A House of Gulls.

I’ve been thinking, reading, writing about houses lately (due to another, soon-to-be-blogged project.) Thinking about the way that the space around us shapes our sense of possibility and the ideas inside of the mind.

Then stepping outside this afternoon, post-rain, the strip of land alongside the creek very green, and bright in the sun that slanted at just the right angle between the clouds and the top of Mt. Sanitas, the soil dark and puddles swirling copper when I walked through them in my boots.

Most of our houses, our apartments, our offices and buildings—they are too box-y, too much involved with themselves and the people who made and live in them. The outside world is unpredictable and influences us, if we let it, will pull us quite naturally out of the minds that we occupy so much of the time.

Perhaps then, the best space would be one that invites in as much of the outside as possible. That does not shelter the live-r, but allows the elements (or at least the experience of the elements), into interior spaces.

What would it feel like to live this way?

“I should like my house to be similar to that of the ocean wind, all quivering with gulls.” ~ Georges Spyridaki

* That last photo, of the tent on the beach in Morocco, comes via Peggy Markel

Do Things Taste Better in Handfuls, or When Chosen One By One?

In Florence it is raining, round heavy drops that soak the uneven cobblestones of one narrow street (among others) behind the Palazzo Vecchio. Under streetlamps before dawn, a man leans his umbrella against the stone wall and bends down under an awning to raise the metal gate that covered his shop for the night. Around the corner, another gate lifts as another man, slightly stooped from consecutive mornings of this same routine, drags a rusty food cart onto the street for a day of work. The pasticceria next door is wrapping up business, having poured the smell of baking butter into the alley since one a.m. Now it’s about six. The pastries are baked, now on their way to cafés around town, and a small crowd loiters by the non-descript door hoping to purchase leftovers before the baker, in his sweat-stained apron, heads home.

donuts from the donut shop.

Visiting the Souk. Reading Rumi in Marrakech.

I woke up this morning trying to explain what it is that I love about Morocco. Last night I told a friend that I am happy here but couldn’t say exactly why. I fell asleep thinking about it and even in my dreams, it was so hard to coalesce the dense sensations of this country into words. Slowly waking, I found myself describing it as one of those amusement park kiosks where they make wax molds of your hand. I feel like I’m being dipped in hot wax, I thought, still half-asleep, coated in a hard hot shell which slowly peels away.

I came home from the souk last night—spice mix, hats and slippers in hand—feeling overwhelmed and spent. “I feel like a towel,” I wrote in my journal, “that needs to be wrung out,” and then imagined the river of saffron and cumin that would pour out, the sounds of metal hammers banging wrought-iron into lamps, hundreds of hands beckoning into stalls of leather, pottery, a man holding a blade between his toes while he whittles wood with both hands.

I sip my coffee the way I want to live. Slowly, searching for flavor.

Why is the coffee so much better in Italy? The question hit me with my first sip of espresso. The tiny spoon and hardwood counter, my suitcase still resting against my knee as I waited for Peggy to rush home from the market and invite me inside.

I asked the question again this morning, trying to keep the coffee on my tongue for as long as possible, so I might ascertain just what about the flavor was so different. Less bitter. Darker. Smoother. I wanted to use words usually meant for describing wood, or wine.

I had a similar experience later in the day, when handed a chunk of parmigiano cleaved from the heart of a 20-pound block, in the kitchen of il Teatro del Sale. The taste of it made me think of a well, as if I was pulling the flavor up from its depths in a bucket. That’s how long it lasted, each tug bringing up something new.

Heaven is Infinite Learning, She Said.

She was sitting across from me at a table in a corner of the café. We were surrounded on three sides by windows and hot bright sun.

We talk about ideas. This is what I love about her, this friend of mine whose name is Alyssa. Her eyes become bright and her hands dance across the table while the ideas come flying out. We cannot stop them. Our plans for the future in hundreds of variations, countless lives to be lived and the sheer possibility of it.

I’m so anti-Valentine’s Day. Or am I. Really?

Eating lunch at the bar with a friend last week, I asked if he’d decided which of the many girls he’s been pursuing to take out for Valentine’s Day. I find his situation fascinating, and hilarious. How a winter holiday is threatening to turn one of his flings into something weighted down by the scent of romance. That kind of pressure could either be a blessing for a fickle one like him, or a disaster.

He asked me what my plans were, probably finding it just as strange that I’ve had a boyfriend (though not the same one) every V-day for the past 5 years.”I’m not a big Valentine’s person,” I tried to convince him, “It’s just so much pressure and makes everything feel weird and forced.” The bartender looked up. “You,” he proclaimed, “are the perfect woman.”

I could take Valentine’s Day or leave it. This is true, I swear. Unless…

Roasted Roots

My mom is notorious for burning herself while cooking, and slicing her fingers on too-sharp kitchen knives.

She doesn’t follow recipes and afterward can never say exactly what ended up in the mix. Despite this and because of this everything she cooks is delicious and impossible for me to replicate. A meal with my mom is a one-time experience.

She dashes around the kitchen and throws things into pots, things I didn’t even know my kitchen contained and never would consider combining. She says that when she reads a recipe she can taste the finished dish in her mouth. Vegetables should be roasted with fresh rosemary. No fresh rosemary? We’ll use nutmeg and dried ginger instead. The kitchen cleaver becomes an extension of her hand and she uses it to gesture and point at things from across the room, slicing dangerously through the air between us.

When she cooks, I get out of the way.