6 Things I've Learned Along the Way

  Growing up ain't easy.  There are so many things you learn in such a short span of time that sometimes it's hard to grasp it all.  Some life lessons are obvious ones, and your parents or some other adult in your life can at least warn you of them if not fully prepare you for them.  This list of things I've learned along the way is by no means comprehensive or authoritative.  I'm quite sure that it's also far from complete.  It's simply a collection of lessons I felt like sharing.   Make time to notice your place in the world, and how it may or may not have changed since the last time you stopped to take note.     

Enjoy the ride.

    1.  Pick your battles.

Life is too short to spend all of your waking hours arguing with people whose minds you will never change.  Even a brief introduction into the real world as a young person will have you reeling at what you, at that time, perceive to be the absolute ignorance of your elders.  If you're opinionated AND outspoken, it can get even harder to resist the temptation to bite at all of the bait that will drift your way.  My advice?  Only pick the juiciest, plumpest bait that has the greatest potential to enable positive change to occur.  Resist the urge to engage in the same, tired debates about issues that will likely remain controversial for many years to come.  That doesn't mean you have to give up entirely though.  Chances are, there are a lot of other people who think like you, and chances are even greater that they organize to do something within their community.  Get involved!

     2.  You can be humble and self-confident at the same time.

There is a special place in Hell reserved for the people who started making other people feel dumb for being smart.  I know that you know what I mean if you've ever been surrounded by others that are threatened by your intelligence.  Since when did stupid become the new smart?  I don't buy it.  This economic pit of despair that our country is currently languishing in has clearly shown us that education is one of the most clearly defining factors that separates those with the jobs and those without.  So be proud of your smarts, and remember that education is a lifelong process.
That being said, many of those same 'educated' are equally languishing in their cesspools of student debt, which leads me to the next portion of this lesson: Be humble. You may not immediately start working in the field of your dreams, and you may have to do some less than desirable jobs along the way to getting there, but never, never quit.  Self-confidence and humbleness don't make quitting an option.

  3.  There are certain things in life on which you do not skimp:

•   Haircuts- There is a reason people go to school to learn how to cut and style hair.  Choose a professional!  You might spend a little more on the cut/color, etc. but people notice your hair, and as one of my favorite sitcom characters Jack Donaghy from 30 Rock says, "After all, your hair is your head suit."  I don't mean this in a superficial way, and of course I know that hair will grow, but it's hard to feel self-confident when you're worried about your hair.
• Toilet Paper- There's a reason that those singular, paper-wrapped rolls are so cheap...because they will rub your ass raw!  Seriously, when it comes to hygiene, splurge a little.  
• Pet Food- Crappy pet food can KILL your precious animals and even make you ill as well.  Choose pet food that is made without grain, corn, or soy. 
• Your Food- You really are what you eat, so eat a vegetable or two.  When it comes to olive oil, buy organic extra virgin olive oil.  I know it costs more, but so what.  Simple, fresh ingredients make the best food, as I've said time and again.  Quality over quantity generally always applies when it comes to something that is supposed to nourish and sustain you.  Plus, you'll probably save money if you buy more produce because it usually doesn't require any packaging.  Did you think companies wouldn't pass that cost along to you, the consumer?  Think again.

  4.  Edumahcate yourself, aka, Read a Book!

  Learning doesn't stop the minute you graduate from high school.  If you didn't even make it there, then I don't need to tell you how hard life is, you already know.  College is not for everyone, but education IS.  Be informed, stay informed, get empowered.  If you plan to reproduce, just know that 50% of your genes are going to be passed along to your offspring.  You should also know that children born into homes with less-educated and/or parents living below the poverty line have lower vocabulary levels, tend to struggle more in school, and have less access to health services.

  5.  Find a purpose, benefiting yourself and hopefully others, and do it.

  This one isn't exactly easy, but it is essential to a life well-lived, in my opinion.  Maybe it takes you awhile you figure out where you fit into this and how you can make a difference in your own life and the lives of others, but chances are you know what you're passionate about.  Sometimes it takes doing something you loathe to find what you are born to be doing.  Maybe, hypothetically, you once worked for the Homicide Department in a large, metropolitan area and day after day were confronted with violence, suffering, and rage.  Then maybe one day you had an epiphany and realized that you'd much rather be a librarian.  You figured out what it would take, and you did it.  While this does not define your happiness, it does shape your future.

  6.  "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."  -Randy Pausch 

  Without being too cliche, sometimes what you want isn't always what you need.  One thing I am sure of is that all we are is a result of how we react to what comes our way in life.  You can run the gamut of emotions- you can be upset, you can be bitter, or you can take things in stride and grow from the defeats as well as the triumphs.  Even the beautiful lotus blossoms up from the mucky depths.

   What have you learned along the way?

Meet me on the sunny road...

What an amazing summer of wonder and discovery!  I have thoroughly enjoyed my rudimentary explorations of Colorado, my new home.  I continue to be awestruck by the diverse climates and landscapes I find, each place having its own beautiful and harsh nuances.  There is definitely something "great" about this West, whether that be in its vastness or the rugged handsomeness of its valleys and peaks.  It's hard not to wonder what the first newcomers thought of such places, and it isn't difficult to understand the reverence and worship that the Native Americans have felt for natural landscapes for centuries.  Anyone who knows me knows how very non-religious I am, and yet when I am in the presence of such earthly splendors I've never felt closer to god.  Appreciation is the prayer, enjoyment and preservation are the worship.    

Cottonwood Pass-Continental Divide

In many ways I feel as if I've been a tightly-furled blossom, closely guarding my inner secrets, life and love giving abilities, in anticipation of a brilliant sun.  And with the perfect proportions of nourishment and light, I....

  Bloom.

My new and improved, plant-based lifestyle has been coming along swimmingly.  I can't quite tell if I feel so much better because I have cut meat and dairy out of my diet, or due to the fact that I'm paying much closer attention to what I eat.  As predicted, cheese has been the most difficult thing to stop eating.  I'm borrowing a bit from Alcoholics Anonymous with my "One Day at a Time" approach.  I realize it is unnecessary to think about whether I will be able to not eat cheese a year from now, and instead channel my sole focus into not eating cheese today.  Ironically or not, I'm beginning to understand that I was addicted to that component of my diet.  By making the conscious and informed choice to remove it, I'm empowering myself to start taking better care of myself and the world around me.

Kitchen experimentation has been frequent and fruitful.  There have been some flops, but they have been few.  What is most exciting, to me, is finding ways to reinvent the ingredients I love.        

Some tidbits from the kitch:
(Click on the recipe title, below the picture, to be redirected to the recipe!)

Olive-Oil Roasted Tomatoes & Fennel w/ White Beans

I dare you not to eat this all in one sitting!  Use the best olive oil you have, and a cast-iron skillet makes the transition from stove-top to oven easy.  Try this over pasta, greens, or the best way: sopped up with crusty whole wheat bread.

Cantaloupe Granita

I made this up, using the basis of another great recipe, which you can find here.  It's easy as pie.  Flaky, frozen, melt-in-your-mouth, cantaloupe pie.

Ingredients

4 1/2 cups cubed cantaloupe
1/4 cup agave nectar
Juice from one lime

Preparation

Put it all in the blender.  Blend until smooth.  Freeze 1 hour.  Remove; stir mixture and break up frozen chunks with the back of a fork.  Cover, freeze until firm, 2 hours or so.  Flake with a fork before serving.

Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding

I. love. this. pudding.  You will too, and you won't believe that it's dairy-free!  Trust me on this one.

I leave you with a flower, until next time.

the future of the past.

.looking back.

  The late Lucy Grealy wrote that there are moments in life which grab us, and demand that we live each day after in reference to them. Just as our outward experiences affect our attitudes, our inward thoughts and meanderings are able to imprint a subtle influence on behavior and actions. Maybe it's not so much a moment as it is a person, a place, a smell, a taste- that both sweetly and urgently demands our attention. Our memory becomes soaked in the bitterness or the joy, and we are undeniably marked by the experience.

  Long ago I was imbued with a love of writing, and it stained me in a way I never could or cared to wash away. Not to say that it hasn't been a tumultuous relationship, because the ups and downs have been numerous and frequent. But it's a practice, and you eternally work at the things you love.
Along the way I have had the great fortune of being surrounded by incredibly talented artists, dancers, writers and musicians. Some have been fleeting characters, now distant ghosts, and others have made lasting impressions- all fortifying my love for the crafted word.

  April is National Poetry Month, and all month long I toyed with the idea of a writing-related blog post. I realize the month is long-gone, and Spring has lazily shed her skin to make way for Summer. But the nagging feeling that this is something worth doing remains.

In my younger years I was lucky enough to meet and begin a correspondence with an author named Fielding Dawson. Fielding was a close friend of some other poets in Indianapolis that had nurtured and encouraged my writing. A long time resident of New York, he journeyed to Indiana as a guest speaker during a visiting authors series sponsored by Butler University. I had the opportunity to pass along some of my poetry from that period of time, and to my pleasant surprise, he actually liked it. It is worth mentioning that I was a teenager at the time; preferring the company of adults but unable to rationalize that preference with the fact that I still had so much to learn.  Nonetheless, the experience has left a subtle imprint on the way I look at life and the world around me.

Fielding Dawson (1930-2002)

The enclosed poem is one of which I hope Fielding would have approved, had he had the chance to read it.  Here was a man who wrote with such stunning imagery and bone-deep emotion.  A man who had incredible insights on society and culture.  A man who wrote this:

"America has the brightness and glitter of someone who is big and rich and powerful who is trying to skip what can't be skipped, itself, using everything it has to avoid itself, it doesn't glitter inside, it's dirtier and more neurotic than it dares believe, it's soaked with guilt and fear for its unsatisfied viciously related hungers which are never satisfied, causing a friction sending up great showers of sparks for the whole world to see, and the world cries, 'How wonderful!'"  

Krazy Kat & 76 More: Stories 1950-1976

 This piece is from 2006.  A fleeting memory that tells a fragmented story of an important person from my past.

For the demimondaine from Detroit

dem-i-mon-daine n.  a woman of a demimonde

dem-i-monde n. 1 a hist. a class of women in 19th-c. France considered to be of doubtful social standing and morality.  b. a similar class of women in any society.  2 any group considered to be on the fringes of respectable society.  [F,=half-world]

The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide

And she was beautiful like a funeral dirge.

Melancholy mournful like when two notes

make that perfect connection

and just vibrate on through.

She had a voice that made me hungry

for creamy foods.

Puddings, custards, meringues.

It was in the way she said words;

Pushing her tongue to the roof of her mouth

and letting them glide out

like newborn babies.

On that plywood stage in the back of the record store

she stood ten feet tall,

dressed in black,

with long hair flowing as she paced

to her own tempo.

She her own metronome.

  And we were just slack-jawed kids

in awe at how well and how good she looked playing their game.

She was the demimondaine.

  To be the only woman

in a group of male poets

who had concluded that men wrote poetry for pussy,

she was doing pretty well for herself.

  Became the girlfriend of a writer with a bald head and glasses,

known for his graphic accounts of anal sex with fat women.

  She was the same age as my mother

though she looked 10 years younger,

and sometimes wore a leather jacket.

  She published a chapbook

with a photograph of herself on the cover,

smoking a cigarette in a silky black dress.

And at a party in her honor,

she read those poems like they were fresh, wet wounds

she was bandaging.

Like they were a feverish brow she was caressing,

a nervous hand she was holding.

And she was magnificently serene in the face of such pain.

She called herself the demimondaine.

  The queen of the half-world,

ruling on the fringes.

  A little girl playing dress-up,

and a woman encouraging her daring to dream big.

  I eked out the lines

and she was there every time

to tell me to keep going.

To keep writing because it was inside of me

like it was inside of her.

  And when that fire went out,

it meant we were dead.

  The last time I saw her

was at a poetry slam

-someone's idiot idea of making poets

compete against each other when really,

they can only compete against life.

  I was older and not much wiser,

but wearing it well.

  And she was older,

and very much the same.

Though it had ended badly with the poet,

and he was there to get revenge

in the best way he knew how.

  She was uncomfortable and alone,

smiling sadly at her table by the window.

Writing her number on a cocktail napkin,

though we both knew I wouldn't call.

  There was nothing to talk about anyway.

Too much time elapsed between old and new.

The only thing we'd ever had in common

was the poetry.

But sometimes that's enough.

Sometimes that's the stuff,

that bonds you even after the moment is gone. 

  She was the demimondaine from Detroit.

Queen of the half-world,

the soul-child of passion done wrong.

While this post has strayed a bit from my normal focus, I have realized that this isn't a space for creative limitation, but rather a blank slate without borders.  While I enjoy sharing recipes and notions about food, writing also feeds and nourishes me.  And I must admit, my soul has been starving for its return.    

You can read more about Fielding Dawson here:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2010/08/fielding_dawson_the_best_st_lo.php
http://ploplop.org/dawson.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/apr/05/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries