Cooking

I cook. Rather, I have become a chef. Naming me "chef" seems so eloquent. No, no, all wrong . . . I cook.

I cook "French Bistro" style dishes. It has not always been this way. I started cooking Asian in the 1980s, in a wok over a hot gas burner. Rice was my staple. I made it in a pan.  What I fixed in the wok was the seasoning/sauces/bits-o-food to put over the rice. So, I started cooking "rice." I was young and I was happy. 

And I was thin. Now, I am not so thin. Nor can I plant my foot on the solid earth and spin a round-house kick over people's head. People used to call to me as I walked down the sidewalks in Chicago . . . "Hey! Steven. Steven Seagal. How yu doin'?" My name is indeed Steven, but my last name is NOT Seagal. I did have a pony-tail and dark eye-brows though . . ..

After becoming bored with "rice, rice and rice,"  I started to include other styles into my repertoire. And I relaxed a little.

After a period of experimentations, I moved away from multiple nationalities and styles. I focused only upon Italy and France. I had grown tired of so many ingredients and condiments in my cupboard ending up in the trash bin. Italy and France share similar ingredients. So again, I was happy, but not so thin. 

Apparently, I cook pasta well. I can boil water and not burn it. And I can use my Chinese cleaver appropriately to cut and prepare the ingredients for my pastas (I only rarely cut a finger). For me, there is something ethnically similar in Asian and Italian cooking. Both require the freshest of foodstuffs and no over-cooking. Dishes must be presented immediately when finished. Cooking Italian, I enjoyed making a pasta or risotto first course and then followed with a plate, usually featuring meat. Antipasto beforehand but after the before-dinner drinks - salad after the plate. All orderly and formal. Marcella Hazen was my guru and inspiration. I imagined myself an Italian at heart . . ..

As Marcella stated; 

“The explanation is that I consider cooking to be an act of love. I do enjoy the craft of cooking, of course, otherwise I would not have done so much of it, but that is a very small part of the pleasure it brings me. What I love is to cook for someone. To put a freshly made meal on the table, even if it is something very plain and simple as long as it tastes good and is not a ready-to-eat something bought at the store, is a sincere expression of affection, it is an act of binding intimacy directed at whoever has a welcome place in your heart. And while other passions in your life may at some point begine to bank their fires, the shared happiness of good homemade food can last as long as we do.”
― Marcella Hazan

Recently, I have diminished my desire in Italian meals. Perhaps it is that France is what is in my blood  (my parental grandmother was from France). Perhaps I just prefer French Wine over all others. Perhaps I am a French Snob . . . no matter. I am happy now cooking simple French dishes. What I have done all along before enters into the preparations. How can it not? 

As for my weight and health: I know what to do. There is an old saying, "Knowing what to do and not doing it, is not to know." Knowing is not enough, we must apply our knowing to know.

Wolf vs. Sheep

"The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care."

-Hugh MacLeod

The River - part 2

Throughout Europe, especially amongst monastic orders, the honeybee has been symbolic of the soul, death and rebirth. Bees were also closely connected to the priestly functions of the Druids. Amongst the native Navajo Indians comes the sacred concept of the Pollen Path. This shamanic path is certainly mystical, yet like most all of myth is based on practical elements and possesses a sound purpose. It represents the life source, as this path is the path to the center. The Navajo would sing:

"O beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me; I am on the Pollen Path."

This speaks of a kind of journey, a journey thru bliss. It is a journey to understanding the deepest aspects of the self, and the heart. It is of being one with creation, and of movement with our minds and bodies to that chthonic oneness with the earth, the spirit, and the cosmos.

Arthur Schopenhauer in his "Transcendent Speculation upon an Apparent Intention in the fate of the Individual" (1850) points out how the unfolding of seemingly unintended events and accidents in one's life give the appearance of a carefully constructed novel - as if all that ever happened, whether intended or not, represented integral elements of a larger unfolding destiny. Schopenhauer concludes "it (life) is one great dream dreamed by a single Being, but in such a way that all the dream characters dream too. Hence, everything links and accords with everything else."

This is a wonderful idea, where everything arises in mutual relation to everything else. So you can't go and blame anybody for anything. We are all together in this sort of sacred dance, each with their own part to play. Now as for personal choice, I don't think that any one of us has lived the life that we quite intended. We continue to struggle all our lives to that extent. But there is (to my mind), a sort of life-destiny pattern. Active awareness of that pattern while being in the moment is what I call being in the river. It is a level of consciousness where one is open to those sacred happening that come your way.

"Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt -marvelous error!-

That I had a beehive here inside my heart.

And the golden bees were making white combs

And sweet honey from my old failures."

- Antonio Machado

The River

I am convinced that there is an energy strata - a plane of consciousness that we all are sharing. Some more than others ponder and reflect on it.

I have had many meaningful experiences in my life that could have been considered coincidences. Often, to my thoughts and understandings, they were synchronistic with energy and vibrated with deep meaning. For instance: meeting somebody, having something kind of "click," and knowing that you are going to start doing something together that will become a major feature in your lives. Often in that very first meeting, the knowing that it is going to happen is right there before your eyes.

Other times I have had premonitions that something was going to happen, only to watch it come to pass. Living within time is a strange experience indeed!

But sometimes you can have the feeling that you are out of touch with that energy strata - that you are not in the flow. One has the experience of missing out. Perhaps the person sitting right next to you has the answers to your questions, but you are too distracted with issues to get the gift.

Spiritually being present in the moment is a good thing. It allows for you to be what I call being "in the river." When you are in the river, you feel as though there is an effortless journey unfolding. That you are being carried thru your spiritual progress.

It is when you choose to decide what path the river "should" take, things become difficult. Movement slows or stops entirely. Exertion increases. The experience is of struggle.

Sort of like swimming against a very powerful current.