Okay.

You used to be a *****.

Now don’t get self conscious. We all used to be *****. Check out the period at the end of this sentence. That tiny little dot is around 600 microns wide. When you were a ***** you were about 40 microns wide. And you were so cute back then too with your little tail wagging all over the place and your love of swimming. Boy could you swim. In fact if you hadn’t outswum your siblings, you might be a slightly different version of yourself right now. Maybe you’d have a higher-pitched laugh, hairier arms, or stand two inches shorter.

You had a great life as a ***** but always felt incomplete. The truth is you weren’t whole until you met an egg. And then you two began a nine month project to make a cool new version of you. It took a while but you grew arms and legs and eyeballs and lungs. You grew nerves and nails and eardrums and tongues.

For a ***** to meet an egg it means your mom met your dad. But it’s not just them. Think about how many people had to meet, fall in love, and make love for you to be here.

Here’s the answer: A lot. Like a lot a lot.

Before they had you, none of your ancestors drowned in a pond, got strangled by a python, or skied into a tree. None of your ancestors choked on a peach pit, were trampled by buffalo, or got their tie stuck in an assembly line.

None of your ancestors was a ******.

You are the most modern, brightest spark of years and years and years of survivors who all had to meet each other in order to eventually make you.

Your nineteenth century Grandma met your nineteenth century Grandpa down at the candle-making shoppe. She liked his muttonchops and he thought she looked cute churning butter.

Your Middle Ages Grandpa met your Middle Ages Grandma while they both poured hot oil from the castle turrets on pillaging vikings. She liked his grunts and he thought the flowers in her hair made her heaving bosoms jump out.
Your Ice Age Grandpa crossing the Bering Bridge in a woolly mammoth fur met your Ice Age Grandma dragging a club in the opposite direction. He liked her saber-tooth necklace and she dug his unibrow.

Your ancient rainforest Grandpa was picking berries naked in the bush while your ancient rainforest Grandma was spearing dodos for dinner. She liked his jungle funk and he liked her cave drawings. If it wasn’t for the picnic they had afterwards, maybe you wouldn’t be here.

You’re pretty lucky all those people met, fell in love, made love, had babies, and raised them into other people who did it all over again. This happened over and over and over again for you to be here. Look around the plane, coffee shop, or park right now. Look at your husband snoring in bed, your girlfriend watching TV, or your sister playing in the backyard. You are surrounded by lucky people. They are all the result of long lines of survivors.

So you’re a survivor, too. You’re the latest and greatest. You’re the top of the line. You’re the very best nature has to offer.

But a lot had to happen before all your strong, fiery ancestors met each other and fell in love over and over again for hundreds of thousands of years …

So let’s stop for a second and pull back again. Let’s pull way, way, way, way back.

Okay.

Let’s go on a field trip. Put your shoes on because we’re heading outside.

Take a bowling ball and drop it on the edge of your driveway. That’s our Sun. Yeah, the ball is only eight inches across and the actual Sun is eight hundred thousand miles across but that’s our scale for this little brainwave. Okay, now walk down your street ten big paces and drop a grain of salt on your neighbor’s lawn. That’s Mercury. Take nine more paces down the street and drop a peppercorn for Venus. And then take another seven paces, so you’re now two or three houses down the block, and toss down another peppercorn.

You got it.

That peppercorn is Earth.

Here we are, basking in the blazing sun, twenty-six big steps away from the bowling ball. Our giant planet is just a tiny speck in the middle of nowhere but here’s the crazy part: It gets a whole lot bigger.

If you keep walking, Mars is only couple more houses away, but Jupiter ends up ninety-five big paces down the street, out of the neighborhood, and halfway to the corner store. By now a dog is probably slobbering in the bowling ball finger holes and kids are flying by you on their bikes, slurping drippy popsicles, and wondering what’s up with this nut tossing crumbs on the sidewalk, acting out some demented suburban version of Hansel and Gretel.

If you want to finish up our solar system, you’re going to have to start taking two- and three-hundred paces for the remaining planets, eventually dropping a grain of salt for Pluto half a mile away from the bowling ball. You can’t see the bowling ball with binoculars and it’s getting cold out for your long walk home.

But here’s the crazier part: That’s just our solar system. That’s just our bunch of rocks flying around our big bright bowling ball star.

Turns out our big bright star and all its salt and peppercorns are racing around a cosmic race track with two hundred billion other big bright bowling ball stars. You’d have to cover the entire Earth with bowling ***** eight thousand times to represent the number of stars in our race track. Did we mention this race track has a name? Yup, it’s called the Milky Way galaxy, presumably because the scientists who first noticed it were all eating delicious Milky Way candy bars late that Friday night down at the telescopes.

So basically our bowling ball, salt, and peppercorns are flying in the fast lane around a ridiculously giant race track galaxy called the Milky Way with billions and billions of other bowling *****, salt grains, and peppercorns, too.

But are you ready for the craziest part: That’s just our galaxy. Guess how many giant racetrack galaxies are in all of outer space? Oh, not many. Just more than we can possibly count. Honestly, nobody knows how many galaxies are out there in the big blackness. All we know is that every few years somebody stares out a little further and finds millions more of them just shining way out in the void. We don’t know how deep it goes because our rocket ships don’t blast off that far and our thickest, fattest telescopes can’t see that far.

Now, all this space talk might make us feel small and insignificant, but here’s the thing, here’s the big thing, here’s the biggest thing of all: Of the millions of places we’ve ever seen it appears as though Earth is the only place that can support life. The only place! Oh sure, there could be other life-giving planets we haven’t seen yet, but the point is that Earth could easily have been a clump of sulphur gas, be lying in darkness forever, or have a winter that dips a couple hundred degrees and lasts twenty years like Uranus.

On this planet Earth, the only one in the giant dark blackness where anything can live, we ended up being humans.

Congratulations, us!

We are the only species on the only life-giving rock capable of love and magic, architecture and agriculture, jewellery and democracy, aeroplanes and highway lanes. We’re the only ones with interior design and horoscope signs, fashion magazines and house party scenes, horror flicks with monsters, guitar jams at concerts. We got books, buffets and radio waves, wedding brides and roller coaster rides, clean sheets and good movie seats, bakery air and rain hair, bubble wrap and illegal naps.

We got all that. But people, listen up.

We only get a hundred years to enjoy it.

I’m sorry but it’s true.

Every single person you know will be dead in a hundred years — the foreman at your plant, the cashiers at your grocery store, every teacher you’ve ever had, anyone you’ve ever woken up beside, all the kids on your street, every baby you’ve ever held, every bride who’s walked down the aisle, every telemarketer who’s called you at dinner, every politician in every country, every actor in every movie, everyone who’s cut you off on the highway, everyone in the room you’re sitting in right now, everyone you love, and you.

Life is so great that we only get a tiny moment to enjoy everything we see. And that moment is right now. And that moment is counting down. And that moment is always, always fleeting.

You will never be as young as you are right now.

So whether you’re enjoying your first toothpicked turkey cold cuts and marveling at apples from South Africa, dreaming of strange and distant relatives from thousands of years ago, or staring into the blackness of deep, deep space, just remember how lucky we all are to be here right now.

If you feel that sense of wonder and beauty in all the tiny joys in life then you’re part of an international band of old souls and optimists, smiling on sidewalks, dancing at weddings, and flipping to the other side of the pillow. Let’s all high five and keep thinking wild thoughts, dreaming big dreams, and laughing loud laughs.

Thank you so much for reading this.

And thank you for being

AWESOME!

Step into to her world, a world where she lives -
Of colors a plenty and flavors many,
A flick of a hand, in measures she gives,
Spices that tantalize, worth every penny.
Red chillies an ounce, turmeric a pound,
Spices scarlet, earthy, exotic,
Peppercorns, cardamoms, whole or ground
Brown bay leaves, cinnamon, aromatic.
Wonders for the body that soothe and heal,
Nurturing from nature, a stoic promise,
From the choicest gardens, as senses reel,
Fragrance of flavors in sensual bliss.

Within her world, another world entices...
Her voice in sweet whispers has tales to tell,
Magic in dark eyes, the mistress of spices,
With a flick of her hand she'll cast her spell.

( inspired by the title of the book with the same name. )

The smell of oolong still speaks your name. In the tea and spice shop I drift among leaves and peppercorns, petals and sugar,  I want to fade into the muted tones of flavorful hulls, curl into the scent of cinnamon and cardamom. Pulling down the iron goddess of mercy, I realize the veneer of curled baroque leaves rest on a sandbag. Shadowed abundance, a pretty lie, hollow, futile. Too much like us. The Cheshire glimmers of what we could have been. What I always wanted you to be, and what you sometimes were. A small edge, tiny supply to fill my cup, flavor fading too quickly. Replacing the jar, I realize there must have been a last day I named you mine.  The last time I called you boyfriend, partner—by our last talk, it was already finished, the last note in a fading song, off tune. I cannot recall the shape of my lips, the weight of your name, the tenor of my voice, the bend of my tongue, much less the listener. I still hear you, through the broken measures of a desperate song. You say you still love me, but perhaps I never told you, dear, I prefer coffee to tea.

architectural mollusks
    are falloping through
                              my brain
                        squeezing past the
                         instincts that
        have kept me down
My instincts,
              once brittle sea stars
                          that splintered
                                    into cracked
                                 peppercorns,
                 are now mixed with
           the breathy liquid
        of squid,
lubrication for
the spiny paths ahead
They blow their ink
between my
inverted vertebrae
      injecting Jello into bone
                           busting through
                        fiber and tissue like
                          fresh-skimmed
                    lavacream
and all my muck
rises to the top
in a neon rawness
that I find beautiful

Soon
my burning crevices
will be cooled
fossils will turn to flesh
and, as sure as knowledge
springs into action
I will make
for the shoreline
like a cephalopod rocket
silky smooth
my fins spun into wings
touching magic
as they glide

They say it depends where you're from
as long as you don't miss the meat,
(sometimes I prefer pork)
soy sauce and vinegar,
garlic (as much as you can peel)
bay leaves (a couple, maybe) and
peppercorns.

They like to tell me where I'm from
as long as they smell the added sugar,
the occasional potatoes, the mix of
chicken and pork. And through my teeth,
I tell them that there is nothing that different
about me.

A gentle pungence of the nutmeg
Burns the hands that dwell in its ashes
Sprinkle generously, lest you want the
concoction, to turn out bland.
Yet, how would bland be? A curry.
Dressed in an assortment of spices,
As, Cardamoms and Peppercorns and
Cinnamons and Aniseeed_ Do add a
bay leaf as you temper the potion
to a base.

It is joy, manifold_ flavours not just in
conclusion but odyssey of the process.
It is joy, unbound, creation nienté
could bring about such happiness !
Joy of the 'Kitchen Wizard' is
in his pots and potions found !

Step into to her world, a world where she lives,
Of colours a plenty and flavours many,
A flick of a hand, in measures she gives,
Spices that tantalise, worth every penny.
Red chillies an ounce, turmeric a pound,
Spices scarlet, yellow, in hues exotic,
Peppercorns, cardamoms, whole or ground,
Brown bay leaves, cinnamon, aromatic.
Wonders for the body that soothe and heal,
Nurturing from nature, a stoic promise,
From the choicest gardens, as senses reel,
Fragrance of flavours in sensual bliss.

Within her world, another world entices,
Her voice in sweet whispers has tales to tell,
Magic in dark eyes, the mistress of spices,
With a flick of her hand, she’ll cast a spell.

Written in 2013

( inspired by the title of the book by Chitra Divakaruni)

When they had all they had to eat of
peppercorns and roasted meat,
they decided in extravagance
to strip quite naked and to dance.

I blame the barley wine, for that
get together of a time
but they denied it was to blame
and said
it's only high jinks and a game
then invited me to join in,
I declined quite rapidly and
trotted home to have my tea.

It was a normal day in Whitehall.

When understanding the fact
there may no longer
be future days
it's the little things
which burn with the ugliest truth.

Like not knowing what cabinet
the olive oil
and peppercorns are in
or how much laundry detergent is left.

Gasping yourself awake
at the sound of barking dogs
still haunting edges of every doorjamb.

when i miss you
the longing makes a home under my skin.
drives pickaxes into my bones
and reminds the marrow
that i’ll never see you again

my skin crawls and my fingers grow cold
knowing i’ll never feel
the crepe-y skin
that felt like family

my nostrils burn
knowing they’ll never smell your scent
j’adore mixed with a little bit of menthol

your presence promised me a home
as long as the stove was burning
and there were people to gather around
the table at dinner

loneliness takes shelter
and wraps its spidery hands
around my vocal cords

insecurity whispers
into my ears

that it won’t be the same without you
that i’ll never feel okay without you
that i’ll never feel whole without you

as if going to church everyday and thinking of your steady voice and fervent Hail Marys weren’t enough to break me.

as if hearing the crack of peppercorns before dinner time wasn’t enough to bring me to my knees.

as if shards of ice don’t stab my heart when i hear the jingle of gold bangles on thing wrists

as if jealousy and rage doesn’t consume me everytime i see an old woman knowing that it’ll never be my Nana on the other side.



i see the farmer’s market and i hear you asking when the next time we’re going grocery shopping is.

i see a tablecloth and i see bright eyes alive with the thought of throwing a party.

i see a word search and i see the stains you left on the comforter when you forgot to cap your highlighter.

the worst part is,
is that i can still feel you
i can still feel the warmth of your hugs
i can still feel the mark you left on my heart

there’s no emptiness.

just constraint.

everything is just too much
knowing that
it’ll be a long time
before i can come home to you.