Fortunes and Friars

Looking for fragility, I come across fortunes, and friars, and fragrance, and fou—remembering while turning pages of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations just why searching books is far more satisfying than the Internet.

And in the end I find the perfect quote from Shakespeare to accompany the picture above, which I immediately fell in love with.

“…nature’s fragile vessel doth sustainIn life’s uncertain voyage.”
(from Timon of Athens)

And in the meantime I’m baking walnut and flaxseed bread in a bright yellow Dutch oven borrowed from a friend.  I’m trying the no-knead variety, the rising dough smelling like yeast and Cretan thyme honey and abundance all night, rising in the only warm room we have, off by my mother’s rocking chair and a tangle of slippers, while we were sleeping and dreaming of the afternoon’s Mozart.

In life’s uncertain voyage all these things are sails filling with wind and sky, and I’m intensely grateful.

image: Tough Beautiful Life