where i fell into the computer and lost 3 or 4 hours. Searching for flights to the States, emailing friends, researching how to card wool (because I have wool carders now!). and suddenly it was so late in the day. But I managed to sit at the spinning wheel and practice for an hour and I found out something. Unaided, my foot is hopelessly lost in a jerky start and stop motion, never quite finding the rhythm of the wheel. (rather like my mind was in meditation, actually.) But when I sing, then my whole body lines up and I can keep the wheel going and going. I sang a song that a friend wrote to Prajna Paramita, the mother of wisdom and the Buddhas. When I sing, that generally happens, I line up and things flow, I can find the rhythm of what it is I am doing. Or better, I can find the rhythm of my being. Always has been that way, but increasingly more in the last years, I find that singing is more an act of an energy moving through me not from me. And whether my voice is the vehicle or the product, the sign or the gift and release, it really doesn't matter. As a woman says here, singing is a life-elixir. I think I need to be doing it more often. I was so happy sitting there for an hour, singing the same song over and over, running the treadle with my foot and at the end, actually spinning a bit of wool with my hands at the same time. So, the value of a song to be sung while working and the value of the singing itself.
Then I made a soup of leftovers and an apple quince crumble for dessert. I have to admit something. even with no refrigerator and not much food in the house, I have still managed to let things rot- a package of precious, rare , and expensive cilantro because my sweetie and I each bought a package on the same day and I only needed one. Half of a cauliflower beginning to brown, a quarter of a rutabaga already used in two meals, half an onion in a tupperware getting all spread out and dry, the quinces, which have been sitting since the beginning of january turning more and more brown by the day. I have a problem with vegetables and fruits- I fall in love with them and buy too many and then they sit around and wait patiently for me to cook them and I do, but only three quarters of them. Then I get seduced by the next leggy carrot or busty squash and its all over. The sight a week or even two later, of greens turning to yellows, of brown blotches on on the skin of a fruit, things sliding into rot and decay inside of my refrigerator makes me actually sick to my stomach. But I am a compulsive sort of food buyer. It is all so beautiful and I can't help myself.
So I made a soup tonight of those above things as well as some meatballs I brought home from work because I couldn't stand to throw them away. I put in spicy tomatoey sort of seasoning and we'll see how it turns out. I think the crumble was a stroke of genius.
But I want so much to treat the vegetables and fruits I bring home with more respect. Maybe I need to not go shopping until I have an empty fridge. Or only buy what I need for a specific meal and plan things in advance. Or, somehow figure out how not to buy all the beautiful things I see, which would save money anyway. Or invite more people over for dinner so I can use the whole of something rather than a portion.
Wednesday night we went to see the fabulous Ulrike Haage from Berlin play her Piano amazingness. She does things with the computer and she plays the piano all over- as a drum, on the strings, with little hammers and mallets and wires and of course, on the keys. This is one of her more well known songs, check it out:
She used to be part of the Rainburds, with Katharina Franck:
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