Julie Wong - BLOG -

RITUAL

sourdough pancakes 

I'm a fan of rituals, I just don't have very many of them.  There are plenty of things over the years that I've entertained ritualizing in my life.  Such as,

wouldn't it be great to go to the farmer's market every saturday and buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and walk around, watching people...

if I just put some stuff together and wrote a short, handwritten note to someone, every week.  Not even all the time, maybe just once a week...

couldn't I start every morning puttering in the yard, watering my plants, breathing fresh air, watching things grow...

It's hard to commit to things though.  I think one has to remember that adopting a ritual is like shopping - you can try things on, think about how they fit with the stuff you already have in your life, and if it doesn't feel good, look good, or say something about you that you want it to say, you can change your mind.

TOO TIGHT

Dan and the oculars

Think of someone or something that makes you laugh.  I know.  Funny, isn't it?

It's hard to laugh when your pants are too tight.  Do you know that point when all your pants become 'when I lose 5 pounds these will be perfect' pants?  I've been there for a while.

On the weekend I bought a pair of nice pants that fit.  Right now fit.  Like, I can breathe fit.  Like, I don't have to worm my way into a pair of Spanx to get these to button up fit.  Like I don't dread sitting down for more than 30 seconds fit.

Sweet relief.

I highly recommend the fits right now pants.  Totally worth it.

PUT 'EM UP

 the bath

The last several weeks I've felt mostly like a black cat wandering around in circles with an upside-down horseshoe adorning my neck.  The situation has grown to proportions that could really only be dealt with by crawling into a hot bath armed with an Oprah magazine (the feel good magazine, if ever there was one...) and various junk foods.  And by various, I mean many.

After an hour (or two) I felt immensely better.

And then I tried to pull the plug.  Which I had jammed forcefully into the drain to prevent leakage.  Removal was accomplished with a pair of needlenose pliers.

Dear Life.

Must we fight all the time?

It's so uncivilized.

HEART

 a transcendent cappuccino experience at the Kicking Horse Café in Invermere, BC

Moments that let our hearts breathe are so important.  Often it takes something really remarkable to remind us of that.  

By remarkable, I don't mean spectacular, wow, fireworks-show remarkable.  I mean, remarkable.  Something we wouldn't experience in our normal, day to day lives.  

I think we forget sometimes, that we can create those moments instead of waiting for them to happen to us.

"may my heart always be open to little / 

birds who are the secrets of living" 

- e.e. cummings

summer

A hawk just ate a mouse in my backyard.  In the middle of the city.  I watched it pick flesh off of tiny bones.  Then it sat on my fence and looked at me (directly at me) before it flew off.

Today I also dyed one of my favorite running socks pink.  I knew the moment I put the red blanket in the washing machine it wasn't a good idea. 

But I did it anyway. 

Do you think that one white sock and one pink sock will help me run faster??  White, pink, white, pink....

The confused socks are sort of representative of the mental gymnastics I've been performing recently just to put a coherent thought together. 

I could sit in the sun, lie in the grass, watch the world going by, for HOURS on end without knowing how to channel this flat, sticky contentment into any kind of recognizable productivity.

I've been scatted, unfocused lately.  Millions of reasons I guess.

I don't understand any of them.

At some point I chose to surrender to 'what is'.

So far.  I'm happy.  It's been a good summer.

RITUAL

Bialetti Moka Express 

My sister bought me a cinnamon bun yesterday.  I've been saving it until now.  It's in a pink box, and I don't know, somehow pink makes it taste better. 

Rain outside - again...

A latte to wash it down.  So much more than just washing it down, though.  It's ritual.. .

measuring out the beans with a shiny, perfect stainless steel scoop, four rounds in the grinder.  Assembling the silver pot, water, coffee, top screwed on TIGHT.  Gas to exactly '5' on the stove, blue flame, carefully listening for any unwarranted gurgling.  Shaking the carton of soy milk until it comes out bubbly.  Heating, stirring, heating, stirring in the pot with the copper bottom (with that wood thing with the flat edge and the 3 holes)

I remember, a few years ago, in someone else's kitchen, drinking my first ever home made latte.  It was a total revelation to discover that you can make your own latte.  How could I not have known??

Whatever the reason, with that first bitter-sweet sip something inside just settles.

If you don't already have the iconically-fabulous-Italian-espresso-pot, you should get one immediately and experience the thrill of the NOT-$4.83-but-just-as-good-latte.

Soon you won't remember life without Moka Express...

* If you can find it, try Kicking Horse Coffee, based in Invermere, BC, Canada (a beautiful place, incidentally, with a very cool family-owned hot glass studio!)  Organic, fair-trade, shade-grown coffee from a company with nice business practices and nice values.  Nothing tastes better than that...

GREEN TEA

Yesterday morning on my way to the studio I stopped in at a café around the corner to get some green tea.  Somewhere I've picked up the belief that green tea is good for everything.  Brisk winter mornings.  A nasty cold.  Delusions of weight loss.  Etc.

I opened the packet.  Fragrant, leafy green tea.  Sewn up in an organza-like pouch, edged in unbleached ivory thread.  Surprised, I spent several moments smelling the tea and watching it diffuse into my mug.

Moments I'd never have spent on an ordinary tea bag.

Wouldn't it be great if there were more beautiful things in the world that made us actually stop to experience.

* Read more about the company that makes this amazing organic, corn-based, GMO-free tea bag here: Mighty Leaf Tea

So yesterday while I was working, a flying piece of molten glass burned a hole in my favorite bra.  Although I recognize and appreciate the fact that generous padding in said bra probably saved me from a more noteworthy incident, why, oh why couldn't it have happened on a bad bra day?

THE SURPRISING THING

horned melon

It's a strange, pointy orange thing.  I almost gasped when I cut it open - beautiful in a way I did not expect. This is what you get when you choose adventure in the produce aisle.  Some beautiful thing that you don't know what to do with.

Not that yummy, I have to say.

Tastes like a blobby cucumber with pithier seeds.

Like the surprising fruit/vegetable thing, a juicy and unexpected wave of creativity has hit, finally.  It's been a dry summer.

THE CARAGANA BUSH

caragana bush, around the corner from where I live

In the summer heat, tinder-dry pods snap in time to the beat of the sun.  Staccato rhythm.  Snap.  snap snap.... snap.

With sweat decorating my forehead, I peer between the clumps of leaves, swaying in a whisper of a breeze.

If I was very small, I could pass between the branches and walk forever in the cool, green, shady depths of the caragana bush.