This morning I crushed a strawberry into a cup of lemonade (which was delicious, obviously) and it occurred to me how little pressure was needed to mash the strawberry.
I don't know how many of you have had the chance to crush a strawberry at home, but I can tell you that it's no easy task. You have to hold them still and apply a lot of force to make them pulpy. But these French strawberries sort of collapse on themselves if you apply light pressure with a spoon.
It's noticeable when you eat them as well. As you bite into them they melt into pulpy messes. At home a strawberry is a more formidable thing - it holds its shape as you go.
I like both of them - the American strawberry for its bright color, plump appearance, and sweetness - and the French strawberry for its delicateness and its less sweet, but more flavorful taste.
I wonder how much the differences have to do with climate, soil content, genetic modification, and selective breeding. We certainly like things to be bigger and sweeter in the US, so it would make sense if we had bred our strawberries to be larger and more sugary, but it might just be differences that happened by chance.
Either way: delicious.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
How I React to Famous Things.
I have this freakish obsession with touching famous things (Not people. That's too creepy even for me). It's not that I'm going to wander up to a Michelangelo and put my hands all over an incredible sculpture - that would be bad for the sculpture after all - but if I'm in a church, or a palace, or a famous building I'll run my hand along a banister or if none of the security guards are watching too closely I'll give one of the columns a brief hug.
It all started with the Hagia Sophia last summer. There's this thing called a wishing column. It's a brass section of one of the pillars with an a little indent in the center. You place your thumb in the little spot on the pillar and make a wish as you rotate your hand all the way around. And for me this offered some connection, quite literally, with the building and the other visitors. The tactile sensation of the place made a great impact on me. I remember being surprised at how cold the wishing column was despite all the warm human touch that had graced it. I remember thinking that my wish just went up with thousands of others from around the entire world for thousands of years.
Then there was the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, again last summer, where I felt like I needed to hug every column and run my hands over every surface. There was something so alive about it. It was constructed with such movement that the building looks like it is vibrating. In touching it I felt maybe I could resonate with it, maybe I could become a piece of the marvelous history that went into it.
This summer, the most prominent experience I've had has been at the Pantheon in Rome. I ran my fingertips along the cold marble on the wall, a dirt red stone in particular. Perfectly smooth and cold. I did stop to think that it was probably not the original stone being as it's close to the door and at a height where many might touch it, but it doesn't really matter if it is the original or not. More importantly, it is a part of something great and famed whether it was in the original building or added ten years ago. Touching it connected me to several thousand years of history. How many people entered that building in awe? How many of them got in an argument with their spouse? How many of them wondered how it was build? How many of them wept?
What has become increasingly clear as I've touched each great building is that it's not actually the monument that matters, but the people passing through it that do. The people passing through these famous places make them increasingly famous as their history is put onto a higher and higher pedestal. While most monuments are breathtaking in their beauty and grandeur, many more beautiful buildings have fallen in fires, in revolutions, or simply in the passing of time. It is just that these have survived and have been building reputations upon themselves through the passing of time. They are important because we have declared them so.
For me the physical contact with them brings them back down off the pedestal. Touching a railing reminds me that it's a real place, not a photo in a history book, not the essence of a Roman god, but a real thing that people go in and out of nearly every day. This simple act reminds me that it's the people who are incredible and amazing, not the building.
It all started with the Hagia Sophia last summer. There's this thing called a wishing column. It's a brass section of one of the pillars with an a little indent in the center. You place your thumb in the little spot on the pillar and make a wish as you rotate your hand all the way around. And for me this offered some connection, quite literally, with the building and the other visitors. The tactile sensation of the place made a great impact on me. I remember being surprised at how cold the wishing column was despite all the warm human touch that had graced it. I remember thinking that my wish just went up with thousands of others from around the entire world for thousands of years.
Then there was the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, again last summer, where I felt like I needed to hug every column and run my hands over every surface. There was something so alive about it. It was constructed with such movement that the building looks like it is vibrating. In touching it I felt maybe I could resonate with it, maybe I could become a piece of the marvelous history that went into it.
This summer, the most prominent experience I've had has been at the Pantheon in Rome. I ran my fingertips along the cold marble on the wall, a dirt red stone in particular. Perfectly smooth and cold. I did stop to think that it was probably not the original stone being as it's close to the door and at a height where many might touch it, but it doesn't really matter if it is the original or not. More importantly, it is a part of something great and famed whether it was in the original building or added ten years ago. Touching it connected me to several thousand years of history. How many people entered that building in awe? How many of them got in an argument with their spouse? How many of them wondered how it was build? How many of them wept?
What has become increasingly clear as I've touched each great building is that it's not actually the monument that matters, but the people passing through it that do. The people passing through these famous places make them increasingly famous as their history is put onto a higher and higher pedestal. While most monuments are breathtaking in their beauty and grandeur, many more beautiful buildings have fallen in fires, in revolutions, or simply in the passing of time. It is just that these have survived and have been building reputations upon themselves through the passing of time. They are important because we have declared them so.
For me the physical contact with them brings them back down off the pedestal. Touching a railing reminds me that it's a real place, not a photo in a history book, not the essence of a Roman god, but a real thing that people go in and out of nearly every day. This simple act reminds me that it's the people who are incredible and amazing, not the building.
Post-Cannes Bloggin'
The study abroad has long ended and my grade has since come in so I now feel free to use this blog for whatever I might.
So welcome to The Factory: Post-Cannes Edition.
What have I been up to since leaving the glittering world of the French Riviera?
The week following the program I went to Herrang Dance Camp. It is a magical place in Sweden where you do nothing but dance for week long intervals (and fuel yourself almost completely with ice cream). I took a series of lessons in advanced Lindy Hop with a good friend of mine from Atlanta, GA. It was common place for people to walk down the street singing Gordon Webster pieces or break into a set of Charleston moves. Everyone dressed like people from the 1930s and 40s and tattoos as well as headbands and hair flowers were abundant. Needless to say it was my heaven - except for the part where I felt like my feet might fall off or my calves might never relax. I'll go more into detail about what I learned in a separate post.
On the last night of the camp I danced until 5AM packed my things and got on a shuttle to the Stockholm airport at 6AM. I spent the rest of the day getting to Amsterdam where my mother was waiting at our hotel. I explored Amsterdam with her for a week which was not nearly enough time to see the city.
Now, I'm sitting in the stark white Paris apartment my mother and I have rented writing this post with the mercifully reliable internet connection we have. I've been here for a week so far and I'll be here for another week. Still, I'm not sure we're going to see all the things we'd like to.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)