FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

Joseph Campbell said that and it’s good advice.

It’s wonderful if you could have followed your bliss all your life, but you can start anytime. You’re never too old.

I think it’s another positive part of the aging process, out with the old, in with the new. If you’ve always wanted to write. Write. If you’ve always wanted to paint. Paint. Learning to do something new is healthy for mind and body and spirit, if you’re into that.

Confession: I always hated to cook. Used to warn my friends, “If I ever invite you to dinner and you know I’m cooking, head immediately for Nome.”

All ‘ugly Americans’ have a cook in the kitchen. For all my years as an expat I stayed as far away from a stove and oven as possibly. I remember one occasion when I discovered-suddenly, in the middle of the night when welcome guests hinted for a snack- that I didn’t know how to turn the lights on in the kitchen.

Today, at a ripe old, I’m learning to be a creative cook. 2013 style. Microwaves are fun. But the greatest latest cooking device in the place where I keep the refrigerator is the Vitamix. I’m not selling them, I don’t hold any stock, and I don’t expect anything for the mention, but that is the greatest culinary discovery since deviled eggs. The greatest cooking device since the campfire coffee pot.

Soups- soups, soups, beautiful soups -are an art form I’m learning to master and there’s one thing I know-other than I’m not Julia Child- everything I put in that little wonder is as nutritious as the stuff I toss in. No nourishment gets lost in the shuffle. Whatever you put in comes out in the wash.

I haven’t learned the fancy lingo but- boy oh boy- do I love the whirr of this hard-working cooker. I love to toss in unexpected flavors, a squeeze of lemon, a sprinkle of dry white wine, an experimental herb. Color. It’s a work of art. Tomatoes are red. Potatoes are white- with a brownish tinge if you toss in some mushrooms. The aroma when you take off the lid- don’t forget to turn it off first- lets a hot healthy smell fly up your nose.

I’ve got to stop, my taste buds are screaming, “Feed me. Feed me.”

I don’t know how I lived to be 82 without it.

Quick share. Make chicken broth or vegetable broth. Or buy it in a jar an add water. Bake a potato in the micro. Saute onions, artichoke hearts in oil, garlic, green peppers, carrots, bite size bits of chicken -whatever-in the microwave.

Toss it all in Vita dear-don’t forget the magic stuff, Brewer’s Yeast and Wheat germ-flip three switches-whirr, whizz, sing. Open. Pour. Enjoy.

Delicious for breakfast, lunch or dinner. A treat for a welcome guest who’s yearning for a snack.

I even ordered an 11 inch  chef’s cap.

AGREE TO DISAGREE

This entire column is dedicated to one of my favorite people on Kauai. Hawaii? The country?

A grey-haired bloke  who has a darling dog, a wonderful blog, always finds some way to haul Darwin into the gig and feeds me consecrated chicken soup on occasion. Two member of his ancient  family feed me matzoh during Passover and make me an honorary Jewess for the day. But not this guy. Next year, during Passover, I’m going to feed him a ham sandwich  at Costco and make him an honorary atheist.

This guy, whose name I will not mention, also tries to teach me how to use a computer. He’s kind of patient, I am a pitifully slow learner. A computer to me is nothing more than a glorified typewriter and typewriters can’t cut and paste, send pictures through cyberspace and perform other incredible feats.

He even bought me a telephone once,  but I’m still Peggy Evans, a character too dumb to dial.  I played her in Neil Simon’s first play, Come Blow Your Horn, in the Magic Ring Theater at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. That could certainly be part of  my When the World was Young column in the Garden Island Newspaper.  We’ll wait and see. Sometimes I think I have too many editors.

But I digress.

Anyhoo, my favorite person in all the world has to rest for four weeks after one pizza  session with me-at Costco- before he’s strong enough to  have another.

Also, come to find out, he was a leader in the pro Super Ferry fiasco in which I was a noisy-who me?-anti protestor. Further, he liked Linda Lingle-EEEEKKK-and insists atheism is a religion. We  disagree about GMOs and WalMart. More EEEEKKKS. He’s also constantly on my back about what to write about. Viagra?

GRRRR.

But I did it.

Almost got booted off another site-’cause that Editor thought it too frisky risky for his readership. His readers, by the way, are mostly made up of no-namers, silly namers and name callers. Many of whom hate me. I’m their favorite kig-me-doll. Good for me.

On ‘blanks’ site, some of the best writers in the state, I think-mit pictures and real names-speak their minds. They’re  head and shoulders  above the crowd.

More than that, what I see is a group of independent  thinkers who express themselves well and who, if it came right down to it, could picket, protest, shout to the sky, wave signs on the street on opposite sides of any situation and remain friends. Cross over -verbally, physically-take a breath, share a drink and a wink and a smile , then pick up their signs, brush off their pants and get back to work.

When it’s all over, and one side has won and one side has lost, we remember we’re all in this together. Humans breathing the same air, drinking the same water, eating the same food (?).  Living on the same planet. In paradise. Lucky us.  Knowing how dull it would be if we all agreed.

The Patriarchs

I don’t like them.  They don’t like me.

Actually they usually stay out of my way, as I stay out of theirs. They know better than to  storm my gates. They’ll get my shillelagh across their broad behinds.

Nevertheless,  a truly deep concern for women, little children, the future, keeps me in the game.

Their harangue, their harassment, their fear and guilt and sin and hate peddling simply cannot be ignored. The American ones-the worst in the world- stand in the pulpits and TV screens and rant and rave and froth. They parrot, in mind, deeds and action  the god they created some sixteen hundred years ago.

Sixteen hundred years ago? What’s that?

…and here we are  back to Emperor Constantine, the Church of Rome, the Pope with a direct line to the great Jewish horror, Jehovah,  the Inquisition, witch burnings, the plagues, the Dark Ages begin here.  The whole sick sick sick shebang. I think if I were today’s version, I wouldn’t take much pride in ‘my’ history.

And it certainly is ‘his’ story.

The incredible delight of the pagan gods, these powerful, very human fantasy creatures were done in by them like enemys of the state. The pagan gods loved sex, nudity, war,  and they had  balance. Gods and goddesses of nature, peace, hearth and home,  the great god Pan and his pipes, replaced with a father, an abused son, a holy ghost -come on- and one insipid virgin who took the place of  a panoply of gorgeous, glorious, powerful  women.

Most people have never even heard of them. Except  on those rare occasions when the word ‘pagan’ cames up and it is bad mouthed, regaled and banished from a state of human experience. Understand, I am not ‘selling’ paganism, but I am suggesting you at least peer into these historical times.

Venus Rising by Botticelli-she looked like Julia Roberts-Leda and the Swan by Reubens,  Yeats’ poetry, mythology and wonder  were disappeared. Hung in museums, buried in esoteric university libraries and studies. The Greek and Roman and Norse gods and goddesses shoved down the memory hole to be replaced by : let me quote Richard Dawkins, “The God of the Old Testament,  arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction, jealous and proud of it, a petty unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive blood thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynist, homophobe; racist, infanticidal, genocidal, felicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capricious malevolent bully.”

Humankind has been living with this nut case for how many years? Raise your hands if you know the answer.

I do hope you’re aware that in the past-even the recent past- voices like Richard’s did not for long remain attached to bodies.

Today there is still a stigma-an orthodoxy, as Hedges might say-against speaking out against religion. Religious criticism was verbose. It was not nice, in polite society, to expose religious beliefs, no matter how nutty, hateful, gaunt, greedy, stupid and childish it was.

To dare suggest it is a fierce, powerful, disgusting  force to contend with, expose and bring  down is naughty.

Well naughty is as naughty does. Dawkins and Hitches and Harris are fighting back.

Let the games begin.

A WORLD WITHOUT BOOKS

Chris Hedges indicated in his book Death of the Liberal Class, if we don’t  find a way to change things-’rebel don’t revolt’-  we will end up in  a world in which we would  not want to live. I agree.

I could not live, I would not want to live, in a world without books. I am surrounded by books. On just about every subject: History, Nutrition, Psychology, Math, Fiction, Poetry. You name it. There is very little I need to know about the world that I can’t find in a book here somewhere.

I don’t read books. I consume them. I turn down the pages, write in the margins, fight with the authors on a variety of different subjects. I can go back to this very same book, sitting on a dusty shelf, sneeze, open it up and peruse the margins. The arguments. I can actually see how I’ve grown, or  changed, or gone down a different path.

Books are my friends. I’ve-I should say my family-has  carried them about in our travels for years. Fifty. Sixty. Books beloved in my childhood. Alice in Wonderland. The Jungle Book.  My husband was n love with Kipling’s poetry. I was in love with Rikki Tikki Tavi.  Shere Khan. Mowgli.

I took an acid trip-one-in the sixties and went down Alice’s rabbit hole. One of the most beautiful. mind-blowing-experiences in my life. So beautiful I never took another, Thinking: what if it were as bad as this one was good? Actually, I don’t think my mind would send me on a bad one and, maybe, like Timothy Leary- the father of LSD-I’ll go out on one.

I’ll set the scene. Out in my jungle, under a blazing blanket  of stars, a setting moon, overwhelmed by the scent of Sanseseria and Plumeria, sung to by a whisper soft breeze, a cricket  song, surrounded by my beloved animals-my horse, I’ll aways have one- my dog. Maybe Duke, my macaw-who will outlive me- standing vigilant  guard, a silent winged guide. I’ll clutch in my hand my favorite book, maybe the battered and tattered  Thurber Carnival. Sip  slowly a glass of cold Chardonnay- how will that go with acid, I wonder-and hele on.

But I digress.

I have  in my reference library a MCMLXX MCMLXXV (my computer does not even recognize this) copy of Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia in which in volume P, there are ten pages about Palestine and a beautiful picture of Dorothy Rothschild,  better known as Dorothy Parker, (1893-1967). Maybe I’ll take that, too.

Dorothy’s dead and gone.   Once I had a very nasty general’s wife tell me there was not, nor had there ever been, a country named Palestine. She lied through her teeth.However, I do have a recent copy of one of the silly modern paperbackss-The Far East for Dummies,whatever-that never even mentions it. An entire country down the memory hole.

Goebbels said, “…if you lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.”

Aldous Huxley said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Understandable why Hitler burned books.

Maybe I’ll have a Viking’s Funeral with my books as tinder.

Hell no. I’ll leave them behind for dumbed down brown-shirted Americans to roast what’s left of their empty brains in.

A world without books? No thanks.

SPAM

Now the meanest Editor is telling us what to eat. Spam? EEEKKK.

This morning he had a picture of the ugliest  food I ever saw. He’s a good photographer but he  doesn’t know how to make a plate of food photogenic. I’ll bet even his dog  wouldn’t lick that dish.

I’m coming from many long years of Adelle Davis.  Lets Get Well. Let’s Cook it Right. Linus Pauling’s Vitamin C and the Common Cold.  Dr.Roger Williams Nutrition Against Disease. I have dozens of  books about the importance of nutrition. If anyone wants I can give you a list and you can order them-used-from Talk Story Book Store.

The two first authors, Adelle Davis and Linus Pauling-one of the brightest minds on earth- were vilified. Obviously because the medical profession was scared to death if people learned they could stay well and heal themselves, the bucks in their pockets would diminish. No  money in good health.  Plenty money in drugs and knives, hospital stays and office visits.

The pharmaceutical houses own the medical schools and, today  not one orthodox doctor- I know of , anyway- has a clue about nutrition. They’ve got a pill for every illness known to man and some pills for diseases they haven’t  invented. And every one of those  pills has a side effect for which they can prescribe another pill. Soon your medicine cabinet looks like the local pharmacy on steroids and, worse, your natural immune system is as screwed up as the minds who prescribed them.

But, hey, doctors are  great for setting broken bones. Committing heart surgery, too, if you’ve got the big bucks. They practice such procedures on the poor.  An aspiring heart surgeon  needs a heart to practice on so he can eventually sell his skill to the rich.

Don’t envy them. Someone said,”When my doctor tells me I need a new heart, do I really need one, or does he need a new yacht ?”

We’ve come a long long way from my editor’s icky  recipe-and Spam-and I have a lot of nerve talking since I’m just learning how to cook and couldn’t take a picture of strawberry shortcake that would be a visual delight.

Never the less, I would love to share some of the nutritious, delicious things I’ve learned to high-tech cook. I’m also going to suggest you  go out and buy a Vitamix-and I’m not a Mormon-and learn to make soup. As a liquid, it’s easy to digest and whatever nutrition is in the stuff you toss in that machine gets in your blood stream pronto with little energy expended.

Bake a potato in your microwave. Cut in half  and toss it in the machine. Saute in olive oil a clove of garlic, half a small onion, some sliced yellow squash, a carrot or two and anything else handy-create and improvise- toss them in, too. Salt, pepper,herbs, a dash of Worcestershire helps. Think color. Think taste. Then splash a couple cups of water,  use  bouillon and the magic ingredients: generous spoonfuls  of Brewer’s Yeast and Wheat germ.

Turn machine on as directed, it’ll heat up.  Drink.  Enjoy.

Hell, you could even toss in a little Spam.

My SHILLELAGH AND ME

Sometimes little old ladies are targets. For bullies and blackguards and such. Some doctors, many doctors in fact, see dollar signs when they see one. Which is another reason I stay away from them.

I seem to be particularly prone. In many dimensions. Lots’a guys don’t like what I write or what I say or that I am an outspoken out -of-the-closet atheist.

I’m also a quite noisy opponent of laws that allow private citizens to own assault weapon. Or the right to carry concealed or unconcealed weapons in public. I own a gun. A Smith and Wesson Saturday night special. Just my size, but I have a license. And  I don’t wear it in a holster on my thigh, or in my handbag when I’m out and about.

Still, today, I often find myself in the middle of a parking lot, surrounded by cars and interesting  looking thugs- for lack of a better word- and wonder if I’m going to get me and my shopping basket, filled to the brim with edible goodies, back to and into my car all in one piece. I have had the experience of meeting up with an outraged driver barreling up a narrow parking lot lane with who knows what kind of mayhem  in mind.

Which get me back to my roots. I’m Irish, Scottish and Welsh. Celtic. Fey. A born again Druid in one of my ms favorite fantasies. I really hate to be bullied and I stand my ground. Most bullies don’t understand such behavior and either back off or keep on coming. I know to stand still  and face a runaway horse or a  guard dog with a severe territorial behaviour syndrome. and have, so far, been lucky with the ones I’ve met.

But these are different times. Drugs, alcohol, jobless jerks and  just plain angry lunatics are out in force and number. You meet them where ever where you go.

And so Hammacher Schlemmer, one of my favorite catalog stores, came to my aging aid. I like to forget I’m 82 but a quick look in a mirror or the windows of a passing vehicle slams back  to remind me. “Hello, dear,” the reflection says. “You smell good but you ain’t getting any younger.”

Once I had a loutish lug confront me at my table at Talk Story Book Store-the furthest West book store in the country-to tell me I was dumber than a ‘Pollack’ and then sent me -through the mail-a wrinkle cream ad.

Anyway dear H & S saved me. For a pittance I could buy a genuine walking stick made in Ireland.

I’ve adopted a style. On a lone walk about I swing it forward and tap tap tap the ground. Then if see a potential marauder I pick it up and carry it in one hand like a club. “Come any closer,” she says, she’s a she and I’ve named her Macha, “and you’re apt to get a knock about the  head and shoulders. Don’t screw around with this scrawny old hen.

So far, taking a walk with a walking stick isn’t against the law.

HAPPY EASTER

When  we left our story our poor hero was still hanging on the cross, speaking to his mother, “Woman behold thy son,” he said. I mean like, lady look what you did to me.

Then to his brother, I think it was Simon, he said, “Brother behold thy mother.” Like, look out, she’ll do the same to you. I don’t think he got it, but his story is another story. Some four centuries later the Emperor Constantine made his mother a virgin again and sent her off to heaven.

According to  the story in the Book, our hero agonized for 3 hours and then, with a loud cry, gave up the ghost. There was an earthquake, tombs broke open, all kinds of bad stuff happened and the thug  on guard exclaimed,  ”He is the son of God.”

It gets a bit complicated here. Anther  thug threw a lance at our hero and he bled and water flowed and a guy, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret follower of our hero, convinced the thugs our hero was dead ,took him down off the cross, wrapped him in white linen and placed him in a tomb carved in a rock and, to keep the secret safe, rolled another rock over the entrance.

There did exist at that time a Jewish sect, the Essenes, about whom many Greek and Roman historians wrote. They were kind of Jewish monks, without women, without money. They’d got the hell out of the cities because they were as filthy as our planet is today. They were gardeners. They made the desert bloom, Pliny said.  They were also healers and often took in little boys who worked for months to prove their worth and joined them. I think our hero spent his missing years there, learned their ways, was a teacher, a good man, but one who could not live with the celibacy part of the deal. Sort of a man of the cloth without the cloths,” As Carl Sagan once said.

Let me tell you something  about healers: before one can heal one must learn to heal oneself and our hero, according to ‘their’ Book, even says,  ”…physician, heal thyself..” Which physicians in those days couldn’t do  any better than they do now.

Stashed safely in the tomb, with his girl friend Mary Magdalene, he recovers from his wound-you’d be amazed how quickly the body can heal itself and this was a strong, healthy young man. (He certainly wasn’t the creature in the pink nightgown religious artists paint floating off to heaven with a bleeding heart. Because this is often the image you see of our hero, Philip Roth called him,  ’the Pansy from Palestine’. That, of course, was back  in the days when there was a Palestine.)

But I digress.

Three days later, he and Mary shoved back the rock, went outside, said goodbye to friends and he and his love got out of Dodge.

They left. Hand-in-hand.  Married. Had  lots of kids and, today, have something like 416 million descendants-I rounded that down-world wide.

(Well, something had to balance the one out of six creatures today who are descendants of the Genghis Khan.)

Happy Easter….

GOOD FRIDAY

The last time we saw our mythical hero, the guy whose momma proclaimed him the son of God, he was riding triumphantly into Dodge on a donkey preceded by a bunch of happy hippies strewing  palm leaves before him. I hope they were also mouthing make-believe trumpet sounds and tossing fragrant flowers at his feet.

Sadly, this put-on turned nasty. Fast. According to the story some Jewish Temple Guards, helped along  by a traitorous disciple-he had twelve, one of them a woman-turned him in for 30 pieces of silver and our hero was arrested.

Here begins a really terrible part of the story. Our poor hero is found guilty of blasphemy and another of his  disciples, Peter, of rock and shoes of the fisherman Roman Catholic Popish fame, denies him, too.

We move on with all kinds of awfulness. Flogging by the Romans. Governor Pontius Pilate, who, later, washed his hands of the whole business and declares our hero to be innocent but, for political reasons, turns him over to Roman thugs to be crucified.

Now crucifixion is an absolutely horrible way to die-and we’ll talk about that later-because , at the moment, our hero is being marched through town dragging a heavy wooden cross, wearing a crown of thorns-the town’s people throwing rotten eggs-and ends up nailed to the cross he’s carrying…

…what kind of nightmare writer wrote this Grimm’s fairy tale anyhow?

Even worse- let’s roll time out a bit-some religious folks have kept our poor hero hanging in effigy for over two thousand years! In their rites, to this day,  in some neck of the woods, they even reenact the story. Carry crosses. Walk the walk. In my neighborhood in a large church parking lot there is a huge white marble-well it looks like  marble- our hero, on the cross with his mommy and his brother-the son of the old carpenter we may assume, our hero’s mommy had a bunch of kids-and his girl friend, Mary Magdalene, at his feet. He hangs there 24/7. Every time I drive by I want to go in and physically haul him down.

Do you know how one dies of crucifixion? Your feet are nailed to a board. Your hands are nailed to the cross beam. Your feet start to hurt-the nails remember-so you lift yourself up with your arms and then your hands start to hurt. When you hands hurt, you put your weight in your feet. Unbelievable agony.  And it can go on of days. Fortunately a Roman soldier comes along and saves the day. Our hero does not die of crucifixion…

…but before this, it is written, that our poor suffering hero looks down at the figures at his feet and says, “Woman behold thy son. Brother behold they mother.” She did this to me, kid, and she can do it to you, too.

That says it all don’t you think? I mean it’s a clearly stated summation of the entire affair and this, dear reader, is the expurgated version of good Friday (?). Sounds like a perfectly horrible way to spend a Friday, to me. But I have a surprise ending.

Tune in tomorrow.

An Easter Story

We all know the story. Some two thousand years ago a little Jewish girl was married off to an old man in another town and, when she got there, it was discovered she was pregnant. Again, as we all know, in those days a Jewish girl in such a situation could be stoned. Well, this young girl hadn’t gone to school to carry her lunch, so she told the old man God did it. In those day Gods often came down and had sex with women. They don’t do that so much anymore.

Anyhow, the old man bought it and a few months later his young bride gave birth to a son who was born in a manger with great folderol and hoop de doo and three wise men and a star in the East and sheep and goats and cows and camels and angels and stuff starring in minor roles.

What really interests me here, is that the young mother taught her first-born his daddy was God. I can just hear her, “See that old man? He’s not your father. God is your real Daddy.” Well this kid was a precocious kid and raised a lot of hell in the community. I picture him as a kind of first century Dennis the Menace as far as the town was concerned.

So far, so good, the story hangs, but then the kid disappears. He leaves home when he’s about thirteen-about the time little boys learn about sex and stuff-and doesn’t show up in the story again until he’s in his late twenties and, when he does, he shows up barefoot, in  a brown robe, riding on a donkey. Now his mother, delighted to see him again, rushes about Jerusalem telling everyone whose ear she could bend, that her son, the son of God, was back and he was the Messiah. These were not very healthy ideas to be spreading around in those days. Made worse because the aged Dennis the Menace-the itinerate Jewish rabbi, barefoot and on a donkey, was hanging out with a bad bunch. Poor guys. Sick guys.  Fishermen. You know: peasants, hippies and the like.

We all remember the story of the wedding. Poor guys. No wine. Momma burst in the door. “Oh son, show them you’re God. Turn the water to wine,” she cries. At which time he says, so it says in the Book, “Get that woman out of here.”

A mystery of the Book: he never calls his mother ‘mother’. Maybe he got fed up with the silly woman. Remember, in those days, it was believed the Jewish Messiah-the King of the Jews-would ride triumphantly into Jerusalem on a white horse, over a red carpet, with trumpets blaring and worshippers tossing flowers and stuff and oust the Romans.

So what does this guy do? He puts himself barefoot on a donkey, brown robe, bare feet, gets his hippy friends to run out ahead of him strewing palm leaves and rides triumphant into the city…

That’s when I fell in love with him. What a put on. I mean he really did have a keen sense of humor. Too bad most people don’t get it. The story ends badly

Tune in tomorrow.

PALM SUNDAY

Reblogged from bettejo:

We all know the story. Some two thousand years ago a little Jewish girl was married off to an old man in another town and, when she got there, it was discovered she was pregnant.  Again, as we all know, in those days Jewish girls in such a situation could be stoned. Well, this young girl hadn't gone to school to carry her lunch, so she told the old carpenter that god did it.

Read more… 435 more words