Technically, flotsam and jetsam refer to the junk that floats on water and ends up on the shores or collected in small eddies and pools of water...a mish-mash of assorted, sometimes unrelated pieces of debris.
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Sort of describes what's in my mind right now, a collection of debris. I am burned out from doing taxes for the company where I work and for the Quaker school where I volunteer as treasurer. When I get burned out, about anything, I "pull in my horns," as the Chinese fortune telling I Ching advises me to do upon occasion. I take that to mean to back off, to return to the cave, to disengage. I float on my internal ocean among all the flotsam and jetsam bobbing up and down, back and forth in my mind. Eventually I come out of burn-out, re-enter the universe around me and carry on with whatever's next.
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"Pull in your horns" is good advice, actually, because I don't think clearly or carefully when I'm burned out. I've been known to say and do some pretty stupid, dumb-ass things when in the state of burn-out. I am convinced one or both of my marriages took place while my inner-moon was in burn-out phase.
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Anyway, today is the perfect day for making one of my favorite soups, as seen above in the photo. I don't know the exact name of the soup, and the recipe changes from one batch to another, depending on what I have on hand when the soup-making urge hits me. I call it Italian bean soup. I must have seen someone making this on the Food Network or maybe Julia Child's show on PBS...who cares?
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The wild winds of March have arrived about 15 days too soon, for those who set their watches, plant their peas and shear their lambs by that sort of thing. They are fierce today.
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I love wild winds, the wilder the better (except hurricane force winds). I love how they howl and moan and shriek, like the wild being I sometimes am inside. They roar down the chimney, scattering spiders and the cats' equilibrium to the four corners of the house. They sweep through the darkest, spookiest recesses of my psyche, flushing out the ghosties and other nasties that like to hide there. The only thing that could make these winds any better would be if I were standing at a cliff's edge with a jagged, rocky coastline below me, on a night brightened by a full moon, with silver-lined clouds scuttling by, as if trying desperately to find a sheltered cove out of the winds.
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Wild wind makes me feel alive like nothing else in this world, not even multiple orgasms or the silkiest dark chocolate melting against my tongue.
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Too much information? Okay. Back to the soup and perhaps the other stuff I intended to write about.
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Soup is chicken broth, canned beans - cannellini or some other white bean - like navy beans; garlic, onion, diced tomatoes; greens (broccoli rabe, mustard greens, kale, spinach, collards-whatever you like), Italian sausage (substitute whatever you like). Leftover pasta is optional. I had some so I tossed it in the pot.
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I found seasoned broth in the market today...has white wine and herbs in it. Smells rather enticing, in fact.
Excuse me; soup is calling and my gut is growling in response. Gotta go feed the Beast.
(c) 2009 Martha McLemore
5 comments:
This is a lovely piece of writing. A nice soup of the very personal and the metaphor. A story with atmospherics. The wind unnerves me. It makes me grind my teeth and hunch my shoulders.
Thank you, US.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of the wind. And just about anything else. I still shudder during electrical storms to this day.
I used to live in New Orleans and was out with friends one night when a wild wind came blowing southward across Lake Ponchatrain. The five of us linked hands, stretched out in a line along the shore and "shouted down the wind." What I was shouting down was my fear, of course.
I'm not as courageous now at 61 as I was at 18. Wild wind reminds me of the Martha I used to be, sometimes blowing some of that youthful courage back into my heart...usually not, though.
I'm sorry your experience with Cal didn't live up to your fantasy, but I admire you like hell for taking that chance...and for your unflinching honesty.
Martha
Wind makes me "pull in my horns". It stirs up too much flotsam and jetsam. It's a bully, pushing and buffeting me but not stopping to face me so that I can fight back.
Wind is a wonderful reason for soup.
Flotsam and Jetsam are two of my favorite words/sayings. How fun. Only problem is, when I say those words, nobody seems to know what I mean :(
Kali, your post made me think about other winds and there are some winds I dislike and never want to see again. The Santa Ana winds used to buffet my VW bus like nobody's business when I went to Anaheim from San Clemente for a class I took for almost a year. Hot, dry and hellaciously strong!
TS, I have favorite words, too, that I like the feel of when I say them, or the sound. Flotsam and jetsam are two of the funniest. I like serendipity and fortuitous.
Thank you both for your comments.
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