Game Night

(As printed in The Food Fanatic 2009 supplement in The Independent, http://www.independentpub.com/ October 2009)

I look forward to autumn, and the changes it brings are nicely surprising, each year seeming new. The first sweater-worthy morning, the first ruby-red leaves, the changing quality of light and oh yes, the heartier fare, all come to mind. In New England we may move through the food seasons in tandem with nature’s seasonal offerings, and fall, I think, is the very best of these transitions. Squash and roasted potatoes replace fresh corn, light macaroni salad gives way to rich baked macaroni & cheese; grilled chicken, burgers and dogs are replaced by roasted meats drizzled in rich sauces. It is a time of preparation for the long winter, via second helpings.

The other aspect of fall I anticipate is the resumption of friendly indoor gatherings. In the summer we tend to scatter a bit and summer activities are dispersed outdoors as they should be. I love a BBQ, but there is something closer-to-the-heart about eating with friends and family indoors on chilly nights.

My friends and I have a bi-weekly ritual that resumes each October; we call it “Game Night.” Don’t let the title fool you, it’s about food and community first, and if we get to some fun games after our bellies and spirits are full, so much the better.

Every other Friday night a different host is charged with creating the main meal we will share. The rest of us pledge a salad, a dessert, an appetizer and/or the beverages of our choice. There is usually a cultural or regional theme; sometimes the theme is “experimental”. We all carry a certain amount of palette-based fear to the door on “experimental night”; even though we are a group of seasoned cooks, several of us having spent years cooking professionally. There have been odd incidents of culinary injustice, napkins raised to mouths hiding the ejection of an unpalatable morsel from a dish gone horribly wrong. We are not kind when such a thing occurs. Sometimes the sting of rebuke is the only appropriate teacher. After all, we didn’t ask our friend to attempt that chocolate-parmesan risotto, so he or she must deal with the repercussions as the bitter taste of the dish is reflected in our reviews.

Thankfully these instances are rare, and frankly there is no real punishment for such experimentation. We all appreciate the risk-taking, and are adept at absorbing a laugh at our own expense. Though tasty food may be one of the reasons we all show up consistently on Game Night, it is the joining of great food with a community of friends that we primarily seek.
When my turn comes around, I give careful thought to what I might prepare. Will it be a dry-rubbed pork loin, subsequently marinated in hearty red wine and maple syrup, pan seared until golden brown on all sides, and then finished in the oven until the edges are crispy-sweet, and the meat is juicy and cuts with a fork? Will I pair the pork with roasted-garlic mashers, or sautéed Brussels sprouts with caramelized onions, garlic and dried apricots?

As I stroll through the market, touching and testing the available ingredients I contemplate the night to come. My dish will arise from an inspiration that is itself a recipe of answers to three questions, in equal parts: For whom do I cook? What, if any, theme will constrain my choices? What captures my interest as I walk through the market on that day?

Game night always begins in the kitchen. As guests arrive, their offerings are placed on the table and the grazing begins, along with the pouring of the wine or the local Maine ales. More often than not, the host is still preparing the main dish as things get started. This enhances the family-feel of the evening. This is a night of participation, of shared service to gathered friends rather than a formal dinner party or night-out being served. There is a richer tone when each person has added something, no matter what that might be. We are family on this night, the TV is off, it’s just us and the food.

When it’s time to fill our plates with the main dish, the sound of friendly chatter blends with the “Game Night” music playlist and the place is a whir of activity. Once we all have settled at a place of our choosing around the living room in a loose circle, there is only the familiar sound of tableware on plate. After a few moments the “yummy sounds” ensue, followed by looks and exaggerated nods across the room as if to verify the shared experience. Next the spontaneous reviews begin which might be directed at the dish’s creator, or simply exclaimed to generate agreement and discussion amongst the group.

In turn, I am certain, we all take a moment to look up and survey the beauty of all that is before us. Our friends nourished, sharing a common experience from the work of our own creativity and from our own hands. Yes, food is at the center, is the vehicle for this sharing, and what better vehicle could there be? Nourishment is so much more than giving the body calories to enable its life-sustaining processes, not to diminish the importance of survival. Assuming we have food to eat, a blessing unto itself, there is also nourishment in the sharing, the community around the table. Monopoly, anyone?

Glacier and Another Time

I tried to ride the night rocks,
just off the crowned shore road. They
hunch deep into the sand,
let down by a carriage of glacier
against the summer beach.
That giant came and went,
dropping its fatigue,
melting.

I sat on those rocks once,
my knees bleeding-
a cold tingle storming my spine to re-route the pain into passionate memory.
My knees bled, yes, but under Gem's weight.
it was the kiss
that halted everything but her
prying fingers at my mouth.
We rode that carriage,
It set us down.

I can't see the night rocks now—I hunch, I squint-
they are disappeared.

A faint dragging sound, I hear,
slow grinding under some weight,
the moon rubs the sand smooth so
my knees don't bleed.

Frankenstein's Monster

In paradise, the monster
has no face.
His heavy shoes scrape against
the hostile public sphere. He is
out-cast, shelter’s shadow.

He lumbers across personless reaches.
As the real prime mover, he
is a hole of light.

--The Monster Speaks--

"I felt the first charge
joining my partial bodies,
light behind my blindfold.
I reached to embrace my father,
begged him for a name."

--The Monster Exits--

He might have been gently wakened,
thick curtains drawn, a dark-wood room,
only column shafts
of warmless light.
His skin is cave-cold and bright.

He id not beg to know, but for a name.
Breathing in, expanding
from all centers
into great black lungs.

One dying universe exhales
for the next hot beginning.
Life feasts on death,
and trembles in
the dark.

But darkness is the beginning of everything.

8 Weeks to Spring (me)

If I had a motorcycle to ride,
eyes closed in the snow, out through it,
until the roads turned dry in the south.
I'd trade for a horse,
trot into the Virginia mountains with a pack of dried fruits
a jug of juice
and a year.

A David Day

A down day can fall
into any month.
Trip and
drop right in mid-week.
Thick as the mud of the week.
Jagged as the borders of the week,
drawing the blood of the week.

A full down day is like a david.
The goliath week's big happy eye caved in
by a rock cast-up from a fallen david day.

The Trouble with Pure Bliss

There is a very dangerous idea that’s been floating around, oh, for about 40 years now and it’s time for all the sane among us to extend a hand, and an olive branch...then swing the branch with the full intention of striking this idea very roughly until it finally abates.

The idea in question is the immediately attractive, yet completely bizarre drive towards a state of permanent bliss. Where does one begin to deconstruct this insipid notion?

First, I should say that moments of bliss are great, and are in fact, blissful...however the desire to achieve some sort of mind-numbing permanent state would cancel, most certainly, bliss itself. The idea, the feeling, the spiritual value of bliss is to be found in the measurement from itself to less blissful states such as anger, frustration, sadness, loss etc. The devaluation of these "lowly" states is the crux of the problem for the misguided pure-bliss-seeker.

No sadness = no bliss. No struggle = no bliss. No loss = no bliss. No destruction = no bliss.

Consider that we may require, and indeed would do well to cultivate an embracing acceptance of, the less pleasant emotional states of being and unavoidable realities that are inherent to our mortal existence. Without these states, there would be nothing to move us: no art, no music, no community, no sex, no urgency, no food...no reason for life to exist. Permanent bliss would be the end of us, and if the universe had begun with a Big Bliss, it would have poofed into non-existence from sheer boredom.

All life struggles to finally show its beauty.

Those who advance the idea that one should strive for a life of pure bliss, may be setting those who actually listen to them up for major disappointment and an ironic turn away from any bliss at all.

There is not a single one of us who will not face many challenges including the loss of loved ones, injuries, set-backs, and all the attendant emotional responses to normal life. It is our ability to continue during these times that "grows" us, and in turn our growth that stimulates those with whom we interact. It is not healthy, normal or sane to respond to loss with bliss. It is healthy, normal and sane to respond to loss with sadness and experience grief. --Of course anything can be taken to extremes and there is also the reality of clinical depression and debilitating sadness...this is not what I’m talking about.--

When one burns a hand on a hot stove, the body’s healthy response is to send pain signals to the brain letting us know we’ve been injured and that we should immediately remove our hand from that hot stove...then fluid and blood are sent to the burn-site which creates a protective blister. We have a habit of looking at the blister as "bad". We do the same thing with emotional "burns", seeing sadness as bad or grief as bad, when these responses are healthy and appropriate.

Is there anything more rage-inspiring, or at least confusing, at a moment of loss or struggle than some well-meaning bliss-seeker telling us "everything happens for a reason" with a big silly smile on his/her face? Why is that? Perhaps there is an intuitive imperative, of which we are just barely aware, that tells us what we need to hear instead is "please feel free to feel crappy right now, reasonless and sad." There is nothing worse than being told we should not be feeling the way we are feeling.

---And yes, for those who are sure "everything happens for a reason"...I think you are close and I dig the sentiment, and maybe we can take it even further, so you might try this sentence instead: "Everything happens for your benefit"...just don’t say it when someone needs to feel rather than think. Trying to divine reason from mystery is the sort of hubris that led to witch burnings and The Inquisition BTW...it’s dangerous folly...just try assuming it’s a benefit and spend your time creating something new with your energy. (this whole thing will likely end up on another post).---

Back to our topic:
If the body responded to burning with bliss, it would be welcoming death when some ointment and a band-aid would have sufficed...Perhaps the best way to deal with life’s challenges is not to seek permanent bliss, but to develop responses that pull us through, while allowing us to feel what we need to feel. Trying to chase away the blues with a wish is a sure way to keep the blues around for a much longer time. Instead, let them in, write a song, enjoy a primal scream from universal grief, create some orgasmic friction, let yourself weep for crying out loud.

Convinced that we should be in a state of bliss, most of us will feel completely inadequate when we can’t get there, and those precious moments of bliss will be ever more elusive...this is called paradox and it is where most truth is to be found. Writer/Minister Matthew Fox explains this perfectly in a related topic, he writes, "Basing spiritual experience on the mystical is like basing baseball on the grand-slam homerun, effectively eliminating 99.99% of the game from inclusion and barring most people from wanting to play." (paraphrased)

Instead of seeking bliss, maybe the best way to feel better in this life, is to cultivate an expectation that there will be times in all our lives that are not so pleasant, and to see those times as equally important, necessary and good for us as any moments of bliss.

The universe clearly requires loss to achieve its motion. It earns its voracious appetite by performing cycles of destruction and creation. There is a lot of destruction required for things to keep moving, to continue to offer astonishing creativity, to anxiously search for something more amazing than the last thing.

Therefore, the only logical, intuitive and sane thing to strive for is acceptance followed by creativity and perseverance. For life to continue, we need every single one of Bliss’ less friendly cousins around as well. Cheers.

The Subtle Effect of Dishonesty

Greetings.
When we think of honesty and dishonesty we most often think of the overt, the obvious measures. When someone directly lies to us, we call that dishonesty, and when they simply don't reveal a truth, we call that withholding or ommission.What about when someone wants to say "no" but they say "yes"? What about when a person is moving through the world hiding their true self out of fear that they will not be liked, loved or accepted if their "true self" is revealed?

Both of these examples are also examples of dishonesty. When we don't present an honest "face" to the world, the world responds in kind.Never mind the fact that hiding one's true self will see us isolated from even those who believe they are closest to us, the subtle effect can be found in the interaction we attract in our normal daily lives.The person who fails to assert normal healthy boundaries will likely encounter people who regularly take advantage of them. If you are being taken advantage of while inside you are screaming "no!", you need to find the courage to actually voice your protest. I call this "Developing your Interpersonal Membrane."

In nature, the membrane is the first Earthly "invention" to allow life to flourish. It happened first in the sea, of course. If you want the best example, just look at your skin. The skin allows things we need to pass through and keeps things that are harmful out. It does this simply by being skin. A person without boundaries sends a non-verbal message in every interaction that says "take advantage of me, I have no boundaries", and their mission is to begin to build their Interpersonal Membrane by asserting their boundaries honestly. Once a person learns to say "no" when they feel "no", and does so regularly, the membrane develops and is effective just as non-verbally as when their non-verbal message was "take advantage of me." The new message is "don't even think about it." Just take an accounting of the people in your life and recognize those who are good at asserting boundaries. Most of the time, they don't have to assert anything at all. Their Interpersonal Membrane is healthy and anyone interacting with them feels it without having to test it.

For the person who is always hiding their true self...find the courage to reveal yourself, or you will have extreme difficulty in meeting the people who would naturally be attracted to who you really are. If you are in hiding, your interactions with strangers and also the people you know, can never truly "reach" your inner self. One cannot move through the world presenting one face while hiding another and expect rewarding relationships to somehow find them. To use a quote from a Bare Naked Ladies tune "If I hide myself where ever I go, am I ever really there?" The answer is simple...no.

When in hiding, what you might find is that every interaction contains some hidden dynamic. You might consistently be frustrated when seeking advice, when interacting with customer service personnel seeking answers to problems. You might find yourself always anxious that you will be "found out" and this anxiety will have a not-so-subtle effect on all of your interpersonal interactions.Worse, you might believe that everyone is similarly in hiding and find it almost impossible to trust people.

Now, I'm not saying we should walk around with our private lives spilling out, or saying "no" when we really want to say "yes". I'm talking about finding a balance, knowing when, and with whom we feel safe being truly who we are, and also feeling secure saying "no" when we don't want to do something or agree to something in any situation.

Both of these examples explain some of the effects of the "shadow" and how it works in our personal interactions. I suggest a great book called "A Little Book on the Human Shadow" by Robert Bly. It's short and amazing, a mix of prose and verse by a great writer.

The shadow is that part of the psyche that we project out onto everyone we meet and interact with. It is the part of us we have rejected, for various reasons, and stuffed deep into the subconscious. The tricky thing is, shadow energy takes a little twist on its way out into the world. So, if we are failing to assert our boundaries, we might encounter those who lie directly to us and/or betray us. If we are in hiding out of fear, we might encounter those who misrepresent themselves purposefully, or we might consistently have trouble getting straight answers from those we interact with daily like teachers or service personnel or those we might hire to help us learn a new skill.

If you want to "inventory" your shadow, start paying attention to those people who annoy or frustrate you, and do the work of finding out just what about them is annoying or frustrating. You will be identifying your own shadow. To do this effectively, we must first remove the judgment and begin to see these people as "gifts". I know that is a stretch for most of us, but give it a try and see what happens...test it, don't believe it.

The good news is, that once we develop a regular practice we can overcome these challenges to attract the people and situations into our lives that feel "right" to us at the deepest level. It is important to remember that we are always attracting the things and people we "need" into our lives whether they bring pleasant or unpleasant feelings and/or results with them. We always get the information we need to make different choices, or to support the choices we have made that have brought us pleasant results.

It is also good to remember that we will always encounter some people who have the deep empathic sense to see beneath our surface. These people are around to help us feel accepted, to give us a boost, to give us evidence that what we are hiding will be accepted when we show it, and that we will still be liked, loved and accepted when we learn to say "no" when that is how we feel.

Life takes practice, and a certain amount of courage!



JohnHillcopyright 2008 JohnHill all rights reserved