Love and thank yous

As soon as I saw on Facebook that Igor was sick I knew I was going to make him soup.   But it didn't occur to me that I was doing for him what my wise women teachers taught me to do by doing it for me over all these years until later, standing in Derynne's kitchen tonight.  Her friend, who I've never met til tonight, said 'that's really the best medicine, the vitamins and minerals cooked in from the whole foods.'  Then she took a sip from a plastic red cup of wine that already had her lips joker purple. And she grinned and added 'and all that bright white light~'

It made me raise my brow with my own little grin because indeed as she said that I was adding the last little dash of flavor and also putting blessings of so much love and thank you all over that soup.  This was the first thing she'd said to me directly all night.  I don't know if she saw my smile.  We'd been packing D's house for their move on January 2.  They are going back to the dessert where Cam's tattoo shop is.  Packing laundry boxing taping labeling drinking wine drinking wine making chicken soup.  And dumplings. This gal's either got drunk second-sight or is wild-intuitive.  Either one totally natural.  One homemade pot was macaroni noodles with broth just like Judy taught me to make way back even before I lived on the farm.  To that pot I also added kale and chard-pot like Teena used to make to heal me, when I lived in sabbatical with her those many long days at Chop.  Also tons of oregano because Igor's sinus' are sick and for sick sinus', well that's one of the first things I ever learned working with herbs.  Also back in the days that I used to salvage Judy's herb garden out on the side of her river house.  And cloves and cloves of garlic.  And other secret dashes and smiles.  The other pot was homemade chicken dumplings, the way grandma taught me all those different times standing behind or beside her or out of her sight but her not out of mine.  I didn't make hand-pressed noodles Pennsylvania-Dutch style though, but, with Grandma's recipe and a combo nod to Judy again, little butter dumplings that turned in the broth and before the roux to the warmest, fluffiest balls.  That pot I made for Laura another student of mine, or rather as I don't teach them now, for Laura a woman I know who's far away from her mom's countryside home in Romania.  My students, I mean my friends, so far away from family, during the holidays.

It is cold and clear the night before the last day of the year.  Pon Pon walked me to where I was parked on Adams.  He lives with Igor and Gustavo.  And Bob, who I've met several times through them, and Leo too.  Igor was in bed sniffling and laughing his wonderful Igor laugh.  I made all of them take emergenC's and zincs the way Maria did back when I was first learning to teach and got so sick right after Christmas that year.  Back when Judy first made me homemade chicken soup and showed me how.  And her, and Maria my mentor teacher, how both those good women took turns stopping by to give me care.  Pon Pon handed me a bag of Brazilian chocolates at my car and gave me a million kisses on my head.  We could see our breath.  I live in Southern California, it was almost midnight, I have a sweet artist's studio in the canyon that was calling me home.  All these darling Brazilians.  My sister D and her dear kids, moving away.   I made soup or dumplings for everyone who took care of me this year, for all this precious family here who helped me find my way.  My cherished friends.  I am eating a bowl now.  Thinking about the year that just passed.  Sending cosmic soup with thanks to Mike, my dear friend, on vacay in the BVI.  Remembering how in February in a panic I called him, then drove the Sonoma coast not sure what would be around the bend. Readying myself to leave and come here, all the way South.  The hand-cut life I've glistened up down here since then.  Crafted on nothing but pure love.  Love and lots of help.

Love and thank yous.  Which always work whenever you remember to cook them in.

To Dream

Weekends at Choptank...

Teena's Vietnamese and Thai infused pho with influence of Normandy Chicken!

I am sitting in my big blue bathrobe, front porch of Choptank in the corner near the heater, the only place I get wifi here on my own secret spot on the shore. I'm indulging in leftover ghiradelli peppermint bark from christmas--yummy breakfast just for me and also the only best part of this past commercial holiday season far as I'm concerned. Went back to work Monday after two full weeks off and woah--socking me in the face with a brick would be the closest reality to how that felt. I forgot how damn much energy I give to adult education. My heart and soul. That's it tho--how I do my life. With my whole heart and all my soul.

Weekends at Choptank so far are usually spent in my pajamas, so it felt good to put my foot down and choose not to go in to the office first thing today and instead take this morning in full lounge mode as I've grown accustomed. Teena cooks a lot when she's here; a lot of good, rich, enduringly satisfying and savory foods. I wear my robe, sit by the river, read, take pictures, write a lot. I cry, I pray. Soak in moments. Feel myself, my life, coming in through me. Through some block that I didn't even know had grown so strong and cold there. Sitting there just underneath who I used to be, who I currently dont know I am, who, in quivering moments, I know I have the potential to become...on the underside of it all there lay the instinct of my life, the force of me so raw at times that the pure alluring surprise of it startles me to tears.

It is incubation time. Time for the earth to draw herself long inwards for time-full and quiet rest. So too we find ourselves doing the same--tho perhaps wide awake at night, passion-felt and full with the waking dreams of what, of who, of how we could be. Take light of this waking felt in the night, this startling sense of suspended animation, of instinct towards joy and flight tempered regularly by dark and futility. So should it be. The whole purpose of a long sleep is that one may dream.....

Retrogrades @ Harvest Time

I am still in my pajamas. I am still in my pajamas and my breath is the breath of someone who spent a day long laid-out on the earth in the sun. That sun is going down now--I am blissed and calm and mellowed beyond words.

This is good, that love affair with self I am so committed to. Not the selfish kind, but the courageous kind, embolden by solitude and knowing when to listen to your own cry. The Elizabeth Gilbert When you fill up your own skin with yourself that alone becomes your offering kind.

I sat long outdoors today, under my favorite trees. Brandon in the hammock part of that time, me chest opened to the sky and also at times chest folded over my knees. I sunk in deep to me and let the feelings of inadequacy from my new job, the fears and insecurities prisoned-up in my heart rise and pass. I read poetry til the song moved in me and tears wet-up my eyes. Seriously, for a day of doing Nothing, I got a lot done.

It is harvest time, the geese are arriving back from their summer stops. All the greens from the summer garden were today brought in--and new-bloomed fall crops, too: turnips and radishes and the last of the apples from the highest branches in the tree. Tonight we are having our friends over to feast on the season and sit by the bonfire in the cooling Autumn night.




It is also Mercury Retro right now. In her book We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For Alice Walker talks about the periodic times in life that call for a natural pause. She uses the time right after college as specific example, but goes on with her own poetry to exemplify the richness in spirit, the natural ebbs and flows of the human-spirit experience as the essence of, and at once the reason for this nessecary phenom. Here is what I know: Mercury Retro comes four times a year, once always during Harvest time. This is the time to do Nothing, Nothing w the capitol letter N kind. To take, in Walker's words, the great Pause. Time to give yourself, to your Soul or your subconscious or your physical health or your mental machine or however you see you in your finer undefined essence, time to Breathe. To just stop. And watch. Maybe to gather, or to reckon. To go within.

If your running around crazy that's because your fighting your self and the cosmos and the earth's right now natural flow. Get outside. Eat a late bloom apple, drink some harvest wine. The earth in her infinite changing expressions of oneness is teaching: Your Nature is Her Nature. This I know. So get your toes and heels down on her and watch your mind go and go until it realizes you see it and it has nothing more to do. Unwind. Real-ize. That flow is of you and you are it and now it offers you a real chance to witness, and to grow.

So love a little. For us super-scared humans taking time to learn to love the passings is the least (if not the best) work we can do.....

Smile Kel, it's almost 6pm and you're still in your pj's!

Warty and Peanut Punkins & Harvest Corn Dollies