World Enough and Time

"Jeremy Beaumont-Jones has been lucky enough to be born rich. He wasn't in the mad oligarch class but once you're past a certain point, the sheer weight of your money sucks in wealth like a financial singularity." - Ben Aaronovitch, The Hanging Tree.

“The job of the writer isn't to answer questions. The job of the writer is to ask the questions for which there are no answers.” - J.M. Porup

From Ming the Mechanic: A Samurai's Creed by Flemming Funch: The creed of a samurai, written around 1300 by an unnamed author. Via Chris Corrigan.

I have no parents; I make the heaven and earth my mother and father.
I have no home; I make awareness my dwelling.
I have no life and death; I make the tides of breathing my life and death.
I have no divine power; I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means; I make understanding my means.
I have no magic secrets; I make character my magic secret.
I have no body; I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes; I make the flash of lightning my eyes.
I have no ears; I make sensibility my ears.
I have no limbs; I make promptness my limbs.
I have no strategy; I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy
I have no designs; I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design.
I have no miracles; I make right action my miracle.
I have no principles; I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.
I have no tactics; I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no talents; I make ready wit my talent.
I have no friends; I make my mind my friend.
I have no enemy; I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor; I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle; I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword; I make absence of self my sword.

My mother used to love breakfast. It was her favourite meal, if only because it meant she could eat her favourite food - grapefruit.

I never liked grapefruit much - too sour for me, unless sugared - and could never understand her love of grapefruit. She used to say that when she was young and poor, she only got half an orange with her breakfast - her sister got the other half. She thought I was lucky to get a whole orange. I thought she was lucky to have a sister, and any sister I had would be welcome to my orange.

My mother used to love the passage in Winnie-the-Pooh:

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.

Sometimes my father made pancakes, which was fun.

I think I was a teenager before I started to like breakfast, and adult before I realized that while the rest of the world was eating their cereal, their toast, and their scrambled eggs, I could eat anything I want. My favourite breakfast? Oatmeal. Or Caesar salad. Or leftovers from the night before. Or crepes, which can have just about any filling, but my favourite is cinnamon with butter and sugar. Yeah, decadent. And I like the crumpets that they sell at Metro, especially when they are really fresh.

I've been enjoying going out for breakfast, when possible, with maaseru and sometimes Pim. Club Zed at Zeller's is currently a favourite; good cheap basic breakfast of bacon and eggs (sunny side up) and toast, with coffee. The kind that Nate's used to have, on Rideau Street. I like that.

A recent discovery (by maaseru) is that they serve a darn good breakfast at Kristy's on Wellington near Woodroffe. We went on the weekend; Pim had liver with onions and eggs, while I had a double-bacon version of Eggs Benedict. Nice.

Different places have different breakfast choices. I like the oatmeal at Denny's, but not much else. The oatmeal at Tim Horton's is delicious. Baker Street on Wellington used t obe great, but was disappointing the last few times I went. I need to find a good place for breakfast crepes.

When I was in Turkey, I was swooning over the magnificent breakfasts we had. Buffets with huge, fresh selections. Every day: maybe a dozen different kinds of cheeses and bread, fruit including fresh figs, and lots and lots of watermelon. I came to love Turkish yoghurt.

My first trip to France, as a student, I loved their continental breakfasts: fresh baguettes with unsalted butter and delicious coffee.

In Italy a few years later, I came to love palmiers with cappuccino.

In New Orleans, I had beignets for breakfast.

Today I came across 50 of the World’s Best Breakfasts. I'm always fascinated by foreign breakfasts - always such distinctive national food. I instantly read the Canadian one, and thought: what? I've never had perogies for breakfast in my life, or seen it offered on a restaurant menu. Maybe in Calgary.

I want to try Halim. I assume the Vietnamese dish is actually congee? No, it says semolina. Okay. I do love congee - essentially the same thing, but made with rice rather than wheat. I have that for breakfast sometimes. I suspect I would like a Mongolian breakfast, as I love lamb.

And #50 - the Turkish breakfast. I sigh in nostalgic longing. But, really, their picture doesn't do it justice.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it. -- Thomas Jefferson

I stopped reading newspapers a decade ago, when I was suffering from depression. Previously I'd always wakened myself by setting my radio-clock to the CBC morning news at 7 p.m. - if I wasn't already depressed, the news of new worldwide disasters, wars, and environmental decay would have made me so.

Thing is, the things I really want to know aren't covered by the media. They say what, but not why. And I don't know anything that makes me feel as powerless as hearing about atrocities and not being able to do anything about it.

Best thing about the newspapers is the comics. But they aren't as funny as they used to be.