Circling the Wagons

Crushed by discouragement late yesterday, I’m gathering things around me this morning that make me feel happy and brave.

• these Matisse red onions
• warm hot cross buns, with custard and raisins and bits of red candied cherries
• the thought of Café Sabarsky (that indulgent Viennese coffee house), in uptown Manhattan
• a recipe for Treviso style spareribs, pan-roasted with sage
• an old Josephine Tey mystery, The Man in the Queue, to reread under a flowered quilt
• the young Luciano Pavarotti singing “O Dolore”
• half-written stories I want to finish
• the phoebe out the kitchen window

image:  Henri Matisse, The Red Onions