So what do you do when you're stirring your soup, gazing dreamily into the saucepan as steam begins to rise and the beef and vegetables swirl in schools through their rich, glistening red-brown broth, when suddenly something terrifying whirls up from the deeps and into view for two horrifying seconds! - your mind unable to look away from it! Your eyes unable to identify it! - before it rolls and sinks back into the depths from whence it vomited unspeakably forth! I mean some object or thing so odd, so uncanny, that after it vanishes, you - freed from paralysis - stagger back gasping. Your spoon slips from your spasming hand, and describes a high, tumbling arc that lands *plop* in the sudsy dishwater! What do you do, in that case?
Well I will tell you what I do, or rather: what I did.
First I retrieved the spoon and gave it a good rinsing-off, of course.
Next I stirred, very carefully, the now-roiling boil of broth until the visibility began to clear, somewhat. I also lowered the heat. I stirred. I stirred. I even scooped around and around, getting everything moving in near-vertical circles instead of horizontal ones. I dared the thing to come forth again! And then, when it refused, cowering in some deep, ever-shifting corner, I made up my mind.
I poured the still fiercely-steaming soup into a bowl - eyes vigilant. Nothing. So I made up my mind.
I sat down and resolved to eat that soup. Bite by grim bite. Do you know what that's called? Do you know what that exemplifies?
COURAGE.
I screamed a little when I saw it again, about halfway through the bowl. Luckily, the soup had cooled a bit by that point! I got a little soup everywhere, in the confusion. But I'd cornered the damn thing, and I chased it around a bit more with my spoon, and fished it out. It was a really weird-shaped hunk of potato, that had a piece of sallow, yellowy-orange carrot embedded into it, in a way that made it look like something out of Satan's worst nightmare. I gave it a good look. Then I got up, balancing it in the spoon, walked to the kitchen door, stepped out into the garden and pitched that thing out, far as I could! Pitched hard, at the stars. It's probably still flying.
I wasn't going to eat that freaky thing.
Well I will tell you what I do, or rather: what I did.
First I retrieved the spoon and gave it a good rinsing-off, of course.
Next I stirred, very carefully, the now-roiling boil of broth until the visibility began to clear, somewhat. I also lowered the heat. I stirred. I stirred. I even scooped around and around, getting everything moving in near-vertical circles instead of horizontal ones. I dared the thing to come forth again! And then, when it refused, cowering in some deep, ever-shifting corner, I made up my mind.
I poured the still fiercely-steaming soup into a bowl - eyes vigilant. Nothing. So I made up my mind.
I sat down and resolved to eat that soup. Bite by grim bite. Do you know what that's called? Do you know what that exemplifies?
COURAGE.
I screamed a little when I saw it again, about halfway through the bowl. Luckily, the soup had cooled a bit by that point! I got a little soup everywhere, in the confusion. But I'd cornered the damn thing, and I chased it around a bit more with my spoon, and fished it out. It was a really weird-shaped hunk of potato, that had a piece of sallow, yellowy-orange carrot embedded into it, in a way that made it look like something out of Satan's worst nightmare. I gave it a good look. Then I got up, balancing it in the spoon, walked to the kitchen door, stepped out into the garden and pitched that thing out, far as I could! Pitched hard, at the stars. It's probably still flying.
I wasn't going to eat that freaky thing.
Comments
Thank you for the kind words, especially in praise of my bravery! I'll level with you, though - once I found that damn thing, I threw the rest of the soup out.
Not hungry any more!
It's the granules!
(and I've had the white-globules in the yolk too! I'm at peace with them, though, because they remind me of a sort of descendingly concentric instead of side-by-side version of yin yang, and pretty much all things zen serve to calm me).
It is a well-established fact that the ultimate sign of courage in the kitchen is the ability to put some bread in the toaster, stare intently at the grill, face right up close, and not flinch when it pops. I don't think anyone has mastered it yet.
It doesn't stop me from trying though. I will triumph.
From this point on in your life, no force on earth can stop you.
As to the other, I've never had difficulty watching the toast right out of the toaster. But then, I can watch a pot to boiling just by watching it.
I don't even need to turn the gas on!
It's all about how hard you watch that pot. Those who say it never boils...they aren't watching nearly hard enough.
I managed to get only one to do that for me last night. I need to concentrate harder, furrow the brow just a little bit more.
But only if I'm walking at the edge of evening's twilight. If it's a twilit morning walk, then they do switch off.
All forces circulate cyclically. True mind power is in the mind. No one can command the forces that flow about them! But it's about understanding, not command. So that when you know something is going to happen anyway, you can level booming predictions about it, and then reap the credit and awe on the afters.
Oh shit - I have to get going! I need to get ready to make the sun go down.