Making Stew: Onions, Om, and The Creative Journey
You start by washing, peeling and chopping vegetables.
Splash of cool, clear water over your hands, washing away the mud and grime.
The glistening beauty of potatoes, released from their skin. The orange family: cheery carrots, ruby yams. Brooding purple globes of eggplants; the peppery scent of turnips.
Lovely!
The sun shines in through the kitchen window. Olive oil warms gently in the stew pot. You’re an artist, one with the rising steam, one with the vegetables, one with your trusty knife and chopping block.
Ahh, the zen of cooking stew!
Then come the onions. Peel away that papery skin. Chop chop chop sniff sniff weep. Ugh.
Sting. Tears. Runny nose. Ow.
Into the pot they go, the air still redolent with onion breath, your eyes still streaming from the sting of onion juice.
Not so much an artist now. Let’s get this over with already!
Garlic, next. Little bitty pods with a mighty smell that soaks through your skin and settles in your bones.
Hmm. Not feeling very zen-like right now.
Knife bites your thumb, oh yeah. Ow ow ow! Blood!
Eyes stream steadily. Great, existential questions swirl about in the air overhead.
Why do you always have to be the one to prepare the stew? Why can’t someone else do this for a change? Why stew anyway? Is there any cosmic purpose to stew?
Stew stew stew… Steam from the pot OMMMM…mingles with steam from your mind OMMMM…Aaargh!
Owwww! Burnt your hand on the stove. This really sucks!
Who needs stew, anyway. Maybe stew-making is not in your destiny. Everyone else’s stew is better than yours and they don’t cut themselves and burn their hands while making it. Maybe you should open a stationery store instead.
Mmmm…stationery. No onions in stationery…
………………………………………………………………
Today’s post is a tribute to the love, commitment, creativity and humor of the women in my four-month Become Your Own Business Adviser program. The onions are chopped, the tears are flowing–the delectable aroma of stew fills the air.
How about you? What do you do when you’re in the sting and suck of your creative process?
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Yup, that sounds pretty much like a parable for life to me.
And I guess that’s the real reason to make stew, or open a stationary store, or do anything else…reminds me of “wherever you go, there you are.” Whatever you cook, too. :)
Tara Mohr’s last post … Reclaiming Lost Loves
ooh, what Tara said — “a parable for life”. I love this, Hiro – the humor in it allows me to admit to myself that – yeah, that’s me — often!
In response to your question – what I (am learning to) do “in the sting and suck” of my creative process is to keep cutting those darn onions (even if I go through a box of tissue doing it), you know? So I try to keep on keepin’ on
Square-Peg Karen’s last post … Square-Peg Manifesto
@Karen The trick is to get those onion-cutting goggles! ;) (Metaphor for… ?)
This really is a parable for life, love, and (especially) motherhood. Your descriptives powers are awesome; I really felt like I was in there, smelling, touching, tasting. Thank you Hiro. :)
i’m not much of a stew fanatic but…mouth…watering…remember “slow” with knife for me next time…i know knife’s bite, too.
thanks for sharing this…makes me think about the coffee bar i want to open up every time i have a hard time with [isn't it always something?].
Dian Reid’s last post … Being You During Coming Out::Part 1
Hiro-
Simply lovely! Stew is definitely a metaphor for the creative process, and let’s not forget the waiting bit… I get the bits and pieces chopped and in the pot but then it has to sit and… stew. As impatient as I feel, there’s a time when there’s not really much more I can DO for the project, except wait for it to come together. Listening for the sounds that tell me the watery beginnings have thickened into something substantial. The smell that tells me that the sharp, raw bits have mellowed and softened. And then the taste- where the disparate parts have become a unified whole.
Ah yes… stew is a lovely metaphor!
Liz’s last post … Do-Overs and High-Fives… the soggy Tuesday edition