Hasn't this been a balmy Monday? If you live in my little quarter of England, you'll know what I mean.
By Muhammed! I DO love the heat! It gets to my core, warms my bones and my joints move freely; my skin reacts only positively to the Sun's agency (when I burn, I know I'm alive). I really ought to be living in Mallorca or Malaga, with all those ex-pat Brits with lapsed pension contributions and negative equity; or the Canaries; or decamp to one of those cruise-liners, such as The World, that follow our star around this planet (I realise this is scientific inaccuracy, but everything is relative!), satisfying their passengers' every need, with only a minimal risk of endemic disease.
Pending our lottery win, however, in a few weeks we're off to Turkey. Neither Dr Sam nor I have been there before, but we've heard only good reports, Midnight Express and some Kurdish disabuse notwithstanding.
I went to Washington DC one late summer and it was fucking hot in a humid kind of way. But I guess the best experience of heat and its beneficence was a couple of trips to the Red Sea on vacation during successive summers a few years ago: 40ºC? Bring it on! We came back, however, to a Heathrow Airport at over 100 Fahrenheit, the hottest day in Britain's history apparently since it fell away from Pangaea, which somehow deflated our buoyant sense of accomplishment.
One might select today one's summer holiday from a broad church of packages premised on sightseeing, hedonism, watersports, camping, etc., but every couple of years we decide on the necessity of a relaxing beach holiday, where we can offer our bodies to Helios and damn the consequences. The most a la mode scare stories since AIDS are to do with skin cancers (sorry if that's glibly offensive to some), yet I'm of an age group that can remember a specific kind of Ambre Solaire sun lotion, which was probably a simple admixture of olive oil and lemon juice, with no pretensions to 'protection'. We lay on the beach or swam there or frisbee'd there or beach-bouled there, without an inkling of the risks involved from overexposure to our planetary system's energy source. We lay there on our bunks at night, hot, sleepless, dehydrated and on the verge of heat exhaustion, but we LOVED it. Between us (κοσμος or maybe γαια), we have lost the ozone layer and with it our cocooned existence, yet we were always aware of the unforgiving nature of relentless sunshine.
I dream of the bleached, rocky shore of the Mediterranean, the turquoise, the aroma of the pinaceae, the fruit vendors on the beaches, the sense of bounty that, yes, is purchased and is material, yet is humble and which should be available to all. Indeed, who knows, were I doomed to roam this green and pleasant England two centuries hence, after climate change and sea-level rises have done their worst, might I be able to walk among olive groves and fruitful vineyards, where watermelons embiggen on a daily basis and figs ripen on their boughs, where every kind of malaria-vending creature might lurk?
But damn the risks... give me the heat!
The imperfectly communicated reverie of a faulty autodidact. Please make his day more real by responding.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Wormwood and rocket
Today in the garden I'm mostly contemplating rocket (Eruca sativa). Why? Because, sometimes we are impotent to do great works, solve others' or our own problems and, if we are blessed with any sagacity, resign ourselves to dealing with that with which we are able to deal i.e., the gardening. If there is another crisis about which to tell, it's not going to be related here, today, because my refuge from the problematic is the garden and a few tins of beer.
Anyway, we sowed a packetful of rocket seeds in springtime and we've been harvesting and enjoying tasty salad leaves for a few weeks now. I'm allowing a few plants to go to seed and I've noticed that some bloom yellow while others produce white flowers, with the latter tending to offer relatively less spindly foliage. The subtleties of any difference in taste between white and yellow would require a more discerning palate than mine, but it is generally recognised that the maturer leaves are bitterer.
Consequently, in contemplative mood, I have been put in mind of the Passover meal of the Judaic tradition (which tends to coincide with the Christian Holy Week) and at which lamb and unleavened bread are consumed with bitter greens (wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)) and sometimes wine. Yummy, I imagine.
Notwithstanding the festivities associated with Passover, its symbolic notions are founded in the story of the Israelites' leaving captivity in Egypt circa 1200BC and the last of the biblical plagues associated therewith: the passing over the houses of the Egyptians of the "angel of death", which visitation we are told impartially killed all their firstborn. In the Christian tradition, the sacrificial Lamb of God, is killed at Passover and is memorialised at Easter.
You'll in all likelihood recall the Chernobyl incident of 1986, in which a nuclear event occurred in Soviet Ukraine, the full consequences of which are still unclear but which, one imagines, have been destructive at all conceivable levels. Chernobyl is Ukrainian for 'wormwood' and I'm not the first to reveal that the oft-presumed prophetic Christian bible book of Revelation (8:10-11) reads, “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
Coincidences abound, of course, but this was one of the more intriguing prophecies to test the curiosity of the unbeliever. Indeed, interpretations of prophecies are legion, with apocalyptic dates proffered, arriving and passing without incident, there always being someone arrogant enough to explicate what is written and impress upon others the import of their own idiosyncratic interpretation.
For now though, there's a chicken roasting in the oven, some new potatoes to boil and a nice salad of bitter leaves to prepare. Wasn't it yesterday that I remarked that the best things in life are the simplest?
Anyway, we sowed a packetful of rocket seeds in springtime and we've been harvesting and enjoying tasty salad leaves for a few weeks now. I'm allowing a few plants to go to seed and I've noticed that some bloom yellow while others produce white flowers, with the latter tending to offer relatively less spindly foliage. The subtleties of any difference in taste between white and yellow would require a more discerning palate than mine, but it is generally recognised that the maturer leaves are bitterer.
Consequently, in contemplative mood, I have been put in mind of the Passover meal of the Judaic tradition (which tends to coincide with the Christian Holy Week) and at which lamb and unleavened bread are consumed with bitter greens (wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)) and sometimes wine. Yummy, I imagine.
Notwithstanding the festivities associated with Passover, its symbolic notions are founded in the story of the Israelites' leaving captivity in Egypt circa 1200BC and the last of the biblical plagues associated therewith: the passing over the houses of the Egyptians of the "angel of death", which visitation we are told impartially killed all their firstborn. In the Christian tradition, the sacrificial Lamb of God, is killed at Passover and is memorialised at Easter.
You'll in all likelihood recall the Chernobyl incident of 1986, in which a nuclear event occurred in Soviet Ukraine, the full consequences of which are still unclear but which, one imagines, have been destructive at all conceivable levels. Chernobyl is Ukrainian for 'wormwood' and I'm not the first to reveal that the oft-presumed prophetic Christian bible book of Revelation (8:10-11) reads, “And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
Coincidences abound, of course, but this was one of the more intriguing prophecies to test the curiosity of the unbeliever. Indeed, interpretations of prophecies are legion, with apocalyptic dates proffered, arriving and passing without incident, there always being someone arrogant enough to explicate what is written and impress upon others the import of their own idiosyncratic interpretation.
For now though, there's a chicken roasting in the oven, some new potatoes to boil and a nice salad of bitter leaves to prepare. Wasn't it yesterday that I remarked that the best things in life are the simplest?
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