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Sunday, June 27, 2021

We Love

Being human, we love.

We sometimes lose our bearings,

our moral compasses high-jacked

by a rogue magnetic wave

skewing us toward greed and comfort

and I'm-all-right-Jack.

And then (though being human, we still love)

then we love in the wrong direction

guided by the Zeitgeist,

replacing eschewed wisdom

with the merely clever.

We are off track.

 

What would it be like to forgo the TV

and its technological cousins

and allow ourselves to drift back to the natural:

the earth,

the bark of trees,

the wild seas.

Taking care of these

will lead us not toward destruction

but toward what,

being human,

we need: love.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor
 



 

Sunday, June 20, 2021

Uncertain Ground

How steady are you?

Can you stand firm

on the uncertain ground of life?

It's always and ever been uncertain,

but we shoved that fact

under the rug

in order to maintain our illusions.

Now the rug has been yanked

from under our feet

and there are no more illusions to comfort us.

Some adapt not too badly.

Others are frantic to regain

the sure and certain,

to re-establish the supremacy of their will.

 

But will is of little avail here.

Now is the time for us to find our sea legs.

It's time to learn to stand on the uncertain ground

as if we were born to the wild, dangerous joy

of surfing.

Balance will save us.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor




 

Sunday, June 13, 2021

Fluidity

Say the world different

and see the change.

Not set in stone,

the world moves like the shadings of our energy fields,

licking the edges of the auras

in shifting impulses.

I don't need to tell you

that life is change

and holding on will end in tears.

 

During the '60s revolution

we were urged to go with the flow.

A commonplace now, so familiar,

so casual,

we forget that there we have the ultimate edict.

All that matters is knowing the change

and allowing it.

 

Am I really saying that the meaning of life—

well, at least the optimal approach

to a meaning of life--

is in this jokey, overworked phrase?

Apparently.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor




 

Sunday, June 6, 2021

Sourdough Love

On Monday I took out the sourdough for its weekly feeding. My sourdough technique is slapdash (aren't you surprised?). My mother, Eileen, described her own rule for life as "by guess 'n' by golly", and I know I'm the same. Like it or not, we eventually, inevitably, turn into our mothers.

 

Anyway, rather than measure and niggle over my sourdough, I just feed it until I'm ready to use it. So I fed it (equal parts flour and water) all day Monday, not having the time to actually start the bread that day, until I had over six cups of sourdough starter ready to use. That's a lot.

 

I used two cups of it for some fantastic biscuits to go with Monday's dinner, but then I fed the starter twice more before bedtime, bringing the total amount back to well over six cups, which I left on the counter overnight to ferment.

 

Now, some people throw away excess sourdough starter. I beg your pardon? They do what? So no, that's not me. In this house we don't throw away good food (potential food, that is).

 

All day Tuesday my life revolved around bread. While I brewed our morning coffee I milled a quart of spelt flour in our grain grinder. After reading the paper, I started three kinds of dough: an ordinary white flour for French bread; my usual mixture of flours for whole-grain sourdough bread ("Scotch oats", millet meal, Red Fife wheat, spelt, and unbleached white flour); and finally, a white-flour dough enriched with eggs and butter.

 

By dinner Tuesday the top of our chest freezer (the only large horizontal space in the vicinity of the kitchen) contained three ficelles and two fatter French sticks; two large loaves of whole-grain sandwich bread; a dozen hamburger buns, a dozen sweet rolls (with fig and fennel jam), and a loaf of cheese and onion bread.

 

At bedtime I said to DinoVino, I think we should give some of this away; it's too much for us to eat and the freezer is full. And he said, No, we'll keep it. In the morning I pointed out again the fact that the freezer is packed with bread from previous weeks of sourdough play plus his own meat indulgences from the Virtual Farmers' Market. The. Freezer. Is. Packed.

 

So today I'll be delivering quarterings of sourdough loaves of one type or another to neighbours, adding a little happy gluten to their lives.

 

 
Copyright © 2021 Ann Tudor
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
Audible.Ca: go to https://www.audible.ca and search for Ann Tudor
Audible.Com: go to https://www.audible.com and search for Ann Tudor