Happy Happy Almost in Everyday Ramblings

If you have any familiarity with downtown Portland you would recognize this iconic tree and wax nostalgic. I took this shot yesterday on my way back from our Central Library. Early Sunday morning; it was just the dog walkers out and about with my excuse being an invisible dog. (Or the fact that I like to walk early.)

A year later the yoga studio I used to teach in is still empty with people sleeping in the doorways of the barely surviving massage and new age place next door. This makes me a bit sad, I need a place to teach and there is a place I could teach but the owners are greedy and I am poor. It is a less than ideal location and will be until we can deal with the fact that we have unaddressed drug and mental health issues on our streets and most folks just don’t go downtown anymore.

But if I won the lottery and money were no object I would not choose that location. There is a remodeled warehouse that is empty in my neighborhood that would be perfect. Not that I have fantasies about having a studio or space I am in control of or anything…

With the heavy rains and wind and darkness upon darkness as we move into winter I am reading and finishing books! I finished another one Saturday that I had been reading in bits and pieces for months. This one was The Alchemy of Illness a book of essays from 1993 that our ODSago mentioned reading.

It is by a therapist that realized she had Chronic Fatigue after collapsing in her office and the book is reflections on illness both by her and then she quotes a number of other writers throughout time on the subject.

She is deeply thoughtful and brings in a number of perspectives including quite a bit about how the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas in particular view illness. But I am going to admit that the book annoyed me no end, which is why it took me so long to read.

Even though she would touch on these profound concepts that way it was all organized made it so I retained none of it.

I suppose in a way you can think of it as a Western focused dharma talk. With dharma talks we are supposed to not take notes or try to retain anything the teacher says, just sit and let the words and the thoughts that the words evoke move through you.

It is interesting to consider what purpose illness has in the encompassing world of humanity.

There is this incredible piece in the New Yorker this week by their long time art critic Peter Schjeldahl called Sunset Me, The Art of Dying. He has advanced lung cancer and this is a farewell summing up with little bits of advice thrown in for those of us still shouldering this mortal coil.

I was riveted by that and stayed up late reading it the other night.

Because we get early signs of spring here I am expecting daffodil shoots and crocuses in about 7 weeks on the flower clock.

And yesterday I got an ebook version from the library of yet another Christmas cozy mystery that an algorithm at Amazon recommend that has a recipe at the end of each chapter. This one is called Christmas Cake Murder and is by Joanne Fluke. It is the 23rd in a series. And the writing is good-natured, and very very bad. Oh gosh.

But! The first recipe is for Cocoa-Crunch Cookies that employ crushed up potato chips. I have been making these high-end sort of snobby cookies and I thought it might be fun to make some basic fly over country Midwest treats for a change.

I am going to try really hard not to think about how much butter is in them. Okay? And we are not going to talk about my current fixation on festive cookie tins either… That would be a great salvage house item to be on the look out for.

Happy Happy Almost out there in whatever way you celebrate.

Last updated December 24, 2019