Dear Poet, your words feel like an invitation into the alchemical kitchen of psyche ... that place where heat, pressure and time reveal what’s essential. As I read (and listened), I kept thinking of Jung’s journey of individuation ... the slow rendering down of everything we think we know until only the true salt of our psyche remains.
Naturally, I’m writing about "salt" this week ... we couldn’t script this thing called life if we tried!
Your image of knowledge shrinking "like frying bacon" is just perfect! For it’s what happens when our ego’s certainty melts away and something quieter, truer begins to speak to us. Being instead of knowing. Essence instead of accumulation.
And yes, we live in two worlds at once ... the visible and the invisible, the literal and the symbolic. "We truly are the metaphor." Your poem moves between them like a surreal dream, dissolving the boundary until we're standing at the threshold and both feel necessary to the meal.
"It took me a while to realize that we have been art all along." What you call "rendering" is what I’ve always felt as the soul’s way of shaping us ... burning off what no longer serves, leaving behind the flavour of who we’re becoming. The salt. The soul.
Thank you so much Jamie for sharing the sights, scents and sounds of your inner kitchen. It feels like I'm standing at the stove with you ... watching old forms melt away and new ones take shape. "We are the salt of another language." Utterly salivating, utterly soulful! 🙏💖😋
Dear Poet, thank you for tasting the salt of this one. Of course you’re writing about salt lol! The longest day arrives with its own knowing. The mystery smiles. Thanks for sharing the analogy of individuation with the rendering of frying bacon. Definitely a melting way of ego. A me to we. Essence of Being. We are the metaphor. Trying to connect our experience to expression that lives on the other side of language.
In the end, that might be a sur-render. Burning off that fat and water into salt. Art and Alchemy. Thanks for your wisdom and thanks for being here. I look forward to your next dance with words 🙏❤️💫
What marks you as a true poet Jamie, is that I felt myself standing beside you as you read and I listened … watching the bacon sizzle with soul, salt and sur‑render. So many synchronicities abound, for even your line about being much more “naked than nude” mirrors this week’s poem. 🙏💖🌊
Thank you so much Deborah. For one’s words to open up the words of another is a poem. Thanks for sharing your gift of poetry and stepping into the spaces of mine. If words can open up doors to images and feelings, heArt has arrived. Big hugs. 🙏❤️
“We are the salt of another language” — our other worldly languages touch us in codes that we feel into being — our expansiveness. Where soul’s knowing may seem not to relate to intellect’s knowledge — perhaps it is attachment to belief and story — that creates the myth that seemingly separates the possibilities of a union between knowledge, knowing — truth? Those other worlds we inhabit — beyond the linear reality of time and space? Beyond the reliance of what is apparently known?
Perception — in the shrinking of one, an expansion of (an)other?
Your curiosity and questions beget possibilities — what is infinite is open for us to create. We are the art and the artist. Soul’s metaphor, the bridge. As your poignant poem and prose invite us to reflect. Always stunning.
The fires are literally burning down here on this side of the planet. Thank you, as always Jamie, for stoking them — to feel into who we are. 🙏🌀💙
Thank you Simone for stepping into the fire. I love the questions you ask. Deep in poetic spirit. All connected. In the shrinking of one - an expansion of another. Beautifully said. I can feel into that. We definitely are the art and artist. As always, thanks for your kind words and support. Enjoy the new season as it arrives. Thanks for being here. I look forward to your next instalment of another language with Team John. 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, i suspect that as we get older we slow down on the chewing to savour the flavours, and aren't so sold on the recipes anymore — eat less, chew more, keep it raw. Pot luck dinners and more conversations — curiosity and imagination the seasoners of our creations. Soak the burnt pans overnight, then its not so difficult to scrape out the residue — the soul knows. Oh, and thank you for reading. 🙏🌀💙
This speaks to something I have been discovering with increasing gratitude as the years pass. When I was younger, I imagined wisdom would arrive as a collection of answers. Instead, it has come more often as a relinquishment of certainty.
The image of rendering is a powerful one. Life seems to place us in the pan again and again. Ambitions, identities, convictions, even cherished illusions melt away. What remains is often smaller than we expected, but somehow more nourishing. Less impressive perhaps, yet more true.
I find myself wondering if meaning and understanding are not quite the same thing. Understanding belongs largely to the mind. Meaning seems to arise in the soul. One can understand a great deal and still feel lost. One can stand before a forest, a work of art, a dream, a Eucharistic host, and find meaning that exceeds explanation.
Perhaps the task is not to know everything, but to consent to the rendering. To trust that what falls away has served its purpose and that what remains carries the flavour of a life honestly lived.
Thank you for this beautiful meditation. It leaves me with the sense that the soul's deepest work is not accumulation, but transformation.
"Meaning seems to arise in the soul." I love this Muriel! I always wondered, if it is my mind that wants to make meaning but it so often feels as if an ancient wisdom wants to emerge alongside what I witness.
Thank you so much Muriel. As usual, beautiful words of reflection. A poem. I agree in that understanding belongs to that physical and intellectual, whereas meaning is something emotional and spiritual. Meaning is soulful. Surrendering to the rendering. Transformation. Thanks so much for being here. Enjoy that longest day! 🙏❤️💫
"Living into these questions I am often called the dreamer." - My dear Jamie, I think the dreamers are the truly awake ones. Please don't ever stop dreaming! This world needs the dreamers, the artists, the creators! As someone who often tries to escape the human part of me, I needed that reminder that we need both. We definitely live the world differently, yet Love connects us all. That's why Love feels like coming home, I guess. Your words, as always, so poetic, activate some deep wisdom that lies beyond the wrinkling knowledge of mind. When our knowledge shrinks, wisdom has room to expand. Thanks so much for being you! Sending Love!
Thanks Sadhbh! We are definitely a bit of a dream team on here lol. It’s definitely a harmony between that physical/mental function and that emotional spiritual mystery that is so hard to put words to. Maybe that’s the love? Love. That ancient wisdom that we don’t need to search for- just to surrender to it and get out of its way. Thanks for being here. Thanks for your kind words and wishes. Right back at you. 🙏❤️💫
Thanks Jo! Thanks for jumping into the pan here and for all of your poetic inspiration. Thanks for being a fellow dreamer. How did you know this one came out while I was cooking lol? Yes we are art. Enjoy that longest night of the year soon. There’s magic there. Blessings. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️💫
Dear Jamie, with this poem you are truly taking metaphor to a whole new level:
“We eat life.
In the fires of becoming
…..
are we still chewing on it?”
The answers you offer by living into these questions:
“Is knowledge rendered into being?”
and
“Is meaning the same thing as understanding?”
which strike a long chiming resonance in my creative inner space where I hear the questions reverberate as an echo
What if being is a way of knowing?
and
What if meaning unfolds by sinking deeper into understanding?
Dreaming up a world you throw art into the melting pot, cooking emotional experience until the fat of life sizzles in the pan, and we can lick the salt off our naked skin. It may indeed take lifetimes of being cooked until we are tender enough to truly meet in the fire of words between being and becoming.
Thanks Veronika. I love your questions. “ What if being is a way of knowing”? And “what if meaning unfolds by sinking deeper into understanding”? I would love to sit and have a long conversation in the spaces between both of those. They do intersect. Maybe we need our first live Substack community chat to open these up? Thanks for breathing into the metaphor here with me as I try to connect what I struggle with words to describe. To ask. To live into on this other side of language. Thanks for cooking here with me as we tenderize into the fires of transformation. 🙏❤️💫
But what you are really sharing is about beauty in its truest form -- not the curated kind, not the kind that angles itself toward approval, but the kind that stands there unadorned and unafraid. The kind that meets the Mystery head-on without flinching.
There's something so refreshing about the way you name that. Beauty as presence, beauty as honesty, beauty as the moment when nothing is being performed and everything is simply true. Naked, in the best sense of the word.
Dear Poet, your words feel like an invitation into the alchemical kitchen of psyche ... that place where heat, pressure and time reveal what’s essential. As I read (and listened), I kept thinking of Jung’s journey of individuation ... the slow rendering down of everything we think we know until only the true salt of our psyche remains.
Naturally, I’m writing about "salt" this week ... we couldn’t script this thing called life if we tried!
Your image of knowledge shrinking "like frying bacon" is just perfect! For it’s what happens when our ego’s certainty melts away and something quieter, truer begins to speak to us. Being instead of knowing. Essence instead of accumulation.
And yes, we live in two worlds at once ... the visible and the invisible, the literal and the symbolic. "We truly are the metaphor." Your poem moves between them like a surreal dream, dissolving the boundary until we're standing at the threshold and both feel necessary to the meal.
"It took me a while to realize that we have been art all along." What you call "rendering" is what I’ve always felt as the soul’s way of shaping us ... burning off what no longer serves, leaving behind the flavour of who we’re becoming. The salt. The soul.
Thank you so much Jamie for sharing the sights, scents and sounds of your inner kitchen. It feels like I'm standing at the stove with you ... watching old forms melt away and new ones take shape. "We are the salt of another language." Utterly salivating, utterly soulful! 🙏💖😋
Dear Poet, thank you for tasting the salt of this one. Of course you’re writing about salt lol! The longest day arrives with its own knowing. The mystery smiles. Thanks for sharing the analogy of individuation with the rendering of frying bacon. Definitely a melting way of ego. A me to we. Essence of Being. We are the metaphor. Trying to connect our experience to expression that lives on the other side of language.
In the end, that might be a sur-render. Burning off that fat and water into salt. Art and Alchemy. Thanks for your wisdom and thanks for being here. I look forward to your next dance with words 🙏❤️💫
What marks you as a true poet Jamie, is that I felt myself standing beside you as you read and I listened … watching the bacon sizzle with soul, salt and sur‑render. So many synchronicities abound, for even your line about being much more “naked than nude” mirrors this week’s poem. 🙏💖🌊
Thank you so much Deborah. For one’s words to open up the words of another is a poem. Thanks for sharing your gift of poetry and stepping into the spaces of mine. If words can open up doors to images and feelings, heArt has arrived. Big hugs. 🙏❤️
Aww ... always, your words meet mine like salt on the tongue ... sudden, bright and true! 🙏💖🌊
Hi Jamie,
“We are the salt of another language” — our other worldly languages touch us in codes that we feel into being — our expansiveness. Where soul’s knowing may seem not to relate to intellect’s knowledge — perhaps it is attachment to belief and story — that creates the myth that seemingly separates the possibilities of a union between knowledge, knowing — truth? Those other worlds we inhabit — beyond the linear reality of time and space? Beyond the reliance of what is apparently known?
Perception — in the shrinking of one, an expansion of (an)other?
Your curiosity and questions beget possibilities — what is infinite is open for us to create. We are the art and the artist. Soul’s metaphor, the bridge. As your poignant poem and prose invite us to reflect. Always stunning.
The fires are literally burning down here on this side of the planet. Thank you, as always Jamie, for stoking them — to feel into who we are. 🙏🌀💙
Thank you Simone for stepping into the fire. I love the questions you ask. Deep in poetic spirit. All connected. In the shrinking of one - an expansion of another. Beautifully said. I can feel into that. We definitely are the art and artist. As always, thanks for your kind words and support. Enjoy the new season as it arrives. Thanks for being here. I look forward to your next instalment of another language with Team John. 🙏❤️💫
Hi Jamie, i suspect that as we get older we slow down on the chewing to savour the flavours, and aren't so sold on the recipes anymore — eat less, chew more, keep it raw. Pot luck dinners and more conversations — curiosity and imagination the seasoners of our creations. Soak the burnt pans overnight, then its not so difficult to scrape out the residue — the soul knows. Oh, and thank you for reading. 🙏🌀💙
I’ll eat to that! 🙏❤️💫
Don’t forget to have the wine 🍷🤣🍳
All ways 🍷 🙏❤️
This speaks to something I have been discovering with increasing gratitude as the years pass. When I was younger, I imagined wisdom would arrive as a collection of answers. Instead, it has come more often as a relinquishment of certainty.
The image of rendering is a powerful one. Life seems to place us in the pan again and again. Ambitions, identities, convictions, even cherished illusions melt away. What remains is often smaller than we expected, but somehow more nourishing. Less impressive perhaps, yet more true.
I find myself wondering if meaning and understanding are not quite the same thing. Understanding belongs largely to the mind. Meaning seems to arise in the soul. One can understand a great deal and still feel lost. One can stand before a forest, a work of art, a dream, a Eucharistic host, and find meaning that exceeds explanation.
Perhaps the task is not to know everything, but to consent to the rendering. To trust that what falls away has served its purpose and that what remains carries the flavour of a life honestly lived.
Thank you for this beautiful meditation. It leaves me with the sense that the soul's deepest work is not accumulation, but transformation.
"Meaning seems to arise in the soul." I love this Muriel! I always wondered, if it is my mind that wants to make meaning but it so often feels as if an ancient wisdom wants to emerge alongside what I witness.
Thank you so much Muriel. As usual, beautiful words of reflection. A poem. I agree in that understanding belongs to that physical and intellectual, whereas meaning is something emotional and spiritual. Meaning is soulful. Surrendering to the rendering. Transformation. Thanks so much for being here. Enjoy that longest day! 🙏❤️💫
"Living into these questions I am often called the dreamer." - My dear Jamie, I think the dreamers are the truly awake ones. Please don't ever stop dreaming! This world needs the dreamers, the artists, the creators! As someone who often tries to escape the human part of me, I needed that reminder that we need both. We definitely live the world differently, yet Love connects us all. That's why Love feels like coming home, I guess. Your words, as always, so poetic, activate some deep wisdom that lies beyond the wrinkling knowledge of mind. When our knowledge shrinks, wisdom has room to expand. Thanks so much for being you! Sending Love!
Thanks Sadhbh! We are definitely a bit of a dream team on here lol. It’s definitely a harmony between that physical/mental function and that emotional spiritual mystery that is so hard to put words to. Maybe that’s the love? Love. That ancient wisdom that we don’t need to search for- just to surrender to it and get out of its way. Thanks for being here. Thanks for your kind words and wishes. Right back at you. 🙏❤️💫
We eat each other…
mutual rendering at play.
Even us vegans.
Thanks Marisol! Chew slow 🙏❤️💫
is this read by AI ?? seems like it
Thanks Rohn! Maybe I’m a robot lol. Thanks for listening.
me too !!
Hello Dreamer, Love your musings on knowing and being. Of what is left behind and what chooses ( what we choose) to accompany us.
Is today built on
what yesterday left behind?
What got left over - in
the pan - of knowing?
What disappeared?
Did it break apart easily
or are we still chewing on it?
Can just picture your poetry forming as you cook the bacon Jamie.
Thanks for being Art, for Be -ing Here.
"It took me a while to realize that we have been art all along." Gorgeous. xx 🙏💖
Thanks Jo! Thanks for jumping into the pan here and for all of your poetic inspiration. Thanks for being a fellow dreamer. How did you know this one came out while I was cooking lol? Yes we are art. Enjoy that longest night of the year soon. There’s magic there. Blessings. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️💫
Dear Jamie, with this poem you are truly taking metaphor to a whole new level:
“We eat life.
In the fires of becoming
…..
are we still chewing on it?”
The answers you offer by living into these questions:
“Is knowledge rendered into being?”
and
“Is meaning the same thing as understanding?”
which strike a long chiming resonance in my creative inner space where I hear the questions reverberate as an echo
What if being is a way of knowing?
and
What if meaning unfolds by sinking deeper into understanding?
Dreaming up a world you throw art into the melting pot, cooking emotional experience until the fat of life sizzles in the pan, and we can lick the salt off our naked skin. It may indeed take lifetimes of being cooked until we are tender enough to truly meet in the fire of words between being and becoming.
Thanks Veronika. I love your questions. “ What if being is a way of knowing”? And “what if meaning unfolds by sinking deeper into understanding”? I would love to sit and have a long conversation in the spaces between both of those. They do intersect. Maybe we need our first live Substack community chat to open these up? Thanks for breathing into the metaphor here with me as I try to connect what I struggle with words to describe. To ask. To live into on this other side of language. Thanks for cooking here with me as we tenderize into the fires of transformation. 🙏❤️💫
Oh the richness of methapors and puns in this piece. The idea of 'me to we', and all you said about poetry. I'll be chewing on this one for a while 😊
Thanks Dorette!
Dear Jamie,
I laughed at the bacon because...same.
But what you are really sharing is about beauty in its truest form -- not the curated kind, not the kind that angles itself toward approval, but the kind that stands there unadorned and unafraid. The kind that meets the Mystery head-on without flinching.
There's something so refreshing about the way you name that. Beauty as presence, beauty as honesty, beauty as the moment when nothing is being performed and everything is simply true. Naked, in the best sense of the word.
Thank you for sharing this! Love, love, love! XO
Thanks so much Danielle! Thanks for being here. Enjoy a well earned summer. Bless you some more undressing with nature. 🙏💫❤️
Beautifully lyrical - full of questions that need no answers thank you Jamie.
Thanks Andy! I appreciate you reading and subscribing. 🙏❤️💫