Solo-travelling in Leiden

The "have food, will travel" diaries of a couch potato. As a solo traveller in Leiden, the main difficulty was food and the main motivation was plants. I kid you not - of course, I'm not really the travelling sort, and my idea of a good holiday is staying home, cooking my own food, reading...

If we got good things in proportion to

however much we have suffered, then last Friday has wiped out my universal credit. - If the good things of these two weeks are to be paid back with the vengance in the week after, then, I will confess that I am afraid. - I have much faith that that is not how the universe...

It is the spending of that time

(from 19 August, 9.02 am, left among drafts and forgotten until it wasn't.) which gets me the most. The time that is not mine to give in the first place. Of course, it's difficult not to apportion blame when we feel it is rightly deserved. So this slow, cold morning that is on its own...

They blow through the case readings

like the wild wind does, echoing through the hollowness of a forest. - Someone mentioned to me that it feels like the readings never end, we only had the rejoinder that in the lecture, our three hours worth of case readings are equivalent to three minutes of air time. The three minutes are double-counted as...

Over time I don’t want to forget,

what it is that is worth whatever that we do. - In another world, where life is truly a game, I hope it will not be pay to win. Unless it's paying it forward with kindness. - On a slow morning in a slow month, listening to a piano I cannot play with the sunlight...

Then let us write for you,

once, clearly. That you will not have to filter through the piles of 'you's and 'they's in hopes of catching a glimpse of the you of the past. - Since this is also what the future is facing, the present and gift left to be passed. I write five steps ahead of the vain brain,...

Racing against the tide to be the wave

breaking up into pieces and the seafoam rushes over your head since bubbles filled with air are, well, less dense. - No pictures of the tomatoes today, I'll think another week about how to best organise the three pictures. I already transplanted some of the seedlings into their final pots - one trough and one...

Counting and losing count

of days spent in repetition but still, good days. - Here's a picture of the tomato plants from yesterday, Day 24. As one can see, they're a bit leggy and some are a little bit yellow. Nothing water and time won't fix, I hope. Daily I have to rotate the egg carton because they grow...

Just hold on, we’re going to

stay home. I promise that disasters are cyclical and that this too shall pass. Bad things, like good things, will not last for eternity. So even if that wanting is the source of all suffering, we will keep wanting. Because being hungry is the only way to make good food, to persist in making good...

Projects of the present,

projecting into the future. - Sourdough has come and been eaten, but as promised, here is the one-year-old rye flour starter at it's bubbling peak. The line mark for the maximum rise, like a tide in the sand; the peak. Little bubbles, pockets of carbon dioxide or some other gas that this yeast could produce....