I am reading Adam Zagajewsky’s new book of essays–more really diary entries–called Slight Exaggeration. I’m a fan of both his prose and his poetry. His standard of literacy and breadth of knowledge is so high. I came across this passage, which he wrote about the generation that came of age on the cusp of the First World War but which seems to me to apply perfectly to the baby boomers.
“What other people of that race, in other nations and times had achieved and attained over generations, through the course of age-long efforts at the cost of life, or of sacrifice and renunciations greater than life, this lay before hem like a chance inheritance, destiny’s perilous gift. It seemed fantastic and unlikely, but it was genuine: they could do whatever they wished with their youth.”
Somehow I thought we’d do more with this opportunity than we did.
Another phrase that caught my attention was from Samin Nosrat, who is now the food writer for the NY Times Maazine. Her cookbook “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.” is worth a read, as was Sunday’s article on super slow cooked vegetables. She recommends this technique especially for “the shunned, the fibrous, the forgotten-in-the-fridge” a very poetic description of forlorn produce.
And finally, somewhere or other I came across this phrase from the Japanese,
物の哀れ. “mono no aware” which was translated as a wistful sense of the impermanence of things.