The first ingredient is awareness
crêpes, cooking, transformation, and creative practice
“A great experience,” one paid subscriber shared of a recent journaling workshop. Curious about chances to practice together, and want to write, breathe, create in person and online? Sign up for Cultivating Curiosity, free for paid subscribers — reply to be added to the list. We start June 3. Paid Subscriptions are 50% off until June 2. The full list of workshops for May and June are here. Let’s practice together.
On the weeks when I need to stretch resources and time, I make crêpes. It doesn’t take much to make these paper-thin plates of food to come to life: flour, milk, salt, a single egg, hot butter in the pan, drizzle of honey and a raining of berries to finish — though the possibilities for topping and plating, in theory, are infinite.
These weeks, I’m grateful for a kitchen. Here, time and focus are the main ingredients. Grains by way of the earth, egg from chicken and carton, butter from cows, then some kind of milk or water to make the batter thin. Fuel and heat to make the flame. Thank you, I think. Then, heat. Then a hot pan and attention and time come together to transform batter into meal — into something edible, and not only edible, but hot, and not only hot but a meal like a cosmos. Nourishing, nurturing, a wonder to dive into. A plate of berries like a constellation. Honey glittering in sweet striations. Breakfast.
Paper thin crepes are the edible equivalent to what I’ll spend the rest of the day thinking about and working with: paper, books, texture, attention, timing. Take paper, fold it, sew it together. There — you made a book.
Like kitchens, tables are spaces where we stitch together our lives, where we make space for creativity and potential. Over the month, friends come for studio visits. We share coffees across two seats in the kitchen. We share dinners across tables, and I take what is present and tactile, turning ingredients over the heat of the stove into something for us to share. This is how we nourish. This is how we take care — noticing what’s present and stretching whatever is so there’s enough to go around. There’s no rushing to the store to complete some list of ingredients or to fill some void from lack, but rather making something nourishing from what is available. This is the ambition I’m into: how to take pile of vegetables, paper, ideas, fragments of something and with creativity, transform them.
The power of creativity is the gift of transforming. The first ingredient is awareness: noticing what we are present with, the second ingredient is the tenacity to try creating something — belief in the possibility of it — and the third ingredient is time, both in the act of making, and in the attempts at trying, and trying again. Meditation practices, creative practices, making plates of food, pages of words, meaningful experiences, connections and communities. Each are built on insistence and ingredients.
Gather your ingredients. Take each intricate bit of existence and do not take it for granted; take a day and turn it into something. Pulse down fruit on the verge of turning and make it into juice. Notice the gift of a minute or a moment and breathe and ground down to settle. Hold weariness or wound and turn it from a weight and a burden into action, a lesson, a learning. Let your heart be the driver, let your body do the motions, write the pages, make the calls.
Take the lingering vestiges of vegetables deemed as scraps, mix with water, heat, salt and time and make a stock. Take the thoughts you once had — those unearthed, internalized beliefs — and compost them and plant something new in the place of the soil of what you used to believe. From this inner ecology, this earth of your life, turn the soil over, and craft something new. A blank piece of paper, an emotional pull, paint brush, color, shape, ingredients. Find something that moves you and move with it.
Crêpes come the weeks where rent is due, cash is promised elsewhere, and I am considering ways to stretch a dozen eggs and how to maximize their use. I write to do lists to stay focused on what matters on the back of scraps of paper. There is plenty of space; there is much to draw from. Everything an opportunity.
In the kitchen, on the street, on your pages, in your life, tend to possibility. Give weight and attention to imagination and potential. Pair ideas with awareness, curiosity, and turn toward the ingredients in the process where few become many, and many become possible. Turn on the stove, open up to the page, bring the ingredients of your life together. Then simmer down, stir, and share. Creative practice shows us potential and possibility. With your time and attention as ingredients, where do you place them?
Noticing,
or A Recipe for Writing and Attention,
INGREDIENTS
journal, pen or pencil, curiosity, care, intention,
time to prepare: 8 minutes active, longer to simmer
What do you notice? write for two minutes
What do you wonder? write for two minutes
What are you interested in? write for two minutes
Where do you want to go next? write for two minutes
Mix all reflections together onto the page. Then do something entirely different. Come back a day or a week later. Let it simmer. Let it sit. Stir it up. Now what do you notice?
PS. Want to transform your Monday evenings into grounding, creative spaces to root into the week? Sign up for Cultivating Curiosity. We’ll work with meditation, creative conversations, and journaling, bringing together time and attention to ground into the month ahead. If you’ve been craving community, and want to strengthen your attention and turn toward curiosity and possibility, sign up. Paid Subscribers, this is included in your subscription. Reply to be added to the experience.
classes and upcoming experiences
creative practice classes in nyc and beyond
5/29 Pamphlet Stitch: Hand Sewn Journals
6/3 - 6/24 Cultivating Curiosity, free for paid subscribers
6/4 Build Your Journaling Practice, online
6/4 Grounded in Gratitude, online
6/5 Suminagashi Cards [outdoors]
6/12 Coptic Stitch
6/13 Taste and Write: Meditating on the Senses [outdoors]
6/19 Suminagashi
nourished by, nourishing
what’s inspiring this week
Sleeping early. Early morning. Rare bird. A whole day of walking. Slowly savoring The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. This piece by
