DISPLACED IN MULLINGAR:BEING EXCESSIVELY happy is a mixed blessing. There are frosty mornings on the streets of Mullingar, when red-nosed people are heading for work, and the canal is frozen solid beneath a cloudless sky, and I am almost unable to restrain my joy at being alive.
On such walks I ask myself the philosophical question with which a Mongolian teacher once challenged me: Who does your heart belong to in the morning? The Mongolian answer is that the heart's desire for other people, frosty mornings or apple tarts, only amounts to a heap of suffering. And the beauty of the day, or the beloved, should not allow the mind to become overexcited.
Well that's really my problem; I get overexcited. My mind is like an unruly elephant that goes where it wills, attaches itself to frost-covered fields or bare trees, violin music or beautiful voices.
I have a treacherous heart; it clings to people and places, and I mistake these attachments for happiness. I just think I am happy - except when I'm depressed.
When I am depressed I follow specific therapies; playing the flute sustained me for years. And lately I have begun to enjoy cooking.
I do pancakes, apple tarts and buns.
It is a way of mending the broken world by making a little bit of the universe okay; an alchemy that says, "At least in this kitchen, I can create a ritual of healing." When the preparation of food is undertaken as a ritual it anchors me deep in the cosmos. Just like sweeping the floor of a meditation room, cooking empties my mind of all distractions.
In Mongolia they tell a story about sweeping the floor. Once upon a time there was a student who wanted to study with a great teacher. But the teacher thought he was too stupid to learn, so he just allowed him to clean his study. For a lifetime the simple student swept. But he became enlightened far sooner than the unfortunate professor.
For me cooking is a way of sweeping the mind, and so I have been bun baking this week. I have been struggling with apple pies. I can empty my head when I cook. I can take my mind off the recession, politics, and the dwindling pennies in my piggy bank, and make something.
I mix the margarine and flour to make the pastry. I use Golden Delicious apples and I spice them with a pinch of cinnamon and a handful of cloves. When they are spread in the tray I mix a little butter and sugar on the pan, add water, and then drench the apples with the sweet juice before covering the tray with the final layer of pastry.
In the beginning I was cooking a tart almost every day, and devouring it by night; and it was around the same time that I was due to visit the doctor for my check up. He said I was overexcited about the apple tarts. He said I was eating too many of them. He said my cholesterol was gone up to 5.3. He said if I didn't stop, my cholesterol would go through the roof.
The cholesterol didn't worry me, but I did feel like a monk attached to a ritual, who manages to miss the essential ingredient - compassion; cooking is something done for other people. The Christian Eucharist is shared. And the salad bowls at the table in L'Arche communities are shared. And in Mongolian tents the butter tea, and horse's milk is shared.
Recently a letter arrived from a woman in Dublin describing to me in great detail almond buns my mother used to make many years ago. First she made the pastry. Then she put on a layer of apricot and syrup. And on top of that she sprinkled almonds, finely chopped. All this was baked on a moderate heat for 30 minutes.
Many years before I was born my mother showed a young girl in the neighbourhood how to bake these almond buns. And the girl grew up and continued making the buns throughout her life. It was she who wrote me the letter. But my mother doesn't make almond buns any more, so what can I do only bake a tray of them, and bring them to her, as a gift; a token to show that the heart remembers morning.
mharding@irish-times.ie
