I adapted a Cook’s Illustrated recipe today. This is the first time I’ve made good use of my online subscription. I like Cook’s Illustrated because they cover the basics so thoroughly. They’re the physicists of cooking: it’s all about first principles. Once you understand the essential building blocks you can go off an build anything you want.

They had a nice recipe for Mustard Maple Roasted Green Beans, which I used as a starting point for my own take.

My variation: dump 1-pound bag of green beans (washed & trimmed, if they don’t come that way) into a roasting pan. (As seen at right.)

Thinly slice a shallot and mix that in with the green beans.

Anoint the beans with oil (olive, preferably) and salt (sea, preferably).

Roast in an oven at 450 degrees (preheated, of course) for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix together in a small bowl:

• 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. maple syrup

I used sugar-free syrup to accommodate diabetes. Obviously, if no one in the family has sugar restrictions, you ought to use pure maple syrup, which is to imitation syrup as Degas is to velvet Elvis.

After the beans have roasted for 10 minutes, pull them out of the oven and pour the mustard-maple mixture over them. Mix together thoroughly and sprinkle liberally with paprika (or conservatively with cayenne pepper — I didn’t have any or I’d have used that instead).

Put back into the oven and roast another 10-12 minutes.

Serve and savor!

“You must give birth to your images. They are the future, waiting to be born. Fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens.”

~ Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

(via Upaya Zen Center)

Gamble everything for love,
if you’re a true human being.

If not, leave
this gathering.

Half-heartedness doesn’t reach
into majesty. You set out
to find God, but then you keep

stopping for long periods
at meanspirited roadhouses.

— Rumi

(via Kim Anami)

The DC Mall on a gorgeous spring day. Nothing better.

I just finished my sixth weekly review, per David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” system. I feel expansive. I mean, I was pretty organized before this. Or at least conveyed an image of being organized. But having applied the GTD system for the past month and a half, I can feel myself starting to settle into a new mode.

In one of his recent newsletters, David Allen says:

Anything your nervous system experiences as unique or unusual will likely be “rejected” unconsciously in short order, because it is not in the comfort zone.

And of course, as a PTSDer, I can attest to this. You can reset for a brief period of time, but sustained change is difficult simply because of the inertia of the system.

It’s easy to clear the mind, make intelligent decisions about our stuff, organize and review the results, and feel much better about work and life. Especially with the GTD model that I teach. What’s much more difficult is to get yourself to experience that so regularly, so consistently, that it becomes how you are, emotionally, as a standard experience rather than an exception.

But when you do experience that clarity on a regular basis, man oh man oh man. It feels So. Good.

The wild thing is how liberating all this structure can be. When done properly. It lets me do things like wander around the yard with my camera taking random photographs. Lie on the ground under the pine trees. Get up at dawn and make pancakes. Weave strips of paper into abstract designs. All with a sense of rightness. The day’s work has been done, and now it’s time to… drift.

I guess I’m someone who’s going to drift, one way or another. It’s just that I used to drift during the day and then panic and spend my evenings trying to make up for lost time. I like this new pattern much better. I think I’ll keep it.

My puzzle, my peace, my empty cup,

I write this on your skin with my tongue. Your body is solid as concrete under my hands, and now when I ask you a question, you answer me. Grief and doubt opened the path to this moment, my cheek on your chest, our pulses syncopating.

You’d been seeking me, which I should’ve known but feared to believe. I was so busy searching that I almost didn’t see you, and you called my name and shocked me into stillness. I thought I had yet to cross plains of sulfur to find you, but there you were. You held me so close, so long, that our spleens became fast friends. In that moment I swam another sea, the terrible ocean that filled my lungs when I thought I might ever lose you again, ever again lose you from my arms.

And of course I will lose you again. Won’t I. Every day I will lose you and find you, find you and lose you. And if we orbit each other long enough, still one of us will lose the other into the Void. So goes the sad, fierce joy of existence.

For today, it is enough to lock my fingers into your hair and press my body against yours until our nerves entangle. It is enough to tease and talk and work and worry and fuck and find, and find, and find, and find, and find.

Start here: The First Letter

My journey, my ghost, my unheard scream,

I write this on a piece of skin with a charred stub of bone. I am sitting beside the Gates of Hell. The gargoyles pinch and taunt, distracting me. Distant shrieks evoke spiders, alleys, approaching footsteps.

I was not afraid to come for you. Until now.

Soon I will tighten the laces of my boots and swallow the last of my water. Soon I will stand beneath the misshapen Gates of Hell and brace my soul against its own fear. Am I your seraph, your scar, your daemon lover? Soon I will set forth across the raw landscape that separates us, hoping a chasm will swallow me and spare me this passage. Are you my apple, my trespass, my true salvation?

A leering demon has offered to carry this letter to you, but I declined. No more emissaries. I will bring these words to you myself, and you will answer me.

Are you ready for me to come to you?
Are you ready for me?
Are you ready?
Are you?

The Sixth Letter »

My dristi, my rhythm, my whispered koan,

I write this on parchment blessed by a mischievous guru, standing in a bell tower in the Himalayas. The planet drops away on every side. Joy unfurls in my belly, a wild vertigo. Beneath the wind, I hear the drone of monks chanting the oneness of the universe. The world is alive and you are you and time flows again, bearing me to my rightful place.

I have released everything I once owned. Tomorrow I will descend the mountains, descend as far as I must, until I find you.

Are you ready for me? Have you forgotten me? It doesn’t matter. Am I not your priestess, your cup, your steady bliss? Surely you feel my breath in your ear, my thighs on your hips. Already I taste your name on my tongue. The bitter reality of you. Are you not my heron, my mist, my morning tea?

A white eagle is rising towards me on a draft; she will carry this missive on to you. I feel your rightness in my veins, and it makes me strong.

The Fifth Letter »

My darkness, my core, my unopened eyes,

I write this on a sheet of dark matter in a burst of electromagnetic radiation. Forgive my poor script but I am cramped and cumbersome on the surface of this neutron star. Time is dragged down into lethargy and my patience has compressed to a painful disc of anxiety.

Awful time.

Time is not yet right. I believed I could wait forever; now I doubt I can wait another hour. These moments that separate us, I record them with prisoner’s ticks, my anvil, my guilt, my dark lighthouse. The seconds collect on my belly, my breasts, my throat. Choking me.

Your rescue is distant as a star. Fear sinks into my gut and I wonder if you still await me. Were you ever waiting? I draw shallow breath and curse myself. A merry Fool, writing letters to a delusion.

But am I not your magnet, your charm, your strange hero?

I am sending this with an escaping gamma ray on the next rotation. I will do what I cannot do. I will wait a little longer.

The Fourth Letter »

My sundog, my cloud, my wild prairie,

I write this on a rusty scrap of metal on the Golan Heights, perched on a gutted tank with the sun and wind in my hair. I have not the slightest notion where you are. Do not fret, for the key to your rescue is patience. Delay is of the essence.

I find traces of your blood on the ground, and I caw like a crow, lamenting your pain. How did you survive these battles? Are you still battling, or have you forged an uneasy truce? I yearn to bandage your wounds, but I know you will persevere. When I find you, I will soothe every scar, I will whisper healing into your bones. Haste is futile, so I sit motionless and wait.

I can touch your surprise from here. How can I not know your calendar? Am I not your sunrise, your crown, your patient zodiac? To come for you early would be mayhem, would be to fling the chick from the nest before its wings learned air. Dally for me, my foundation, my earth, my summer rain.

Four sunburned soldiers are walking through the grasses. I will give them my letter to deliver. Fold me into your breath when you read this.

The Third Letter »