Newness–Week 4

 Newness–Week 4

Last highlights of newness. I hope I don't forget to always look for newness in life after writing this!

Day #23: New Dance Partner

An elderly man with a bandaid over his nose let me be delicate and light tonight. He let me express the music as I knew how, or as I felt it to be. God, how I love dancing with senior partners. There is nothing to prove: just to be.

Day #25: Spending a weekday with my companion

In our weekday wanderings we found a new shop in the center that sold used books (particularly comics and mysteries). We ventured downstairs and discovered that a record store had remained seemingly untouched there since the '80s, maybe even earlier. CDs covered the walls of our new found treasure land and the center was an aisle of records. My love found a vinyl of Joan Baez singing in Spanish that he had been searching for for a while, as well as two others that were practically being given away. This was probably because they were classical: one had a cover of Brahms that we later learned was actually Mozart's Jupiter symphony. The other record was a collection of quartets by Mozart. We lucked out!

Day #28 New Recipe

Seeing as how we had to boil some chestnuts that were getting old the other day, I searched for a recipe with them that wasn't sweet. So, here it goes:

Cut speck lengthwise and roll the pieces around each chestnut. Drizzle with olive oil and after 15 minutes in the oven, it's done!

I also added pieces of tomato with olive oil, salt, pepper, and oregano in a separate dish to use the oven at the same time. Everything was so yummy!

Day #29 Making a care package

It was the first time I had made one, but my partner and I had decided that's what we would give his sister for her birthday. So, I went to our favorite Japanese shop which sells simple, quality goods at decent prices. I grabbed chocolate truffles, barley soup, a cold tea, and really warm socks to give her a cuddle on a cold day.

We had a box at home that I lined with peach tissue paper before adding the goodies. Everything fit snug as a bug, so I wrote "Care Package" in large letters on the lid with a marker. I then sprinkled some shiny hearts over everything in the box, and afterward my companion closed it with a long, gray ribbon that I had saved from another package. We stuck a handmade postcard with an image of a girl with long hair floating in the wind into the ribbon. Voilà!

It felt so good to give it to the birthday girl because I imagined how I would feel receiving a similar package!

Photo: Leone Venter 

Text: Kristen Mastromarchi