Cooking For Two, story by Jonathan Hammond (MY SWEET WORD Series)

Cooking For Two
by Jonathan Hammond

I love pancakes. The first ones I ever cooked were for her. It was because she said she was hungry. I wanted to feed her, to impress her, to make her feel good, so I added white chocolate and strawberries to those delicious, disc-sized flat cakes. My grandparents loved them too.

At the time, we were coworkers. She had lost her grandparents recently, and I wasn’t in a good spot in life, so making edible gifts for her created positive moments for the both of us. What happened next was truly a blessing. We started hanging out and watching TV shows!

On a chilly February’s night, she came over to marathon The Walking Dead with me. I liked her and was a bit nervous. So, to disguise my shyness, I made us blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. She said they hit the spot. Four hours of zombie-gore later, we both felt a connection.

One humid night in May, pancakes transcended friendliness into intimacy that has since then become a long-lasting relationship. I am so grateful. I find it amazing how flour, butter, eggs, milk, and a little fruit could alchemize into love – sustenance that we all need in our lives.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: For this “sweet” prompt, my thoughts first went to one of my very close friends with the same last name. Thinking beyond that, I searched my mind by licking my teeth and thinking of the best sweetest memory I could recall in recent time. I thought of pancakes and who I first made them for. I thought of the sweetness shared in those moments, and how it went way beyond actual food. This project was really fun and I greatly appreciate the prompt.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jonathan Hammond is a student at North Shore Community College. His interests, besides reading and writing, include mixed martial arts, espresso, talking about philosophy and life in general, as well as group or one-on-one discussion regarding practically anything except fancy motor vehicles.

PHOTOGRAPH: Happy Hour at Maki Sushi in Peabody, Massachusetts (Halloween 2014).

Redwoods create a lasting vision, quote by John Steinbeck

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.” Excerpt from Travels with Charley: In Search of America, memoir by JOHN STEINBECK

PHOTO: Jon Von Neumann, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration

In the Winter 1981 issue of The Paris Review, Nobel Prize winning novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez discusses inspiration. (Read the entire interview at The Paris Review.) Here are some excerpts:

I can only work in surroundings that are familiar and have already been warmed up with my work. I cannot write in hotels or borrowed rooms or on borrowed typewriters. This creates problems because when I travel I can’t work…You hope for inspiration whatever the circumstances…

I’m convinced that there is a special state of mind in which you can write with great ease and things just flow. All the pretexts—such as the one where you can only write at home—disappear. That moment and that state of mind seem to come when you have found the right theme and the right ways of treating it. And it has to be something you really like, too, because there is no worse job than doing something you don’t like…

Inspiration is when you find the right theme, one which you really like; that makes the work much easier. Intuition, which is also fundamental to writing fiction, is a special quality which helps you to decipher what is real without needing scientific knowledge, or any other special kind of learning…For a novelist, intuition is essential. Basically it’s contrary to intellectualism, which is probably the thing that I detest most in the world—in the sense that the real world is turned into a kind of immovable theory. Intuition has the advantage that either it is, or it isn’t. You don’t struggle to try to put a round peg into a square hole.

Illustration: Gabriel Garcia Marquez by Margarita Karol, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, March 6, 1927-April 17, 2014

…human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez passed away on Thursday, April 17, 2014 at age 87. We are forever grateful for his brilliance, inspiration, and influence. His novels, including his masterwork One Hundred Years of Solitude, are among the greatest works of art of all time. Thank you for your life and work, Señor Garcia Marquez! You will live on!

Nothing to do all day and night but write, quote by John Fante

“The good days, the fat days, page upon page of manuscript; prosperous days, something to say…the pages mounted and I was happy. Fabulous days, the rent paid, still fifty dollars in my wallet, nothing to do all day and night but write and think of writing; ah, such sweet days, to see it grow, to worry for it, myself, my book, my words, maybe important, maybe timeless, but mine nevertheless, the indomitable Arturo Bandini, already deep into his first novel. “

From Chapter Sixteen of Ask the Dust a novel by John Fante, originally published in 1939.

…Of Rivers, poem by Langston Hughes

…OF RIVERS
by Langston Hughes

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. (Read more at Wikipedia.org.)

PHOTO: Langston Hughes by Gordon Parks, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Addressing of Cats, poem by T.S. Eliot

THE ADDRESSING OF CATS
by T.S. Eliot

You’ve read of several kinds of Cat,
And my opinion now is that
You should need no interpreter
To understand their character.
You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are same and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse–
But all may be described in verse.
You’ve seen them both at work and games,
And learnt about their proper names,
Their habits and their habitat:
But how would you address a Cat?

So first, your memory I’ll jog,
And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG.

And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste–
He’s sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he’s finished, licks his paws
So’s not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat’s entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.

So this is this, and that is that:
And there’s how you ADDRESS A CAT.

PAINTING: “Blue Cat, Green Eyes” by Walasse Ting

The Naming of Cats, poem by T.S. Eliot

THE NAMING OF CATS
by T.S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey —
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter —
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum —
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover —
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

(From Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, poems by T.S. Eliot)

Poems by John Lennon and Lewis Carroll

I SAT BELONELY
by John Lennon

I sat belonely down a tree,
humbled fat and small.
A little lady sing to me
I couldn’t see at all.

I’m looking up and at the sky,
to find such wonderous voice.
Puzzly, puzzle, wonder why,
I hear but I have no choice.

‘Speak up, come forth, you ravel me’,
I potty menthol shout.
‘I know you hiddy by this tree’.
But still she won’t come out.

Such sofly singing lulled me sleep,
an hour or two or so
I wakeny slow and took a peep
and still no lady show.

Then suddy on a little twig
I thought I see a sight,
A tiny little tiny pig,
that sing with all it’s might

’I thought you were a lady’,
I giggle, — well I may,
To my surprise the lady,
got up — and flew away.

PHOTO: In 1964, John Lennon holds his just-released book In His Own Write while Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr read over his shoulders.

SOURCE: “I Sat Belonely” appears in the 1964 release In His Own Write by John Lennon — a collection of poetry, stories, and drawings. Much of the work was inspired by Lewis Carroll‘s nonsensical poetry in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, particularly “The Jabberwocky” (included below).

THE JABBERWOCKY
by Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Oscar Wilde on San Francisco

“It’s an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.” OSCAR WILDE

Photo: Brockeninaglory