::something profound::

So it's been awhile, again.  I moved.  I tried to start another blog, this one in response to a friend of mine who turned out to be....not so much a friend.   

There doesn't seem much of a point to finishing it.

The move I made...the physical one, that is...is making me....still.  Quiet.   I keep listening to the trees, marveling at the thunderstorm's we've had over the past few days, watching more birds and butterflies than I've ever seen before.

Everything I've been so angry about seems so far away.  And so very, very, petty.

I run, I have run, on anger for so long that I sometimes forget there's another way to function.  I forget that cynicism doesn't make you smarter, it just kills you faster.  I forgot, wholly, that my quest for knowledge begins with accepting that there are things you don't know.  It was just attack attack attack all the time.

There's nothing to fight here, and I think that's why I like it.  We're still working on catching up, financially, but by the end of the month, we'll be in surplus.  Virtually debtless.  Able to save.   Able to give.  

I'm unsure of what to do with myself in the absence of financial struggle.  In much the same way, I'm trying to figure out who to be in the absence of social drama. 

Quiet.  

I'm finding joy in cooking for people, something I always had, but now is actually appreciated on a larger level.  I'm finding that the thought of beginning the struggle of putting words to "paper"(or whatever), might not be worth it after all.  Honestly, do I really have anything more profound to say than anything that's been said before?  Is anything I think going to change the world?

I'm not so sure anymore.  The trappings of that academic world simply aren't as enticing from up here.  Perhaps I'm not so much the intellectual as everyone thought I was.  Perhaps I'm not as brave, either; I'd rather step down than step up.  I don't want my life to be a fight, and the things I want to say seem to either cause confusion or anger.  It seems a pity to spend a life only to elicit that kind of reaction.  Instead, I can make a beautiful, decadent plate of food for someone, and they walk away feeling cared for.  

Which is the higher calling?

In so many ways, the kitchen is a step down, unless one aspires to be the next Bobby Flay.

I have no such aspirations, and so perhaps I should do as my former friend suggested and give up the academic work and do something humble.  

His argument was that my thinking was childish, an embarrassment.  But maybe he was on to something else that he can't even see.  Maybe the whole conversation is childish and embarrassing, and maybe it's time we devoted ourselves to the business of nurturing.  Maybe the sociopolitical dialogue is what's wrong, and the lack of time spent together lingering over a good bottle of wine or fine desert (sans diet or guilt talk, of course) is what we should be devoted to?

I'm not sure anything wholly good came out of a good old fashioned debate about racism, but I know if you took those same folks and sat them around a table with some killer food, a lot more connection would happen.  

And if that's not the point, please...what is?