life

Day 852

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What completes breakfast is marmalade. What enriches it with tradition is marmalade. What makes breakfast wholesome is marmalade, a source of happy, healthy, tangy carbs.

The origins of this exquisite preserve are controversial but date back to the1500s. The name has its roots in the Portuguese language. It is made from sugar and water boiled with the juice and rind of citrus fruits. Sweet oranges, limes, lemons, mandarins, grapefruits, any other such fruits or combinations of them are used.

Apparently the younger generation of today is more inclined towards smoother spreading jams, chocolate spreads and peanut butter as opposed to the bitty orange spread.

What had me hooked was the homemade version, made with Seville oranges by Si’s mum. Dark, with an intensely rich flavor. As most modern mothers have no time to make marmalade at home, it is not surprising that their kids have no taste for it. They are missing out on a delicious piece of their heritage.

For variation, it can be flavoured with ginger and whiskey as seen in farmer’s markets and gift shops at distilleries. I like them all.

It’s official. Without doubt, I am now ‘old’.
Both, The Telegraph and BBC Radio 4 support this view.
I am not just old, but ‘elderly’.

Ref: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/23/marmalade-preserve-elderly-data-shows/

Day 848

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Three centuries ago, Newton thought that reality had 3 basic components: time, particles and space. This model didn’t explain everything. Soon other forces that govern movement of particles came along like electromagnetism. Photons, gravitons and gluons emerged yet the essential ingredients of reality remain a mystery.

To explain gravity, Einstein merged space and time into a composite, space-time. Michael Faraday added the concept of a classical field that carries forces through empty space. Quantum Theory showed that all mass and energy are really excitations of underlying quantum fields. Quantum fields and space-time are incompatible, so perhaps there is a more basic component hidden beneath.

In the late 1990s, String Theory was proposed. I don’t understand it fully but basically it says that elementary particles emerge from the vibrations of one-dimensional strings. Therefore, an electron is not really a point, but a tiny loop of string. If it oscillates one way, we see an electron. If it oscillates in another way, then we call it a photon, a quark, or a …

Julian Barbour, a British physicist believes that space and time, united by Einstein must be uncoupled. The only way to define space is to consider it as the geometric relationship between observable particles. He argues that the universe is a set of possible configurations of the 3D geometry of space. He believes that these configurations or ‘snapshots’ exist in a space of possibilities. Time is not real but merely something we perceive – an illusion that comes about because the universe is constantly changing from one snapshot to another.

Spiritual masters have been teaching the concept of everything being an illusion for thousands of years. Physics seems to be catching up.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
– Albert Einstein

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Day 846

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Simba Muzira, son of Sara Muzira.
Exhibition of Art, Long Gallery, Maudsley Hospital. London.
Simba Muzira. Doing it again.

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Spray paint. Street art. Bold statements. Clear expressions. Innocent eyes. Pure soul.
Courage. Suffering. Passion.

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Pigeons telling him not to wear his shoes. Pigeons everywhere! No words!

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A mother’s tribute to her talented son who died at 32 after living with mental illness for a few years, in and out of the hospital. Her accounts of doing things in his best interest which turned out otherwise. Her heartbreak at having to live away from him when he was too ill to be at home. Her sense of an utter waste of a young life full of promise. Her guilt. Again and again. Her love. Immeasurable.

I salute you. Sara and Simba Muzira.

 

Day 845

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The art of pottery has held my fascination for as long as I can remember. It is my secret dream to be a master potter, someone who creates magical ceramics that can hold the world in them.

This evening I happened to watch a pottery programme on TV. It featured 7 highly talented potters. Some of their creations brought tears to my eyes. Watching them make these artful objects step by step from scratch was a real treat. One thing they all had in common was that if the clay on the wheel went wonky in any way, they would start all over again. They made no attempts to fix the broken, damaged, warped, marred, misshapen, spoilt, wrecked potential pots. That clay went straight from the wheel onto a waste heap. However, it can be reprocessed, kneaded and made ready for the wheel again.

I identified completely with one of those accidentally wounded pots, even in the hands of master potters. No fresh clay is needed.  I just have to refashion this existing clay into a divine vessel that lovingly cradles the world.

Day 841

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His bathroom has 3 lights, one on top of the mirror and the other 2 on the ceiling. The switch for the mirror light is just underneath the mirror. The switch for the ceiling lights is outside the bathroom door. I sometimes found the mirror-light switched on, on the way to his room even when he wasn’t there. I would tell him off for repeatedly forgetting to turn the light off after use. Now, it is my bathroom. I still find the mirror light on sometimes when I go upstairs, even if I haven’t been there for hours.

It is so easy to forget to turn the mirror-light off. I know that now.

I would arrange mail-order deliveries for the times when he would be home. Sometimes he would be in his room on the second floor and fail to open the door for them, especially if they came very early in the morning. We would then have to go around chasing our parcels. Again, I would get a bit annoyed with him for missing out on the deliveries.

Now we sleep in his room. One morning last week, I almost didn’t hear the deliveryman’s knock on the door. I thought I heard something like a knock in my sleep but disregarded it, believing it to be a dream. An identical sound came again and nudged me out of my slumber. Had the man not had enough patience, he would have left us a note and gone to his next destination. But I did manage to bundle myself up and roll myself down the stairs in a semi-comatose panic to get to the door just in time.

It’s so easy to miss a delivery. I know that now.