Taking Stock

A guy on Twitter was confused by people saying to save vegetable peels to make stock. He said he can afford, when the time comes, to just buy an onion for it.

I get that this was Twitter, home of the knee-jerk reaction and snark, but it stuck with me.

I don't want to buy a fresh onion for stock. I usually keep a bag of onion peel, carrot ends, and wilted celery in the freezer. This is mostly in the winter when I want soups, but sometimes in the summer too. I haven't this summer, but the tweet reminded me to start again.

It bothers me to waste money, time, natural resources, and opportunities to create. I've wasted a lot of these things and I know I'll waste more. Still, it seems worthwhile on many levels to try to waste less. It doesn't require much.

Mostly, I think the guy's tweet is a bad message. I have no idea how many followers he has — I can't remember who posted it — but no one reading it was well served. Except maybe me.

Her's my message: put an old bread bag in the freezer. When chopping onions, carrots, and celery, push the cuttings into the bag instead of the garbage bin. Keep going until the bag is full.

Then, some weekend, empty the bag into a big pot, add water to cover, throw in some spices (cloves make the house smell great), boil, reduce to simmer, cook for a couple hours or longer (for stronger stock).

When you strain out the vegetables, you'll see, smell, and taste stock you created seemingly out of nothing, but in fact out of everything. Either way, it feels and tastes better than snark, and it's cheaper than buying and wasting a fresh onion.

Control, Acceptance, Openness

I’m thinking about how much and how little I control my weight. I control what I eat and drink, but my weight each morning is removed from the moment of stepping onto the scale, dependant on last night’s dinner, yesterday’s exercise, the water still in my system. These were under my control but not in the moment on the scale.

Contrast my morning weigh-in with things under my immediate control. Say I want to walk 5,000 today tracked on my phone. Right now, I can pace one hundred steps. Immediate effect and entirely under my control.

Will those steps affect tomorrow's weigh-in? Maybe a little. If my weight still trends upward, I can try 7,500 steps or add in other movement, taking control over immediate things and using the scale as a measure of how things work out. Choosing control of immediate things and accepting the mysteries of the larger picture, I might be alright, but this is tough for me to believe in the moment of a weigh-in when the number has gone the wrong way. I need some way to prop up my faith. For that, I remember how this works in writing.

I recently finished my seventh year of Morning Pages, writing three pages by hand every single morning. Some pages are inspired, but mostly they are drivel. They are process and practice rather than product. Once again this morning, I worried that I’m wasting my time, covering the same ground, spewing random thoughts rather than writing something artful. It felt dangerously embarrassing.

It is if I frame Morning Pages as needing to result in brilliance. A better frame is: “sit, write three pages, accept what comes and push for more.” If I show up, do the work, accept what I write and open myself to what might happen, that’s all in my immediate control. In writing, I largely believe in that practice and process. I even believe, mostly, that product will result from it.

Today, after Morning Pages, I fed a page into the typewriter with the goal of filling one page that might become a blog post. I typed two pages and created this. I exerted control by typing a page and accepted what it might produce while opening myself to the possibilities for product. A pretty good balance.

I can likely become healthier through a similar combination of control, acceptance and openness. I control how much I move my body in the moment. I accept that the number on the scale involves factors I have yet to realize. I’m open to what I might be able to do.

If I sound like I really get this, I’ve exaggerated my position. I struggle to show up each morning and accept that as this human’s nature. I fill the Morning Pages. I weigh in each morning. I try to accept what is and I’m really trying to be open to what might be. It is a balancing act for sure and I am out of balance more than I am steady. I suppose that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I might as well accept it, right? Make adjustments in the things I control and be open to the possibility that someday I will be more secure up on the wire on which I have chosen to walk.

Dead Blogs

I just read that blogs are dead, a tongue-in-cheek statement on a running blog. I smiled until I saw the post was from February 2020 and nothing on the blog since. Either blogs really are dead or that writer, heaven forbid, was struck down by the pandemic. I didn't stick around to investigate.

Certainly, this blog has seemed dead. I wrote this on paper and was too chicken to check when I last posted. Weeks? Months? I've lost the rhythm and this post is no promise that things have changed for the better.

I'm looking for blogs because the news is killing me. I won't bore you with the details, but it's mostly the Republicans, damn all of them all to hell. I want to improve my physical, mental, emotional, and even spiritual health. The news ain't helping, but since I often turn to the web for distraction, I want blogs that lift me up a little. Blogs though are dead. Everyone moved to social media. Ugh.

On a good blog, it's just a writer and whatever their mind turns to. There's not much of an audience and almost never any money. The possibility of an audience makes a good writer careful and thoughtful. The absence of profit sets the writer free.

Years ago, I was wisely advised to blog about one thing and build a brand. I didn't do it, mostly because I'm obstinate but also because I found other ways to make money and, especially in writing, I like to do as I please.

It's the do-as-they-please bloggers that I want to read.

Austin Kleon — phenomenal blogger — suggest we should write the books we want to read. I want a blog that lifts me up. Nothing hopelessly, endlessly upbeat. Just something that nourishes my mind and soul a little.

Am I writing that blog? I don't know. I'd worry more about it, but I just read that blogs are dead, so I don't think I'll get too fussed.

The Problems With Poetry

The problems with poetry begins with a book of it that might be good but you're not sure. You've read it once. You're reading it again. Lying in bed. Winter only a few stanzas away in the night. You're too tired to read the next poem with all the wondering whether the book is good or not. So you open Mark Strand's Man and Camel, a thing of certain and exquisite beauty. So good it solves all problems. You read six poems. Each a gently impossible wave brought to shore by invisible forces, celestial bodies on elliptical paths. Too much wonder. You need to share these poems with someone who would understand enough to simply sigh and smile at finding the divine on these pages, inside these brief poems, between man and camel. But you don't know anyone who reads poetry. Not that way. And even if you did, they'd prefer some other book. Not that Mark Strand stuff, they'd say. You'd tell them how wrong they are, but the camel has spit all over you and the man has climbed up to ride away. A real poet's exit. The kind of poet you see in your sleep, his book of poetry open on your chest rising up and down, as though pulled by some celestial and poetic force, the other book lying next to you filled with questions a mere mortal such as you hopes someday to answer though the poetic part of you knows you never will. Those are the problems with poetry.