Mashed Potatoes: An adventure.

Am I an adventurous eater? I don't know. Most people would say no, because there are a lot of things I haven't eaten and don't want to try. Things like Chinese food (sounds like lots of bits and pieces. If I want leftovers I'll just eat leftovers. I also prefer  to be filled up by my meals, and rmor has it that doesn't happen with Chinese.

I don't like soy sauce or teriyaki or other Oriental seasonings, although I'm not always clear on the country of origin.

I just plain don't like seafood. I have yet to taste anything that does not overwhelmingly taste of vast anounts of stale salt water.

I don't eat Mexican food, either. It is way, way too spicy for me. Hot spicy. I've sampled this, while cooking, but not eaten as a meal or part of one. I don't like the ingredients.

I don't like  hot spices. I want to taste the food. I don't want my taste buds burnt out or overloaded to the point where they don't function. I want to enjoy the taste, to savor the flavor, and to be able to take in all that the food item has to offer.

If that makes me unadventurous, so be it.

I like food. I like to smell it, feel it, taste it, hear it, .and see it. Eating should be a sensual experience. Not all the senses will be used with every offering, of course. Mashed potatoes are pretty quiet.No crisp snap of the fresh potato. No crunch at the first -- or last -- bite.

But they can be cheesy, golden, salty, lightly garlic, smooth, lumpy, snowy white, steamy, dry, peppery, and even food-colored if you have a kid who will only eat green. 

Mashed potatoes are mundane and boring, but they sure can be jazzed up. 

That can be an adventure.

Seasonings and combined ingredients should enhance one another and especially the main ingredient. Too many people  and places do not use balance or moderation. jalapeno flavored should include the taste of jalapeno -- not taste like jalapeno and nothing else. 

So, if my adventures in eating aren't what you expect, I'm sorry.

But let me share with you my cheesy mashed, and maybe you will learn that true adventures start with the familiar.

finding fairies

I began with the fractured memories a fractured strobe of a forgotten theme, but one with a title, a phrase that repeats in my mind: The Sinner Cannot Hold.

Over time, I begin to hold the images for a few seconds longer than the strobe flashes. A fountain. Three or four females. Compass points radiating from/relating to the fountain. Many background of red-and-black, projecting a feeling of menace; in contrast to the light and water and spray-rainbows of the women and the fountain

My dear heaven, is my mind, or my muse, heading me into some post-apocalyptic drama? That type of story is not quite my thing, but I'm always willing to learn as a writer. Also as a writer, one must go where one is led.

The women begin to come clearer. They seem to have finely spun wings, although their clothing is heavy and ragged.
They are looking for something, perhaps from the four corners of the world.

Then life gets in the way of the creative process -- or does it?

My granddaughter came for a week long visit. There's nothing new in that. She probably spends one week a month with us. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's the average.

This child has a creative imperative of her own. She draws. She sees colors with a depth and intensity that I can observe, but never see. I am in awe of her Great Ability. This three (then) year old child drawing faces on envelopes, calendar squares, and any other available scrap of paper is not so different from my own scrabbling to record a phrase -- such ad 'the sinner cannot hold' on any scrap available to me. It's not so different from a brief description of an image. Not so different from the need to put into words the Visions that Fill the Mind's Eye.

Her last few visits, she had drawn fairies. Tinkerbell is her main model, but she can and will discourse on the differences, although her vocabulary is mainly limited to color. But the different colors do different things.

During her most recent visit, she not only drew her multi colors of fairies, she had to hang them up. Not on the refrigerator. No, that wasn't where they belonged. They had to go on the walls around my bed. They had to be hanged in a precise array, in an exact order, and they had to stay there. A falling fairy was an urgent problem.

It was not until after she went home that I began to wonder. Fairies? Around my bed? The same bed where I dream of fairylike females as a bright spot of air and water as an oasis against a backdrop of dark and angry?

Am I incorporating her fairies into my musings? Is she seeing the fairies I am trying to place and put into words? Are there fairies around my bed that are unseen save by the unconscious mind of the dreamer and the innocent open mind of a child?

Is this an example of the Creative Synchronicity that sometimes happen, especially when there are great grave events in the outer, physical world?

What do you think?