The poor you will always have with you

-Matthew 26:11

I finally volunteered at the local food back this weekend. Shame on me for taking so long. Food is a kind of charity I feel good about. I’ve been a customer and then a volunteer of foodbanks in my life.

I can think of two outstanding books about struggling with basic sustenance:

Charles Dickens Little Dorrit is a story about a Victorian era young woman born in a prison for men who didn’t pay their debts. She was born in debtors prison and lived there until her adulthood allowed her to get a job outside to pay for her family’s food. We have a modern system of bankruptcy now, which seems an improvement.

George Orwell Down and out in Paris and London is Orwell’s story of a time when he found himself in a period of no income. He had to find a way to scratch together enough to keep body and soul together until he started his next job.

My teenager was feeling sympathetic towards the homeless people we saw on the streets around us. I love her kind heart. And I figured if she could see how the charity systems work for the poor around us, it would ease her heart. Our life with her has included relying on charity.

When I was her age, my family was well acquainted with the systems that fed those who couldn’t. I wrote the story of butchering a road kill moose here. Alaska used that system to share food with those in need.

Later, I got become a cook for a YMCA day care, and had to feed 70 people (mostly little kids) breakfast lunch and snack every day. The food came from the local foodbank. That’s when I first learned about the lifecycle of the food industrial complex. Grocery stores take in huge amounts of product, fresh and processed and do their best to sell it all.

A percentage is left over, and that gets passed on to the tail end of consumers. As a cook for a charity institution, I ransacked these misfit items and turned them into food. There were some weird items to get through.

At the food bank this weekend, these institutional over flows were distributed to the individual consumer. The baked goods, meat, boxes of crackers and other random things were available for distribution.

We had 250 banana boxes and we stuffed them with similar items so each box had a hearty assortment. This was not the sort of thing that could be automated. It was a by-feel kind of thing. Each box had items I would have been glad to have. The recipients signed up for their box. They drove through in their cars, present a number to get their box.

At the end were a few folks without cars. A smaller box with the extra items that didn’t make it into the 250 were put into the hands of the walk-ups. They’d been waiting under a tree for their turn.

Clearly the Saturday was a culmination or a week of accumulating the food for distribution. And the food being stuffed into the boxes was the result of a lot of connections with merchants so that these extras could be gathered and given to people who wanted them.

My daughter enjoyed the productivity and obvious benefit of what we did.

There will always be a reason for a person to need food. Healthy fruit trees will make more than is easily harvested, and this is an example of how generosity is built into the world.

Different times and places did it differently. I got to see again how sharing and generosity is done in my time and place.

The chicken meat has frozen itself around the bars of the basket in the freezer. Earlier, I’d jammed a butter knife into the packages to free them. I got a few, and some were too stubborn to extract.

And today I have no chicken for dinner. What will I do? I’m hungry!

My plan is foiled. I had purchased chicken to solve this problem, but this best laid plan came to naught.

What choices am I left with?

Freedom of choice is best served with time. When I have time I have more choices. Since I burned up my time by giving up on freeing the chicken from the cage in the freezer, I have to come up with another choice.

I have money. I have a car. I could go buy some food.

I remember other hungry times when I had a car but no money. That was a time to look in the cupboard.

What is in my cupboard? I had been looking for meat, because I wanted protein. What are the other options?

Time and resources increase the choices. Resources are the result of work done previously, often by me. Did I stock my cupboard previously? Did I save money from a paycheck I earned before?

Some resources arrive as gifts. When I play monopoly, I get 200 dollars after I pass GO. I have the gift of 24 hours each day I live. I can also have the resources that were given to me by the family I was born in. Do they give me food that they worked for?

My choices are dependent on my location. What is common here and what is rare and precious? It could be easy to get water near a lake, but it is rare in the desert. In the same way, I could have natural inclinations that are valuable. I am a person who writes, that could be rare and valuable. I also could stockpile skills that people need, to trade for

Chicken

I have an embarrassment of riches in my choices right now. I’m stuck in a rut. As you can tell, I have chicken for dinner a lot. Is that the choice I really want?

I know I could change it. I could start choosing to eat no meat at all. Or NOTHING but meat. Big choices is where big changes start. What do I want?

While staying in Cologne our hotel was in view of the cathedral. I watched people walk from the window. And I heard the bells.

The bells rang on the hour. Not every hour. I couldn’t find the pattern during our stay. I was teleported to a time when the bells would tell the city to pray. Bells were and still are a way to notify the people all around.

BONG

Pay attention!!

BONG

Stop and notice!!

BONG

This is an ancient human need, both individual and community.

I need to join the gathering. Or I need to take an action—like closing the gate.

The whole community may need to pause and mourn when someone dies.

I hear these church bells that have been all those things for the people around for centuries.

We all know that the sun rises and sets every day. We can pay attention to the moon waxing and waning, and even the stars moving in the sky. The bells were created by human beings to add new points of significance in the day.

The age of industry created non-agrarian methods of production. Factories required people to gather at times not tied to the sun, and bells were the way to call out the start of the work day. The workers came—DON’T BE LATE!—and the machines could make the things that people needed and wanted.

The business in the area would have had competing bells that would sound out. This was the way to communicate far away. The factory needed people to show up for the work at the factory, And the people wanted to get paid.

It was hard to get used to the factory’s demands. The work force was agrarian peasants who got up with the sun. The machines of the factory were not affected by light or dark, and they would work winter or summer. The industrial age brought so much productivity. The bells would wake us up in the dark of night.

And in its season, more rest. Long days in summer, and shorter in the winter. That must have been part of the “innovation” of daylight savings time.

Now, I strap a watch to my body that taps my wrist for notifications, and a device in my pocket the chimes to remind me to do a task.

I have a feeling in my gut that this movement is out of control. Was I meant to be notified and brought to attention in all these ways? If everything is important, then nothing is important.

But those bells are so beautiful. I want to hear them. Their significance as a call to action is lost and only the beauty remans.

I was last in Cologne 18 years ago. My impressions of the cathedral and the surrounding businesses are updated with what is happening now. It’s been a pilgrimage destination for centuries. And the Romans were there even before the cathedral.

Pilgrimage is a place for commerce. There are businesses surrounding the square, with anything I want.

I last visited in 2007, when Germany admitted .67 million immigrants. They have admitted more and more immigrants since then. In 2022, 2.67 million were admitted. What does that mean?

I saw a different flavor in Cologne this year. Literally. The square around the cathedral had a lot of take-out shops. The German beer shops with traditional food are there. From my view, the other styles of food outnumbered the local food.

I came to Germany to have an experience. I can have all these international flavors at home in California. As we saw the sights, I got hungry. My family was exhausted, so I let them go back to the hotel. I set off alone and hungry. I had a credit card. And some currency.

I had a mission. The taste of Germany that only the land itself could give.

I found the first German-seeming pub and looked at the menu. It was helpfully marked CASH ONLY.

Ooh. The first barrier. I had SOME currency, but what if it wasn’t enough? They wouldn’t take my credit card, and I figured I’d better keep looking.



Surely  closer to the cathedral would be have options. I up there, and saw waiters bringing bowls of soup out to the tables. This had to be it!

After the waiter dropped his food off, I asked him where to go to be served. He pointed into the door vaguely.

Ok, I went inside and looked around. I saw tables, and a menu by the door. But I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to catch the server’s attention. How did I do this?

The sky was darkening. My hunger was more demanding.

I gave up and walked back to the shop name Istanbul kebap. I felt it as a personal failure. The Turkish guys making the plates were eager to take my money and give me food.

I took the bag with my food back to the hotel. It was delicious, and Veronica ate half the rice and chicken. When I put the fork of cabbage salad to my tongue, I got a zing.

Mediterranean food can be spicy. Hot sauce is everywhere in southern California too.

But this?

German food has a reputation as bland. When the cathedral was only a couple centuries old, the drive for spices gave Christopher Columbus a reason to set off for America.

I could imagine the medieval Europeans with nothing but cabbages and turnips in the dark ages.

I shook my head. This Turkish shop had found the native taste for their recipe.

The chef used horseradish for the kick it needed. People are always on the move to adapt to the landscape they are in. That hasn’t changed.

This German ingredient—flavor—appeared in the middle eastern dish served in Cologne. It’s perfect.

Our trip to Germany and Denmark was only a week, and we hadn’t put the usual careful planning in. I grabbed a notebook and stuffed it into the carry-on for the plane ride. I slept on the overnight flight. Well, I tried to sleep as best I could. I didn’t write in the notebook.

When I stepped off the plane in the floaty weary traveler fog, I immediately noticed things. Interesting things that I wanted to remember, that I wanted to tell other people about and examine more fully when I had a moment.

That’s what I love about travelling! That’s why I am doing this. So many remarkable things I didn’t have a chance to even remark about with the people right next to me. There were so many things atttacting my attention I couldn’t even notice them in the moment.

As soon as we got in the hotel,we collapsed in exhaustion. When I woke up I scrambled for the notebook I brought without thinking and poured the notes of what had happened. Just the fact, quick before I forget.

Time was moving fast, and everyone woke up to go see the sights. I didn’t have a chance to finish my writing down the bare facts of the trip.

I saw so many more things that I had to capture as soon as I had a moment with the notebook. It was a race, to write it all down before I forgot it.

This is a forgotten feeling brought to me again. Like a favorite food I hadn’t eaten for years, the compulsion to notice and savor in writing the adventures in encounter.

Why Why had I stopped doing this delicious thing?

Both the travel and the noticing.

Going through chemo and cancer treatment sucked. I chose a focus to walled me off from the sensations in my body.

For example, my mouth would have no saliva (this still happens) and that has consequences for swallowing and speaking. The skin inside my nose would be parched far, far far up the sinus cavity causing stiletto-sharp boogers to stab me day and night. This has stopped, thank heaven.

The unexplored territory of cancer treatment did offer experience to notice. I did not want to go there, carefully cultivating a tunnel vision.

On this trip, I awakened that hunger and curiosity. I am safe and ready to explore.

When our daughter was a baby, we read all the books. Yes, I had “what to expect..” One of Chris’s favorite was one about growth spurts. We found it pretty accurate, that certain milestones would happen and we could expect certain things in her life.

God bless those child experts, who gave a roadmap for this very important part of our lives.

A couple years later I was asking my Psychology professor friend about those milestones. “Do they have those for adults too? It seems like once we get to 21 and are allowed to drink, it’s a wilderness.” She agreed there wasn’t much after people hit adulthood.

It’s up to the individual person to make a map. Piecing together from the scraps of the stories I’ve heard and the weeds that grow along the path, I can pick a direction.

Maybe this combination of local foliage will be sustaining….maybe I could try what they are doing over there

Off the map it’s a land of myth, rumor and experimentation.

But I know I’m not going to stay still, so I’d better pick a rumor and explore it.

A brand new adventure, right? That’s exciting. From nothing to the first bit of something is a huge step.

The thing is the next step is a lot less impactful. To live in the myth I have to do the hard work of beign unimpressive for a long time. Just one step isn’t much of an experiment.

The journey of ten thousand steps starts with one step. It don’t’ become ten thousand steps without the 362^ndstep. Or that other 7,562. By the time I get that far I better be ready to enjoy the scenery. I suppose my stories help create the map for others.

I’d like to think of the myth of myself I’m creating, but there are a lot of dreary steps to get through first.

I’ve been writing most of my life. This last bit, with the chemo and everything, I let myself put my attention eslewhere.

I remember getting in the habit of blogging in the 2000s. I wrote every day. I didn’t try to be profound. At this moment I am trying to find a way to increase my excitement and determination.

No one comes to this blog. And by no one, I mean I have less than ten visitors a week. It might be the same person. It might be a bot that is trying to figure out a way to exploit this site somehow

but for sure, this is not a platform to impress anyone. This is my empty corner where I can do repetitive exercises to see if i can eventually attain something I like.

And if I like it I might share it with others. I certainly don’t expect them to find it HERE

I used to get readers here. That has changed. And that’s ok.

today I hope to start a habit to get better at writing.

I was talking about mission statements with Veronica yesterday. We had been talking about how governments formed

families–>clans –>tribes –>nations

then the nations in combination with religion came up with a reason for why the ruler was the ruler

divine right of kings

then the enlightenment happened, and people decided not to leave leadership up to kings and elected leaders

once that was out of place, people could imagine other ways of running a society and other ideas emerged including marxism

Marxism also wants to get rid of Religion

which means a bigger overthrow of the controlling parts of societyz

the enlightenment coincided with the industrial revolution and over time this has led to corporate entities, businesses who had to create new mission statements to give a common goal to their constituents

I shared this idea with Veronica and we looked at some fortune 500 mission statements

They are basic, recreations of common goals that used to be part of the culture. But the culture got upended

and now we have to redefine everything.

But it doens’t have a soul

Veronica said “They don’t define “best.”

All the mission statement ssay something like “to be the best provider of the thing we provide”

We dont’ have a workign definition of best.

I’d like to think I was on the track and moving forward. My cancer journey put me on a side track, a maintenance track for quite a while. But wasn’t that supposed to be over?

I had to do what I could do to get through it. Shrinking horizons and lowered standards changed my world.

Meanwhile, back at the rest of the world, this new thing was catching on:
AI

Artificial Intelligence. It will give an explanation, organize and create long reports. Its great!

Well, it is pretty good. Be reasonable, it’s a computer after all.

It would seem the whole world was also shrinking its expectations. Sufficient is better than excellent. Don’t expect too much, but it will do.

If I’m trying to get my feet under me and be excellent once more, is that no longer fashionable? What moved out from underneath me while I was under that burden? I see that society is looking for more of the ordinary.

Excellence has always been rare. The easiest path is the one worn down with frequent use. That only makes sense. The harder thing is less traveled.

I am looking for my old habits that I once had and I want to take up again. Except nobody is asking me to. I am struggling to find the reason.

Is my higher self a memory of an adventure I once had?

“Wasn’t that crazy? aahhhh….” As I settle in and arrange the pillows around me. “Once upon a time, I was really something.”

Once. Am I that same person?

I’d like to be.

I’ll be honest, I have foggy ambitions. I do know that I’m disappointing myself by not going deeper for more clarity. Just like I would be if I cut and pasted in an AI response without adding my own spark. I could easily sit back and coast on all that I created before.

Doing nothing now wouldn’t take away from what I’ve already done.

Except

I don’t want to be done. I know that I need to find an inspiring challenge. It’s been a long journey back to myself. There is a lot of rubble to put back in order. The wild beasts have made their nests in this life of mine while I was away.

But this is my life, and I’m not going to share it with anyone who hasn’t fought for it like I can and do.

In a world—a universe—of adventures and experiences I am thirsty for more. And after a long day of keeping my everyday under control, I might only have the memory of thirst. Where did I leave the keys to my house? And did I lose the one to the special gate that leads to the magic kingdom?

Oh, look. They are in my pocket. Were they here all along?

Don’t sit down yet. Leave the shoes on my feet. I will need them if I’m going through the gate.

I am afraid the door might be too heavy to open. Close my eyes tight so I don’t have to look. It’s too scary to face. The idea is enough, right? I can imagine what could be and that’s almost as good.

Until I shame myself into opening my eyes, and see there isn’t a door after all. I have to walk further up the path to find the door, it seems. I don’t even see it yet. If I stay on this path I will surely find it.

Until I realize that’s as far as I can go today, I can go this far from the everyday. I’ll come back tomorrow ready to go further until I see it.

Which means, back to regular life for now. I will come back tomorrows

It’s when stack up the come-backs and revisit it on the tomorrows that I get closer to the magic kingdom. After a while it doesn’t feel like a magic kingdom, it feels like a well-worn path. Familiarity doesn’t feel like magic, but I’m far further along than I ever thought I would be.

Showing up tired, keeping my shoes on when the everyday gives me a break. Still looking for that magic. I found stuff along the way, not sure if it’s the magic I thought it was but I would not have found it without looking like this.

I look in the mirror every day, but I am not at all sure what I look like in the world. Yes, I have taken phone photos of the back of my head to see what my hair looks like. But still, I’m not sure if I am presenting myself the way I want to.

Then again, what is it I’m trying for? How perfect am I supposed to be when I can’t even tell what I see?

I have been trying to get a view on myself, and whether or how all my medical adventures have changed me. How do I get a view on whether I am weaker or tire more easily than before? That’s not something I can take a photo of.

Do I contort myself to find a way to capture a view? Chasing the immaterial.

What is it I’m looking for? What magic will my appearance unlock?

Perfect is too narrow a target. It’s not even important. Should I be trying for the perfect hair-do? Should I stretch my voice for the perfect note?

I’m never going to get it perfect. Showing up at all is going to get me what I want.

The right place at the right time is magic.

My sensei has taught me the best way to avoid a punch:

Don’t be there.

When my body is not in striking range, I am safe from strikes.

The opposite is just as true. When a nudge or a push is needed the time is now.

Showing up is better than being perfect. Raising my hand when my name. Sitting at the table. Answering the question when it is asked.

And singing the songs. I know I am not as good a singer or musician as I wish I were. But the best way to sing a song is to sing it.

Pushing it into reality. Both performance and practice. I don’t have to contort myself to make a perfect shape. I’m not going to let this day fall without making a sound