Get Over It

When it comes to cooking, as with so many other things in life, I naturally fall into a comfort groove. Then I get stuck. Sometimes the groove is the plateau after I have mastered something I strived to achieve. Other times, it is something easy for me to do, and that enables laziness: Egg roll, anyone?

During these times of "comfort" cooking, I notice a grayness in life in general. The great John Lennon said it all on Walls and Bridges: "You don't know what you got until you lose it." Oddly, I can still cook things I have cooked many times or things that are easy for me because I have cooked them into submission. This can lull me into a false sense of creative well-being. It distracts from the cure, which, for me, is stepping way outside my comfort zone.

The road to wellness looks something like this: The fuse is trying and cooking new things. Once that is lit, everything else bursts into more color, more enthusiasm, and a more robust life. So for me, cooking is life.

So why do I forget this so often?

There has got to be something else, a flanking factor in the blind spot that I am missing. I am not sure what that is but suspect it is hyper focussing on the needed tasks; house, automobiles, work projects and the surprise emergency that we all encounter here and there. Perspective is a peculiar companion.

I have been chasing mechanical anomolies in our Nissan. I recently took care of some previously unknown major interval services and and regular service, then chased a noise which made me aware that the rear brakes were in need of service. Like so many exercises like this, the noise continued.

I have listened to this car hammering the road for the last 400 miles, hoping it was the tire chop which was caused by my neglecting rotation. Of course that task getting back burnered because of the larger tasks that I allow to block me, and then nothing gets done.

Photo by Bianca Ackermann on Unsplash

Finally, I had enough and I booked an appointment at Walmart for all new tires and made them discard the heavy duty snow tires that still looked new, but were so chopped, I thought they might fail a wheel bearing. This is where I find my blind spot.

I cannot tell you how the war inside of me rages when I have to make a decision like this. But now that it is done, I realize, I am free. There is no turning back. I am telling myself to get over it. Why? Because I can see more clearly when I cut the weight of these things from my life.

It's hard for me. I grew up with little, but really did not see it that way. It made me resourceful and creative. Now I look around me and notice that some of the items I keep around me because I see value equate to little more than the bars of a jail cell that I personally built.

I feel it is in this area where the stagnation can happen when it comes to cooking. Last night I threw together a trash-dinner of tteokbokki, made from 5 different things I had laying around. It was amazing. This is how it is supposed to be. 

Jettison that weight, tear up the kitchen, make it happen and just get over it. That is where true life begins, in flavor, in words, in breath, in life and in freedom. 
 

LXI (٦١)

 My pen lies with neglect on my fall table, oddly idle. I have no explanation for this. I realize the inevitability of repetition as the summer closes into fall, dropping like a piano off a skyscraper. I would prioritize the fires if the floor were not spinning so fast. 

I can reach those things; I overtake them with a swift spin and throwing motion. One to the next. Some, two at a time. I need more, and more, and more. The sun has retracted into the six o'clock hour and makes me realize I don't treat you like I should, old Sol. 

I am over my head, suspended 3 miles above the ground, precariously balancing, holding onto a lifeline in which my entire existence and actions filed charges of denial, over and over again, much to my dismay. The captain- and that would be me- could awaken and take charge. This means I fall, you fall, we fall.

I know that this one is not for me. Not about me. So I tell myself to just get over it. There is change moving in like an autumn night storm, and this one cannot be avoided. Twinges of oblivion come, and I work hard to shake them, but something lingers, and I don't know what it is. Am I concerned? More than anyone knows.

What will I learn? I swing from tree to tree, each a different species. I'm here. I'm good. I'm there, I guess so. Truth is, I don't know much. Then again, I know more than most. And that bothers me. The oblivious walk like it does not matter. Those of us who see the chaos carry a burden everyone else just trades in for something else. What way is better?

I awaken with a burden. Nothing new. I have had to shed debris from my slumber for a quarter century now, but I swear it is heavier every day. I pull up to the table at which I meet my greatest adversary: me, each morning. Collectively, we try to navigate the haze. Lies and propaganda, manipulation, pacification, and I smile as I cook, write, and get ready, as I shovel the ash of incinerated misconception from my exit from the place where I lay semi-unconscious for the night.

“people gather round her and she finds it hard to stay alive.” 

-Another Day -Paul McCartney -1971

I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to, and yet I do. Real to you, real to me. Real to you, not real to me. I slingshot across the wasteland, deeply aware that it won't always be wasted. A sunrise out there is yet to come that will never set. It's hard to believe when I look around me. 

Cry baby, cry. Are you just wasting minutes with your words instead of doing things? Isn't that what got you into trouble in the first place anyway? What can you do now? If you were not afraid. I still haven't answered the girl from the spaceship. I am not sure if she is still waiting for an answer, but I sure am.

Looking for changes, looking for clues, looking for cracks in the foundation that let light come through. You know I want to lift my head off the slate floor that makes it seem like backlit LEDs are interfacing with my face, pulling my consciousness and the days of my calendar into it, devouring and laying them waste like burned carbon that used to be paper.

Am I happy? Am I sad? Does it matter? I am reaching for fragments floating in the void. My rage demands that I do my best. The clock spins, and I am beating it into submission. I feel it, though. So.

But I tell you, as I lay it all out, I have fallen down an abandoned well. I couldn't stop the fall as it began, perhaps because it was slow and incremental. I kept telling myself that on a better day, I could blast out of this hole in just a moment of brilliance.

But the officer walked up to the window as I rolled it down. He handed me a number, the next one. I knew it was coming. We tell ourselves we are no different than the rest, until we look down and realize just how terrifyingly high we are. The realization rolls in like a thick fog; I am not immune to any of this.

Like the hours and minutes of the day, after the sun disembarks from the Tropic of Cancer and begins its long, at-first-imperceptible journey to the Tropic of Capricorn, the earth beneath our feet begins to disappear. Each day we have less leverage and range. Sometimes I challenge it, futilely, of course, and other days I let it push me down.

Today, however, is the closest I will be to the sunshine. It is all what you make of it. It is all in my head. Sometimes I get tired of arguing with gravity, age, and time. I also know I cannot stop. I am not sure I ever can. Either way, I make no promisses.

The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)

 It was forever Tuesday, and I somehow believed my little corner of the world was immune to the world spinning on its axis and the planet revolving around the sun. We lived so free in the shackles of ignorance. September again. Panic season commences. What have you done? More importantly, what did you not do? That is where the pain points lie.

I woke up with Atlanta Rhythm Section's "Not Gonna Let It Bother Me Tonight" stuck in my head. "The world is one big tragedy," so I needed to look. I love looking up the complete lyrics to a song that's been part of my life for 54 years. I always thought that song came out in 77, when "So Into You" was released. It was actually 72, so it got a lot of play in the late 70s and, well, still does today. I was surprised to hear the word suicide mentioned 3 times in the song. Obviously, the writer was truly discouraged at the time.

But September. Really? My body cannot make the payments for the ambition my brain is calling for. That is a problem. I keep telling myself that. Giving in to the propaganda that I am not going to succeed. Then there is a knock at the door. A puzzle is presented. I grab it, almost boasting that this is simple, and that modern, expensive solutions can be left to those watching us and saying it is our only choice.

This is where I shine. There was never a hill I could not take. I said yes, filled up the gas tank, grabbed a cup of coffee and a rack of cassettes, and we were rockin' down the highway. When we returned, we turned the tables, made it happen, captured the dream. It was Tuesday afternoon. Limitations and failure were not yet written into the script. 

We painted our houses to beautify and protect, and then the news came in, decade after decade, laced with uranium. It wore the beauty away. It compromised the protective coating. We hung our heads low when we realized our yards, neighborhoods, and cities were nothing but gray ash. Smiles were replaced with mutilation. Love with loss.

A generation knew only this landscape. In our mourning, we took away from them whatever joy was really possible for them. We reminisce and, all along, subliminally plant the idea that the world they live in is but a mere cemetery.

When the doctor asked if I was hurt, I answered from my pile of debris. I could not tell what was mine and what was collateral. Awakening, I did a physical evaluation and determined that I, for what it was worth, was whole.

Many days after Tuesday, I began to realize the deceptive power of the air we were all breathing. Was I so injured? Was I no longer the man that I was on that Forever Tuesday? To my surprise, I was still the person I was before. A great lie blinded the truth from all of us who lived through Tuesday afternoon.

I am standing up. Yes, I was there. I can no longer subscribe to the lie. The younger ones who see no hope need to know they have more power in their hands. They can live and have so much because of it. I live in a wild world where, yes, there is so much to cry over. I am not going to give in. The radiation rain can be deflected; you just have to be diligent. 

I cannot imagine what I could have been forever Tuesday with all the knowledge available today. I realize it doesn't matter. I am that person. I remember what I am capable of, have unlimited information to create anything, and have a raging drive to make it happen. Yeah, I got that. I am not mourning Forever Tuesday. No. It will be with me all the way through.