Toothsome quotations: 'In herbis'

In an age when just the composition of a salad required a great knowledge of herbs, their flavours and combined tastes, it was commonly said that "In herbis, et in verbis et in lapidibus sunt virtues" ("There are powers in herbs, words, and stones"). The syncretic character of late medieval cuisine... finds a mirror-like reflection in the taste for farce and linguistic blending, and in the interweaving and overlapping of words. Farce, whether "stuffed" or "mixed," makes up the combination of seasoned ingredients which conspire to please the palate; it is the dietary archetype at the origin of linguistic structuring and presides over the stuffing of vocabulary and locutions.

-Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams, from the collection The Ravenous Muse, Karen E. Gordon, ed.

Today I decided to be impulsive [irony] and painted a tree on my wall.

I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down...

As days go, today was pretty relaxing in a decently busy way. Woke up early, got coffee out with a friend, did some laundry, painted a tree on my bedroom wall, went out for dessert with another friend (who's leaving the country next week, and this was the last time I'd see her until... ever? heck, no.), made decent dinner, and my roommate got a job (ok, that one's not me).

As an impulse project, this came out alright. I needed wider masking tape and less spackle on the wall (it came off a little with the tape), but honestly I'm pretty pleased. This wall was blank and bothersome, and I needed to actually go through with one of my hair-brained ideas, just to get rolling.

I still need to go back and touch up the edges, take off some of the hazy over-spray from the paint can. Thoughts?

Dear Mr. Freud...

...Thank you for reminding me that you were quite a misogynistic twit.

I just went back into my copy of Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis from college to look up symbolism in dreams. I'd had one about quelques tours en l'air (a ballet jump where one leaps and turns one- to several times in the air) in which I could jump and then, Mary Poppins style, continue rotating casually much longer than gravity should have permitted. So I went to look up dreams about flying, only remembering something about their having to do with sex:

Dreams can symbolize erection in yet another, far more expressive manner. They can treat the sexual organ as the essence of the dreamer's whole person and make him himself fly. ...And do not make an objection out of the fact that women can have the same flying dreams as men. Remember, rather, that our dreams aim at being the fulfillments of wishes and that the wish to be a man is found so frequently, consciously or unconsciously, in women.

Right. That's it. My flying dreams are not, in fact, anything to do with a desire to escape the bounds of gravity (daily life) and to ascend to something more spectacular, to leave the humdrum behind, break free of seemingly unstoppable forces (gravity, society, money etc), they're really only about my wanting to be a man. Who would want to be a woman, anyway? bah.

The closest thing to home: Sharp residence, London

I see a lot of interior design ideas come across the web and in magazines, but this is the first that is really close to what I would like in my living room. There are a few key elements here:

• Built-in bookshelves. I require many, many of these for my books.
  
• Interesting design elements. Angles, antique ceilings, fireplaces, nooks and so on.
• Contrasting walls. I keep considering wallpaper, but I think paint is the way to go, because...
• Minimalism. Keeping it simple, even if there's some clutter.
• Warm, home like feeling. Generally attained through well-controlled clutter and lush fabrics, shiny metals.
• Well designed furniture and art pieces. I'd like to collect these from artist friends and around the world.
  

So, here, thanks to Christopher and Suzanne Sharp putting it together, Vogue's Francois Halard shooting it (full story behind link), and ApartmentTherapy posting the image, is the best representation of my vague ideas for the decoration of a living space:

In fact, the only thing in this image I really don't like are the two yellow chairs in the foreground. Otherwise, I would just have my own interpretations of what's present here.

Demons of Simulacra

Just when you think you've perceived a subject clearly - just when the glass, or the light, or the peephole that has allowed you to observe it with certitude - nature fools you. Blame it on perspective, on distortions in the medium, on the demons of simulacra: You can't always believe what you see. In optics it's called an aberration - when light is imperfect, when rays fail to converge to a sharply defined focus. It can be due to a flaw, to the distance, or perhaps even to a failure in the optic nerve. Astronomers know this as the aberration of heavenly bodies: You think you see a star to the left, but in fact it is to the right, because, though every hair on your head is in place, you are reeling through the universe at considerable velocity. This is very like the moment when you gaze out the window of a moving car and the rain looks as if it is falling sideways. It is now. Its trajectory is a plumb line toward the center of the earth, following the brute pull of gravity. But if you are planted serenely in your seat, it is hard to factor that you are rushing along the earth's surface, and so what you think you see happening isn't happening at all.

Cellophane, Marie Arana, p. 255.

Photos of Phood: Cucumber Salad

This is, in fact, the best use I've found for my mandoline so far. It's vastly easier than trying to cut all those cucumbers into perfectly thin slices. We accidentally got a lot of very cheap if not free cucumbers from the Farm Market and well, had to do *something* with them...

Photos of Phood: Caramel Corn

So darn easy, and so tasty.

Photos of Phood: Enrobed in Chocolate

Ah, here is one of the ganache balls finished! In the foreground are my attempts to do the same thing with caramel. Semi-success, mostly turned into puddles. Next time they'll be in cup form instead.

An Insufficiency of Data

Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. A man really learns little by it, for it is narrowly limited in range. What does a faithful husband know of women, or a faithful wife of men? The generalizations of such persons are always inaccurate. What really teaches man is not experiences, but observation. It is observation that enables him to make use of the vastly greater experience of other men, of men taken in the mass. He learns by noting what happens to them. Confined to what happens to himself, he labors eternally under an insufficiency of data.

From Minority Report, H. L. Mencken's Notebooks, Knopf, 1956, p. 248, nabbed from this page of Mencken quotes.

Photos of Phood: Chocolate Ganache

I think I need lights so I can shoot my food stuffs properly. The lack of focus and the flash bother me. Nonetheless: Chocolate. I believe this became centers for little chocolate covered ganache balls.