I had an impromptu vegan breakfast inspiration this morning.
Mind you I cannot claim the title vegan for my dietary life but I do like to eat vegan food often and make fruit and veggies a more prominent part of my life.
This morning I was really wanting some fresh raw veggies so I pulled out the mortar and pestel and got inspired.
I started with some raw Brazil nuts (a fair handfull).
First I made sure to crush them very fine only leaving little chunks here and there as desired for texture but you can chop as fine as you like.
What I really like about nut dips is how crushing the nuts potentiates the oils inside of them. They mix very well once they are well crushed with whatever you may desire to mix them.
Moving on; After the Brazil Nuts were well chopped and ground in the mortar and pestel I added 3 cloves of garlic (mind you all of this preparation takes place in the mortar and pestel) . Pound in the garlic gloves to the desired texture. I like making most of the garlic cloves disappear into the mix and leaving a few surprise chunkier pieces to grace some surprise bites here and there. I’m a chunky guy after all 🙂 .
Next add in yellow or orange bell pepper well tore, just about enough to fill the middle of the palm of your hand. I try to crush the bell pepper to the point that most of its juices permeate the entirety of the dip and there are not very many chunks left visibly in the dip. I also made sure to litely stir as I crushed the bell pepper till it seemed to disappear into the dip. Last but not least I take a little bit of fresh cilantro rip it a few times, crush well and mix diligently into the #brazilnutcheezpleez and then once done pepper the dip to taste.
I was going to grab some Ritz Crackers to eat my Brazil Nut Cheez Pleez but found the Blue Diamond Almond Nut Thins to be perfectly crunchy and sufficiently firm to dip easily in this dense, chunky and ‘hearty’ dip.
This dip can be served as an appetizer, enjoyed as a snack by itself, or used to grace your charcuterie board with extra flavor. No matter what it is sure to be a protein full, flavorful hit at a party, small gathering of friends or whatever the occasion!
We live in a day and age with many different opinions and in a time where people don’t know what live and let live means.
Some might say it is because we have surrendered too much of our self government to the governing powers.
The Project Vehicle.
Others would say it begs the question the idea that the government would not ‘enshrine our values’.
For people like me the poles of secular and religious nationalism express perfectly why I don’t consider myself having reached my country. My kingdom ‘is’ not of this world.
There is a belonging without violence.
There is a city without nationalism.
There is an inclusivity with open diversity.
There is identity with cosmically aligned individuality.
There is a post post modernism that progresses and doesn’t destroy all ancient values.
The apex we stand on like a spinning globe is the interrelation of movement that is fixed and chaotic.
The social architects of the world may be called ‘they’ by some but to cool headed non conspiracists who are not afraid of the mechanics of the worlds infrastructure we merely call it a project vehicle.
Imagine deep within your soul you want to give gifts to the world..but then life happens and you get tired.
Imagine having the passion of a Content Creator but not knowing how to put your thoughts into words.
What am I protecting? Is this modesty.. its own form of honesty?
In order to be a popular platform poster you need to “post every day” or at least a few times a week.
Ah
That might not work then.
Where is the passion I’m looking for? Where is the spirituality I once had or the zeal for living life as if this life is a rare commodity?
How do I take life for granted so much? How do I lounge in carefree boredom narcolepsy or not? Am I pregaming my midlife crises, getting ready for it, double fisting it?
Seems like a me thing to schedule such a thing rather than to be surprised by it.
Well why on earth am I surprised that there’s no element of surprise when I feel like I already know what the book of my life is about..like God and I deliberated and threw the book at me?
Sometimes I feel like I have some crystal ball or a blueprint to my life in my subconscious mind. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want the left hand to know what the right hand is doing. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of watching my movie from the outside.
Life and the enjoyment of life seems rather to be that the eyes and the ears and the nose would hear, see and smell what is here or at least whatever senses we have available to us. So strange that even Spiritual Doctors have remarked on sense “All knowledge comes through the senses.” Good job St. Thomas Aquinas for being like the Doubting apostle in your search for faith. I feel that heartily.
So there is that darkness in the soul of understanding (nous) to wit my life gives reference that I keep remembering that I don’t know and I do know. Part of me know my spirit though living in my body and not separate has separate agencies, faculties and ‘abilities’. I find it hard to be a gnostic because I’m an earthen vessel and yet though trying not to be “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good” I find myself trapped between worlds, like a ghost with a preternatural stain on the ink blot tests of the collective unconscious of this age.
In my heart I watch kingdoms rise and fall revolutions turn and the sun set many a year. The ages of time acquiesce to an Apocalyptic dance that never seems to end. All of this is beautiful and is a verdict to my and the worlds mortality. I hope that I can learn lessons of this knowing that “the spirit gives life and the flesh is of no avail.” so that perhaps life can come to my dry bones again.
I’m nervous as all get out tonight and I don’t really know why but I can say for sure that part of it is exemplified in how long it has taken me to make another blog post.
Cohesive senses of identity are difficult for neurodivergents like myself who have goldfish level attention to the present unless the deepseated passion quota within is met.
As a father and a husband I find myself struggling between the pragmatic mercantilism of St. Francis of Assisis father and the universal trustful love of St. Francis as if there were no way to balance the two.
I’m torn; comparing myself to the subjective standard of success I see in others and my fear of not measuring up to the imaginary ‘standard’.. all the while fearing the giving up of better heavenly real estate, my truest goal because I could only ever justify being a capitalist in the kingdom of heaven because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work very well for human nature down here on planet earth.
And yet somewhere deep inside my conflict (deep conflict) is that I of assurety believe in balance and yet I desire for the extremes of childlike trust in God and radical trust in His free miraculous work through His creation like I knew in my youth.
What do I need to become not only who I used to be but the next chapter of me?
Am I perhaps meant to be both? Sometimes a turned page is merely the front and back of one turned page.
I’m convinced I’m too young for a midlife crises but perhaps I’m early! If I die before I’m old perhaps I’ll have the luxury to live before I’m dead.
As a guy I knew once said.. “I don’t know what I’m doing and so can you.”
Original clay and mixed digital media art by me: “Blood and Water”.
It is easier than people think for you to have an opinion when people are listening; contrary to the modern proverb “You can’t even have an opinion anymore.”
I know this because I wanted to be heard for years.
I had been glossed over. I had been forgotten. I had been passed over.
For about 5 or so recent years though I was performing live very regular as performing artist/ musician and in what could be considered a pendulum between a new entertainment extroversion to never before experienced levels and on the flip side semi extreme hermitism.
Then in comes the pandemic and I assume the role of a stay at home dad, the multimillion dollar company that used to pump posts about the show I leaded was no longer boosting my content with consistent and gratuitous amounts of ad revenue and that even in cahoots with some of my personal accounts.
The connection of my activity to Facebook translated mysteriously into my person seemingly having value to said algorithm (even if I wasn’t by any means even close to making the type of money the company I worked for was). To all possible intellectualization I could make out however, that the algorithm believed I was famous whether I was much at all. I was noticed somewhat. I was heard. I wasn’t so passed over.
Let me give you one lesson though. Facebook is not censoring you because they do not like you. Facebook just isn’t ‘boosting you’ because you aren’t making them money. At that time I was but now the algorithm believes I am noone, caput, basically a nobody.
This is the sad value testimony of human value in our crapitalist society. Nothing is usually popular in the way it was in ancient Athens.. back when intellectual values, philosophy of ideas and metaphysics were valuable of their own accord and merely for the fact of having mused upon them and nursed them into schools of thought. Now even that value is worthless unless it’s ready to pay the piper. I wonder how much money Facebook wastes not investing in these ideas. But I guess every time a toilet flushes at Walmart a tax deduction angel gets its wings!
So I’m settling in to a more long lasting version of my hermitage but I would be lying if I said that my depression has been totally at bay.
And yet still I’m doing something that some in the medicine/ science only crowd might think muddies the waters into dangerous hippy sentimentalist territory. I’m taking alot of walks in nature, exercising, taking my cbd, eating better, avoiding excessive alcohol or cussing at puppies and of course writing my blog as one part of my weekly healing process.
And you know what .. it helps; because sometimes even after a good helping of protein rich organic peanut butter pancakes.. on a rainy day, when your mind is racing and the sleep disorder demons have clocked out, they need someone to pick up a shift and of course the depression demons are ready and rearing to go. Even so when I write it out it has been transmitted from the realm of thoughts to the realm of words and in my subjective pseudoscientific opinion it seems to help.
I always knew I was an ‘ideas person’. I was always desperate to be stuck in a college academia library studying theology, philosophy, science, physics, social theory (EVERYTHING)!
I have always been mad that whatever secret branch of the government that hires for think tanks hasn’t broke their silence and reached out to me yet. But patience is a virtue after all! Le-sigh.
Re-sign. That’s my miraculous auto predict shake out of writers block! And that’s precisely what I’m getting to now.
The first step to embracing and truly enjoying solitude is getting past the loneliness and just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely when it’s just me and my daughter during the day. Yes.. even with my daughter there I get lonely sometimes and that’s ok even if her just being there really really helps!
You see loneliness is no respecter of persons. And yet perhaps its more helpful and comfortable to be all St. Francis like and call her Sister Loneliness.
Loneliness is like engaging a Jericho wall and sometimes you just got to blast a trumpet in your heart and shake yourself up a little to get past the false barriers it suggests and remember somehow, right now, life is still being lived.
You also must be humble if your’e more the type to be desirous of the hermit lifestyle because whether Pentupium Introvert 5.0 or not you just have to face the music that people aren’t always terrible and in many ways many of them are much better than you… and that’s ok! After all you have your own strengths and weaknesses too!
Most saints probably don’t mantra on that word too much or at the least they think it means something different than most people think it means.
So also a healthy hermit has to be humble and it is as intriguingly intricate as this idiomatic tongue twister.
The healthy hermit is the balance of ones needs and “the Others” needs.. whichever other or Other that may be.
Healthy solitude is a gift for a heart that is healing. It is the opposite of the crusted bitterness of undealt with trauma. The deep irony for he, she or they that seek solitude is this.. one can only seek solitude well as they find a supporting cast.
(A little poem comment I wrote for y’all antimaskers. )
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So the fear of the Lord isn’t an end in itself. Is it fear to avoid hell which is worthy to fear and then say to the sick..go now physician and heal thyself?
Jesus said preach and heal is thy task. Where many words are -sin will not be lacking..so why oh erudite soul wont you please wear a mask?
If the Lord is to fear and the punishments of hell and to heal and to preach is thy mission pray tell..can you not also protect another’s mortal shell?
You know it is written as has been duly known by the beautiful Jewish messiah bethroned that what’s done to the least of these is done to His own.
Therefore if you quibble at a small ethical task …can your master charge you in the big if you can’t wear a mask?
Wear a mask ,wear a mask is all that they ask during pandemic plagues do the wise “cancel’ that?
Elephants work for peanuts and GOPple them fast..if it could save some one you know WHO’d appreciate that…
Most kindly then till the coast clears .. for the least of these “that” will you do them a favor.. wont you please wear a mask?!
This message is approved by James Dillon Broxson. Thank you Kay Ivey for extending the mask mandate and listening to our public health officials. It means the world to us that you are trying your best to put people before politics on this issue. A good and ethical bipartisan and science following move. Legacy comes from doing the right thing over merely following a brand. We appreciate it.
UPDATE { I SPOKE TO FAST… SHE CHANGED THE MASK ORDER TO A CHOICE THING. GOOD GRIEF!!!}
P.S. I’m glad she did the right thing for a while but I guess politicking is an endless pressure. “Shaking my head. “
If 2020(all flowery philosophical and faith based sentimentality put aside)..
was an easy year for you then you might be a masochist or if you were not at all stretched by this year you might just already be perfect.
This is not to say one is a masochist if one has legitimately experienced new life blessings this year (We received our first baby girl into the world this year).
It is also not to say that faith based sentimentality is not often anchored in solid reasoning beyond mere emotion and thus… ‘a wash’.
What it does boil down to is a confession that the ‘perfect man’ sleeps through the storm and the imperfect man cries out in terror “Lord, we perish!”
There is a type of restful contented waiting that weighs heavier than any storm. They say that the “little ones” have the kingdom of God and I believe I have proof. This year I got to witness that contentment and peace first hand or rather ‘hand in hand’.
I named my daughter Eliza to be a female version of Elijah the prophet.
Well in her first year of life not only has she gone through the Coronavirus Pandemic and global economic upheaval but as of recent time, here on the Alabama, Gulf Coast she has gone through hurricane Sally (The most contrivedly and ill undermeasured Cat3 I’ve ever been through in my opinion).
Interestingly enough my wife and mother in law who are both from Venezuela had never been through a hurricane so while we sheltered at my parents home I had plenty of snuggles with my wife that easily matched that of a couple watching a horror film. My wife was a little spooked by the whole ordeal obviously.
Now on the other hand our daughter Eliza was definitely a little preacher by her actions. She like Elijah lived through the whirlwind and like Jesus slept through the storm! Thats right she slept through ALL of the worst hours of the storm where all the damage happened!
I know this amazed my wife but it personally deeply inspired me. Our little prophet weathered and slept through the storm and all throughout this year has never ceased to be the little chonk of joy she was.
So for the title of this blog post I want to explain it a little more because it was another little precious way my daughter deeply inspired me just by being her and that was by one of my favorite little encounters with her.
In the age of smart phones alot of us become dummies from time to time. I think my baby intuitively knows this and she returns my wife and I back to the human. Yes sometimes in the hodrum of everyday life and exhaustion even we can veg out on our phone. My baby on the other hand as a fresh human straight out of the oven won’t have it! If we are on a phone in her presence she will protest..she will return us to the now. The most precious example of that is if I am feeding her with bottle and putting her to sleep. If I have a phone she will get frustrated.
Just like God my baby innocently and purely demands my total attention.
When I feed her it’s all or nothing. It’s daddy and daughter time. It’s ‘contigo’. But the funny thing is though she demands that I look right at her little face and just be present with her she also demands that she can play with my hand while I feed her. She wants to hold my hand but she doesn’t always do so with consistency.
Sometimes she has a death grip and other times I feel like a goldfish is slapping me! But I have learned a very deep 2020 lesson from this encounter of love and relationship with our precious daughter. In these moments of connection and relationship building I have learned something splendidly transcendant!
I have learned that sometimes we might be inclined to impugn guilt on God for seemingly sleeping through our often stormy lives. I have learned it is easy to be jealous of those for whom storms seem to not shake their easy restfulness of spirit but with a shift of perspective one can be inspired by it! I have learned that God demands our attention with crystaline and 2020 vision (hindsight is 2020 and all that..) and I have learned that it is the connection that matters the most and that it is better to hold God’s hand even if like a little child He ‘holds our hand badly.’
(James Dillon Broxson born and raised in Alabama likes dark bold letters because why not? But seriously they really are much better right?! James is a father of one beautiful baby girl named Eliza born in 2020 and married to an amazing lady from Venezuela named Carolina.)
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I find it important to never quit learning. I often like to imagine the future and to imagine becoming proficient in a skill not generally associated with my public persona.
One such imagining is that of becoming a scientist.
I could see myself pouring obsessively, lost musing over medical mysteries and biological quandaries as my mind often obsessively does.
I could see myself as a mathematician pouring over formulae as if they were nature’s immutable song, an indivisible unifier to inherent non-divisible truths.
As a long time musician I have often dreamt of being a classical composer, of sharpening the higher faculties of my mind with the beautiful truth of song, expressing mathematical facts through the medium of tangible felt beauty.
Sometimes I imagine being a lawyer, an advocate, a public defender..knowing the law well so as to subvert it’s misuse by evil people in high places eager to destroy others life for a buck. I imagine protecting the innocent against those who would use the law against ‘they’ who are innocently unknowing of their schemes and to condemn those falsely accused with unfair and unjust punishments. I often imagine saving people through diligent study and erudition.
Sometimes I wonder about these things because I am sure that vocation isn’t the full description of who I am and yet I can’t help but think these desires of my soul describe some ineffable inner truth about myself.
What are some things you’ve dreamed about your life?
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Musings of a Picture Frame Conversationalist. 