The Furious Spinner

I just got back home. Been out of town for a bit and on the run for a while. I have many unfinished posts. I start to write and then I don't finish because I haven't had time. Or something. Still behind in my writing work, but thems the breaks. It's summer, or nearly so, and I've got different priorities besides my books. I need/want to get the garden rototilled and planted...But wait. I won't bore you with my to-do list. I'll fascinate you with my what I've been doing summary. Naw. That's too much pressure. I'll just tell you what I've been doing, but I won't try to fascinate. If I can remember. I haven't gotten much sleep the past few days, and I'm in a bit of an altered state.

But you kinda like that, don't you? Admit it. I'm fun when I'm loopy. We all are.

So what's the haps? I told you I wanted to take cooking lessons from my friend. We did indeed have our first lesson. It was a ball. I had laryngitis, so I couldn't talk. This was a wee bit disconcerting for her, but we carried on...

I must pause to tell you I'm lookin' out my window as I'm typing. A storm is moving through. And I mean movin', babies! Five minutes ago, it was pouring down pissing down flooding down rain. And sleet. Or hail. That has stopped. Thunder rumbles. (Is there any better word for what Thunder does? Rumble.) The Weather Gang is in town and they is ready to rumble. The huge cauldron bubblin' white clouds are riding the thermals down through the gorge, exposing a patch of blue sky, reminding me of a dancer letting the material of her gown, dress, shawl slip down to reveal her round sensual kiss-inducing shoulder. Mmmmmm. To the south, the clouds slide past the green and black gorge cliffs. A close encounter of a glorious kind. The light green and black green conifers on those cliffs really pop after a rain. It's like seeing one of those old masterpieces before and after they've been cleaned. Now the sky skin is covered up with grey clouds again and the thunder is like the growl of a big old cat.

Anyway, I had my cooking class. We cooked together. We talked. I smelled every little bit of everything we used for our meal. I zested limes and was ecstatic with the sight of those bright green snippets of lime curls and overjoyed to smell them. It was a tangy smell. I pulled off the insides of the lime after we juiced it, and I sucked on that piece. Oh my word! Never tasted anything like it in my life. So tangy and sour. Lovely, lovely. We toasted cumin and ground it up and I smelled it. Same with oregano. Cinnamon. Cilantro. What a little tart cilantro is, isn't it? I never knew: the smell of cilantro is tart. And tangy. You may have figured out we were making a Mexican dish. Quinoa with cilantro, scallions, and a garlic lime sauce, and pinto beans with carrots and onions and a myriad of sensual herbs and rice. In any case, it was a delightful meal and I've been cooking up a storm and using the wisdom she imparted on me since then.

I started two or three posts about the cooking classes, but I haven't finished any, and I probably won't. It was two weeks ago. We were going to meet every week in her tiny house out in the country, but she's moving to New Mexico so The Unified Field Theory of Spices or Saffron Butterflies and Cinnamon Quills may be finished. Kaput. Or on hold. Of course those of you who have been hanging around for a while at FS know that the food thang ain't going away with me. I think our connection with food as nourishment and as a source of communal experience is very important.

I wish you could see the light here now. It's amazing. Betwixt and between time. The raindrops on the window are reflecting the sweet light that floats through the gorge right now like some wistful spirit looking for someplace to alight for a spell.

Did I already tell you my sense of smell went away again? I went off the nasal meds, as was always my plan, Stan. About a week or two later, my sense of smell disappeared. I was so upset. Can't express to you the depths of my despair. Truly. Not exaggerating. I went to the docs and she looked up my schnoz. Wasn't looking good. Went back on the meds. Smell came back the next day. I was dancing in the freaking streets. Right now my nose meds are also a great antidepressant. I will endeavor to go off them again after everything is all calmed down in my ol' sinus caves.

What else? After I cooked all day one day last week, I went to school and talked to about twenty 12 and 13 year olds. They had all read my book Broken Moon. I had a ball! Anyone who thinks kids nowadays are stupid hasn't spent any time with kids. These children were articulate. They had their own opinions. It was so much fun. It was fascinating to me what they liked about the book. They said they liked learning about other cultures and seeing how they lived. Someone asked me if I had "gotten in trouble" because Nadira was Muslim and she uses the word Allah. I said no, Nadira is a Muslim and they call God Allah. I thought that was an interesting question. They also wanted to talk about what actually happened to her. Was she "just" beaten up? Or was she raped? Did it matter what actually happened? They had quite a discussion about that. They talked about how Nadira felt about her scar by the end of the book. I've got two more of these discussion groups in the next month or so. I really like it when they've read the book ahead of time. I've done this with adult groups, too. It's interesting, as a writer, to hear people actually discuss my stories! And it's great for the readers to ask the author what was going on in the book or why you did this or that. (Of course, I often say, "What do you think?")

I've also been attending the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy group in Portland, the eight week course based on Jon Kabat Zinn's Stress Reduction Program. It's a group of one, did I say? Me and two facilitators. I don't care. I am determined to get on board with this. I've had my ups and downs these past two months. Quite a few downs, actually. But I'm learning to deal with them, learning not to struggle so hard against the downs. It's kind of workin' for me. By the way, the new book The Mindful Way through Depression" Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn is out; it's pretty much the course, the group, in a book, with a CD.

This weekend I went to a workshop. It was exhilarating, but I haven't hardly slept in three nights. I'm gonna rest and relaxacate. When the rain passes, I hope to go dig in the Earth. Say hello to Mom Earth.

Tomorrow.

Mañana.

May You Walk, Dance, Play, Pray, Love in Beauty!

Labels: Broken Moon, food, mindfulness, sleep

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Friday, May 11, 2007

Speechless