I am seeing the Spring blossoms
as I have never seen them before,
pink
white
caressing my perceiving,
my senses invited
to Nature’s wedding reception,
the blossoms a love-infused bride,
the trunk an elegant groom.
We are all privileged guests
of this natural union,
silently listening
as the branches
and leaves
whisper their applause.
Let’s catch this bouquet
of abundant flowering,
sharing in a simple gift
of Nature.
I wrote this poem the Winter before last, while sensing the presence of my late partner in the first glimpse of morning
CONNECTED BY BEAUTY
Dearest One,
You passed my bedroom window
In the flight of a winter bird,
The lightest whisper
Across my immediate landscape,
Your shape described
By a swift, speckled-brown movement.
Snowflakes fall
Making fresh music with the air
Forming a delicate dance,
Some ushered by the wind
To a skater’s glide,
Others parachuting
In a patterned freedom.
Nature is offering
Her magical surprises,
Partnering my awareness
With a palette of love.
Connected by Beauty
I take your hand
For this heavenly, morning waltz.
For a long time now I have been grinning and bearing a pain in my right leg, ignoring all the advice from friends, family and healthcare practitioners to reduce my workload. After last week’s Hellerwork session, it has been discovered that the pain in my leg was being referred from damage to the psoas muscle which is a key muscle for fluidity and flexibility of movement. I got the message, and for the time being, I am working fewer hours and faithfully doing the suggested exercises. Even though I won’t be changing the ‘what’ of my work, I am changing the ‘how’ of it in order to learn a new approach to my working life. As Einstein said “A problem cannot be solved by the same thinking that created it”.
The blog got put to one side while I summoned up the courage to address this part of me which was knocking at the front door of my being, and I had a very strong feeling that if I didn’t admit it, it would take the back-door route, and I would end up immobilised and with no agreeable choices for some time.
This urge to take care of my health, necessitating a change in my thinking as well as my routine, has caused me to look at how this damage came about in the first place. Trawling back through 57 years of thinking patterns has helped me to identify a learned set of behaviours in relation to how I work. While I was lying on the massage table last week, following the bodyworker’s hands with my breath – I can assure you this brings your attention to every cell – I had an image of my brain divided in two halves, the left side was light and energised, while the right side was dark and stagnant. This was not a happy discovery, and led to the thought that one part of me was very happy and fulfilled, and the other part very sad and unattended. How could I have allowed myself to become so divided?
While I address this question, and perform alternate nostril breathing to clear my head, I am relieved to be taking responsibility for my present and future health.
In conversation last week with a dear friend who was born in Yorkshire at the beginning of WWII, my friend was remembering how she had lived with her grandmother while her own mother went to work in a distant town in order to bring in an income during the war years and the decade which followed. Her father had died a young man during the war, and the women had to bind closely together to salvage a life after their home had been destroyed by a bomb. She told me how her beautiful mother had cycled with her ‘grip’ which contained her requirements for the week, to catch the bus for the onward journey. She also mentioned that because stockings were rationed during this time, women created the illusion of wearing them by pencilling a thin, black seam of kohl down their calves. Her mother had boiled onion skins to dye her legs the colour of stockings, after which she applied the seams and then was ready to go dancing. I adore stories like this and I am asking my literary friend if she will treat with a memoir of her childhood. Amidst all the hardship there was fun, inventiveness, dedication, great courage and wonderful images of femininity which, I believe, we need to revisit to help breathe a softness into our lives today.
With the mention of stockings and rationing, I was reminded of an anecdote my father told me. As a farmer, he travelled by train from our small village in Co Armagh in N Ireland to the cattle sales in Dublin, where he bought a bull for the purposes of supplementing his income by providing a service for the cows of the neighbouring farmers. It could be termed a niche market for those times because during the 1950s and 60s, farmers could not afford to keep a bull solely for their own cows, and Artificial Insemination was not available. My father would spend a few days choosing a bull, arrange for his transportation by train, and then set off on a mission to purchase silk stockings for the ladies back home. In order to conceal the hosiery from the customs officers, he would drape 12 pairs of stockings over each shoulder underneath his clothing. I can imagine when asked if he had anything to declare, he would look at the taciturn customs official with an equanimity he had practised so well and say ‘nothing to declare sir’, while at the same time bubbling inside with the knowledge of his mischievous deed and the accompanying consideration that he had bought a bull to make calves, and stockings to adorn calves.
Knowing my father, whose blue eyes danced in his head from morning to night, he must have taken great pleasure in having so much sensuous silk secretly lining his tall, slim frame. On his return home, with the help of my mother, how they must have enjoyed peeling off each elegant, silky layer to arrange in pairs, finally to end up gracing the legs of the womenfolk, making them feel special, and above all, feminine.
At the weekend, I watched beautifully-arranged bouquets of flowers being carried by husbands and children to their waiting vehicles, transforming the busy streets and pavements with their bright colours and air of excitement at the prospect of bringing home a happy surprise for mum.
Our own experience in the shop was one of increased business as many men bought their ingredients to make a special lunch or dinner. The atmosphere buzzed for another reason too, with many new faces appearing over the course of the weekend. Along with the local butchers, we received great praise in the magazine of one of our daily newspapers. The journalist had visited one week when the shop was in full swing, followed by a 9.30am photograph the following week, when the stands hadn’t been dressed, which is why we are looking a little sparse in that area. It is a bit like someone arriving to your home unexpectedly and while you are delighted to see them, you have those niggling feelings that your kitchen could have been cleaner and tidier. However, the unexpected benefit is that it helps you practise for living in the moment as you put your attention on your visitor rather than the greasy cobwebs which heretofore had managed to make themselves invisible. And, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
We are delighted that the reporter had such a positive experience and may I take this opportunity to say ‘thank you’ to Aoileann and her food column in the Independent Magazine. You can read her article on this link.
One of my work colleagues had asked for a job with us two years’ ago. He had very little English and the hardship of his earlier years was detected in the absence of his smile. Our experience of these young Polish people had been very positive in the past in that most are very loyal, hard workers and we decided to give him a chance.
We didn’t realise that we were employing a plumber, carpenter, electrician, tiler, painter, roofer, and stonemason all rolled into one. I asked him one day how it was he could turn his hand to anything and he said ‘I come from a small village in Poland, I learn everything’. He has done all these jobs for us when required in addition to going to the market every day for the fresh produce, unloading, displaying, stacking shelves, and serving customers. In other words, this young man is a treasure. Now he smiles from morning to night, his English has improved, his wife makes some of the best cakes I have ever tasted, and one of the great joys of the day is when his 4-year-old son calls over for a hug from his daddy. He loves to stand in front of his dad with his chin resting on the counter, growing himself up by watching his parents do their best for him.
A surprise gift for me early last week was an offer by my Polish friend to clean my car windows both inside and out. I drove home that evening with my vision cleared, both physically and metaphysically as a lifetime of emotional wounding emerged during the course of the week, not for the first time, but followed by a resolve to clean up my own act and honour my own truth.
Sometimes we are encouraged to move forward by reading a life-changing book, or having a conversation with a wise friend, and in this case it came in the simple form of an act of kindness.
One of our weekly visitors is a wandering, beggar woman who wheels a pram and gathers up what she can from those whom she can persuade to part with something that will be of use to her as a bartering tool. There is often no sense in what she produces in exchange for some food. Last year, she presented me with a tall, wooden, carved ashtray. I told her she could keep it and have her potatoes and carrots for free. ‘It’s an antique, it is Chinese, it is very valuable’, she countered. Telling her that I didn’t smoke, and it wouldn’t suit my home fell on deaf ears, because all she wanted to do was make an exchange. She always gives me something. It can be a holy medal, a set of rosary beads, a book of prayer, a set of screwdrivers, a religious calendar, and without fail, when she is leaving, she says, ‘I will pray for your mother’.
For a long time, I would allow myself to get into a state of barely-concealed anger and agitation each time I saw her, wishing she would disappear and I wouldn’t have to deal with her. One day, realising that I and I alone was responsible for the way I was feeling, I decided to change my attitude, look at her properly, treat her like any other customer, and ask ‘What would you like today?’, instead of my usual thought of ‘let’s get this over with as quickly as possible’. I can assure you, I felt a million times better with this approach and knew if I practised enough, I would improve.
The next time she came back, she had a beautiful bunch of flowers for me, a mixture of buddleia and St John’s Wort, the purple and yellow complementing each other perfectly, and tied together with an elastic band. I told her she couldn’t have brought me a nicer present. She said she had picked them up the mountains. And now instead of praying for my mother, she is praying for me. On my way to collect my car that evening, I noticed a little space in a local garden that matched the content of my bouquet, rather surprisingly.
Since the source of flowers has dried up during the winter months, with the exception of a bunch of heather, it has been back to holy pictures and prayers, but now that spring is just around the corner, I can look forward to daffodils and a much eased conscience. Thank you, dear lady, for being my teacher.
Up until about five years’ ago, I had only associated romanesque with an architectural style in Medieval Europe, but when as a vegetable it appeared before me with its neatly-arranged, lime-green, spiky hairdo, and resembling a cross between broccoli and cauliflower, I couldn’t wait to take it home to see what I could do with it. No recipes were to be found at that time. I decided to divide it into florets and steam them. Meantime, I made a sauce with shallots, garlic, passata and oregano and poured it over the steamed florets before serving. This worked very well as a first experiment. Google now yields plenty of recipes and, in the pipeline, I have some coming from my friend in Normandy who has just registered as an organic farmer and is delighted that she will be growing these cabbages as she calls them. Another appellation was being added to my romanesque repertoire.
Shortly after this, fractals appeared in a book I was reading about the secret teachings of plants, with a description of a fractal as ‘a nonlinear object composed of sub-units (and sub-sub-units) that resemble the larger structure’. ‘Oh’, I thought, ‘isn’t romanesque a perfect example of fractals’, and these hitherto unknown words ushered in a wave of fresh discovery as I explored their uses and meaning.
Now, back to the marketplace. I received a phone call a few weeks’ ago from a lady asking for 8 romanesque for a lecture her husband was giving in one of our universities. This was an annual event, and she was keen to let me know that we had always been able to oblige. I was rather excited at the thought of some third-level students being treated to the wonders of fractals via the romanesque as a fine example of naturally-occurring fractal patterns. I asked ‘Is your husband lecturing in fractal geometry?’ There was a long pause. ‘No’, she said, ‘he gives it to the students to cut up’. ‘It’s a biology class, something to do with enzymes.’ My excitement faded, because I saw this vegetable as the perfect exhibit to demonstrate how Nature can help show us the way to a more coherent patterning of our own lives as sub-units of our mathematical Universe. However, when I let go of my own expectations, and brought enzymes centre-stage, I figured that catalysts have their own major part to play in causing change, whether that is as the enzyme responsible for turning starch into sugar or appearing unexpectedly as an event or person representing a significant turning point in our lives.
Eating up our greens could take on a whole new meaning as we bring science out of the laboratory and give it a stir in our cooking pot.
From the interior counter, I look out onto the side window of our local flower shop which, from the beginning of February, the owner had decorated with big, sensuous, red hearts and cuddly white bears, drawing people’s attention to the fact that Valentine’s Day was only two weeks’ away.
This window is a stopping-off point for one of our local figures who lives alone in his riverside home, and who loves to tell me a story when I can take some time out to listen. Sometimes his story will have begun as he leans against the wall, hoping to attract my attention. I give him a wave and smile in acknowledgement. I’ve come to realise this is his warm-up routine to get rid of his shyness before he does his shopping. He knows I can’t possibly hear what he is saying, but very cleverly, when he comes in, he will ask me a question, such as ‘Do you know the difference between Greek Olive Oil and Italian Olive Oil?’, or ‘What kind of music do you like?’, and I am hooked.
Pre-Valentine’s, his line of questioning was around my enjoyment of the theatre and movies. As there was no one else shopping at the time, I came out from behind the counter to engage more fully, and asked him did he watch movies on the tv. ‘I love the old movies’, he told me. ‘Sure, I am in love with Katharine Hepburn.’ Before I had time to pursue this revelation, he turned and walked out. This wasn’t unusual, because he often does this to signal he has reached an end to what he is comfortable with at any particular time. Five minutes’ later, he returned, and positioning himself where he was the one looking out, and I was the one looking in, he presented me with a single red rose, saying ‘Thank you for receiving me’. ‘I hope this is ok.’ ‘You are always very kind to me when I don’t know what it is that I have come in for.’ I could feel my heart melting as I looked at this courageous man with his shaggy grey beard, and tousled, greying hair, his gift for story-telling his vital contribution to human existence. I regarded his whole being while I thanked him and told him that he had touched my heart. I wanted to return to his earlier questions about going to the theatre or the movies, and tell him I had little need, that my senses were constantly engaged with the unfolding of my everyday experiences. But taking my cue from his body language, I knew that he had finished, and could now do his shopping.
I am grateful to Ann, who knows me nearly as well as I know myself, for starting the recipe ball rolling with her request. As my blog develops, I will punctuate the stories with some recipes which I have found to work well for me.
I have mentioned Quinoa, that nutritious, protein-packed, South American seed which is very popular with vegetarians, with those who need to cut down on wheat or remove it altogether from their diet, and as a low-GL food which can assist with keeping our blood sugars balanced. Nowadays, we are asked more and more for gluten-, wheat-, and dairy-free foods, and I find the following recipe a good, delicious-tasting, all-rounder. It comes from nutritionist, Patrick Holford, in The Holford Low-GL Diet Cookbook. I like to read through recipe books and combine tips for one recipe into another, adapt them to my own taste or improvise from what is available in my store cupboard. However, I believe the most important ingredient is love, and all else follows.
For this recipe, I depart from the original a little by toasting the quinoa in a heated frying-pan for a couple of minutes, shaking the seeds around to begin releasing their nutty flavour. When you smell their aroma, this is a sign to stop toasting. Then I mix the bouillon powder with hot water, add it to the quinoa, giving it a good stir, bring it to the boil and continue with the recipe.
Cashew and Sesame Quinoa
Serves 2
140g quinoa
360ml water
1 tsp Marigold reduced salt vegetable bouillon powder
3-4 tbsp fresh or frozen petits pois
2 tbsp cashew nuts
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp tamari (a wheat-free soy sauce), or use soy sauce
2 tsp lemon juice
1 large carrot, julienned
6 spring onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
Freshly ground black pepper
