air awareness.........

There's an hilarious scene in Fawlty Towers when Manuel is underneath the counter in the hotel lobby. The old Colonel comes into the lobby only to find a moosehead staring at him. Manuel begins talking and the Colonel who can't see him, replies to the assumed talking moose.......commenting to it that it can speak English well.........Manuel replies......."Yes, I know English. I learned it from a boooooooooook."

Good to know moose can learn the English language from a boooooooook.

If I was to describe my cooking prowess, I would say I'm a slapdash kind of kitchen princess. Though I enjoy reading cookbooks and new recipes for ideas, I rarely go by the full recipe, unless of course it's when I'm making jam or baking. Then, I know I can't mess around with the details. I've learned that the hard way. However, all other dishes are "miss muskiefied".....a few extra spices, an elimination of certain items.........mad dashes, sponteneous stirrings. I've never been one to follow the rules.....

I can learn some things from a book, but the offbeat rule breaking me tends to go off the batter beater path....... I'll read about a new way of doing something, or looking at the world.........I'll find myself lost in a beautiful poem, my eye will catch on a phrase that sticks to my inner teflon.......I can learn new theories, information, techniques.......but when it comes to really learning, it has to be absorbed, synthesized and put into my own words. It has to be tried and applied.

Most important things you can't learn from a book anyways.....

like love.

like loving.

like what its like to be in love.

like what its like to feel loved.

like the pain of love.

Do you remember when big love zoomed into your life like a bolt out of the blue, bringing with it the big night sky fireworks of possibility? Kaboom! Zip! Zing! The sky fills with showering outbursts of light and colour. LOVE. When it happens in all it's glory, it hits you right in the sweet spot, where destiny awaits to be discovered. Sleep alludes you. It's like you were injected with effervescence that opens up your eyes, opens up yourself to wild bubbly gulps of champagne. The best champagne.

Maybe the way I see and feel it is very different than you?

You can't learn that from a book. Its not academic.........it's not cerebral. Its a rolling thunder of yearnings and desires unique to each of us. It's a give and take onslaught of personal wants and needs. How can you really understand it simply from reading about it? How can you really get over it either by reading it in a book? And yet, the self help industry flourishes...........and feeds our quest for awareness and understanding. I may be able to learn how to make gazpacho, or some fancy schmancy dessert by scouring the pages of the Joy of Cooking......, but when it comes to the recipe for living? When it comes to seeking answers about the important things in life?

You gotta live it..................do it, be it, feel it.............and figure it out......a nose in a book trying to memorize the steps of life and love? You can swallow the essence of the idea, the poem, the feeling that you're not alone in this vast and magnificent world........but it always comes down to kneeling to the beauty of a feeling heart.

My kitchen time when I'm messing with the spices and ingredients, is when I feel comfortable letting my thoughts and feelings flow. But, by far my favourite place to reflect, to plan, and to feel is sitting on a dock (or a beach) dangling my feet in the water and listening to the grace-full sounds of life around me, inhaling the simmering spices of the spirit and learning to understand how to breathe again. One invisible breath at a time. Because, it is in the air we breathe where we find our own unique recipes for all the big things in life which are not found in a boooooook.

ps. the essence of this post was found in the spiritual wisdom gracenotes of John O'Donahue's anam cara.......i highly recommend it. :)