Sunday, March 25, 2012

Let's get it straight . . . .




Let's get it straight,
or maybe
crooked.

We all want to be
on the other side,
where there aren't
any beer cans
or plastic
bags.

And this ain't no
metaphor. The
other side is not
in the city or on the
moon.

It is about water,
and really about
Nirvana, that place,
so very far away
that we don't even
see it when we
look in the
mirror.


Monday, March 19, 2012

Three Little Pigs and the Expired Auto Sticker

Our neighborhood cars with expired stickers have had their windshields defaced by a citizen who believes that people shouldn't let their stickers expire.

There is a lot of angst expressed on our neighborhood elist about the individual who is performing these deeds.

I suggested that, like the pig that builds the brick house, why not just keep our stickers up-to-date and not have our windshield defaced. My argument fell short, because (in the original fairy tale) the wolf did not go away, but rather went into the house through the chimney and became soup. (I can't fathom why this is an appropriate kid's story.)

It was pointed out to me that the citizen (a.k.a defacer) also defaces some properties being renovated, scribbling on renovators' walls and fences that they don't have the proper permits. Perhaps it is a matter of the permits not being clearly visible, or perhaps the defacer is just spiteful. Maybe the permits need to be bigger or better lit. I don't know.

What concerns me about this situation is that we are fighting fire with fire (defacing with anger). This is the stuff that wars are made of, and we all know that we have enough of that. And not just country angry at country, not just one family angry with another family, but even one family member angry with another.

I'm not sure of the rationale that Mr. Defacer is using. Perhaps he feels this is his compassionate response to the dangers to life and limb when an unsafe vehicle hits the highway, or when renovations are done without the proper authorization. Perhaps he is a believer and advocate of civil disobedience, and is doing what he believes is right.

But why the angst? What does that accomplish? Mr. Defacer scrawled on my windshield. It took an hour to clean it off. And then it took a day to let the anger subside. The anger is something we don't need to create. The birds are leaving me gifts on my windshield. When we are able to talk (they are busy fellows) I apologize to them for not providing a Johnny-on-the-Spot. But is this a cause for anger?

Gluten-free Vegan Bread

This recipe is from Namaste's website

Granny's Gluten Free Oven Baked Bread
This bread was so great in the breadmaker we begged Granny for the oven baked version. Contributed by Sharon Gilman. Thanks Sharon!
Ingredients
3 ½ cups Namaste Perfect Flour Blend
1 ½ cups milk or rice milk
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons honey or agave nectar
½ cup cornstarch, arrrowroot or tapioca flour or powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 tablespoon yeast
¼ cup warm water

Directions
Mix yeast in ¼ cup warm water and set aside for 5 minutes. Warm milk, add oil, honey and cider vinegar. Beat (room temperature) eggs and add to milk mixture. Add yeast mixture to milk mixture and blend.
Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and blend on medium speed with electric mixer for 3 minutes. Pour into well greased loaf pan. Cover loosely with waxed paper and towel and let rise for 30 minutes in warm location. Preheat oven to 350°F.
Cover loosely with foil tent to prevent over browning and bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for another 35-40 minutes. Let cool completely.

Here is my variation (altered 4/5/12), which eliminates the oil and eggs and doubles the recipe. It makes three loafs in this 1 lb. bread pan

Granny's Gluten Free Oven Baked Bread (Kim's Vegan
Ingredients
7 1/2 cups Namaste Perfect Flour Blend
3 cups almond milk or soy milk
2 tablespoon cider vinegar
for oil: 3/4 cup cold milled flax seed.
for eggs: 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons flax seed AND 1 cup + 2 tablespoon water
1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
1 cup cornstarch, arrrowroot or tapioca flour or powder
2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 tablespoon xanthan gum

Directions
Mix yeast in 1/2 cup warm water and set aside for 5 minutes. Warm milk, add oil, honey and cider vinegar. Beat (room temperature) eggs and add to milk mixture. Add yeast mixture to milk mixture and blend.
Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients and blend on medium speed with electric mixer for 3 minutes. Pour into well greased loaf pan. Cover loosely with waxed paper and towel and let rise for 30 minutes in warm location. Preheat oven to 350°F.
Cover loosely with foil tent to prevent over browning and bake for 50 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for another 50 minutes. Let cool completely.

Gluten-free bread needs to be toasted quite a bit. I do it on "6" — the highest number on my toaster.

Changes 4/5/12—added xanthan gum, increased yeast, decreased temperature, increased time. Next loaf I'm going to change the flour from 7 to 7 1/2 cups to see if having more flour will help. I'm assuming that the long cooking time is because I have too much moisture.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

A tten shon. Confessions of a “first-class slob.”

Click on collage to enlarge.
A young Zen student was given the job of arranging flowers for the various altars in the temple. He was a very serious sort of young man and was concerned about doing a proper job. There may also have been a bit of vanity involved. “Flowers no higher than the statue’s eye. Check. Odd number of flowers in the vase. Check. No thorns or spiky flowers. Check. No all-white arrangements except for funerals. Check.” As he was working, an older monk came into the room, watched for a moment and asked, “Do you want to know how to make a perfect arrangement for the altar?” “Oh, yes!” said the youngster. “Well,” said the monk, “You take a bunch of flowers, put them in a vase, step back and say ‘That’s perfect!’”

I’m acutely aware these days how poor my attention has been. Yesterday I spend 15 minutes looking for a glass of juice that I had finished earlier and even washed the glass. When I saw the glass in the dish rack I finally figured it out.

Saturday I helped someone set up for tea ceremony. I asked, after altering the wiring on the heater, if it was all working. The tea teacher saw a light on the heat controller and said “yes.” I should have checked the heater itself, which wasn’t heating.

I bought some wiper blades yesterday. There was a twenty dollar rebate. But I threw the package away at the store and didn’t have the UPC code. And now I see that the rebate ended two days ago, a day before I bought the blades.

Last week I contributed to an IRA, but did so from an account that didn’t have enough money in it to cover the purchase. In the meantime, the mutual fund went up and I lost $150 or so.

I could go on and on. Luckily none of these errors was life threatening. They cost time and money, and in the case of the tea ceremony, the error resulted in lukewarm tea. My wife, in the spirit of a true geisha, was very polite when she said that the tea was perfect.

In Zen, Dogen tells us that when we are cooking we should be directing our attention to our cooking. We use the expression, “where were you?” when someone is one place physically and another place mentally. What a gift it is to be “with” another person, and not just sharing with them a physical space.

My mom used to say that I was a “first-class slob.” I always liked the “first-class” part. I thought that softened the blow a little. My neighbor thinks I’m OCD because when we go to our favorite Mexican dive for breakfast I organize the menus on the counter so they are all going the same way, and rearrange the multi-colored chairs sometimes so they look better. So is OCD and SLOB related (a question for my dear deceased psychotherapist aunt who would give me definitive answers (unlike my psychoanalyst sister who says, “ask your aunt”))?

So back to the zen student arranging the flowers. What a difficult job! We want the flowers to look like they just grew that way, and were not arranged. Yet the harder we try to imitate nature, the more unnatural it looks. Is greater attention the answer? Probably, but it has to be wholehearted attention, not just “concentration.” That is another topic for another post.

P.S. I wanted to report that now that I’ve discovered how inattentive I am I would turn over a new leaf. So I went to get some groceries. When it came time for checkout, I remembered that, as usual, I had forgotten the reusable bags I have in my car. Then, when I got back to my car, I remembered that I had forgotten to take into the grocery the bag of recyclable bags that I’d been carrying around.

P.S.S. Just heard a wonderful keynote for SXSW by Bruce Springsteen. At the end he said, “Don’t take life too seriously ... and take life as seriously as death.”

P.S.S.S. I’ve been reading about Shanavasa, the third patriarch of Buddhism. His enlightenment came when his teacher (Ananda) tugged on his robe. He was asking Ananda, “What kind of thing is the original unborn nature of all things [who were you before you were born]?” Imagine how that simple tug must have moved his attention from his mind to the present moment. A tten shon.

Friday, March 9, 2012

Taiwan/US cultural exchange exhibit

A couple of my art pieces were in a traveling exhibit in Taiwan and the US. After the fact, they are now doing an illustrated catalog of the exhibit. I wanted to share what I'm submitting for the catalog:
I've been making my staple collages for about 15 years now. I'm struck with the beauty in what we throw away. I used the same stapler in the 1950s in my father's store to recycle hosiery boxes into Christmas handkerchief boxes. Sue Eisler gave me permission to use the stapler for art making. She staples with a beautiful and vigorous reckless abandon, while mine is a more controlled and functional means of attaching one layer to another. 
In these particular collages I incorporated a brochure that Sheow Hwey gave me of the beautiful Taiwanese dancers who, though physically handicapped, showed us all that our only path is to work with what we have.




Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"