pages for sketches and charts and the lined pages for notes.
Our stocking-exchange dinner at the local bistro was yum, but the rich food gave me a bit of a belly ache. We finished off the meal of shared appetizers and salads with a vanilla crème brûlée. The custard was a little more pudding-like than I prefer, but the burnt sugar was spiced with cardamom and topped with a few fresh blueberries. The combination? Sublime. I need to do some sort of dessert with cardamom and blueberries. After I’ve lost this baked goods belly and have strengthened my self-control muscles enough to have just a taste instead of emotionally stuffing my face with half a cake, one sliver at a time on the sly, over the course of a Sunday afternoon.
And now on to the question. Tell me…who or what is informing your thinking today?
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
January 12th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Too many things to comment on, so I’m going to limit myself to two.
1) I got a lot of gift cards for Christmas, notably about $150 worth for bookstores and got around to reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy of environmental speculative fiction, a lot of theatrics, but some very compelling arguments about the long term damage of Industrialism and Consumerism.
2) The Lodge cast iron wok is great, once it’s hot it can heat a small room, I’m thinking of getting a second one for use outdoors on a bed of coals.
January 12th, 2008 at 11:59 am
Steven, heh…it was a bit of a brain dump. I haven’t heard o Robinson, but will check it out. I just recently re-read King’s The Stand. I read it in the late 80s and loved it, but couldn’t remember much. This re-read against the backdrop of today kind of got me shaking in my combat boots.
I’m using the wok for the first time tonight. I keep looking at it and thinking what a beautiful piece it is… bed of hot coals sounds like a great way to use it. I was thinking of doing that with a lodge Dutch oven. Can’t see myself putting the orange Le Creuset dutch oven on an open fire.
Happy weekend!
January 12th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Amen and hell yeah!
You know, I have never been about the comfortable lifestyle thing, really, But I am all about good tools. And your new wok sounds very cool.
Good weekend to you!
January 13th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Derrick Jensen- yes, that name sounded familiar to me. And for good reason. I’ve been trying to dig my way through The Culture of Make Believe for several years now. It’s a tough go, simply because of it beats you up and wrings you out with the raw darkness of the subject matter.
Perhaps you’re too young to have lived through enough that can give you a more hopeful outlook. I have difficulty with those who proclaim what a “dangerous time” we live in. When I was coming of age there were thousands of Russian nukes pointed in my direction, this nation was on fire with rage - the civil rights movement was major - people literally died for their beliefs. When’s the last time you knew someone who went off to help a cause and got lynched? There was the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers. Half the population of young people were stoned and holding hands proclaiming that all we needed to do was sing Kum-bay-ya and all would be well. Pfffffftttttt. I was young but knew enough to realize that things could change simply by dreaming and believing in peace and love was at the least naive and very dangerous. It requires alot of really hard work to change the world. And no one changes unless they’re forced to, so until a perturbation occurs all the cultures on the planet will continue business as usual.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Hi, farmer’s wife…and welcome! You’re right. I’m only 40, so I guess that’s not old enough to have worked my way through the thick layer of fear and worry I have developed. The only ones I’ve known who have gone off to help a cause are US soldiers who have died or been traumatized in Iraq. But war is war is war is war, and it seems it’s just going to be the way.
My lack of hope is for society and our culture. Not for individuals. I know of a lot of people who are working very hard to change at least their own small piece of the world and yes, that’s often with the hope that it will ripple out and change the wider world. But a lot of factors are at play, things most people don’t ever think about. I doubt there has ever been a “safe time” in human history. Humans are dangerous. To others and to ourselves and to our planet.
I’m glad you commented. Food for thought.