Yesterday I was picking cherry tomatoes, the ultimate act of summer, from a seemingly endless plant, and contemplating their destiny – sauce, salsa, salad, all three? However, the light in the afternoon was flickering fall so I should have known that a cool rain was coming. I try to not pay attention to weather forecasts because it’s important to have some unknowns and surprises in these days of information overload. It forces me to pay attention to light, the quality of the air, and the shades of white to grey in the clouds.

Today the rains have arrived, and there is the fall chill in the air. Soup is simmering on the stove to save the day and warm the house. I call this soup Holy Trinity Soup, not for any religious reasons, but because of the love affair between butternut squash, kale and white beans. They are all transcendent on their own, but together are otherworldly delicious. This is a soup to sustain the literal and metaphorical change of seasons. If I were in New York, on Wall Street with the protesters this autumn, this is the soup that I would serve.

Holy Trinity Soup

Ingredients and Notes:
Olive oil – enough coat the bottom of your soup pot

1 medium yellow onion – finely chopped

2 or 3 carrots – diced, if you do a perfect dice, you are doing too much, breathe and relax.

2 or 3 stalks of celery – diced, if you are like me and often don’t have celery, well then leave it out like I often do.

6 sprigs of thyme – I love the word sprig. It’s like spring without the “n.” You could also add other herbs like rosemary, savory or even a bay leaf.

Butternut squash – if you have a large one, peel and dice half of it, if you have a small one use the whole thing. Use your head to determine if your squash is big or small.

6 to 8 cups of chicken stock or vegetable stock – of course, you should make your own and it will definitely be more delicious that way, but sometimes the rain comes a day sooner than you had anticipated.

1 bunch of kale – de-stemmed and cut or torn into small pieces, any type of kale will do and of course cousin collards would always be welcome.

2 cups cooked white beans – now I say cooked rather than canned because, again, of course, it is better if you have some beautiful leftover beans that you cooked yourself on hand, but I’m a realist at heart so use a can of good quality beans if you must, but rinse the gunk off of them. Your stomach and your family will thank you.

1 to 2 cups of cooked wild rice – you can also use a wild rice blend because at my local market plain wild rice would sink the hyper-local economy in my wallet.

salt and pepper to taste – taste! Always taste and adjust your food, your music, your thoughts, your art, your life…

To cook the soup, heat your pot, add the oil, and then add the onions, carrots, celery and thyme. Sauté for 5 minutes or so, until they are glistening and making your kitchen smell good. Add the butternut squash and stock. Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes or until the butternut squash is on it’s way to soft. Add the kale, white beans and wild rice and simmer until the greens are tender. Season with salt and pepper. Serve to your family, friends and a stranger, if you can.

The October leaves have lost their color.

The tickle well is full.

The smell of camp fire becomes a retching stench.

Joy dies in the Autumn damp.

BUT:

Some time ago I was browsing through my bookshelf to find something to read on my way to the office. I picked a book that I borrowed from my parents years ago. It`s a title by Christa Wolf, a famous german writer; “Accident: A Day`s News”. The title didn`t ring a bell so I just grabbed it and put it in my bag.

When I started reading on the train I was immediately sucked into the flow of the narrator’s stream of thoughts. It`s a very deep and intense diary-like style of writing that confronts the reader with the author’s state of mind which is dominated by insecurity, fear and hope while she is waiting for a call from the hospital where her brother is undergoing brain surgery. The second accident that interrupts her daily routine on April 26, 1986 is the news of the massive nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

The book reveals more than just the narrator’s state of mind during that single day. She questions the way we are treating our world and whether we are making the right decisions. The author is not only trying to get to the bottom of scientific progress and it`s consequences – the connection between killing and inventing, technology and humanity – but ends up with the leading question; whether the human race has a tendency to self-destruction.

“The long-sought link between the animal and the truly human person is us.” – Konrad Lorenz

It`s terrifying how relevant this book is. While reading it I received day by day similar news from the nuclear accident in Fukushima. It`s the same fear and the same questions; 25 years after Chernobyl, 66 years after Hiroshima.

This world isn’t fair, fortune strikes and disaster takes away. We have the ability to spread the odds by ensuring that everyone is adequately taken care of. The Japanese people have proven that even in the depths of calamity and despair, a nation can come together and eliminate narcissistic tendencies coupled to self-survival and proliferation, and instead can hold their hands collectively and take care of the less fortunate. Why is it that we need disaster to happen in order for us to radiate how uniquely caring and loving we can be as humans? It doesn’t have to be like this, just listen to Akiko. Not only does the planet need us at the moment, our own people do too. The Hawaiian monk seal is not going to be around in 20 years, so at least for her sake, let’s ensure the survival and contentment of all humans, disregarding status, creed, colour or race. In some bizarre way, I think laziness is the key. There is too much focus on being industrious in the modern world. Think about it, lazy people don’t start wars, but they certainly end them. So bless the lazy slackers, for they may just be the next step in our evolutionary progression and, in turn, save our planet.

Dyptichon II

Steve and I were a little drunk and the late morning, Hawaiian sun was promising fierce judgment. Kalakaua Avenue was lightly trodden for a Tuesday morning, mostly Japanese tourists, since it was cheaper for them to fly to Hawaii for events like weddings and parties than it was to host them in Japan, because of the price of real estate apparently. We took a brief rest by the statue of Duke Kahanamoku and got back out on the boulevard.

An elderly Japanese couple, seventy or so, I guess, stopped us as they crossed our path. With heads bowed they avoided eye contact as they asked “So sorry, may you help us find the USS Arizona?”

The Arizona was a ship sunk in the Pearl Harbor bombing. Unlike the rest of the fleet, she was left on the bottom of Pearl Harbor bay to be a memorial for my shipmates who made that warm water their graves. It was a popular spot for all visitors to the island. I knew the spot well. I’d marked a hundred navigation charts for sailing in and out of the harbor. Unlike typical navigation hazards (marked with an “x” or a “>”), the Arizona was always marked with tear drop. All Navy men pause soberly at the mention of that glorious ship and her fierce crew… except for my friend Steve.

The Southern Comfort and sweat got the better of his New York judgment that day and he barked back without hesitation “It’s right where you fucking left it!”

The old man’s posture straitened and he stepped slightly in front of the beautiful, aging porcelain woman. Maybe he was protecting her. I think he saw the anchor tattooed on my left forearm and knew that even fifty years later and two generations apart, the loss was fresh for us. He bowed rigidly, with pain and fury. He never raised his head.

“So… sorry!” His voice was a feeble mask for regret and strength.

As they disappeared down the street Steve turned and hurled back “That’s all you have to say?”

I grabbed his shoulder. “I think that’s what they call bushido.”

SEPTEMBER, 2002

My corner man, Joe (a Canadian gangster that grew up in orphanages and loved marijuana and guns) helped carry me back to the dressing room for the doctor to stitch me up. The fight had been a grinding affair. I barely had the strength to stand. A Mexican named Javier took me into the third round, slicing my face to pieces with elbows and fracturing my jaw with a knee.

I lay on my back on a wooden bench as the Doc fed me Demerol and laced my eyebrow back together with a thin needle. Brennan was on a mat next to me warming up for his fight. He was decent fellow, a grappler from Mission Viejo. We had trained together a few times and I knew he was tough. Neither of us had fought in Japan before, and we relished the experience, though we knew the local fighters were “karate-types” that wouldn’t survive long in the unforgiving spectacle of the cage. His opponent was one of those laughable local martial artists, a kid named Gomi. Gomi was in for a bloody lesson.

I showered and dressed and took another Demerol. I made it out to cage side just as Brennan started his fight. A shot, a slam, and heavy right hand… Gomi is on his back catching 1800 pounds per square inch of American terror. The referee should stop this. Six minutes go by with no change. More blood. More desperation. Is Gomi alive under there? Then it happened. Brennan arched upward and jumped to his feet. Gomi had an arm tucked between his legs and the whole coliseum could hear Brennan scream and the crunching of his elbow joint. There were no cheers of triumph from the Japanese crowd. The home town boy had come back from the seventh level of Hades to snatch a story book victory. But all was silent. Brennan was carried on a stretcher out of the cage. Gomi bowed rigidly. His silk shorts were so blood stained I could barely read the white script embroidered in the waist band, “bushido”.

MARCH, 2011

I reclined in my leather couch in rural Ohio. I had the house to myself and I wanted to write at least 2000 words that day. I like to re-type pieces of great literature put my mind in a place to create something meaningful. I like the way the keyboard sounds as you’re pounding out Ginsberg’s “Howl”, or Hemingway’s ‘Kilimanjaro’. It helps to have some noise in the background so you’re not too focused on the conscious mind. Find something deep. Find something visceral.

There was a scene playing out on the television. I thought for a moment I’d tuned in to a nature documentary. It was live news, the coast of Japan. Muddy torrents were crashing over retaining walls, tossing cars, felling buildings. I’d met the ocean in her angrier moments, but never witnessed fury like this. Streets were subsumed, lives swept away right in front of me, a culture drowned in the foamy abyss. There were some that tried feebly to run, most froze. The news camera panned to a bridge crossing the churning water. Another wave. The camera followed it in from the horizon, ignoring the stopping cars on the bridge, ignoring the real story. In the lower, right corner of my television there it was, a Japanese teenager stepping out of his car and facing the oncoming water. Nowhere to run. No shelter. No grace. He stiffened his posture. I was heartbroken and captivated, all the while my fingers kept moving across the keyboard. I cried. He raised his chin. Time paused for moment before impact, at least that’s how I dream it now. There was no triumphant sound, no Hollywood ending. In the last moment he bowed rigidly and was swept away to rest in the crowded annals of human tragedy.

When the wave dissipated I looked down at my screen. No Hemingway, just “BUSHIDOBUSHIDOBUSHIDOBUSHIDO”.