chicken, buddhism, creativity and stuff
So I was standing at the stove picking the meat off of a chicken carcass tonight. I do that a lot lately, pick meat off of chicken carcasses. We roast a lot of chickens. It's easy and everybody will eat it. You can get a couple meals out of one chicken. The first time it's just sliced and sometimes I make gravy. Then I pick whatever we didn't eat off of the carcass and then I simmer the carcass in water to make stock. Sometimes I even pick the little tiny bits off of the carcass after I make the stock. That's what I was doing tonight. I used to get really grossed out by picking apart carcasses, that's why I went vegetarian for a little while, but I've gotten pretty used to it at this point. I think I could probably butcher my own chickens if I had the means. We used to do that when I was a kid. Anyway I pulled out the wish bone and I thought about cleaning it off and sending it to Joe for Valentine's Day. Then a couple tiny little rib bones were in my slotted spoon and they were so cool and tiny I thought about taking all of the bones and cleaning them and assembling a chicken skeleton and sending it to him and how that would be pretty awesome. And then I thought that actually that would be pretty weird. But still awesome. And then I thought that what I was thinking wasn't very Buddhist. I wasn't in the moment of picking the chicken carcass, I was thinking about what to do with a picked chicken carcass. So does that mean the creative urge isn't really a Buddhist thing? Or is it Buddhist if you make that chicken skeleton right there in the moment? Is planning ahead anti-Buddhist? Picking a chicken carcass is actually pretty anti-Buddhist, because you're not supposed to kill things or something like that. I haven't gotten that far in my Buddhism. If it's really Buddhism. I don't actually know what I am doing. But I do wonder if creation is an act of ego. Is it possible to create egolessly? Tomorrow is 24 hour comics day and I'm thinking I might do that, make hourly comics. I really like Pictures for Sad Children. It's kinda Zen. If I make some hourly comics I will try to put them here, although that would mean charging my camera. I had a nightmare last night in which my cameraphone revealed the inherent evil of a magical mountain plateau in Canada. I don't actually own a cameraphone, although my phone does have googly eyes on it. Hah, the spellcheck accepts googly but not spellcheck. It was a really beautiful plateau, but the geography was seriously fucked up. Also there was some evil giant baby buried underneath it, I woke up before I got to figure it all out. I'd like to think that if I hadn't I would have kicked that baby's ass, because that was what I was trying to learn to do right before I woke up. The villagers had Irish accents. Even though they were in Canada. The subconscious is a wonderful thing. I like to let it out to play. Is that Buddhist? Is living in the moment the same thing as releasing the subconscious? I kinda hope so because I have a lot of fun with that. But I think maybe it's not so much. Living in the moment is all about being conscious. I don't quite understand how it can be so complicated and so simple at the same time but I guess that's just part of the magic. I should go to bed now since I didn't really sleep last night. I love you.