Tag: capsaicin

If I could put time in a walrus

  1. NO: AN INTRODUCTION: the Exploding Aardvark shares her “NO” tag.
  2. My del.icio.us stuff tagged “NO” has some links in common, because the ‘vark and I share an esthetic of “no.”
  3. And then, there’s my LJ stuff tagged “no.”

I spent most of the day in a shitty state of mind but had a nice long coffee talk with becauseshewas at which dawn_michele unexpectedly showed too. Good blather was had.

Want to know what keeps me hanging on? Chili pepper, that’s what. Specifically, hot sauce made from my own chili paste which in turn was made from chipotles, chiles de arbol, ancho chiles, salt, and vinegar.

Maybe I should take a jar of the stuff to therapy tomorrow and hand it to Carol and say: physician, spice thyself.

I appear to have at least temporarily lost all interest in cars. How’d that happen?

Chop wood, carry water, stem chipotles, seed anchos

If you’re looking for a mindfulness exercise, I recommend working with dried chili peppers.

Food preparation is the closest I come to meditative exercise anyway. Preparing the chiles means removing the stems and seeds manually, which requires attention to detail. It’s absorbing and keeps me in the moment. And if I lose my mindful presence with the task, I’ll inevitably touch my eye or nose or some tender spot with a hand covered in dust and seeds from very hot peppers. This is as good as a Zen monk hitting me in the face with a stick. Instantly, I am back in the moment.

Mindfulness, focus, attention, process, an absence of distraction, and finally: chili paste. So even if I am not a step closer to enlightenment, the next few dinners are greatly improved.