Prose. It's arguably the most powerful tool we have as humans and sets us apart from the other beasts, birds, and bugs with whom we share this blue planet. Prose is something that can be metered out. Wielded, judiciously, like a sword cutting through every doubt or argument in contradiction. Or, prose can be crafted into tantalizingly elegant wisps of words strung together and that wrap you in swaths of comfort keeping you safe and warm; insulated from reality.
Written words are immortalized; left for the futures to tell our story. The story of humanity in all of our layers woven out of complexities, but somehow always falling somewhere between our faults, and our passions. We experience each other through prose and exist outside of ourselves for moments of greatness when that prose is delivered without doubt, and without censorship. Our emotional selves are externalized and placed on display searching for meaning, purpose, and power. The power of thoughts, personified. Prose is our history and our future existing all at once in our present.
Sustainability Spotlight: This blog is prose. It may not be published "officially" nor read by many. It exists in the smallest space possible among the millions of voices all merging in a cacophony of human perspective. But, it exists. And it shall exist as long as I continue to feed, nurture, and develop the contents and collection of my thoughts, feelings and opinions. Distilled down through levels of fortitude and review, this prose is simply "me" delivered to "you" with verity.
History is full of writers that have gone to the depths of their being and produced great literary works aimed at verity. One that inspired me to write about prose, and which ultimately became the namesake of this recipe post, is Hemingway. Hemingway championed a semi-revolutionary approach to his writing, and valued the ability to strip away everything not needed from a sentence or paragraph and bringing his thoughts, concepts or ideas down to bare bones. In that ravaged space, he was able to create a new way of writing dialogue and descriptions that got to the heart of the story he wanted to tell; the truth and purest essence of what something is or was or needed to be. A writing style that was divested of the unnecessary and made raw and real by just the purest and elemental verbiage.
Sustainability in action is a process much like Hemingway's approach to prose. It requires us to recognize the basest forms and motivations of our decisions and distill them into simplistic approaches. If we stripped all of our "needs" fully, much of what we may discover could be identified more as "wants" of convenience in a society that is built upon pretentiousness masked as modernization.
If we, like Hemingway, dispossess the unnecessary, we can then take steps towards sustainability in the evaluation of our needs framed with simplistic approaches to consumerism and communication. Because, in truth, many of our societal "trappings" which lead to unsustainable approaches can come undone if they are challenged by voices. Challenged by prose.
So, here is my Hemingway prose, challenging you to strip down to "bare bones" and evaluate your impacts on the planet for sustainability at the very basest part of yourself. See what you discover, and fill up the world with your prose of change. Maybe even do so while enjoying The Hemingway Smoothie.
Ingredients:
1.5 cups frozen sliced peaches
1/2 cup frozen mango chunks
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder (Garden of Life - Plant-based Sport)
1 ripe banana
1 large handful baby spinach
1.5 cups coconut water
(1) 8.4 oz can of pineapple juice
Optional Garnish: spinach leaves
Directions:
Place all ingredients (peaches through pineapple juice) in the order shown above in a high-powered blender.
If you have a Vitamix with smoothie button, turn on and wait for the blender to automatically stop. Proceed to Step #4.
If you do not have a Vitamix with a smoothie button, turn on blender on low and gradually increase in increments of 20 seconds each all the way up to the highest setting. Use a tamper or scrape down sides as needed and blend until smooth (~4 minutes).
Pour into glasses and top with the optional garnish(es) noted above. Serve & enjoy!
With love & hope for a better future for all of us - Jamie