There is no more Hollow feeling then being in a theater full of people laughing and living on cue and you can't feel enough human emotion to even smile. The dark just seem to roll in at those times, dark and soupy like living a night in a heat wave above 100 degrees. It was one of those spiraling mind thoughts that seem to repeat Instant by instant rolling down as my eyes peered out of the Blackness like two lights seeking Humanity on the screen in front of me. I couldn't reach to the human next to me, but if my eyes kept seeking maybe the rest of me would come out of the darkness. I was alone as I ever was sitting in the sea of people full of ebs and wains, emotion likened to tides that a lone ship sitting in the death hollows of a sea that never moves, sun beating down but never seen, unlite only the heat and night remained.
Thursday, July 15, 2021
Grave Yard Memoirs
I could hear him from the other hospital room oh, but more I could hear him deep inside my soul and mind. I heard his groans of pain long sorrowful moans and there was another voice loud and predominant I think it was his sister. I got the impression he was about 65 afroamerica wizened man with white hair and deep black wrinkles under his eyes as he had been fighting death Breath by breath for sometime. His sister was there in prayer and in loving support as those moments waned on. He was so afraid and I was so close it was like I was eye-to-eye with him even though he was on a breathing machine completely hooked up to equipment keeping him alive. He suffered so and I felt it in my bones. I felt for him and also had a message for him. I reached out and told him, "It's okay you can let go, it's okay to let go of the pain, you will be okay". I let him know basically he was going to heaven and it was real. I wonder if to him my voice must have sounded like an angel in his moment of peril as he crossed from this life to the next. I heard all the machines alarm from down the hall as his breath left him but this time it wasn't in Terror it was a sound of peace in this last sound mixed with a sigh not like the moaning before. I felt his soul leave seeming to disappear shaking free of the white sheets and beyond the yellow tiles that line the walls and rooms. The sound his sister made as his life left him with a shriek of Sorrow that I have a heard a breif few times in my life. I couldn't reach her to give any Solstice like I had her brother in her time of need , but of course she wasn't across the veil like I was.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Acorn Cap
We are so often defined by limitations that are set in front of us not by limitations we have set or surpassed. I just started a journey again. It opened the door to a lot of memories about the severity of my disability that I had pushed down from 10 years ago. The worst was the way I felt when I knew people were looking at me when I was in public fighting to regain a life that I would never see again. Life is like that; it moves on. I couldn't tell them my struggle and what stage I was in and I often didn't know for the first year or even more as my injury became a life long disability. I am revisiting that place but with an intent this time to again to heal. I went from a terrible state of seizures and loss of controls like walking well it is a spine issue. I went and learned to walk a long way then run, then run a long way until 4 years later I did a marathon. The point being in what I said at the beginning. I never ran more than 7-8 miles in my life, and I was the unreal fast without training for speed. 12 sec 100 meter in 20's. It took the disability that I still live with everyday, the one that I beat down after years and was the man who ran a 1/2 and then a full marathon 2013-14. I ran a 12.78 100 meter in 2013, 13.00 in 2014. I far surpassed anything in running I had done before in my life. I don't let people set my limitations anymore, That never ends well in heart of action and method of creation. My disability, well it does what it wants sometimes and that is my life. You see I can always decide to start running again. My only limitation is my disability, how far I want to go, and most of all how hard I fight. If I had a wish it might be that people might not so much see the falls as they do the fights. I started running again. Every day I run. I fall like I used to, I look like maybe I shouldn't be alone so stricken my stature in my battle as I fight the hill on my run, yet I get up, and I keep going. I come back the next day and do it all over again. Maybe I don't fall, but my disability is there with me often for all to see as I run, drag and push, interpose my inner struggle on the outside world by feats of personal relentlessness that I too recall from that time of running. I pick up an acorn top by the Oak as I run. I put them in a jar at home one by one. An acorn top can make the loudest whistle in the world, if you know how and have the patience to practice until you get it right. Be the little acorn cap, a bit of natures surprise and a testament to the will of humanity.
Ps. I don't know where that came from but it did.
THOR
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
2Pac - Better Dayz (Original Version)
"Profite De Ta Vie-Enjoy your life."
I am 52 years old and been in kitchens off and on for 34 years. It has been way more on than off, but homelessness and drug addiction can take its toll on anybody, so a few years off during that time following with college to get right again and rebuild. Am I saying too much? I rather just keep it real; I crossed 10 years clean. The pandemic has been terrible for the industry and even so after the spring break I was again in a kitchen feeding people even during the fires in Oregon. I wrote a essay back then about what it means to take people away from their worries to a special time or place, so they could have comfort for a meal. I posted it and gathered over a 1k comments on several platforms. The responses reminded me and I had reminded them about why we do what we do in the kitchen for long hours and not much pay often. We do it for joy of others and something else and that I found tonight and want to share. It is rare that a guest will actually ask to see the Chef/Cook to thank them for the meal, and it is rarer when we get 1-3 minuets to run out of the kitchen take a running high five and return to flip a steak. It is all shut down here for in house dinning in Oregon and I am not in the kitchen again now coming on 3 months. I dutifully make my own food still finding time to try new things, but then I have to eat it all or find someone to give it to. That of course is a joy when I find a hungry soul. Hmm, is that what we look for a hungry soul I ponder? Netflix and I have become very close with a long list of movies' that require finishing. It so happens tonight I found a gem. I am watching 'Julie and Julia' and keep listening to Meryl Streep enliven and channel Julia Childs and can hear both the voice of the book by Julia Childs I am reading and bring forth memories of watching Chef Childs as a young man. I took a pause, I note this for the Mexican Wedding cookies I again batched out are making a mess, and my cat loves to lick the sugar off if she gets a chance. I let her just to laugh when she gets a snootful of powdered sugar and then blast it on the table, and I am a nice fellow whoes cats love cookies. Well back to what I was saying about Julie and Julia which is on pause right now. Julie just rolled over sleeping while her timer went of for the Beef Bourguignon and I threw my hands in the air yelling "Nooooo". My cat looked at me with query wondering what had gone wrong and quickly pay me no attention. I had finished the cookie. I have been so excited during this movie as Julie had to kill the Lobster, Music: "Lobster killer ..." end music or as Julia talks about creating a mayo that is 'scientific' as she says. I get that. I often bring up TAT charts for recipe creation or break down concepts in scientific terms while discussing food on the internet and can match both Julie' and Julia's excitement of discovery that is our profession of culinary arts. The way that every cuisine is out there in print for everyone to see from all corners of the globe is a treasure that never runs out. I thought to myself how cool it was to follow an idea like cooking every recipe in The French Way like Julie is doing, then I remember that I did a cooking show for 5 years while I taught myself to walk, run, then ran a marathon in year 3 after my injury trauma and most of all I had to stop having my seizures from the trauma to get back into a kitchen. I did all sorts of cooking with 3k videos teaching people with the only thing I had Food Stamps and a camera. I don't advise getting hurt 2 terms from a degree, but well life happens. The need to stay involved was what drove me and it is exactly what drives Julie and Julia. Cooking is a way to reach not just yourself but others and that is the essence of what I want to say. If you might be down and out like many people are during this pandemic I suggest finding ways to rekindle that joy and passion of cooking that we all have who bustle the tile floors and stainless steel with monsters of heat all around in simple chaos of creation that is our place of comfort. I have so many books about cooking and I am always reaching out to fellow Chefs to speak food, but sometimes something is missing since I am not in a working kitchen. While watching this movie full of memories and laughter it brought much of that what seems to drift away, Joe my cat came looking for more cookies and snorted when none were evident just now. I thought I would stop and write to you all and say, "Bon Appetit" and more so "Profite De Ta Vie-Enjoy your life." I have told my doctor that "When you go to China, Brazil, or France the human body does not change, but for us Chefs the local food, products, and the cuisines all change and there is never and end to what we can learn."
