“Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave.”  

-George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords   (via kallissi)

Nope.  I wish it were like that.  The truth about bravery is that it requires someone hurting you so much and leaning on you so hard to try and eliminate you from humanity, that you finally wake up one day not giving a shit, with your kindness and goodness and gentleness choked to death and gone.  Then you turn around and start saying everything you were afraid to say, and threatening to do things you never thought you could do, and not caring about the legal or social ramifications, and suddenly you barrel straight toward them just for the fun and pleasure of ripping their head off because you actually no longer care whether or not you live or die, as long as you can launch yourself toward their face for the fun of biting off whatever you can get to.

Bravery is not a rush of sublime moral character at all.  Real bravery is actually not giving a shit about who you are ready to murder.  Bravery is blood for fun.  Bravery is realizing how much of a pleasurable rush it is, not to be capable of hesitating to kill the one who has pushed you to this precipice.  Bravery is laughing while you do this, and doing it harder because it feels good; in fact, it feels so good, that your opponent being armed is merely a barrier to work around.

Do you want to be brave, or do you want to be gentle?  Do you want to be brave, or compassionate?  Do you want to be brave, or kind?  Do you want to be brave, or do you want to be loving?  

Bravery is not character.  Bravery is necessity in a broken world full of sick people who will inflict their darkness on you if you don't fight back.  I don't want this necessity.  I don't want to be brave.  Not any more.  I want to be loving, kind, compassionate, and gentle now.  If the sight of a baby bird fallen out of the nest doesn't break my heart, if the tears of a child lost in a grocery store doesn't make me rush to pick them up, then I need to keep learning compassion.  

Because I have been in the head space where the helicopter raid and jungle napalm scene in Apocalypse Now would have been adequate treatment for my enemies.  I would have broken out the surfboard and shed not a tear after giving the orders.  

Anyone who cannot see the tragedy behind such necessity should not be viewed as any kind of moral authority.  This is why I read Tolkien, a master of moral allegory, a man who fought at the Somme- the epitome of unnecessary butchery- versus the wankology of most modern fantasy.  

Anyone who defines bravery as anything but the most tragic, compassion-killing, and unnecessary of necessities, does not understand bravery.  If bravery is strength, I want to be weak.  If bravery is the will to live without a heart, then let me die with one, no matter how broken it is by the end.  Because courage, not bravery, is the willingness to allow the world to break your heart, and choosing compassion to the end.

Snowed in: a great way to rotate a food hoarder's pantry

My mother hoards food. It's a child-of-the-Depression thing, except her parents were the children of the Depression. But her self esteem seems hinged on a pantry bursting with crap that it will take years to go through and eat. So when an ice storm from hell isolates us, you can bet I enjoy the hell out of the journey of jungle discovery I can make in the pantry. Looking at the ages of some of the spices about three feet back, I half expect to find generic cans of nuclear crackers and peanut butter from the Reagan era.

This early morning, the ice storm gods have demanded a sacrifice: for me to make two tofu lasagnas at 3 AM out of leftover pasta sauce, all the leftover cheese ends and crumb-carrying cheese bags populating the cheese drawer, mooshed garlic tofu instead of ricotta (which is really good), the multiple jars of lonely antipasta in the back of the fridge with half a teaspoonful of (garlic, roasted peppers, artichoke hearts) left in them, all the lonely leftover vegetables from several dinners, 2/3 huge box of year old lasagna noodles shoved in the back of the cupboard, and a lonely can of cream of mushroom soup transformed with milk, garlic, and parmesan into Bechamel Topping of the Gods. 

Because a) if you want to know what to do with fridge leftovers and pantry sentinels after being snowed in for a week, you call me; and b) all my life I have possessed the Huggins gene for being a gourmet Italian cook in the wee hours, because the world is a roomier place to think and work in when all the other minds in it are quiet and asleep, and the Bolognese tastes better for some reason. 

The last project, last night at 3 AM, was several loaves of fruit bread I made from all the leftover xmas baking fruit and crushed pecans, the never-used frozen cranberries, the unused pin oatmeal, Splenda, treacle, baking powder, allspice, 2 1/2 cups of flour, a cup of water and five smooshed manky bananas. This fruit bread was so good for breakfast it put Tesco's finest teabrack to shame. It's also vegan, which you completely don't notice. The project before that was oatmeal biscuit berry cobbler and chicken stew, and before that, traditional yeast-based stuffed pepperoni bread and baked ziti.

3 AM is the best time to cook, because nobody will question the product if they can't see and judge the process. (ie "NO, I will not eat something you baked with sour milk!" versus "Mmmm, this sweet onion cornbread is to die for!!") Being stuck with what I'm given, and making a celebration out of it, is something I can be inspired to do very very well. Also, busy-baking meatless entrees offsets the parental panic response to there being only one day's worth of meat left in the house. It'll be into Sunday before the roads are melted...maybe.