I watched BBC 2’s The Restaurant late last night once I had finished writing a decent 6 pages on Sham up in the summerhouse. I had gone out to Sainsbury’s and bought some lamb liver earlier on in the day, trying not to do my usual and throw good money after bad buying good expensive food every time I step into a supermarket and having enough only for one meal. I spent much of the night then talking to people on Saturday Kitchen and Something for the Weekend (where I was, as ever, as a famous writer), talking to the presenters about how it’s important to bring back cheaper cuts of meat, that there was here, as elsewhere, a reportoire of dishes based on cheap cuts, but that we have now lost them with the industrialisation of food and meat prices coming down so that prime cuts now cost little, though they are of abysmal value because of the poor quality. I began to talk about this when I was asked about my food heaven and hell and said that, aside from my food intolerances, there’s hardly anything I wouldn’t eat. (I have had reveries about this every time I have watched the programme, and sometimes decide upon okra, which is horribly sticky and glutinous and I don’t feel the need to reaquaint myself with it.)

Later, watching the Restaurant, which to my disgust was won by a pair of blaggers, the “chef” of whom simply couldn’t cook, I flitted back over this. Since then I have been visited by a gentleman who was not overly sold on the fancy restaurant fare and stated that he would sooner have liver and onion. The most recent iterations of this reverie have me doing The Restaurant with my brother on front of house and him relating to me the gentleman’s comments. I have been sending out a complimentary liver and onion starter as a kind of kindly joke and sending out my bro to sweet talk him into trying a main afterwards, perhaps the Boef Bourgignon.

All of this is a variation upon reveries I have been having of talking my way into a job with a restaurant I was told was opening down the road where I have been cooking traditional English fare. This strand was influenced by a book I have been reading, The Land that Thyme Forgot, a culinary journey around Britain.

Gav B

Watch the tides

In the bay,

Grub remnants

From erstwhile morning,

Of blithe facets gone by.

Hush frolic thoughts,

Soothe reckless times,

Sort out tangled memories

On a drowsy midday

And be ready,

And be ready,

And be ready to get hold

Of the hand of passing time

From this moment forth.

Know which rock to hold

When the cliffs are slippery.

Climb up with certainty,

But know when to hang on

Or climb down, if necessary.

And be ready.

Lay the spirit down

On the hay

Of the harvests

From erstwhile morning,

Calm and carefree.

Watch the clouds

Form

Dissolve,

And Resurface fluffy

Souffle and sweet

To the tongue of memories recalled

On a dreamy midday

And be ready,

And be ready,

And be ready to confront

The inevitable streams of time

From this moment forth.

Know when to sow

And to toil night and day.

Sprinkle the earth

With blood and sweat

That trickle on the forehead ~

Let the seeds grow,

But know when to stop

And celebrate the harvest,

When it is time.

And be ready.

Come home on a rainy day

To an old couch, old and saggy,

That kept imprints

From erstwhile morning,

Of blots of ink and paint

Red and blue

From childish blows

And gentle touches.

Trace back  the stories

From stains and tears,

Unreeling,

On a quiet midday

And be ready,

And be ready

And be ready with soothing

But sometimes harsh whisks

Of the nearing eventide

From this moment forth.

Know the terrains,

And be guarded of the stings

Of each season, but be happy.

Be accepting and resigned,

And embrace the gifts

Of each moment

To build the plinth -

With stable bricks -

Of one’s equanimity

That mellows in time.

Take a moment

To keep your thoughts hushed

And tarry like the water in the bay.

Take time to glance back

To the parting waves

Of the erstwhile morning

And listen to the silence

Of the midday.

And be reay,

And be ready,

And be ready

To watch the sunset

In the bay

With me.

—

Jeques, 2009. From his “Traveler’s Soliloquies” poetry collection.

Uma data especial para mim que quero manter para sempre: o dia em que me despeço de corpo e alma de um companheiro de 10 anos.  Mesmo nao havendo amor, ha milhares de experiências conjuntas.  Há uma cumplicidade (aqui sim faz sentido a cumplicidade!!) que se forma inconscientemente. Há uma vida partilhada. A tristeza é indescritível, deixei um pouco de mim para trás hoje.  Deixei esse pouco num restaurante.  Deixei-o numa conversa.  E pensei que o deixaria para sempre.  Mais uma vez enganei-me. Não o deixei…dei-lhe um destino…uma memória coerente e muito viva que nunca me deixará. A cumplicidade continuará se depender de mim, porque nada mais posso fazer senão agradecer o que me foi proporcionado com tanta angústia … felicidade e liberdade. Os homens não são todos iguais, às vezes surpreendem-nos para lá de qualquer palavra, e é esse o momento que temos que salvaguardar para sempre.

Afinal havia amor…mas um diferente…o da amizade…a única real que conheço até agora…

Aos meus homens…surpreendam-me só uma vez…that’s all I ask for…

(No comments pls)

Walls have been built, since Man has felt threatened.  If one thinks a bit about it, all the walls were erected to keep something out…

Take for instance the Great Wall of China…to keep the so called barbarians out of the Chinese territory. It’s construction took the lives of over 100.000 workers…

Another example, the Berlin Wall built to keep the capitalism away….it’s construction didn’t take exactly a lot of lives, but during its’ existence it was know as the ‘Death Strip’…I think one can imagine why…

Bottom line…Walls Suck! But still they tend to make one feel safe, despite the harm that they can inflict on others…

We shouldn’t need thought control so stop placing bricks in the wall!!

Personnages inspirés du "Dico des filles" paru aux éditions Fleurus

Pronostics

Quel avenir pro ?

Proposer

Se jeter à l’eau

Des projets

Se poser

Ex nihilo

It is so hard to go from special to just another….

Everyone goes through it at a given point in life…

It’s all about learning to deal with it…

I did…will you?

Now one other has turned to be the special,

it will remain so for an unknown far future,

I hope…do you?

I’ve turned into a despotist of the heart,

For two is the number to be,

one I will share no more!

Will you keep me?

Parce qu’on l’est toute un peu de temps en temps …

Premier essai avec Illustrator ...

… Oh les filles, oh les filles …

Today is the 37th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.  Such a simple and vital necessity…clean water.  What kind of world is there that they have to enact legislation to make it so?

I have been on the phone already this morning with 2 women…one long time sober and one new. Not much different, really. Women still have trials and tribulations, we still wake up and have a feeling and ride it all the way to the rodeo.  Forgetting that we have choices about how to feel and act, forgetting to not believe everything we think.  I only know this because I have the same malady from time to time.  But today, I scuffled through the beautiful falling leaves of orange and gold and red over to feed the neighbors dogs, and they greeted me with such loving enthusiasm that I didn’t have a chance  to feel bad. It was a frosty cold morning here, but the mercury is rising and it’s 44 already. It is supposed to hit the mid-60’s tomorrow. The sun is shining fiercely and the birds are busy trying to find the last of the bugs and worms.  We have been warned: the cold weather is coming. The fuzzy fat caterpillars are lolling around, the mice are building nests for the winter.  Out in my studio, in a drawer I opened last evening, I found a perfect little nest in the process of being built. They are fastidious about the building and not so much once they move in…but that’s the nature of the rodents.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my life lately. Is it the lot of the middle-aged to consider so many things in retrospect?  I live in the past a lot..I never think this is true, but it is.   Daydreaming and remembering. (I have a fair amount of time on my hands).  In the studio, I have covered the walls with things that I have collected over the years, photographs of family and friends and places I have known.  I think that triggers some of this too. A reverie, sometimes melancholy but mostly just interested in my perspective on it all. It is certainly the luxury of the old to  gain insight on things long past….

I will leave you with this…by Albert Camus

“Poverty was not a calamity for me. It was always balanced by the richness of light…circumstances helped me. To correct a natural indifference I was placed halfway between misery and the sun. Misery kept  me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.”

Namaste.

Rentrée littéraire

Ivre de lire depuis son lit, délires se lient à un air de hallali …

ahlala… hiiiii

]]> http://etheriel.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/the-carvings-of-my-path/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:32:01 +0000 Grace http://etheriel.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/the-carvings-of-my-path/

I look down, and I see my feet.

Ten digits, two appendages, on them I stand, and they carry me through the forest, fields and mountains that form my life.

What usually adorn them…these creations without which I could not live, are something amazing, beautiful, an infinite chameleon in shape and form – shoes.

Just another girl with a shoe obsession, you say. And you would be close to the truth.

Except it’s more than an obsession – it’s an adoration, an appreciation, a celebration. I love shoes for not only what they do for me, which is allowing me to walk in relative comfort of varying degrees from place to place, but for what they hold for me – freedom, adventures, my exploration of the world.

Step by step, one in front of another, they lift me off razor sharp rocks, dirty puddles, sticky mud, and burning concrete while I trek through unknown foliages and scale nameless landscapes. Yet at the very same time of shielding me from unimaginable harm, they are the only lining between me and this very earth that lies beneath. They are the truest witness to my trials and errors, my wits and stumbles, my leaps and bounds, my elations and despairs. While I’m alone, walking down the road, they are my silent companion, the secret witness to the formation of the essence that defines who I am. They are my soldiers in travel, one of the great passions of my life, and for that alone I owe them my utmost affection.

But it doesn’t stop there. They also accompany me in my stiller moments. When I’m people-watching in a cafe, reading on a patio, savoring a pint by the bar, or laughing over a great meal with friends, they are there. Quiet friends. Always faithful and unwavering in their devotion. They bid their time patiently beneath the tables, under the countertops, by the swiveling stools, wedged in corners, tangled up with others, sometimes. There is never a complaint. They just observe and absorb. The truest companions could not be more.

I remember how I came to possess every pair of shoes I have. Each a story of its own making. Each unique. I never buy the same shoes in different colors – it’s like buying the same painting in two different tints…unthinkable. I also never go on shopping trips for a specific shoe. I never find them that way. Something always comes close, but who wants a forced companionship? The initial awkwardness never wears off. The pleasure lies in the surprise of the encounter.

I have one pair of red flats, shiny strawberry red, probably some plastic or manmade material, probably made in China, but that’s beside the point because they are the most comfortable and beautiful flats I’ve ever had, and I will wear them as long as I can. I saw them out of the corner of my eye at Green Hills, a huge multi-floors market of stalls in Manila, after what felt like hours of endless assault on my senses. It was love at first sight.

A pair of my tallest strappy heels stands at four inches, a graceful arch, soft leather, an elegant nude shade. The straps snake around my ankles with silky ease and end in a small, discreet silver buckle. I’ve only worn it once, and I have the photographs to remember it well. They made my legs go on forever. I found them in Hong Kong on my last day during a short and hectic three day stopover, after storing my luggage at the front desk of the overcrowded guesthouse I was staying at post moving out of a double room, before realizing that the owner tried to dupe me by giving away my reserved single room and putting me in a closet (an actual storage closet) with a skylight, before wandering the street trying to find a last minute place to spend the night, under the weight of an oversize backpack and three shoe boxes.

Then there is my most trusted summer dolce vita flat sandals that I bought right here in Toronto on Queen Street West, at a place called the Blue Shoe Box. It was a tepid summer day. I just said goodbye to a group of friends after a particularly enjoyable afternoon stroll along Queen st, dipping in and out of cafes and antique furniture shops and stationary stores. No more than a block on my way home did I see them in the window display: white, two thin straps forming a most perfect T on top of a simple leather sole – I knew I wanted them right there. Images of summer dresses, soft sands and wind-tousled beach hair flashed through my mind. They weren’t on sale and they seemed unaffordable. I hesitated in front of the window. Then a voice called out: “why don’t you try them on?” A man from the doorway smiled. I couldn’t, I said, they are too beautiful and probably out of my price range. “How do you know they are out of your price range?” He said. That is true. There was no price listed. “Besides, you won’t know if either or both are true until you try them on.” So I did. And they were perfect. The man turned out to be the shop owner, handpicked all the designs and imported them. He loved them on me almost as much as I did, and gave me a discount. I took them home, beaming all the way. Since then I’ve strolled through the French Quarter of New Orleans in them, ran through the blindingly white sands of Barbados in them, danced all night in them, laughed until I got the hiccups in them, and watched sunrises and sunsets in them. They’ve been put through quite a lot, the poor things, spills and dirt and all, but they’ve weathered well. The white leather has some creases and speckles, but like ring stains inside a tea mug, they hold the memories of times past, and the imperfections only adds to their perfect appeal.

And after all is said and done…sometimes a pair of beautiful shoes is simply to be loved, for no reason other than reveries of what they may bring and times that have yet to unravel. It’s like a Keats poem, a Monet painting, there’s something so vaguely arresting about it yet undeniably breathtaking…a thing of beauty, its loveliness not restrained by the boundaries of our physical senses, and transcends the commonplace reality of life as we know it.

Most of all…shoes are forgiving. The right pair will carry you through good times and bad, through sickness and health, through changes in weight and the silvering of your temples. They don’t pass judgments on the color of your skin or the affiliation of your religion. They don’t care if you are partisan or simply don’t give a damn. They don’t overwhelm in times of glory. And when the going gets tough, they will still be there, silently bearing the burden of your weight and the heaviness of your thoughts, till the good days come back once again.

Eventually, their beauty will fade and their form may fall prey to the elements of nature, but their spirit will not falter. In fact, they become even more forgiving, the insides so perfectly molded to the arches of your soles…like an old friend’s hug. And they will continue to soldier on, until you decide to change company. Some may discard a worn pair of shoes with thoughtless abandon. I, however, know intimately every crevice of those old chaps, and I know that their beauty, though faded, cannot be destroyed by the temporal erosion of time and space, but rather live on in the reveries of the golden days and dark times past, and is forever etched in the carvings of my path that stretches far beyond me into the horizon.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its lovliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 

- John Keats, A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

]]> http://mariodomina.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/affabili-pensieri/ Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:40:51 +0000 md http://mariodomina.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/affabili-pensieri/

Di tanto in tanto, nelle mie quotidiane passeggiate là dove la cintura urbana si sfalda per diventare bosco, mi ritrovo a pensare a questo o a quello, un po’ a casaccio – non mi è chiaro se tali pensieri svolazzino attorno e finiscano per appollaiarsi sulle mie spalle o se si limitino a turbinare placidamente nel mio cervello. C’è qualche filosofo della mente che accampa in proposito teorie che potremmo definire “estensioniste”: la nostra mente non sta nel cervello e nemmeno nel corpo ma è tutt’uno con l’ambiente del quale siamo parte.

Lasciando perdere tali quisquilie, mi ritrovo anche a pensare a certe stranezze della nostra epoca: non ho ad esempio ancora ben capito quali trasformazioni sociali ed antropologiche finirà per indurre la avviluppante e labirintica e onnipresente (e spesso appiccicosa nonché soffocante) “rete” nelle nostre menti-ambiente e relazioni. Al di là di una certa dose di casualità, l’incontro con altri umani è sempre stato regolato soprattutto dai contesti sociali, urbani e produttivi: villaggi, campagne, città, mobilità, viaggi, emigrazioni, ecc. – si trattava di contorni piuttosto definiti del mondo delle relazioni possibili. Entro questi contesti giocavano poi, certo, anche gli elementi psicologici individuali. La nostra però è l’epoca “liquida” per eccellenza. Quando su un celebre social network (né più né meno che una piazza virtuale) come facebook i contatori automatici dei contatti segnano numeri come 300 o 1000 o 3000 “amici”, c’è qualcosa che mi sfugge, sia nel numero che nel termine utilizzato.

Ma siccome i pensieri della passeggiata rampollano liberamente, viene fuori che non era nemmeno questo l’argomento di cui volevo parlare oggi. Anche se un po’ c’entra. Uno di questi “amici” o “contatti” incontrati in rete, mi ha scritto qualche giorno fa alcune parole (dietro cui non so bene se intravvedere dei pensieri o delle teorie, data la fuggevolezza e inanità di tali incontri) a proposito di una supposta “affabilità nei confronti del mondo”. Mi tocca riportarle, quelle parole:

“Conoscere qualcuno è un segno di affabilità verso il mondo… comunque. Ovunque e in qualsiasi momento può accadere… ma non vuol dire altro… se non incontrarsi… è un atto d’amore anche quello”.

Ora, il termine affabile viene di solito usato in riferimento ad una persona, e non, che io sappia, al mondo: viene dal latino affabilis, “cui si può parlare”, e attiene dunque alla sfera della cordialità e della garbata urbanità, della cortesia, benignità, compitezza. Chi è affabile ascolta e si fa amabilmente ascoltare dagli altri. E’ l’optimum della relazione, anche perché non ha mai un carattere formale o di distanza: l’affabilità scalda i cuori e avvicina tra di loro le persone.

Immaginare un mondo affabile, è però tutt’altra cosa. E poi, quale porzione di mondo? La società, il luogo di lavoro, il condominio? Luoghi per loro costituzione ben poco affabili. E se poi ci dovessi mettere la natura, anche lì non si scherza: può capitare di trovarsi di fronte un ambiento bucolico (con affabili cipcip e carezzevoli piani erbosi), ma anche uragani, fiamme e tempeste, un’iradiddio che certo non sussurra affabilmente le parole che ha da dire…

Ma ancora i pensieri non accennano a ritirarsi in buon ordine, e allora mi è balenata in mente (o sulla spalla) la strana espressione che Hegel utilizza in più occasioni a proposito della supposta tenerezza di Kant nei confronti del mondo: “qui Kant – dichiara ad esempio nelle sue Lezioni sulla storia della filosofia – mostra per le cose eccessiva tenerezza: sarebbe peccato se si contraddicessero!”. Le antinomie, i dubbi, la negatività, la contraddizione sarebbero cioè solo nella nostra testa, non là fuori. Hegel pensa invece che il sale del mondo sia una razionalità conflittuale, in perenne movimento dialettico, che non ci sia riparo in nessun “dover essere” o comunità di anime belle, e che la tenerezza sia un sentimento che non ci si può permettere, per lo meno non nelle cose “serie”: la fatica del concetto, il corso della storia, il movimento circolare dello spirito, la tragicità dell’esistenza…

Ecco che la giostra dei pensieri gira di nuovo, cambiando ancora la prospettiva (e si torna così al mio “contatto” virtuale): che significato può mai avere essere ben disposti, affabili, “teneri” nei confronti di un mondo che, per lo più, ha quella pervicace e disdicevole (e per nulla affabile) tendenza a sovrastarci e a non farsi mettere sotto controllo dalle nostre buone intenzioni? Ma poi, a ben vedere, non è che la nostra sedicente affabilità debba invece essere letta come una supponente petulanza?

(E fu così che piano piano, pensiero dopo pensiero, fantasticheria dopo fantasticheria, mi ritrovai nel bosco, con due grossi gufi sulle spalle e, di fronte a sbarrarmi il passo, un lupo dagli occhi color miele che mi scrutava silenzioso…)

foto: http://lag0scur0.splinder.com/

Humer, consommer et se consumer …

C’est toujours par la faim que commence un bon repas.

Louis Auguste Commerson

L’âme du gourmand est toute dans son palais.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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