Rise Up, Little Bird

Cooking up a quiet cacophony from scratch

I’ve been learning to make sourdough lately.
I know, a little late to the party.

A friend of mine, who quietly liked my last post, told me it’s better for you.
Slower. More natural.
I always wondered why food feels easier to digest in Europe.
I think this is why.

The post she liked,
Miss Yana Bene and the Blood Moon Eclipse,
for me, the process was a little less about getting it out there,
and more about actually finishing the thing.
It’s long.
And I didn’t expect to feel relief.
And I didn’t.
If anything, it reminded me that I have to do it again.

So, anyway, I bought a little jar, made a bit of a mess,
and now I’m here, between folds, writing this.

I started baking with a 900-year-old Dutch starter.
It came to life in a jar by the window.

A living archive.
It has weathered plagues, winters, heartbreaks, and harvests.

I'm joining an unbroken thread.
So I’m not just a little late to the party,
I’m really late.
The earliest evidence of sourdough-making is from 3700 BCE Switzerland.
But bread making traces further back: ancient Egypt,
then to the Mediterranean, the Middle East...
And now to me.
And to you.

Lately, the world feels divided in stranger and stranger ways.
As if the split between what can be measured
and what can only be felt is widening.

There’s a pressure to prove everything.
To hold the line of what’s “real.”
But story, myth, and dream,
they’ve always been part of what makes us human.
Fairy tales, science fiction, ancient epics,
we use them to say the unsayable.

Back to the dough,
mixing. Stirring.

This is all a break from doing, sort of. Drishti meets Komorebi, but eyes resting on oranges on the counter instead of light through the trees. Conjuring up nirvana.

Just above them
out the window

a hummingbird.
She’s been coming around a lot lately. (You can see her if you look carefully in the photo.)

I think I know why...

Nature can be so visceral sometimes.

I’ve shaped the loaf. It’s tucked in cloth now, resting.
The counter’s a bit of a mess.
But the kitchen smells like something good is about to happen.

Bread’s rising.

We can’t always understand what’s real for someone else.
But we can listen.
And maybe that’s enough.

I think it’s ready to go in.

That voice we all carry
the one that gets buried between tasks and doubts and noise
the birdsong,

it’s still there.

So, the Yana Bene poem, was a lot of fun to write. It’s in iambic pentameter,
a rhythm and a tuning fork
for anyone who feels quieted
for anyone who’s watched their imagination get repackaged, watered down,
sold back to them, or stolen.

The oven’s preheating.
Almost there.
Coming in hot.

You don’t need permission to start.
To write. To speak.
To bake.
To make something with your hands or your heart.

Just feed it.
Let it rise.
You’ll know when it’s ready to share.

She was right.
This is good.

You never know until you try.

Meanwhile, just a little something for later.
More is marinating.

Red onions, dreaming in vinegar. Pretty in pink.