Quinoa Oatmeal

Sunbird Quinoa Porridge

Everyone eats oatmeal differently. I used to make mine wirh nuts and raisins, and protein powder. Then I was content just to read Galway Kinnell’s “Oatmeal” on occasion. I am back to eating oatmeal, but it is at a cafe where they make quinoa porridge. It is made with coconut milk, topped with chopped dates, cashews, flecks of sea salt, lemon zest, and pickled strawberry slices. In the summer, the chef sometimes sprinkles lavender buds on it, or sprigs of dill. Today, my porridge was topped by sunny flowers of what I was dill. Small things of fortitude in these uncertain times, when anxieties settle aimlessly in the stomach.

That was written a day ago.This “today,” I am not eating porridge, but peering at the dawn through panels of curtain I will soon part. Part means both to divide and to leave. Earlier, woken by frisky cat, I looked at the drops of stars in the night sky. There, another day.

Two Seals, A Road

Did the world just get a little darker today?

2 Replies

Indira Ganesan, Bleak, 2016

A student turned around as we were both on our way to respective classes and asked me, “Is it just me, but did the world just become a darker place?” We were strangers, and no context was needed. The unbelievable has happened, and we have the wrong candidate in the victor’s seat.

I was grateful to this student. Twice previously when I tried to open up conversation while waiting for the bus, my opening gambits of got me baffling responses about the sunny weather. Only a transit cop riding his bike (!) through the hallways at South Station bus terminal asked me, “So how about that election?” I could only mime despair and disbelief, and gratitude on being asked.

We need to talk. We will survive. A New Yorker article that says pointedly and correctly we are not the decent nation we thought we were, because racial hate and misogyny won the votes. A part of me wants to what one commentator called ” normalize,” assuaging our fears, thinking the worst is over. It isn’t. But we will and we must stand up and fight the fight against injustice. I know for myself I must do better.

Last night I heard the coyotes cry.

Days before, I celebrated another year past by taking part in a retreat sponsored by TruroYoga and the Cape Cod Modern House Trust. Walking on the beach and land, we did not know what was to come. I learned Provincetown was only 6,000 years old, a blink in the eye of time, said a fellow retreater. I learned several tables full of diners can sing Happy Birthday loudly and on key. The photographs I took this last weekend reflected, briefly, a different world than the one we up in today.