Bread and butter

On Saturday night, somewhere in Serangoon, I had a generous serving of bread and butter pudding, a favorite dessert of mine that I hadn't had in a while. Eating it again - tasting the warm and moist bread with raisins, polishing off the milk-and-egg sauce - reminded me of my desire to find the best bread and butter pudding in Singapore (my father recommends the pudding served in Carousel at Royal Plaza On Scotts). So enough of chocolate desserts for a while; I will shift my attention to bread and butter pudding.

As I was ate, I also mulled over the name of the dessert, the words "bread and butter." It's common knowledge that when we say "bread and butter issues," we mean matters related to survival or basic necessities in life. And I've certainly been thinking a lot about my bread and butter issues. I'm not starving but I have to be careful if I live the good life a little too well. (Fewer book and music purchases would be wise.) Late last year, there were certain unfavorable adjustments at the institution where I work as an adjunct, teaching English. I edit too, and while it's been steady work for some time, I can't always depend on that. Perhaps it's time to look for a more stable job, one with medical benefits too.

Finding a job I'd actually like in this city-state will be a challenge though. As a student in junior college and university, I knew I could only take classes I had considerable interest in. And so it is with work - I need a job I feel passionate about. I actually have in mind the kind of work I'd like to do, in a particular location in the world, and it's not here, nor can I find such work here easily. Not now anyway. It'll be a fair bit of a struggle to get where I want to be but at least I know where I'd like to go. And knowing is a start.

Some time back, I thought how nice it'd be if I were keen on finance and had a cushy job at a bank - because that's where most English graduates think money is to be made - but I know I'm just not cut out for that sort of work. So I've accepted the reality that I'll never earn the kind of money that lets me jet off to Italy on a whim or spend a week snorkeling in Bora Bora. Still, having my life this way makes me appreciate every thing that much more. When I purchased Salman Rusdie's The Enchantress of Florence today - after not having bought a book in what seems like ages - I felt as if I were toting home a small treasure. (Then again, anything with an illustration of Renaissance Florence is a treasure.) And every journey I get to take is that much more precious. I'm hoping for a long, grand one this December.

Now, in a wistful mood, I think back to a time when I felt I could do anything...summer, 1999. I'd just climbed up and down (getting down was the real triumph for me, since downward movements are more hazardous on my bum knee; I was the group's "Gimpy") Mount Washington, and I'd never felt stronger or freer. During that summer, I spent a lot of time sitting by myself on the edge of Lake Winnipesauke. I would stare out at the distant shoreline in the day, imagining families in their summer lodges, wondering about their happiness or lack of it; at night, before crawling into the warmth of my sleeping bag, I looked for the pale golden lights hovering against a dark sky, oddly moved by the knowledge that someone else across the lake could be awake, just as I was right then. I loved being in that rural setting; the world seemed large, the sky more open, and I felt a great peace whenever I sat by myself. Nature wasn't the only beauty around; I also had to read Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and now, more than ever, his closing words come back to me.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." (Conclusion, Walden)

A change is gonna come, by Ben Sollee.

To be gone, by Anna Ternheim.

A little something extra from Wikipedia - "A couple is walking together, holding hands, and encounter an obstacle. Their hands separate, they say "bread and butter," pass the obstacle, and hold hands again...[the phrase] is spoken to prevent bad luck that might happen as a result of being separated."

Posted by Monoceros at May 26, 2008 9:45 PM