*sigh*.  Just when I was feeling a bit, tiny, tiny, tiny bit better about President Obama.  The Partner wanted to hear the State of the Union speech; he was surprised that I couldn’t have cared less.  We tried streaming it but our internet provider (who I now hate, thoroughly.  I can’t even update my software on this…”service”.) is not quite up to streaming, or much else.   So I read the speech out loud.  We both thought it had some good stuff, Maynard.  Along with the mention of the “small business owner in rural America who can’t sell HER (!) products abroad” (this was connected to an internet topic, but still…), it seemed to contain some common sense, cogent ideas.  So when I saw today that, yes you gullible kids, even though SOPA and PIPA went down, President Obama had already signed in on an agreement that required no Congressional or Judicial oversight or approval at all, LAST OCTOBER, that provides for the mandate of all (as in every single one) ISPs to maintain total information about everything you do on line, and terminate your connection and ability thereto if you violate their rules.  Which of course….are meant to protect the Intellectual Property…of….wait for it!…. all the people who were backing SOPA and PIPA.  Pharma, Entertainment.  Etcetera.   Many countries have already signed on, and apparently the EU and Mexico have indicated that they will sign.  Sometime.

More uplift? Not so much.   It made me a bit crazed for a minute, that revelation.  But then I remembered this.  One of the really big things the Internet has done is allow people all over the world to relate to each other on a peer level.  Share their concerns and realities.  Work toward solutions.  Realize, in short, that we are not alone- we are really all together.  I think about the indomitable spirit out there among all who struggle with the daily obstacles of poverty, injustice, who work toward a better world for all in whatever way they can.  So I decided to take the Dalai Lama’s advice: No reason for too much worry.   I think we will all do just fine, because we’re already doing the work.  Once the inner uproar subsides and the inner back relaxes back down, it can be seen that all this negative, let’s just say it: evil, stuff will sink under its own weight, as those who strive for the good keep moving in the right direction.   Not without cost, but without giving up on truth, and beauty, and love.  No matter what.

And here we are finally at the initial thinking of today.  The Partner is a carpenter, builds houses and all sorts of things.  He was talking about how wood has to be a certain percent dry before building in order for the house to be stable.  Too wet, it’s bad, too dry, also bad.  The resonance of the place is off because the parts are energetically, so to speak, out of synch, so things don’t fit together in the end.  Everything is moving after all, everything has magnetic and electrical currents.  So when a house isn’t in synch with itself, the materials are not really integrated with each other-  it probably won’t be with you either. It is like when you’re looking for a place to live and some places make you really comfortable, others make you want to run and hide.    Out of synch things don’t last as long or as well, either.  Recently I also read a study that discovered (amazing, but there it is that such a thing as this has to be “discovered”) far better health outcomes for poor people who were placed in attractive and harmonious surroundings.  I mean: it doesn’t take much to realize that someone is going to do a whole lot better with their asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes or whatever it might be if they’re living in a well maintained, reasonably safe, light, clean, pleasing to look at place.  Instead of being crammed into some apartment in a dangerous location.   What all this said to me was that we live in a society, a culture, that expects- demands, really- that you do whatever is in front of you whether it is in accord with you or not.  You do a beastly job and you’re thankful because you’re not starving, or on a somewhat higher level you dog paddle because you can buy things you think will make you happy.  You cross borders illegally to work, or you live apart from your family because that’s where your good job sent you.  Or the new one you got after being unemployed sent you.  You live wherever you can find a place, and this can range from awful squalor to simply a cramped place in a neighborhood you like if that’s the level you’re at on the monetized scale.  You may buy a house because of the staging or the prestige of the location, not because you are comfortable in it and really like it yourself.   But nothing is really in synch, in accord, moving in complementary directions.  To me it means that we have a society in which people  are deeply out of touch with themselves, their real goals and aspirations, their physical realities; the prevailing paradigm reinforces that to a big extent.  So we have people who are physically unwell, mentally unwell, all because while we may say that individual rights are important, they really aren’t.  The pressure to do what you “have to” is overwhelming for many and their individuality lessens and lessens as a result.  From my point of view in terms of health particularly, we really do need to be mindful of what is in resonance with us, and what is not.  This is the first step toward awareness, which is what leads toward action of any kind, whether it is toward better health or a better attitude or a better school district, or whatever.  Action taken in resonance is right action because it is action that is in connection, properly, with what is around it.   Right action is what we all need, all the time.  It really isn’t that hard, once you take the first step.  And remember, No need for too much worry!

We had been talking yesterday about Freud, the Partner and I.  You have to remember, said the Partner, that Freud was a GUY.  A brilliant, deep thinker who had something that had to come out of him- not something he particularly formulated.  What came out of him was basically a description of twentieth century man, not necessarily a key to human behavior. ( The Partner is a pretty smart guy, yes?).  I’m thinking specifically about Freud’s linking of almost EVERYTHING to sexual repression.  Guilt.  I took a seminar on him in college and thought, basically, if I had to read about how Dora “fingered her reticule” under therapeutic questioning just one more time…I’d go crazy.  But it did make me think about how this sort of characterization has become an accepted analysis of things in many ways.  And it may not be correct at all, or certainly not to the extent that our society has absorbed it.  The hierarchy of values Freud implied has manifested in the free for all, greed driven, unconscious motives to the front semi-catastrophe we call the world today. ( In my admittedly grossly oversimplified opinion.)

So, fast forward to this morning.  I’m thinking about the enormity of the things Cleaves writes about, and thinking about the enormous variation in people, things, EVERYTHING, that just is by nature.  It’s a bit of the luck of the draw what can happen to you, really, even though as humans I suppose we all want to feel more or less inviolable.  (Which is laughably and sadly not the case.)   Everyone is not, actually, equal and those who are “less equal” suffer the consequences- what happens. for example, to the baby who is born with gender disarray? or in the Sudan?  It’s a long road to the top if you want to rock and roll, Gentle Reader.  And we can find ourselves doing whatever we have to, to maintain our sanity.  Even if it makes us actually crazy. (the Partner, again.)

WHICH REALLY DOES LEAD US TO THIS MORNING.  We, the Partner and I, may be suffering from some dystopian dysphoria, as I suspect anyone would if they’d spent the past two years as we have.  But wrestling with reality every day is rigorous.  I thought about people who are imprisoned for their views or way of being, and of those who are able to come out of that experience ALIVE, unbroken and functional.  So these periods of being in the dark are, I thought,  in a way like involuntary confinement.  And seen in that light, keeping it together, ourselves together and sound to the greatest possible degree,  is a revolutionary necessity.  If we are to inhabit a better world, we have to make it so ourselves.  That can involve some tough sledding.  What we have to offer may be rejected regardless of its merit.  But we cannot give up what we know to be fundamental truths- about justice, fairness, equity, not violating everything that moves just because we can- under even the most challenging situations of pain and duress.  There is always a way.  That way may not be the one that gives the immediate reward, the sense of accomplishment, or even a sense of belonging to anything anywhere, and it can certainly be a way that causes those around you to perhaps Not Be Very Nice.  But there IS a way, there is a path, there is a tide, there is a time.  The patience required, and the surrender, is big.  But we’re doing something new, and also tremendously old, here.  Not reinventing the wheel, but finally understanding how to use it.

My supplier was struggling to maintain composure through the many calls she had to make to tell people their orders weren’t going to happen. It made me feel terrible.   I called another source who reminded me that, as small businesses, manufacturers don’t really give a flying whizzbang about you.  They decide what to make, what not to, and you as the tee tiny business person out there get to, essentially, retool on a dime.  It took a huge amount of tooth gritting determination to keep my mind from completely exploding (again) when I think about the TOTAL FREAKING HYPOCRISY that is rampant, about “small business”, “job creation”, “support for entrepreneurs”, “getting America back to work”, blahblahblahblah….BLAH.   As a small business person, I have not found that support or help terribly available.  I couldn’t get a Small Business Loan at the startup because….I hadn’t been in business long enough.  I really liked that.  The bank wouldn’t lend me any money unless I essentially bought my car over again.  Once per car is enough, don’t you think?   I’d love to be able to expand and JEEZ, maybe even hire someone to help us.  That is definitely out there in fantasy land at this point, as the Partner and I toil on here in Biodynamic World.  But anyway.

I’m trying to maintain a calm, easygoing, upbeat attitude about all this.  It’s just change! A shift in direction! We’ve been thinking that we should raise our prices a bit.  The only jars I can find that are remotely acceptable now are  bigger than our current ones and a fair bit more expensive.  It makes sense to raise the price on something when you’re getting more of it, doesn’t it?   So we get to ponder this price point stuff too.  There’s a whole ecosystem for that, too.  At this point, my products aren’t expensive enough for people with  money to be too interested in them- they are lovely, they work, they’re good for you, but sadly no Swank Factor it would seem.  If we raise the price,  current customers are going to think twice, and we hope continue their purchases but after all.  Things are dicey and money is funny.   This is the life, Gentle Reader!

On a positive note, at least SOPA and PIPA, those two mutant darlings, are off the table at present.  Probably to be..retooled! and brought out again but nonetheless, something good happened there.  Tonight I’m making ravioli (hence today’s title),  another guided meditation to  keep everything loosely connected while we fly through the air hoping there’s a trapeze out there somewhere.  That tree branch I got stuck in last night wasn’t, in the end, all that comfortable.

We have drama brewing apace here on the hill, which used up quite a bit of my time today.  The good news was that our landlady had indeed returned on Monday with plumbing parts, did fix the leak to a certain degree, and then?  The pipes froze.  That was yesterday.  So when the phone rang and the day went to hell right off the top, I guess I was temporarily buoyed up by the knowledge that the pipes weren’t frozen TODAY! All the water I’d put in buckets all over the yurt could stay there for now! Just in case! And even though my mail wasn’t reaching its important destinations and my calls weren’t being returned, there was still a (temporary) sense of having backed away from the actual edge of the cliff.   But back to the Drama.  Perhaps the importance is in knowing when to say something, when not.  Also to whom.  Stupidity, however, IS forever quite often, and attempting to provide redress to that fundamental gaping hole in things is pretty damned hard.  This particular case in point showcased my general tendency to jump in, sort things out, get the life boat provisioned, and other people’s willingness to send me straight to the front.  Etcetera.  But then I thought, hmmmm.  When it’s drama, and high drama at that, the messenger often gets shot so really it is probably better to wait until everyone is calmer. It has also been brought to my attention that people don’t listen all the time, and that being the case a different approach than talking might be better.  But then people may indeed experience the consequences of their own actions, which sometimes has a scattershot effect, and in this case would be highly undesirable to say the least.

So.  Public policy.  How do you get people to actually act in their own best interests?   A spot of news listening doesn’t cast much light on this, either.  Boehner of our existence, WTF?  SOPA? PIPA?  I actually heard someone say that these bills are, get this! ABOUT JOBS.  Zillions of innocent people will lose their jobs if these bills are not passed because…er….piracy of films online will…..why, it will…..Totally did not get the connection there, except that JOBS are a catchword now, used by Republicans in every context whether appropriate or not.    I think if I hear…(well, and here it is! ONE MORE TIME! Mitt and Newt running their mouths with minimal brain engagement and maximal use of “job creation” ) any more malarkey about jobs I will scream.  Pardon me……

The birds screamed for me just now, the sweethearts.  Still.  It is really something to be on this runaway train.  We can’t agree that climate change is real in the Hallowed Halls of Legislation but we can sure wade in and make sure censorship is alive and well, because why? Because it’s easier than tackling the actual problems of the world.  And? Because the money has to stay where it is.  The laws will still be broken, criminals will still succeed, but by cracky we’re striking a blow for….certainly not democracy.  I wonder what they’re going to call it this time.  All they really need to do now is put Monsanto in charge of the internet, and their work would be done here, the forks could be removed.  They could go back to being Job Creators!  I suspect our fine legislators are just as confused as we are, however, because I also heard something quite interesting from one of them this past week, something to the effect that half of the people in the US don’t pay income tax.  This, it turned out,  was an allusion to people at or below the poverty line not having to pay income tax.  Therefore, it would seem that this person was saying that half the people in the US are at or below the poverty line.  Wow, I thought.  Inadvertent truth!

Anyway.  The sky is completely clouded over, no visibility and dark falling rapidly.  The weather is changing, and winter may have actually arrived in full force.  This will make the coming week a logistical nightmare but what else is new?  Meantime, I found a recipe for pinto beans with garlic and red wine (Lynn Rosetto Kasper, in the JPR Monthly)  and it is a winner.  Simplified:  Cook beans in pressure cooker.  Saute finely diced carrot and onion until beginning to brown, then add 8 or so thinly sliced garlic cloves, cook until they are softened.  Then, a cup and a half of red wine, bring to simmer lower heat and let reduce to almost nothing.  THEN, add beans and their broth, let cook for a half hour or so to meld flavors.    This was a really good variation on pinto beans, and with some good bread makes a good meal.  Tonight we’ll probably make something spicier with them, which it is now time to ponder.  Chili? Cumin? The challenge of making something interesting from a basic and often used ingredient, as well as something good out of nothing particular, is always eventually very enlivening.  Thank goodness.

I was talking to an old friend who remarked that parsing ideas was becoming ever more difficult.  BOY HOWDY, I said.  Sometimes you find yourself simply unable to respond to things.  Anyway, it being Sunday we’re listening to Harry Shearer again.  Monsanto!  Mitt Romney!  UGH!   Not to mention all the local excitements of dwelling here in the land the BiPolar Express visited once and then forgot.  As in, restraining orders being tacked onto neighborhood bulletin boards with warnings scrawled thereon in lipstick.  But who’s counting?  The entire world seems to be more than a bit excitable.

And so time moved on and found us here at Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, erstwhile holiday.  I had actually thought about writing about that today until I found that we were unexpectedly  back at the part of the film titled “FUN WITH PLUMBING”.  The Partner had noticed a growing leak at the pumphouse (of the relatively recently replaced well, another fun time) which this morning culminated in:

The landlady’s husband turning off the water without telling anyone, then leaving.  He does things like that.

The landlady calling and saying they were BOTH leaving, she’d turned the water back on, and if anything happened THEY DIDN’T DO IT.   This was fun.   In addition, The Partner responds especially well to stimulus of this sort.  The water was indeed on, which also meant that it took some time for it to get back to a point where it would come out of our faucet.  This did finally happen, accompanied by huge spurts and sprays, green water (just like before!), muck, nothing, spurts…I decided to bite the bullet and wash dishes.  While I could, sort of thing.

While engaged in this attempt at productivity, I found my inner voice going: WTF! Am I the worst person on the planet or what? Why me??? Screw the easy button! That’s not good enough any more!  I can’t take any more of this (spurt, spray, glob, wild temperature fluctuation, rinse and repeat).  I NEED A NEW LIFE RIGHT NOW.  Then as if in some sort of dizzying technical display, I saw every plumbing fiasco I’ve ever experienced flash before my eyes.  There was the festive house where the original owner had used the wrong kind of materials when building the bathroom with the following results:

1) There was a constant ring of slugs around the base of the toilet until it eventually fell through the floor.  This was resolved by calling a plumbing company run and exclusively staffed by the Hell’s Angels.  Oh, yes.  During this time the sewer line from the street backed up into the bathtub also.  Tree roots, don’t you know.

2) Shortly after the toilet and floor and whatnot was…er…fixed, the shower wall/back outer wall of house, collapsed in due to…well, see toilet bowl above.    This repair took MONTHS.  Then the landlord’s son knocked up his girlfriend and I got shown the door.  Isn’t that always the way?  You just get things the way you want them, viz basic amenities, and then, whammo!  So.  Ultimately after looking at a variety of lodgings that made me cry,  I moved to another seemingly fine house in another adjacent town, where this happened:

Every drain in the place spewed straight up and then an air lock descended and nothing would move.  THIS TIME, I missed the Hell’s Angels.  This time, I got the Persian Plumber who, after thwacking, hemming and hawing, saying things along the lines of women should never go near plumbing, got up on the roof to clear out the roof vents.  Barefoot.  With his roto rooter thing, which smashed into, yes you guessed it! the kitchen window I had just replaced because it had gotten shaken loose in the earthquake and…..

This, in short, is how things Usually Go In My Life.  Apparently I am still delusionally attempting to pretend that I have a NORMAL LIFE.  Normal, schnormal.  Now I’m just working on telling myself that, uh, that……surely there’s something I can do today that will at least lend this Punch and Judy show the air of having a plot.  Meanwhile, the landlady’s back, perhaps with piping.  We’ll see what happens.   If we dare………..

But at the moment,  the concept we’re getting the Intensive on is perception.  We see what we expect to see.  So, when we’ve misplaced something for example, it can take a long time to find it because we, perhaps unconsciously, keep looking at where we expect it to be instead of clearing our mind’s eye and scanning the whole area impartially.  Of course Attitude influences Perception.  So, on that last lengthy trip down the rabbit hole I couldn’t get right side up for a while because my attitude was…on a par with a squashed Dixie cup.    I do feel that the Stuff that’s Going On right now is affecting how everyone on earth feels, whether they know it consciously or not.  So many things are staring us all in the face at present we just can’t see it all.   And that can make it seem as though there are no options, not just for whatever we’re trying to figure out, but at all.  That, of course, does not help at all.

So, when my kind Gentle Reader mentioned that…well, basically tags have a purpose….it was a tiny bubble moment.  Because what I saw was that, essentially, tags are a way of describing something, in a specific sort of shorthand way.  The way *I* look at thing like tags is as a broad philosophical sweep that doesn’t include enough concrete definition.  To oversimplify.  And? This is an ongoing feature of my challenging engagement with The World.  Who knew?  So that was a really good piece of information and now? Now I get to learn how to do something new.  Analyze things in a totally different way.  I’d come to the conclusion, while sitting in a small and wonderful German cafe in Berkeley waiting for my mechanic, that I’d raked over the coals so much they all had parts in their hair and I was no closer to either question or answer than ever.  This meant that once again I had brilliantly replicated Einstein’s definition of insanity.  Something I’m really good at, as it happens.  So the idea of looking at things in a piece by piece way instead of an amorphous all overish way…well, it’s different.    I managed to pull myself together, mop my eyes, snag my notebook and write down the salient points, just as a start.  There was a bit of a distraction- or perhaps a clue- provided by two women sitting next to me eating lunch.  They were discussing how so very  many people they knew were out of work and desperate, needing to be “taken in” (in one case), and how they (the two women) weren’t going to do that.  “Something will happen” they said.  “He/She/They will be all right.”  And so they kind of tagged all that as managed.  Not their problem.

Seeing as how I felt some not small similarity to the Unemployed Individuals, and nothing in the following interactions of the afternoon  made me feel much better about Things as They Are, and I had actually starting writing some defining words down in that cafe (OMG, I thought.  Now I’m one of those people sitting at a cafe table writing! Holy Cats!), when I got home to the Tag Comment, it was like a big light went on.    My teacher used to say that true listening is healing.  And we all need a witness.  It’s just that sometimes that witness has to perform a describing function to complete the circle, as it were.  Things now are on a knife edge, and clarity is fundamental to the navigation of that edge.  I drove back up north, through the gathering dusk, purple clouds and rolling brown hills (now we’re in a drought, usually they’d be green) feeling all of us hurtling through space toward whatever destination there may be.  We may, and probably do, tell ourselves that “something will happen” implying a dramatic rescue, but I think we’re at a point now where Tags are, really, not just our friends but important ones.  We have to start calling things by their proper names.  Otherwise we won’t be able to see the whole picture.

When the Partner came into my life, he came bearing a Martin Yan rice cooker.  I had always thought rice cookers were silly, WHICH JUST SHOWS YOU WHAT I KNOW.  (Also demonstrated in my last post. *sigh*)  However, after a few years of use and live and learn, I can now say that this rice cooker is practically the best thing ever.  Ever.  It is amazing.  It produces perfect rice, and holy cow.  If you follow instructions? Amazing.  I finally started soaking my basmati rice for about 20 minutes before cooking, like it says in the..instructions…and using butter instead of olive oil.  Now I Am A Rice Genius.  All because of this stellar piece of equipment.  You can even make risotto in it.  And sweet potato, saffron, tomato or artichoke heart rice.   And the beauty is that after the initial soaking? You turn it on and IGNORE IT.  Which I really like.

So tonight in the midst of my dis-inspiration post re-entry into earth’s atmosphere, we’re having roasted vegetable chickpea curry.  Over wonderful, individually tasty and non-stuck to pan, rice.   We’ll discuss the armed struggle it took to get this written another time.  Thank you, Gentle Reader.

There are a lot of things it seems I’ve forgotten lately, and at times I feel like an amnesiac in my own life.  Probably it is just the cumulative stress of the past couple of years; at the same time it’s as though things are slipping away and freeing up space, turning some lights on and others off.  It isn’t all bad, at times even restful.   Not remembering things, not keeping the same old opinions- for a minute there’s a feeling of freedom and openness.  The trick is to keep on the sunny side of life, of course.   Mostly it’s interesting to encounter daily life in what amounts to a whole new way.  Other times it is tremendously alienating, very lonely, cognitively dissonant.  Reconstructing a whole life is quite a project, and of course generally? You get to do that after a moment’s leap that may have been years in preparation but remained largely unconscious in nature.  It’s all a big surprise.   It amounts, in this case, to being in a sort of exile where the past has been wiped away and the future stretches out from an inchoate present.  I think many must be feeling this sense of dislocation now, given the times and the tenor thereof.  But it’s difficult.

Meanwhile, here it is yet another year, time marches on and all that.  Realizing that the lay of the land has changed in a timely way is important to running a business.    The digital world, for example.  All kinds of apparent rules, SEOs and niches and what not.  At the end of the day, it’s like a big race to the bottom.  So many “opportunities” that seem to me to be rather parasitic.  Sell this product to x number of people and then you’ll get money from them and the people they sell the product to….ye olde Pyramid Scheme.  The market place is full of middlemen and the flow of things is indirect.  But, you gotta do what you gotta do, right?  Still it seems to me that a system built on consumption may not be the most long lasting.  The producers of commodities get relegated to a lower and lower status, and the people who step in and affiliate themselves (!) to sell said commodities seem to be able to dictate everything about how those things get distributed, sold, for how much and when.    So I see more and more people falling behind because they can’t sell what they produce for enough to live a simple life.   Thus they stop producing those things.  Then what happens?  If you look at agriculture, you can see that one or two things happen pretty routinely.  The commodity disappears, the original thing itself is no more.  Except.  It morphs into something that is mass produced and whose value is completely controlled by those who control the means of production.  Think food.  Chickens, for example.  You have no idea how that chicken you’re eating was raised, what it ate, whether it was genetically modified or what.  But the individual farmer, who used to raise chickens- actual real chickens for sale in a market- is hard to find in the maze of agribusiness.  The same thing happens with the things I make.  The hours I spent trolling through resources and visiting people and giving talks and handing out samples.  To find that even a small, local grocery/natural foods/health store in a small place gets provisioned through a larger, middle man, entity.  And whatever that entity carries is what the store will sell.  Whether you have a small, feasible, competitive product, or not.  So it’s interesting.  The dance card is filled in advance.  I still believe that success is possible, but it is a question of scope and degree more than one might have thought.   Perspective, what really matters, what you really need- all that sort of thing, right?

So, in pondering the New Year Business Plan,   how to “increase traffic” to the things I do,  the website and this blog and stuff, I find that generally I’ve jumped through all the hoops.  Except that I don’t put pictures on the blog, which apparently is CRUCIAL, Gentle Reader.  Crucial.  If you don’t have pictures there’s nothing for searchers to hang on to, more or less.  Then there are all those bloggers I follow who quite often post nothing BUT pictures.  Also, the places I do post pictures (website, for example) I do get a lot of traffic.  Yes.  But it is from people who come and download my pictures and text and that’s all that happens.  I suppose I could say you’re welcome, but really.  So I’m ambivalent about the picture thing, let’s just say.  And, meanwhile, yet another computer fiasco so I can’t even GET to my pictures at the moment.  A little matter of the photos going into downloads instead of the photo app.  *sigh*

Meanwhile we’re trying to slog through things and as usual, even though I had a firm and fast Important List of Things To Get Done, the universe intruded with a series of informational sequences, of which I am still trying to unravel the meaning, for the most part.  It doesn’t look altogether good.

BUT.  Nils desperendum, right?  I’m glad we don’t have TV- even though the Partner is ramping up his active campaign to get something that allows network and public television to enter the yurt- because I’m not sure I can handle listening to doom and gloom about 2012, which according to all reports is verging on incessant.  A whole year of that?  Not to mention the election.  “   “.   It is true, we think here, that at this point the media is pretty much straight out propaganda.  Who really believes the “recession” is “over”?  Or that Iraq was a “success”?   It’s all very peculiar.

And thus, perhaps all our perceptions are happening on a gradient.  It’s all relative in a way.  Supposedly the U.S. is “the best” country in the world.  What is that based on?  An old idea of how things were, how they might have been at one time.  Perhaps it is a question of how much really horrible stuff goes on unchecked and tacitly endorsed, this “best”?  We watched The Kite Runner the other night.  I was struck by how, at the same time, the characters seemed exactly like anyone, anywhere, and also totally horrific things transpired which are the sort of things that make people say that, in comparison,  the horrific performing group is “backward”.  Or “bad”.  Or whatnot.  And this was all happening in the same arena, so to speak.  Just as it always is.  So perhaps the U.S. contention of being the “best” is based on an old standard of decency that doesn’t altogether exist.  Our society now lets its weakest members suffer, and cant and hypocrisy rule the day to all appearances.  Anyway it made me think about how easy it is for us to judge each other, and how afraid so many people are.  They’re afraid so they react combatively,  meanly, cruelly.  Over time it is possible to notice that when someone accuses you of something or calls you a name or bullies you, they are the ones who embody the insults they hurl in both behavior and thought.  It should, then, be easier to walk away from these things.  Over time it does become so.  I now find, however, that the lack of understanding and the inability to communicate manifested by such things and behaviors is not something I can just walk away from.  Of course, what to do, what to do.

Lao Tzu wrote that one should do one’s work, and then let it go.  I guess with all the uncertainty and shift going on ow, the looming question of what one’s work will BE can be a bit of a poser.  But the bottom line remains that our work is, indeed, to help each other and be stewards of our earth.  Right now, we’re wondering how we can do that effectively and survivably not just for us, but for everyone.  So, we’re working on the world, one recipe at a time, here at yurt central.

The world of course is still WAAAAAY too much with us, and tonight we’re having another Leftover Challenge, so as not to Think Too Much About Anything.  How can people in Iowa, A number one: Have that much influence over who a Presidential candidate will be? I am stumped, so to speak….and A number two: Be having any trouble at all just saying no to the present slate of….caucus candidates?  Seriously?  Santorum?  Not to mention all the rest of it.  So.  Enter beans.

I didn’t have a package of mixed beans so I made one myself.  Many elderly beans in this, but we’re hoping the pressure cooker takes care of that.  Then, I’m thinking diced up leftover smoked turkey, carrots, celery, the beans, herbs and whatnot.  Leftovers may merit cornbread.  Or biscuits.   I’m hoping my clever mix of white beans (small and large), black beans, yellow peas and orange lentils, oh, and the black eyed peas I didn’t make at the Actual new year….Anyway I’m hoping this mix has a little panache that will benefit from some various prestidigitation.  Or else, scrambled eggs.  Anyway, the timer has gone off and in a few minutes……the beans will be unveiled. and ready to be put in their next manifestation. Or not, depending on whether the spa like conditions of the pressure cooker were persuasive with some of our older ingredients.

A recipe at this point is easier to make up than a life plan.