After a stressful week, what with one thing and fifty others, I made a lovely pot of cream of celery soup this morning. With a teaspoonful of Bill Veach's Curry Powder Mix, you mix it yourself from his recipe. And added milk at the end, and a dash of lemon juice.
And for lunch I had a bowl with a slice of wholewheat bread. And pronounced it good for what ailed me.
Aside from Richard Rohr, whose The Art of Letting Go accompanies my
weaving and whatever else I'm doing with fiber, because he's talking
about contemplation, and at this stage in the jacket, it's contemplative
work, I've found a new reader to listen to.
The Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to be exact. It seems unlikely to have him as my reader, but I got there by circuitous paths. I originally got onto their YouTube channel in search of a series of excellent lectures on Julian of Norwich, given by Dean Emma last name escapes me, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on Julian. I was interested in knowing more about a mystic contemplative hermit, and learned a lot. Including the fact that hermits get a lot more company, largely people in search of spiritual guidance, than we might think. Also that she had a cat, who could come and go by the window in her walled up little room. And how contemplation in solitude works.
Anyway, once on that website, I found that the Dean has a very young relative who can't visit at the moment because of lockdown restrictions, so he's reading The Wind in the Willows partly for her, partly for any other kid such as me, who wants to listen.
It's peaceful, hearing him, in his agonizingly correct English, tell the story. I love the first chapter, of Mole and the springcleaning and giving up and going out because it was better in the sunshine. There are parts I don't like, such as Mr Toad, I find him very unsettling and distressing so I skip him. But I love the carol singing fieldmice and Mr. Badger, living alone and liking it. And a lot of other things. I've pretty much given up on analyzing the agenda of the whole work, as I used to, and just enjoy what's there on the surface. I know about the implications, and I'm good with all of it.
So that's the evening listening at the moment. Except that this evening is for a movie. Searching for Bobby Fischer, which you can scarcely recognize after the library has finished stickering it and stamping it, and generally ruining a lovely design, anyway, this is what I'll watch tonight
I don't think you need to know chess to watch this one, either, just as you can enjoy The Queen's Gambit without knowing much, if anything, about chess.
But where are the Misfits, you ask? Usually we come in here today and find a mass of vegetables strewn across the countertop. This week the weather stepped in and put back the deliveries all over the place, particularly produce that might have originated in the south during their bitter cold spell. Tomorrow, they tell me, it will arrive. Well, it won't suffer from the heat on the way, anyway.
So it will be a Saturday Salad instead, this time around.
