Category: reading

Everyday cake

Posted in anxiety, cooking/baking, favourite quotes, health, life, reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ...Tagged , , 7 Comments

Other people’s words about … cake

The other day, in a dark moment, I was trying to compile a list of things that make me feel better when I’m feeling bad.
(I write these lists often. You can draw your own conclusions about what this says about me!)
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One of the things that’s always on my list of consolations is: CAKE.
Cake never fails, right?
Lovely blogger Stacy Ladenburger talks about this over on her blog Delightful Crumb.
Her solution is something she calls ‘Everyday Cake’ —
a cake to eat and bake through all life’s trials and tribulations.

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Everyday cake.
Even the idea consoles me …

Note:
I have never posted a recipe on my blog, and don’t intend to. One reason is my self-imposed word limit. It’s hard to publish a recipe in a post that’s 101 words or less.
But if you would like a recipe for everyday cake, I’d try Stacy’s recipes here and here.
And whatever recipe you try, I hope that baking and eating the end-result will console you as I have found it consoles me…

Kinship

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Other people’s words about … headaches

One of the things I love about reading is the sense of kinship
you can find in another person’s words.
Sometimes, the smallest phrases from a book sing true.

Since he left, a headache had followed Laura, the kind like a bird that settles and soars.

from ‘Questions of Travel’
by Michelle de Kretser

(p. 177)

Sometimes I, like Laura, get headaches that come over me, varying in intensity —
for a few hours, or days, or weeks.
Medication doesn’t help:
and I’ve learned just to sit the headache out.

… she could feel a headache coming on, the close-fitting, all-over kind like a swimming cap made of lead.

(p. 498)

So I find solace and companionship in these words of Michelle de Kretser.
I may never meet her.
But I know how her world is coloured,
and I know that she is kin.

Self-transcendence

Posted in anxiety, favourite quotes, nature, on writing, reading, Running, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged , , 2 Comments

If you are ever in need of an answer or feel a little lost in this great big world, go out there and hit the trails. Leave the Garmin at home and just get out there and be. Connect with nature. Listen to the whispers of breeze in the trees or the ramblings of the nearby stream. Eventually, you will find what you are looking for and perhaps, in time, you will find yourself as well.

 

The words I’ve quoted above come from the blog So what? I run.
(Read the whole post here.)
For me, they apply whether I’m walking or running.

Through the gate …

Because of my knee injury, it’s all about walking for me right now.
And I’m okay with that.

Past the vineyards …

It’s all about the connection with the world around me:
it’s vital.
It’s healing.

Past the reeds swaying in the wind …

And in the spirit of the quote above,
I’m posting today some photos from one of my favourite walks.

Past the hanging tyre …

You don’t need phones or apps or pedometers or fitbits.
You just need time to look,
to listen,
to breathe.

My hourglass

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Slowly, it started to feel as if I had clawed my way back to something resembling a life. It was such a relief to know that I hadn’t finished changing — I wasn’t an hourglass that had timed out, all the grains fallen through. I wasn’t stuck, too soon the best I could ever be.

from ‘Inbetween Days’
by Vikki Wakefield*

Have you ever wondered if you’ve already achieved the best you can?
Have you ever thought that it’s all downhill from here?
If so, perhaps — like me — you will find these words comforting.
I like to think of the grains in my hourglass still trickling through slowly …
… not quite timing out.

*Note:
Vikki is a good friend of mine and fellow writer. Check out her website for more information.

Happy/sad

Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, favourite quotes, life, reading, solace, staying humble, staying trueTagged 4 Comments

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.

From ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘
By Stephen Chbosky

Have you read The Perks of Being a Wallflower?
I came to it a few years ago — later than most people, long after the film was released. I think I thought (cynically) that it was a kind of super-cool rewrite of The Catcher in the Rye. And I don’t like super-cool books.
But it isn’t.
I like Charlie’s voice. The narrative is simple and poignant, and gets at the heart of the loneliness of being an adolescent.
Happy/sad.
That’s not just adolescence, though, is it?

PS Happy birthday to my mother for today! ❤

The chef gets healthy

Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, cooking/baking, favourite quotes, health, life, on writing, reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ...Tagged , 3 Comments

Other people’s words about … life

Cookbooks are all about food and cooking, right?
But here’s what I found in a cookbook I borrowed from the library recently:

I generally don’t get into the whole ‘life quote’ thing; I pop them in a basket with mason jars and hip-hop yoga. But there’s a snowboarder I follow on Instagram called Kevin Pearce … who listed the non-negotiables in his life and it really stuck with me. I adapted the list to suit my life, but the fundamentals are still the same. When I am disciplined about making time for these rules, I find everything else falls into place easily and I am a better person, inside and out. That’s a good thing, right?
Make space for this:

  • Start the day with exercise.
  • Do yoga or meditate (even just 5 minutes): morning, noon and night.
  • Eat a healthy breakfast, lunch and dinner.
  • Prepare food in advance so there’s no excuse to eat crap.
  • Drink lots of water, at least 2 litres a day.
  • Get outside, look around (not down at your screen) and listen.
  • Be present!
  • Take care of hygiene.
  • Read and learn something new every day.
  • Keep in touch with friends and family.
  • Lead with your heart and keep your mind close behind.
  • Remember that conscious breathing will always centre you.
  • Be appreciative and be patient.
  • Surround yourself with awesome, like-minded people.
  • Sleep and rest, as much as you feel you need.

from ‘The Chef Gets Healthy’
by Tobie and Georgia Puttock

I have to confess: the recipes in the cookbook didn’t do much for me. I like my carbs! (Tobie and Georgia have eschewed carbs in the name of health.)
But I loved Tobie’s list.
It’s a recipe for life, not just for food.
And, as with all the best recipes, you can adapt it and make your own.
It’s a starting-point, I think —
a good one, too.

About a dog

Posted in a thought, books, favourite quotes, reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ...Tagged , 2 Comments

Other people’s words about … pets

No words from me today — just a quote.
Anyone reading this who has a dog will, I think, smile and nod in recognition.

The dog stretched out and dropped his head onto my lap. Instantly he began to snore and I admired his opportunism and the detail of his design. The seams of his eyelids and the way they met perfectly, sealing him shut. The backward slant of tufty eyelids; a dense ridge of tiny hairs. And the odd crazy whisker that sprouted from his head, feeling its way out into the world. I flicked one and he twitched but he knew it was just me. And with my other hand I stroked him long and hard and felt the thick grease of his fur rise and coat my hand. He soothed me; he always did.

From In my house
by Alex Hourston

Twenty-one breaths

Posted in a thought, anxiety, gratitude, health, life, Paths, reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, Uncategorized2 Comments

Recently, I’ve been reading about the power of breathing.
As I understand it, when we’re busy or stressed or even excited,
we activate our sympathetic nervous system,
moving into ‘fight or flight’ mode.
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But when we stop —
to sleep, rest, meditate, relax,
or simply just to breathe —
we activate our parasympathetic nervous system.
And it’s then we can heal ourselves:
of anxiety and sickness and angst.

Winter sunset at Aldinga Beach
Winter sunset

So now — in keeping with my blog’s theme —
I stop several times daily to take twenty-one deep breaths.

♦

In (through the nose).
Out (through the mouth).
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Healing.
Healing.
Healing.

Quote

Other people’s words about … loneliness

Posted in anxiety, favourite quotes, on writing, reading, Uncategorized, What I love about ...Tagged , 2 Comments

Jack realised then that his father had stopped smoking. He was profoundly impressed. It made him realise as other things had not how important this job was to Jerry. He felt that perhaps older people needed satisfactory jobs even more than young ones; they had narrower worlds. They needed hard edges, secure boundaries to their lives. Somehow this made Jerry seem remote: Jack had never felt this before.

He listened, grinned, joked, and all the time there was this unassuageable pain of loneliness in his heart. It wasn’t a boy’s loneliness any longer, but a man’s. He felt he might go through life with this longing, this sensation that there was a pit inside him, never to be filled. He faced up to it, looked at it carefully: it was like a kind of haunting, as irrational and inherently terrifying. Now he knew he had seen its traces on many faces. It was what made old people withdraw into themselves, peering out suspiciously through tiny windows at the world, as the reclusive pensioners of Towser’s house peered at him. it was not that they were defensive in their loneliness: it had changed them to a different kind of person, that was all.

From Ruth Park’s ‘Swords and Crown and Rings’

Ruth Park is most famous for her novel The Harp in the South. She also wrote a much-loved series for young children called the Muddle-Headed Wombat books. In my adolescence, I devoured her novel for young adults, Playing Beattie Bow.

I hadn’t read any of her other novels until I came across Swords and Crowns and Rings at my library. Written in 1977, it’s a wonderful read, full of observations and thoughts still relevant today.

This I love: this unassuageable pain of loneliness in his heart.

Words like that — they quicken your heart.

 

Rebecca and the sea

Posted in favourite quotes, reading, sea quotes, the seaTagged , 5 Comments

Other people’s words about … the sea

You could hear the sea from here. You might imagine, in the winter, it would creep up on to those green lawns and threaten the house itself, for even now, because of the high wind, there was a mist upon the window-glass, as though someone had breathed upon it. A mist salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea. A hurrying cloud hid the sun for a moment as I watched, and the sea changed colour instantly, becoming black, and the white crests with them very pitiless suddenly, and cruel, not the gay sparkling sea I had looked on first.

from Rebecca
by Daphne du Maurier

The sea in Rebecca is a hidden menace — sometimes beautiful, more often ominous.
I think it’s a wonderful book.