A brilliant idea

In brain-scrambling times like these, I like to read old books. I’m currently reading one of Michel de Montaigne’s essays every morning to avoid a.m. doomscrolling. 400 years ago, Montaigne wrote in “On Prognostications” about “the stubborn curiosity of our nature which delights in worrying about the future as if it had not enough to deal with in the present.” He then quotes Lucian: “Let the mind of men be blind to what is to be. May those who fear be permitted to hope.”

Austin Kleon

This makes me wonder why I didn’t think of that. My habit is to write every morning, but that usually makes me think more about the state of affairs these days, just increases the impulse towards doomscrolling.

The Horatians

I often think of Auden's poem "The Horatians": "We can only / do what it seems to us we were made for, look at / this world with a happy eye / but from a sober perspective.” That's my ambition, and controlling my attention helps me to draw closer to it.




Alan Jacobs,  in thought-provoking post on reflecting and sharing

Bread Baked Daily

The cover image at another site I run is an image of Ada bakery door. There's a promise of bread baked daily. I wish I did. This today from Lisa Donovan at The New York Times

It brought me back to wondering why bakers are the way they are. There is a quietness, and a kindness, to their lives that veers into almost monastic behavior. Perhaps it is simply the ancientness of being a fire maker — tending a hearth really brings something out in a person. I’ve been working in restaurants since I was 15, and one thing I keep learning over and over is that some of the smartest, deepest and most earnest people in our world are bakers.

It raises other questions for me: What does baking require of us? It requires patience, thoughtfulness, an eye to your surroundings, otherwise known as simply paying attention and responding accordingly. Maybe most important, it calls to light a common refusal to let the world shift your perspective, to hold true to a thing you believe to be true in all the small movements and steps and to return to them again and again.

There is a saying that goes something like: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” I think of that a lot when I dig into what I find so remarkable about bakers. To dedicate your life to such an ancient practice, one that is grown from such ritual and devotion, well, it feels like a kind of spiritual calling to me. And every time I take a bite of Ruan’s brioche, I find myself steeped in belief.