Cocina Asana
One thing I have been in 2018 is scattered. First I was a whirling dervish, then I crashed like a bad 90s band. So tonight I’ve been doing what I always do when I desperately need to collect myself: I’m cooking. There’s something about the slow deliberation of cooking–the foraging for ingredients, the chopping and scrubbing and peeling, the tuning into what wishes to be prepared–that is more centering than lotus pose, tadasana, or even the New York Times crossword puzzle.
Simmering on the stove is my first real kitchen endeavor of the year–a moroccan lamb stew, with cinnamon, lemon peel, ginger, garbanzo beans, tomato paste, chicken broth, apricots, onion, carrot and parsnip, bits of cilantro and mint and garlic and cumin tossed in for good measure. Like all good witches, I’ve gone way off book, and am 
trusting the wind to tell me what to sprinkle in my cauldron. My house smells great, but only tomorrow will reveal if my culinary magic is still in place. It’s the day after that tells the real story.
The Book of ‘And Then’
Yesterday I woke early to watch the latest episode of “This Is Us,” which means I was a puddle by 7 am, when I’ve programmed my phone to wake me every day with Aretha Franklin singing “Hello Sunshine.” The show always undoes me–Gd knows I’m not alone in this fact–but the last few episodes have been completely ruining. The death of Jack Pearson, the patriarch played so sweetly and sadly by Milo Ventimiglia, devastated me even though intimations of his demise have been woven into the series since its inception.
The timing also wove devastatingly into my real life. I’ve always believed it’s not my right to disclose the details of other people’s hardship on my blog, and I won’t begin to do so now. Suffice it to say the father of one of my dearest friends, a person so private I’ve never included a picture of her here or even her real name, died last week, and I’ve been taking her loss with me everywhere because that’s how our bond works. When good things happen to one of us, they happen to both of us, and the same holds true with the bad. But I also know that while I can hold my friend’s hand and even some of her pain, this is a path she walks alone. The loss of one’s father is a shadow nothing can fully brighten, especially in a world in which good daddies are far and few in between. Continue Reading →
