I hope that the raggedness can be overlooked as one would overlook dirt on a child or wrinkles on a beloved grandmother. It is life I want to see here, to communicate. It is messy and beautiful.
Thought
Reply
Author Archives: Robin Crow
Turn
Bands of sunlight alternate with blue shadow
Across Italian ice snow.
I pass through enchantment laid in pools,
Breathing Purim air:
The air of promise,
Promising, promising….
Warm early summer alternates with cold,
And my steps dance with the flux,
Slipping and regaining in my worn, wet boots.
A Little Bit o’ Mystical Humor
.jpg)
Tat Tvam Asi
“I am that I am.” ~ Yahweh
“I yam what I yam.” ~Popeye
People
My kryptonite and my lifeline. What I think people think I should be or am, and fighting against it. Meeting people and exchanging various forms of love, nourishing each another, often in the most ordinary places (passing a stranger on the sidewalk and sharing a smile). I’m lucky to tread a balance, but often stray into hopeless entanglement with my need to label everything and tell myself what it means. To grab hold of it and make it something instead of letting it be whatever it is.
The trick is to always stand on your own two feet–to always know where you are and engage from there, instead of trying to figure out where the other person is and act from that imagined place.
The trick is doing it not just writing about it.
My two feet.
A Thought from Grandpa Joe.
We must be willing to get rid of
the life we’ve planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.
If we fix on the old, we get stuck.
When we hang onto any form,
we are in danger of putrefaction.
Hell is life drying up.
Excerpt from A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
What do you call it when you don’t write? Hell? Oh, block.
2:44am.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written. Just woke from a dream in which a woman is talking about writing with a fountain pen and how it is perfect for those times when you know what you want to write, and it is relatively short. Then I woke up and thought, I guess she prefers the more even, reliable flow of a modern pen for the hard work of just starting to write, when you don’t know what you want to say–or when you have a lot to say but you haven’t been saying it, so it’s backed up and clogged and things are going to get messy enough without adding a fountain pen into the mix. That’s what I thought–because I’ve never used a fountain pen, but I imagine they are messy.
Because
You can start anywhere, and there will still be stuff before that, just as pertinent to the story you want to tell. But you have to start somewhere, so a good recipe.
I’m supposed to have a game plan, a clear picture of where this is going, but honestly, the idea started in 2004, and if I don’t start I never will–so I’m just going to start.
We live in very interesting times. Can I quote William Blake so early without being judged pretentious? “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” And, oh yes, we are all the best and the worst.
What I envision is a bit of salve–healing the worst and encouraging the best in whoever it may. But it may not, and that is OK too. I just know that if I don’t write about the stuff I’m thinking I feel like I’m surviving, and if I do I feel like I’m in love.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
To outline the idea of Human Nation News, basic premises:
- We’ve outgrown the us-them thing, and we need to think of all humans as part of the same group. We’re out here in space, on a planet we’ve nearly made uninhabitable for this number of people in the future, and we need to recognize we are one. Or not. But if we don’t and we continue on this path we’re on….it ain’t gonna be pretty.
- Most of us know this at some level, but think we’re a minority, or that for one of a few reasons it’s impossible to change what has developed over centuries: it’s like turning the Titanic. But I believe we can turn on a dime, like schools of fishes or flocks of birds.
- In fact, we are a majority.
- I believe in the power of words, music, art, and the stories we tell to nourish the best in us, and also to feed the worst in us. We are given too much feed, and I intend to nourish.
Good night, and good luck.
(But as a professor I know says, make your own luck.)
In the Beginning
There was a recipe. A very good, plain recipe to nourish the body and mind.
Lentils, Monastery Style
(Adapted from Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lappé)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon marjoram
3 cups seasoned stock
1 cup lentils, rinsed
Salt to taste (if using cooking sherry and/or store-bought stock, add salt at table if desired)
¼ cup fresh chopped flat (Italian) parsley
14oz can diced tomatoes
¼ cup dry sherry
⅔ cup grated Swiss cheese
2 large onions, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon marjoram
3 cups seasoned stock
1 cup lentils, rinsed
Salt to taste (if using cooking sherry and/or store-bought stock, add salt at table if desired)
¼ cup fresh chopped flat (Italian) parsley
14oz can diced tomatoes
¼ cup dry sherry
⅔ cup grated Swiss cheese
Saute onions and carrots in olive oil until onions are translucent. Add herbs and stir, then add lentils and tomatoes, and cook 45 minutes or so, until lentils are tender. Add parsley and cook another 5 minutes. Add sherry at last minute. Serve in bowls, over a generous pinch of Swiss cheese, or put grated Swiss on top. Good with corn bread or a nice sourdough.