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.

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Find The Light So You Can BE The Light

December 9, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

Hello, everyone.

My name is Matt. I am a Jewish-American baker, writer, and raconteur. I love food, beer, whiskey, mead and meadmaking, the taste and smell of good pipe tobacco, talking to strangers, and telling stories.

If you are in Beaverton today, you might see a guy in an Irish sweater with a copper-shod walking stick, a tweed hat, and a long tan cloak sitting at a bar with a pint of dark beer, typing on an iPad disguised as a very beaten-up composition notebook.

There is a lot of darkness and sorrow in the world right now. I’m keenly aware of it- too keenly, maybe, according to my therapist who’s been reminding me to keep off of social media. I’ll probably write something later summing up my personal attitudes about it all, but I’ll just as likely keep that to myself. The world is not short of opinions right now.

It’s also not short of doomsaying, chest-beating, and heartstring-wringing. There’s plenty of people who will take it upon themselves to remind us of all the horror in the world, and that’s a good thing. We can’t go about with our heads in the sand, pretending the problems of others aren’t our concern and then getting indignant when “no one did anything” when they become our concern.

What goes too far is when these good-intentioned messengers take it upon themselves to berate others or themselves for finding joy where they can. “With so much suffering and pain in this world, how dare anyone be happy?! Don’t you care?!”

There are plenty of who don’t or are ignorant of the plight of others, to be sure- but so many of us do. Here’s the truth though: Denying yourself joy and happiness does nothing to help others, and it weakens YOUR resolve to endure.

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Listening In On The Anxiety

September 24, 2023September 24, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / 1 Comment

Yesterday, I went for a long walk through Mount Tabor Park before it would start raining. It was finally a cooler fall morning and this was to be my workout for the day, so I made a point of enjoying it. I wore my favorite tweed vest combo, my favorite shawl, grabbed my walking stick and just did my Hobbit thing.

I made sure to bring my headphones with me in case I wanted to listen to music or a podcast on the walk, but I didn’t think I would. I haven’t lately, and not for lack of quality in my favorite podcasts. (Seriously, check out Old Gods of Appalachia, especially as we get toward Halloween here in the states.)

Instead, as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve had the time and bandwidth to get more curious about my inner life- how and why my mind does what it does. Historically I’ve used podcasts deliberately to blot out intrusive thoughts, break the anxiety spirals and derail rumination funks that can sap my focus and energy. In other words, they put someone else’s voice in my head when I can’t bear the sound of my own anymore.

They are still excellent for that, but lately I’ve had the energy to explore the “bad neighborhood” parts of my brain and figure out what’s going on in there.

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The EMT In The Kitchen

July 9, 2023July 12, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

First responders have a saying- “Being a first responder leaves you with two kinds of stories- ones you don’t want to tell, and ones others don’t want to hear.” It also leaves you with a LOT of quirks and habits that only other folks who’ve been there will notice.

A friend claimed she thought I had PTSD from my time as an EMT. I personally don’t think I do. I go to a therapist, and it’s never once come up. For a brief time after a particularly bad situation in 2005, I definitely had flashbacks and triggers- but not since. At least, nothing more than what Anxiety gets me to ruminate on.

I simply don’t think I saw enough stuff long enough to give me honest-to-God PTSD. I know it doesn’t necessarily take repetitive or long-term exposure to trauma to cause PTSD, but I can honestly count on one hand the number of calls I’d been on that might be considered “traumatic.” If anything, most of them were of the “ok, you won’t believe this shit” genre of anecdote. There are no Misery Olympics and I wouldn’t want a medal if there were.

What I think being an EMT did leave me with were a couple of trained behaviors and responses that others would find odd- especially in the kitchen.

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The Kitchen Monk- Presence and Pie Crust

June 11, 2023June 12, 2023 / The Black Hat Baker / Leave a comment

What does it mean to be present? Not just physically but mentally? Spiritually? It doesn’t just mean being in a particular place, like during roll call at school. For yourself in your own life, no one’s checking off an attendance list.

We owe it to ourselves to stay present and keep ourselves aware of just who, what, and where we are if we want to live not just good lives but deliberate ones.