Watch out, it'll make you cry.
Last night CP and I went to a potluck dinner thing put on by our new church. We were on salad duty. I ended up buying the ingredients during our emergency 7:30 bottled-water run to the Super-Valu, so my options were sort of limited (I was planning on hitting the produce markets and the Grotta del Formagio for cheese). I ended up with a really tasty salad!
Tasty Last-Minute Salad with Basil Dressing
1/2 head each romaine and green leaf lettuces (or use organic baby greens)
2 mandarin oranges, peeled and segmented
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1 cup sun-dried black olives (the wrinkly, dry ones)
1/2 cup crumbled goat feta
Wash and tear lettuce. Reserving a small handful of each other ingredient, then toss remaining with lettuce and about 1/3 of the basil vinaigrette, below. Garnish salad with reserved ingredientes.
Basil Vinaigrette
2 large garlic clove, minced
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
3 Tbsp honey
1/4 C apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1.5 oz fresh or frozen basil leaves (I used frozen)
1 tsp sea salt
1 cup olive oil
Combine all ingredients in a food processor then slowly pour in the olive oil in a stream with the machine running. Adjust for seasoning. This dressing is super delicious and would be good on sandwiches, other salads, fish, chicken, stirred into soup, etc.
I had the most amazing evening last night! I was priviledged to attend a talk, and then a dinner, with explorer, ethnobotanist and author Wade Davis, who is one of my heroes. He spoke for almost two hours about his approach to writing and his process. He was incredibly inspiring, intelligent (wow, is this man smart), open, and, most of all, intensely positive and encouraging--about the world, about writing, about humanity. I found myself wanting to write down every second thing he said, but, eventually, I gave up and just let myself absorb what I could.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a botanist, and there's a big part of me that often wishes I'd pursued that. I don't regret the choices I've made and I know I'm where I'm meant to be in life--at least, I hope I am--but the little girl who wanted to research orchids in the Amazon basin is still alive and well inside me, too. I dropped that dream partly because of the math involved in undergraduate biology degrees, and partly because I became a pragmatist. I didn't believe people who lived lives like Wade Davis's existed anymore. If I'd read any of his books in middle or high school. though, I might have made some very different choices. He's what I wanted to be when I grew up.
After the lecture a small group of us went to a Malaysian restaurant downtown. I sat right across from Wade and had the chance to ask him a lot of questions. I wish Captain Poetry could have been there, and the rest of our families, too. It really was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. It reminded me to have hope in a way that I haven't been reminded by anyone or anything for years and years. I'm a little sad that I can't find that kind of inspiration in my own faith, although maybe that will change. However, like Madeleine L'Engle, I believe anyone can be a source of God's light, whether they realize it or not, and I thank Him for letting me spend a few hours on the edge of the light Wade Davis casts with his writing and his life.
I'm aware I sound like a big cheesy dork, but we're all entitled to those moments, right? Anyway, I'm really frackin' happy I got to meet the guy, and I'm encouraged to pursue the vision CP and I have of starting a non-profit centre for ecology and the arts somewhere in the wilds of BC (or maybe in Nicaragua, or maybe both). Who's in?
The title, by the way, is one of the things Wade talked about in his lecture; I think it sums up his vision and expresses what I feel is the purpose of poetry (and all the arts and sciences, really).
Vive la revolución!
A wealthy country, joining the cult of Mammon to the cult of Hercules;
while Liberty, lighting the path
to easy conquest, raises her torch in New York.
But our own America, which has had poets
since the ancient times of Nezahualcoyotl;
which preserved the footprints of great Bacchus,
and learned the Panic alphabet once,
and consulted the stars; which also knew Atlantis
(whose name comes ringing down to us in Plato)
and has lived, since the earliest moments of its life,
in light, in fire, in fragrance, and in love
the America of Moctezuma and Atahualpa,
the aromatic America of Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America where noble Cuauhtemoc said:
"I am not on a bed of roses"-our America,
trembling with hurricanes, trembling with Love:
O men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls,
our America lives. And dreams. And loves.
And it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful.
Long live Spanish America!
A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free.- from "To Roosevelt" by Ruben Dario
