New Blog.

As you all know, I love food. I also love blogs. I have a new blog for you all to enjoy and it has the best. name. ever. "Barn Appetit." It is a blog about cooking, food, recipes and life on the farm. There is also Crema De Limoncello recipe that I am going to make VERY SOON.

Simplicity.

I think, mostly, we all kind of wander through our lives slightly tuned out to a LOT of what is going on. There are, perhaps, a myriad of reasons for doing so....we are afraid, we are comfortable, we don't know any other way to live. It's hard to be present. It's hard to live in the now. As Marshall McLuhan suggests, "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future." Living in the now requires peace with one's past, hope for the future (without any attachment to possible outcomes) and a focus on the here and now. I don't know that I have ever been completely present in my life. I have mostly been distracted by anticipation over what is to come or angst over what has passed. Until now. Something shifted in my life several months ago. And, for--maybe the first time in my life--I am truly present. It's the best I have ever felt about my life.

The Buddhists say that all suffering comes from attachment. Attachment to physical things, and attachment to feelings and outcomes. Attachment to a future possibility or a past regret. Never before have I understood the simplicity of this concept. That said, the more I understand it, the more I understand that simplicity is anything but easy. Simplicity requires mental and emotional discipline. I'm not certain I have completely gotten the hang of this practice of discipline, but I'm well on my way...and I am relatively certain that it may be the key to sustained happiness in life.

Poetry Friday.

Okay, so I have been told by colleagues that the sophisticated poet may not care for the writings of Billy Collins. Having several poet friends, I hesitate to show my unworldliness, but I really like this poem that I read yesterday and I'm going to share it with you all in hopes that I am not judged a literary simpleton. Enjoy.

Adage - Billy Collins

When it’s late at night and branches
are banging against the windows,
you might think that love is just a matter

of leaping out of the frying pan of yourself
into the fire of someone else,
but it’s a little more complicated than that.

It’s more like trading the two birds
who might be hiding in that bush
for the one you are not holding in your hand.

A wise man once said that love
was like forcing a horse to drink
but then everyone stopped thinking of him as wise.

Let us be clear about something.
Love is not as simple as getting up
on the wrong side of the bed wearing the emperor’s clothes.

No, it’s more like the way the pen
feels after it has defeated the sword.
It’s a little like the penny saved or the nine dropped stitches.

You look at me through the halo of the last candle
and tell me love is an ill wind
that has no turning, a road that blows no good,

but I am here to remind you,
as our shadows tremble on the walls,
that love is the early bird who is better late than never.

Ranier Maria Rilke.

I was reading the oh-so-intellectual publication Marie Claire the other day while getting the oil changed in my car and I read an interview with Renee Zellweger. She quoted Ranier Maria Rilke, a german poet, on the notion of what a "good marriage is" and I thought it so lovely, true and worthy of sharing: "A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude."