Snow is a force that gives us meaning

As a kid growing up in eastern Oregon I loved snow. No matter how much it snowed, it was never enough for all the skiing, sledding, snowforts, snowball fignts and snowjumping (jumping off of the roof into a big snowpile) which could be dreampt up by my siblings and I. In fifth grade the snow reached over my head, the closest it ever came to my imagined quota. Now, 25 years later, I again find myself in snow country. And once again I want more.

This morning it snowed a couple inches while I stayed inside and fiddled with the new projector that LL and I have decided to treat ourselves to. Now that that is done--as with all projects remotely electronic and/or mechanical, it always take way longer than expected--I am temporarily at a loss for what to do. Not that I don't have any number of things I could/should be doing. But none are as fun as...

Of course! Snow. Outside I go, shovel in hand, to tackle the driveway.

As I push snow my mind relaxes. The task is simple and at hand. The reward is tangible, measurable, satisfying. Even as I clear a path, I wish for more: as long as it snows, I will have something which must be done, just as after finishing the driveway, I have to take LL's rig in for studded tires.

I wonder--not yet having read Chris Hedges's War is a Force...--if our urges toward violence might not be taken out more benignly on snow. We (and by we I mean of course I) have within us (me) the occasional urge, borne of the daily stresses accumulated by living an imperfect life, to destroy something. Snow is beautifully unique in its range of accommodation. Like water it can be hit and pushed without harm to do-er or do-ee, but in a way that water can't it can also be used for creation. In skiing and sledding, the desire for speed, even reckless speed, can be satisfied with yet a soft landing for crashes. In moving snow, there is unfettered access to the physical labor that is so often lacking in our lives. Maybe we all could use a little more snow.

Maybe, too, part of my love affair stems from the sense of something fragile and vanishing. We are in a La Niña year so it's supposed to be colder and wetter. But the numbers implied by global warming do not bode well for snow in the years to come. Snow, at ever-higher latitudes and elevations, may be an endangered species.

In which case, maybe snow could become the icon that finally galvanizes the floundering (or dead, as per the title of Hedges's latest, Death of the Liberal Class) progressive movement into action.

Ok, so that's a stretch. But such recent events as the failure to pass I-1098, which the 98$ of people who DON'T make more than $200k/yr would have benefited from, against a backdrop of huge cuts to essential services in healthcare and education, have me grasping at straws. At fragile and ephemeral things. At snow.

I'll write again when it's over my head. Until then let it snow!

Pumpkin soup

1 large pumpkin
A few ripe tomatoes
Hot peppers--3 or more, depending on BTU level
1 freshly picked coconut, or, if you don't live where coconuts are freshly picked, 1 package of processed coconut product
3-7 cloves of garlic
fresh ginger root, grated
2-4 orange and/or red bell peppers, depending on size
some ground nuts (e.g., hazelnuts, cashews, almonds--probably 1 cup)
1 beer of your choosing. Moose Drool is nice. If the beer is too tasty, more of it will end up in your belly than in the soup...
salt and pepper to taste
cilantro to garnish

What would you do, if you knew you could not fail?

Facing the end of another week in which the in-box is not empty I think of this quote. I don't know the author. The words are printed on a wooden placard in LL's parents' house in PT.

It is Friday morning and I am making some pumpkin soup before heading in to work. In point of fact it will be a turban squash soup. And also, I will be finishing it when I get home after work. This will probably be the time at which I'll take the baked squash and blend it with the roasted red peppers and roasted tomatoes, and throw them into the pot where the garlic, ginger and hot peppers will be sauteing. Also I still have to buy the hot peppers. I'm hoping for habañeros.

Also, in looking for an enye (ñ) to copy and paste, I learned that habanero is actually spelled just like that, and that ñ is incorrect--and on the screen just below that, I learned that "octopi is ignorant in three languages simultaneously", as it is derived from Greek instead of Latin and thus would be octopodes (while in modern English octopuses is considered "correct"). Thanks Wikipedia!

But I digress. What would I do if I knew I could not fail?

Hopefully, I would still be doing exactly what I am doing now, which is to say, I'm about to turn off the oven and go into the hospital where one of my patients was just admitted and then go to clinic and finish some charts and make some phone calls and look up some information on how better to treat chronic pain and how better to diagnose chronic suffering and how better to encourage a healthy diet and regular exercise and nurturing relationships, which are the things that keep all of us out of the hospital, and all the while I hope to be learning, learning, learning, which of necessity requires some letting go of previously learned information and letting go of some long-held habits and prejudices and beliefs, not all once of course because that would be too easy, but perhaps bit by bit.

And maybe if I can keep working at this I can not fail. Maybe if I can slowly change, bit by bit, my self-expectations, I will not let myself down. Perhaps if I keep reaching out to others, asking for help where appropriate, which is really almost always, we will succeed.

Perhaps the question should be re-framed, to What would we do, knowing that we can not fail?

We have to go for it. As Andrea Gibson says, we have to create. Whether a jack-o-lantern or pumpkin soup, a patient care plan or meaningful relationships, this is what we are here for.

And then of course I look back at what I've written and realize it's too pithy. Too canned, too hokey, too much of this, not enough of that. I have failed. I think that now that my blog frequency has dropped off to near-zero, I am trying to squeeze too much metaphor into too little space, and the result is--well, to forge on anyway, it's a soup.

And at the same time, why not go for it? Most of us, as LL likes to say, are going to die. Most of us will start out looking like the pumpkin at the top, and slowly wither to become the pumpkin below. Why not make a soup of it? Why not do it anyway?

Perhaps the question is, If we know we are might fail anyway, what will we strive for?

The answer, I hope, is Yes.