Pema Chodron is an American Buddhist nun and author whose teachings and writings on meditation have helped make Buddhism accessible to a broad Western audience. I have a couple of her books and admire her immensely. This last week she interviewed with Bill Moyers for his PBS special Faith & Reason. The first few paragraphs from her beautiful book The Wisdom of No Escape follow:
“There’s a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. you can see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same.
A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passioante, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we’re committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing.
When people start to meditate or to work with any kind of spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they’re going to improve, which is a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. … But loving-kindness — maitri — toward ourselves doesn’t mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years. We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try to change ourselves. Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s the ground, that’s what we study, that’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”
Hardwired.
Most gay people, no matter what their outward face, desire a life of community in which their sexuality is irrelevant but acknowledged. The ways in which our humanity expresses itself are indistinguishable from the ways in which all other peoples have expressed their humanity throughout all of time: creativity and relationship. Ultimately gay people are only as queer as our environment makes us. The current gay subculture is mostly a temporary reactionary formation that will subside once the mainstream more fully welcomes us as the full human beings we already know ourselves to be.
This past week-end, Ang Lee won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for his film adaptation of 
Limburger Virgins and Puttanesca Whores
The Pasta Puttanesca is for tomorrow. A couple years ago, I was living in New York City and an opera singer friend of mine whipped up a batch of the “whore’s pasta” as it’s commonly known or “pasta of the peasant prostitute” as I’ve now decided to call it forevermore. Whatever. Back then I had never heard of capers and was intrigued. In short, I ate and loved it and obviously haven’t forgotten about the dish though I no longer have the slightest bit of memory as to how it tasted. Well, I’ve decided to find out… again.
As for the Limburger, it also has long intrigued me. When I saw it mixed in with the other cheese such as Asiago, Feta, Blue, Goat and Havarti, I knew it was the one I wanted to try tonight. The name sounded familiar. I remember seeing it from time to time in the grocery. Also, and this will prove significant, I felt a sense of unease as I surfed through my mind for any sort of clue as to what I should expect when I opened the foil wrapper and cut off a taste. There flashed a foggy warning inside my mind that left no specifics of what I ought to beware. I dismissed it.
[If only I had studied entomology, perhaps I would have thought differently. Limburger is one of the few known Mosquito attractants.]
Later, at home in the kitchen, I tossed the chestnuts in some vegetable oil and roasted them in an iron skillet over medium heat after cutting an ‘x’ in each of their shells to prevent explosions. As they roasted, I unwrapped the Limburger and took a generous up-close intimate sniff.
Horror of horrors! Instantaneous three dimnesional memories of past encounters with dirty feet, undeodorized underarms and unhygenic old women flashed throughout my nostrils. Nevertheless, still curious (morbidly?), I took a knife and cut a small piece of the cheese and placed the morsel in my mouth. Surely the odor is an illusion and this famous fromage sold in stores all over will reveal itself to be a secret delight to the tongue, I thought.
Not so! Now instead of the nostrils it was my tongue which experienced something I would honestly imagine as equivalent to eating tofu bathed in corpses (yes morbidly!). But don’t get me wrong – I like tofu. It’s the corpses part which had awoken taste buds I never knew I had. There was even a weird tingling sensation that I suppose might be due to the enzymes listed as an ingredient. I really don’t know.
[It turns out that a main ingredient in Limburger is a bacterium that can be found on the human foot.]
In the end, I wrapped the Limburger in plastic then tin foil and then plastic again and threw it in the fridge. I had thought of tossing it but then thought about how I had payed good money for that monstrosity and how I feel it my obligation to save the cheese in order to share the experience with unsuspecting visitors – preferably Limburger virgins like I had been. And also, there’s part of me still curious.
Online, I listened as the last remaining maker of Limburger in the United States revealed that the older generation are mostly the ones who still buy Limburger. He mentioned that sometimes it is enjoyed with a thick cut of raw onion as a sandwich. Sometimes it is enjoyed with sardines and horseradish on pumperknickel bread. And sometimes it is eaten with strawberry jam and toast as breakfast. I wonder if I might discover that – with such accompaniments – the taste would grow on me…
The Chestnuts finished roasting with a bit of water thrown in during the last five minutes for softening. I ate half of the bunch with a little salt. Unfortunately, they were not as delicious as I had hoped. Too dry. They probably needed an open flame or perhaps I simply cooked them too long. I remember buying a small bag of them from a street vendor in Switzerland during my college semester abroad. Loved them then.
Even so, that Limburger taste lingers still on my tongue. I’m glad I tried the cheese and even a little excited by the pungent power of its smell and taste. But ultimately, I’m disappointed. I can’t possilby imagine enjoying it spread on a toasted Everything Bagel nor do I possess the courage to act on my curiosity and give it another try. If only I had thought to combine the Limburger Cheese and Chestnuts. Well there’s always tomorrow’s Puttanesca…
What was your first time like with Limburger? Any Limburger lovers out there? I’ll understand if you wish to remain anonymous.