nakedjen

Clyde's Cookies

Pandemic Times call for cookies.  Clyde's Cookies.  

Here's the recipe.

Here's the recipe:

RECIPE

1 cup dates (soak in hot water if using medjool)

1 cup almond flour

1/2 cup walnuts

2 Tbs Vanilla Extract

Vegan Chocolate Chips

METHOD Pulse dates and Almond flour together in food processor to make dough. Transfer to mixing bowl and add in chocolate chips and vanilla extract and walnuts (if you want those things), combine. Using a tablespoon, drop and press out on a cookie tray. Bake at 345 degrees for about 10 minutes (watch them carefully). Let rest and then EAT!

 

I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight

I sat in silent meditation as the tea swirled in my cup, contemplating the last few days, the last few weeks, the moments that have gotten a bit lighter as the days have found their way from deep darkness around the sun back into a bit more light. 

We were gathered together in a small group, searching for community in this city of strangers that so often pretends that we are not, for a ceremony.  A tea ceremony.  The tea on offer last night was a miner's tea from China.  Cooling to the body and, as I learned, engaging for the mind.  

Six rounds were poured. One after another gently served in beautiful clay cups.  I held mine and with each pour, more tea leaves gathered with a story in the bottom.  I know that there are wise crones that could have discerned the messages in those leaves for me, but what I found was a message from Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Go ahead and laugh.  I certainly did.  Loud and clear, I heard him say, "Ah, Nakedjen, this is the only life you've got."  

Wise and timely words from a dead man.  

****

The last time I really saw Philip Seymour Hoffman he could barely keep himself vertical.  It was far too early in the morning for either one of us, honestly, and a film he had both directed and starred in was screening at an ungodly hour at Sundance.  I'm not sure he actually went to sleep the night before and instead had chosen to acclimate to our thin air and altitude by just drinking all night.  He could have been absolutely any one of the characters he's played standing there, but he was also absolutely himself.  He was charming in his self-deprecation and was completely honest that he felt his film was just, well, not so good and thanked all of us profusely for sitting all the way to the end. 

I chatted with him briefly when he was here, again, the year he died.  I asked him if he was drinking enough water? Altitude sickness, you know?  He laughed his laugh and told me drinking water wasn't the problem.  He shuffled his way, I wandered mine.  That was a strange Sundance year for me for a whole host of other reasons, but I still mark it as the year we said goodbye. 

****

My last few months have found me struggling with time.  With age. With love. With relationships. With the masks that we wear.  
Self-medication can take so many forms and can cause harm in our lives in such varied ways.  The devil in our own hearts is sometimes a mistress whose lies are far sweeter and nicer to hear than the hard truths we're tasked with facing about ourselves.  So we eat the pecan pie doused with bourbon while sitting on the couch in the dark with a dog in our lap and hide under our blanket and believe that it might not be such a bad way to disappear.  

****

Then the light hits you square between your eyes. Brightly. 

You put on your love goggles that you remember you actually do own. 
You get some fresh air. The dog stops snoring and wags his tail and reminds you that walks in the woods are good for you, too.  You say yes to an invitation. 
You actually get out of your pajamas, extract yourself from the bottom of the couch, make no excuses, stay sober. 
A dead man finds his way into the bottom of your cup and reminds you that this is the only life you've got and a smile finds its way to the corner of your frown.

I'm not making promises about tomorrow. Today, I'm showing up for the living. 

There's More Than One Way To Have It All

 

"There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors."

 

• What I am reading   Proving that everything that is old is always new again.  Or, perhaps I just got really bored and stopped paying attention and this industry never actually died.  I'm sure there's at least one person who remembers when I worked for Camera Cafe.  I knew this world. It actually was part of the impetus behind #nakedfridays and my own wish for everyone to love themselves as they are.  I'm not surprised that the world is dangerous.  It was then, it can only be more so now.  We forget that people are actually HUMAN BEINGS. 
•   
• What I am eating  I have to make something to take to a party.  Who doesn't like chocolate and caramel?  I mean, some people obviously do not, but I'm pretty certain this will just disappear and I won't have to deal with bringing home leftovers. 

• What I am Listening To Stella is missing her brother. I'm thinking she might even need a heating pad with a heartbeat in it, if I can find such a thing.  She used to sleep wrapped around him and now, well, now she sleeps with her head burrowed under her blankets. Times are tough.  The music helps. 

• What I am watching   Feeding my Gilmore Girls habit. However, it's even better because Amy is not constrained, has a far bigger budget and, well, we get to go on a deep dive without commercials.  Stella joins me on the couch for every episode. Also, the New York Times gives us this fab list of reading material to add to the fun.  

• What I am thinking about The money quote: “I hope — I pray — we don’t have to use this fund,” DeAngelis said. “But odds are we will.”  
  
  What they do not really mention in this article is that the State of Colorado is creating a 501(c), based on the generosity of others, to take care of victims of mass tragedy in their state.  While I know that we're human and we all respond with caring hearts when mass tragedy happens, what bothers me most here is that why not also fund this fund by collecting additional dollars from the sales of guns?  Maybe?? Or does that cross some line drawn in the sand.  Or even with additional fees for gun licenses?  And, yes, I know that most mass tragedies occur at the hands of people who probably had illegal access to guns in the first place.  However, I'm a big believer in helping to make the entire community (in this case gun owners) take responsibility.  
  
  If you're going to need a FUND for the victims of Mass Tragedy and you want people to donate to fund the fund in advance of the tragedy that you know is inevitably going to happen, why not also ask for money from the makers of the guns that will probably also contribute to the tragedy.  It just seems like common sense to me. 

• What I am really feeling: Like I want to throw up. Pleasant, I know. However, it's the truth. And I'd like to think when I read this however long from now in the future that I'll perhaps not feel like throwing up because things will have somehow sorted themselves out.  A girl can hope. 

It's time #UTAH. This plant is medicine and with regulation could provide help to millions of patients that are currently using far more harmful drugs that do not actually work well for them.

Let's do this.

Sign the petition and at least allow the people a chance to vote for a choice.

www.utahpatients.org

Adding this here, because it is pertinent information and those who find their way here may appreciate it: Seniors Turn to Medical Marijuana 

Still grateful...

If you had told me in the summer of 1995, on that August day, when Jerry Garcia died, and my whole world crashed down around me and I thought that the songs could not longer be sung that in the very late spring of 2017 I would find myself standing barefoot in the grass on a hill in Salt Lake City dancing and singing out loud with a twelve year old boy and his professor father who have their hearts all tied up with mine and who call me their own, I would have wiped my crying eyes, tilted my head sideways like a small puppy, and told you to eat another wacky cookie because, well, Jerry was dead and the music had stopped and there was no one left for my heart to love and no way I was ever going to be in Utah.

It's funny how life finds other plans for your foolish heart while you're busy living it.

Wednesday night I shook my hips to Sugaree with that small child who shares his heart with mine and he smiled and he laughed and he has asked me if he can please, please, please go to another Grateful Dead concert. Yes, well, Jerry may still be dead, but he absolutely loved his very first concert experience. At one point he asked me if every single Deadhead just knows one another and I explained to him that, well, yes, we kind of all do because it's like one, large, very happy hippy family. 

My professor asked me if I was going to dance through the entire show? I explained that, well, yes, I might. The set list was a bit mixed up (for my very picky particular tastes), but I have to admit that they played well and I specifically at one point said, aloud, "Well, it would be really great if they played Masterpiece next...." and then, yes, they did just that.  Thank you, Bobby. You made my little heart explode in that moment.

I loved sharing every single tiny and big and special moment with those two who hold my own heart so very gently and deeply in theirs. Even the set break was magical in my own very Nakedjen way and that filled my heart with glee.  Utah served up a perfect evening for a Dead show. The crowd showed up, the band showed up and we created a very tangible new family memory. 

I am still and always forever grateful. 

*****

As a quick addendum to this story: When we fell into bed late that night (it was actually more like 1:30 a.m) my professor turned to me and said, "You actually DID this every single day for like YEARS of your life? Night after night?" And I sighed, happily, and said, "Well, yes. Pretty much. Until the music stopped."

"I don't know how you did it?!"

"It's the music and the family and all those love bubbles..." xo

Some Things Never Change

Remember when they took all the Kombucha off the shelves of all the stores across the land and all of us who identify as hippies thought we were all going to die?

Maybe you weren't someone who drank kombucha back then? Maybe you were hadn't joined the cult, yet? Maybe you thought to yourself, "Who pays $4 for a bottle with a jellyfish floating in it that tastes like fizzy vinegar and then actually drinks it instead of throwing it right into the garbage?" 

Well, that would be me.

Cult leader, Nakedjen. Who created a blizzard of special snowflakes when that special fizzy vinegar went missing from the shelves. 

Do you know that now they make BEET KOMBUCHA? I bet you already did know this. Because, you're part of the cult. You're drinking it and you've been waiting for this moment to tell me that you imbibe on the fizzy goodness every single day and...."YOU HAVE NEVER FELT BETTER!"

Salt Lake City, the land where all good things eventually do show up, now actually not only has multiple varieties of kombucha available, but we even have GROWLERS of kombucha available and, get this, we even have kombucha available ON TAP!! My god, people. It's like we might, some day, be like Portland. The dispensaries are coming. Just don't tell the people down at Temple Square.

No, seriously. I think they may be. It's a revenue thing. 

In the meantime, though, let's all just be thankful that the goodness is back on the shelves (it has been for a while, I know, I'm just back to talking about it) AND...shall we also be grateful that in some states you can freely participate in the self-care for the resistance by other means you may find necessary, as well.

Whatever it takes, people. 

I'm here to support you. With love. Always with love.