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‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Visual Feast. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Visual Feast. إظهار كافة الرسائل

Visual Feast VIII

ALL IS GOLD

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth. 
- Napoleon Hill 


I slump in front of the laptop. I can no longer hide from myself that I have, once again, taken on too many projects. The weight is unbearable as if I am carrying each and every one on my shoulders, evil little imps of doom and despair. They snigger in my ear, their hot, fetid breath on my neck; their constant jeers taunt and tease, my brain rattles and the urge to simply push myself away from the desk, away from my laptop, to drop it all with a resounding thud sweeps over me.


He, on the other hand, continues to take on more and more projects, working like the devil has him by the toes, bewailing every second of spare time he has, no matter how badly he truly needs a break. When he does pause from one of his many activities, he hops and dances around my desk, urging me to pay attention, to join him on a jaunt around town, to alleviate his boredom, satisfy his need for movement.

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, 
every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver. 
- Martin Luther 


Photographs of autumn past. A golden glow lighting up the city that fires my imagination. Something unreal, intangible thoughts, elusive emotions lie in the gilded wonder of a city in autumn.


My romantic sensibility is awakened. Golden photographs scattered across my desktop like a handful of jewels tossed across the floor. A fantastic landscape of wonder, a fairytale vision of our everyday, ordinary life.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value. 
- Arthur Schopenhauer 


I love autumn for its glow, its magic. Crisp cool days in a dazzle of sunlight, a flourish of leaves as my feet kick through the carpet of gold, yellow, red. Everything suddenly takes on that resplendent intensity and my own burdens seem lighter, irrelevant in the flush and splendor of fall. A sky of burnished gold welcomes me in the morning. Everyday objects, touched as if by sorcery, blend in with their glorious surroundings as painted on a canvas.


A city on fire, suffused with a luminosity that cannot but draw me out of myself and my own melancholy.


When I feel the burden of winter, or, worse, the dreary limbo in between two seasons when the weather just cannot make up its mind, when more days are blank, gray phantoms, ill defined, obscured behind hazy, dingy dispositions, I return to the golden days of autumn.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, 
but by washing away from it all that is not gold. 
- Leo Tolstoy


Visual Feast VII

THE ART OF THE CITY

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. 
- Pablo Picasso 


While others are battling breathtakingly wild snow storms and digging their way out of mountains of white, while romantic flurries swell and intensify into a blizzard like a bad mood seething hot, smoldering until fierce and out of control, while others are building snowmen and having snow days and stuffing tiny hands into mittens and little paws into booties, we are experiencing one blustery, uncomfortable, dreary, gray, ambivalent day after the next. Weather that simply cannot make up its mind. Weather that simply does not want to turn into winter. I peep out the window every morning to see what I can see, to take the temperature, figuratively speaking, of the day ahead. Tar black or a deep rosy glow, soft, pale blue or angry gray smeared with menacing puffs of charcoal clouds. It is impossible to plan the day, inconceivable to know what to cook.


Rare moments of sun, a gentle glow or a blazing light flood the apartment and invite us outside. As usual, I grab my camera or my phone to capture moments in the life of my city. Phone in hand, I see objects as more than simply modes of transportation or a quiet place to sit. Each and everything is a work of art, a story being told, an emotion inspired, a laugh evoked.

Pink

What fun are our days if everything we pass is just ordinary?


Graffiti becomes art, bicycles a study in color. Chairs tell a story of souls no longer present, edifices loom up a canvas against the sky. Light and shadow, color and texture change and move; day moves into night and ghosts appear, and everything around me tells a new story.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. 
- Oscar Wilde 

Blue

How often do we stop and look around. We walk the same roads each day, pass the same buildings, the same street art soon blends in with our surroundings and we no longer see it. How often do we take to the streets rather than being hermetically sealed in a car, tuned out to the outside world? My own city is small in comparison to those tremendous metropolises, quiet next to the noise and bustle, the swarming masses of larger urban hubs. My city is a model of sameness, predictability. Faced with the everyday of our lives, we no longer see the beauty, the movement, the energy of our city, our town, our surroundings.


Yet open our eyes; stop and pause. Look around, listen, feel and suddenly everything comes to life.


The rain begins again and I sit at my desk and write, distracted too often by the veil of fog outside offering a mysterious, romantic landscape, absorbed by the tickety-tick of rain on the sill. The mood outside suffuses the room with a sadness, yet I am cheered by the progress I make, of my articles being published one by one, as plans for the Plated Stories Workshop take shape. I was astonished and thrilled to be interviewed by and featured on RDV Des Arts Culinaires, an incredible bilingual website dedicated to gastronomy Cellar Cooking Table, as well as having my favorite Chocolate Spice Cake featured. My article Nantes Now on Nantes’ evolving and exciting new food scene has appeared in the Food & Wine issue of France Magazine. And more pieces have been finished and submitted. I have also been asked to speak and offer a workshop at an important food blogging conference in 2014 and am more than excited.


With all on the table and driving my life hard and fast, I love nothing more than sneaking outside with my iphone and discovering and rediscovering my lovely city.


Visual Feast VI

AROUND TOWN

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one. 
Aristotle 


The week has been a busy one. Hectic, to say the least, but energizing as only hectic weeks can be. Husband in his corner, typing, typing, making phones calls, his muffled voice shifting through the closed office door, his intense concentration and tenacity broken only by the occasional wandering into my workspace for a bit of tension-relieving buffoonery. And I have spent my days editing, revising, adjusting and adding paragraphs … or cutting paragraphs on two articles soon to be published, finally hitting the send button with a satisfied tick. Simon rushes into the apartment and then out again loaded down with bags and sacks of school supplies and what to make dinner for three or four hard-working students, swallowed up into the night.



The weather has finally cooled down a bit, and as autumn sets in, wrapping the city in a golden glow, we put aside our work, slip into sweaters and coats and rediscover our lovely city. Camera in hand, I notice what I never took note of, what I simply never saw before.


Along the Loire River

The famous penis balconies... former brothels?

Saint Nicolas

Place Bretagne

L'apératif on Place du Bouffay


I look up, I look down, I search out street art and unusual architecture, I spot greenery and ironwork, sculptures and oddities that had hitherto been secreted from me in my blindness. I now see art in the everyday, magic in the mundane.

Saint Nicolas peeking over into Place Royale


Les Nefs de l'Ïle de Nantes

La Maison des Vins de Loire on Place du Commerce for a little Gros Plant

Nantes' famous Mascarons keeping the evil spirits out.

Take a short break with me and allow me to show you around.

A stroll along the Erdre.


When you look at a city, it's like reading the hopes, 
aspirations and pride of everyone who built it. 
- Hugh Newell Jacobsen


Visual Feast V - When No One is Looking

WHEN NO ONE IS COOKING

Life is a voyage. 
Victor Hugo 


November met June sometime mid July in Nantes. We went to bed buried under an extra blanket, feet stuck into cozy socks, and awoke to the sun blazing through the kitchen window, the heat oozing in under the door, poking us with his sticky fingers, keeping us awake all night and laughing at our discomfort all day. Voyage à Nantes is in full swing, offering us poetic respite from summer’s prose.







 Come along for the ride. 
Accompany me on my voyage across my city. 
There are many ways to get there.
 
I grab my camera, lace up the signature pink Chucks and go out to rediscover my city. Nantes is bubbling over with creativity, bristling with ingenuity. Already dotted with objects of art and humor, summers offer a deluge of happenings and visual titillation. Through parks and gardens, up and down streets and roadways, spaces both public and private abound in sculpture and experiments in creativity. One never knows what to expect and stumbles upon surprise after surprise around every corner. Yet, the more Nantes is filled with art, the more one realizes just how artistic everything can be if just given the chance, if looked at and observed at just the right angle, with just the right mind set.


The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes 
but in having new eyes. 
– Marcel Proust  



Provocative. Humorous. Silly. Thoughtful. Inspiring. When no one is looking, the elves come out, playing tricks on our eyes, on our senses, on us. Teasing. Asking us to notice something new, taste something different, become something that we are not.


The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off of our souls. 
– Pablo Picasso 


Felice Varini at HAB Galerie 

Flash Mob Cuisine & Muscadet

Mob Sun & Music

No mob at all.

With Nicolas Bourget of La Raffinerie


My beautiful cousin Andrea passed away after a long, valiant, courageous battle against breast cancer. May she dance and laugh in heaven with my brother Michael. 


 It is what you make it. It is exactly what you want to see.

Meanwhile...

Ilva and I muse creatively on Dirt and on Cookbooks on Plated Stories.

Both Life's a Feast and Plated Stories now have their own Facebook fan pages which allows you to stay up to date on each and every post and become part of the community!

I am very happy to say that thanks to my writing about Hook Kids on Fishing, an event created and hosted by the good folks at Anglers For Conservation, a wonderful friend of mine will be making a donation to AFC in the name of her father who recently passed away. I am honored that I am able to connect people in this way.

I hope to share some wonderful news about my work very soon.

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