Hay, Contest, Frick
It's amazing how people have different sides to them. Colin Hay who was the force behind Men At Work has smart, sensitive, solo, songs. Relative obscurity seems to serve him well; take this charmingly sarcastic I Wish I Was Still Drinking. Here's a touching one; Me and My Imaginary Friend. This one, Overkill, is painfully touching and profound. And here's one that's just fun.
I have an idea. One of the topics at the upcoming J-Blogger Conference is called No-One Cares What You Had For Lunch. I'd like to open up a contest. Please write in any form: memoir, poetry, dialogue, etc. If you want to go the fiction route you can, but I really prefer this be a blogging thing, because - if you write about it well - I do care what you had for lunch. Write about a lunch you had. Let's keep it at roughly an 800 word maximum. There are no restrictions, other than to keep it wholesome and appropriate.
I recently visited The Frick Museum, which I don't think I'd actually heard of before. One of the paintings I was taken by was this one, The Wool Winder by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). As is generally the case, it's more impressive up close, the details of every strand of hair, fur, etc. The emotion captured here spoke to me immediately, still does. I bought a card of this and framed it.This relates to the art discussion we've been having here lately on the blog. In a way this is more accessible than abstract art, and yet there is also much that is hidden to the untrained onlooker.
More later. Please G-d.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 7:24 PM
4 Comments:
What I had for lunch
It was a balmy Maltese summer day. Not one of those in which you could fry eggs on the pavement or bake cookies in the car (who would want to eat the results, anyhow?).
The soft, salty Mediterranean breeze kissed the cheeks and promised much.
So, we piled into the car and set off. It just so happened to be my birthday... so I decided that we would “eat out” – my way.
We changed into our swimming gear and, armed with a shopping net, a fork – and goggles, of course, we dived into the cool sea. We caught sea urchins... orbs of scintillating spikes hiding bright thick, orange stars of edible sea-essence.
My Nan had taught me how to open them with a pair of scissors, rather than a knife, and this meant that I didn’t even prick myself once.... we rinsed them in the sea to get the gunk out, and washed them down with Perrier.
That was merely an appetiser, of course... so we put on street clothes again and crossed to street for a pizza.
This was one of the places where you could choose your own toppings. This, not from those humungous containers which are meant to last a day but deteriorate as soon as they are ladled into the serving dishes.... Rather, there was a never-ending alphabetical list and you could choose up to five as a standard serving, and pay something extra for each additional ingredient selected.
The wine was on the house... and indeed, it was house wine, too, made from local grapes that may not be much to look at, but which deliver their soul with every sip.
We lingered over our pizzas, people-watching. It seems that we were the only non-tourists around that day, so we got the red-carpet treatment…
Ice-cream for dessert? Oh, no – that’s so humdrum.
I had a better idea. We drove a few kilometres to my friend’s house. At the back, she had a couple of fields. Conveniently, at the edges, there grow prickly pear trees.
Now I know for a fact that inside her fridge there is always an ice-cold mound of the brilliant orange, pale green (the sweetest ones) or bright pink fruit awaiting visitors... and today was no exception. She makes prickly-pear liqueur, by the way...
She greeted us with open arms... and of course we followed her directly into the kitchen and sat down on the freaking cane chairs she had inherited from her mother.
Out came the dishes of prickly pears and the jar of wild thyme honey and the bottle of anisette... this, of course, tastes much better than pastis or ouzo or anise.
As we ate, the aroma of freshly-ground coffee reached our nostrils...
It is traditional to pour some honey or anisette over prickly pears or into the coffee – I don’t do that; I prefer to have a teaspoon of the former and a tot of the latter.
Talk about a five-star lunch in a perfect day.
That, then, is what I had for lunch.
tanjachilja@hotmail.com
Very well done. Thank you for enriching my blog. I was pulled in by the story from start to finish.
The French paintings of the classical school are amazing works. They get eclipsed by the brilliance of the Impressionists, but they are very beautiful, as is the one you posted here.
..................
I took a plane
to California
as I often do.
In California
I had a sandwich
and I thought of you
A thousand miles away
asleep mid-afternoon
tilting closer to the sun
and further from the moon.
****************************
(Not sure the poem above, which I just wrote, makes much sense. But whenever I travel there is a moment, usually when I sit down to eat, when I suddenly get a sense of distance and time lost.)
I love Miriam's poem.
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