Season

Advanced Literature class in Spain, in Academia La Cocina Verde, getting ready for an excellent read a year ago. Now, fall just around the corner, we've read our way through season by season.

Just like excellent poetry, this isn't a book to be read from cover-to-cover, but rather savoured throughout the year, reading each entry like a delicious tidbit in its season, hence the well-named title. I love this prose. It as though I'm playing while reading, dancing between the lines and then lingering here and there to drink up the visual flavours and imagery of almost every word and phrase. 

Imagine this: 

"The sky seems like a watercolor love story." - Fireflies

"The air smells like spring seduced late summer and drenched the night in promises. Somewhere between possibility and substance, the evening hovers, a strange shade of autumn....
Amazing...astounding what fifteen minutes surrounded by the throb of another's heart can do for the equilibrium of a soul. Storms arrive and abate. The planet spins. And hearts beat." - Heartbeat

Or

"End-of-summer rain traces the outline of the window panes next to me; damp trails glimmering beneath the slate clouds that seem to hover close enough to touch, should I stretch out my hand." 

-Blurred

"For that is the secret, isn't it. No matter how deep the pain, how unbearable it seems as it scrapes and tears and breaks our bodies, our dreams... our souls. No matter the wound, there is the balm of time. The bandage of memory, the antiseptic of grace." - Burns

I relish the Soup. It revives me, reminds me that the world is made of flesh and breath, not manufactured compounds (like that from a can) and synthetic fibers... For the truth of the Soup, the revelation, is that if you wait until 'it' is done - whatever your 'it' may be - you will miss out on the authentic happiness that is 'now'. We all have scuff and brokens and imperfects... but this is exactly what ties us together!" - Soup Afterglow

"We live, we love. We laugh and grieve and learn and grow. Life is a forge that burns away the surface, strengthens the core, and reveals the soul. This collection of essays and memories plunges through more than a decade of the beautiful struggle that is marriage and parenthood and finding one's self amidst the tangle of both. This journey weaves joy and sorrow, passion as well as isolation, into a tapestry that makes such an ordinary life, more splendid than its solitary threads."

I'm Off Then

A week after Sobrino Jake, 18, left on his "Camino" I picked up a book he had left unread behind and began a vicarious journey of sorts with him and Hape Kerkeling, the author of this book.

Because I live on the Camino this chronology of one sojourner's pilgrimage from town to town on his way to Santiago de Compostela, the Way of St. James, is especially relevant for me. It is interesting both because of proximity and also because of the hundreds of pilgrims that make their way through our little city of Astorga. I appreciate Kerkeling's humorous style of what might have otherwise been a dry journal-entry type of narrative. Instead it was quite charming and inspiring.

"In our Western world, which is practically devoid of spirituality, we suffer from a lack of ritual. The Camino is a ritual that offers a genuine opportunity to take up a challenge. Every one of us needs something to hold on to, but the only stability comes from letting go." - Hape Kerkeling

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Summer Baskets

Summer baskets, just waiting to be lifted off their rural home's pantry shelf and filled to the happy brim with delicious lunch items of choice. Maybe herbed cucumber sandwiches on fresh baked bread, season-ripened fruit, sweet wine and dark chocolate. These two lovely beauties have been abandoned here far too long and someone's simple joys of a quiet forest or waterside picnic have been forfeited by a litany of chores and other important business in modern life. What if we balanced our modern responsibilities and consistent productive use of time instead with a few hours enjoying a simple meal outdoors, stretching out afterwards on a blanket with a book or facing upturned to the clouds? Seeing these old items, a woven mule's pannier and two simple baskets, l'm left yearning for just that, a little escape, a little something more. How about you? When was the last time you slipped away to eat outdoors and where did you picnic? 

#antiquebaskets #antiques #baskets #cestos #maragateria #maragatos #alforjas #arrieros#picnic #verano #comehomewithme #packalunch#afternoonout

A Flower Grows in Astorga.

#atreegrowsinbrooklyn #parallels #recurringsymbol #rose #astorga

Okuda San Miguel Gijón

The city's dingy greys and
hard look of constant human barrage, urban crowding and industrial pollution suddenly give way to a kaleidoscope of geometric colour. It's unexpected and visually thrilling. You've just spotted a work by Okuda San Miguel, the world's most colorful street artist, a Spaniard born in Santander and living in Madrid whose Surrealistic Pop Art carries social and political messages as well as captivates the eye.
Imagine, whizzing out of Gijón, I almost missed it, this particular, unassuming, but classic urban jewel, a geometric print and multicolored pattern on an old building, just like other patterns across old warehouses, lost railways, factories that started to become recognizable and iconic in Spain since 1996.
I only began to take note a year ago and have become an enamored fan. Okuda San Miguel now has work in major cities across the globe.
"These pieces of artwork often raise contradictions about existentialism, the universe, the infinite, the meaning of life, and the false freedom of capitalism. They help ignite conversations about the clear conflict between modernity and our roots."
"Sus trabajos a menudo plantean contradicciones sobre el existencialismo, el universo, el infinito, el sentido de la vida, la faja libertad del capitalismo, y muestran un claro conflicto entre la modernidad y nuestras raíces; en definitiva, entre el ser humano y él mismo." #okudasanmiguel #gijon #inkandmovement #okudart #surrealismopop #santander #bellasartes # ##UniversidadComplutensedeMadrid #geometrico #multicolores

Okuda Links:

www.okudart.es

http://instagram.com/okudart
https://www.facebook.com/okudart

https://twitter.com/OKUDART