I am making bread today and thought about bread as a teacher. We are such a result driven culture that when we do x and y we always expect result z.
Sourdough is like life in the sense that sometimes shit happens that we can’t control. A couple of years ago I had a starter die for no apparent reason. I had leaven work exceptionally well one week and hardly at all other weeks. For no reason that I could see.
To work with starter is to figure out a way to deal with life. Maybe those are obvious observations but in my case I found them to be invaluable.
Lovely, Ottmar.
Everything teaches me about life. Right now I am wrestling with assembling a cabinet ordered online,. Well! The “instructions” consist of perplexing drawings with few verbal directions. There is a maddening fasting mechanism used in 15 places:. The Titus mini fix. Have you ever heard of that damn thing? I had to look it up on YouTube. Enlightening. I looked up the whole cabinet on YouTube but found only an entry that said it was impossible!
Anyway, I tried and tried. Put it together – no good. Took it all apart. Tried again. I realized I was becoming familiar with all the pieces, beginning to understand them. I started to figure out what to do, independently of the instruction booklet. I would often wake up in the morning with a vision of what I should do next. I have become friends with this piece of furniture. And it has taught me to breathe past frustration and keep on going. The solution is there.
The cabinet is standing! Now I just have to do the drawer. I know I will succeed! (She said with new-found confidence.)
I meant “maddening FASTENING mechanism”
Nice!
“Shit Happening” is neither good nor bad…just is. ;)
We’ll see… :-)