Cooking with chaos,
everyday from scratch.
Summer mourning gone.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking. And that is not a typo, the mourning is gone. I am no longer lusting after the summer of lazy, idle sunlight and gratifying heat. No, I am relishing the chance to energize the movement of clarification, purification. What will I take with me into the next season, what will I leave to compost? What is the essence of my Summer that I can articulate, what can be released to the world so it can have a new life on someone else’s time.
I’ve always loved Fall.
And I’ve always enjoyed cooking but not quite like this.
Pie after pie. [the best grain-free pie crust ever! I made this one with blueberries, blackberries, apples and pears before it was over.] Mole, Chili, Meatloaf, Fennel Egg Soup, Coconut Creamed Spinach. The list is pretty nearly endless. Making a joy, an art, out of a necessity brings me some very deep relief. While fording the stream of a great transit in my life, I am alternately elated and despairing, moved to tears and dancing with complete abandon or paralyzed by fear, afraid to even leave the house, both on account of the simplest moment. Either way, I’m just in the middle of it.
Chaos reigns. From one day to the next, I don’t know what will demand my attention, what I may have forgotten about, what may come streaming in with so much light it cannot be ignored. Fact is, I think this is actually just how things are. If I look around at the way things grow in the natural world, I can see all their chaos. I can see when they didn’t get enough light or water and how they had to twist to survive. Why should we humans be any different? When I have to twist, I grow, I stretch, I see new vistas. And I feel the burn. The burn might be the burn of incinerating all that keeps me trying to rigidly look straight ahead while things fall down around me or the burn of soreness as I stretch to meet random invitations coming at inopportune times or the burn of ignition as creative excitement responds to those new vistas.
Incinerate; bless, celebrate, appreciate, feel the heat, relax.
Soreness; encourage, attend, more appreciation, input, exercise.
Ignition; go, don’t wait, jump in, make waves, go all colorful.
Nature eats chaos for breakfast. [Check out Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for more on this topic] More chaos equals more beauty, more creativity, more lushness, more growth. Can I do that? Can I allow the chaos to be a force for growth, for beauty, for strength rather than a force I must fight? Chaos is both the birth and death of all things. Discovering what is dying and what is being born seems to be my task. What is dying and how can I ease its passage to the next incarnation? What is being born and how can I ease its passage into this world?
Something more than old is dying in me. Something that lingered, that demanded me to remain small, unnamed, unseen, is dying. The ashes of its life are rich and dark. I will treasure them. Something so bright is being born. Words are its lifeblood, this new being, and the words will be honored and shared, gathering energy for this new life. Who knows what will emerge, what this being will grow into?
You are such a beautiful writer, and thinker, Josephine. Poetic. I see the need to tackle food in a new way. Lack of seasons where I live is less inspiring. Will have to look for different inspiration.