CHUTNEY

When I turned 70, I cried for a year.  Finally I got to be 71and felt much better.

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“It is essential that we be convinced of the goodness of human nature and we must act as though people are good.”  John Cage

(Who in hell is John Cage anyway? But I like this quote…especially now.) 

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RISK DELIGHT!

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Andy Goldsworthy and Patrick Dougherty: both are artists whose art is a “celebration of human collaboration with nature.” I don’t know where that quote came from but I’ve used it a few times. It’s so grounded! 

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“Sacred Spaces” is a term hardly ever used by us secular folks but it has popped before my face in unlikely ways during the past week and so I must pay attention. 

First, like always, I look up definitions and they’re a little elastic. One source says that a sacred space must be”… DEFINED - distinguished from other spaces - dedicated to a sacred (holy) purpose; a place for reverence.”  Hmmmm…this sounds like a platform for building yet another church/temple/cathedral/mosque with tag line “so send us your $$$.” Still, I suppose that culturally, societies must have such labels.

Joseph Campbell wrote that everyone should have a personal space where time, telephone, family and friends can be ignored - a place for meditation where ideas can hatch and thoughts can rule uncensored, his version of a sacred space. He called this your “bliss station.” 

Edmund DeWaal is an artist and writer.  He works with porcelain and makes pure white, imperfect objects - plates, vases, bowls.  Somehow he marries the technical properties of porcelain object making with the imperfect nature of nature itself; he celebrates the wabi sabi of art. After throwing one vase he said “It looks like a kid could have made it - it’s that good.”

(Are we back to Goldsworthy and Doughtery and that celebration of nature thing?)

Anyway, in a really good interview with DeWaal published in the New York Times Magazine (November, 2015), DeWaal talks about looking at a vessel (bowl or vase or something) and crawling - metaphorically -  inside to find  a sacred space.  

I am left wondering where my bliss station is and begin a mental list of possibilities:  the garden, my tiny desk, once upon a time the workshop but not so much now. 

Guess what? It doesn’t matter!  Like a snail, I think we carry our bliss station on our backs. It surrounds us like flannel pajamas, our personal cathedral. At any instant, we can be brought to our knees by some ridiculous outburst of nature, or insanely beautiful piece of art, literature, music. I just mostly need to stop crying and pay attention. 

CHUTNEY:

I chop up whatever fruit I happen to have (apples, pears, peaches - 3 -5 )

Sautee a little minced garlic and chopped onion in olive oil (I start EVERYTHING this way)

Put in the fruit and throw in handfuls of raisins, dried cranberry, chopped walnuts

Balsamic vinegar….honey…..a little sugar…lots of cinnamon…curry….nutmeg….(I’m not too specific about amounts)

Cook the whole mess together (fruit should be soft) and serve with any meat. Bonus:  It makes your whole house smell good AND it convinces people that you really can cook!

Happy Holidays!