Confusion

Experience is the slight pang you feel in your elbow in Autumn.

It’s a memory of pain. All pain ends in one single boiler, a disposal of lost hopes, two spoonfuls of forgotten dreams, a litre of offense, some neglect, and a dressing of absurdities. Pain present and pain past are both perhaps present in pain future. And pain future contained in pain past.**

And if a twinge present, a little, unimportant twinge, little more than a pinch, is dipped into that same cauldron, and if that twinge present resembles a twinge past, you can witness to the genesis of chaos. Things lose contours, emotions mingle in a perfect anarchy. And thus a trifle can cost a million, destroy paradise, set everything on fire. Because that minor trifle is a spark added to the whooping blaze that’s been burning somewhere all the time.

Experience is a generalization and its associations are mechanical in nature. It puts together all things that resemble each other, even just outwardly. Memory flattens all forms but leaves them colours and tactile qualities and smells. Mixing people and circumstances and factors causes you to react to things the way you’ve learned is best, and if you’re unable to discriminate, to name, to trace the exact outline of something and lay it back where it belongs, your own means of protection can twist against you. So you meet somebody and suddenly wish to harm him if he’s wearing a white sweater and is cooking mussels and is speaking of Christmas and you don’t know why. The way a woman’s mouth turns when she smiles gives you a pain in the neck. You laugh frantically when somebody uses a certain keyword as if you were in “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion”. A certain stink takes you back to your first day of school.

But then, not everybody is the same. What happens once mustn’t happen all the time. “You live, you learn”, but at times it’s necessary to forget.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Field news

I should rethink the whole news system of my website/blog.

Ahem-Ahem, er…
I’m proud to announce that issue #5/2009 of RazorMonkey features one of my pics on page 10.

Hope you like it!

Popularity: 8% [?]

Yoghurt

Among the only nice things a Bulgarian can teach somebody else: how to make good yoghurt. Want to do it yourself? Here’s how.

Ingredients
1 litre milk (fresh, skimmed or whole, as you like it)
1 spoonful of fresh yoghurt (containing Lactobacillus bulgaricus)

Put the milk into a pot and let it come to a boil.
Let it cool down until it reaches approx. 40° C (my grandma and my mother used to say “you should dip your little finger into it and be able to resist the heat for at least 4 seconds”).
Pour the spoonful of yoghurt in the milk and stir.
Cover the pot and put it into a plastic bag.
Cover it with a woolen blanket (on all sides).
Place it in a spot where you, your pets, your children or some dumbo won’t risk tampering with it for about 12 hours.
Don’t tamper with it for about 12 hours (any interval between 8 and 14 hours will do: the more it stays, the more solid and sour it will get).
Uncover the pot and put it in the fridge for about 2 hours.

There you go!
Now you can use it with whatever you like – sugar, fruit, cereal, chocolate, coffee. I’ll give you time to learn how to make it, and then post a few recipes with yoghurt.

Useful tips:
- Like any other fermentation process, this procedure can be hampered by full moon or female period. I’m not joking.
- I personally prefer earthenware pots.
- Don’t uncover the whole contraption before it has spent a decent amout of time in the fridge.
- Yoghurt doesn’t make you grow fat; doesn’t make you pregnant; doesn’t send you to hell. So what are you waiting for?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Your questions answered

I’ve added a FAQ section with a few answers to the most common questions. It will grow with time.

Popularity: 7% [?]