today’s menu:
cappuccino in a fat, green mug
grilled cheese special
(with caramelised onions + garlic + mushrooms and almost every kind of cheese in the pantry)
Ollivier Pourriol’s The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard
countless thoughts about time and surfing (I miss the sea)
< ‘lo-fi jazz’ music in the background >
I have been making espresso-based-with-steamed-milk drinks regularly for almost a year now (wow, what? A year? How time flew last year) but tonight’s the first time I drank one in a while. When I first started practising, I’d try a drink first before making another one for either my mom, her friends, or my dad. But after a while, it was just a lot of hoping I worked up enough skills to not burn the milk.
Mother bought a lot of bread the other day, as per my request. All the cooking/café-vlog watching had been making me crave making all the things they make. Emphasis on making because I don’t necessarily want to eat, I just want to make and share the stuff I make. (Though more often than not, I get hungry and do not mind partaking in the goods as well).
There weren’t any specific recipes I had watched and subsequently wanted to try. It was more of I see something and think Ah, yes, that one can work or because of all the watching, I’d get my own ideas and look more videos or recipes up if ever it was an idea I was yet to figure out.
Now that’s quite interesting how I said getting my own ideas because I only realised that truth of that when I typed it. See the past few days I have been asking myself often ‘What’s wrong? Why do I feel so unsettled?’ I’ve been feeling overwhelmed and, for one, I would think it was because I’d be continuously consuming ideas, quite unable not to. Only ‘quite’ because I think if I restrict myself, it would be easy: no screens nor books in bed, set a time limit for screen time, set a time goal for meditation, etc. Even if I don’t really want to do it, I wouldn’t have trouble trying. But that’s the point: I didn’t want to. Still don’t, honestly. Some days I get tempted with the promises of ‘productive structures’ but we’re still here ‘unresistingly resisting’. I’ve decided to go with the flow and I better keep going.
Ah, this ‘lo-fi jazz’ background‘ music hits it tonight. I can feel my eyes getting heavy now but it’s less of ‘I should sleep soon’ and more ‘I can feel myself diving deeper into the flow’.
The flow—the damn flow. I’ve been trying to feel it but for some time now it’s been so difficult. At the end of last month, just when the waves had been so kind to me, I got washed ashore. I can tell a specific moment—the exact date and time—but I won’t because things aren’t so simple as one thing causing another. Aristotle acknowledged four sorts of causes but it can be even more complex than that. At the very least complex enough for humans to never know the right answer.
Still let’s let the linear rational mind: some Wednesday afternoon last month pushed forth for the continued destruction of the tower. More similar moments followed right after. And now we’re here.
Here where I’ve been feeling a little ditzy. Some days I’d think maybe it’s time to set up a routine, but always that planning stage ends up with me convincing myself that we’re better off getting back into the flow and following the natural rhythm of things than spending time and energy racking up grey matter to formulate the ‘best sort of day possible’. And anyway, have I already any idea what the objectively best sort of day possible is? No is another point.
So, no ‘plans’ still, no routines, so to-do lists whatsoever, just going with the flow. But time? What of time? I can’t quite recall what made me think of scaling back again on my awareness of kronos and when. Was it before or after I had missed the deadline for an assignment? Ah, it was after. It was while I was making the sandwich which was way past the deadline. I had already submitted the late work by then.
I think I was going to figure out how that may be possible, the ‘scaling back’ I mean, but while I was eating tonight’s masterpiece, I chanced upon these words from Ollivier Pourriol’s The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard (my bible these days):
“Then it’s no longer a sport, in which individuals compete through the energy they create, but principally a sensory and imaginary experience, an elementary pleasure. The aesthetic is more important than performance, and the surfer’s main priority is to “take” the wave well, to cut a beautiful line across it. … Subduing sea monsters is, of course, sport, but most importantly it is a mythical dream. … Horse riding is also a “gliding sport”—you surf on the movement of the horse—with the one crucial difference that you may eventually end up being able to steer the animal wave, but never that of the ocean.
Ollivier Pourriol. The French Art of Not Trying Too Hard.
Time too is a wave.”
(I would share the whole chapter if that was easier, but really just read the whole book like I’ve done more than once now.)
It was that last line: like thunder in an otherwise quiet night. There was a good paragraph between that last line and the last one I had read but when I turned the page my eyes landed right where the word time was printed just as thoughts of kronos were entering my mind. Maybe it was those thoughts that pulled my eyes?
But, wow. Just wow. Imagine that: time as a wave. An actual wave, like the damn sea that I so miss. A wave to paddle through—can you feel the sprays and mists of seconds and minutes?—and, once far enough, on which you would you would hop on with your board and strong centre and carefree balance. When you fall, the oneness of the waves will catch you in its embrace, all so you can try again and again and again.
