For the Mycophiles

 If you were to take a walk through a west coast wood, at a certain time of year, perusing the forest floor, peaking beneath wide fallen leaves at the base of cedars and around decaying maples and firs, there is an entire world you might be privy to discovering. Coming out of the dead and decomposing, in all shapes and sizes, grouped together in towers and colonies, or on their own, isolated, and standing stoic, are strange and wonderful growths. Mushrooms and toadstools, mycelium, mucilaginous, and mycobiont fungi—those slippery or puffy, spikey, or smooth, red, orange, brown, black, or the purest translucent white you’ve ever seen, spore-bearing growths are everywhere in the early fall, if you know where to look.

I’ve often told those who would listen that if I were to be a scientist, I would study the world of the fungus. Those heterotrophs, gaining their nutrients by feeding on other organisms, naturally composting and recycling, are the epitome of the circle of life. They represent a healthy and well circulating ecosystem and are among the most underrated and beautiful natural growths that I have ever known.

When I venture into the woods, at the autumn hour each year when tree leaves explode into great collections of colours— red, orange, yellow— now here, now there, everywhere one day and gone the next, I am looking not just for that moment of transition in the canopy, I go also to find the most decadently sculpted fungi.

Heel toe, heel toe, through the forest and along the trails I go. My keen eyes search in the afternoon light, for champignons—flourishes of oyster mushrooms, penny buns, azurescens, lactarius, chicken of the woods, and expanding towers of pleurotus and toadstools. This year, Thanksgiving long weekend, the weather is strange. Looking with my eyes, the evidence of cooler days and even cooler evenings is everywhere. With each passing day, this change exists in the scattering of fallen leaves and trees growing more bare. Yet, as I walk, warm winds blow from somewhere beyond the forest, contradicting the predicted frosts and icy breezes that naturally come with autumn. The warmth, at once nice as it dances along my uncovered skin, is unsettling— a queerness and uncertainty floods my mind for I know I should not be feeling comfort like this in these autumn months.

In California, there is strange lore surrounding the warm Santa Ana winds. Occurring September through May, they originate over the dry, desert regions of southwestern United States and flow westward out to the California coast and the ocean. Some say these winds—whipping down mountain passes, dropping humidity, and sucking moisture from the air, cause strange behaviours in those living along the coast. Folk songs and legends come out of the odd influence this change in the air creates.

Known by some as the season of suicide and divorce, there is a sense of apprehensive foreboding, that creeps into people’s minds and hearts, when the season of the winds arrives. The Santa Anas have been known to cause impulsive actions, upended feelings of uncertainty and restlessness. Many residents lean into the devil winds as their bodies become overcharged with electrical energy; their hair stands on ends and their minds grow lightheaded and nauseous and excuses for bad behaviour and poor life choices are often made at the expense of this shift in the air.

Santa Ana winds are a strange but natural phenomenon along the coast of California. However, warmth is not so natural in these woods, at this late hour in the year. So, as I wander, kneeling to talk to the mushrooms, in awe of the burgeoning blooms of white buttons, I can’t help but don a puzzling and disquieted sense of peculiarity in the easy breeze drifting through the trees and along the surface of the ground these fungi are formed from. Is this the dawn of a new world? Will we now have incongruous and curious winds blowing about, changing the seasons, and disturbing the natural state of this place?

The colonies of mushrooms, black and gold, shaped like angel wings and fresh water oysters, as I walk and wonder, help bring peace to my mind. Long determined as a symbol of good luck in the coming year, a representation of strong relationships and resilience, the massive varietal collections of long necked and slightly curved, stiff, and spongy, bulbous, and flat, furry, and smooth, thick, and translucent, mycelium growing from every place imaginable, gives me hope.

I am a mycophile, a fungi enthusiast, a mushroom seeker, an awestruck observer. If these freakish growths, living off the dead and hidden from sunlight, with healthy in-tact caps, strong stems, and complex root systems, can thrive in such zany days, there is hope that the warm winds coming in will not set off any sort of chaos. Instead, they will release carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous into the soil and into the atmosphere, continuing the great cycle of life with which they, and we, are so acutely and unavoidably connected.

So, I will continue to walk in the woods at the late hours of the year. I will watch for the mushrooms to sprout, then flesh out, wither, and fade. If they are doing this, the cycle of life and death will continue, no matter the strangeness spreading amongst the winds.

Circling the sun

Last week marked my thirty-fifth rotation around the sun. Every year, around this time, I like to take stock of my life— my successes and failures, my hopes and wishes, my queries and answers. I never seem to completely come full circle in any of these areas, rather they are ongoing and forever adaptable contemplations and temporary understandings of who I am as I pertain to the present state of the world.

This year, as in many recent years, the planet is on fire. Lives — human and non-human— are lost to war, to starvation, to drought. Ecosystems are on the brink of collapse. Affordable housing is in crisis. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, detachment from self and society, are an epidemic continuing to grow as access to care becomes more difficult, addiction becomes more prevalent, and our ties to community and village-minded living are severed, deepening the hurt and isolation of humanity. Those who would seek to feed these separations are celebrated and revered, while those who aim to bond us as a collective, stronger together, are ridiculed as weak and foolish— “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats). We have forgotten how to be a part of something beyond ourselves, how to move with one another, hold opposing views in our minds, communicate effectively and with kindness, empathy, and appreciation for the other. I wonder if a remembering of these ways will help to guide us. I worry that while some search for a way to connect— to embody— there are more who would seek to separate.

It is my belief, that the search to know oneself, is one of our greatest difficulties and joys. As part of the planet, in the way it breathes and moves, we depend on everything around us for survival, and yet the awareness we possess has worked to detatch us from that connection. Perhaps the practice of knowing oneself— where we come from, how our mind works, what we feel, how we contribute and connect, what errs we have done and what improvements we have yet to accomplish— is one way we can rekindle our bond to both human-kind and the environment that sustains us. Know thyself, for “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” (Aristotle).

As I reflect on my birthday this year, what then, do I know of myself?

I know I have experienced many triumphs and failures, some of which I have learned from while others still unravel. All of these experiences, I have learned, are interconnected. One leads to another and another. They are embedded within the unique way I see the world around me, how I interpret and filter it, and what I produce and do and understand as a result.

So as I close one year and march into another— another year of writing, of promoting a book already written, nurturing relationships, sharing life, teaching, and learning— trailing what will inevitably come along with me, I make one promise to myself. I promise to remember the interconnectedness of all things— to keep “looking deeper, zooming out, or in. Opening possibilities for a new way of being” (Rick Rubin). For in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty, what else is there to do?

Forthcoming memoir!

I am excited to announce a project I’ve been working on for the last year!

With the encouragement and support from Caitlin Press, I will be releasing my debut book in February 2023— a literary memoir set in the forests of Sumas Mountain in Abbotsford B.C.

Here is a description of the book on the Caitlin Press Website:

“In Remnants: Reveries of a Mountain Dweller, writer and educator Natalie Virginia Lang offers a vision of Sumas Mountain throughout the seasons to expose the impact of toxic progress on Place. Through poetic prose, Lang meditates on the social, historical, cultural, and environmental losses suffered at the hands of infringement upon natural areas. Remnants ventures into the natural spaces on Sumas Mountain, illuminating the errors of the modern colonial approach to progress and posing philosophical queries for alternate pathways into the future.

With whimsical descriptions and close encounters with creatures, forests, and climate change, Lang brings us an embodied experience of nature and bridges the gap between science, philosophy, academic theories, and the social sphere. Remnants offers a shift in the way environment is perceived and celebrates the value of interconnected relationships with and within ecosystems. The result is a fresh lens through which to see our relationship with that natural world, one that inspires us to join an ever-growing conversation about finding balance with our environment, even in the midst of growth.”

Click HERE to visit the site

Nature Writing?

Romantic elegies of the way the arms of a tree dance in the wind, or how a flower wilts as its season comes to an end, mirroring the change of weather and the fading of a person, have been examples of nature writing in the past. Most often, Nature serves as a useful tool for the introspection of an individual. One can escape into the trees to find themselves; they are tested and bested by the peaks of a mountain, learning their limits; they sit in fields among grasses and wildflowers in deep contemplation, reflecting what they see, feel, or hear, back on themselves. This has been nature writing.

There are some, however, who let the awesomeness of the natural world speak for itself without imprinting upon it, Richard Powers, Gilbert White, and John Clare come to mind. I’m sure there are others, and yet most of what is called nature writing has been a useful tool for self discovery. Though, this seems to be rather counterproductive. Is writing about and for Nature not a way to provide a voice to what has been trodden over, exploited, extracted from, and disrespected in the most horrendous way? Should Nature writing not be focussed on the identify of Nature itself, rather than the person inserting themselves into the picture? Is it not hypocritical for authors to claim the Nature Writing title, through fiction or non-fiction, and yet refer and relate every element of that Nature back to the human identity? Are humans too limited in their understanding of anyone outside their own species that the only way they can appreciate it is to see themselves in it?

I propose a revolution in the way people relate to Nature.

Learning to appreciate the natural world as its own entity deserving, like any other living thing on the planet, respect, its own voice to be heard, to be left alone, and to be given a fair chance at survival. In the same way assistance and compassion are offered to human beings who have been downtrodden, traumatized, torn, and disrespected, I propose the Natural world be given the same respect. How do we get there?

It begins with the way we talk about Nature. It begins in allowing Nature to speak for itself, the same way we expect human beings to speak for themselves. It begins in not running our mouths and in printing our own identity upon the natural world so as to stifle its own voice, way of being, way of connecting and communicating.

Let the natural world speak through us, as itself, rather than imprinting our own egocentric ideologies upon it, as a way to better understand ourselves.

Featured!

Check it out. The Graduate and Post Doc studies department at Simon Fraser University has featured me on one of their student profiles. Check it out here to see what I think about the Graduate Liberal Studies Masters program at SFU.

See the profile on SFU's website here!

Paths to ponderous minds…

Calling all readers and supporters of writers!

My writing group has recently created a website to showcase the projects we are working on and encourage the collective pathways to connect brilliant ideas ready to be laid in word.

After a class through Simon Fraser University’s Graduate Liberal Studies on The Art of Writing ended, some attendees of the course decided to continue to collaborate and bolster one another in our own written endeavors. The result was the Harbour Group; a hub for keeping tabs on each other’s works, and a place to discover what we’ve all been working on.

One member, Jasper Lastoria, developed a platform for our work to be seen.

Check it out at https://theharbourgroup.wixsite.com/website

The perfect cup

Is there anything sweeter than the perfect cup of coffee?

If you’re anything like me, you are always chasing that perfect cup of coffee. Drip isn’t on the radar. The perfect cup exists in the sweetness of crema, the scent of freshly ground beans, the knowing that the beans you’re using are recently roasted, not too oily, and not too dry, and that moment of silence right before you take your first sip — this is the stuff of a great cup of coffee.

A few years ago, I walked across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I started in St. Jean Pied de Port in France, and made my way up the mountain, crossing into Spain and spending the first-night post-walk at Roncesvalles. The remainder of the journey was peppered with lively characters, long days and short, cool breezy walks, and difficult desert scaped hot walks. Each day presented a different challenge and an altered state of mind. Walking the Camino is like living through the waves of an entire life, in 30 days. There are only four constants a walker can predict. One. You will have bad days, wonder why you came, and want to leave. Two. There is always someone’s smiling face or gentle presence willing to help you along the way. Three. You are never truly alone. Four. There is always coffee at lunch, and wine at dinner.

By the time Spain came along, I’d been drinking coffee for the majority of my adult life. I was never an extra-large double-double fanatic, always erring on the conservative side with a smaller cup and no added sweetener, milk, or any other dilution of the great coffee substance. When I traveled to France, I learned about the art of drinking coffee where one sits in a wicker chair on cobble-stone streets, watching passers-by going about their days. I had some great cups in France, other parts of the world, and closer to home, but it really wasn’t until Spain where a full understanding of the power of the perfect cup surfaced.

Day after day, walking from town to town, through forested trails, fields of wine grapes or sunflowers or wheat, along mountain passes and on cobblestoned streets, the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee while taking a rest at a wooden table, your pack nestled at your feet starts to elicit such joy it’s difficult to compare it to much else. When your feet are tired, your mind is weary, and the monotony of putting one foot in front of the other for hours at a time, spanning 30 days – sometimes more, depending on where you started– an open chair, a croissant, and a cafe con leche is enough to put you right again, sending you on your way for the next few hours until the end of your day where you can rest your head once more, only to begin again with the next sunrise. The smell of the cafe, the touch of the chair and table, the chatter of those around you, the sound of each footstep and walking stick tapping on the ground, as the sun shines from above, warming your heart, you realize that perhaps it isn’t the coffee at all that has touched your soul so completely, but something else entirely.

Those moments of pure joy, in whatever form they may take for you, are perhaps less about any one thing or person, but center their power around the experience; the way we internalize a moment. It’s about perspective. In the right frame of mind, emptied from worry or chaos or distraction, people have the potential to experience joy in whatever is laid in front of them, barring a moment of trauma or tragedy, there is always a joy to be found in the simplest pleasures if only we’d learn to stop – to sit – to observe– to let the moment wash over you as if you’ve reached Nirvana. If I let it, that moment comes every day with the perfect cup of coffee.

Making a connection…

This week, I want to comment on a few readings that I’ve been dipping into. I’ve found, through the introspection that comes from slipping into an awareness of self, that what I choose to read reflects that awareness, answers questions I have, and leads me farther on my search for those spider webs linking it all together. It is my hope that through all the reading, and thinking, and searching that I will discover something about me I hadn’t yet thought to discover. So far, whatever is on the way, is leaking out through the ideas and experiences of other writers, thinkers, and feelers. I am starting to see connections not only between my life today and my past life and what that may tell me about my future life, but I also notice those connections in so many other people who may at some point have delved into introspection in the way that I am now.  Here are a few notes from the books I am reading. 

In Mary Oliver’s “Upstream”, she writes that her “loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If [she] has a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if [she is] late. Rejoice even more if [she does] not arrive at all.” As a writer, Oliver knows what it is to need to see, to ponder, to sit on the edge and work within that space to discover what hidden elements of herself live there in the darkness waiting to be illuminated, sculpted, and shared. Most revered as a poet, Oliver’s work in “Upstream” continues to exercise her poetic stamina while edging into philosophy and a particular way of life that reminds us to “look with shut eyes upon the miraculous interchange that makes things work, that causes one thing to nurture another, that creates the future out of the past.” I think this is what I am attempting to discover, and perhaps what we all should attemp as strangers come to know one another, sharing lives and ideas, remaining vulnerable with each other as we all attempt to sit on the edge of ourselves and look to see what exists there, hidden away. 

I wonder though if it isn’t enough just to sit there with ourselves on the edge and see. I wonder if the way that we see makes a difference. Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses that “We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them.” We must first understand that we live on a surface, with edges, and then we must learn the “art” of skating. We must approach it with balance, with pleasure, with elegance, and over time we may all become ice dancers inside our own consciousness, skating about the world both on the edge and on either side, with grace, poise, and aesthetic beauty. 

There is perhaps one more element required to sit on the edge, well. While learning to navigate gracefully, we can’t always be moving forward. We will stumble. We will fall. We will go too far and need to retreat. Perhaps then, by approaching it with this understanding that we must both go toward the edge and aim for the future, sit on the edge for some, and retreat to the memories of the past, we can fully embody the transformation embarked upon. Kaie Kellough explores, in a collection of short stories titled “Dominoes at the Crossroads”, the notion that the past is at once occurring alongside and is embedded into the present and whatever future is coming. In order to move into the future with grace and strength of self, we must remember that we are part of a community; part of a history where the selves we are folded into the selves of our ancestors. We are at once them and us. Kellough is referring specifically to the cultural connection of Black Canadians to their historical homelands. However, the concept of connection may apply to everyone in a person’s past which is as much a part of us today as it will be tomorrow. We must learn to understand our past to move gracefully through the present, enabling us to sit at the edges of ourselves, and then move forward with a balanced and elegant future identity, fully encompassing the entirety of who we are. 

There are so many links, from diamond to diamond within the web of existence on this planet. I’ve always tried to see those links and connect them to myself, and recently, perhaps as a direct result of the Covid-19 pandemic, I have been able to see so much more in a much wider expanse than before.

What connections are you seeing?

Poise ~ and a Wee Bit of Wisdom

This week I’ve gone down the rabbit hole with Alice. No, not the mushroom-eating drug-induced rabbit hole with creepy tree-slinging invisible cats, but rather one that holds the memories of all those moments and events of one’s life; the choices we made that ultimately dictated the path we are now on until another moment and choice arises, flinging us, arms and legs flailing, in another direction entirely. All I can say is, don’t go down the rabbit hole until you’re prepared for the cobwebs and skeletons that might jump out at you from caverns along the way. That’s not to say I have skeletons, per se, but it is to say that I believe our lives are made up of a series of profound moments and choices that we may not always realize are the dictating ones in our lives, moments we are proud of and moments we aren’t.

You could point me to books and poems and movies and art centered around this topic, I’m sure. It’s a subject, among many others, humanity has been trying to understand going back to Greek philosophers who sat around in long flowing robes and talked, posing hypothetical questions, eating grapes, and being fanned by a boy called Alessandro. Great men (and some women) talked about it and wrote about it, plays were acted with this as its theme, and so it went. Poetry, more writing, more talking, more creations of art. On and on. Yet, today, here I am attempting to make sense of it all for myself. I can read the philosophy, watch the films, contemplate the poetry, and see the plays. I can even sit in a group — virtual of course; thank you for that, dear Covid— and ask the big questions, talk about all the possible answers, and not come up with any viable solution.

So here’s the question, or rather here are the questions: what effect do our choices make on the direction of our lives? Do we have any control over any of it? Would our lives have turned out generally the same in the end, with only having landed here by different means?

Answers. Great effect and no effect. Yes and no. Perhaps.

I know, I know, we can’t “repeat the past”, dear Gatsby. We can’t even make a plea to a guardian angel named Clarence who would help us to see how horrific the world would be like without our presence, helping us to see just What a Wonderful Life we really have in spite of the choices that were made that took us away from the life we thought we wanted. All we’ve got are the choices we’ve made for better or worse, and the moments we find ourselves in now.

Releasing ourselves from the dream-like expectations we have over our lives, where we criticize what we’ve done, where we’ve gone, and how much we’ve accomplished, is the only way to step over the rabbit hole and keep walking forward on the path we’ve created. Hopefully, the farther down the road we get, the more wisdom and poise we get to bring with us, making better choices that will bring us closer to the world we want for ourselves when the darkness comes crashing in at the end. Yet, if we don’t have that wisdom just yet, or maybe it comes in waves with highs and lows and isn’t always there when we need it, perhaps we can remember to live in the moment; to make each day count and get on with it.

Courage - Calm - Resilience -Strength of Character

This week as my holidays continued and one old year folded over into another, I read “truth be told: The Story of My Life and My Fight for Equality”. Written by Beverley McLachlin, who served as the 17th Chief Justice of Canada, the first woman to hold that position, and the longest-serving Chief Justice in Canadian history, her memoir is nothing short of exceptional and has proved to be a great read in setting up goals and attitudes for the year ahead.

In her book, McLachlin pens the story of her life, starting with her childhood in Pincher Creek, Alberta, and a teacher who told her she had no aptitude for anything useful as a woman. Against all odds, she made her way to the University of Alberta and upon the completion of a degree in Philosophy, after soft suggestions from the man who would become her husband, she applied and was accepted into law school. The following decades of her life, as she leads us through the major and minor events that make up one’s identity, are nothing short of exceptional. She discusses the places her career took her, the people she met, the different promotions and appointments she accepted, the struggles she faced as a woman practicing law in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond, and the guilt she endured as a mother preoccupied with the duties of being a lawyer, then judge in many forms, then Chief Justice of Canada. She also outlines some of the profound cases that would go on to change Canada and its people forever, some of which included, but are not limited to, the rights of women, LGBTQ rights, Indigenous people’s rights, Reconciliation, same-sex marriage, and abortion.

Throughout her tale, McLachlin leads readers along with the wisdom of how the world works, how to manage difficulty and strife, the qualities an individual must cultivate, and above all the power that the Canadian Law has in striving to ensure every Canadian has the support and power they need to develop a proud and successful life.

As I read phrases like, “Accept imperfection. Embrace risk. Have the courage to fail and the strength to pick yourself up and start over. Do your best and move on”, and “The first lesson in judging: listen. If you think you know the answer, you probably don’t. If you think you are the smartest person in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room. Listening will help you get the right answer”, and “Ideas must alter; cultures must shift. It takes time. Occasionally, however, we witness[…] a tangible result”, I started to wonder what else helps people to not only get through this life but thrive in it and encourage growth and development in all the best ways. People like Beverley McLachlin, and so many others like her, started nowhere. Along the route of her journey, McLachlin took a few chances, listened to decent advice, tried new avenues, and generally went where life decided to take her, and a successful life that helped to create positive change was the result

It’s true, in spite of success stories like Beverly Mclachlin’s, that not everyone gets to where they want to go. Injustices still occur and roadblocks pop up at inauspicious times. Perhaps, though, by honing a few very specific qualities in ourselves, we may have a better chance at the life we want. In reading “truth be told”, I conclude that the key qualities adept at aiding us this year and in the coming years could be: Courage — Calm — Resilience — Strength of Character.

With courage, we may learn to step into the unknown, take a few chances, see where the road takes us, and not to fear failure but rather to embrace the challenge.

With calm, we may act with poise. We may remember to stop and think, do our research, weigh the options, consult experts, and avoid overly emotional decision making that so often gets us into trouble and can desperately hurt those around us.

With resilience, we may face the struggles and pains of inevitable in life with respect for the lessons they teach us. We may discover what can be done to ease suffering in others, and to build strength in our minds and our hearts, as the world turns and changes and shocks and causes great suffering.

Through the cultivation of these qualities, we may start to develop a Strength of Character within ourselves that embodies these and so much more. We may go about our day with greater wisdom in our minds and compassion in our hearts, knowing that with every action we do, every word we say, every person we encounter, we are continuously building our character, and it is up to us what we will become.

Covid on the Coast- Letters from the Pandemic

Written for Graduate Liberal Studies 30th Anniversary Project at Simon Fraser University.

To read more letters, visit the Ormsby Review

A letter to William Wordsworth.

Dearest Will, 

Today, the gloom has overtaken me. I can no longer picture what tomorrow will bring; every tomorrow for months has led me farther away from the life I knew and even more far flung from the one I had been working towards. It seems that chaos continues to erode every corner of the globe with the shock of leadership, dashed hopes, failed romance, and daily struggles in completing everyday tasks. The threat of sickness has faded into a dull haze hanging in the spaces of my mind. I know you will understand when I try to explain the state of the world and its impenetrable effect on us all. We are forced into seclusion, separated from companions and all manner of social interactions. Venturing out has become a dance of avoidance and anxiety. While change and the hope for better days is on the horizon, a dependable future seems more unattainable today than ever before. I know when I tell you this that you will sympathize and perhaps even provide some wisdom to keep the shadows at bay and tempt the arrival of hope for more dazzling days. 

You once told me that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of emotion. It seems all I have now is an excess of sentiment with no outlet. In my isolation I have tried to capture and keep what’s in my heart in the form of prose and poetry, but seem to be at odds with the clarity and direction of my thoughts. Instead, I reach out to you who has also ventured homeward in your own solitude, often separated from your Dorothy and Sam. What I find in your words is a great wisdom in their application to life in these difficult and strangled times. You once said,  

... in this time

Of dereliction and dismay, I yet

Despair not of our nature, but retain

A more than Roman confidence, a faith

That fails not, in all sorrow my support,

The blessing of my life…

I understand now, Will, that no matter how difficult these days might be, or how cut off and distant we have become from each other and from all that creates delight and excitement between people, I can still recognize the grandeur of the human heart and walk among the trees and creeks and gaze up at the stars at night, not completely lost in the gloom and despair that lurks in the twilight of loneliness. We are all in isolation at this trying time, yet in some strange way your words have brought a spark to my step and provided greater confidence in the wonder yet to come. Your words, visions, and philosophies of joy in the simplest things, a cloud or a daffodil, even now have magic trailing out from your pen, onto the page, and into my heart.

Thank you dear friend, for reminding me of the joy that resides in our world. 

As you have written to me before with such wisdom and acuity, I wish you well using your own sage embossed words:

  Fare thee well!

Health and the quiet of a healthful mind

And for thyself, so haply shall thy days

Be many, and a blessing to mankind

Your faithful companion, 

Know thyself

One of the greatest pursuits in one’s life is to seek-out who we are.

Through world experience, trials and errors, great joys and immense sufferings, and the ongoing inner-dialogue that makes up a lifelong conversation between me, myself, and I, one would think that at some point along the way I might find a true and solid person within that I can attach my identity to. Socrates said to “know thyself”. But what is, the self?

Is the self that I should come to know, the thirty something me who likes to run and walk and read and eat and have long drawn out conversations with a tree about the state of the world? Is it the self that is in constant pursuit of learning and knowledge, that I should identify with? Am I the self who teaches the next generation to think and read and write? Or am I the self that I was as a child, with bright curiosity and an unfailing smile and cheery temperament? Perhaps, I should be the self who is brave and kind and strong, and ignore all of those icky bits that a strange onlooker would be in opposition to? Which self, dear Socrates am I supposed to identify as?

I suppose it is all my selves that make up the entirety of me. It is the past, and the present, and the hope for the future that designs my identity. But here’s the wrap… that future, and that me, walking through time and history is in constant fluctuation. How can I know myself as a solid and unwavering individual, have all of my questions answered, and walk off into the sunset with me, myself, and I, when that knowing of who I am changes?

Camus said in “The Myth of Sisyphus” that one can only know thyself in an approximate way. The world, like people, is absurd and contradictory. One moment we are emanating certain qualities and actions and voices, until something shifts in us or our surroundings and we shift to accommodate so as not to be thrown off balance into the abyss, left to fend for ourselves in contrast to our world.

How then, can I know myself if the self that I am is so many contradictory and fluctuating elements moving around as my identity? Perhaps, then, one does not know thyself in a concrete, “THIS IS ME” way. Rather, one learns to know how they change and react to new ideas, new behaviors, new challenges, and new faces of the world. To know thyself then becomes knowing the changes within the seasons of one’s mind and heart. I must understand myself as I understand the weather. There are predictable qualities in every season of who I am, but every now and then a snowfall occurs in August and residents must learn the best way for them to react. This perhaps, is the true way of knowing oneself, as I come to understand not who I am but how I am and what I do.

Perhaps, we shouldn’t then expect to know ourselves, but should instead seek know the seasons of our hearts and minds, learning whether we are the person who carries an umbrella in August or not.

Good Food Feels Good

Tutto finisce a tarallucci e vino.

It all ends in biscuits and wine —

In Italy, where great food, beautiful ingredients, and flowing wine are abundant, there is a certain kind of magic that bubbles about when the time is taken to savor. Each flavor, each ingredient, each color, and the way it all comes together in a symphony of taste not only tastes good on the palate going in, but also sparks something powerful in our minds and our hearts, reminding us of the glorious experience of eating delicious food. Of course, the chemical reaction occurring is a release of endorphins caused by the pleasure we experience through devouring the meal in a slow and ritualistic way. As is often the case, however, in the Western ideology of eating our meals, savoring, taking the time to cook, and actively stepping away from life to share an intimate moment with the sustenance we all need, is often pushed aside in favor of fast meals, helping us to get on with the other, more important, aspects of our lives.

What if, the most important aspect, though, is actually the ritual of eating itself?

I challenge you, to carve out some time in your life some Saturday or Sunday night, to experiment with the pleasure of eating. Find a recipe that excites you, do the work of going to whatever grocery store is necessary in order to find the correct ingredients, and set aside an evening (or a morning if you are one of those elusive breakfast lovers) to cook, eat, and truly enjoy yourself.

Put on a playlist of tunes that fit with the mood, or the type of food. Andrea Bocelli for Italian; classical guitar for Mexican; C’est si bon for French. Pour yourself a drink. Put on an apron, and cook. Take the time to taste the flavors as you’re adding ingredients. Thinking about how each one changes the way you feel as you work to create a cacophony of magic in a dish.

When it’s all finished, grab a beautiful plate, arrange the meal like a professional, sit with a candle and the music still playing, and eat. Avoid the television, the computer, the phone, or any other distraction designed to remove you from the all encompassing experience of savoring the flavors and textures of what you’ve created. Take small bites. Listen to the music. Gaze into the flicker of your candle. Ponder how the food changes the space in your body. Just be there with you and your food.

Given the chance, you may just discover that good food really does feel good.

Pandemic Sourdough

When Covid 19 became part of the norm of 2020, and self isolation for the protection of ourselves, of the vulnerable, and the health care system, was something we were all subject to, many of us took up strange hobbies to occupy our minds and make use of the time we had at home.

Some learned to sew or knit. Others dabbled in writing or in reading those books that had been sitting on the shelf for months or years. Maybe a guitar was picked up and YouTube lessons streamed while strumming made their way into your daily habit. For me, as with many, my outlet was sourdough. That sweet and sour, soft bread born from a living bacterial culture occupied my nights and my days. Dreaming hours were privy to sourdough woes just as often as waking hours. I worried about the type of flour I used to feed it, whether the recipe I had was the best, whether it’s supposed to be sticky, or perhaps that it was too dry. I wondered if I should clean the container each time I fed it or if I should continue to let it stew in it’s own growth. This goopy substance was an entirely central focus in my life.

As restrictions lifted and we gingerly entered the world once more, some may have abandoned their creative endeavors, but to those of us who didn’t, do you feel as if your life has altered so completely that now, to abandon the sourdough, or the guitar, or the knitting, would be to leave a part of you behind? I do. As a result, my life is now dictated by the sourdough living in my fridge.

Every four to five days, a reminder pops up on my smart phone. Ding. Feed your sourdough today! The message reads. With bittersweet obedience I go to the fridge, open the door, and take out the jar hosting the nebulous entity.

I always try to schedule a feeding on Saturday or Sunday. Otherwise, if it falls mid-week, I can’t take it out of the fridge and feed it until the afternoon, as I am not at home. If I do this, then the leftover bits need to become bread, or pizza, or something other than what it is, resulting in a very late night as that extra glob of culture turns into something else, resulting in midnight pizza, or 3 am bread. You might say that I could wait. I could feed the sourdough and leave the leftovers in the fridge until a more convenient time came along to make something out of it. This is absolutely true, but then you see, there would be two jars of growing sour culture in my fridge. A desire to control anything, resists this logic. So, I try to make the fourth or fifth day of its growing cycle land on a weekend, then spend nearly the entire day constantly returning to the bread or pizza dough I am creating, nursing it to becoming what it will be in the end.

It may sound ridiculous to some that my life revolves around a growing sourdough culture. Perhaps it is ridiculous. Or perhaps the caring for something, occupying my mind, and creating something that can be eaten in the end, is one element that is keeping all the seams of my life stitched together; however haphazardly. I live alone, and my cat often refuses to acknowledge my presence. Hence, to relieve the pressure he has in keeping me company, the sourdough must step in.

If you’ve got a sourdough calling out to you from within your fridge, or perhaps are finding that you need an extra something to grow, care for, and occupy your mind, consider this recipe for beautiful ciabatta bread!

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120 g sourdough

10g salt

400g warm water

500g flour

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Take the sourdough out of the fridge and measure out 120g into a medium sized bowl. 

Add the water and let sit for 20-30 minutes. 

Add the flour and the salt. Mix. 

Cover with a damp cloth and let sit in a dark, warm place, for 1 hour. 

Fold the dough from the outside to the inside four times, rotating the bowl  90 degrees each time to fold in a new side each time. 

Flip  over the the newly folded dough so the top is now on the bottom. 

If the dough is starting to stick to the bowl, add olive oil.

Repeat every hour for the next 6 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500degrees C

Place the dough on a well floured surface. Coat all sides with flour, and divide into three equal parts. 

Place onto a pan and bake in the oven for 18-22 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

Remove, rest, and serve with butter, jam, or your favorite topping!

Enjoy!