29.12.08

listening to pique nique a nagpur by Anouar Brahem

28.12.08

a turning point and mindful revelation late in the night just before sleeping.
dribbling sounds from clicking fingers.

taking these thoughts to precipices
i feel so many things and no-thing... i am stretching and rolling and opening. i am sitting in this quiet looking for a direction to appear. it always does. if you are still enough.
maybe bits are always going missing, like how memories disappear because you need the space for new stories to play out... bits of you fall away and the space opens up again to improvise, this breath in. in. IN.
a bit of me has gone missing, but maybe i didnt need her anyway?
leaning my forehead against cold glass i can see the warmth in hidden places.
im lying on floorboards and can feel the weight of other bodies in this building, moving.
"it's hard to hate anything when the universe is so big, you know? make things, movement, bringin the ruckus, causing change on any scale. i wonder if daniel boone sang to himself. i think everybody does, there is a universe infinitly unfolding itself in the centre of your chest and that shit is totally blinding, little strings of fluid gas blueblacknitetime fluxuate back and forth in every direction over lapping the deeper parts of a darker kind of cosmic infinity that is growing inside you right now. one day, you die and we watch eternity expand even farther away into a different eternity. capcom versus marvel. try to understand how endless this feels, why shouldn't i stay at home all day?"
- Cougar Flashy

I just saw this video of scout niblett and was held so strongly struck that i had to put it here too. i will think about what else i want to say. there is something forming in the cords of my vocals, but now just quiet and soaking.

27.12.08

the moon is one percent full.
"time means nothing to your subconscious."
- The Books

26.12.08

"in the failing light of the afternoon" listening to carousal and house by the sea by Iron and Wine
listening to David Krakauer playing clarinet

(clockwise) Sprouted whole grains of rye - brown rice, quinoa and millet porridge with rice milk and honey - fermenting fruit drink with kefir



I feel something like sad, but it is foreign to any sad ive ever felt before, it is hard to describe because its unknownness leaves its definition open and folding.
what is the emotion that is full and big and felt with your whole body?
but, can-not be readily classified under the standard modes of emotion.
what is untitled emotion? white coloured emotion?

i went walking with my camera this afternoon, looking at the art that is present everywhere.






sometimes holding a camera can heighten
this
realisation.

25.12.08




Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about other people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

Tao te ching







My bath of chamomile flowers, slices of root ginger and orange peels.


i just had a bath with fresh orange peels and loose leaf peppermint tea. i thought that it might be helpful for breathing and wintery cold. it was poetic but a little noisy. tomorrow i think i will try chamomile flowers and ginger for a quieter warmer bath. haha.

so im pretty sure that im definitely allergic to gluten after a serious breathing difficulty took me to a german hospital today. which is a bit sad seeing as I have 2 and a half beautiful loaves of spelt and rye sourdough in my kitchen, but being alive is way more important and so I guess I'll go back to being me and not just a normal person. ah well, it was a nice experiment.
bread highlights of the last week:




so many of them - the acquisition of three beautiful new baking pans that work like magic (i could build houses with my bread, its so brick like), making a dried fig and walnut loaf in my friends kitchen, she collected and dried the figs herself in spain, watching the bubbling getting out of control...
but probably the most exciting is a friend gave me some dried sourdough culture that he got in spain that is 25 years old! Really looking forward to trying it out, it smells amazing.

today i had my heart x-rayed

23.12.08

the wind pulled tears from my eyes

22.12.08



and now for your patience, some drawings i made when i was in france (touch to magnify and see all the lines). planning to publish something small soon.


I just ate my breakfast at 4pm in the afternoon, and in berlin that means the sky has already darkened. What i prepared for my sustenance felt somewhat revolutionary to my own small existence and so thought I would type it out here, on my page of tiny revolutions.
Rolled flakes of organic oats, spelt, rye, barley and rice, dried quinoa and sunflower seeds mixed with water and a teaspoon of sourdough culture, left to soak and ferment for 24 hours. Cooked on a low heat with unrefined atlantic sea salt. once in the bowl i poured a little natural rice milk over, a few tablespoons of good soy yogurt, a couple of soaked almonds (soaked for at least a day) and a healthy flickering of olive oil.
I want to get back into a routine with my eating and so Ive already set tomorrows breakfast to ferment. I think that is the easiest way to be consistant, soak the next batch while cooking. I have quite a few fermenting projects on the go at the moment, im making a dried fruit/ lemon water drink with a kefir like ferment and im also trying it in a simple honey water. And then my next bread project is bubbling away, its a spelt and rye sourdough with sunflower seeds ands rolled grains of oats, rye, spelt, barley and rice (5 korn flocken, same as I used in the porridge), and i put some whole grains of rye in that i had been soaking, im going to sprout them but threw a couple in the bread.
You might have noticed that im eating grains with gluten in them after a very long time. Im increasing my digestion vocabulary slowly and so they are affecting me much less than they used to, its also much cheaper and easier to find rye and spelt here that it is to get rice, maize, millet, quinoa, and potato flours. Another interesting thing is that fermenting, soaking and sprouting grains changes their makeup and renders the gluten content much more digestible. Im experimenting anyway, and definitely noticing the tiredness that comes along with eating gluten but I believe this is also present when eating stodgy gluten free baked goods. Its largely the process, freshness and source of what you are eating and preparing. So i think that its actually better to eat a dehydrated sprouted rye bread than a cooked white starchy rice/potato bread. And thats why Im so excited about my porridge that I started this entry with because it was so full of good happy and alive enzymes and Im investigating cheaper and easier ways to get probiotics into my system (not just buying refrigerated capsules) and create a happy environment for digesting and processing and living and being active. Also in my experience soured foods suffice the desire for sweet food, so it is a very productive way to eat less sugar.
Ive always believed that it is possible to get all the nutrition that you need from your food...
and meditation.


Note: If you wanted to keep this gluten free you could try fermenting cooked rice or millet, or dried rice/millet/quinoa rolled flakes that you usually use for porridges... or i just had another idea, the other day I was reading about how you can sprout brown rice - soak overnight and then follow normal sprouting procedures, will probably take a few days, and then once its sprouted you could try mixing it with some water and sourdough culture for 12-24 hours then lightly cooking it. Hmm, there are so many possibilities and possible tangents for experimentation.

Further note: this is the longest text post that i have written in this whole blog in the five months that I have been making it. And on another observational note, my 'travel-life-art' blog seems to be almost entirely concerned with food. This definitely says a lot about me. And my travels thus far in europe have been mostly concerned with acquiring ingredients, cooking in different spaces, finding other people who cook or grow things, wandering around farmers produce markets, organic stores and vegan raw food cafes. Collecting ideas, sampling things, cooking and fermenting things.
and going to improvised dance trainings.
"When we go inside of crying we become foreigners to it. We're no longer in the familiar of crying. Think of it. If we focus on the actual experience of crying we become a landscape of sound, energy, movement, weight. We're present." Ruth Zaporah

21.12.08

19.12.08

so many circles naturally occur
and each time a slightly different line is drawn

Naomi: yes
and the centre looks so central but always shows up in a different place

18.12.08

i thought there was snow, floating in the air in the space between buildings.
but soon realised that it was tiny particles of styrofoam
and they were floating up and landing on the window sill,
and covering the bare concrete of the ground

17.12.08

"to think and feel clearly we need to switch off our constantly roving eyes and allow our minds to wander in stead."
ilse crawford

i just re-read this quote printed in an old book that i made once
and let it seep into my now.

15.12.08

i slide onto the vinyl
the music starts
we woosh through the underground.
it ends just as abruptly
there are coins in a cup

i wonder if by crossing out the connective words a paragraph becomes a poem?

11.12.08

The improvisational body existing in each moment.
A moment running through memory, a memento to reach new experiences.
Break habits and find the body in momentum.
Collect and leave new memories in an instant.
Here we begin to dance...
Yuko Kaseki

8.12.08

im afraid of heights not because they are high but what i might do if i had no fear.
and ive started dancing again, my co-ordination is lopsided and loopy but it is good to be waking up and moving.
holding and moving,
releasing to move
and create again.
"freedom is a psycho-kinetic skill"
i read this on a flyer, i liked it a lot.
squash • squish • squesh • squosh • swuush⤵

6.12.08


Wow Olivier made a super delicious raw vegan sweet lemon pie for my birthday and everyone's un-birthdays (of course). We collected the ingredients from the turkish markets: sunflower seeds, almonds, fresh paradise dates, avocadoes, lemon and honey. The pie was so good. and very inspiring. I want to make more raw foods.
The two photos show the pie at night and in day light (hence the dramatic difference in colour).



Finally cooked the rice pasta with hemp seeds I got in prague and have been carrying around everywhere. Oliver made a sauce with amazing french olive oil, fresh parsley, tomatoes, pumpkin and green olives. The pasta had a gooey consistency similar to soba noodles. This dish made the best squishy noises. I wish that we had recorded them. Hopefully we will make some recordings of food and plant noises.

5.12.08



My new home for a brief while on the overnight train from paris to berlin. I loved it, so warm and comfortable. Slight lack of oxygen though, with all that heating and cramped space. But they gave me bottled water and I had a pillow so that was pretty good and deffinately better than being on a bus.
landscape shrieking past in a blur,
train running so fast that my eyes fall shut.
I pry them open with gloved fingers
to make out mountains peaked with white snow crystals and a darkening sky

4.12.08

my friend rang me from another country, someplace where they squish whole pomegranates into sticky juice to drink and hoist bread up to windows in baskets. i hold my eyes shut so the images make it all the way into where i store my imaginations on old reels of film.

3.12.08

I found my way belligerent
Following the stars of your eyes
- Cocorosie
tannin stained teapot, and im briefly overwhelmed by this connection into the interworld, where so many things are happening concurrently at the same time. a minute ago i was walking on the street eating a white chocolate and cranberry cookie and that was all there was, and now an influx .

2.12.08



a drawing of kaki (persimmon) that i was making as the sun was setting and my light disappearing. we had been hoping to use the kaki to make a honey wine (mead) but the birds ate them before they were ripe enough.

1.12.08


Stir fried barley with cabbage and pumpkin and carraway seeds and topped with fennel, fenugreek and alfafa sprouts.



I made a pumpkin and coconut pie with a millet crust for my birthday.