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I’ve always appreciated punctuation.
This new reality feel like a semi-colon.
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I’ve always appreciated punctuation.
This new reality feel like a semi-colon.
… or houmous … or hummous (if you are taking a wild orthographical stab)…
I’ve just returned from holidays; four weeks of self-satisfying and socially-acceptable selfishness where the ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ were mine alone to decide.
Holidays always involve a supermarket shop (because, I believe that the supermarket is a unique place that offers the visitor a rare insight into the non-visitor’s everyday)
Holidays always involve some sort of food discovery.
Last time it was France : madeleine …
The madeleine is simple perfection where success relies on knowledge and patience.
I read the history and the poetry and shopped for conventional wisdoms; I ate wholes and halves and crumbs and asked questions of kitchens and salons and bistrots ; I collated recipes and bought moulds and started exploring …
But I have not yet read Proust in the original French; and I believe that any exploration of the madeleine should involve a little Proust.
…
…
No comments necessary.
… laughing …
It’s a self-imposed bar.
… laughing …
And so, my musings on the alchemy of a perfect madeleine have been shelved … for the time being.
There is no Proust-shaped equivalent in the history of hummus … that I know of.
The exploration has a realistically-located end point.
This time – food discovery was Jordan : hummus. And I ate ladle, spoon and bowl-fuls; from tetrapacks, Lonely Planet-identified “Places to Eat” and self-identified holes in the wall …
And it turns out that good hummus, really good hummus, is quite the difficult concoction to achieve; contrary to better and common judgment.
It requires two things … craft and attentiveness.
In other words #TheSimpleThings …
In other words it was the perfect subject for exploration …
I don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog, or this week, or this life … but I do believe in serendipity …
… and magic …
… and, if I remember to listen, I will understand that everything will be OK.
I have a frequently-used hashtag – #TheSimpleThings.
Capital ‘t’, capital ‘s’, capital ‘t’.
A title.
An idea that guides what I do and how I do it … most of the time.
At work I want to know the what, why, how. In life I am trying to be more instinctive, less wedded to self-constructed rules based on social expectation. I am trying to understand, and be true to, what works best for me.
And The Simple Things include playing with words … writing.
But not just writing. Writing something of value
(def: value = impact)
The only trouble is – I don’t know what to write about.
There are too many words in the world – spoken and written – that offer no value. That are thrown, like salt, into an already over-salted soup killing the nuance, the sweetness.
And I don’t want to add to the existing cacophony; I don’t want to add to a recipe collection, or reminisce previous travel, or review the ideas of others …
So what ‘value’ to provide … what value can be plated up and served for impact?
…
…
?
??
… so no writing. Until I’ve found something ‘worthy’ to write about.
But ‘not writing’ doesn’t mean that my brain has switched off to the idea of writing. As instinctive as the flight/fight response, it identifies potential subject matter and discards the same within moments.
Searching for value without finding any.