Art of Cooking

 Mussel with mint vinegar and olive oil







Arugula with figs and cheese

here life is simple

Sitting in my patio, at sunset on a early summer's evening. I want to be in a place where life is simple. I'm originally from a very old culture, our people know how to live. Eating outdoor in the summer's evening, sipping wine, watching the moon slowly come up in the eastern sky, listening to the cicadas making continuous sound after dark, that sort of thing. It's comforting. I try to re-create that kind of setting.

Dear Updike

Dear Updike — Evelyn Lau 
I dreaded those future aeons when I would not be
present — an endless succession of days I would
miss, with their own news and songs and styles
of machine.
— John Updike, “On Being a Self Forever”

No, nothing much has changed.
A year later, the world is still one you’d recognize —
no winged cars to clog the air,
no robots to do our dirty work.
The hours and days, as it turns out,
just go on. No space age fabrics
drape our tired bodies, though I did try on a sweater
built of bamboo, soft as chewed silk.
The chrome surface of the dream’s lake
where I swim every night
still hides the same wreckage in its mud bottom.
Sometimes I open my eyes at the morning
and wonder what words you would wring
from the splendour and boredom
of these limited hours. Some day
there’ll be a future we won’t recognize,
but not now. Outside my window,
the low moan of winter in the ragged street.
Flakes of funereal ash falling from the sky.
The soiled comforters of the clouds;
the tightly wrapped buds of winter roses.
These grudging gifts of December,
tied in newsprint. For weeks after your death,
The New Yorker continued to print your backlog
as if death couldn’t stopper your creativity,
as if you were still writing in that midnight room.
But not a word from you now, and it’s dark at four.

John Hoyer Updike, March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009, was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic.

Evelyn Lau is a Canadian poet and novelist. 

We all feel sorry for ourselves

The roots of artistic ability grow from psychological injury. — Charles Dickens

Rolling in the Deep — Adele 

There's a fire starting in my heart 

Reaching a fever pitch, and it's bringin' me out the dark

Finally I can see you crystal clear 

Go ahead and sell me out, and 

I'll lay your shit bare 

See how I'll leave with every piece of you 

Don't underestimate the things that I will do...

Buddha teaching

Do not go by revelation; 

Do not go by tradition; 

Do not go by hearsay; 

Do not go on the authority of sacred texts; 

Do not go on the grounds of pure logic; 

Do not go by a view that seems rational; 

Do not go by reflecting on mere appearances; 

Do not go along with a considered view because you agree with it; 

Do not go along on the grounds that the person is competent; 

Do not go along because the recluse is our teacher. 

—Siddartha Gautama c.563-c.460

Almodóvar Viva Pedro

9 films in a box set: 

—Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown 

—All About My Mother 

—Talk to Her 

—The Flower of my Secret 

—Live Fresh 

—Law of Desire 

—Matador 

—Bad Education 

Add one more to make it 10 —

Volver 

Money well spent.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death. Almodovar add 5 more to life: secret, transsexual, betrayal, incest, murder.

Thank-You Notes

I own so much
to those I don't love.
The relief as I agree
that someone else needs them more.

The happiness that I'm not
the wolf to their sheep.
The peace I feel with them,
the freedom -
love can neither give
nor take that.

I don't wait for them,
as in window-to-door-and-back.
Almost as patient
as a sundial.
I understand
what love can't.
— Wislawa Szymborska, 1923 – 2012