Underground

The room had been described in the house agent's list as a 'convenient breakfast-room in basement,' and in the day-time it was rather dark. This did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but then it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At least, I suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never would.

The Phoenix and the Carpet
E. Nesbit

Recipe

I am convinced that a recipe should not be a set of rules to be followed to the letter for a mind-numbingly uniform result, but when I hear someone praising a recipe because it always works, my heart sinks a little. I believe a recipe should be treated as a living thing, something allowed to breathe, to change its nature to suit our ingredients, our mood and our desires.

~Nigel Slater
Appetite

Continuing Education

But knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her temp'rance over appetite, to know
Or measure what the mind may we'-l contain ;
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly', as nourishment to wind.
~John Milton
Paradise Lost
Book VII Line 126ff

THE ART OF HEALING

(In Memoriam David Protetch, M. D.)

Most patients believe
dying is something they do,
not their physician,
that white-coated sage,
never to be imagined
naked or married.

Begotten by one,
I should know better. 'Healing,'
Papa would tell me,
'is not a science,
but the intuitive art
of wooing Nature.

Plants, beasts, may react
according to the common
whim of their species,
but all humans have
prejudices of their own
which can't be foreseen.

To some, ill-health is
a way to be important,
others are stoics,
a few fanatics,
who won't feel happy until
they are cut open.'

Warned by him to shun
the sadist, the nod-crafty,
and the fee-conscious,
I knew when we met,
I had found a consultant
who thought as he did,

yourself a victim
of medical engineers
and their arrogance,
when they atom-bombed
your sick pituitary
and over-killed it.

'Every sickness
is a musical problem,'
so said Novalis,
'and every cure
a musical solution':
You knew that also.

Not that in my case
you heard any shattering
discords to resolve:
to date my organs
still seem pretty sure of their
self-identity.

For my small ailments
you, who were mortally sick,
prescribed with success:
my major vices,
my mad addictions, you left
to my own conscience.

Was it your very
predicament that made me
sure I could trust you,
if I were dying,
to say so, not insult me
with soothing fictions?

Must diabetics
all contend with a nisus
to self-destruction?
One day you told me:
'It is only bad temper
that keeps me going.'

But neither anger
nor lust are omnipotent,
nor should we even
want our friends to be
superhuman. Dear David,
dead one, rest in peace,

having been what all
doctors should be, but few are,
and, even when most
difficult, condign
of our biassed affection
and objective praise.

~ W. H. Auden (1907-1973)