Chapter 50. Run Motherf….er. Run.

Chapter 50.

Run Motherfucker. Run.

‘They call the wind Mariah’.

The only way to run a marathon without dying is to train for it.  Then, when you think that you are ready, you train some more until running distance becomes second nature.  Well, I had been training long and hard for my manful mediation marathon and was more than ready for a mental run to far side.  A quick lunch burrito being gone and the dishes put away, big foot white dog would have to wait; there would be no walk today. Meditation was calling. I headed back to the mancave, sat down on the cushun’ and closed my eyes once again psyched to hit the ground running.

The task at hand that afternoon was to uncover a treasure trove of new manful subjects to meditate about so I could get them out of the way before starting to work again next week.  I was down to my last days at home and I knew that I was running out of time to do so. I could feel inside that things would soon be different, for the better I hoped, but different no matter what.  It was time to tie up some loose ends and seek some closure beforehand.

Instead, I plunged into the cool waters of a very calm and relaxed state of peace that seemed to last forever even though only a short time passed, no more than 20 minutes.  It was a classic meditation, the kind I couldn’t have dreamed in the past (what me sit still?).  When it was over I didn’t feel peaceful, I felt frustrated. I had failed. Where were those manful subjects that I wanted to cover in the now anticipated mediation marathon?  That list of great man stuff I wanted to deal with so I could move back into to a working man’s life without feeling guilty about what I hadn’t been able to accomplish while hanging out at home.

So I sat there. Waited some more.  Still nothing came.  Was this some kind of final cosmic joke?  A message on the inner machine that there was nothing left to meditate about, so why not just get on with life and move on.  Was that all there was?  Was MM over?

I sat up straight.  This just couldn’t be. There had to be more ground to cover.  The show couldn’t end here.  So I sat there some more and waited for any kind of inspiration to show up.  As I waited none came.  I began to wonder about the whole mishegas.  For starts, why had I even chosen to meditate in the first place?  I was never exposed to anything resembling Eastern thought growing up, except for that one group of guys in high school who heard you could chant for a new car (they didn’t get one) and the saffron robed Krishna’s dancing dancing down the streets.  I could have cared less about Eastern thoughts, having enough trouble dealing with Jewish ones.

Where had this desire come from? How did this Eastern stuff seep into my life?  Did it begin the first time I heard Coltrane blow India or Africa or a Love Supreme?  When I saw John McLaughlin and Carlos Santana take the stage filled with candles at the Kabuki, all dressed in white. So blissed out and blessed out by Sri Chimnoy as they wailed on their electric guitars. Listening to Miles play Bitches Brew live at the Hollywood Bowl or the opening chords of that weird Beatles song on Revolver? The first smell of jasmine incense?  The first sound of the tabla drum?  And when did the trance become real, that unusual rhythmic beat that had beckoned me for long, how did it become an integral part of my life?

No doubt I became really curious about meditation after witnessing first-hand what it did to see who does not relax except when she is asleep and maybe she isn’t relaxing then either.  I had never seen her calm (remember that quiet is not calm) in the first 15 years of our marriage until she began meditating.  It evoked a huge change in her. There she would sit in our bedroom, headphones on blissed out and so happy when she finished. It looked great.

What held me back from embracing it years ago? Simple.  The complete lack of male energy in her meditation process. By no means is male energy a prerequisite for me to learn a skill. I have no trouble sewing a button on my coat (it needs fixing and waiting for help is hopeless and hapless).  I love gardening, cooking and other allegedly feminine activities.  But the whole meditation scene around her was dominated by pastel colors, roses that contained your inner fears, burnt sage and steeped deeply in the zeitgeist of women’s issues and feminist philosophy.  Let me be clear, I am not criticizing their style.  It just had no appeal to me and it wouldn’t to any regular guy.    And to be perfectly honest, as a result I didn’t trust it.  It was just too foreign to embrace.

Only when a good dose of masculine energy seeped into my quest did these Eastern concepts gain traction in my soul.  I still have trouble believing that a series of events that began as a ruse on my wife to get her off of my back as I sat stuck on my couch unable to overcome the inertia of living without a career set me careening down this road less traveled. That out of nowhere I heard an inner man Buddha speak to me and a journey began that continues to this day down this out of the ordinary path that I came to call manful meditation.

It wasn’t easy to find help or guidance.  There certainly was no map to follow for guys like me. I suffered through poor teachers and bad instructors. When that failed, I figured that there might be some reference on the internet or something to meditating with a male emphasis.  Nothing.  I was on my own and lucky that I found the way over time. I thank the stars for that.

There were other more personal reasons why it was hard. Early on it became clear that while I yearned for a powerful inner peace within, I knew damn well that I couldn’t calm myself down using traditional methods.  I needed help and not just the usual prescription. I needed guidance with male view that spoke to me.

I searched for books about Eastern thought by male authors who might make sense.  They were wonderful writers but completely neutral in tone, virtually asexual in nature and some downright creepy, replacing the power of the rose with the shape of a pine needle.  For a man who grew up with Vin Scully and Chick Hearn as his primary motivators, their mellow approach did not anything to help me overcome the long-standing persistence of my hyperactive Jewish/western mind. Nor were their instructions to practice and practice until it came good enough either. I stood on the other side of this dance floor afraid to step across just looking and looking waiting for an opening that was already there.

Eventually the mediations began to take hold.  I’m the kind of guy that has trouble reading a manual about how to work something and would rather poke at until it does.  Meditation was no different. I just kept at it until it worked. I learned over that first year that the problem with meditation for me and maybe for many others it that it is passive and we aren’t.  As I began to practice Manful meditation regularly, I replaced the traditional emphasis of meditation on emptying your mind with a focused and controlled set of thoughts that were appealing.  It helped me concentrate to pick a specific subject and then to focus on it.  That, in turn, made it easier for me to relax which helped my mind to calm down and over time it trained me to do so easily.  Oh, and it was fun.  That’s right, fun.

My manful meditations started with simple easy subjects that made me happy and held my attention.  Easy things to focus on. Stuff that reflects the glue that binds us, the male html code that builds manfullness.  Good healthy things like beer, baseball, hamburgers and wine.  Hey, I didn’t know what I was doing.  I was just thinking about what seemed to come naturally and easily.

Then over time as my power of concentration increased, the mediations grew in complexity.  As my studies intensified and fall blended into early winter something else happened that was unexpected.  I calmed down and I believe that as a direct result, she who is my wife loved me more than before. I meditated about manful subjects that I could understand and love and focus upon with an open heart and lots of joy. I could spend hours lost in manly bliss and equally powerful marital harmony.  No wonder I was attracted to it.

With equal parts concentration and confidence, I covered some serious issues in my life via mediations. Taught myself to forgive, never my strong suit.  Then forgave my parents.  Learned how not to be as overwhelmed by the complexities of living with someone as complex as someone who would even think of living with me. Learned to embrace the pains and struggles and to let go of what I cannot control. Learned the new mantras that guide me now, how often do I hear the voice within that steers me away from anger, resentment and corrosive thought towards joy, giving and strength.

As I continued down the path of manful meditation I discovered something else. I believe that I learned what Manfullness really is.  A deep understanding of Manfullness that is grounded in the belief that the world that we know as men is truly a holy place.  That every waking moment that is spent in a manful state of harmony can be a blessed one.  A perfectly balanced state of mind and body, something to be revered and celebrated as healthy happy males.*

(* a brief side note: As women have staked out their roles as equals in his world, the concept of manfullness has taken quite a beating in the past 20 years.  And let’s face it; many of our brothers have done a shit job by polluting manfullness with stupidity and abuse.  Do not fall into the trap of blaming women for this. Our goal is to honor being a man by living a better life and that honor extends to respecting those around you.  And a note to those self-righteous women who continue to condemn the mass of men for the sins of those who came before us, do not throw stones in the bedroom when you live.  It pisses us off and makes us want to leave.)

I had embraced the gentle part of the word gentleman, something so many men have forgotten.  It felt good.

Manful Meditation created an additional benefit that I grasped as another incidental pleasure of the practice. A sweet real treat, a sort of mental biscuit waiting for me at the end the road. Here is one of the most important and liberating lessons of the practice of manful meditation.

No woman, including she would not want to be called ‘my woman’, will ever challenge time spent in a manful meditation practice if you repeat the blessed chant of the meditating manful man to her:

“Honey, I need a few more minutes, I am in here meditating.”

Oh, and toss this one in if you really want to be left alone.  ‘I am really into it.”

Or this one:  “It’s a really tough one.”

She will embrace you.  I guarantee it.

The first time that these words came spilling off my lips they worked so well that I laughed out loud, reveling it their power, it was that good. I used it on her after watching a brutal 49er loss one Sunday afternoon (it was the early game). Not wanting to see a soul afterwards, I retired to the mancave where I went to console myself with several cold ones, a corned beef sandwich and some SCTV videos.  Sometime during the afternoon she knocked on the door and asked how I was doing.  I turned down the volume and told her I was meditating. After my reply she walked away from that door saying not to worry and talk to her as soon as I was ready.  When I emerged later that afternoon she could not have been more sympathetic (and affectionate too!). Do you really think she cared about how pitifully the secondary handled itself that afternoon (please just turn the fuck around and look at the ball) or that she would have reacted as well if she found me on the couch in the living room in the same scenario?

Over the course of my growing meditation practice, I imagined how this teaching could help my brothers in arms out there.  Think about this. Repeat that line about needing time to meditate to yourself a few times and imagine how that would play with your partner.  Go on, imagine the scene.  She has just walked into the room.  You are sitting up on the couch.  You might be thinking about how your favorite ball club gave it up last night in the 9^th inning and worse yet, how much money you lost on the game.  You hear her walk in.  Now close your eyes quick. What do you tell her when you look up?  You tell her that you are meditating.  That’s right.  Mediating.  You are bettering yourself.  The result? You are golden.  She loves you. She walks away feeling whole.  The entire scene has changed. Done a 180. But the truth? You could have been falling asleep.  You probably were asleep.  You might have been thinking about a blessed cold one or a slice of pizza. Your mind could be anywhere.  Period.  You could be thinking about anything, anything at all.  You can and it will work.  But I digress.

Manful Mediation taught me lessons that I will always treasure. It brought me joy where there was pain, slack where there was tension.  It acts as the coder pins of a balanced manful experience, the silicon lube that frees the internal rusty mental hinges. Teachings as clear as the power of a strike at the bowling alley.   A journey with the integrity of Sean Connery and the consistency of Tom Brady.

I had found my roadmap, a manual, a guidebook to living life fully and completely in the moment. Free from boundaries and loved by those around you.

How is this even possible?  I just relaxed, released and practiced grasshopper. And please don’t think too much about how Carradine died. Wow that was weird.

As was the case on so many afternoons I started to think about dinner.  Maybe Rack of lamb.  Real Mashed potatoes.  Cumin scented  Carrots.  A dry white for her and a big red for me.  Suddenly I felt excessive, it was only Thursday.  But wasn’t there a rack still in the freezer just waiting to be defrosted?  Time to thaw.  Time to thaw.

Rack of Lamb.  Is there an easier way to show off?  I don’t think so.

Ingredients.

1 Rack of Lamb, about 8 to 10 little chops for 2 persons.

Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil.

Option 1.  Mustard, Bread Crumbs.

Heat your oven to 450.

Put a flat baking sheet in the oven as it heats.

While waiting, toss the rack with salt, pepper and a small amount of olive oil.          If cooking option 1, combine all other ingredients and coat the rack.

When oven reaches cooking temperature, remove the baking sheet.  Place rack fat side down.  Bake for 7 minutes.  Should be brown when you turn over. Bake 7 more minutes. Lamb should be brown but still pink in the middle of the chop.

Real Mashed Potatoes.

For small portion.  3 russet and 3 Yukon potatoes.

Milk/Half and Half.

Parsley.

Salt.

Butter.

Boil the potatoes in salted water.  Cool.  Peel.

Put the potatoes in a large bowl.  If lazy use a hand masher, if pure, a ricer.   Pour in ½ cup of milk or half and half depending upon health vs. pleasure concerns.  Add butter.  Mash.  Add salt to taste.  Add liquid until the texture looks right, you know what they should look like. Chop parley and sprinkle on top.  Place a pat of butter in the middle and let it melt.

Early meditation music before I knew what it was.

John Coltrane, India, Africa and/or A Love Supreme.

Ravi Shankar

The Beatles, Within and Without You, Revolver.

The Kinks, See My Friends, Kinkdom.

Miles Davis, Shhh/Peaceful, In A Silent Way.

Chapter 49: Things Get Wet Easily, But Dry Slowly.

 

 

Chapter 49

Things Get Wet Easily But Dry Slowly

 

 

At the moment that I made the decision to take the job, I felt something subtle slip deep inside.  The same feeling resurfaced again later during our sort of celebration dinner, an evening that was highlighted by the unmistakable look of relief on she who was wondering if I would ever leave the house again for anything but a walk, the groceries or yoga class.  Not wishing to derail our happy mood, I didn’t let on about the fact that my mental state was off if ever so slightly.  The sense that something was amiss remained there at the edge of my consciousness just out of view, feeling like the slightest miss in a transmission shifting gears.  Enough to let you know something was off but not to take it into the shop.  I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe I had found a new lower gear, some kind of personal overdrive that caused my brain rpms to drop?  Maybe I was happy? Or perhaps was it a lot simpler.  Maybe I was just plain relieved to see an end to this phase of my life on the horizon.

 

Whatever it was I slept like a rock that evening.

 

I woke up early the next morning to a bright blue sky and the sun shining brightly into our bedroom, she long long gone.  As soon as I got of out of bed, I was set to make the move.  To make the call.  It was time to get off of the bench and check into the game.  On y va mon ami.  Yallah. Schnell. Move the ball. Andale.  Kadimah.  Forward.

 

It was time to leave the house.

 

I found the phone in it’s cradle (a good omen) and made the call.  John was already in the office at 8, another good sign.   Our conversation was brief and to the point once again.  We would finalize the terms of our agreement on Tuesday when he returned from a business trip and unless there was some issue that came up, I would start whenever I wanted working as much as I needed to learn the lay of this new land.  It all took less than 2 minutes.  He added that he was excited about the potential of working together and that was it. No strain, no issues.  Weirdly calm, I hung up and just sat there for a moment stunned at how easily this was all going.

 

That morning time became different.  For so so long I had been challenged by a seemingly infinite sense of emptiness and a lack of structure.  As soon as that phone call ended time, the concept, now carried a sharp point of definition that started next Tuesday when I would get in my car and drive to the office.  That activity, i.e. going to work, as normal as one could imagine, now felt like a rare delicacy sitting on a plate waiting to be eaten.

 

Afterwards, I said fuck it to myself and returned to bed enjoying the leftover warmth in the flannel sheets.  Next, after  a short moment of shut-eye, I enjoyed a long peaceful set of downward and then upward dogs, stretching myself out, slowly, luxuriously and easily.  Finding new motivation in this newly re-defined sense of time, I threw on some sweats and took big foot on a quick walk to the corner bakery.  (P.S., I don’t care if they call it a patisserie, it’s a still a damn bakery).  I brought home an almond croissant for me and a brioche for her (she who loves a brioche sandwich not big foot white dog).  White dog had to settle for kibble and left over sourdough bits but she didn’t mind.  Made a cup of dark roast Sumatra, thick viscous and chocolaty and drank it slow, savoring the contrast against the pastry.  I lingered over the NYT and let the sun shine through the dining room window warm my back.

 

I, who do not ever ever recall being calm, was damn close if not there.

 

Following breakfast, there was only one thing to do and one place to do it in.  At that second, the thought of going to the mancave felt as sweet as the honey and pistachios in a gooey square of baklava.  I couldn’t wait.  The chill had gone out of the house and I tucked myself easily and comfortably onto the cushun’ waiting to see where the practice of manful mediation would take me that day.  Oh, the world felt so fine, I wanted to dive into a pool of clear thought and swim.  And I swim I did.

 

As I rolled through those moments of precious mental peace my mind drifted over the events of the past few weeks.  As I did, I came to understand a different side of my now limited time frame at home.  To my surprise, I became concerned, realizing that there were so many subjects that I hadn’t had time to work on in my practice of manful meditation. I wondered if I would get the chance to cover them once I started working.  And even if I did, would they be the same?

 

And then, yes once again, the inner man bhudda showed his wisdom as he spoke to me from deep inside.  ‘Why worry bro’, he said, ‘do what you can now and take what you can later’.

 

Do what I can later.  Hmmm.  I had the rest of the week and nothing big planned but so much to cover.  That left one answer.  A manful meditation marathon.  A personal conscious-raiser.  A celebration of manful meditation and all that it had been so far and what it could be in the future.  It sounded great.

But what would I meditate about?  How could I choose?

 

To know where you are going you must know where have gone, although lord knows it would have been easy just to repeat the subjects that I had worked on already.  Looking back over those meditations, for the most part I had kept to the middle of the road of mandom. We honor memories of the simple things we love most first, like alcohol, food, sex, and cars and that is just what I did.   Yet by doing so I had missed scores of important subjects of great meaning that should have been dealt with more seriously during this phase of mental liberty.  Instead they were forgotten or glossed over in favor of tits, beer and a tight spiral or a deep three.

 

New possibilities raced in and out of my mind bouncing into consciousness and then disappearing again.   How was I going to discover so many missing subjects with so little time left and hope to prioritize them? I needed to start meditating immediately, but how would I figure out what these missing subjects were?  I drew inspiration from she who is the yin to the man Buddha’s yang.   There was no choice.  I broke out of my trance, got off the cushun and went to get out a pen and paper and started to write out a list just like the hundreds that seem to cover her side of the office.

 

So here are the subjects that I wrote down during that 10 minute stream of consciousness that I could read later.  Alas, many many others were victims of my uniformly and historically horrible penmanship.

 

What is the meaning of marriage?

How could I improve my relationship with she who is sometimes here with me?

Parenting. How to get over it.

Parenting.  Does it ever end?

How did I relate to my two kidults?  What had I done wrong as a father? What had I done right?

Why had I scrupulously avoided examining mortality?

What was death?   How could I have gone deep and not gone there?

Love and how we play the game of love.

Sex.

Success.

More sex.

Cars.

Even more sex.

God.

Or no god.

My Jewishness.

Or my not being jewishness.

My Jewish capitulation to the pleasures of life.

Trust.

Distrust.

Happiness.

Pain.

Boredom.

Guilt.

 

All that in 10 minutes.

 

As I read over this list of subjects I knew that I could meditate about them for the rest of my life and never fully, no partially, understand them even if I worked on them exclusively for all time.  And would never have the time go back to work.  Perhaps more importantly, hundreds, no thousands, of philosophers had spent their entire lives debating these subjects and writing texts that bordered on holy that went on for thousands of pages without deciding these issues. Who did I think I was I to think that I could meditate about them looking for answers? Spinoza?  Freud?  Sartre?

 

Far from it.  Better to think about the Giants, Cartier-Bresson or a porcini.

 

That triggered another thought, education. The truth is that I have always been an A-/B+ guy. Now, looking back on my education, I realized that my approach to learning was liberating.  True, I wasn’t a Yale or Harvard grad (with due respect to the Cal Bear nation).  In fact, I was so out of whack on this issue when younger that I felt intellectually inadequate graduating from U.C. Berkeley Phi Beta Kappa.  Although in classic Kragen fashion I squeaked though with the lowest possible grade point average clearing the hurdle by .03% before they raised it for the next semester.

 

I walked the intellectual line without achieving the singular focus to higher levels of greatness for a simple reason. From the beginning I was drawn to a full balanced life.  Yes, these were all important subject to cover, but so were the arts, music, photography, food, food and food.  Why should they suffer just to score another .05% on a g.p.a.?  I never got that.

 

There had to be less stressful things to meditate about, things that would make me happy and that I could still learn from. As I finished that thought a vision popped into my head that I knew could follow.  It was a moment I wanted to revisit, so I headed back to the cushun and sat back down.  The manful meditation marathon had begun.  I closed my eyes and took myself right back to the birth of our first child, my son.

 

This is a meditation that too many men might have had to skip and that is a shame. Maybe they weren’t there, maybe they closed their eyes or left the room. But for those of us who witnessed the birth of our first child, and yes our first son, it is a moment of pure and clear manfullness as bright the first moments of as a desert sunrise.

 

I remember the date, September 4 (sorry family, just kidding).  Then I tried to think of the time to recall whether it was morning afternoon or evening.  I went back a few hours and put myself in the moment when we looked at each other and realized that this really was the moment that we had been reading about and thinking about and worrying about.  It was time to grab that bag we had already packed and get the car.  I go back to the drive to the hospital, admission and the rooms we were in that day.  This isn’t a test but I remember it all.

 

After a small eternity passing time listening to Motown and watching the heart monitor, they finally moved us to a birthing room. Where am I? Just trying to keep her distracted and joking and the nurses and doctors. Then I am back at that moment when birth occurs. How hard she worked the pain, the screams, the push and then the head poking through, the wet tousled hair, the sudden shocking moment when the shoulders clear her body, the rush of the being into the world, the first time you see your first child. Totally at peace and fully zoomed in this manful moment, I relive the first time I saw that little penis and knew it was a boy.   There is that skinny pale body and the first action he takes, a cry, a breath and then a glorious pee.  A gentle arcing stream of water, free for the first time and all over the nurse.  Welcome to the world amigo.

 

Then do the same exercise for the birth of my daughter the greatest Christmas gift of my life.  Remember being at a Christmas party timing the labor pains so we could leave at the last possible second.  How much faster she showed up.  Impatient, stronger, emphatic, louder, darker and more powerful, she emerged like a cannon howling.  She was ready for the world and still is.

 

All of this memory caused another reaction, my stomach growled and cut through the peace of the moment.  It was time for lunch.  I knew that there was nothing in the frigo at the moment, this called for a steak burrito with black beans and hot sauce, easy on the rice.   I asked for extra hot sauce.  It burned just like it should.

 

Music for labor (for Dad mostly)

 

To bring you both up:

 

London Calling.  The Clash.  This of course depends on your wife and can be a dangerous choice if it fails.  Then again, with the right girl…

A safer alternative, Tom Petty.  Greatest hits.

 

Maybe better to stick to Motown:

Marvin Gaye, The Master Vols. 1 to 4.  This will kill a few hours.

Dianna Ross and the Supremes, any greatest hits collections (for her)

Barry White.  The greatest hits.  To keep her calm and laughing.

Hall and Oates, Greatest Hits.  Nothing like smooth sailing.

 

There in case you need to come down:

 

Keith Jarrett, the Koln Concert.

 

For the birthing room.

 

Nada.  You are there to be there, not to listen to music.  Turn it off.

 

 

Chapter 48. Follow That Bouncing Ball.

 

 

Chapter 48

Follow That Bouncing Ball.

 

On Monday morning I felt much better.  Yes my left eye looked like she had finally lost patience with the bad jokes and sarcastic jibes she puts up with daily and let me have one as richly deserved.  Yes I still hadn’t worked up the guts to look at my poor nose which remained carefully embalmed under layers of gauze and pressure Band-Aids, checking in at an ungodly 3 times its normal size.  Yes I still couldn’t breathe.  But all of that didn’t matter because today the tide had turned.  The pains were gone and I could see that for the first time the swelling wasn’t getting worse.

There were other reasons why I felt this way. On this particular Monday I knew that this week would be different because I was going to back to work.  Soon.  I could feel it.  My sense of confidence about this was deep, not set in unfounded fantasies about what I might be doing at a new job as I had done too many times before.  I could feel change around the corner.  I just had to let it come on in and it would happen.

 

I called John at the coffee company that morning to confirm our Wednesday appointment.  I warned him not to be shocked by my appearance when I walked in the door and explained my recent trip under the knife.  It hardly seemed to matter to him and he wished me well as he hung up.  Although impersonal there was nothing wrong with his response. After all, this was business and there was little else to chat about.

 

With spring in the air and physical recovery on the horizon I felt strong and energized.  With little to do and change coming, I did what any good Jewish man would do at that moment. I opened all of the upstairs windows and then I cleaned.  And cleaned.  And then cleaned some more.  I plotted a blitz attack on my office, clearing piles of bills and don’t forget to do’s, opening drawers that had been shut for months with the Clash and the Who Live At Leeds cranked up so loud that white dog fled the room after barking at the speakers.  I threw away piles of magazines that were more than 2 years old god knows why I kept them.   By the end of the afternoon I had filled several plastic trash bags and spent some quality time with our shredder, stopping short of attacking the closet and settling for a late afternoon margarita instead, my first drink since surgery.  Let me say right here that it felt fantastic.

 

Where a day like this would have bothered me in months passed, now it was easy and light.  The rest of the day ended with burgers on the grill (never too cold to crank it up), most of a bottle of Tempranillo (how can anyone make decent red wine that cheap?) and a scintillating Monday night match up between the Jets and the Titans.  I barely noticed that she came home early and then left almost immediately for meditation.

 

The next day, after a breakfast of steel cut oats, bananas and almonds washed down with a cup of oh so sweet medium roasted Timor, I set out for the mancave. I anticipated a meditation in preparation for my job interview.  I wanted to clear my head of the strange energies that had accumulated over the past 18 months of underemployment.  I was convinced that if I could nail down what this unanticipated period of under-activity had meant to me I could start a new chapter of life much more easily.

 

Well not exactly. When I started in on my ritual manful meditation nothing of the sort happened.  My mind went empty as the blocking schemes of the 49’er offensive line and stayed there.  Instead of panic, my breathing was deep, calm and focused.  I thought of nothing and 20 minutes later I emerged refreshed and centered.  This, I think, was what meditation was supposed to be like, manful or not.

 

In a sense my inner thoughts were ahead of my conscious mind.  They let me know that there was nothing more to meditate about regarding what had happened over the past year and a half.  It was done, gone and over. I had to be let go, to disengage in order to move on.

 

And so I had.

 

After the meditation session ended I didn’t move. I sat peacefully cross legged on the cushun, eyes wide open staring out at the neighbors rooftop and the clear blue East Bay sky once again, noticing that the tree in her back yard had started to shoot forth green leaves as another cycle of life began, an appropriate symbol for what was finally happening to me.  Sitting there, having let go of time, I began to think about what the last 18 months had meant to me.

 

Lots and lots of thoughts emerged about what it all meant.

 

For the first time that I can recall it became OK to do less in my life.  I entered into a mental state that I never before experienced, a time of less.  A time where there were no great moments or accomplishments and eventually I became comfortable with that, not that it was easy or instinctive to do so.           This unstructured time was a kind of mental anti-inflammatory, a period of completely unexpected personal calm that emerged slowly and naturally over time.  As I embraced it, I experienced a profound sense of being in place and at peace with where I was in the cycle of my life. I gained an understanding of what I could do and, in the hardest part for me, a begrudging and then complete  acceptance of what I could not.

 

It was a time to walk the dog for the sake of the walk and not the expectation that she or I ‘needed’ the exercise.  To let dirt crumble between my fingers as I planted bulbs in the fall knowing that there would be tulips and iris in the spring to photograph.  Moments to watch the mozzarella cheese on the pizza bubble to brown perfection and not to burn it in the oven because I was trying to do to many things at once.  Time to rub the back of she who is so stressed she forgets how stressed she is and then rub it again to help her remember how good it feels.  Time to let go of myself my needs, my desires, and let the world come to me as it does not under micromanagement.  Time to be available to my kidults as they passed through the many paths of their own young lives as a mentor, friend and confidante and not have to hang up the phone because I was busy.

 

More importantly this was a time to slow down. How very very strange that felt at first.  It wasn’t that way now.  I had learned to drink time in and savor it.  Honoring that feeling, I sat and then sat some more, taking in the warmth of the afternoon sun lying on the carpet eyes closed when I felt a paw grab my leg and looked up at the crazed expression of a white dog who had come back upstairs and was now fully ready to play.  We did until, as is her nervous femaleish way, she got bored and walked downstairs.

 

What else to do in such a mellow mood then to cook?  The fridge was full of vegetables including several gargantuan organic leeks that I had picked up the weekend before at the farmer’s market. I submit that leeks are more delicate cousin of the onion. They don’t burn your eyes when you chop them and they give that je ne sais quoi to the traditional vegetable soup that I was thinking of.  A round sweetness that the onions, food warriors that they are, just can’t.  A vegetable soup that could warm the heart of any woman, including mine.

 

It was still cold outside that afternoon and the kitchen windows steamed quickly as I sautéed the leeks, celery and carrots along with lots of dill, parsley.  Soon the house smelled ridiculously homey and white dog scored lots of floor goodies as bits and pieces of vegetables found their way to the floor along with several carrot bites which she still had no idea how to catch no matter how soft I tossed them.  I felt that I was standing in some European/Americana moment, linking me back to those grandmothers who had come before us in the soup that cooked slow and long.

 

The soup worked as well on she who came home at about 7 as a dozen roses.  What a smile.

 

And then boom, our meeting on Wednesday showed up.  It was an extension of our first one, all business and no bullshit.  Then only negative was that I got lost again and showed up 10 minutes late, a personal peeve of mine when on the other side of the table.  The office looked no different, no busier but no worse and we spent the next hour talking about coffee, how to market their products by segment and how to restart their sales effort knowing just how brutally limited the marketing budget would be.

 

From the beginning it felt as if I had already been hired and for good reason.  I had been.  And why not?  There was no risk for either side.  He got a sales manager for virtually nothing and I got an office and plenty of upside.  All I had to give up was time and time was something I had a lot of.  As much as I had loved the time at home there had been too much as of late.  I was more than ready to get out.

 

As we closed the meeting and shook hands John asked what I thought about the opportunity.  I told him that I was excited about getting back into the bean business (true) and that I needed to talk it over with my wife (sort of, I mean you just can’t give it up that easy it looks you are too easy). With that I left and drove back to Berkeley.

 

Something was missing in our interaction and on the drive home listening to some vintage Tom Petty I thought about what that could be.  What was wrong, why did this feel so odd and empty? Try as I hard as I could I just couldn’t put my finger on it.  Eventually I realized why I couldn’t figure out what was missing.  Nothing was missing because there was nothing to miss.  The process had gone so smoothly that it was boring.  It was a business meeting with only one goal, to rebuild their business and thus my career by increasing sales.  Makes sense doesn’t it?  Everything else was in place and ready to roll.  Why worry? But I couldn’t help but wonder to myself, where was that missing tension? The waiting, the upset stomach that accompanied a job in play?  Where was that feeling?

 

MIA with my anxieties and my often dysfunctional career choices.

 

By the time I reached home any doubts about this decision made were completely toast.  Eliminating any leftover sense of bullshit bravado or ego, the choice was an easy one.  There were few healthy alternatives on the horizon.   There had been a couple of vague leads early in the year, some work maybe helping out so and so start up a new business all uncommitted. I knew that I spent way too much time writing food reviews and blogs that didn’t attract traffic or editing photos that I didn’t print.  I had killed enough minutes passing the time when the mediations weren’t working and the walks were dull.   There was no point waiting for imaginary opportunities that would never come.

 

That evening I set the table right, got out the silver candelabra and blue candles. Found the decent plates and good cutlery.  I started the evening with a champagne toast followed by a dinner of leftover vegetable soup and a roast chicken with vegetables (heavy on the roots) all cooked in the pan.  When I raised my glass and looked her in the eyes after we sat down I didn’t have to explain why we were celebrating.  She who often doesn’t know what was going on in my life knew loud and clear when it counted.  She didn’t even need to ask.  It all felt so good.

 

Vegetable soup a la maman.

 

Several large leeks.

4 carrots.

1 head celery.

1 bunch dill

1 bunch parsley

1 potato

2 cups chicken stock (recall the earlier discussion on this subject).

Pinch salt and pepper.

2 tbsp. Cooking oil.

 

Clean and chop vegetables small and keep separate.

In large cast iron pot, add oil until warm.

Start with leeks and the potato.  Then gradually add celery and carrots until wilted.  If you have vegetables like spinach or peppers, add them.

 

Add the stock put the lid on and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add the chopped parsley and dill and simmer for another 20 or until mush.  Puree with a blender stick or in a food processor.  If clumpy add water or milk to desired consistency.  If you want it more ‘rich’ add a ½ stick of butter before serving.

 

Songs for a vegetable soup:

 

Call Any Vegetable.  Frank Zappa.

Green Onions.  Booker T.

Know Your Onion.  The Shins.

Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme.  Simon & Garfunkel.

Salt Peanuts.  Dizzy Gillespie.

Cut the cake.  Average White Band.

Mack The Knife.  Frank “the Chairman” Sinatra.