cooking stock, walking hand-in-hand

Dear Ones,

I'm slow cooking a new veggie stock tonight using my trimmings and savings from the last few months. It's complex, fragrant ~ yam and potato skins, red and white onion skins, dignified older okra, collard green stems, limp celery, floppy carrots, jalapeno ends and stems, a whole head of too-dry garlic, peppercorns, star anise, miso. It'll give me three generous quarts at least.

It puts me in mind of making a quilt out of clothes that got threadbare and frayed. I have no idea what the flavor will be. There’s no recipe but what I collected in a gallon silicone bag in the freezer, so it’s a concentrated infusion of two months of meals. The flavor of time.

And what a time it’s been. I’ll strain the spent vegetables, let them cool and throw them under the pecan tree for parched insects to suck the water out of.

The Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is the first thing I think about upon waking and the last thing I think about upon falling asleep. This letter is meant as a brief respite.

Do you know the Floridian visionary folk artist, Mary Proctor? She has an amazing story of how she came to be an artist, involving fire, flea market and being born to a mother who was aged eleven. She loves collard greens. You can read some of her story here. Her art is vibratory:

Mary Proctor, “Collard Greens,” 12x12 acrylic on board

Like Mary Proctor, I love using the ends of things, barter, scavenging and salvaging. I think a found, given or gifted thing is more alive than a thing bought with any kind of money.

On Saturday, I brought a young person I adore and her 1-year-old son to Carol’s Kindness Food Bank. She was down to her last twenty dollars and still needed to buy diapers so we went to see what we could find for her. We were almost the last people in the line of 200 before they closed up shop. The food remaining on the tables could not be reused; it was all expired and perishable, donated by an organic retailer. This was its last stop.

The volunteers told us to take as much as we could carry. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t food insecure; I will share the food, once cooked, with people who are unhoused. They loaded me up. That’s how I ended up with collard greens, dented apples, cheerful okra, vegan cheese, poppyseed cake and rancid salads in my fridge. I also got a huge bag of granola bars and goldfish crackers to give to folks at traffic intersections.

A picture from the food bank bulletin board:

I love the semi-colons, the smiley face, the backwards cent symbol.

A woman in the food bank line showed my friend’s baby son her chihuahua.

The experience of receiving this donated food—and the kindness of others in the line— put me in mind of Buddhist monastics who walk with their begging bowls, eating only what is offered by others.

“My begging bowl
Accepts the fallen leaves.”

—Santoka

This practice, takuhatsu, going door to door begging for rice, also opens a spiritual door. The Chinese characters for takuhatsu mean “trust in the bowl.” The orientation is gratitude for anything that fills the bowl. Whether someone gives you a handful of fresh rice or a handful of dirt, a bow of thanks is called for. Trust in the bowl—not grasping, not fearing when it is empty.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

—Mary Oliver, “The Uses of Sorrow”

This is what I think a box of darkness looks like:

(A Vase of Flowers, Margareta Haverman, 1716)

I was fortunate enough, once, to go on a Buddhist retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh. It was at Magnolia Grove Monastery, the community he built in rural Mississippi, ten years or so before his death. All of the resident nuns and monks came from Vietnam to live in Bates, a town known for its 1920’s lynching postcards.

Could a monastery in gently rolling, bright green, cicada-deafening terrain, with practitioners chanting to end the suffering of all beings, help cleanse the land? Could there be an apology the ancestors can hear?

A stone from the grove is engraved with Thay’s phrase, for use in any time or place.

I asked my mother to attend the retreat with me. She answered, “YES, I would! It coincides with Rosh Hashana so school will be closed. XOXO Can we reserve now?”

My favorite memory is doing walking meditation in a long line behind Thay with her. About 100 people moved very, very slowly, through a pine forest. One exhale, one inhale, one exhale, move left foot forward. One inhale, one exhale, one inhale, move right foot forward. We held hands, my mother and I, for the first time since I was a child. Her hand was gnarled and light in mine. Tears rolled down my face. We could be outside time, outside biography there. There was no story, no complexity, no torn loyalties; only love. The present moment.

After the walking meditation and a dharma talk by Thay under a big white tent, we went to the dining hall for the silent evening meal. Dinner was cabbage, rice and tofu with moon-shaped cookies and oranges for dessert. When the mindfulness bell rang its deep brass tone, everyone stopped chewing and paused to breathe mindfully.

After we ate, I was about to scrape the remaining food into the compost can, on the way to the dishwashing station’s three plastic tubs (soapy scrub, rinse and sanitize). One of the nuns spoke as I hovered. She pointed at the cooked brown rice with tahini sauce and the half a sugar cookie left on my plate. She said, "No transform this. Bad for transform. Slow."

She gestured at the purple cabbage and picked up my orange rind and said, "Transform quick. Good transform." As if to embody it, she lit up with a radiant smile. Her eyes were stern. Her shaved head was velveteen. She tossed the orange peel into the compost and nodded me forward.

What can we do in this realm, with these verbs? We can do the best we can. I wish you Transform Quick, Good Transform. May tomorrow bring peace.

Love,

Abriel


P.S. In my other daily poetry Substack, today’s joy is “collard greens” by Lucille Clifton.

Sooner or later, I will make 2 newsletters into one newsletter with two sections. For now, please enjoy them both with a friend or a dog and share them if you like.