Chocolate relief

And on a less serious note.. chocolate cake, which forms one of my personalised 'five-a-day' foods chosen on the basis of their pick-me-up qualities. This particular cake is a dark chocolate and hazelnut recipe by Mary Berry, made with very little flour and lots of eggs. Its brownie-like texture and yummy but not-too-sweet taste rendered it a short guest on our kitchen side. In fact it lasted all of Saturday and two thirds of Sunday before being reduced to little brown dots . ..   . ... .   .

Watching a cake rise when baking is magical. Powder, grain, grease and egg slime transform into a beautiful dome of gooey sweet heaven. I like to turn the kitchen light off so everything is dark but the golden glow of the oven, then i watch my baby cake grow (i do not normally compare edible products to babies, unless they are made from jelly).

The best things in life emerge from a hot oven.. sweet sugar-scented steam clouding the kitchen window.

The Virgin Post

How frustrating it can be to develop a fear of words. I suppose that's what writer's block is really, a deep fear of inadequacy. That you don't have the mental organisation and intelligence to order words in a fashion that will express your thoughts clearly and accurately to a reader. I have started so many blogs, all anonymous, including this one to an extent, because i fear the judgements my words will provoke. All wordless, because i'm afraid that my words won't reach a high enough level of coherence, wit, poignancy. I feel that when i commit 'my' words to a page they enter into a world of assessment and competition in which i'm found lacking in some nameless, colourless, faceless measure of value.

Perhaps this is one thing my degree has taken away from me. Years of being trained to strive for a particular level of analytical clarity and complexity. Every word is important in its significance to the end goal. What happened to superfluous playful rhythmic sensual words that flow fall flux in fluid motion like the rise and fall of breath beat of heart palpable waves of emotion. I have lost this, i have lost the me in my words. I don't write a diary anymore, only the occasional meaningless Facebook status update or Twitter comment. I want something more from words. I want them to be mine... to embrace my voice and carry pieces of it by whatever means through time place and form. I want those small moments of life, love, emotion... feeling, to be made timeless in writing and to flow like blood through word shaped pieces of me. My plan is to re-build my relationship with words, and in the process i hope that i will come to know myself better. This blog may be another failed attempt at diarising, or it may grow into a collection of word-shaped pebbles of sound and silence that play the tune of a thing called me. We shall see.