Happy 10 Years of Transactions with Beauty
— I’ve been mulling over what type of post I wanted for my 10 year anniversary of writing in this space, of insisting on beauty and that you are required to make something beautiful. You are! You really are!
— In the end I’ve decided that the same old same old shall suffice haha. In the name of persistence and continuing…to celebrate by being low-key, by that old slow and steady wins the race mentality.
— The phrase that has been popping into my head the last bit though is this:
“Be the piping on the cake you want to see in the world. ”
— So of course it shows up in my morning doodles :) I like the phrase because is it the piping or the cake that we ought to be more like? Both, really.
— My birthday challenge for you is to imagine someone gifting you an amazing cake with the offer to pipe anything under the sun atop it. What would you have piped? Please specify cake flavour, piping colour, icing etc.
— Well, let’s face it this blog has always been about the sponge-cakes. All this time later, I’m still really chuffed to be part of the July feature for Unexpectedly Austen on JASNA. I mean, JASNA!
— If nothing else, it feels right to celebrate with literary cake references.
— How about the poem titled “Cake” by Noah Eli Gordon at poets.org. He gets at how we want a cake and it’s the wanting we end up wanting. Which is often so true, isn’t it?
— Oh, C.D. Wright, how missed you are.
Poem without Angel Food
by C.D. Wright
Well, a great many things have been said
in the oven of hours. We have not been
shaken out of the magnolias. Today was another
hard day. And tomorrow will be harder. Well,
that sounds like our gong. But we’ll have
the boy’s birthday and we will have
music and cake. Well, I will think only
good thoughts and go up and talk to the rock.
— I’m fond of this poem by Mary Biddinger,“Book of Disclosures” which describes how the speaker “cried over photographs of other people’s cakes” and how “once she punched a cake.”
— A cake mentioning poem by Hala Alyan that will punch you in the gut begins when the speaker says, “I forgot about you with my mouthful of cake.”
— Normally with a post like this I’d be tempted to throw a bunch of quotations in, but the general rule these days is that I won’t quote something unless I’m holding the book, or can find it on a reputable site. And lord, what are those these AI-days? But I did come across this by Alfred Hitchcock which apparently he said to François Truffaut: “Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.”
— I’ll take that slice of cake, thank you very much. I’m under no illusion about my fame or glory, my popularity. I’m happy to serve a few slices of cake and have them enjoyed. So if you’ve been here the past 10 years, thank you. I’m glad to be here. I’m glad you’re here too. That’s something worth celebrating.
— You might have noticed the celebrations here a tad before the actual September anniversary date. This is because I’ll be off next weekend celebrating my daughter’s wedding. So you’ll have a break from my odd notes :) Warm wishes to you and please have a slice of cake in my honour at some point :)
