The West Pacific Sunrise

 I was hanging in my weakness, 

the waves of fruitless thought.

I took the steps I had so carefully crafted, 

smashing them with shame that only I could perceive.

I saw fantastic strangers who wanted everything I wanted.

They were clinging to rafts of their creativity.

I saw them as mentors, and they saw me as theirs.

Like me, they fought for dreams, moving one thread at a time.

Photo by Aidan Kahng on Unsplash

I do not understand how I have blocked out the sound of reassurance.

I have walked the shore of self-doubt for no reason.

I saw them flying kites in the breeze, and I was astonished at their skill

They complimented my craft, and my past slapped me for listening.

When the sun lit the water then slowly touched the sky

I heard a noise that it was making, and it was fine.

I held my thoughts of self-depreciation at bay so that the work of my hands 

could prevail with the sound the sunrise makes.

I am listening now, my inner voice subdued and held down, and I am never allowed to speak.

I have heard enough of that and will now listen to your words.

The sun is rising and it is time to acknowledge that.

Stop the madness

Sometimes, I wonder what is up with me. I have taken the food business thing further than I ever have before. I absolutely am pushing forward too. I was all set to apply for my catering license which will allow me to produce and sell food made at home, but I do need to take the Serv Safe Managers Certification. That is the big one, and once I have that, apply for the license, undergo an inspection. Because I have not had the time to study for the test which is actually administered live on video with a real person, I have not moved forward in a month.

I had an early morning meeting at work yesterday which caused me to skip breakfast. At around 11, I ran up to a local gas and convenience store that had a food kitchen with a drive-up window and dared to call itself a "Bistro", desperate for something to eat. I knew it would not be good, but how bad could it be? 

As I looked at the warming bin's offerings and its ridiculous prices, I knew I was in trouble. I ignored what I knew and kept steady on the effort knowing that I must make a choice out of things I did not want to eat. Scary things that sounded interesting, such as fried hash browns with bacon egg, and cheese embedded inside of them. I could only imagine those ingredients having at some point being in a blender.

I picked up something called a "breakfast empanada". It was flaky on the outside and was shaped like those old hostess fruit-filled pies from the 70s. Other than those two words, there was no description of what was inside. Although there was a paragraph of fine print ingredients printed on the back of the label, the best I could see, it was merely a list of chemicals and may as well been a Material Safety Data Sheet. 

 Needing to cut to the chase I asked the people behind the counter what was in them, (I am not picking on them) who were the most un-culinary type of people I had ever seen.  I could picture them sitting on rocking chairs in rural western Pennsylvania on the porch of a run-down cottage. Everything was so out of place that it is still bending my mind even now. I was told egg, sausage, cheese, bacon. With tears in my eyes, I bought this abomination.  You guessed it, it tasted just like a Dunkin Donuts breakfast sandwich, by which I mean, dusty cardboard.

For lunch, none the wiser, I went to Walmart to get the things we needed for the house. There is that Twilight Zone-ish void that happens sometimes when you are at Walmart. You go in, walk around for ten minutes, and suddenly, you cannot account for the last hour. If aliens are experimenting on us, then most likely, they are anesthetizing us while shopping, and doing who knows what, leaving us with these gaps in time while Walmart provides the perfect cover for them.

Suddenly I realized there was no time for lunch, so I went to the hot food bar.  I already knew I was in trouble. My friend Dave has warned me about this place. He once said he had to resort to this place providing most of his meals one winter in Florida. "I don't know what sort of Satanic Nutrient Extraction Process they use on that food, but I started to notice I never felt good anymore. If I had a cut, it never healed." As I stared down the barrel of my options a friendly patron stood next to me, smiling and telling me, "They are just pulling fresh mozzarella sticks and popcorn chicken from the fryer now." I should have listened to him, but instead, I blatantly ran into the culinary dumpster choosing a 6 pack of chicken wings that was already in the warmer.

After eating this back at the office, I had to clean the area, remove the trash, and change the bag, to get the non-food, burned-down-village smell out of my workspace.  Texturally it had to be similar to what it would be like to chew through a plaster wall. The next morning, I could still smell a faint remnant but could find no surface that was not thoroughly cleaned.

It gets worse. Friday back in the office, I had lunchtime errands to run and had no time to select a decent lunch. Avoiding McDonald's and its familiar assault I stopped in Hannaford and checked their hot bar. Stupidly not learning my lesson, I grabbed the bag of Nashville hot chicken tenders, bent on righting yesterday's wrong, hammering the square peg into the round hole. What ensued was 10 hours of intermittent stomach cramps

I have no one to blame but me and I know that. But let me tell you something. We as a society NEED to get it together. This non-food food is so abundant I get worried that the real food will disappear!  We need to stop the madness! How on earth can they charge what they do for this Frankenstein like garbage? I am of course an idiot for buying this crap and that is on me.  I needed this lesson, however! Nothing lately has shown me more than how important it is that I push forward. It is not just for me or for my family. It is for the good of everyone!  I owe it to myself and yes, I owe it to you! I need to take this very bad thing and make it into a lesson and a motive to do it. It is always rage that makes it happen for me, everything else is not enough. After all, it is in the name: FIGHT FOR TASTE!

Julie and Julia and what it really means

Fragmentation of my existence continues. I feel that some of us are more fortunate than others. We are staggering around through life and we get our foot stuck in a crack in the trail. This happens because we are either nice people or we are inducted into some sort of servitude temporarily. Others made an unpredictable course change equivalent to suddenly jerking the steering wheel rail-ward on a long bridge. No matter what they did, when everything settles, somehow the pieces of who they are, are found to be more assembled than ever before.

It was certainly this way for Julie Powel, the author of Julie and Julia. BTW. I have never seen a movie that was so NOT the book ever before like this, meaning, if you saw the movie, you have no clue. Read the book. Julie clearly hated her life. She worked in the wake of one of the biggest tragedies there ever was. Even worse she worked for the bureaucratic remediation of said tragedy. Her personal life was empty or at least she perceived it was. She envied her friends that had lives that it seemed she actually would not have wanted if you said, "ok Julie, you win, you can have this life." Where is she now? Her life actually does not suck. Just as importantly, she brought great honor in defining another great woman who, herself was also feeling this incredible fragmentation of the sum of her being. It is a shame the movie got dumbed down to the level a 7 year old could understand. On a whole, you can only feed Americans entertainment from a Pez dispenser.

Sorry, I am doing that thing I do. Julia Child was one of those fragmented people who had some really great qualities that needed the glue of purpose, and well, we know she sure found it.

Getting to the point now. Last fall in September, we camped at this exact site at Winhall Brook Campground. I proclaimed then that I would wrangle those fragments of mine in a coherent and collected and hopefully talented person. The question is, knowing that I did not succeed, what DO I have to show for a winter of cold, cooking, loss and introspect?

More on this later. The coffee is done perking!

What's normal Anyway?

One of my friends at work today said, I don't think you guys eat anything normal. At first that is an easy statement to accept , but as I think about it it makes me realize why I am cooking in the first place. I actually want the food that I am cooking to become my normal. If I can see the progression of Trying a recipe and progressing to getting good at it and developing my own style then I can own it. Then i have acheived normal.

Bibimbap is like that for me. In a subliminal quest to eat better I need the flavors to be like snapping life out of the jaws of death! people like George Stella and Juan Carlos on the Food Network told us many years ago that if we wanted to change our diet we could actually enjoy food even after you've made drastic changes to improve your health. I think we do eat normally. Eating a box of Kraft Mac and cheese (which I did try a forkful one time) would be the weirdest most NOT normal thing I could eat. So, what is "normal"? It is different for all of us. Whenever there is a potluck type meal at work, I love this because it allows us to see the diversity of our friends through the food they bring. I know there is the occasional person who could care less about food and when they bring in a super size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, so like there is collateral damage in any worthy investment. Korean food amazes me because it is enjoyed and shared as a celebration of life, it's achievements, friends, family, and praises the differences in everything. Here is to those differences. May they continue to flavor our lives.