pink chopsticks*

Tonight you may call me Iron Chef. The only word that could describe my stirfry is "magnificent"! First, I harvested a japanese eggplant and two summer squash from my garden. Next, I added mushrooms, zuccinni, bell pepper and broccoli. I sliced the vegetables and pressed the garlic. I concocted the sauce out of 3 pressed pieces of garlic, dried red pepper flakes, soy sauce, olive oil, sesame oil and molasses. I fried until the color was heightened with the vegetables still firm (about 3-4 minutes on the highest setting). I artfully arranged my beautiful vegetables on a bed of brown rice and served with iced tea. Finally, I ate the meal with my classy pink chopsticks from Japan with one of Schubert's Piano Concertos wafting around the room. Lovely.

I enjoyed my brother's visit so much! He and I used to be super-close, then he went to boarding school and I moved to Canada to become a hippy (that's his version of my life, anyway). Last night, I went downstairs about 1:45 because I couldn't sleep. My brother was sitting in the green chair with his feet crossed on the foot stool. He held a pen poised above the lined pages of a spiral notebook, listening to a U2 CD.

"Whatcha doing?" I ask.

"Writing a sonnet," he answers. Come to find out it was a Shakespearan sonnet because he's afraid that he's getting rusty as a Business major. We discussed Shakespeare's genius and our favorite aspects of that genius. He mastered multiple forms. It's not as if he wrote a really good poem. He wrote hundreds of brilliant poems and plays. It's hard to fathom that kind of talent. My brother's favorite sonnet is #14 and mine is the old standby #116. J-D talked about how the strict form forced Shakespeare into precision; he especially enjoys his synecdoche. We talked about how the Bard not only mastered literary forms but what a keen observer of human nature he was.

My paltry summary of our conversation does the moment no justice. It was magical and edifying to feel our kinship at a truer level than genetics. There are those moments when I'm around my siblings that I feel an incredible bond that defies description. It's more potent than the basic I-thou experience. Similar to Euclidean geometry in which there exists a line between any two points, I believe there exists a connection between any two people. But, it's magic when you feel connection/intersection at multiple points of yourself. During this late-night conversation, I felt I belong and make sense. My family is my home. Humans are the only thing in the world that are made in the image of God. There's something sacred and holy about relational transactions between human beings.








*A great name for a fictitious all-girls punk rock group in the 80's. This phrase might be the inspiration for my November novel.