A wedding in Paris (I): rules of Love

Weddings are serious matters (and somehow scary as well): a wed, etymologically speaking, is a promise. One aspect concerns ritualised tradition, the other is the personal interpretation each couple gives to it. Moreover, I have always seen marriages as a bet: you bet now that within thirty years nothing is going to change. I believe instead that each human being passes through a series of (r)evolutions which modify one’s approach to life: if you merry the bug it is not said you shall like the butterfly. Another thing that scares me is the idea of having an institution that has to seal a spiritual union: is the marriage aim whether prosperity, charity or profit? I am not entirely sure; I’m persuaded by the fact that marriage should be only a symbol of happiness. To marry and to be merry should merge together. Love is the only key to unlock the doors of anguish: love is an aimless donation of the Self.

Love and Psyche

On the contrary marriage, from maritare, means only to gain a maritus, that is to say a husband, since mas, maris, the root of maritus, means only male. This is linguistically sad: in our languages, though rich of nuances, marriage is basically linked to the idea of taking a dominant male, who has to substitute the father’s figure. The wealth of a newborn family is then called patrimony, from father/pater. If marriage were only a form of partnership, I would have accepted this overlapping feature – between interest and feelings - bluntly. The number of divorces in the West is actually pointing out that something is going wrong. I came to a feasible conclusion about this debacle.

Roman weddings: the statues faces are talking by themselves:
nowadays it is even worse, since we Italians lost the Empire,
all the rest have been silence.

Recently, I came across three different couples of dear friends: Isabel and John, Carol and David, and Mark and Cécile. They made me actually rethink part of my previous argument. I apologise if I cannot devote much space neither to Isabel and John nor to Carol and David, but it would be overpowering to speak satisfactorily about them as well. The core element of my observation is the following: dialogue is the only weapon with which men are able to manifest their feelings and emotions, since language is a sort of volatile yet cogent symbol. First, the mind and the heart speak a language of images, closer to dreams and fantasies. Secondly, each of us passes through a great deal of bigger and smaller traumas, this implies that each of us built up some defences to arm against what brought pain out. Thirdly, life choices might be driven by aims, yet love should ground itself on a more flexible basis. Forth, the other person’s presence shall lead us to express our best part.

Lady Catelyn Stark conversing with her husband Eddard Startk at Winterfell,
next to the Gods' tree (from Game of Thrones, season 1)

Each member of a couple has to work on what’s wrong inside his past to be born anew, polished, filtered, and light. Merely this purificatory path will lead both partners to be in a state of inner balance: they won’t need a complementary being who repairs their unsolvable leaks (due to losses, parental grudge, past defeats), but they actually wish a person to sail with. Being complementary (from completare, to integrate) implies we are not single entities, yet as individuals we cannot deny we are incomplete only when we are torn apart. Specular (from speculum, mirror) instead involves the idea of two separate being facing each other.

Specularity is not just mirroring himself,
yet mirroring the other within ourselves

Chemistry shall indeed provide that unconscious alchemy that brings out Love courage, yet only dialogue (and language) works as the medicament able to solve those misunderstandings and divergences that may rise. So, I noticed that both Mark and Cecilia have positively interwoven this level of communication, a dialectic bridge: there is no need nor space for incomprehension, bitterness and quarrel, every conversation is a maieutic and indomitable attempt to comprehend the other, to clarify the shadows, to follow and welcome reciprocal changing in Time, while accepting those features that won’t amend. Mark actually points out there are moments of tension and argue, obviously I believe him, but I also think they both keep open the channel of give-and-take understanding. These are the basis for lasting relationships, within or outside the boundaries of marriage.

Cosmic union of lovers: chemistry and stars

Mark and Cecilia bonds have been fastened under my eyes, silently and gently: at first by a close and torrential correspondence. Mark was on holiday in Edinburgh, as I casually was, and while walking on the beach of Portobello, he kept messaging with her, lost in a universe of cognitive assonances. I saw him ravished by a totalizing desire of fulfilment: his fight against windmills was over, his quest of knowledge found a Library of affection. 

The sandy promenade of Portobello, Edinburgh, Scotland:
a few cosy inns and pubs face the fiord waters and deliver
succulent meals.

As soon as I met Cecilia, I felt their union profited by a blessed and holy nature. Mark’s description was poietic almost enacting Reality: through his words he crafted to me both his love and the Real beneath this feeling. Cecilia’s beauty is not only evident, but just, a reward for the eyes or a Schopenhauerian answer to sorrow: beauty, he said, it what relives us from pain hammering to the door! Indeed the sacred knot of their spiritual lives fastened after years of individual roaming, struggle, compromise, incomprehension and darkness. If it isn’t karma, what else can it be? 

Only recently I am trying to study the eventual implications of karma:
if in some cases I couldn't found evidence for it, in some other occasions
I couldn't work something else out, if not karma, what can it be?

How all this rambling speech may be of some relevance? Oh yes, a weeding in Paris, as the title has anticipated. I almost forgot Paris, Balzac and Hugo will pardon me for my distraction. Mark and Cecilia decided to tie their knot in Paris, in the XIX arrondissement. In France a city hall is not only a bureaucratic functional place, it carries out the same legacy the religious spiritual life held by the monarchy before the 1789 Revolution. 

Town hall of the XIX arrondissement: beautiful, symmetrical, dignified

Being part of this community means being part of the values of the nation. It was a moving feeling of belonging. What came after was a French toast dans la mairie (town hall): I need here only to recall three things, a huge river of excellent Champagne, pyramids of Macarons and oasis of Algerian Mignardises, shaped and flavoured with violet petals: it was a sort of sweet North African dream. The patisserie that provided this luxurious palate entertainment is called Le palais du sultan in 38, Rue d’Aubervilliers, 19^e arrondissement. The sweet mysteries of the sultan’s secret chambers were all there on the feat trays: if you are from Paris, or just passing by, have a quick drop there.

Line of easy-goint macarons: have a look here for the recipe

Mignardises with violets

Along with other guests, mainly close mutual friends, we let the afternoon s’écouler, flow by. Someone had a nap (concealed by the excess of Champagne), others a coffee near to the Metro station called Laumière (line 5), where a sign advertised Lavazza coffee inside. I still keep some sugar cubes from that experience! I have this peculiar tendency to store apparently useless objects. Nonetheless, they often help me catching up with Proustian memories still alive within me. Objects do not mean anything to me, yet they are vehicles to recover what’s gone forever, as the past that won’t come back.

Sugar cube: still well preserved!

This sugar helped me remembering the entire scene: Marco, a chilly Italian guest, was wearing a gray suit with waistcoat and a coil woollen scarf. Simone instead had a magnificent make-up, the pencil gave a vibrant effect to her dark eyes. Her short hair was combed in a sensual wave, “soft as sin”, as George R. R. Martin would have put it down. An orange pin gave a casual touch to her gray smock. Most of the people were not sure whether it was the fading Sun increasing her beauty, or vice versa. Her boyfriend – Fabriz - commented on the fact that it was expensive (and environmentally unfriendly) to wrap every single sugar cube like that. It is very typical of him to assess and measure things with an ancestral taste for waste and worthiness: then he concentrated on the speech for the bachelor, since he was one of the two witnesses, along with Piero Stones. Lucy was drinking warmed up Calvados, with a sort of Andalusian nonchalance, magnificent in her red mane, cheerful in her smiling words wittily addressed to Simone. Personally, I was talking to Michael (Matt Dillon's look-alike) about how exhausting is Paris when you know in advance how beautiful corners you’re going to neglect. He is an art historian with a passion for wilderness: from one side there is his artistic taste, circumscribed by golden gothic frames, on the other his passion for the open sea, the steep cliffs, the desolate heart of thick forests.

The rooster, one of France symbols

And finally we moved to Les marmittes volantes, the flying caldrons, yet this is the following post: there I shall try to reproduce the wedding menu and I'll explain how to find it. Good luck to me! 

The logo of this casual and cosy tavern

...to be continued...

What makes couples special?

Creepily cute carrots

What’s exclusive about couples? Many may argue that couples work, in general, because the two elements are complementary. Well in that case I would rather speak of a symbiosis, which is often based on vulnerability, inadequacy and need. My idea of couple is instead rooted in the concept of specular beings. As a mirror does not add anything to the image it captures, so should be a couple. In a couple there are two people and two mirrors, of course: a couple is never one being, in that case is called widowhood. Each person has to be, in fact, always independent, absolute, unique, and autonomous, self-sufficient if you wish: what seriously matters is that his or her better qualities have to enrich the metaphorical lake of sharing with open minds and hearts.

Tim Burton will like this one!

Obviously there has to be mutual support and help, yet when only one partner is – in the sacred name of Love – receiving while the other constantly giving, then we are facing a form of spiritual slavery: in this case, unfortunately, the narcissistic element polarizes the attention on his continuous urge for external care and forces the other person to keep a subordinate position. A partner is not a parent (hopefully): educating and correcting are manifestations of reciprocal weakness and misunderstanding. The secret hope to re-write one’s traumas by sliding on your partner childish frustrations is inconsequential and leads to sorrow. Food and cinema work almost the same way: only good couples are positive examples of how it is possible to be together, without being suffocating. Everyone - on his own - should be perfect and self-reliant, the couple offers the chance to built up something new, unreachable alone!

Struggling couples

Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara achieved together something big: Cuba is not anymore a cultural colony of anyone. Cuba and Brazil, more than other South-American nations, freed their souls from the terrible yoke of being an economical dependence of disturbing pasts and overshadowing neighbours. Which food-blend may portray them?

Fighting heroes

Fighting against a whim: chocolaty bread with lightly salted organic butter

Indiana Jones and his father are a fantastic duo, who can deny this? Spielberg inverted the roles: the son is very concrete and rational, while the father is a dreamer, who seeks for absolute quests. Only together though they make fun of the Third Reich and they are able to size the Holy Grail, becoming the new Percival of fiction. A cup has to describe this union!

The Jones

Apricot in Moscato Grappa

Bonnie and Clyde or Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction are terrible example of couples. Funny and ruthless they uneventfully lose ground, so that the pulp fiction of life overcomes them. A terrible example of awful food then! Or not?

Controversial robbers and assassins Bonnie and Clyde	Fish fingers on a hill of salad
John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, a must and a cult.	Torciglioni tomato sauce and ricotta: pulp isn't it?

Spartan yearns for freedom and Persian demand for submission never worked well together. There is a phenomenal moment in 300 when a Spartan warrior Stelios (MICHAEL FASSBENDER) leaps over several guards to counter the attack of the Persian emissary (TYRONE BENSKIN): the Spartan sward meets the Persian whip and a hand falls. Bad guys. Which sharp dish can mirror this example? Maybe, yet it is just a hypothesis, this dish would not work as flowers and snow.

300 adopted the graphic novel of Franck Miller

Meadows in Edinburgh (in March, unfortunately)

The Beauty and the Beast is possibly my favourite Disney cartoon. Perhaps this B&B idea deals implicitly a lot with catering, perhaps not. Their story is particularly involving, the contamination between a pure being who comes from an enclosed world of fascinations as Belle and a ruder character who belongs to his castle. It would have been easier to compare them with French crêpes. I wish to be more audacious this time and call in aid one of Scotland’s national dishes.

The ball scene

Porridge with bananas

A famous Italian duo of comedians is that of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill. Often seen in hilarious spaghetti westerns, they always had that light touch, so to be amusing for children and entertaining for adults. Baked beans and bread would have been the perfect dish reflecting the spirit of their movies, yet it is a too cheesy dish, hence I opted for something still rough but more stylish.

Terence Hill (Mario Girotti) & Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli)

Red chicory and two Frankfurters

Finally, two thinking athletes, two people that shaped the lovely France we now have the pleasure to adore. I am speaking about Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Maximilien de Robespierre, two of the main protagonists of the French revolution and strange enough they were both aristocrats. They were Machiavellian and incorruptible, sacred and holy in their own sense. They were executed the same day, the 28^th July 1794, by that same Terror they had fuelled! He tried to defend his friend in front of the Convention (an executive assembly), once Robespierre was arrested. Then Saint-Just tried to free him out form jail with the use of force. They were caught and were guillottinés along with other twenty-two Jacobins. I thought for them of a preparation that combines sobriety and effect. Vive la France (et les Fraçaises)!

Saint-Just et Robespierre

Delighting fennel with a brie hat

I would like to dedicate these reflexions to the person who allowed me to find myself without taking my burdens onto her back. Thank you, Michelle, my sweet macaron! 

Macarons as bags