Identity Crisis - Averted

A few months ago, I was reading an assignment for a Discovering Buddhism class. The text focused on the importance of wisdom and compassion in obtaining a  clean clear mind in order to minimize / escape cyclic suffering.

At that time, I felt the text was rather deep, esoteric, and focused on ideas for which I had no reference point for understanding. I admit, I had a few doubts about my decision to learn more about this philosophy.

Yet, I struggled on.... as I continued reading, I began to understand. We see the world through a filter of our own making. What I see as beautiful, you may see as a waste of canvas. What I think is deep and meaningful, you may see as trivial. And vice verse. The point being made was that the names we give things and what we believe them to be have no affect on the thing (reality) itself.

For example, if I remove the headlights from my car, is it still a car? How about if I remove the door handles? Or the seats? Or the tires?  Although the removal of each part changes that thing, making it a different thing, we continue to call it a car. How many parts have to be removed before we stop calling it a car?

Likewise, we see ourselves as unique and special butterflies. When I think of myself I think of this mind and this body in this place. If I change my name, will it change me or how my friends perceive me? What if I lose a finger? Would I be the same person to myself and my friends? An arm, a leg, an ear? When would I stop being that person I know as Glenn? What if I lost my job, my condo, my car? Would those unfortunate events change me - of course they would, and yet I would continue to cling to the idea of my unchangeable uniqueness. By not accepting the reality of change, I would only amplify my suffering by longing for things that are no longer there.

Scared, alone, trying to get home...

I had an opportunity to test this recently. By my own fault I lost my wallet at a movie theater. Upon arriving home and realizing my mistake, I immediately called the theater and returned to look for it, but the theater was full of people and I did not see it where I had left it. The next morning I returned before the first show and again searched under the seats, behind the curtains, in the trash receptacles, and the parking lot to no avail.

This was the first time in my adult life that I was without proper ID or access to money. I remembered the reading above, and thought that perhaps in the eyes of the law, I could no longer prove my identity or worth. Should I be stopped for a traffic violation or need to cash a check, I had no means of proving who I was. But did I need to prove who I was to those who know me or to myself? Was I changed by this inconvenience? Maybe, maybe not.

Two weeks later, as each piece of my identity arrives in the mail, I feel relief that I no longer have to carry my passport to the grocery store in order to write a check. More importantly I am happy that by remembering calmness, focusing on the moment, taking action, and resisting the urge to be angry, scared, or take my place on the cross of martyrdom, I was able to put into practice something that seemed so foreign just a few months ago.

Namaste! 

Embedded Prezi: How Do I Publish on Lulu

Food, Glorious Food (الغذاء والمجيدة)

I have no idea if Google Translator got that right, but fingers crossed....

Why the Arabic? Well, after our experience at the Gravy Farmhouse Dinner, Carl set out to find another foodie experience for us to enjoy. Luckily for us, we received a Living Social coupon to Babylon Restaurant for a 5 course Moroccan dinner for two - including wine pairings for the outstanding price of $49 (USD) per person. We jumped on that deal like a hungry cougar on an innocent young boy. 

Dining Room

I had previously visited Babylon for a lecture on current US immigration law, but had not yet had the pleasure of dining there. The location is on the edge of the downtown district. The patio is gorgeously designed for lounging by the reflecting pool while sampling flavored tobaccos from the hooka pipes. The interior is a mixture of downtown warehouse-chic and Moroccan tiled ceilings. Its a lovely space.

Like the farmhouse dinner, the dining for tonight's event was communal. Carl and I selected seats in the far corner, and were promptly joined by a rowdy group of ladies on their 'girls' night out." After a slight rearrangement of seating in order bring us all together we proceeded to introduce ourselves. We could not have been luckier in our dinner companions, who were energetic, warm, conversant, and eager to experience new flavors.

The chef and the wine steward began by welcoming us and then the dinner started. Our seat selection meant that we were usually last to be served for both wine and food. Due to our seat selection, the food was not piping hot when it arrived, but we also did not have to wait as long after receiving our courses for the chef to come out and describe it.

We started with a light and tangy Moroccan Salad paired with a Picpoul de Pinet

Followed by Almond Praline Chicken Roll Bastilla paired with a dry Rose.

Shrimp and Mussels over Cannelini paired with a Chardonnay (White) Burgundy

Rustic Lamb Tagine paired with a Malbec ("you can never go wrong with a Malbec)

Moroccan Almond Rolls paired with a Bombay Champagne Cocktail
(I was so excited, I was almost finished with dessert before I remembered to take the picture.)

Overall impressions of the evening:

• The restaurant is lovely.
• The service was adequate, but a little slow for such a large crowd. The kitchen did not seem capable of getting the dishes out quickly enough.
• The serving sizes were perfect for a tasting menu.
• The food was tasty, but was often not served quickly enough to be hot when it arrived at the table.
• There was quite a bit of time between each course. At the end of the evening, I was satisfied, but still a bit peckish. 
• The wine pairings were the highlight of the evening. The wines perfectly complemented each dish providing additional depth and highlighting subtle spices.
• The company was delightfully entertaining.

All in all, this was a great evening that combined three of my favorite things: Food, Drink, and Friends.

Babylon Restaurant
309 N. Dawson St.
Raleigh, NC 27601
(919) 838-8595

From the Lists: #36 All the King's Men

Between spring allergies and a cold that has lingered for the best part of two weeks, I have been somewhat off my game lately. The blog topics have been piling up and I have pledged to catch up this week with few rapid-fire entries.

First up, I finished reading #36 on the list of the Best 100 English Novels of the 20^th century:  All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren, which is loosely based on the life of Louisiana Governor Huey Long, nicknamed The Kingfish. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1947.

Back in the day, I had an English professor in a Modernism course who stated: “When the dwarf shows up, you know it’s a southern gothic novel.” In this case, the role of the dwarf is played by an aggressive pock-marked, political insider, who is instrumental in both the rise and fall of a southern politician – think female James Carville. 

For fans of southern gothic political dramas, this book is for you. The settings are draped in Spanish Moss. The language and descriptions drip with a humid fecundity that all native southerners in the United States recognize as summer in the deep South. 

I don’t usually quote long passages in these blog posts, but when I read this, I was so struck by the description that I had to read it again and again:  

“A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater with a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick mocassins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like kerwhush and a tinny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be whoo-ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over their ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass – well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.”

And, it’s one sentence. Jeeze, I can’t even imagine trying to get that past a teacher, but I can dream of one day creating a sentence with this much power. As is obvious from the excerpt above, this is an atmospheric book as much as it is a political potboiler, complete with illicit love affairs, backroom dealings, corruption, and redemption – but sadly, no dwarves. 

I was immediately pulled in by the style and found myself hoping that the governor would make everything all right and bring down the bad guys. But in truth, there is a little bit of bad in all of us, we just have to learn how to make good things from it. 

I have added the Oscar winning, 1949 film version to my Netflix Queue. I am eager to see how the screenwriters adapted the narrative to film.

Next up: #33 Sister Carrie