I want to explain how The Gastronaut journal will roll out (no pun intended). So you know what to expect.
There is an order to what may appear to be an erratic site.
From the moment I wake up, I am being pulled in a million directions. I have so many interests and passions that constantly brew ideas for projects and creations; these projects and those very thoughts that inspire and create them all compete for my time.
So I need to find the time to pursue my passions to write, cook, bake, and keep my journals—including this one, The Gastronaut, which is probably going to become quite the ‘fusion’ journal.
Therefore, I found that the morning is the best time for me to organize my day and plan the day… Just kidding… No can do! I can’t ‘plan’ or ‘organize’ a day filled with rambling notions, roaming thoughts, interruptive ideas, and creative surges. It’s like bottling ocean waves.
Anyway, as usual, I stray. I was saying…
I found that the morning is the best time for me to become a bit ‘grounded.’ So I have a morning ritual of sorts regarding how I start my day. It is the only ‘set’ and ‘planned’ part of my day. I switch totally into spontaneous mode after that.
My day starts in my kitchen—with my coffee and some homemade bread slathered with butter (and honey?) or something tempting, eh, like a light pastry or cake.
Who am I kidding? Since when are pastries or cakes ‘light’? …Butter is butter, eggs are eggs, milk is milk, and the show goes on….
If I am having breakfast alone, though, that changes everything.
I don’t have to wait for breakfast to be finished and to return from being pulled away from pursuing my creative doings by whatever may enter my day. Having breakfast alone gives me the time I need to ensure that my day begins with my morning journal entry.
So I realized that having breakfast alone is ideal because I need a working breakfast. And so, I implemented this as a ritual. A must. Well, at least on most days….
When I have breakfast alone, I bring most of my work to the kitchen table, which happens to be my headquarters.
Headquarters of The Gastronaut
So, breakfast, then, means my coffee, paired with a very carby thing, and a book PLUS my journal, which is on my laptop that also houses my other pursuits.
The quirk?—it’s in these words: ‘a book.’
I love to read, and I love literature. But the book I bring to breakfast?
It isn’t “the book” as in the one I happen to be reading.
It is “a book,” as in the one that is randomly chosen from my bookshelf in the morning, on my way into the kitchen.
Yup. I choose a book—one that I have read before.
There are books on my shelves that I have yet to read, trust me. The Japanese have a word for that—tsundoku.
About that previously read book I choose each day—I search through it over breakfast. In the same way people used to read newspapers at breakfast in the olden days. Good God, it feels like yesterday when I had a thick newspaper to peruse with real journalism when fewer puppets churned out their scripts and real voices were heard—that sort of thing.
Back in the day, The New York Times, The Village Voice, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, and/or The Guardian…at breakfast—right off the press—the papers leaving their ink smudges on your fingertips, or you leaving buttery prints on their pages… THAT was a gourmet breakfast for me…no matter where in the world I lived…NY or Greece. I needed that paper clutter and fresh publication smell to be the base notes to the aroma of coffee and pastry—but in these times, this online whatever we pass as journalism (don’t get me started) will have to do.
So this is my thing—I sip my coffee and munch while searching through the book I chose, pour more coffee, munch, and go through the ‘news’ online. Then I write my morning journal entries. Then I spend my free time being creative in the kitchen or with my laptop, writing novels or researching for them. BUT I also wander about the internet, searching for whatever inspires or provokes.
And those finds? Well, many of them will find their way into this journal as the days and nights play their tunes.
But this Gastronaut journal? It’s my newest passion project and one that I find inspiring. Here I can just ramble about food and everything else that finds its way to nestle under my cultural passions’ umbrella. How amazing is that? I can ramble and talk/type for hours… Bet you would have guessed that by now…
Anyway, back to why I choose a book to bring to breakfast: Getting crumbs all over the pages, I peruse it; I go searching for “a few collectible lines.” It is like ‘rewatching’ one of your favorite series—but not going for the great scenes, but searching for the subtle details you missed elsewhere in the episodes.
That is what I search for—and I almost always find it the first time around, searching through the book—a great line or two whose brilliance escaped me the moment I was reading…discovering a truly artisanal choice of words the writer used in a description, analogy, or phrase… I look for that little something spectacularly written yet hidden in plain sight, like a golden thread that somehow gets lost in the beautiful fibers of words that weave the tale.
You know, it’s not so much ‘what’ it says…it’s ‘how’ it says it that inspires me.
There. Now I admitted my quirk. We all have them.
So you don’t gasp at the randomness and scrambled notions that make my morning Gastronaut entries. Because yes, they are about food—but they are about so much more.
I’m leaving this entry as is. A confessional of sorts. Written before I have my coffee. It can accompany the “about”-style entries I have already added…
The journal officially begins. Now.
And like a true gastronaut that is into too many things, a morning journal entry is essential…join me… I am about to pour my coffee in a few minutes, peruse today’s book choice, and then do my morning journaling before I go off into creativity.
