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Seasonal eating

March 4, 2021 by bobleckridge

The first white asparagus of the season are arriving. The main lunchtime news had an item about the white asparagus from the “Landes” region yesterday, showing the first harvest. This is one of the most impressive differences for me about coming to live in South West France and it’s about food. Firstly, before I came here I don’t remember the annual seasonal arrival of any foodstuffs feeling like an “event”. I’m not even sure I could tell you what were the main seasons for anything in Scotland. But there are a number of distinct foods which appear seasonly here in France. Secondly, I don’t remember the seasonal arrival of any foodstuff being covered by the national news. Both of these phenomena are just normal here.

So, here we are in March and suddenly it’s the beginning of the asparagus season. First of all, the white asparagus. This season will only last until June so you’ve just over three months to enjoy it. In other words, it’s not just about the seasonal arrival of a particular fruit or vegetable, it’s that the season is exactly what you’d expect – about a quarter of a year – then you need to wait till this time next year until the local, fresh, harvest appears again.

I took this photo a few years ago at one of the markets in Aix en Provence. I’d never seen that much asparagus before! Well, I’ve seen displays like this quite often in different parts of France since then (always, of course, at this time of year). In fact, in the weekly market in Rochefort, which isn’t too far from where I live, I heard a vendor behind a display like this shouting “Aspergez-vous!” – which would translate as “Asparagus yourself!” – nope, I don’t think you’d find that verb in a French dictionary. It was just his personal creativity and enthusiasm on display.

I don’t think I’d ever tasted asparagus before I came to live in France, and I certainly didn’t know there was both white asparagus and green asparagus. But I love it now – both kinds! I love it simply boiled with lemon juice drizzled onto it on the plate, and I love the white especially in a risotto. What a treat!

So here’s what I’ve learned from this experience – that when you eat food in its season, food which hasn’t travelled too many kilometres, food which hasn’t been processed, it tastes superb. Not only that, eating that food becomes something of an event. To eat it when it arrives in the market in season you experience a kind of excitement, a sort of thrill, which is added to the actual taste of that food. Applying this principle enhances my enjoyment of the food I eat, and when it comes to diets and “healthy eating”, enjoyment is not a supplementary option. It should be at the heart of the decision making. (This is a reverse to that old adage about the best diet being the one where “if it tastes good, spit it out!”)

I’m now more aware of variety in my diet. I’m more aware of how far the food has travelled. I’m more aware of wanting to choose what’s been produced locally where I can – and I’m happy to expand that concept of “local” depending on what the food is! (Corsican clementines are another of my all time favourite seasonal foods for example).

OK, so let me be clear. I don’t eat ONLY what is seasonal and local. But I have an awareness of those factors and I’ll deliberately choose them when I can. And yes, I know, not everyone has the same culture as the one I’m experiencing here. France has markets with local and seasonal produce really in every town….even quite small towns. That isn’t the case back in Scotland, and it might not be the case where you live. However, the culture of local small producer markets was always one of my favourite things about France when I used to come on holiday here and knowing that certainly influenced my decision to emigrate and to come and live here. (I emigrated to live in a different culture, a different language and a different climate)

How is it where you live? Are you able to access seasonal foods? If you are, I really recommend it. And, oh, yes, I’m pretty sure that a diet with plenty of seasonal and local plant based foods in it is a healthy diet. But I don’t think there is any one good diet which is best for everyone. I think it’s great we are different and we can make different choices.

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Integrating wildness and organisation

March 3, 2021 by bobleckridge

This is the Kamo River which flows through Kyoto. I took this shot because I liked the colours of the trees on the bank, and the reflection in the river of the clouds floating on a blue sky. I still like it for those reasons. However, I’ve found that, in the many years since I took this photo, that I’ve returned to it over and over again. I’ve used it to illustrate what I think are some of the most fundamental lessons of the universe.

On one bank you see trees, and a pathway running between the trees and the river. The trees are diverse. They are different species, different shapes, and different colours. For me they represent diversity and a “natural” habitat. You could argue they represent “wildness” – that universal force which continuously strives for growth, difference and diversity. It’s a “multiplicity”, not a “mono-culture”.

On the other bank you see houses, hotels and offices. This is the built environment. It is planned, constructed and ordered. Yes, I agree, the buildings are not all the same, and there is a saving grace in the Kyoto architecture. In some parts of other cities the buildings really are “cookie cutter” in their shape and construction. Let’s say this represents a second universal force – that which organises and builds.

Thomas Berry, in his “The Great Work”, describes these two forces beautifully and points out that an excess of “wildness” produces destruction, chaos and disorder….things can fall apart, whilst an excess of “discipline” produces too tight limits, narrow boundaries and a level of organisation which makes life impossible. I see this story represented in this photo.

Right down the middle of these two forces we see a calm, harmonious, “integrated”, flowing river. This is the “sweet spot”, that place where the interplay of these two great forces produces both Life and beauty. In this photo, there is even a bridge connecting the two. The bridge is a connector, and it’s through the creation of “mutually beneficial bonds between well differentiated parts” that we experience “integration”, harmony and growth.

You can think of a life journey sailing down this river, sometimes veering off towards more organisation, and sometimes off to the other bank to find diversity and wildness. As we navigate our way between these two opposites, we experience a full life, a rich life, a life of depth, meaning and purpose, a life of beauty and joy.

The final thing I’d say about the universal lesson I see in this photo is that it encourages us to appreciate the “whole”, not to judge one bank as “good” and the other as “bad”. After all, if we only had one bank, we wouldn’t have a river……we wouldn’t have a life.

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Go play

March 2, 2021 by bobleckridge

One day I was walking the streets of Kyoto and I saw this…….a game of Go, set up at the side of the road, for anyone to play. I don’t play Go but I thought it was amazing to see this. I suppose I’ve seen public chess boards and outsized chess pieces in other places, but this seemed a first to me.

Board games are very popular in France, where they are called “jeux de sociétié”(which would translate into “society games”) and sales of board games have apparently taken off spectacularly here. Card games are also very popular in France, although it’s a long time since I’ve seen a group of old men sitting at a cafe playing cards (I expect that will come back though)

There has also been a tremendous growth of interest in chess this last year, although, as I understand it, that is being put down, largely, to the extremely popular, fabulous, Netflix series, “The Queen’s Gambit” (if you haven’t seen that yet, I highly, highly, recommend it)

I also read recently that a study has shown that young boys who play video games are registering lower degrees of anxiety and psychological stress during the pandemic. Nice to read a more positive report about gaming.

So, maybe this pandemic has turned out to be an opportunity for us to rediscover the value of play in our lives – whether that be board games, card games, video games, or simply the unexpected benefit of young parents finding more time to play with their children. I know a lot of concern and emphasis has been on the difficulties associated with home schooling but I also know that many young parents now working from home are finding that their quality of relationships with their children has increased, at least in part due to the fact that commuting has diminished so much and spending that “found time” playing with the kids is such a delight to many.

So, how about you? Have you been playing more over the course of this last year? Did you take up chess? Are you enjoying your new “play times” with your children?

We shouldn’t underestimate the value of play.

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Slow down and play

March 1, 2021 by bobleckridge

One day, as I was walking to the railway station to go to work, I saw this little guy apparently checking out surfing! Ok, I know, it’s actually the stick from an ice lolly but, hey, to a snail, maybe that looks like a surf board? I paused to take a photo, smiled, then continued on my way to work. But this photo still makes me smile every time I look at it.

It reminds me of two of the most important things in life – slowing down and playing.

I emigrated from Scotland to France when I retired in 2014, and I now live in the Charente. This region of South West France has a snail as part of its logo. There is a strong culture here of slowing down, staying calm, and enjoying the everyday. Slowing down is what I had to do to take this photo. I was on my way to work, and for most of us, that’s something we do somewhat hurriedly. After all, I had a train to catch. However, stopping for a moment, getting my camera out of my bag and taking the photo, pulled me right out of my head full of “to do” lists and schedules, right back into the here and now. That’s what slowing down does. It gives us the opportunity to be present, and to savour the moment. It gives us the opportunity to pay attention to reality, right here and right now, instead of surfing across the face of life with our head in the clouds. It also prompts you to reflect and consider. I find that when I pause, or slow down, and notice what is around me, that whatever I’ve noticed lingers for a bit. It affects my mood for a bit. It stimulates a line of thought that I carry forward…..on that particular day, into the train, where I got out my notebook and jotted down some thoughts about the “slow movement” – “slow cities”, “slow food“, “slow medicine“.

The second thing is that this is just fun. It’s amusing to think of a snail taking up surfing. It’s about play. The neuroscientist, Panskepp, describes seven fundamental emotions we can find in many living creatures (including humans!). The three “negative” ones, are the ones we are all probably familiar with – Rage, Fear and Panic. Interestingly, though, he names four “positive” ones – Seeking, Care, Lust and Play. (read this interview with him in the “Journal of Play” – yes, there really is such a thing!) Play turns out to be a really important driving force, stimulating curiosity, experimentation, imagination and creativity.

You only need to spend a few minutes with a toddler to see how important play is. They press every button (yes, including your buttons!), as they explore what each object can do, and what they can do with each object. As they get a little older you see children totally absorbed in imaginary worlds….whether playing with toys, with found objects, or with other children. Give a child a piece of paper and some crayons or paint and they don’t stop to wonder if their art skills are up to the challenge of creating something, they just start to draw and to splash the colours around. How much do children like dressing up? Building spacecraft, houses, vehicles from cardboard boxes (thank you Amazon)? Play is absolutely fundamental. Pansepp has studied this in depth, and much of his work has been on the way animals play. He’s gone a long way to help us understand the importance of play and thank goodness for that, because otherwise we are likely to dismiss it as “childish”. It isn’t.

So, here’s my recommendation for this week – follow the surfing snail’s example – slow down and play a little!

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The breath of life

February 28, 2021 by bobleckridge

I love this photo of a tree in winter. Without its leaves you can see how the tree has a classic structural pattern – a pattern which we call “branching” – no doubt in reference to where we see this most – in trees!

This is a pattern we see in many, many places. You can see how water runs down the mountainsides in small streams which gather together into larger streams, then rivers, until one big river makes its way down to the sea. You can also see it at the coast where rivers form an estuary. You see it in root structures under the ground, as well as in bushes and trees above ground. And, perhaps more for me because of my lifetime work as a doctor, you see this pattern throughout the human body – in our circulatory system, in our lymphatic system, in our urinary system, nervous system, our liver, and especially in our lungs.

So when I see an image like this I see something “universal” – something fundamental. It gives me a glimpse of some of the underlying structure of the world. And I find it beautiful. I love how seeing this in the tree brings to mind all those other locations – out in the countryside and within the human body – so that the single tree elicits a broader and deeper reality.

Mind you, we mustn’t get carried away and think that this is the only kind of structure we find in the universe. Of course it isn’t. It’s just one of THE main ones. Equally, or maybe even to a greater extent, we uncover the patterns of networks and webs.

And in those places where we find a beautiful merging of both of these core forms.

Deleuze and Guattari clarified this best for me when they described these two structures as “arboreal” and “rhizomal”.

Take a look around you and see where you can spot them. It’ll help you to become more aware of how often you use these structures when you think, and when you try to make sense of your world.

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Limits

February 27, 2021 by bobleckridge

This pandemic is giving us a really clear experience of living within limits. We experience that as a series of constraints. It’s frustrating and uncomfortable. We want to be free, don’t we? Free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without a care in the world.

Wouldn’t that be bliss?

But, wait, isn’t that kind of naive? Because there is no such thing as living without limits. We are never free to do absolutely anything we could imagine or desire. That’s a fantasy. Or even a delusion.

I found myself thinking that as I looked at this old photo of a thin layer of cloud hugging the contours of Ben Ledi.

I have just read “Ou suis-je?” by Bruno Latour where he describes some of the limits we live. One of those is what scientists call “the critical zone” – which is the space in which Life can exist. It’s an astonishingly narrow space. You can probe down into the Earth about ten kilometres and you’re down to rock where nothing lived, and you can soar up into Space about ten kilometres and beyond that the atmosphere becomes so thin nothing can live there.

The actual numbers aren’t that important. What is amazing is that all of Life exists within a very, very narrow zone. I don’t know if you’ve seen a photo of the Earth from Space which captures the thinness of the atmosphere. Let me find it for you.

There you are.

Well that’s the image which came to my mind as I looked at my photo of Ben Ledi.

We all live within these very narrow limits. We share, with every other living organism, this astonishingly thin “critical zone”.

The fact that living with limitations has become such an intense experience for so many during the pandemic has woken us up. We live in One interconnected world, a world of precious and limited resources. Now we have to learn to change the way we live – to change away from consumption and destruction to sustainability and creativity.

The pandemic has also shone a strong light on inequality showing us, perhaps more clearly than ever, that too many people are struggling to live with financial and social limitations which make them most vulnerable to serious illness and death.

So maybe now is a good time to think about the reality of living with limits and start to make the changes which increase the chances of better lives for more of us, rather than keeping our eyes closed and hoping for the impossible.

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Fitting in and standing out

February 26, 2021 by bobleckridge

“Don’t draw attention to yourself!” “Keep your head down!” “Don’t stick out like a sore thumb!”

Social pressure to conform.

I bet you’ve heard a few of those instructions before. Or others which say pretty much the same thing. The basic idea is that to be safe you need to hide yourself away. Isn’t it a common experience at school that the kid who is really different gets picked on? You can see where all this advice comes from…..as this chameleon demonstrates, disappearing into your environment is a good way to avoid predators, and so stay alive!

But we aren’t chameleons. While there are real advantages to “fitting in” and conforming, every single one of us has a strong sense of Self, and deep feelings of uniqueness. There is, after all, nobody who is “just like you”. The truth is we need to do both – we need to function well socially, which means building healthy mutually beneficial relationships with others, and we also need to develop our autonomy and our self-expression.

The social powers of human beings are incredible, and, as a species, they are responsible for a lot of our survival and development….our success, if you like. But, equally, is there any greater diversity possible between members of the same species as their is between two humans? I’m not sure there is. We’ve evolved such complex nervous systems, such sophisticated bodies and brains. We have consciousness, imagination, language. We just can’t stop ourselves from co-creating and from expressing our uniqueness.

I wrote a book based on “and not or” because I think this is perhaps the most important characteristic we have – the ability to handle paradoxes. It’s built in. The cortex of the human brain is divided into two almost equal parts, with each part (hemisphere) engaging with the world in its own distinct way……the right seeking connections, the new, relationships and an understanding of the raw whole, whilst the left focuses, analyses, labels and categorises. One half giving priority to living relationships, the other most at home with objects and machines which can be measured and controlled.

It’s the same then with conformity and uniqueness. We do actually need both, because we need to be aware of our uniqueness and self-fulfillment involves fully expressing that uniqueness, and we equally need to form mutually beneficial relationships with others, which involves finding points of connection, shared values and desires, tolerance and respect.

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Not really separate

February 25, 2021 by bobleckridge

When I look at this photo I think “This is what life feels like, and this is what life really is”.

What I mean is this – look at those bubbles (I’m going to guess that when you looked at this photo the first thing you noticed were the bubbles). Each one looks perfect, and perfectly separate from the rest. Each bubble is distinct, different in size, different in location, different in the exact way it reflects the light, and also, although you can’t see this in a still photo, each moving along its own distinct, and different path (there are hints of that in the flows of water currents which you can see creating that marbling effect between the bubbles).

We feel like this. Separate, distinct, different. We feel, and we are, unique. There are no two of us with identical characteristics, identical stories, living in exactly the same time and place having exactly the same experiences. We have a membrane which seems to separate us from the rest of the world. On the outside, that membrane is our skin. On the inside it’s mucous membranes lining our lungs, our digestive system and our urinogenital system. Inside, and within, that, is our immune system, a distributed network of cells and chemicals which recognise “foreign” substances and protect us from their potential harm.

But actually, we are not separate. Those membranes are porous. They are not impermeable. And that’s for a very important reason. They enable us to connect. They enable us to interact with others and with the rest of the planet. They enable us to ingest nutrients, inhale oxygen, expel waste materials and exhale carbon dioxide, amongst many other exchange processes. So, to see them as simple barriers or borders is wrong. They do distinguish what is “me” from what is “not me”, but they enable my life by enabling these, and multiple other connections and flows.

Look again at these bubbles. Where do they come from and where do they go? They emerge from the water itself, and they dissolve back into the water they emerged from. So do we. We emerge within the rest of this “natural” world, come into existence for a brief period of time, then we dissolve back into the great web of being from which we came. In the part between birth and death, that part we call life, we don’t disconnect from that great web. We live in communion with it. We live as part of it, not apart from it.

Life is flow – flow of molecules and chemicals, flow of energy, flow of information. Our existence is a delicate but distinct dynamic interplay of those flows, creating the appearance of separateness and difference, but never disconnecting from, or existing apart from, the whole.

Our lives are distinct and beautiful, but they are not separate.

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Why do we open up?

February 24, 2021 by bobleckridge

Why do we open up? Why do we “unfurl”? As I wrote the other day, my word of the year is “épanouissement” – which means to flourish, to blossom, to fulfil – we follow that path by uncurling, unfolding, unfurling, just like these ferns. And why do we do that? Because, just like these ferns suggest – it enables us to connect.

Opening up, vastly increases our chances of making meaningful, healthy, nourishing connections. Closing down does the opposite.

There are times we need to enfold ourselves, to close down, curl up like a hedgehog for defence, but actually, much, much more, we need to do the opposite. Because without making connections we die.

We do not exist in isolation. Even if it feels like we are being asked to do exactly that during this pandemic, what we’ve discovered is that it isn’t possible. None of us can live without the vast world wide web of others…..without whom we wouldn’t have shelter, food, water, comfort or care. It’s the natural state of affairs – connectedness. And connections aren’t worth much unless they act as channels of exchange – of materials, energies and information.

When I look at this photo, I don’t just see two ferns unfurling, opening up, but I see two ferns touching gently, almost as if they are having their first kiss.

Isn’t this what we need to grow in our world? Not grow our consumption of “stuff”, nor grow our production of waste. We don’t need to grow our destruction of ecosystems. We’ve been doing that all too well. It’s time to change course, isn’t it? To grow our connections, our “integrated” connections – the ones which enable mutually beneficial relationships to thrive. We need to grow our capacity for care and creativity. We need to grow our passion for love, tolerance and acceptance. And to do all that we need to open both our minds and our hearts.

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Normal isn’t fixed

February 23, 2021 by bobleckridge

At one point in my career I flew to Tokyo to teach a number if times over a ten year period. I loved it. Japan was THE most different culture and society I had ever experienced at that point, and when you are somewhere so different from what you are used to, then you notice things which might otherwise have passed you by.

One morning I was in a coffee shop for breakfast and it struck me as strange that I, like pretty much everyone else in the shop, was sitting drinking my coffee alone. In fact I took this photo of a woman who was sitting on a bar stool facing a wall – I guessed that they had decorated the wall with such a lovey photo of a flower to make it more pleasing to sit there with your back to the rest of the room. I tended to seek out a seat next to a window, but it was a tiny coffee shop so there wasn’t much choice.

Now, as I look at this photo again, in the midst of this pandemic with coffee shops in France having been closed since October, it doesn’t seem so strange any more. I can imagine a new norm emerging where people choose to sit more separately than they used to. Maybe not, but it just seems that “normal” isn’t “normal” any more!

What will “normal” be like later this year, and into next year? I guess none of us know. But I do remember how odd it seemed to me that so many people went about their ordinary business in Tokyo wearing masks all the time, and I sure don’t see that as odd any more. Will that become part of our new norm? Here in France people have always had a degree of physical intimacy which was significantly beyond what I’d experienced in Scotland. The normal greeting would be to “faire la bise” – to kiss on both cheeks (for someone you knew anyway!) Well, that’s all gone. Will it return? Or will keeping a social distance become the “new normal”?

I genuinely don’t know. Part of me thinks this pandemic is changing us forever, and, after all, there is never any “going back” in life. But part of me also thinks that people will “revert to form” at the very first opportunity, and rapidly re-establish their pre-Covid habits and behaviours.

All that raises the question of what we are going to do collectively……how we are going to live together having gone through this experience. After all, a lot has become more obvious, not least how interconnected we are on this planet. The massive inequalities have become clearer. Is there political and Public will to tackle that? People who were pretty much disregarded have now been shown to be “essential workers” (which does get me wondering who the non-essential workers are……I’ll leave you to think about that one for yourself!). Will we change our priorities about Public Health and Social Care? Will we change the way we look after our elderly and vulnerable? Perhaps even more importantly will be turn against mass consumption and so called “growth” to put our efforts into tackling the big problems of climate change and loss of biodiversity which are probably at the root of the pandemic anyway?

There are plenty of reasons to hope that “normal” has changed, will change, and that we will not even attempt to hang on to the ways of living which got us into this mess in the first place.

Thank goodness “normal is not fixed”.

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