When Cultures Collide

 Pork Dijon With Wild Leeks

When you're an American, it is easy to mix cultural influences. Ask anyone, staring in the refrigerator after returning home from the grocery store....or as most Americans would say, "the grocery stores." The world feels like smaller place when one can dine on Korean food one day, Amish the next, and Phillipine cuisine the next day at lunch. And, with a touch of creativity, whatever you find in the grocery stores can create a new world of flavor.

Even if you reside somewhere else in the first world. And sometimes the second world... maybe even the third world.

Today, after planting some new Peppermint plants in the garden, I returned home to a small butcher-paper-wrapped set of pork butterfly chops (not made of butterflies) waiting on me in the refrigerator. I had a hankerin' for something with country Dijon mustard. In the fridge, I had some Ramps (wild mountain leeks- a delicacy here), some regular leeks, garlic, and peppers (capiscum  for some of you). The result of today's lunch creation is in this recipe.

1 set of Pork Chops

1 Leek

2 Ramps (or more Leek)

2 cloves of Garlic

1 Medium Pepper

Olive Oil

Fresh Parsley

1/4 cup of Dijon Mustard (Country Style)

French Tarragon

Cut your pork into small strips, place into steel sauté pan and add olive oil, garlic, fresh chopped or sprigs of parsley, sliced leek, sliced pepper, Tarragon to taste, and diced Ramps (one may substitute with a stronger tasting ingredient like more garlic) Cook, attended, adding the 1/4 cup Dijon Mustard about five minutes after starting the meal. Continue until pork is thoroughly cooked

and hopefully, your meal looks something like mine.

Digging Deeper

Digging deeper,

the humusy soil yielding

to my strokes and claws,

the prong harder than steel

yet made of wood

slicing, cutting the roots that bind

the tangled past unearthed

revealing bulbs, purple stems,

the green frond that salutes

the wind whipping the meadow,

cherishing the ramp as I dig.

and yet here i go again

sitting beside the exposed trunk

massive tree engulfed by a lake

watered with a garden hose,

producing mud by the pailful

as the plastic boats

spin out of control.

My hands dig deeper

into the soil of my youth.

what beckons me that I should

bruise the knees of my Wranglers

and drag a sack against the ground?

I am as the baby who delights in wonder

the toddler taking precious steps

the newlywed gathering roses

as I gather the bouquet 

of the green, the purple, and the white.

I have been here before

in my secret dreams.

I am playing in the dirt

and I am free.

c 2012, Daithi Fleming

the appearance of the holy fire

This Saturday, on the day before Orthodox Easter, in the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem, which supposedly has a small entrance to Christ's tomb, Orthodox Christians claim a white fire miraculously appears from inside that opening. An Orthodox patriarch, using an oil lamp in the opening, waits. After a humble prayer, the holy fire appears. 

The holy fire is then passed to candles. Eyewitnesses state that for the first 33 minutes, the holy fire does not burn human skin, nor human hair. 

On the internet, videos circulate showing the fire causing pain 34 minutes after the miracle appears. 

So, what is this and why have so many within the Christian tradition never heard of this? 

Within the chronicles of Orthodox history, there are supposed references dating back to the first century. But while that may be enough for a traditional Eastern Orthodox, what can be said from other sources. Are there any? 

Throughout documented history, the Greek Orthodox authorities have been involved in the tradition. There have been dates where it did not happen, although rare. There were a thousand years ago. Those dates usually corresponded to a religious tension between Christian groups. 

There are plenty of doubters. The patriarch is hiding his hand inside the tomb opening, so could it be manipulated inside the tomb? Could the flame be ignited from planted phosphorous from inside the tomb? And why is it that the Greek Orthodox patriarch is favored? 

Whatever the truth, the "holy fire" that allegedly appears has more believers than you might first assume. Among others, there was at one time a tradition among Lutheran churches to have an "eternal flame" hanging somewhere in the sanctuary. I can attest to this as I witnessed this in my childhood. But, I was a child and found the mystery of the "eternal flame" just that, a mystery for others to discuss. 

  

The Senior Citizen Dictionary

Every once in a while, a new generation creates a compendium of useful words, notably a slang or associated vernacular, which is then classified by their generation. Those within that generation might understand one another better than those who had formative experiences in another time period.

These anomalies of formalized language tend to be most pronounced during youth or during a maturing phase of life. Sadly, the language of a Senior, or Senior Citizen, may be misinterpreted by earlier generations.

One way to solve this, would be to compile a "Senior Citizen Dictionary" that would explain the world as it might be viewed by your man or won 65 and older. I say this as one who would know.

The Senior Citizen Dictionary, which I believe could be as successful as the "mansplainer," would contain dictionary entries solely based on relative senior experiences.

For example, under "Golden" (Noun):

1. The stream running down your leg because you did not make it to the bathroom 2. the color of your urine because of dyes in your medicine.

3. The false idea that your latter years in life will be filled with smiles, happiness, and massive discounts on everything from steaks to new gutters. SEE Golden Buckeye Card fraud.

These definitions would require "as used in a sentence" sentences, like when we were in school.

TEACHER: Can you give an example of that in a sentence?

9 YEAR OLD: Yes, I can.

TEACHER: Give me a sentence with the word used correctly.

9 YEAR OLD: He correctly her mouth.

TEACHER: That is not a sentence.

9 YEAR OLD: It is too.

TEACHER: You are incorrect.

9 YEAR OLD: I know you are, but what am I?

Included in said dictionary would be words like "Epizoodie," which some old codger used to ramble on about to you...and now that you have gray or white hair, you have been dwelling on that word, wondering what in the blazes it means. So, of course, it goes into the Senior Citizen Dictionary.

It would be colored by your great grandmother who used the word incorrectly, spelled it incorrectly, but it was "a thing" to her...and very awful...so it goes in the dictionary...

Epizoodie (Noun, adjective)- Your grandmother's term for a horrible thing, likely a deadly disease. "I swear she got the epizoodie last week and it plumb near killed her."

This grandmother did not know there is a term "epizoodic." Hence, it appears in the Senior Citizens Dictionary as used by the senior citizen.

Slang words from the 1940s might appear because your mother used them. Since she called the stupid guy who dropped a pass from the quarterback a "dumbbunny," that entry would go into the Senior Citizen Dictionary. Forget about it being a word that shouldn't belong in the standard dictionary. The Senior Citizen Dictionary should supersede such a "narrow view."

As you can plainly see, this proposal would very likely be a best-selling reference text, right up there with The Oxford Dictionary of Verse and The Toilet Seat Reference Tool. 

Perhaps, I will go to Wix, Squarespace, or another website builder and craft a slick-looking site to market and sell the new dictionary, offering a free T-shirt with every sale. I am sure we could make big money...mucho dinero...but right now, it is 10:59 PM and I've one minute before my bedtime and all those pills and I have to strain my urine for the doctor and i have to gargle with salt water and i have to check my oxygen level, so i've no time for it. Besides, I have to eat a handful of nuts before bed, 'cause Momma always said if you don't eat nuts before you go to bed, you won't be able to poop in the morning.

 

  

where is your treasure?

 

when the mud is so thick

and the world is so cold

look to the Heaven

to that city of Gold,

your reward awaits you

for all those long nights

you prayed for a miracle

for wrongs to become rights,

for all those long seasons

when hope kept you from fear

and you walked in the grey-light

your angels were there near,

for God has been watching,

indeed, God has been true,

so keep your eyes on Heaven 

until God sees you through.

 

The way forward

 In a tech-centric world, the creative arts are tolerated. They are for those who do not fit the maze-like mentality of the Program Nirvana. Their talents lie outside the future of the global circular hive.

Consider the vast millions freed from box-like thinking, from a box-like world. Forty years ago, we peasants of the pen were still struggling with typewriters and word processors that slowed our creative geniuses crafting word-painted works. 

Technology freed us from those containers, then stifled us by hiding us in the toy closet. Too many grown-ups gravitated toward that which would not be composed of word-pictures. Unless the screen observant followed code, the creative could not come out to play in the sand box, nor in the arcade. The code enforcers tolerated us, even enjoyed our works, but did not value nor compensate us with a superior value set.

Twenty-six years on from the aftermath of the Y2 embarrassment, the tech elite have not learned from their failures, nor their hubris. When word-painters are relegated to the fringes of "contemporary culture," a systematic decline is inevitable.

The AI Revolution, or "Data Center Revolution," is unraveling. The glaring holes in reliability have been exposed. When Wikipedia, Instagram, and You Tube are elevated as "factual data," rather than what they are, your AI entity becomes less reliable than the factual standards solidified in the age of the dictionary, encyclopedia, and statistical-based standard reliability source. Why do we need "data centers" where deviance is glorified as statistical?

Meanwhile, those seeking to enlighten the populace with stories illuminating the truth of human nature and reality, encouraging the creative, stirring the soul, find too many potential audiences mesmerized by the less human, the less kind and gentle, the less compassionate. As authors, driven by creativity, we need to offer them a positive alternative to the Narcissistic, an alternative to soul-less culture. So, let us throw off every obstacle, and create a compassionate alternative, a spirit-driven soul-filled excellence that artificial intelligence can never create. And in the end, the populace will open their eyes and see the world as realists, not those manipulated by a soul-less revolution seeking the degradation of the human spirit.

An Excerpt From My Novel

     

     Not everyone in the parking lots on Baker Street saw the amber-hooded track star, painting her lips with ruby red, sitting inside her drained-yellow pickup truck, dreaming of malls, money, and cologne-drenched men.

     The grocery store supervisor, out on his smoke break, his mind fixated on Billie Jo Wells, the youngest cashier, stood at the edge of the parking lot.

     The postmaster, who parked near the edge of the ball diamond grass beyond the pavement, lay back in his seat after consuming a large slice of cherry cheesecake and a few sausage patties.

     Across the lot, the cable guy slept in his back seat while the company paid for an elaborate breakfast he left largely untouched forty miles downriver.

     Most people on Baker Street saw the long-bearded figure checking his phone, as lunchtime pushed into an hour-long break, but he looked like just another logger standing around wasting time before taking his massive haul up the next mountain highway.

     Across the street, a tractor-trailer sat in the gas station parking lot. The owner, Joe Jackson, sat in his cab eating a snack cake. He remembered a similar town, several miles back, where he'd met a man with goats...and he daydreamed about a life with freedom.

     For a couple hours every week, Joe Jackson was an important man. People counted on him; they waited for him. The rest of his existence, between bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, and a nap in the cab, he dreaded. The hours on the road were never ending.

     There were many times he drifted, driving by rote, sobered by the appearance of a tow truck, a school bus, or a clueless compact car driver going much too slow.

     But the man in the big rig dreamed of goats, fifty acres, a pond, cabin, and barn, off a gravel road in the middle of nowhere.

     And few on Baker Street watched the black-hatted lady, in low heels, pushing a grocery cart with a small sack of dog food. She clutched her alligator purse, ignoring the tears leaking from her eyes. As she climbed into her small white truck, she set the purse down, opened it, and dabbed her eyes with handkerchief.

     She, like the man in the big rig across the street, opened a Zebra Cake, and ate the icing before the rest of the snack. She wiped her hands with the monogramed white handkerchief. Backing out, she floored the pedal and sped out of the parking lot to get momentum to snake up the mountain to her empty house...

     They, the locals and visitors alike, went about their business with waves around the parking lot, but no one revealed their dreams, their hopes, their cares. In Messer's Cafe, in Hamrick's Convenience Store, Grayson's Grocery, and Cogar's Hardware, folks from out of town, like the hiker, met those from deeper in the hollers, hills, and mountains... beyond Laurel Springs and the nine hundred people who called it home.

Mesmerized

throwing bones to the dogs

enticing an audience of legged creatures,

they've all the energy in the world

while i race for a boomerang in the wind

worse than grasping confetti in a parade-

mesmerized by potential.

 

 

Dating in the blue world...2007

Ecstatic...

she faces a screen i have not seen

a blue world on her side

composition flows, the flower grows

both sides blossoming in the side bars

while i have chartered a new vessel

to reach out and touch your picture

you're eating an ice cream sundae

with limerence in the luminescence

you type your mobile phone number 

and i am at one with my credit card

paying for another month of chasing you

this chronic appetite for a taste of the new world.

you sound like yourself on the other end

yes, i am drunk with a common new disease

for every man ever dumped like a stray dog

yearning for more complicated connectivity

the world slows down when i hear your voice

and one of us is captured by the enraptured.

 

While February Lingers

 Gray consumes the air and sky, and blankets the land with white, the wintry one refusing to leave my doorsteps. I labor yet another hour to stay awake, knee-deep in yawning in place, drugged by the power of dim lights and darkening days.

Sleep is like a tender-hearted woman come to cuddle me. But when I wake the chill in my room reminds me that my cocoon is so thick the blankets wrap me tight. Waking is sometimes severe; I am reminded of the tales of old men and old women who lose feeling in their arms, legs and other extremities, as if death slowly creeps up from the toes and feet...which I did watch when my wife's grandmother finished dashing between the veils and settled for the slow inevitable slipping beyond the material.

When I do venture out in the arctic air stream, breathing is an invigorating exercise. Bundled in layers upon layers, I feel like a fat walrus. But the cold quickly becomes a friend if I can survive the therapy. There will be no more yawning in place there, as I discover sobriety, released from stupor. Inside too long, stiff and sedentary, one's own society vanishing like a vapor, February's fingers, caresses the aged to sleep, into a fog of the numbing, the pungent, and the loss of control. 

New Year's Eve

her fingers a wax-like fog between posts

slipping silently beneath hills and hollers

she's a teaser in a sheen-like fairy light

as she meets her gentleman callers.

she's not too kind with her hoarfrost breath

freezing our feet, our toes, our fingers

our licorice-red faces observe a wintry death

though our love for her fragrance lingers.

an angel-train drifts and wanes beyond reason

passing through her snow-filled frail forest

our mud-coated boots marking a new season

leaving behind the tales of mere mortal men.

 

 

a still frame

 just heard the lights dimming

electric perfume in the breeze

mascara coloring outside the lines

multiple window wiper fragments 

shattered cell phone glasses

charcoal wings come to take away

the bones and flesh left behind.

stay soft in your heart

 stay soft in your heart, as the rain

 quick in your care, as an embrace

 fair in your features, as a countenance

 reflecting the heart of your maker.

why i cannot sleep tonight

if only one- the one who has been on my mind half the night- reads this, and it changes her, then it has been worth it all. but, if this is for you, another, because God will not allow me to go to sleep tonight without writing this, then accept it.

when faced with what happened in your life...the heartbreaking childhood...because other people made horrible life decisions that could have ruined the entirety of your childhood...and your life...you must compose the story of your survival. the brutal truth. it is there because you must compose- write, interpret, sing, dance- the truth. not a religious blanket thrown over your life so that it looks like everything is fine now. No, you must face every last sentence of it. it does no good to write platitudes, to write around the subject. we do not want your rubbish. you can make it a poetic journey, yet it reflects nothing. vacuous. what does that accomplish? do you think that God is impressed by a piece of Art, a book, or a random collection of something that is not your heart and soul? 

i lie awake because i had to repent. i tried writing someone else's story. that isn't my job. you have to go back and find out what really happened to you...not what you remember happened to you, but all that you went through, including the truth about your parents. 

one of the key verses in scripture reveals that the Spirit of the Living God can and will reveal everything to you. every point, every angle, every place each character in your story has played. even those who have died. and certainly, those who left you confused. God is not the author of confusion. You may have yelled up at Him as you wandered around, and you can be sure He heard your heart. But, did you hear His heart? He wants to tell the Whole story. What good is it if only part of the story is conveyed? 

God wants you to tell the story. All of it. Good night.

Silence in Red

 so beautiful, so tragic

this figure of vibrance...

this lion of ancient grace

slain by blind madmen

in a lust for destruction

in a lust for disgrace.

what Hell has awaken

stains alleys and sidewalks

bloodprints on buildings

bodybags in schoolrooms

lace, bows, ribbons all red

silence the sister of the dead.

An Interlude

 While I am working on my novel, I shall share with you a series of stories in a series called "The Speckled Seagull." Although I have written a fair number of these, I have not returned much to them in several years. I am revising them, re-orienting them more toward the central character- a woman extracted from her childhood in a different land, where she daily enjoyed the seashore, her father's nurturing love, and a time she desperately longs for. The story deals with her life as a woman, a mother,  a wife, and a 'speckled bird," not the common bird. Enjoy these short pieces.

a day in the school house

 she sharpened her pencil...until it filed down to a mere nub. but she was not there, she was watching a movie in her head...remembering the early days when she would walk with her father, hand-in-hand, her wee little one in his- down along the strand...in the days before America. before she lost him. and he lost her.

it was not the best of times, nor the worst, nor the in-between. not, in a sense, much different from anyone else growing up along the seacoast. she expected nothing but his big clammy hand, a cup of the warm stuff, and always that scrumptious-wool-blanket when the nights chilled her father's features so.

she played by the sea, took in it's breath, drank deep of it, and lived in those salty breezes, but as the pencil stub fell from her hand, she forgot herself and fell back into the present, in her place of exile. and as she cupped the pencil shavings in her hand, she glanced at the boys in the back of the classroom and smiled. for one day, they might grow up to be as tender as her father...

the ruddy-cheeked boy in row 4 raised a hand and the girls around him giggled.

"Uh...may I go to the restroom?"

"Why, of course, Billy. Take the pass and don't forget to sign out," she chirped.

the ruddy-cheeked boy left the room and the class continued working on a mathematics assignment meant to stimulate their secular side. she moved up and down the aisles, careful not to brush any chairs. the students worked feverishly, their pencils squeaking.

"You have ten minutes."

the ruddy-faced boy opened the classroom door, but it did not close. for behind it stood a man in a white collar, and that ubiquitous black outfit they all knew too well. for here at Saint Anne's Preparatory School, the children expected the bellowing voice to find their room, one time of the day or the other.

Father McCallister loved every one of them like his own children. but even more, he loved to read to them, just as his father had read to him. and when he saw the face of the still lovely teacher, he sighed. for she too knew what would come next...every one of them would try to finish early, and their scores might not be as good as the next class. they would enjoy themselves, listening to his tales as he spun them wildly through the air, and they were taken back to a time even he did not remember...a time when sailors sailed into ports of distant lands...

and that made her happy. happier than she had been for years. happy, remembering her childhood...before the boat, the nun, and the long voyage away from Prince Edward Island...

but when the bell rang, and she grabbed her purse and Doctor Scholls from under the teacher desk, she remembered to where she was returning, and why. and she held the purse tightly, her hands clasped like fingers around a throat, and she had a flashback...and saw the face of the child...her child...and the face of the stranger she had once called "love." 

the fallen

in memory of the thousands killed in the streets

one wanted to make his mother proud-

blessed with quick reactions, quick feet,

he excelled on a field his oppressors ignored

until he wandered into the wrong alley.

one wanted to make her father proud-

so she studied to show herself approved

and walked into the night with no hijab

with every student from her neighborhood.

one wanted to live a life divorced from the past

driving down I-95 following the lights home,

the smell of cigarettes and dull perfume

and a photo of her cousin on a cell phone.

one wanted to spread joy as a cosmetic surgeon

to fix the smiles of thousands of damaged children

in a world so coarse, cold, and unforgiving

she stood against the sea of oppression and fear.

one wanted to be the strong one, who stood up to evil

though his parents pleaded with him to stay inside the house

he boldly proclaimed: If i don't go, nothing will change.

so, he slipped into the night, into the crowd and gave his life.

the fallen, all of them, so numerous in the street

the people, gunned down, lives cut short by hate.