I remember living in the city. Spring would come and we Minnesotans would exit our bunkers and start setting up the tiki torches. I remember wanting all .003 acres of our land to be manicured and purposeful – a functional beauty – if you will.
Dandelions be damned and death to creepin’ charlie!
Perhaps it’s age. Perhaps it’s the maturity I’m supposed to have with it. Perhaps it’s not having neighbors whose lawns I’d “infect” with weeds… but,
I THINK IT’S HIGH TIME I MAKE PEACE WITH THE THINGS I’VE PICKED AND PULLED AT FOR FAR TOO LONG.
If the branch bears beauty,
to prune the bloom is madness.
At first, my good thing of the day was the short walk I took in light rain, lugging cello and music bags to a tucked away corner of an abandoned stage, where I could learn some new tunes with a friend.
But I followed my friend (and the rain) to a wake. I didn’t know the person who’d died. The wake was at a pub we play at, now and again. The man had been good friends with the owners.
And then my good thing became breathtakingly great.
The place was filled with family and friends of this young person who’d passed well before his time. A car wreck, they said. All across the room, the faces were sympathetic but jolly. People laughed and embraced; and when they looked at each other, I watched them look straight into each other’s eyes, and give that lengthened beat of time that ticks, “I know, I know, I know.”
A stranger in their midst, I sat around a table with nine or so more, and plunked out tunes I’m still in the midst of learning. A few couples danced. Each of us with our dram or pint (or both) we watched the rain get harder and the room get warmer. Out of the picture window I could see the street flooding with downpour and flashes of light.
There is something particularly exciting about the first harvest of the year, which in Minnesota is typically:
…rhubarb.
It’s the first time of the year you get your knees in the dirt (and a fair amount under your finger nails if you’re doing it right). And you hack off so much green and branch, you can barely take a selfie with your bounty:
And then you trim,
…and wash,
…and chop,
…and go to sleep with the earth in your skin, conjuring up rhubarb recipes in your head.
or someone that you never really got to know but know you would have loved them if you did,
or someone that’s been in your whole life but never wholly there,
or someone right beside you, someone you can see and cannot find,
or someone you haven’t even met yet.
And your body gets still, and your mind rolls out the words you exchanged or wish you could, and your heart laughs along side theirs, and your hand holds ghosts;
that’s when I find the moon, and say this little ditty:
“I can see the moon
and the moon sees me.
If you can find the moon,
there, the three of us will be.”
I remind myself that it’s okay to miss. It’s okay to long for. We all need to let go and be let of go of, now and again. Even moonlight is bright enough to find the way back home.
I occasionally jam with a banjo man. He’s a gentle giant, has raised his children, is kind to my own, and enjoys playing music in his retirement.
When I started this journey, he sent me a kind note of encouragement and an idea from the late, Jiddu Krishnamurti:
“seeking drives aways the sought”
It made me ask myself, “WHAT DO I SEEK?”
I couldn’t say.
But I can feel it, seeking me.
Like a child lost at the zoo, surrounded by terrible beauties and beautiful terrors, I’ll hold my ground firm, until it, like a good parent, arrives to collect me. This requires restraint, patience, and very, VERY, open eyes.
So whilst we’re waiting in this zoo together, (…And JUST IN CASE you think the banjo is not the most thought provoking, philosophical instrument around), I leave you with a couple of songs from another friend of mine…
An exercise in restraint. With the exception of the introduction and ending, this tune is composed from a palette of 9 harmonics.
I am the lady in the car with earbuds in, belting lyrics at the top of her voice with great, emotional vigor. Many of you know me to be a rather reserved and somewhat composed woman.
You have seen my seedy underbelly.
Some time ago, a friend sent me this song…
…and it made me want to go to war.
Not the kill-people, conquer-lands kind of war, but the break-bonds, aim-high kind of war.
I listen to it, sometimes multiple times a day, as a sort of Battle Song. It summons a strength in me to keep moving, and makes my progress swift. (Especially when it gets all dance-remixey and crazy-rhythm-cool about 2 minutes in.)
The song is in Gaelic. (I do not speak Gaelic, mind you, so the belting in the car is made abundantly more comical by my enthusiastic attempt to pronounce words that have no meaning to me.) I war cry the bejeezus out of it.
Here’s where it gets cool:
I finally decided to figure out what I was singing (or attempting to sing). This could be a song about terrorizing nations and slaughtering the masses and here I am, joining the parade… no good.
But here’s the first verse, in English:
“Hail, oh woman, who was so afflicted,
It was our ruin that you were in chains,
Our fine land in the possession of thieves…
While you were sold to the foreigners!
Oh-ro, welcome home
Oh-ro, welcome home
Oh-ro, welcome home
Now that summer’s coming!”
We can metaphor this to death, but I think it’s fairly obvious I now sing even louder.
What’s your Battle Song?
Have you heard your War Cry?
WAIT! Before you think this ridiculously trite and go back to Facebook, stay with me…
(It’s gonna be a long 540.5 days if you want heavy lifting in EVERY, single, one of them.)
Between my race-child-to-daycare, lunch-in-my-lap-while-driving-a-stick, yes-I-started-crying-because-I-wasn’t-moving morning (breath) and my more-coffee-should-help, stuck-in-traffic-and-crap-I’m-out-of-gas, every-night-is-spaghetti-night evening, (breath) one of my fellow actors did a funny thing:
It was nothing earth shattering nor worthy of a Night at the Apollo. In fact, it was just the way he said a single word. But it inspired this funny feeling in my stomach. A lightness. A bubble.
I had the option to have it rise up like an unexpected belch that I would immediately excuse and negate OR, let it ride. I did.
I let it ride.
And it came up and rippled. The edges of my mouth curled up a bit. My lips opened and my nose twitched. It was an official giggle. Not a laugh, mind you. A giggle. And the best part was, I was alone. Backstage, in the dark. Therefore, it was mine. It was just for me.
Look for giggle-opportunity.
I highly recommend it.
When the weight of days is heavier than I’d like, it sure did lighten the load.
I’m working up to belly-laughter. Expect that post around Day 115. It’ll most likely involve Proseco, Umeshu, and a couple of girlfriends.
I came across the YouTube video, “The Art of Being Yourself,” by Caroline McHugh. She absolutely floored me. She is now my newly adopted mother and I shall begin speaking in Scottish brogue from this point hence.
If being ourselves is an art form,
how many colors are left in our trays?
How many slabs of us go without shape?
If you actually watched it (sláinte!), let’s talk. If you didn’t, you can still check the highlight reel…
Discussion Point 1:
Revelation vs. Reassurance.
Which one are you looking for when you look in the mirror?
Discussion Point 2:
Eccentric vs. Authentic.
One has a negative connotation and the other, a positive accolade. I would argue they’re exactly the same and that “eccentric” is put upon the person whose authenticity is not widely accepted.
“You’re already different. Your job is to figure out how, and then be more of that.”
When we look at all the people who are “larger than life,” the leaders and wonder-kids and movers and shakers at work, “they glow; it’s like they swallowed the moon.”
See, I WANT that. I FEEL the moon in me. Don’t you feel it in you, too???
“When are you good at being yourself?”
I would add, in whose company are you unashamedly yourself?
In Day 2, I talked about these times of change as being “precious.” McHugh also says, they “lend themselves to change…and rock you back into the inner self,” and elegantly names them:
INTERVALS OF POSSIBILITY
They’re crazy scary! If I’m honest, my biggest fear is not losing the THINGS around me, but rather, losing myself in their midst.
Intervals in time, like in music, like in stories, (and definitely like in cardio workouts), are HARD. They burn because they’re short bursts of effort that only yield results if the effort is true and exerted. They take the next year, movement, chapter, (and your abs), to the next level.
But when you’re already tired, how do you go one more mile? And where are you headed, anyway? Would we put all that effort into circling back to where we left off? Or should we instead question, “If I were the person of my dreams, who would I be?” …and point our pedals in that direction.
So, before I go seeking Scottish citizenship, I leave you with this:
“Even on the stormiest of days, the sky is beautiful blue underneath. The sky just is. Because the sky sees the impermanence of the clouds and the impermanence of the rainbows; and YOU have to develop an inner state of mind that’s as impervious to all the good shit and bad shit that happens to you, as the sky is to the weather.”
More can be learned about Caroline McHugh’s work here.
Today, we bake bread. We bake because deep thinking works up an appetite, because Minnesota believes it’s still winter, because kneading works out the angry bits, and because the smell, touch, and taste of this loaf brings me to a place I find comfort and memory in. Maybe you can go there, too.
(I should note that occasionally, I’ll bake a loaf of bread, and some folks react as if I’ve invented the solar system or something. If you think this post is not for you because you’ve never done it before, I offer the following: This is not complicated. People have been making bread for quite sometime. I hear they even do it in Europe. Doubt not. We gonna knead together.)
Step one: Gear up.
Bread doesn’t take much working time, but you’ll need to leave hours for it to sit and rise, so start in the morning and make it when you’ll be at home watching movies or figuring out how wordpress works.
Get these things:
large mixing bowl
measuring utensils
spoon (wooden spoons are best for bread dough)
tin foil
2 loaf pans or baking pans (you could even use disposable, foil pans)
This recipe makes two loaves, so halve it if you only have one pan.
and these:
1 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 Tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
and throw them together in a large mixing bowl so they look like this:
Pour two cups of boiling hot water over them and set a timer for 10 minutes.
While you’re waiting,
get these measured out in a different bowl:
1 lb, 1 oz. (or 3 ¾ cups) bread flour (you can use unbleached, all-purpose in a pinch)
7 oz. (or 1 ½ cups) whole wheat flour
1 Tablespoon active yeast*
After 10 minutes, your melted ingredients should look like this:
and should be warm (not hot) to the touch.**
Then plop the flours and yeast on top of the melted ingredients.
Step two: We knead. O yes, yes, we do.
Start by mixing everything together with a wooden spoon. The flour will still be visible and it’ll get tough to stir. It should look like this:
Now, comes the fun part…
Stick your (washed) hand into the bowl and SQUEEZE. Do it again… a couple more times until everything sticks together.
Okay, now pick it up, stick it just under your nose, and inhale. Pause. This is when comfort and memory kick in for me…
Back to work: put it on the counter and start to knead. If you’ve never kneaded before, just think of it like folding the dough over and pushing it back down. I use my fingers to pull it up and the heel of my hand to push out and down. It’s a lovely, repetitive motion that begets profound thinking and promotes soul savoring.
…pull back…push out
Do this for 8 to 10 minutes. I’m not kidding. Work it. And use both hands; I had to take a picture with my left… (You can cheat and use a heavy stand mixer with a dough hook for 6 minutes, but make sure you give one additional hand kneaded minute at the end.)
It will be a sticky but silky ball of goodness. Now put it back in the mixing bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, set a timer for an hour and go away.
Step three: Things shape up.
Your dough should be about two times it’s original size, but don’t freak if it’s not super inflated; it’ll come.
Now you shape the dough and put it into whatever vessel you’ll bake it in.
Plop the dough ball onto the counter and cut it in half. (If you’ve halved your recipe, use the whole ball.)
If you’re making a loaf, I fold in the pointy ends and roll it into a sausage shape so it looks like this:
If you’re making rolls in a baking pan, I roll the clump into a sausage and cut it into pieces like this:
and arrange them in the pan:
Cover ‘em up with more plastic wrap, set the timer for another hour, and go away again. (This could take two hours-ish, so don’t plan your sandwich party just yet.***)
Step Four: Heat and Bake
Your bread should now be the shape you want to see come out of the oven.
Preheat the oven to 350º
Bake your uncovered bread in the middle of your oven for 25 minutes.****
After 25 minutes, put a piece of tin foil over the bread so it doesn’t get too dark, bake for 10 more minutes, and it’s done.
Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes.
This bread makes a particularly amazing ham sammy with mayo, or strangely enough, rocks tuna salad and a pickle. But above all, toast. Just toast, butter, coffee. Magic.
We eat together,
and it makes a good day.
For the detail oriented:
*If you don’t think you’ll bake much bread, buy the 3-packet strips of yeast, rather than a jar. It’s cheaper and they’ll last longer.
**Two things that will quickly kill yeast and prevent your dough from rising are too much heat and letting the yeast come into contact with the salt before it’s had a chance to “come to life.” If you have an issue with that, try adding the salt just before kneading.
***Bread rises with warmth and moisture. In Minnesota, we have them in abundance or scarcity, so your rising time will fluctuate. In drier, cooler times, I set the bread on top of the oven while it preheats, where the heat rises out. You can even put a dry kitchen towel over the plastic wrap to incubate the loaves.
****Make sure your oven is fully heated before putting the bread in. I let it sit for at least 10 minutes at 350º before baking.
