Quotation Wednesday_On discontent

I'm still ploughing through Eat Pray Love right now (though ploughing refers to my lack of reading time and not the quality of the book, which is, by the way, superb). The book is already totally dog-eared (I'm prone to that, but only with my own books), but this sentence made me want to rip out the page completely and ... I donno, maybe eat it? So that is stays with me forever? Because otherwise I'm afraid I can occasionally forget it...

I don't mind anything these days. I can't imagine or remember discontent.

Imagine is not the biggest here. Remember is bigger. It's like when you want to quit smoking, or drinking coffee, or popping chocolate into your mouth while going up the hill with the pram with the 10-kg baby inside and thus reducing all your pram-pushing to mere nothingness. Not remembering what pleasure that bad habit of yours used to give you is pure bliss.

Vive Le Livre_Beasts in the Belfry

Following the lead of Felicity from Gifts of Serendipity, I've managed to squeeze two books out of this month (well, to be entirely honest, I've cheated and started in the end of January (February is too short, even with one extra day!!!!).

The first book is Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. I read some of his other books (too) many years ago, in my teens, but My Family and Other Animals I knew as a screen adaptation (a lovely one!). The book is hilarious, I have to say at once, and that chaotic family of his is simply marvellous (my favourite is Larry, with his sarcastic jokes and observations). 

 

But it turned out a bittersweet reading for me. Bittersweet, because re-reading novels from my youth always evoke mixed feeling in me, you realize with a bang, how much you've actually CHANGED. 

 

Bittersweet, as it surfaces the memories of things, places, people I most probably will never see again. Perhaps, not reality for many people, but for me, yes. Reading about the colourful Corfu, its scents and flavours made me feel the smell of eucalyptuses once again and remember that night of full moon, that made the streets look almost as it was daytime, only they were deserted and still (on a less romantic side, I was having a pretty bad toothache then, otherwise I would have slept soundly through all that beauty). These days are gone and remain only in memories and some bits and pieces in pictures. 

 

Bittersweet, as not many will understand this, this „melancholy of my own“. I am mostly surrounded by people who were born and raised in one and the same place. They have their childhood friends close to them. They can gossip about old school friends (as they have all the information, who got married to whom and all that). They can make it into a tradition to meet at a certain time of the year at a certain place and keep it for 20 years. They can see their friends (and themselves, too) getting older. Well, that was perhaps not the most advantageous part of it, and in fact I'm feeling less melancholy already. Boring? For me, no. It's just a matter of standpoint, after all. My childhood was very different, cut in two by three years in another country, another continent, and was followed by quite some moving around in my adult life. I don't find that predictable life of other people boring, even though I would never want to change the past. Matter of standpoint, after all.

Which brings me to the second book, full of animals as well – Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I read it some years ago, and could vaguely remember the plot. The end was immersed in darkness, the only light glimmering in my brain was that the end was brilliant. It was, indeed, as I realized after having finished the book for the second time. I will not spoil your pleasure now by telling you about the end, you have to go and read for yourself (and don't skip the rest of the book!). Let me just tell you that there is a lonely boy, a life boat bobbing on the waves of the Pacific and a menagerie, out of which remains only a Bengal tiger, when the rescue finally takes place (the boy lives, too, to tell the story).

What I loved about this novel is it's main topic behind a thrilling plot – what is fiction, telling stories? How much is actually just imagination of the teller in every story being told? Should we call it straightforward lying or is it, after all, art? These all are questions without a direct answer. If it does exist, then literature will simply die. 

 

My Creative Space_Colour Therapy

 

We've finally got snow here, after quite many sunny and snowless days. And even though I grew up in a climate giving you -30°C winters, I'm not a fan of cold and am pretty content with the climate I have in my current place of residence. So, while outside it was looking like this:

I was working on this:

A crochet pillow cover, in cool cotton and bright summer colours. My boy loves to fall down on big soft pillows, especially face down, and I've realized that there are not that many covers to change. In fact, there's only one (before the pillow was just for decoration, simply lying around, and one cover was more than enough, who knew it would get such a workout?).  I've added some neutral, to calm down my inner colour freak, but you've got to start somewhere, right? All those colour really make me think of summer (oh, summer, where are thee?) and all the good edible things associated with it. The back will be fabric, with a zipper, I have some IKEA red and green fabric with funny hippos.

The only thing that bugs me about this cover, is the fugly 'seam' running on one side, typical of those granny squares. Mine is not even straight... Unfortunatelly, I've came across the granny square crocheted from the corner a bit too late, and didn't want to rip it all out. But if you are bothered by the seam, spoiling all your granny beauty, check this out and start making grannies from the corner!

And when I got some 15 minutes of quite time (it was more, in fact, but the other 45 min were used for something else), I've picked up this:

Have you ever read Gerald Durrell? If not, I highly recommend it, especially for children! His writing is highly entertaining and well-structured, it's simply a pleasure to read! Anyway, taking place at heat-infused and fragrant Corfu, this book will certainly make you forget about all the cold and snow outside. I've read some of his books as a teenager, and now want to relive those long gone days of my life, I guess... Now, where's that chocolate I've stashed away?????

More creative spaces you find here.