Bread Karma

Made some soda bread yesterday. We like it. It's quick and easy. No multi-day fermentation of poolish and all the other wonderful yeasty complexity that goes into practically all other forms of bread-making. 

We'll make yeast bread from time to time, but it takes time -- generally all day or overnight or in some cases a couple-three days to get things just right. I think about the housewives who made their own bread daily or every three days or every week or whatever, and I truly wonder how they did it, how they kept their sanity, how they kept their energy level high enough to oversee their yeasty dough, to knead it, to shape it, to patiently let it rise, to bake and cool it, and then to slice it for toasting and serving. They made their own butter to serve with it, too. 

Skill is not the half of it. Much more needed to go into it than merely skill. That's the quality of the bakery in town where skilled bakers create dozens of loaves of simple-same bread every day. They are fine. But they also lack some of the character that the home baker gives to their bread-products. So, my admiration goes both ways, toward the home baker and toward the bakery-baker. Skill and character.

Soda bread is our preferred option when waiting for yeast dough would take too long. A soda bread has no yeast, just bicarbonate and "buttermilk." Well, you can't get real buttermilk at the grocery store in our little hamlet, so we make a substitute by putting a tablespoon of white vinegar in two cups of whole or 2% milk (we almost always use 2%). It works fine. 4 cups of AP flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste), 2 cups "buttermilk"; mix thoroughly but gently. Do not knead. Put on floured or cornmealed parchment on a baking sheet. Form into a round. Cut an X or cross into the top. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes, then 375 for 20 minutes more. Check for doneness by tapping on the bottom of the loaf. Sound hollow? It's done. If a little dull sounding, bake another 10 minutes or so. Cool enough to be able to slice without crushing-mooshing. Slather with butter. Eat.

No skill required. Not much patience, either. Character? Sure.

I don't know whether any of my ancestors were into bread making. Probably not. I know my mother never made bread in her life, and I doubt her mother or grandmother did either. My father couldn't be bothered, and his mother had servants to do the housework. Did they make bread? Maybe. Then going back a little farther to the Irish and German immigrants who started my father's line in America: did they make their own bread? I think probably they did. The Irish ones probably made soda bread. The Germans, yeast bread. 

I don't know enough about their lives in Ireland and Germany, and apart from the Great Famine and all the wars, I don't know why they left for America when they did c.1849-1854.

My father never talked about it. My impression was that his grandparents -- the immigrants -- never talked about it either. I know his Irish grandparents made up stories about who they were and where they came from and sometimes those stories changed so much they by the time they got to my father and me they were so tangled up they were little more than nonsense. When I started untangling those stories and got rid of some of the fantasy, the "real story" was perhaps much sadder than anyone wanted it to be -- thus the many made-up stories of some grandeur. As for the Germans, I never knew much of anything about them except that my father's German grandmother never learned English, so it was hard to communicate with her, and my father's mother was deaf, so it was hard to communicate with her, too.

Karma enters into the equation when I consider who these people were and who I came from. Jack Kerouac wrote a biography of the Buddha called "Wake Up!" in the years before he became famous after the publication of "On the Road" in 1957. It's very simple and straightforward, something like the Lives of the Saints (for children) in Catholic literature. In it, Kerouac proposes that what's called "karma" is in reality mostly a matter of genetic inheritance. Your past lives are for the most part the lives of your ancestors and your genetic inheritance comes through them to you. And that is the basis for your karma; but it may not be the whole of your karma. There may be other elements, known and unknown, that shape who you are. The Buddha, after all, discovers there is more to his Being than simply what he inherits from his ancestors. Oh, so very much more. He has karmic inheritance through many twisted, tangled paths. Lives upon lives. Buddhas upon Buddhas. Universes upon universes.

Becoming aware of it all can be overwhelming.

And so for most of us, we live our lives without becoming aware. It's easier and safer in some ways. But in others, it's unsatisfying. One still has questions; one still wants to know. 

I've found out, though, perhaps more than I wanted to know. But only so much, in the end, that I could handle.

The inheritance from my ancestors is very twisted and tangled, and some of it, I think, is very tragic, horrible, and deeply sad. This comes through both parents. For a time, I wondered if my father was actually my father, for we seem not to have hit it off as father and son at all. How could he be my biological father if we were so distant from one another and never truly connected? Well, but that's part of the karmic load, I came to realize, that I inherited, and not just from him.

Why, I wondered, was my mother so... disturbed and often cruel. What had I done to trigger her rage? But then, I came to understand that she, like me, carried a karmic load she could not dispense with, nor indeed could I undo the karma I was born with.

My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered by his mistress. Her father may have been murdered, too. Her insight into these events was that both her father and grandfather were "bad men." Both her husbands were equally "bad" -- or maybe worse. And that all transferred to me and my sister.  My mother couldn't help the way she felt about us and them. It was her karma.

Lord knows how far back any of this stretched. I would say as far back as any of her ancestors could be traced, and just so with my father's tangled ancestry. Who these people were is as complicated as the most complex bread-making we can imagine.

I think of a sourdough starter for example that takes literally forever and lasts forever -- or it can. The yeast from the air which starts the process goes back to the origin of yeast, whenever that was, and the process, when done correctly, can maintain the "starter" indefinitely, indeed forever. Creating the Perfect Sourdough Bread is seen as a goal in life for some bread-bakers, to the point of obsession, of trying over and over and over again to get it Just Right, and never quite succeeding. Perfection is just out of reach. Something wasn't done quite right, so try again. And again. And again. Karma is a lot like that.

And then there's me and my soda bread. One and done. 

It doesn't have to be Perfect. It doesn't take Forever. It's Good Enough.

All this is vaguely related to our study text for this Practice Period/Ango, "The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi." At some point, I think I'll try to delve into what it meant to me 50-some-odd years ago when I first absorbed the teaching. How it affected and led to a profound change in the course of my life, and yet how strong and heavy is the karmic load I carry.

One day.... 😉

Mountains and Rivers 2

I was at a celebration yesterday for a friend who just got her masters degree. One of the very few times this year I've been socializing. Part of the get together was ceremonial and included a Navajo elder who provided blessings and songs and a surprisingly detailed explanation of Navajo religious perspective -- which of course includes mountains and waters.

Mountains personified. Waters alive. Sometimes when I drive by Mt. Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains, I see upon it/as it a sleeping woman with long black hair. The mountain and the woman are the same, indivisible, and some of what the elder had to say yesterday was aligned with if not identical to the view I've long had about Mt. Taylor/Tsoodzil. Of the other three sacred mountains, I'm only familiar with San Francisco Peak/Dookʼoʼoosłííd outside of Flagstaff. It too has quite a personality, one that changes depending on the time of year, the angle of the sun and the distance you are from the mountain. 

On the way to and from this get-together, I was contemplating the mountains we passed by and the ones in the distance. Each mountain and mountain range has their own personality, their own beingness. 

In some of the study we've been doing, "mountains" are stand ins for ourselves sitting zazen. That seems to be the consensus for what Dogen is saying in his (to me) bewildering Mountains and Waters Sutra. We are mountains when we sit? Metaphorically, perhaps. But I see his metaphors in a somewhat different way, metaphors without a literal analogy. He uses the mountain metaphor as an approach to the ineffable. The vastness and the sameness of the non-duality realm, the ground state, as I call it, of all that is, was and will be.

The mountain flows. The mountain walks. Walks forward and backward. The mountain is never still.

In our usual perception, the mountain doesn't walk, the mountain doesn't flow, the mountain is among the stillest things in our environment.

And yet it does, it flows. It walks. We don't see it -- unless there is an eruption or massive earthquake. But in Dogen's metaphor, the mountain walking and flowing has no reality in our common perception. Not even in an eruption or earthquake. The mountain walks beyond our ability to "see" or "know."

No, his metaphor is about the inner-being-nothingness of the mountain (and thus, yes, of we ourselves sitting in zazen or not.) In that realm, the mountain (and we ourselves) don't actually "exist." Not as separate entities. We are one and the same, and we can walk and flow and dissolve into the mist and reconstitute at will. Or not.

When I see Mt. Taylor as a woman sleeping, it's real to me, but it's not. It's an illusion. A mirage. But then... so is the mountain. And so am I.

So are the waters. And so am I.

The Water Heater Analogy -- or is it a Metaphor?

 The other day we had to have our water heater replaced. We knew it was coming. A repairman came a couple of years ago to fix the gas inlet and he couldn't do it. The problem was that the water heater was so old that his parts didn't fit and he didn't know where to find ones that did. He called in to his company and they didn't know where to get parts either. I said I'd try to find something since I have some contacts in the old appliance realm. I checked with the local hardware store -- which used to have lots of old stuff. Well, no. They'd got rid of most of their old stock, and the parts they have now were the same as the plumber had, and they wouldn't fit. Try a place in town (Albuquerque) they said. A couple of them still have old stock.

So I go into town. At the recommended place. they said yes they had the part I needed (a reverse thread nut) but they only sold it with a complete replacement kit for the firebox. Oh. How much? $108. The part I needed was about $1.35, but what the hey? So I got the kit, called the plumber -- who was shocked I found the parts -- and he came back and put the whole kit in the water heater, and it worked fine, better than ever. But he said at max, the WH would last maybe three more years, and I'd better start saving up for a new one. How much, I asked. He said at least $1,500, probably closer to $1,800 to $2,000.

Yikes. 

Well, but that's the way it goes.

So maybe 2.5 years go by, and by golly, the pressure relief valve goes out, water -- hot water -- spraying everywhere, and there's no way to stop it. Nowadays, it wouldn't happen quite that way, but I'll get to that.

You see, this is an old house, and things have been cobbled together, often self-built and repaired over more than 100 years, and so things aren't necessarily well-planned or thought through. For one thing, even though the water heater was installed in 2005, it was an older model, and it wasn't put in properly -- though it was supposedly done by professionals. There was no shut off valve, for example, and there were other issues. So in order to stop the water spraying all over the laundry room, I had to go out to the driveway and dig out the meter box which was buried in gravel. Initially, I couldn't find it. But then I did and dug and scraped until the cover emerged, and I couldn't find the tool to open it. I used to do it with a big screwdriver, but I couldn't find that either. So I called the city (yes, though we live in a rural area, we are technically in a city, and the city provides water to our section.) They sent a guy within 10 minutes and he had to struggle some to get the water off, but he finally did, and we started cleaning up the... mess...

I called the new plumbers we'd been using, asking if they could send somebody. Well, yes. They could but it might not be until late, maybe 5p or even later. Would that be all right?

I said I'd check locally, and if I could get somebody sooner, I would. Fine. I called several local plumbers, and as I expected, the answer was nope, or there was no answer at all or no call back. One didn't even have a phone number listed. What fun. 

So I called the other plumber back. I knew they were more expensive, but if they could get somebody out here, that would be cool. 

I'd called at 8:00am. At 1:00pm the plumber assigned to us calls, and we discuss what's wrong, and he says welp, he can fix the pressure relief valve ($7-800) or he can replace the whole thing ($2100). What did I think? I said welp, it's old, and we'll have to replace it soon anyway, let's do the whole thing. Can he put a shut off valve on it? Yup. Everything to code, and a very high-end water heater. 

Wow. That's more money than we've got on hand, but you do what you gotta. 

So after several more conversations about household heating and cooling, how much room he will to work and what size the heater is, he says he'll pick up a water heater and parts and be here in about an hour. Sure enough, he shows right on time, and after checking out the situation gets right to work. 

About 3 hours later, the city worker comes out and turns on the water at the meter, and ta da, a fancy new water heater is installed, with a shut off valve, a drip tray, a copper line from the pressure relief valve to the outside, an alarm if it leaks, and all sorts of other things which I wasn't expecting, including the fanciest earthquake restraints I'd ever seen. The water heater works electronically, no pilot light, and there are special instructions for shutting the dang thing off. Not at all like the old one. Steep learning curve for me. But oh well. 

He walked me through the basics and pointed out the instruction manual. It's guaranteed 6 years, he said, installation guaranteed for a year. If anything goes wrong, no charge for parts or labor for the first year, then labor only for the next five years. He said it would probably last for 15 to 20 years, but we should think about replacing it before that.

Otherwise, the price complete was indeed $2,100. 

We chit-chat a bit while he's preparing the bill, and it turns out he's from South Africa and he came to the US in 2016. Whoa, mercy. Got in just in time. He did an excellent and very thorough job. He asked if we wanted him to clean up the water which was still puddled here and there in the laundry room, and the mud he'd tracked in from outside. I said no, he'd done his part. We'd take care of it.

And so, we thank him profusely and at about 6:00pm, he drives away to his next job, a broken refrigerator water line. Time to start cleaning up.

We now have hot water to clean up with. Everything works except one faucet in the bathroom which now leaks which it didn't before. Hm. Well, I can fix that, eventually. 

Now why is this a metaphor for our national condition? 

For one thing, the last four years have been a mess and the government is partially -- some would say completely -- broken. There's crap all over the place, and a big part of the project for the Biden regime (yes, they're all regimes now) is repairing what's broken, replacing what doesn't work any more, and cleaning up the mess left by Trump and his fans. No easy task.

Biden and Harris seem ready to start. But there's so much work to do, and whatever gets done is going to be different than we expect. It's going to be more complicated, better in some ways, not so much in others. It'll look good, probably, but it may not last very long. It'll take professionals, not grifters, to get done. 

We've known this would happen, would have to happen, sooner or later, and we've been prepping, somewhat, not very well, but still...

What needs doing -- like replacing the water heater -- will take care of a little bit of what ultimately needs to be done. Biden and Harris say they are focused on controlling the virus, rebuilding the economy and fixing broken institutions. OK. That's really a much bigger job than I think they can handle, but what do I know? There is so much that's gone sideways, not just since the advent of Orange Man Bad in the White House, but for a very long time. Fixing it isn't going to happen overnight, and the crew coming in is more like a restoration effort, not a renovation/repair/rehabilitation outfit. But again, we may be in for surprises. 

A simple fix of the water heater would have made me happy. We got a deluxe fix. But it's not going to last forever. Nothing does. 

On Metaphors

Jeebus Christmas dancing on a tasty Ritz Cracker, the Intertubes (or at least parts thereof) do not understand the concept of "metaphors."

Posted above is a brilliant video by Boots Riley and The Coup called "The Guillotine." The entire video is metaphorical, of course, given its invocations of "The Wiz" and "Les Mis" and who knows what all. Boots and The Coup are Oakland, CA, artistes, and you don't mess with them. You just don't.

So hotflashcarol posted the video over at FDL the other day along with a link to an article on it at Wired. This caused something of a stir because one of the mavens of the site became enraged at the "suggestion of violence" in the video and commenced to denounce and renounce the video, everyone involved with it and hfc and all their works and descendants unto the seventh generation. Or something.

I've run into this situation a surprising number of times in my perambulations around the InterTubes and Teh Webs since dirt was new. The use of metaphor simply escapes the consciousness of certain individuals who assert some kind of "authority" within the Web-O-Sphere, and typically something like All Hell breaks loose as various posters try to edumacate their stupid asses.

Trouble is, it never works. There is no learning curve whatsoever. Whoever is objecting to the metaphorical statement or video or whatever typically never does anything but object, denounce and renounce and then disappears. There is no interaction, discussion, or engagement. Thus, there can be no learning, and that seems to be the point: simply declare, upon Authority, and be gone.

So it was at FDL.

The individual who objected is known there as a curmudgeon and spoil-sport in any case (there are a number of such high in FDL's hierarchy; it has always been so, sadly. When it was first manifested, it really made me wonder about Jane's judgement, let alone the judgement of those she delegates, but I have since learned it's a somewhat more complicated situation than might first appear to be the case...)

hotflashcarol removed her content from the post, stating that she didn't want to get involved with the Objector, as she was well familiar with his ways, and she wanted no truck with him at all. The post and thread however was maintained for sometime afterward -- the post with no content, the comments mostly slamming the Objector for idiocy and stupidity and celebrating the musical and visual dynamism of Boots Riley and The Coup. And, importantly, mentioning over and over again that "it is a metaphor."

You would think after a while it would sink in, but as is the way on the InterWebs, it never does. I'm convinced it's because there are some online devotees who are simply incapable of comprehending the concept of Metaphor. It doesn't -- and apparently can't -- occur to them that artists (especially) utilize metaphor all the time, it is their stock in trade, and that the Metaphor is not a literal evocation or invocation; it is a means to more fully appreciate and understand... something.

The objection was to the "suggestion" of violence in the video; the "suggestion" was that of the Guillotine, a widely recognized Metaphor in Revolutionary and Resistance circles. No one I know of is actually advocating the employment of guillotines, at least not as they were used in the French Revolution. But their image is apparently a powerful one, and certain people are -- perhaps justifiably -- terrified of them. The Guillotine gives them the willies, bad. The image of the Guillotine, and its use as a metaphor for the Power of the People makes some people believe that the Mob will start chopping off heads any minute if they are not curbed and controlled. No such thing is the case, but the fear is somehow overpowering to some people.

As many people pointed out, the Guillotine Metaphor is not a literal invocation of violence, nor is it meant to be. It is an invocation of Power, the Power of the People. "We got the Guillotine" -- they've got (ie: the Authorities have) the army and the police. They impose violence on the People each and every day, without let or hindrance, and that is the real violence of our current condition. The Guillotine Metaphor suggests their violence against the People is subject to interference.

But all this should be obvious.

Really, it should.

Unfortunately, on the InterTubes, especially in the so-called Progressive Sphere, it isn't. Never has been. I'm convinced it never will be.

"First They Came For Black Bloc..."

...and I didn't say anything, but if they hadn't come, I would have called the cops myself.

When they came for the Anarchists, I didn't say anything because it was just as well, those people can never be satisfied.

When they came for the Communists, I kept my mouth shut because nobody likes them anyway.

When they came for the Marxists, it was all the same to me; there's no profit in being prematurely right, after all.

When they came for the Socialists, I didn't care, since Socialists are such namby-pambies.

When they came for the Secularists, it was nothing to me, since I'm a Believer.

When they came for the Libertarians, I said "Good Riddance."

When they came for the Zeitgeisters and all the various Alternative Energy Proponents and Self-Sustainers, I hardly noticed; I'd forgotten they were still around.

When they came for the Homeless Advocates, the NLG, and the other trouble-makers, it was too bad, but they made their beds when they tried to hijack my movement and protect those who were breaking the law. It's not about the Homeless and Criminals!

When they came to round up the Nonviolence people, I figured they were next, and at least they knew how to behave.

They didn't have to come for me because I'd turned myself in; I didn't want to be alone anymore....

"Where is everybody.....???"