Shutter Click & Chat 4/12

Renew

And, not a moment too soon. I'm breaking out of my funk and into the kitchen today, with laughter and music and lager-not necessarily in that order.

I've also decided to join the 40 day Create A Calm Heart challenge over at Practical Yoga. Per the hosts, Bill and Jeff, "[the challenge] goal is to help you overcome fear and live in the faith that anything good is possible - even in times of great uncertainty". I'm all over it, care to join me? {Details}

“So as long as a person is capable of self-renewal, they are a living being.”

-Henri Frederic Amiel

Shutter Click and Chat 4/19:

If you guessed "heart", you guessed right. As always, any and all interpretations are welcome.

Peace and Renewal

Elephants in the Room

I've been a bad blogger. In fact, I've been a bad insert anything that doesn't involve indie film marathons, Diet Coke, coffee and Pepperidge Farm's 3-layer Coconut Cake. That being said, I've amassed quite a few elephants (read: pressing projects and issues, not my weight) that are growing restless and vying for my immediate attention.

As of this moment, my ETA is oh...I'd say around Friday, but who knows it could be sooner. Until then, peace and peanuts.

Shutter Click & Chat 4/05

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

-T.S.Eliot

Another favorite from this summer's visit to the galleries at Tlaquepaque in Sedona, Arizona. The sculpture rained, forming the rich green patina you see here...heavenly.

Shutter Click & Chat 4/12: Renew, renewed, renewal Any and all interpretations are welcome.

Have a great week!

Untitled

This is the shadow cast of me, drafting this post in my head.

For more shadows, head over to Hey Harriet's, where Sunday shadow shots abound.

It's been...I don't know...what, two weeks or so since my grandmother's stroke and subsequent familial acts of assholery? And, I'm still shaking it off?! I'm in that place; I'm screening my calls, writing open letters, rehearsing cuss-outs -replete with neck and eye-rolling in front of the master bath mirror behind a closed door, and a closed heart. Of course I know better, but there is a familiar comfort about this place. Anger, like oft-worn shoes, we know each other well. We've traveled many miles anger and I, for many years.

I sat out back yesterday for what felt like an eternity; pursed lips, tense shoulders, shaking my head in that doubtful, hopeless way. It was breezy-cool even, for an Arizona afternoon. As the winds blew, I took notice of the leaves that had grown on frail, young trees; some have even blossomed. For all I know, they could have grown as I sat. My thoughts, my ideas, my surroundings have all been blurred behind an angst-filled film.

Something though- something about the day felt brighter, it felt fresh and new. And, I knew my gut to be true in that intrinsic way that you just know things have got to get better. The birds, the large maize butterflies, their weightless fluttering, their directionless flight, the fortuitous deliberation of their presence and of mine, of that moment. In a whimsical legato, they beckoned, "free your mind, let it go, shake it off". So, I did it, and it worked, and I grew as I sat.

Peace

Who I am is...

what I eat. You what you eat or what?

Saturday's lunch with Anna: hummus, fruit and cheese salad, pita, falafel, babaganoush

I've been thinking about food lately. Not like, what will I eat or cook, but really thinking about the ways people think of food. It started when I joined Facebook. There is an application titled "ghetto snacks". Eye roll, grimace. Now, I'm all for having fun and was thrilled to receive several other less...uh what word am I looking for [insert] applications, but this one stuck in my craw. Many of the items are candy, but a few stood out to me as regional/ethnic foods (plantain chips, pork rinds, Malta etc.) and, that sorta saddened me.

I grew up in a GeeChee/Gullah home for the most part. Sure my grandmother in her quest for ultimate northern exposure made pasta and potatoes which my resistant grandfather would eat in addition to rice. We ate rice everyday, and I still do. It is a part of the coastal Carolinian culture, it is part of who I am. As a Native New Yorker and a vegetarian, rice and West African peoples' rice history has been one of very few cultural items I've been able to incorporate and pass on to my own children. Rice also conjoins the Carolinian and Caribbean cultures Favorite guy and I share. Rice though, is not served at high holidays, weddings, graduations et al.; rice is low brow, rice isn't classy-rice is ghetto.

Low-brow, ghetto food?! This didn't make sense growing up, but now at 35 I'm tainted enough to understand and have even partaken in the food caste system. Perhaps, seeing the Facebook application opened my eyes to just how ignorant (that's the word) this practice is. I have to say, I was flooded by thoughts of all the ways in which the things we eat define us. From Ernest J. Gaines' salt meat reference in The Sky is Gray, Jill Scott's, "rice and gravy, biscuits baby and black-eyed peas", Machito's Sopa de Pichon and many others. Yet, this tale and songs of which I speak aren't tales of poverty and despair, but rather comeuppance, joyous occasions, kinship and love even. Attaching caste and class to foods and the people who eat them-food shaming, if you will, is the antithesis of the true meaning of food and dining, of culture, of civilization.

So, let's dish-Who are you? What are some of your regional/cultural/childhood food favorites?