Our crazy Thanksgiving/Christmas/Halloween/Easter cactus is blooming again, which means the light is mirroring some point in fall, ricocheting back and ever-closer to spring. This echo of blooms is a happy happening, signifying days that are getting longer, and a faint hint of hope in the air.
We no longer have a walking iris, the blooms of which would be the other sign that winter was about to start its slow exit, so this cactus will have to do.
“Knowledge is the prime need of the hour.” ~ Mary McLeod Bethune
“If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination, we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should, therefore, protest openly everything … that smacks of discrimination or slander.” ~ Mary McLeod Bethune
“To those of you with your years of service still ahead, the challenge is yours. Stop doubting yourselves. Have the courage to make up your minds and hold your decisions. Refuse to be bought for a nickel, or a million dollars, or a job!” ~
“Forgiving is not about forgetting, it’s letting go of the hurt.” ~
“I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. I leave you a thirst for education. I leave you a respect for the use of power. I leave you faith. I leave you racial dignity. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow men. I leave you finally, a responsibility to our young people.” ~
“Cease to be a drudge, seek to be an artist.” – Mary McLeod Bethune
Keeping up almost a year of social distancing, my Mom and I have kept in contact through meal exchanges, often in the driveway donning masks, and it has turned certain dinners into virtual mental meet-ups grounded in culinary connections. It’s the best we can do in these perilous times, but there is a great deal of comfort in it, especially in a dish of Filipino food like this bowl of mung beans. My Mom learned how to make a number of Filipino dishes from my Aunt Luz, and she in turn taught me how to make things like pancit and sweet and sour fish.
There are a number of dishes that still bring us together, even when we’re apart – and it’s the same way we can feel connected to people we’ve lost. Food, especially comfort food, and especially in the middle of winter, can be a way of making mental connections with those we love. The act of breaking bread is a sacred ritual, and since we can’t do it together these days, we find other ways to make a meal mean something. A virtual family dinner if you will, until spring returns and we can gather outside like we did at Thanksgiving.
A couple of days ago I switched out my daily meditation for an hour of yoga – and while it was good to return to yoga, the following day’s meditation was more of a challenge as my mind stayed scattered for longer than usual. It’s an interesting study on how just one day of meditation can make a difference, at least for me. Without that 29-minute window within a 24-hour cycle, thoughts and tensions and stresses accumulated with no acknowledgment or reconciliation. The next time I meditated, it was more of a challenge to slip into that empty expanse of calm. Thoughts scattered and rushed across my mind – a deluge of minor worries spilling over each other – with plans and schedules and reminders of a new work week clamoring for attention as well.
A few minutes in, I nodded at what was happening, accepting the chaotic firing of neurons and bridging of synapses, and instantly my meditation calmed. Focus returned to my breathing, the usual mental markers appeared, the clear expanse of an open mind slowly revealed itself again, and the calm serenity of a typical meditation session was restored.
A snowy week in February concludes, and another one begins. Such is our slow trudge through the winter of 2021, when everything feels like some purgatorial space of in-between uncertainty. That seems to be a theme here, when I teeter on decisions that once felt sure and simple. Even a trip to the grocery store is fraught with debate and internal dialogue, and lately I’ve been foregoing the trips and staying in, hunkering down with a book on the conversation couch or snuggling into the corner of the basement sectional, idly flipping through television channels and not watching much of anything. So goes winter… Another week is ahead, one that contains Valentine’s Day, whatever that might mean this year. If history is any indication, it means snow – lots of snow… so on with this pre-red recap.
The words of Shirley Chisholm.
Being the conductor of your own orchestra.
A gratuitous Gus Kenworthy glimpse.
The words of Claudette Colvin.
Emanating warmth on the floor of winter.
Even my late Aunt Luz, who is probably one of the greatest cooks I’ve known in my life, sometimes had trouble with her flan. I remember visiting her apartment in Washington, sitting in their little kitchen as her bath of flan was pulled from the oven, and the little ramekins were floating in a curdled mess of eggs and burnt sugar. Quietly, I took it in, expecting some sort of yelling fit as her husband – my favorite Uncle – would have uttered had he been involved. Instead, she laughed it off, and I got my first lesson in gracious dignity while in the kitchen. Andy’s Mom had similar difficulties – according to him she was about 50-50 when it came to producing a decent flan. For my very first attempt at this Filipino leche flan, I was hoping for something that didn’t burn the kitchen down.
Yes, my bar is that low.
Suzie challenged me to give it a whirl, and of course I took her up on it, perhaps over-confident from our last kitchen skirmish (which feels like ages ago). The online recipes I read were quite enthusiastic about how easy a leche flan was to make. The ingredients certainly seemed simple enough: a dozen egg yolks, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a can of evaporated milk, a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and some sugar.
The instructions seemed simple enough too: line a baking dish with some cooked sugar (boil it with a couple of tablespoons of water) then add the egg mixture and bake in a water bath. There were a few things I didn’t do right – the melted sugar freaked me out a bit, so I took it off the heat way too soon, resulting in the relatively clear liquid and coating you see at the end. Next time I’ll be brave and let it go dark.
I strained the egg mixture, which was a good move, as some of the egg whites were caught before they made it into the final dish. I whisked it as gently as possible, per instruction, but bubbles will be bubbles and that didn’t bother me. The flecks of vanilla bean, while decadent, weren’t quite the creamy look I was going for – another mistake of mine for putting in vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract. (A reminder that being fancy isn’t always necessary.) Other than that, though, this turned out surprisingly edible, if not downright decent. I’ll give it another go in a while, and send some to Suzie.
Truth be told, in my mind all my decisions are command decisions. In this case, I finally had enough and a command decision was made, after months of deliberation: I am no longer going to bother following the directional arrows in stores and supermarkets because literally no one else does, including and most especially the employees. Anarchy rules.
For Ben Cohen! He’s got his own category here, so it’s about time we featured some lovely photos by Snooty Fox Images and revisit some of Cohen’s hotter posts to warm the winter’s night.
Like this Ben Cohen calendar shoot.
Or this Ben Cohen beefcake post.
Or this sexy-scented Ben Cohen post.
Or this Ben Cohen manscaping post.
Or this straight-ally story.
Or this definitively sexy Ben Cohen post.
“Noir: all those beautiful sentences telling you the most terrible things.†― Robert Polito
Shadows, and shadows within shadows. Gradients of darkness and light. The remarkably inconsistent way a space looks colorful or devoid of color depending on how the light and darkness work, and it’s always the darkness that is more intriguing. Light leaves nothing to the imagination, and we humans crave imagination. We want to imprint our own vision, our own story, our own connection to any singular event. Sometimes we want it more than we want truth. We are rarely satisfied to simply appreciate something other than we.
The recesses of a Saturday night, hidden furthest from the sane, reasonable safety of a weekday, operate mostly in shadow and mystery, perhaps giving this night more allure than any other. What mysteries shall unravel on this one, and what mysteries shall be left alone?
“Why am I telling you this?” he went on. “A secret’s only a secret as long as you keep it. Once you tell someone it loses all its power–for good or for ill–like that, it’s just another piece of information. But a real mystery can’t be solved, not completely. It’s always just out of reach, like a light around the corner; you might catch a glimpse of what it reveals, feel its warmth, but you can’t know the heart of it, not really. That’s what gives it value: It can’t be cracked, it’s bigger than you and me, bigger than everything we know. Those tight-ass suits can keep their secrets, they don’t add up to anything. This deep in the game, pal, I’ll take mystery every time.†― Mark Frost
“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.†– Dr. Mae Jemison
“Sciences provide an understanding of a universal experience, Arts are a universal understanding of a personal experience… they are both a part of us and a manifestation of the same thing… the arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity†– Dr. Mae Jemison
“Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.†– Dr. Mae Jemison
“Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe. I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet.” – Dr. Mae Jemison
“You have the right to be involved. You have something important to contribute, and you have to take the risk to contribute it.” – Dr. Mae Jemison
“We look at science as something very elite, which only a few people can learn. That’s just not true. You just have to start early and give kids a foundation. Kids live up, or down, to expectations.” – Dr. Mae Jemison
Someone once asked what ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ was about, and having just seen it I said, “It’s about… hope.” My dramatic pause, and the simplicity of my response caused the questioner to crack up in my face. It may have been Suzie or my brother, two people who have always been able to take the piss out of me with a few short words or chuckles. The movie was playing on television the other day, and I caught the last bit of it. Certain movies draw you in no matter how many times youâ’ve seen them ~ and this is one of those for me.
It also helps that my initial assessment has proven to hold true through the decades since I made the trite proclamation. I’ll add something more now that I have a few more years of life experience under my expanding belt: it’s also about grace, and the way friendship is sometimes the only way we survive the horrors of this world. That’s a sentiment which is always worth revisiting.
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.” ~ Stephen King, ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’
For much of my life, Thursday night was my favorite night of the week. Everyone else usually picked Friday or Saturday, no one picked Monday, and my choice was, looking back on it, a reflection of my enjoyment of the anticipation and planning. I’ve spent the last year or so altering that take, finally realizing that in placing my enjoyment on the anticipatory time, I was sacrificing the real moments of life, and at those times when I was supposed to be enjoying things, my mind was already racing ahead to the next event or party. Many times I would find myself in the midst of a celebration or milestone event, after weeks and sometimes months of planning, and rather than inhabiting the moment, I was lamenting the passing of it, my head already working on the next thing, already living in the future. And that’s no way to live, to be present, to be mindful.
On this Friday night, I embrace the freedom, the way the weekend unfurls before us, even if it’s a frigid one in early February. Inhabiting this very moment, I pause and take in a deep breath, letting it slowly out as I release a work-week of the typical stresses that an average 45-year-old feels: the worries over aging parents, the concerns of work responsibilities, the bowl of chocolates that should have lasted five days but was finished in five hours. I breathe in and out again, releasing the realization that we are going on almost a year of pandemic social isolation, a year of this altered existence where seeing people interact in close proximity to each other on television now feels dangerous and foreign – and I wonder what that does to someone who has already had issues with social anxiety, and whether it will be easier or more difficult if and when we ever return to the state of normal we once had. Acknowledging those struggles, and nodding as they pass through my head, I breathe slowly in and slowly out, knowing that there is no wrong, and there is no right, in how we each choose to deal with this strange, weird, wild and wonderful world.
On the window, the reflection of a candle hovers as if suspended from the snow-laden branches of a Chinese dogwood tree. Winter magic mingled with vague thoughts of spring blooms…
A batch of leftover carnitas makes for a scrumptious pulled pork sandwich with a spicy twist. Adding some salsa verde, pickled jalapeños, and fresh cilantro lends it a verdant heat, recalling its original incarnation, but atop a bulkier base. After years of avoiding sandwiches (perhaps a lingering bit of trauma from running away from grade school, middle school and high school memories) I’ve found my way back to this simple way of lunching, albeit with something better than bologna. A similar thing recently occurred with hot dogs.
Now it’s lunchtime again, and I’m starving.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~ Andrew Wyeth
A collection of Tibetan singing bowls sounds its choir, each voice adding another layer of peace until the morning is consumed with singing. Vibrations of sound pierce the heart in a way that no other sensory motion can. The deeper the breath goes, the more expansive the plain of calm grows. In my mind, it begins as a small swath of light that slowly enlarges. With closed eyes, I see and sense this light as it grows, obliterating the encroaching shadows, dispelling the surrounding darkness, until there is nothing but light and calm and stillness.
Even in the midst of winter, there is all this peace and quiet. Even in the middle of a raging snowstorm, there is comfort and solace. Maybe such calm can only come in the middle of winter.
In my earliest days of meditating, well over a year ago, I would often begin a session at the end of the afternoon, closer to bedtime. The living room would be dark, except for maybe a candle, and in the hushed light and reverential silence it was also cool, that space being the closest to the largest window of the house. Winter nights left the floor a cool expanse, broken only by a small area rug on which I sat and began my meditation.
Every time I wondered if I should put on a pair of socks, or grab a robe for around my shoulders, but something told me I wouldn’t need such comforts. And every time that turned out to be true. By the end of my meditation – be it five minutes or 29 minutes – my body would have generated its own heat, and my mind would be so occupied with its own empty consciousness that I wouldn’t be able to give such thought to the temperature of the room. Something about the steady deep breathing and the focused lack of focus would emanate heat and warmth from within, and often I would have broken a sweat without even realizing it.
I don’t have an explanation to such a physical manifestation of meditation, and I’m not going to probe very deeply into online research that may or may not be grounded in reality. All I know is that when I meditate, I have no need for socks or warm clothes – not even in the darkest nights of winter. My mind goes to a place that conjures its own comfortable warmth for my body, and I find it best not to question such wonders.
