It's my belief that we live in an existential state of incompleteness and imperfection, seeing, hearing, understanding and responding to the flow of life-around-us and life-within-us only partially and sporadically.  Once in awhile we get in sync, but mostly we are in a state of unsteadiness and paradoxically are "saved" when we radically trust we will keep on going even when we teeter on the brink of utter confusion and down-heartedness.

My roasted pepper soup

This is what I did:  I roasted two orange peppers under the broiler (after washing, seeding and quartering them and flattening them.)  I put them on a cookie sheet under the broiler on the second to top rack and left there until they were nicely charred.  Then I put the pepper pieces in a small stainless steel bowl and covered that with Saran wrap so the pepper pieces could steam for about ten minutes), allowing me to remove the charred skins easily. After removing the skins I coarsely chopped the peppers.  While the peppers were either roasting or steaming I finely chopped up about 1/3rd of a medium onion and two cloves of garlic- a small amount of these went into the ranch dressing for salad I also made.  I also boiled a small whole  potato until it was fork-tender, and peeled it, setting it aside.  The first items I cooked were the onions in aboout 3 tablespoons to 1/4th cup of olive oil over very low heat (did not want to burn the onion) until the onion was soft.  Toward the end of cooking the onion I added the garlic, still keeping the temp quite low.  Then I added in the pepper, raising the burner temp at this pointcooking it all for a few more minutes.  I then added a coarsely chopped and seeded small tomato and  8 oz of low sodium chicken broth and brought the mixture up to to a boil.  At this point I added the potato, which I had cut into a dice of about 1/2 inch.  After the mixture had boiled for a couple of minutes, I turned the heat down very low, with the pot psrtially coverd, so the soup could simmer (for 20 to 30 minutes) and added a little salt (a shake or so) and a nice turning of black  pepper.  Every so often I stirred and tasted.  Toward the end of the cooking I about a teaspoon of herbs de Provence, my go-to herb.  Then I blended this mixture in my blender.  At this point I warmed about 1/3rd cup of whole milk in the micro and spooned some of the soup mixture into the milk to temper it (gradually bringing it up to thé soup's température béfore pouring that milk/soup mixture back into the soup, which I heated a little more.   This amount of soup will give you two smallish servings, which can be garnished with several different items...we used shredded Parmesan cheese.  With the soup we had some wonderful puglia  bread (so chewy and nutty-tasting) cold, sliced chicken basil sausage (from last night), and a simple green salad, dressed with home-made ranch dressing.  We cut up strawberries for dessert.  Please feel free to use this "recipe!"

A passing

She had always yearned to live by the water.  She would be piercingly reminded of this when they traveled from Portland to Seattle by train passing for a luxuriant half hour from Olympia to Tacoma on the grey, silent South Sound with McNeil Island, home of an old federal prison, heaving it's black green body out of the stillness of the water. If it was a lucky ride they would pass the whole way with their sight unhindered by a train hurling south, and they would pass by the graceful span of the new Point Defiance Bridge, then through a tunnel and and then pass the Port of Tacoma with its freighters lolling in the waters, its shipping cranes, its inescapable graffiti on the bunches of rail cars and warehouses, and then the train would leave the Sound and her desire for life lived at water's edge would evaporate once again.

Running into Hemingway

I have a correction of one of those maddening typos: I wrote "Hemingway,s going to write" or something like that. It should have been "Hemingway's struggle to write."

Perfect beach

Where else can one experience such splendid happiness than at a perfect beach?

Sleepless on Maui