Saturday, December 21, 2013

Decorations of a different sort

I am sitting at a heavy wooden table as I write this...

Two cookbooks are open; a recently emptied coffee canister with a label I found pleasing is sitting by the cookbooks and it is also open...just in case there is any more scent it would care to offer up. I am sipping on a mug of lightly honeyed peppermint tea that I made with water that had been poured over an orange rind and left steeping. Directly in front of me are two spice jars...one of chili flakes--some few of which will be sprinkled over roasted green beans and garlic with a light squirt of lime and sprinkle of salt for a Christmas dinner pot-luck...and the other is of turmeric. I don't know yet what I will do with it, but it was too beautiful to pass by in its clear glass jar. It is $1.67 worth of pleasing and possibility at the moment and I look forward to learning how it best likes to dance.

Christmas music plays in the background, I have a stocking hung at my door, and I just heard Canada geese fly by...

This open, aching, fullness of my senses makes me think about the poetics of decoration...how important it is to me to take the time now and then to create this sort of environment...to find beauty in acts of creativity and preparation...to give myself the time to savor and steep...And in so doing, to Encounter.

To savor and steep myself in the place where all converges...all senses, all Word, all Story, all flavors, all experience, all glory and humanity...

To savor and steep myself in Love, rising and wailing, kneading and needy...Chaotic, like the pleasing mess around me, bright as the bowl of a spoon.

 

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