Celestial Gluten
Making Mooncakes on the Equinox and some Sorting Things Out with Zhuāngzi
(with credit to Daniel Maxwell for the perfect title)
It’s September 23, 2022: The day after the fall equinox and almost exactly a year since the passing of my beloved soul-sister Lillian Pearl Bridges.
It is also a couple of weeks after the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節 zhōngqiūjié), which falls on the glorious full moon closest to the equinox in the traditional lunar calendar, or the fifteenth day of the eighth month, and has always been one of my favorite holidays. For those of you who don’t know this, I love moons, I love traditional holidays that give thanks for the harvest, and I love mooncakes, and that is what this holiday is all about.
I had wanted to make the mooncakes for the traditional Chinese date, but of course shipping took way longer for some of the strange ingredients the recipes called for (ever heard of “lye water” or “maltose”?), and I live on an island with no easy access to a Chinese grocery store. Then it took several days to prepare the various things going into these cakes, from “golden syrup” to the fillings of red bean paste, salted baked duck egg yolks, and lotus seed paste, to the actual dough. I had invited some neighbor ladies to join me last week, but we never made much progress in the recipe because we had too much fun cooking dinner and enjoying each other’s company. Plus, Whidbey Island experienced an unexpected late spell of warm sunshine and I just had to take advantage of that gift and get out on my paddle board until long after sunset for three evenings in a row. And I am busy writing, teaching, and running my business during the day.
In the end, though, the dark and quiet night of the equinox felt like the perfect moment to be assembling these beauties, in this challenging week, with Lillian constantly on my mind as the anniversary of her passing is around the corner. My Jewish neighbor, who recently lost her dad, shared with me yesterday that, in the Jewish tradition, people get to grieve for a full year and do not install a gravestone until a full year has passed. And then life returns to normal, whatever that new normal may look like, I suppose. In other words, if I follow this process, I get three more days of sitting with, being truly present with my grief and then somehow figure out how to tie it up and conclude that process.
Making fancy cakes strikes me as the perfect way to honor the conclusion of a number of transformative processes in my life this past year, some easy, some hard, most bitter-sweet, but who am I to judge: A beautiful new oven and some remodeling in my home, the launch of a formal new training program in classical Chinese, the final conclusion of my farming life in New Mexico, my rescue goat’s full return to radiant health, a rapid succession of mostly unexpected losses and betrayal that did sometimes feel like more than I could handle, and an almost unbearably long, cold, dark winter from hell followed by a short summer, the core of which I missed due to being knocked out with Covid.
In this particular year, I really feel the importance and value of marking the passing of the seasons consciously, intentionally, through the simple process of assembling and baking mooncakes. Somehow, creating this beautiful confection, and the simple anticipation of sharing the sweet fruits of this labor of love with my friends over the next few days, brought me a pleasure that felt deeply meaningful. I woke up this morning to a grey sky and put on my wool socks, long pants, and wool sweater. And unexpectedly, I was at peace with that, even though I had dreaded the end of summer just a few days ago. Maybe I will be able to experience the anniversary of Lillian’s passing on Monday similarly, like a healthy step in the never-ending cycle of life that is not good or bad, but just is. Being able to smile about the fact that I no longer have to worry about her gluten allergy, or Seattle rush hour traffic, when I want to share my food with her is certainly a milestone.
As my dear friend Zhuāngzi likes to remind me with rare insight as relevant today as it was a couple of millennia ago, from his “Discourse on Sorting Things Out”:
“How do you know that enjoying life is not a delusion! How do you know that hating death is not a case of being exiled from your birthplace and not knowing how to get home!
Lady Lì was the daughter of the border warden Ài. When the [ruler of] the state of Jìn first acquired her, she sobbed and cried so hard that her tears stained the front of her dress. But later, when she arrived at the king’s palace, shared the king’s bed, and feasted on the meat of grass-fed animals, she regretted her tears.
How do you know that the dead do not regret that they initially pleaded for life!
Somebody who dreams of getting drunk might cry bitter tears in the morning, and somebody who dreams of crying bitter tears might go out hunting in the morning. As for somebody being right in the midst of a dream, they don’t know that they are dreaming. Moreover, in the midst of their dream, they may be interpreting yet another dream within it, only to awake and afterwards know that they were dreaming.
Moreover, there is a Great Awakening that leads one to realize that this is all but one grand dream! And fools believe themselves to be awakened and to know with perspicacity.
Are they lords? Are they shepherds? Oh the certainty! Confucius and you, you are both dreaming. Even my saying that you are dreaming is nothing but a dream!”
Note: That last picture includes my special cup, which I use every morning for my morning tea ritual of “Whidbey Fog” (fancy Earl Grey with steamed fresh raw goat milk). Lillian gave me that cup for my birthday when I first moved to Whidbey Island 5 years ago, and I have had my morning tea in it pretty much every day since…..
Second note: I used a combination of recipes but loosely based my concoction (filled with either red bean or lotus seed paste and the salted duck egg yolk) on the various recipes found at WoksofLife.com.
