Spruce Tips and Rum Sips

April 28, 2024April 28, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I get so tired of this world sometimes.

The ignorance, the arrogance, and the eager cruelty on parade into our eyes and brains (whether in caution or praise) gets to be way too much after a while.

Earlier this week was Passover. We didn’t do a Seder this year because timing and activity didn’t work out in our favor. Instead, Emily made chicken satay for dinner. I sat on the porch typing away at this piece after having scrolled through far too much nonsense. That’s one reason this blog post is so late- I simply haven’t had the bandwidth after coming back from Philadelphia.

I finished a small glass of grog (because rum is alright for Passover and I had rice lager waiting to be paired with dinner) and I chatted with a dear friend about the logistics of making Sephardic matzo for a change- as opposed to the hard, cracker-like Ashkenazi matzah I’ve had my entire life.

I wore white linen, watched the light change on Mount Tabor as the sun went down, and I’m listened to Ladino music as I wrote (but Zac Brown Band’s tribute to Jimmy Buffett, “Pirates and Parrots,” is still in my head.)

I spent the day in the sun. Here’s what I have to say about it all.

Glad I finally found a tweed vest that goes with that hat. Thanks Goodwill!

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Back On The Road

March 23, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

I promised myself that when the weather started getting warmer, I’d go back to running.

12 years ago, when I was getting in shape for the first time, runs were the means to the end of getting to my little 24 hour gym in Somers Point. I realized the route was short enough to walks, and after enough walks it became a gentle warmup/cooldown run.

When I moved away from the Shore and into the Pinelands, the runs took on a bit more meaning. The runs became a part of my workout regimen I both looked forward to and feared a bit. I’d run a zig-zag path through a few miles of town, at least once passing through a stretch of woodland that was pitch dark at 5am. Coyotes and other animals weren’t uncommon- on my runs I’d find patches of fur or feathers where a predator had gotten lucky.

I loved the quiet more, though. I loved the fog and mist, and how easily I could fall into “the Zone.” I just needed to keep my legs moving, and I felt like I was part of it all. Like the coyotes and dark couldn’t touch me, because as long as I kept moving, I was one of them.

“Nature loves courage,” Terrence McKenna said. I would run through fog, dark, and rain. I would run in baking heat or snow.

The weather is warmer now, and my 37-year-old body is questioning whether I can do it all again. Whether I can really bounce back a 4th time. I don’t know if I can, but I know I’m going to try- and part of that will be reminding myself why I loved it in the first place.

Picture from behind of someone running down a wooded path — Photo by Chris G on Pexels.com

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Our Insecurities Can Speak Out Of Turn

February 18, 2024February 18, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

My exercise routine has been yielding interesting results lately. After injuring my lats by increasing weight too fast on overhead presses, I decided to switch it up and give Romanian Deadlifts a shot, and while I will be going back to running in the spring I really enjoy just taking long walks in Mount Tabor Park.

The Romanian Deadlifts don’t seem to be doing much for my weight, but I’ve noticed I’m able to touch my toes more easily. The walks, similarly, have become less about getting exercise in and finding time to be quiet and mindful and piece my way through life.

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Learning To Be What You Need

February 11, 2024February 11, 2024 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Would you have wanted you (as you are now) in your life when you were a kid?

I know it’s not always wise to start off blogs with a question like this, especially not one that “buries the lead.” Normally I try to start off a bit more gently- a good anecdote that puts the topic in context, or generally coming at a deep topic sideways. In this case, though, I feel like any attempt to answer a loaded question like this can only be given in story form. Ultimately, it makes us check in on our own stories. Has time actually conferred wisdom and maturity? Did we become the mentors and guides we would have wanted?

I don’t know, but I hope so and I’m always trying. That’s where stories help- we use them to understand character and how we write our own every day.

*“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exists, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” –* Neil Gaiman

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End-of-Year Reflections

December 30, 2023December 30, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

When exactly does a journey end?

If you are looking to go somewhere new or better, ideally you find yourself in a different place, put down your stuff, and start about the task of living a new life in your new location. Joseph Campbell’s famous “hero’s journey” structure includes The Return- our brave hero, having crossed the border of the known into the unknown on their grand quest, returns across that border to the world they knew significantly changed.

Maybe they brought the “Magic Medicine,” as Campbell calls it, to solve a problem and the quest of seeking and finding the Medicine was only the first (albeit largest) part. Tripitaka, having successfully reached India and received the sutras from the Buddha along with his assistants Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, must now complete the quest by returning to China with them. Frodo, having seen the One Ring destroyed and the quest complete, returns home to free and rebuild the Shire.

For Tripitaka and Frodo, though, that still wasn’t the end of their stories. Tripitaka and his friends are magically whisked back to India after finishing their delivery and receive their ultimate rewards: Buddhahood for Tripitaka and Monkey, and sainthood for Pigsy and Sandy as their undertakings on the journey expunged the sins that set them on the road in the first place. Frodo, forever wounded and traumatized by his quest and prolonged exposure to the evil of the One Ring, realizes that he “can’t go home again” and leaves Middle Earth to seek peace and healing in the uttermost West.

Returning home but returning differently is just as much a journey as finding yourself in a new place- you set down old ways and start the process of living again as someone new.