Mind walks

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The Norwegian Jøtul wood stove in the family room (where we spend most of our home awake time -- where I write, read, work on photographs, blog, paint and watch movies) radiates heat into much of the house, and the forced air propane furnace rarely kicks on. We feed the wood stove dead, seasoned wood from the fallen trees that stripe the back acre of the farm. Ash borers have defeated many tall, straight ash trees, and thanks to that tiny, mighty pest, we have some of the densest, longest burning firewood there is, for a long time to come.

On Saturdays, just after sunrise, while snow falls and floats like ash outside the glass deck door, and chickadees, juncos, mourning doves, cardinals and blue jays rise and fall from the ground to the spruce and back again for scattered bird seed on the ground, I put our biggest pot on the radiant Jøtul. Into olive oil I drop chopped onions and celery that quickly begin to sizzle. Then what’s left of vegetables in the fridge, rough chopped, and scraps I’ve saved in the freezer, get added and filled almost to the brim with water. (My gourmand ex-brother-in-law Larry scolded me once for not saving every dear peel, rind, stem and shaving from vegetables in a freezer bag for a Saturday broth-fest; within the scraps are contained the same elements of vegetable goodness. I changed my ways.) For a few hours I cook this potful that’s almost as big as the cast iron heat-box itself, creating tasty veggie stock that I’ll use in cooking for the next week. Cabbage becomes fragrant (!), and the low winter sun shines on the spruce where at least a dozen red cardinals are tucked in the branches, looking like soft, exotic fruits.

Like birds picking up seeds, I have been flitting from pillar to post gathering ideas and thoughts. I feel as if I'm back in college classes, pushing myself to do close readings of the writers I read. They join in the pot of my head like scraps from the fridge. But what soup is being cooked up there? I read passages from Rilke and Rumi at the daily blogs. Synchronously they link arms and walk like twins separated only by centuries. See the parallel lines from the readings posted a couple of days ago:

Rumi: I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.  (~ from "The Price of Kissing")

Rilke: I would perish in the power of his being.
For beauty is but the beginning of terror. (~ from "If I Cried Out")

Each day friends come into the comment boxes and reflect on the passages posted in those blog salons, filtering them through their own separate experiences and patterns of thought. Paths emerge, merge, and sometimes lead into dense thickets where I have to focus hard, keep up and try not to get lost. I love mind walks, even when I'm in danger of losing my way. (Have you seen the wonderful 1990 film "Mind Walk" with Liv Ullman, Sam Waterston and John Heard? Nothing but stimulating conversation, while walking around Mont-St Michel . . . ahhhh.) I collect thoughts and words that smell good, and throw them into my pot-head ☺. Does this make me wishy-washy? Maybe. Like water, shaped by the vessel it's in. And what's inside the pot? Fragments of this and that . . . these, and all.
                                                                       
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Steam rises from the pot, walking a ribboning path . . . . .

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out of sorts

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phrases.org says the meaning of "out of sorts" is:

Mildly unwell;
not in one's usual health or state of mind

The origin is:

"Since at least the 17th century 'sorts' has been the name of the letters used by typographers. This usage is referred to in Notes on a Century of Typography at the University Press Oxford 1693–1794 and is nicely defined in Joseph Moxon's Mechanick exercises, or the doctrine of handy-works - printing, 1683:

"The Letters... in every Box of the Case are... called Sorts in Printers and Founders Language; Thus a is a Sort, b is a Sort."

To be 'out of sorts' would clearly be unwelcome to a typesetter. That terminology could be the source of the phrase in its current meaning. The above citations are pre-dated by one from Samuel Ward, which makes no mention of the print trade. That in his The life of faith in death,1621:

"I wonder... to see one... that knowes all must worke for the best, to be at any time out of tune, or out of sorts."

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Being "out of sorts" offers a chance to observe the elements of your life.

My BIL Joe talked at dinner the other night about the "thinking mind" in Buddhist terms. It's where I keep track of who's got an appointment at 9:45, then 10:30, then 11:15, etc. It's what I use to come up with options to solve a student problem, and it's the reasoning tool I use to get to logical conclusions - whether who to vote for or what dish to contribute to my mother-in-law's Mother's Day dinner.

It's also the potentially annihilating part of my brain where I overthink things. Why did so-and-so say that? What did she mean by it? It's where I get defensive, and it's what works overtime in times of stress going to bed at night. It's where I think I'm the center of the universe and interpret myself through the imagined perceptions of people around me. It's where I think laterally (and literally) and forget to close my eyes and listen.

Joe also talked about the non-thinking part of his brain, the place that is there "behind" thoughts and sorting. Maybe it's another dimension, where artists live in another kind of imagined reality, not one that denies facts but considers possibilities in non-data-like ways.

It's a place of the moment. It's organic. Where what is, is. It's where you get out of the sorted into your own space - empty, open and free.

I'm on vacation at home, and I need to give my thinking mind a rest. Maybe being out of sorts is a good thing. Seeing a tulip lying down on the job or seeing an "a" out of its Sort, lets you really see them outside the box, for their essence. Being that tulip or "a" out of the box could be good too.