Whispering

Today we had a favorite of mine for brunch: Cottage Cheese & Apple Pancakes. I make these every so often and like to eat mine with jam, although you might prefer maple syrup. The recipe can be found in Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook.

A long time ago, when I was very young, I took acting classes on Friday nights with a great teacher in the Village in New York City. Short, dark, and slender this teacher, Mr. Beckett, looked like my image of a wise man, and he quickly became my guru. In fact, I still very much try to live according to what he taught. What Mr. Beckett talked about was so captivating that afterwards I often walked all the way home (which in those days was the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, close to Columbia University and far from the Village) in order to digest what he had just said. I’d let the bright lights of Broadway lead the way home, and I often cried, which I discovered you can pretty much do openly in the Big Apple without people looking at you. I suppose I cried because I instinctively knew Mr. Beckett touched upon some sort of hidden truth, just like parables and Zen stories often do. What he said gave me goose bumps. Anyway, one of the things Mr. Beckett talked about was the power of whispering. Lower your voice instead of raising it and people will hear you better. There’s a book now on this subject called “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain, that I’ve been meaning to read. The same goes for writing, I think. Journalists have a tendency to shout, but we don't always hear them, because we’ve become deaf to that sort of language, to those fat headlines. You know what I’m talking about: Disasters of all kinds. Also, photos often take the place of words. We live in a visual world, and people love to say things like “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Being a writer, I obviously have a bit of a hard time with that. I believe in the power of words. In fact, I want to step more deeply into writing. I want to explore whispering with writing. To see if it is possible to be heard. If Mr. Beckett was right.

Today’s breakfast isn’t a breakfast but a brunch, using leftover batter from yesterday’s lunch. I wonder if that sort of symbolism is bad: Using something from last year to kick off the new one? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Let's pretend it doesn't.