Kimchi is Life

 

 As I look to the year ahead, I think of the weather. The snowy days ahead, the mud season tease, the awakening of the impossible spring, summer heat, mosquitos, cicadas, autumn that seemed to take 90 years or 90 minutes to arrive, and finally, the terror threat of November into December.

I ask myself: Culinarily, what do I wish to achieve during this year? The only thing I could say to sum up the entire composite is that the underlying theme of flavors in my rock opera of cooking would be "maximum impact with minimum effort."

In case, throughout my rambling ranting, I have not made this absolutely clear: this is what Fight4Taste is all about. I look back at the tattered calendar of the last year; some plans are memories, and some memories never materialize. You win some, you lose some. Three dear friends went down with the ship, and there was nothing I could do. 

As I contemplated being practical, I found myself in the sand, digging for treasure that I already knew was not there. I persisted, and in a couple of short circuits, my senses returned, and I seriously asked myself what I was doing. I would never need the things I was collecting. 

Sunrise and the scene is different. I see roads and trails that were not visible before last evening. Is it a dream? Will it slip away? I know what this is. The rest of the random particles have been traveling through the void. Refracted light has bounced off a particulate or two, allowing me a gracious thought or reference, but if I were to be challenged at the border by the guards demanding my credentials, I dare say it ends there.

My new rank dictates decisions, actions, and plans. I know in my heart I have earned every last bit of it. If I fail to take action, all the adventures ahead are unknown to those in the lands that these roads and trails lead to. Will I be the killer of that era? Doubt is doubt is doubt, by which I mean;

Doubt is that which causes me to pause.

Doubt is the potential destroyer of the future.

Doubt is the tool that shows others they can do anything they can dream.

You asked me where the door was. I did not even see one. That is when you told me there were three. This is just what I needed. Patiently, you repeated those words over and over until my eyes were open, and the doors began to become visible. This is where the days of weakness and tired soul must dwell. 

In the darkness, the violins struck hard like rapid-fire thunder in the rose garden. How can this exist without me? But as I stared down my own mortality, I knew I only own my version of this. The empathic marketplace has been around longer than any of us imagined. Seriously?

I consolidate, I reorganize. I get high, then I get low. I cash my chips in and count them slowly, realizing I must make every minute count. On the one hand, I need to slam things around and get it done; on the other, I also need to carefully dust the sand off broken pieces as if with a fossil brush to discover that which is sublime and leave behind the substance I will pay storage on and yet never touch again. 

I am not done yet and maybe have not even started. I told my oppressors they were in trouble, and they were not so quick to believe it. But they will know they have failed when the glass shatters and the burning steel contacts my hand with such velocity. Pain, a drain on energy, the very air around us that tells us, we cannot. But I can, and I am, and I will. There is no "no." Deal with it.

In my writing, I realize I have returned to my abstract roots. It is often designed to not name names when an actual story is being told. Today, in these words, it is more to depict the struggle I face daily dealing with wanting to do something with food and time. I have so many great ideas, and I feel they can be inspiring. I have been fighting pain for the last two decades whatever. For a year and a half, I am accompanied by the sound a ciccaidas screaming in my head 24 hours a day, so be it. 

For so much of my life, I have collected endless information. The problem is that it was all in fragments, as if partial novels were disbursed from the clouds and dropped into the land where I lived. Many are fascinating, practical, and useful; others are interesting but have little value, and others I do not understand. For the first time, pieces of this puzzle fit together. Undoubtedly, a gift from the girl who landed in the spaceship over 3 years ago guided me through my whole life and walked with me for 2 years. I never did get to thank her before she disappeared.

The clarity of my ideas is being challenged by my pain and affliction. But when the fragments start making sense, I know I can create so much and show others that they too can do anything, explore their strengths, cook for their loved ones, and not give in to the machine that seems to dictate to us as if we were drones.

Kimchi is like this. It is alive. Anyone can follow a recipe, but a successful batch is a perfect storm of life. Everything falls into place when you really understand what it is to make it and how natural forces must be achieved. Those forces allow the process to make something out of things that previously seemed unrelated. They become one, they make sense and Kimchi becomes life.