vol. 2: sara's books&breakfasts, february ed.
“Soyons reconnaissants aux personnes qui nous donnent du bonheur ; elles sont les charmantes jardinières par qui nos âmes sont fleuries.”
(Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.)
- Marcel Proust
As a seemingly endless winter approaches its grand finale (we hope!), here are a few cultural entities that helped me to blossom a bit this month. I hope they do the same for you!
Sheila Heti photographed by Lee Towndrow
The Torontonian author Sheila Heti is known for being able to divide a book club in half. Her works are so polarizing that at first, even I myself couldn’t stand her novel How Should a Person Be, a work of auto-fiction that humorously and poignantly wrestles with what it means to be an artist and human (a theme which also comes up in her later book, Motherhood). Yet when I returned to the book years later (after some life-living and years of struggling as an artist myself), I loved her lofty, self-effacing tone. Heti self-describes as a Jewish author, and her works, including Motherhood and The Chairs Are Where the People Go, have a Talmudic feel to them, as her characters search for meaning with humour and depth.
When Pure Colour, her new novel, was released this month, I picked it up at Queen West’s Type Books on release day, where the salesperson wished me “Happy Sheila Heti Day” and handed me a Pure Colour tote bag, which I’ve since been wearing around the city (I have fantasies of running into Heti walking her dog sometime). This creation-myth turned meditation on love and grief features humorous and poignant reflections on loss and life. A treat for aesthetes and spiritually-searching lovers and thinkers alike.
“As she drove, she remembered one of the first times she had been deeply stirred, standing before Manet’s Asparagus. It was the simplicity of his expression, the lightness of his touch, the muteness of his colours, how minor a thing an asparagus is, and his name like a beautiful leaf in the corner. It was the perfect balance between carefulness and carelessness, and the delicate and unassuming heart he put into every line.”
Édouard Manet - L’Asperge (1880)
Observing Sheila Heti Day at my friends’ beautiful place in Parkdale (Toronto)
“Keeping a Notebook” (Slouching Towards Bethlehem) by Joan Didion
Joan Didion photographed by Mary Lloyd Estrin in 1977
(A little watercolour I did of Ms. Didion the other day)
Every once in a while, a piece of writing helps you make sense of yourself. For me, one of these instances came in reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a book of essays published in 1961. Didion’s personal essays range from razor-sharp political journalism to musings on what it means to have self-respect. In “Keeping a Notebook,” she reflects on the futile searching for meaning of those who compulsively keep notebooks. As a lifelong diary-keeper myself, this essay helped me understand some of my own introspective qualities, as many of her essays are wont to do. Didion passed away in December of 2021, and I highly recommend exploring her works for anyone craving economic, exquisitely crafted prose or anyone simply seeking to understand themselvees just a bit more.
“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children affiliated apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
“It is a good idea to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about…I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not…Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.” - “Keeping A Notebook” (Slouching Towards Bethlehem) by Joan Didion
Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limòn
Ada Limòn photographed by Lucas Marquadt
I’ve recently been turning to Ada Limòn’s podcast The Slow Down as part of my personal search for quietude, in which Limòn spends five minutes a day sharing a poem and a reflection on themes addressed in that poem. Her podcast, at turns personal and political, has provided respite when I’ve needed something calm while riding the subway or walking through Toronto’s busy streets. Limòn’s own poem, “Instructions on Not Giving Up,” is one I’ve turned to and shared in different scenarios over the past few years, from during Passover seders to when volunteering with domestic violence support groups. Its colourful expressions of resiliency speak to many of us at different times, and I love hearing others’ reflections on her words. Though spring may not be beckoning much in this part of the world (I’m writing this from a snowy and -18 Celsius Huntingdon, Quebec), we know that patient and plodding, it will come at last.
Instructions on Not Giving Up:
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Samantha Seneviratne's Morning Glory Muffins
Morning Glory Muffins on this chilly February morning
I recently remarked to a friend that if it’s Sunday morning and I’m not covered in flour from making something weird, it’s not really a Sunday. These Morning Glory Muffins are an excellent recipe to have in one’s arsenal. Filled with apple, carrot, coconut, raisins and toasted nuts, the ingredients are very modifiable, and I’ve often made substitutions based on what’s in my pantry. I made some this morning for my friend and her Workaway from France, which turned into a discussion of the beauty of morning glory vines, and what these beautiful (and apparently hallucinogenic!) flowers might be called in French (please feel free to comment if you know!). My googling also prompted a re-discovery of Neil Young’s song “Motion Pictures (For Carrie)” (with lines later borrowed by Joni Mitchell as a book title!), where he sings:
I hear the mountains are doin' fine
Mornin' glory is on the vine
And the dew is fallin', the ducks are callin'
Yes, I've got mine
Wishing you lots of muffins this March.
Ingredients:
1 and ¾ cup of a mix of regular and whole wheat flour (I did all whole wheat this morning!)
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon or spicing to your liking (we did nutmeg and cardamom infused milk, as we were out of cinnamon…)
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon kosher salt
¾ cup whole milk (though I’ll often use Oat or whatever I have on hand)
¾ cup packed dark brown sugar (though I’ve used other sweeteners as well)
2 large eggs
shredded carrot from 2 medium carrots
shredded apple from 1 medium apple
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
¾ cup finely chopped nuts, toasted (I used walnuts)
¾ - 1 cup raisins or other dried fruit
½ cup melted coconut oil
Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients. In another, whisk together the milk (heated and infused with cardamom pods, if you like!), brown sugar and eggs. In another large bowl, combine the grated carrot, apple, coconut, and half of the nuts and raisins and stir into the wet ingredients with the melted coconut oil. Fold it all together (don’t overmix!) and pour into muffin tins and top with the remaining nuts and dried fruit. Bake for about 20 minutes :)