Spring Scroll
lemon tart, words that sway you like a sea-wave, and blossoms on canvas
It has been the most unsettled season, with the line between winter and spring blurred by unexpected blizzards, personal disruptions, and anticipation of stable weather. Yet, here I am with artworks that provided a sense of spring’s arrival, recipes and book recommendations (one of which I picked up at a bookstore that faces the harbour), a few photographs from the West Coast, and other random things worth remembering.
Poem of the Season:
(last two stanzas from “Love’s as warm as tears” by C.S.Lewis)
Recipes of the Season:
Asparagus & Radish Roast with Herby Hollandaise
Lemon Meringue Tart
Artworks of the Season:
Essays I Managed to Write:
If “Boring” Is an Insult, Why Do We Design Our Homes That Way?
(a recent hotel obsession and a ramble on the quiet death of character in modern homes)
“A Light Exists in Spring”: Romanticizing (NOT) The Season of Postponed Gratification
(spring bucket-list through literary classics and nostalgic snapshots)
AI’s Pseudo-Art Pursuits: Can We Already Draw The Line?
(objections against AI taking over the art industry)
Special Events of the Season:
Family Easter celebration and a romantic getaway to the West Coast.
Reads of the Season:
“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.”
― John Banville, The Sea (I picked up this book at a local book shop in Victoria, and could not stop reading it out loud. Marvellous imagery!)
“They settled the question, by deciding that misfortunes most commonly happen to us from our own misconduct or imprudence; but sometimes from causes independent of ourselves; that the most innocent and prudent conduct cannot always preserve us from them; and that, whether they arise from our own fault or not, trust in God softens them, and renders them useful in preparing us for a better life.”
― Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed
And to wrap up, a masterpiece that sounds like the first spring day after a week of grim skies and blizzards. Enjoy! (I promise it sounds nowhere near as juvenile as the title suggest.)
How is your spring, by the way?
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one!