mangolandia

<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } –>

dear fellow passengers

voyage is fractal. every space ship in every compart ment holds a flotilla of no-less-spaceships. and you’ve known all the pilots, or will.

I find myself wrapped up in interstate bus travel, enjoy the wilds and snows of connecticut and new york, the surprising springtime in boston, ahead of schedule and surely asking for a stern rebuke, and comfort and glory of travel itself, that precious time to ourselves, wherein we can discover whether we truly

enjoy

the company

we keep.

nothing like the metro north trains up the harlem line to the western tip of new york state, connecticut, and massachusettes, passing schoolchildren sledding and frozen swamps, whose barren trees poke out of their icy skirt, willfully demonstrating, it seems, that we have no idea how deep and tall they actually are. as a guest here, and a farmer, I wonder what people eat, if agriculture is possible in such climes, why – if indeed those scarred cones were once hale and productive apple trees – there aren’t still farmers coming out every wednesday to sell a new variety of apples they had been storing for

just

this

moment

winter apples and storage apples that don’t even ripen towards february. as it is, all the humans I know insist on shopping indoors, at big corporate organic supermarkets, where the apples come from washington or chile or new zealand. what ever happened to buying bulk in season? storage and preservation? shouldn’t there be a warehouse full of dirty local beets and cabbage and potatoes and carrots from earlier in the season, to buy 20 pound boxes of? isn’t that how we’re going to train people that you can always eat locally and of the land, that it’s not such a boogie fashion trend to breed new slivers of identity? are we talking about food or just another commodity?

the answer, of course, that the god’s always throw to us in times of need, is

MAPLE SYRUP

during my estancia with lizzie and baba (www.lizzieandbaba.com), the best music on either side of the mississippi, as far i’ve been concerned, we went out daily to harvest and drink the sweet coconut-water of the northern climes, cold as the driving snow, right from the tree. raw, unpasteurized, innocent of refineries and rbgh, non-gmo or anything but divine.

and then you can boil it, down down down to the 40:1 recommended ration (that’s 2.5 gallons to the cup) to get the hot sticky syrup that contains (I swear to the gods, all of them)

vainilla, butter, caramel, pine, butterscotch, rum

in every warm mouthful. maple syrup. it must be what these strange northeastern native survive upon for the winter season, because god knows there’s nothing else around but snow and firewood.

anyhow, back to the voyage at hand. fellow sojourner and truth-seeker

(responsible for these photos of our bicycle trip through india: http://mangolandia.org/photos/twopass/

)

TOMAS WERNER

TOMAS WERNER

(www.tomaswerner.com)

has departed his native slovakia and temporary asylum in mexico to run rough-shod over the north of amerika, by bus and photography, through the following states of the union:

NY-DC-VA-NC-SC-GA…..all the way to San Francisco

(which is a state)

He is a consummate artist and (easter) european. You will not be disappointed. Please host him on his travels, or at the least, send the modern de Toqueville a message of support (not more than 160 characters, please).

His phone number is: 347-574-6862

As for my own self, I’m in Boston for the week and entering the fog thereafter. Perhaps a weekend in DC in mid-march, and totally lack of clarity for April. I’ve started working for The Man again, a few hours a week, in the material form of two cool Michigan dudes based in San Cristobal (I can’t imagine a better look for The Man), so I may head back down there for a spell.

As always, tomorrow never knows, but the idea of actually living out a season on a farm calls to me deeply, and it’s unclear how long I can, or should, resist.

one love

many instruments,

ankurbhai

feb 20 / norfolk ct / usa / 2010
dear(est) friends

It’s an eventful life. The book reading in philadelphia went really well, with beautiful conversation around the book. I’m growing more comfortable with the idea of talking about this thing I did as if it has some interest to others. A dangerous comfort, perhaps.

Anyhow, I’m doing another reading here with my friends Lizzie and Baba in CT. It’s tuesday at 5-8 at their home. If you want to come, let me know, and I’ll give you the address.

If you are not in Connecticut for some reason (why? it’s where the action is. if by action we mean snow and lack of fresh fruit), then there is actually some kind of

LIVE (free or die)
TELEVISION
INTERNET
SHOW

that Lizzie and Baba do every Sunday. It’s called This Abundant Life, and I recently found out that I’m going to be on it, with or without a haircut it seems, this Sunday (tomorrow).

check it out here:
http://tiny.cc/W2UB8

(special guest ankur shah)

The fact that’s it’s LIVE (free or die) means that you can’t watch it later, I think. 7pm Eastern, 4pm Western. Fill in the blanks, Australia.

Apologies for the events-oriented nature of this email, more storytelling and some photography from Mexico lindo y querido coming next week. But I’m really delight for some measure of rural stability after the last three weeks in north american megapoli, and here I can wake up to the meditation, music, and woodstove that do me well.

one love
ankurbhai

ps never stray from the funk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHE6hZU72A4

Clearly I have no concept of fitting space time into linear and timely communiques, so I’m acknowledging that from the beginning, that my ratio of plane flights to reporting is abysmally high, and getting to the point of this straight up:

There is book reading in Philadelphia at 7pm at Wooden Shoe Books this Thursday February 18th. They contacted me after the reading at Bluestockings last summer, and I’m excited that we finally organized a day together. If you happen to be in or near Philadelphia, it would be great to see friendly/known faces in the audience, or if you think somebody might enjoy the event, please let them know.

Usually with book readings I try to get everybody’s name and a sense of what people want to hear about, there’s no predetermined sermon or anything. Although, sometimes, true to the name, I will read. And I take requests.

After that, I’ll likely be doing some other readings in Connecticut and maybe down in Baltimore next month, as part of my East Coast estancia. As they say, the hacienda must be built. Mexico was three trips in one and I have old napkins and Gandhian cotton paper full of stories and ruminations that I may or may not put together in the coming times.

It feels like I’ll be on the East Coast until May and I’m excited to visit the Beautiful people, so please send me an email if you’re down. And if you want to organize a reading in your hometown, that’s a great excuse as well. And I have a phone. And if I haven’t called you yet, it’s entirely my fault.

All love

Ankurbhai

Yesterday was the first of December, and I made my wish list. I have 24 more days in this bioregion of salmon and berries, this ancient nation of rainforests and rainshadows, enchanted forests of brassicas and sandy carrot armies.

Too many to name of course, as are the gifts and gratitudes always, but there is some writing, some painting, some producing and some publishing to be done. I’m hoping to have some our writing and photographs from the pilgrimage up to the ganga organized by the time I’m out of here, to have written a children’s story for a dear young friend, to be producing and offering Max’s pamphlet on the Apple, to plant dozens of trees on this tender piece of land (the lost mountain observatory), to have enough cash in my pocket to walk the earth for a few months more, to be inspired by a showing of Andy Goldsworthy’s _Rivers and Tides_, so I can walk through these woods with new eyes.

Thanksgiving was, as always, a grand success. We had nine people in the house most of the week, and every meal was a holiday splendor, full of delicious food (mostly from Nash’s) and music. Recipes and songs. Songbooks and Cookbooks. Blending together with our energies and smiles.

And what I’m really hoping for, personally, for this season, is to put together some sort of capstone, some sort of project that encapsulates much of what I’ve been seeking and finding across the world in the past few Whiles and Years. An offering to all those who have taught me, guided me, and supported me, an homage to that underground economy of the gift that lifts us all, without which the songbirds and clouds would refuse to inspire us, without which precipitation and evaporation alike would withhold their magic. Details to come as I work further, but as of now, I see it as both a conclusion to how I’ve been exploring, and a foundation for how I want to continue to explore.

There. And here. Yesterday, also, I went to the ocean, took a camera and some words with me. I’m not too accomplished with the movie-lite software this gentle computer offered me, so smile kindly when you watch it. And you might have to turn up the volume. It’s inspired by a song, Hold Me Now, by Matt Coffman.

the movie attempt:

http://www.mangolandia.org/video/iwentotheocean.wmv

overflowing gratitude
and
december sunshine,

ankurbhai

details and marketing:

a) now is a great time to buy lots of cookbooks and travelogues for your holiday friends. ten books are 101 dollars (shipping included). i leave town on december 24th. email, or call 360 683 5398

b) i will be in asheville, nc from dec 24 - 30, and in mexico thereafter. i have no plan fixe from mid-jan onwards, but am aiming to visit el salvador and mexico df.

c) there are some pictures of people and places around here

http://www.mangolandia.org/photos/late-november/

http://www.mangolandia.org/photos/december-one/

good morning. this morning, international inspirate and dj Aparna Kothary interviewed me about _cooking com bigode_ and _sometimes we walk alone_ on her radio show, naansense.

the link is here. the link is now.

http://wmucradio.com/stream_ripper/tue/Naansense_800_1000.mp3

i think i was on around half-way through, 9am eastern time. and, though it hasn’t finished loading yet, she asked me to request a song at the end, and i went for anything by Bootsy Collins, so that’s certainly more worthwhile than whatever i had to say…

love

ankurbhai

dear loyal friends

in an effort to make the cooking com bigode website more intelligible to all living beings, i have decided to add a page housing photographs of the general public cooking with moustaches.

now, let it be said that i am _Well Aware_ that some people don’t have moustaches. the moustaches in the photos do not have to be real. they can be, alternately:

: other peoples hair
: your own hair but not from your face
: dill or fennel greens
: rabbits feet keychains
: anything else

but what i am asking for is for _you_ to have a picture taken of you with a moustache AND one of the following

: cooking
: pretending to cook
: a pressure cooker
: a robot
: a knife
: a copy of the book

and most importantly for staying warm in a temperate climate…. if you don’t have a copy of the book, you are dearly invited to get one.

www.somethingconstructive.net/bigode

and, i know the holidays are approaching, and everybody loves giving cookbooks for the holidays, so do not hesitate to order 10 (ten) copies of the book to give away to everyone you love, at the incredibly discounted suggestion of $101 (the final one is for goodluck; shipping on big orders is still free)

nb: if you have an authentic and outrageous moustache, photo response to this email should be considered MANDATORY. send me an email of a picture of you with a moustache. horn. okay. please.

love
and
carrot/apple/ginger-juice blended with whole spinach and parsley to provide goodness and energy almost all morning long,

ankur

Humans! In India when speaking of our dead, the people say “she left the body” rather than “she died”. That is, there is a deep clarity — for me our subconscious patterns of speech reveal deeply the structure of how we think — about what death is, or as it has sometimes occurred to me, “the unreality of death”.

Krishna and Jesus are both pretty into this idea –

“For the soul there is neither birth nor death at any time. He has not come into being, does not come into being, and will not come into being. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain.”

“He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”

I’ll let you figure out the who’s whom, but the point is that many tribes and cultures have come up with elaborate rituals around the Leaving of the Body. Some are to gather together, some are to forcibly extract grief (mandatory wailing), and some are in the spirit of pure celebration.

In Mexico, Dia de Los Muertos is celebrated every year, on November 1st and 2nd, to pray for and remember our dead. I’ve been working with a group in Sequim for the past few years, to put on a Dia de Los Muertos fundraising dinner for the last few years. Last year, we served enchiladas.

Now it’s all beginning to come together. You see?

Fellow and erstwhile tripper and professional Reed Aubin recently informed me he is working with a group of students from El Colegio to build Day of the Dead altars for the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. In the spirit of inspiration, I suggest to everybody in the family that we do the same. Maybe we could work on it over the next few weeks, or maybe we could have a party the day before Halloween, make some enchiladas, build offerings together, remember, laugh, and cry over our dead.

You’ve got to do this thing. This idea of memory and creation: the holding and releasing. It happens one way or another. There’s no other way. The skeletons and enchiladas and dioramas are just a tool to help you get on with it.

I think it’s important for those of us still in the body. Ask you family floating around you. They know.

And if you do, or don’t, you might want to try these awesome enchiladas I made for my mom today:

PUMPKIN ENCHILADAS

woke up to 22 degree frost on the grass i scythed this morning and it’s very clear that fall just ended. probably can still get some more blackberries before the rain returns, but it’s basically time to turn towards that pumpkin.

* filling

double-hands-full of chantrelles we picked last week, brushed lightly to remove dirt, and sliced into quarters, or until each piece achieved the volume of a baby carrot.
1 small leek, chopped into thin rings, up to the beginning of the light green section.

saute the chantrelles on low heat until they sweat out a little water. ours have been pretty dry so not much comes out. and, really, you can use any mushroom. they don’t have to be chantrelles and you didn’t have to pick them. but you’ll enjoy it more, likely, if you did. add the chantrelles to the bowl with the leeks, squirt some olive oil (from your fancy ex-relish bottle full of olive oil you keep next to the stove to be cool), and return the shrooms with the leeks to the pan. saute on low head until the leeks are sweet and tender enough to eat. the mushrooms should be plump and tender. if you’re worried about difference in cooking times between your mushrooms and the leeks, you can do them separately and combine at the end.

(salt)

* rice

i did plain white rice today. it was sweet and delicious.

* sauce

i used half of a pumpkin about 2/3 the size of my head. try to measure that. hah. you can cut it roughly into slices and steam it until the peel comes off easily, then (you guessed it) easily take the peel off and boil it with an inch of water and some of the tougher green tops from your leek. you can also add an old carrot, some celery, half an onion, and a clove or two of garlic. basically, you’re making a sort of pumpkin soup, but a watery, lame pumpkin soup. the reason it doesn’t matter if it’s slightly lame is that you’re going to blend it and it’s going to be awesome.

while you’re heating up the pan for the filling but the mushrooms aren’t clean and chopped yet, deposit enough pumpkin seeds to cover the bottom of the pan and let them toast on medium heat until they tell you (really, they will speak) they are done. trade the seeds out for the shrooms, and add the seeds (”pepitas”) to the blender. blend. add the pumpkin soup after everything in the broth is tender, and a bit of salt. blend again. check the consistency. the goal here is to be able to pour the sauce into a pan, grab a tortillas, and dip the tortilla into the hot sauce so it coats the tortilla as it slips off. if it’s too thin, you’ll just be reducing the sauce on the stove again as your friends chop cilantro and avocados, impatiently, receding into the distance. if it’s too thick, you add water, stock, a little cream, white wine, whatever.

taste, add salt, taste, question the salt, taste.

* goodies
avocado
finely diced onions
cilantro

* assemblage

dip the tortilla in the sauce
Almost burn yourself
Jump in excitement!
Flick the soaked tortilla on a ceramic plate
Have someone spoon the filling,
then the rice,
then the avocado,
And roll it yourself to seam-side-down.

Repeat twice, drizzle more sauce on top,
paint with cilantro and chopped onions
if feeling artistic.

Note that these enchiladas were described as “absolutely delicious blend of delicate with spicy with warm and savory.” by a human thousands of miles away. So they must be good. And they are.

delight,
ankurbhai

p.s. if you do this offering thing, as i will, send me a note or picture about it. i think that will be good.

83 lost meadow
sequim, wa 98382

to commemorate the 15 flights i have taken to date this year

just when i thought i was getting ready to

(famously)

“settle down”

i painted the following picture for my stewardess

from newark to seattle

and then failed

to give it to

her,

because i liked it.

- ankurbhai

Well, it’s been a long time coming. Home.

And here I am, in the early fall sunshine, snowless mountains towering over this little valley, baskets of mushrooms and carrots in the cold room, and a suite of tottering laptops with which to do my holy work.

Of course to be home you have to leave, and to have left you must have had a home in the first place, which is uncertain, to say the least. And in some ways I feel I’ve come home to India once again, a recurring theme in the last four years of my life. Note that if India were indeed my third collegiate experience, temporally, I would have just graduated, to enter that familiar limbo of ‘now what’ that Dustin Hoffman and I once shared so intimately. But no, here I am again, picked up by my mother from SeaTac airport and taken a mere 10 minutes (drive, not walk) away to one in a row of endless identical townhouses (is that what they’re called, skinny and tan with a berm of soil behind it so you don’t remember there’s another row of houses just over there, and there, and there, ad nauseum?) and a terribly sweet Indian-Tanzanian-(and now)-American couple.

The best and most Indian thing about the whole delectable lunch, beating the chickpea-potato curry (in an earnest red tomato gravy) was Kirin-auntie forcing my mom to eat, relentlessly. It got to the point where my mother, on her heels, was justifying not having more by recounting what she had eaten for breakfast five hours ago to prove she couldn’t have another dal-filled-ghee-covered roti. Meanwhile, I’m happily munching away, unpressured, slow, with ghee-less rotlis and no botheration. Talk about a graduation ceremony. Eventually Kirin auntie gives up and the argument subsides to the hum of the microwave. It beeps. We continue chewing.

Two minutes later she gets up, opens the microwave, in which she had been heating more of the delicious chickpea-potato curry, and expresses _with genuine innocent surprise_ “Oh Bharti, here’s some more curry and rotli! You should have some”.

The beauty and gentleness is quite obviously insane.

Then Jitu-uncle begins a story about a traveling holy man (back in the day) who would walk from village to village performing whatever rituals needed to be done. I guess it was a gift economy service, no fixed price, including whatever food they wanted. So the traveling priest sits down to have some Ladoos (sweet balls of grain and jaggery and ghee) and pops down five of them in one go. These are about the size of racquetballs mind you, and I can’t stomach more than a half of one before looking around shiftily for a child to pawn away the rest… So he eats five of the blessed (literally) things and burps in agreement, is about to go when the host asks, would you like anymore?

The story apparently is to inspire guests to eat more, because the next episode involves him sitting back down and have 10-12 more ladoos with dal (lentil soup / mental fruit) in addition to the 5 he had already put away. At this point the villagers are exasperated and rather than asking if he wants more, they put their palms together in sincere respect for his holiness and appetite, and ask him to leave:

“Please now you just go.”

This to me is a genius part of the hospitality system. You’re supposed to give away everything you have (knowing full well if you can do it selflessly you’ll be rewarded with all the glitz in the universe) and when you’ve played your part as a good host, you are totally licensed and comfortable in telling your guest “I lose” which translates as “You leave”.

At which point the moral seemed to become: be careful whom you have to dinner, they could eat you out of house and home.

Speaking of which, the sun has arced around enough to the south where it’s just beginning to shine on the dining table, indicating to me that my morning juice has been digested enough for me to prepare lunch. Inspired by Matt Coffman’s dedicated to raw goodness, I’ve been making local/organic/fresh/raw/dope juice every morning. It’s nothing compared to the glory of the raw food cult’s concoctions of frozen mango, tender thai coconuts, and cacao beans, but my unpatented Move To Florida line of smoothies are still pretty damn good

Have your mom juice:
two handfuls of carrots
two apples
one finger of ginger

and then use that as the liquid to blend in your fancy blender:
half a dozen stalks of parsley
half a dozen small leaves of lettuce
1 burly stalk of kale
1/2 pint of blackberries.

I’ll tell you right now the color will be, well, intense. Almost nightmarish. We can call it Kafka Out of Florida or something. But that’s what you get = purple + orange + green.

Anyhow, Move to Florida. Somehow, it’s the future.

But mainly, this is to say, I’m back in Washington. I can be reached at 360 683 5398. I can receive letters at 83 Lost Meadow / Sequim, WA 98382. I can catch up on my email, fulfill orders for books and CDs, work on computer projects, and further train with the scythe.

Please visit. The sanctuary is open and full of beds, vegetables, soft fabric, and firm mountains.

you’re very welcome,
ankurbhai

also: some pictures