Sometimes, I am afraid to write.

Pease Porridge; hot, cold or a season old.

You know what you’ve written before. All of it.

Even if you have forgotten when or where or how or to whom you wrote something, it’s in the stew.

Even if you haven’t followed up on the trail, there are words you won’t forget. They will haunt you in some way. If it’s important, it will stick-to-the-ribs like a hearty chili. It’ll keep stirring the pot.

For today’s recipe, the main ingredient is an undated letter I found just now, one I wrote to myself. I know it was “in the moment” and I don’t know what precipitated that moment. Or this particular moment, either, actually. I only know I found it now, and that as the notebook it is contained within having been a gift, the letter is no more than a year old. It is, however, Pease Porridge nine days old. Or nine months.

It was found in a notebook, of course, of which the cover features a tumble of rabbits and it is filled with delightfully dotted pages; the kind of space in which you decide how the lines will go, a less prescribed place to spill the tea, as it were. (It’s green tea today in fact; keeping the coffee to a single morning cup as I have to sing tonight.) (I nod to my appreciation and affection for that which suggests action or presumption, but also leaves room for interpretation and inspiration, as these dots indubitably do.)

You write something, and you sometimes judiciously put it aside. (Conversely, the words may judiciously set themselves aside.) A lot of information can be found within the words and the spaces between the letters and the words; so much space and latitude makes language; the breath and breadth gives it spice, nuance and life. Language can consume and blossom in a timeframe of rest from its presence; and for me, that’s assimilation space, it’s my simmer time. It’s a form of cadence and punctuation to which I am finally becoming accustomed. Space, double space, tab, return. Sometimes, it is so great a time later that I return, (or that perhaps someone else returns to the communication, as a reader/dinner guest.) Then, the pot gets a stir. Adjust the heat. Tilt the lid…

That space, all the spaces, can create understanding and approachability. Perhaps once upon a time, you yourself had a download; a space in which a little nugget of wisdom dropped in, but you you didn’t yet understand why the heck you would say that or who you would say it to. Some time later, you knew exactly who it was for, or you felt the satisfying click of assimilation. This letter I found today is like that click. It reflects thoughts that needed space. Well, that’s so much like me. And, it’s so much like this very span of my life where I find I am seeking to create (and am creating!) more spaciousness. Life is nothing if not a hologram within a hologram. Dots to connect, even. (Even as they are moving targets, some days.) Stir the pot.

I wonder too, and at once think it’s true that if it’s a good time for me to find the scribbled page, that perhaps it’s a good time to share it with you also, adding some freshly harvested word salad to your autumnal table. (Or, your springtime table. I don’t discriminate, but it’s getting notably chillier here in Michigan.) It’s probably really a mirepoix more than a salad, given the metaphor. I think I heard once that mirepoix really means “food for thought.” (That feels totally made up.)

So, this small scrawl of words that jumped out at me lies close to the (flavor) bone, daring me to pour more in and taste yet again. It hollers from the page, “caution: contents may be hot!” It means to be taken in, but I fight the urge to be ever concerned about getting a boo-boo. And the consequential boo-hoo. (I have been afraid of my own shadow for a very long time.)