Tales From a Zen Kitchen

by Florencia Clifford

  At this, Nanyue picked up a brick lying on the ground and began to polish it. Mazu stared at him and said, “What are you doing?”

  Nanyue said calmly, “I am trying to make a mirror.”

  Mazu said, “How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?”

  Nanyue looked at him and replied, “How can you become a Buddha by doing meditation?”

  When the talk finished I ran back to the kitchen to begin working on the bread dough again. Eddy’s words resonated as I sank my hands in the airy bread mix, listening as the bubbles of air deflated. Who was I? Making a mirror, becoming a Buddha, can it be done while making bread? These were questions with no answer, just small glimpses of realisation. From packets of dry ingredients scattered around the kitchen, to water, to dough, to giving something shape and form, to the moment I removed the tray from the oven, smelled the bread, tapped the base to check if it was ready. The question remained with me as I brought the warm bread to the table, and saw people’s faces and the butter melting on the warm crust.

  I cooked the usual first meal of inky mushroom stew and polenta and served it with a green salad of crisp lettuce leaves, rocket and little gem. I made a dressing with white balsamic vinegar, wholegrain mustard, runny honey and a handful of pink peppercorns crushed in the pestle and mortar.

  I lit Padmasambhava’s altar in the refectory and sang his mantra at lullaby pace, thinking of John and of my feelings of loss. The pain had receded a little. My voice sounded clear and melodic as I lit the heaters to warm the drafty room.

  Everyone came to eat with their coats on: the house would take a few days to warm up. The wood burning stove was difficult to light, but I tried to keep it going. The room looked lovely with the chandelier lit and candles at the altar: dim and welcoming, magic almost.

  After supper I took a cracked crystal bowl and filled it with tea lights and a hellebore flower I had picked from my garden. I made an offering to Tara for my women friends: it was an offering of gratitude for the restoration of my relationships with women and with my own femininity. It was a cold, wet night. The steps were slippery as I stepped onto them, singing Tara’s mantra, wearing three scarves. The last step was packed with slugs, eating the roll I had baked that morning, and feasting on the tiny pale blue hyacinth flowers.

  I felt so happy. Slugs are the antithesis of radiance: they eat the buds and shoots of the plants I love the most. Yet here, at Tara’s steps, I connected to the spirit of the slug, letting go of my previous story of dislike. By dropping the story, I was able to connect with its spirit, its slugness, and therefore with the spirit of everything. The slug had become a symbol of love and the heart of that which I nourish and feed and invoke. Slugs appeared out of nowhere, on a chilly winter’s night, when they were least expected. I saw how feeding the slugs had been a ritual, one which I started with no aim. It had been a tantric process of feeding them because they were there, because I saw them, the creatures with no face. As I connected with them, I was able to connect with myself too. The slug had become a metaphor of me; the process of coming here to cook my life was like the orchids I fed to myself.

  I joined everyone in the Chan Hall in the evening for a communication exercise. Staring into each other’s eyes, we asked each other’s question. My heart filled up with love for the stranger sitting in front of me.

  He asked me: “Tell me who you are.” I am my heart. I am a woman tired of being a little girl, a good little girl. The girl has grown up because I have helped her heal.

  I am a goddess connected with my spirit and with the spirit of everything. I embrace rituals; they help me maintain the state of bliss. Thoughts arise: I observe them, nod at them, let them through, let them go. I connect with the ample realm of the universe; ask for help, for permission. I ask my ancestors, what can I do to help?

  I am sensing, opening, flowering. Seeing with my heart, I am my heart. I am covered in rose petals: rose petals the colour of blood.

  I am a revolution, a rebel brewing.

  I jumped out of bed at 5 am with an energy that felt new to me. In the distance I heard my mind telling me to lie in for five more minutes, but it weakened as I ignored it. I couldn’t wait to check the Rayburn and warm the teapots. I threw some clothes on and ran downstairs.

  Dawn broke the clouded sky: birdsong, stream, a change of light. Both the day and I felt full of potential.

  During a rest period Pete showed me how to lift the cover of the cesspit near the house. It was slightly blocked so he showed me how to poke the waste in order to free the flow. It was an interesting process for a cook.

  After being shown the cesspit I realised that the lamps were the last mystery. The Maenllwyd has no electricity and we rely on paraffin lamps, along with candles and torches. The lamps are hung by their handles from hooks around the beams and ceilings of the house. The air is pressurised by a hand-pump. There are mantles, wicks, and bits. I get dizzy, they confuse me, and I often feel lost just looking at them.

  I have been shown how to use them many times, but I am reluctant to engage with them. I don’t know what it is about them; they feel too masculine, rigid and mechanical. I depend on them but I choose not to connect with them. Yet I love their hissing and a vigorous, freshly-lit lamp as the day starts to turn makes me happy.

  During this retreat I made an effort to connect with the lamps. I realised my feelings were changing when the red lamp, the most beautiful one, passed away; it would be scrapped for parts. Would she hiss again in another shape, would there be an essence of red in an army lamp?

  I was eager to get ahead of myself, so that I could spend more time in the Chan Hall. I made a fragrant dhal using tiny cardamom seeds as a starting point, adding lots of fresh ginger, turmeric and a cinnamon stick. I also made barley miso rolls, by adding a couple of spoonfuls of miso to the bread dough, before the second kneading.

  I made brownies and sprinkled them with different colour cornflowers I had dried in the summer. The dark brown richness of the brownies contrasted beautifully with the summer colours of the cornflowers. I started a curry base.

  I was eager to get things prepared ahead of time because I wanted to join in the dance meditation. I danced with my eyes closed: a woman’s dance. In the past I had danced with the little girl in me, embracing her, attempting to help her mend her heart. Now I felt that the little girl had grown up; she no longer believed herself ugly, fat or poor, or that she did not belong. As I danced, I was that girl full of potential, and the woman who was ready to open up to the world. A woman who was ready to live and to love. The wounds had healed, I had learned to make friends with my ghosts; I had asked them to tell me what they needed. This had been enough to appease them. I had nourished them and they had quietened down to rest.

  As I danced with myself, it felt like an awakening. This was my life, and I would seize it.

  I had learned to ask. This had been my biggest lesson. For so many years I resisted asking for help. I had been closed up, as if in an iron chest. Asking implies an opening, an acceptance of the vulnerability that makes us more connected to ourselves. By asking, I opened a channel which allowed the light in, and with light came space.

  That night I had a dream. Once on a trip to Fes, in Morocco, my friend Ceci and I had visited a tiny antiques stall. We were fascinated by the beautiful objects exhibited behind locked glass, and the antiques dealer invited us to visit the back of the shop. We went through a low door, and as we lifted our heads we entered a different world, a magnificent riad, like the Aladdin’s cave I had imagined as a child. There were rooms and rooms of the most delightful collection of objects I had ever seen: ancient Toureg rugs, woodcarvings, embroideries and jewelry. The place in my dream had a similar shop front: a small unimpressive room filled with beautiful clutter. The antiquarian, who was a different man from the one in Fes, looked Ceci in the eyes, and said, “You are a jeweller.”

  He held out his closed, cupped hands towards her, as if cradling something precious. He opened his hands
to reveal a blue jewel, and said, “This jewel is for you, this is all the treasure you need to be happy.”

  Ceci took the jewel and thanked him, then he turned around to look at me, with eyes like a young doe. He told me, “Flo, you are a nomad. For you I also have something special.”

  He went into an adjacent little room and brought out a metal object, an oracle. He placed it on the wooden counter and unlocked the top. It opened up like a spinning metal top, a shiny carousel, and light, a white dense smoke, began to emanate from the object. I saw glimpses of my life: special occasions; ordinary routines; faces of loved ones, alive and dead. He invited me to look at how wonderful my life had been, and I did. I was able to see it all. I liked it, even the parts I had never liked before. He also showed me the future, a cloudy mass which was slightly further away from where I stood. He insisted that I should open up to my life and seize it.

  A few weeks after I had the dream, Ceci called to tell me she was pregnant.

  The wind was so strong it kept setting off the alarms of the cars in the yard, cars with nowhere to go yet. The wind carried rain from deep Atlantic storms, arriving in the mountain with the smell of the sea. I watched the sheep as they tasted the salt through their woolly skins.

  I returned to my question: “Tell me who you are.”

  As I riddled the Rayburn and fed it coal, I was the child of Scottish coal miners who walked the Ayrshire winters barefoot as children.

  As I buried my face in my hands as I sat down to lunch I smelt yeast and flour and dough; I was the child of French bakers who understood the secret ingredient in breadmaking.

  As words trickled out of me through my pen, I was the child of writers.

  As I walked up the hill, wind blowing my hair around in spirals, my face wet and each pore and cell, each atom, alive, I was the child of woman, fostered by nature.

  Simon, who had succeeded John as Teacher of the WCF, was also taking part on this retreat. On the first night, he told me that he heard owls, and I longed to see one.

  “Have you seen the owl?” I asked.

  “No, why, do you want to see it?”

  “No, I want to be it.”

  To me, owls have always symbolised knowledge and freedom, the wisdom that I seek.

  Many years ago, I held a baby owl at a country fair. I remember gazing into its staring orange eyes, wanting to hold the moment forever. I felt a connection beyond language, an otherness in the ordinary.

  The sycamores resembled giant, black spiders’ webs, intricate against the backdrop of the sky. There were mossy patches everywhere, sprouting into tiny forests: moss giving birth to green goblins.

  I went for an interview. I was so happy, but what would happen if I fell off the 100 foot pole of happiness that I felt I was on? Eddy reassured me that the fall wouldn’t be too bad.

  My mind kept dropping and all that was left for me to be was my heart. I felt like a fearless queen, connected with everything and nothing. This was a new experience, lived at a different pace. I was inhabiting a space that was more to do with my torso than with my head, my usual ruler.

  Owl woman, take flight. Dance. I was ready to make the necessary changes, to shift the stagnant, cross-generational karma for the sake of my kids and for the sake of the women in my family who chose safe instead of wild. That evening I danced with my daughter, my mother, my sisters, my grandmothers and their mothers. It felt like I was beginning again.

  “Tell me who you are?”

  “I am...home.”

  The paraffin lamps were working a treat. Pete told me to drop the fear and start connecting with them. He told me to pump them twenty times each time I left the kitchen, and they kept alight for me.

  The lamps with their leaky wonder evoked a memory of the stoves of my childhood winters. I remembered pulling clothes over my head as I stood by them and the drafts and shivers as they were lit, their brawny tang of heat. I remembered the paraffin barrel on stilts in the garden, the tap always shut tight. I used to climb astride it when nobody was watching, wriggle on the rusty metal and kick it, saying “arre, arre, caballo”, as I rode my imaginary suburban horse.

  One of the participants came to the back kitchen to talk to me.

  “I am very upset about the hungry ghosts.”

  “Why?”

  “Can’t we feed them properly?”

  “We do,” I said, “They have narrow throats which only crumbs can go through. Their hunger and thirst and fear cannot be appeased by the crumbs, but it is the heart that you put in the offering which helps them.”

  “But we should give them a proper meal,” she said, almost with tears in her eyes.

  I felt like telling her that she was feeding them properly, because she was offering them her love, but I remained silent. She needed to work this one out for herself.

  An Apollinaire poem kept popping into my mind:

  Come to the edge.

  We might fall.

  Come to the edge

  It’s too high!

  Come to the edge!

  And they came.

  And he pushed,

  And they flew.

  That night I danced again. This time, I was the owl ready to take flight, feet on the ground, my red toenails hinting at their ancestral past. I let go of the room and felt my legs, my waist, my shoulders. Sensing my joy, I stretched out and flew. I called on the owl in me to be daring, not to fear. I would be the one pushing myself off the edge.

  I thought of the kitchen and stopped moving, while everyone else was still dancing. I remembered all I had to do: arrange the aubergines on platters; toast sunflower seeds and taste the saffron yogurt dressing for seasoning. I needed to warm the tagine with care: the wok was filled to capacity and the food at the bottom could easily burn. It would be impossible to stir without making the sweet potatoes disintegrate. All of the sudden I realised I was no longer present in the dance, so I gently left the barn. As I shut the door behind me, I was startled by a cacophony of owl sounds: hooting and screeching. I stood in the yard by the gate with a grinning heart. The owls were calling each other and I was encircled by their calls. I moved to the kitchen where their cries accompanied me as I carried food into the refectory. I could still hear them as we ate supper, even above the hissing of the paraffin lamp above the table.

  After supper, I showed the “hungry ghosts” retreatant how to offer the bowl of water and scraps. She looked at me blankly and then at the bowl, as if not convinced. She later described what happened after I left:

  “I had a beautiful experience making the offering, which I owe to you. After the initial surprise/disappointment of the unceremonious gate and field beyond where you left me, I looked down into the bowl. The fat in the food had picked up shades of red and gold. I swished it about and it made an emulsion. In the dark, in the light of my head torch, it was as if one hundred billion gems were reflecting back at me. It was spectacularly beautiful. So I offered countless jewels: tiny ones, small enough and enough in number. This experience made me realise that what I can do for others has to come from the heart.”

  I left the volunteers drying up, wrapped my long, woolly cardigan and several scarves around me and lay down on the bench in the back garden. I closed my eyes and I was with the owls; it felt like the noise was coming from a different realm yet it was there, coming from the trees, bouncing from sycamore to cypress, from maple to pine to cherry tree. I could still hear them when I went back to John’s room and took up my pen to write. I could still hear them when, after the night sit, I returned to the bedroom. They hooted all night and into the dawn. The owl called from the mountaintop: “Come to the edge, come, fly.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fly

  July at the Maenllwyd. The weather was warm. The water level of the stream was very low, so the milk was going off very quickly; even the small dam we had built was not holding enough water in the flowing semi-pond to keep the bottles chilled. I wrapped the crates in soaked hessian sheets to help keep them c
ool, but I knew I would have to venture out to the shops at some point. In the kitchen, fresh herbs were rotting and vegetables were growing soft. The bread was going mouldy and swarms of flies danced around the shelves above the sink. They were distracting me, buzzing about me, hovering around the treacle and jams. I had to restrain myself from swatting them with a tea towel; after all, I had taken a vow not to kill.

  Shoo Fly.

  Shoo.

  I became more and more aggravated by them. There were dozens of them: an invasion. I tried to get them out of the kitchen by waving my linen apron around. I was a cook possessed by my need to protect the food I offered.

  After the rest period in the early afternoon, I sat by Tara’s statue, under the trio of sycamores. The sycamores looked like beardy, old men with their bark wisdom and hollow trunks, keeping a watch on me. I had brought a parsley plant with me, as I needed some to flavour the evening meal. I have learned not to chop herbs but rather tear them, gently, and the difference in taste is remarkable. So I began my task, lost in the moment, looking at the plant with its green rosettes. I observed each line on each tiny leaf, split it slowly, carefully, lovingly and placed the small fragments into a metal bowl. I was enjoying the warmth, the company of the trees and the intensity of green against the glimmering silver of the bowl. Suddenly a fat house fly landed on my knee. I felt its tickly weightless body on mine. I saw her large eyes; they resembled the centre of the sunflower I had brought for the altar in the refectory. Her front legs rubbed her face. Her antennae moved as she gently flicked her wings. I observed her – microscopically.

  “What do you want, Fly? Have you come to tell me something?”

  I was taken by the insect’s presence, by her beauty. It was a moment of feeling at one with the universe: a Fly moment. I couldn’t take my eyes of her and I watched as she sank her minuscule legs into the cotton fibres of my trousers. Was she looking at me? I felt warmth arising from my heart. A love for the fly.