Quotes

and I know that..

And I know I am deathless.

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenters compass.

..I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,

I see that the elementary laws never apologize. I recon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by after all.

 

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 I am of old and young, of the foolish as much the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine,

One of the great nation, the nation of many nations- the smallest the same and the largest the same,

All goes onward and outward….and nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.

My faith is to the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths.

Enclosing all worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,

Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years ..

 

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

 

fathers tell your daughters

 

‘before you say yes, get him angry. See him scared, see him wanting, see him sick. Stress changes a person. Find out if he drinks and if he does, get him drunk you’ll learn more about his sober thoughts. Discover his addictions. See if he puts you in front of them. You can’t change people, baby girl.

If they are made one way, it doesn’t wear off. If you hate how he acts when he’s out of it now, you’re going to hate it much worse eight years down the road. You might love him to bits but it doesn’t change that some people just don’t fit. ‘

 

-words  from inkskinned.

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And as a father, it is you that will teach her, her worth when she begins the journey searching for love, She will look to how you loved her, how she is seen in your eyes, if she is all that matters, and that there is no greater love than that between a father and daughter if it is done right. You will teach her to be brave, to speak her mind, to feel worthy, intelligent, important and beautiful, she wont go looking to boys to replace you, if you stay beside her. Know that she will watch you, the way you are beside a woman, the way you love, they way you respect, this is how she learns how to be treated by the ones she lets into her life. This is how she will know how valuable she is. As she grows, she will be demanding, complicated and messy, and at times she will push you to your limits.  She will undoubtably test the love you have for her, she will want you to prove it to her, fight for her, she will do all of this to see if you will stay, to see if you love her enough in all of her shades.

 

draw near, women and hear..

draw near, women, and hear what I have to say. Turn your curiosity for once towards useful objects, and consider the advantages which nature gave you and society ravished away. Come and learn how you were born the companion of man and became his slave; how you grew to like the condition and think it natural; and finally how the long habituation of slavery so degraded you that you preferred its sapping but convenient vices to the more difficult virtues of freedom and repute.  If the picture I shall paint leaves you in command of yourselves, if you can contemplate it without emotion, then go back to your futile  pastimes; ‘there is no remedy, the vices have become the custom’

-Choderlos de Laclos, ‘On the education of Women’, 1783

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As I sit around a table of daughters, passionately involved in meaningful discussion on girls and women and their place within the world of today; I can feel a fire burning deep within their souls, almost a rage not just of how little we seemed to have learnt but how generations of women themselves seem to have come to a passive acceptance of this role we are told to play and that the young adult girls of their age are too being  molded by the mothers and fathers who tell them no different. These daughters I speak of set themselves apart. They do this proudly, and by no means  to condemn, or to be better, or be above their peers but merely to make a difference. They have decided to  walk in another direction. You will not find these daughters engrossed in social media sifting though images of girls depicting themselves sexually, in awe of how they too can look like this and have the freedom to share it with the world.  No, these daughters are not admiring or  being inspired to follow this new generation of girls; instead they find it all the more reason to fight, to stand up and be seen for their intelligence, humility, bravery,compassion and strength even when faced with demoralization from their sisters and male counterparts, because they dare to be different, because they dare to say this is by no means alright. They are choosing to be the voice that speaks  and if necessary shouts and says; Girls what are you doing? And who are you doing it for?   These daughters are reading the likes of Simone de Bouvier, and Virgina Woolf they are angered and equally saddened by despite the fact that so much time has passed, we seemed to have learnt so little. That these women too, carried this very same message and somehow it failed to be heard. They are as astounded as  I,  for the incomprehension that women are still seen in so many ways weaker, inferior, less intelligent and less capable, too emotional and most appallingly as objects to be moulded and designed purely  for our male companions. It is like the world is being deliberately obtuse. I recently came across a piece of writing that was screaming for the attention of women.. for women to wake up and pay attention.

‘… Why, ladies? Why must we continue to whittle ourselves down? Who is it for? What is it for? You can walk through a certain aisle at the pharmacy or at the grocery store and see the language of diminishment all over the packaging for weight loss aids of all kinds.”Shrink your waist.” “Lose inches off your thighs.””Slim down.””Get skinny”

How about”Grow your mind.” “Increase your confidence and productivity.” “Beef up your knowledge.” “Enlarge your scope of asskicking.”

That’s a valid message for women and girls: Grow, expand, branch out, open up,get bigger,wider, faster, stronger, better, smarter. Go up not down. Get strong, not skinny.

You are not here to get smaller. You are not here to have a thin waist and thighs. You are not here to disappear. You’re here to change the world! Change the world then! Forget about “losing a few pounds”. Think about what you could be gaining instead.”

 

-words from clearthatmindofcant

Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes green beans and veloutè sauce

 

we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other

Earnest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

 

IMG_2962Restaurant Polidor 41 rue monsieur Le prince 75006 ParisIMG_2961Polidor restaurant featured in Woody Allen’s, Midnight in Paris 2011IMG_2876

We dined here three time during our four night stay, at this wonderfully humble restruant famous for Hemingway. I ordered the same meal twice not for any other reason than to simply indulge my senses once more in the simplicity of this succulent dish, suprême de poulet veloutè de morilles,purèe. ‘superbe’

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 Slow roasted chicken with silky potatoes and green beans with veloutè sauce

Ingredients for the chicken: 4 large pieces of free-range Maryland chicken,1 litre chicken stock, 3 continental parsley stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, cracked pepper

Method: place all the chicken into a deep baking dish, they can rest on top of each other. lay the parsley over the chicken, add the garlic whole to the baking dish, lightly season with the cracked pepper and then pour in the stock. Cover tightly with foil the entire top of the baking dish to keep all the steam contained. Set the oven at 180°C and slow roast for 2 hours. Check the chicken after approximately an hour and ladle the stock over the chicken sitting out of the stock, recover with the foil and continue roasting. Meanwhile prepare the veloutè.

 

ingredients for the veloutè sauce: 100grams butter,100grams flour,1litre chicken stock

Method:In a saucepan gently melt the butter without letting it colour. Remove from the heat and add the flour all at once and stir to combine. Place the pan back on the heat and cook over a gentle heat to a lightly fawn colour. Allow to cool. Bring the stock to the boil. Add the stock to the roux (flour mix) slowly over the heat, beating in well and allow to thicken before adding the next ladle. Bring to the boil, adjust heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

ingredients for the potatoes: 6 large desiree potatoes peeled and chopped,50grams butter, 250mls cream, salt to taste

method: In a pot of boiling water add the peeled and chopped potatos, boil on a rapid heat until cooked through then strain and return to the pot, mash well until there are no lumps . In another saucepan gently heat the butter until melted and add the cream cook until warmed through then add the mix to the potatoes. With a cake spatula and over a gentle heat work the cream through the potatoes until silky smooth.

Next, boil the string beans for a few minutes, ladle the veloutè into wide bowls add a large scoop of the potato and place a piece of the chicken on top finally drain the beans lightly drizzle in olive oil and season then place a few onto the chicken. Serve.

Shakespeare and company

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Fifty Grand and The Sun also Rises, introduces us to Hemingway. His individual and his concept of human nature were both very close to ours (referring to Jean-Paul Sartre). Hemingways lovers were in love all of the time, body and soul, actions emotions and words were all equally permeated with sexuality and when they gave themselves to desire, to pleasure, it bound them together in their totality.

 

There was another thing that pleased us. If a man brings his entire self to every situation, there can be no such thing as a ‘base occasion’. We attached much value to the small pleasures of daily life, and Hemingway lent romantic charm to such things as a walk, a meal or a conversation;… at the touch of his pen insignificant details suddenly took on meaning. The kind of realism, which described things just as they are.

words by Simone de Beauvoir, Prime of Life

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One thing that I have taken great delight in was the unforeseen wonder of the bountiful bookshops prevailing in this endearing city. Paris was indeed full of surprises. We visit the well-known Shakespeare and Company and immediately are captivated by the lively atmosphere of passionate literary fans wandering in awe of the scene of books that they are surrounded by.  Upstairs there is a library, of donated books that are neither for sale nor for borrowing, they are priceless in their value and you can take great pleasure in making yourself comfortable in a worn leather chair and immerse yourself in one of the precious pieces for a while. No one will ask you to move or to leave, you can sit, absorb, dream, write, read or even play the piano if you are inspired to do so.

Paris’s bookshops are alluring and plentiful, they are a wonderful way of  intimately getting to know this enchanting city.

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“You may have the universe if I may have Italy… -Giuseppe Verdi

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It’s alluring, but complicated. It’s the kind of place that can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred metres, or in the course of ten minutes.

Beppa Severgnini, La Bella Figura

 

IMG_4356 IMG_4330 IMG_4329ZàZà Ristorante Trattoria Firenze  -Piazza del mercato centraleIMG_4629IMG_4654lovely Venice..IMG_4944IMG_5004IMG_5010IMG_4946Artists Apartment, Trastvere, RomaIMG_4056 IMG_3627 IMG_3585IMG_5007cobble stone paths and names for remembering IMG_3614 IMG_3610 IMG_3586 IMG_3609 IMG_4047Luca, waiting for un caffè, NO NAME CAFE, TRASTEVEREIMG_4060 IMG_4061 IMG_3855 IMG_3860the open door bookshop, Via della Lungaretta, 23 Trastevere 00153 Rome,Italy Ph:+39065896478IMG_2859 IMG_4936 IMG_3616 IMG_4986

 

from an apartment in Roma, words ..germain greer

This book is dedicated to LILLIAN, who lives with nobody

 

but a colony of New York roaches, whose energy has never failed despite her anxieties and her asthma and her overweight, who is always interested in everybody, often angry, sometimes bitchy, but always involved. Lillian the abundant, the golden, the eloquent, the well and badly loved; Lillian the beautiful who thinks she is ugly, Lillian the indefatigable who thinks she is always tired.

It is dedicated to CAROLINE, who danced,but badly, painted but badly, jumped up from a dinner table in tears, crying that she wanted to be a person, went out and was one, despite her great beauty. Caroline who smarts at every attack, and doubts all praise, who has done great things with gentleness and humility, who assaulted the authorities with valorous love and cannot be defeated.

It is for my fairy godmother, JOY with the green eyes, whose husband decried her commonsence and belittled her mind, because she was more passionately intelligent, and more intelligently passionate than he, until she ran away from him and recovered herself, her insight, and her sense of humour, and never cried again, except in compassion.

It is for KASOUNDRA, who makes magic out of skins and skeins and pens, who is never still, never unaware, riding her strange destiny in the wilderness of New York, loyal and bitter, as strong as a rope of steel and as soft as a sigh.

For MARCIA, whose mind contains everything and destroys nothing, understanding dreams and nightmares, who looks on tempests and is not shaken, who lives among the damned and is not afraid of them, a living soul among the dead.

-words lovingly borrowed from Germain Greer, THE FEMALE EUNUCH

paris moments

“There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who

has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

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walking the streets of paris, going nowhere in particular

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domesticating children

‘washing dishes can be a meditation…

i have placed a small sticky note above our sink with these words roughly scribbled on it. since the unfortunate dying of our beloved dishwasher it is taking some great convincing in our house hold that this could be an opportunity presenting itself. Thich Nhat Hanh, a practicing zen buddhist monk, uses washing the dishes as an opportunity to practice prayer and meditation. Here, looking out the kitchen window from our simple home front, I see children learning to cooperate, the sharing in household tasks,learning life skills, growing up. It seems though that the only person i have been able to successfully persuade in this new approach to washing up is our Georgie, at 16 months she’ll happily do the rounds of dishes morning, noon and night. Thank god for my little domestic goddess.

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kitchen tale

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“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life
― Picasso

Every now and again life can temporally turn you up side down.  We are in a moment like that now. There seems to be a few things that i do during these moments, without much thought. Maybe unconsciously thats what Im needing to do. Most of the time I renovate or change something, make something new, leaving behind our world for a while. Fortunatly we have an old house with plenty of spaces to do this to. My latest creation is a kitchen wall. I painted it with chalkboard paint on a spur of the moment thing. I was only really intending to put a fresh coat on our babies chalk board and well just kept going. Surprisingly it’s turned out well. I added an old plank of wood as a shelf and filled a few wine bottles with olive oil. I feel better.