Holiness.

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination.

John Keats, from a letter to Benjamin Bailey, November 22, 1817

Russ & Daughters

Inspired.

The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist.  What that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings. 

Plato

Consistency.

Marco Pierre White prepares salmon piperade ...

Life in the kitchen is about consistency, it's about focus, it's about discipline, and punctuality.  If you're late, you'll always be late.  If you can't focus you'll be inconsistent.  If you can't stay disciplined, you'll deliver inconsistency, again.  

The key to survival in those three-star restaurants is punctuality, discipline, focus, which all equal consistency and that's what three stars is all about -- consistency.

Feeds.

I know that we laughers have a gross cousinship with the most high, and it is this contrast and perpetual quarrel which feeds a spring of merriment in the soul of a sane man.

Hilaire Belloc

A spring of merriment in the soul ...

Salmon.

... [A] deceptively simple triumvirate: bagel, cream cheese and lox. It is salmon that lies at the heart of this classic dish, and salmon that lies at the heart of its mystery. Those innocent pink ribbons of flesh could tell a tale of battered national pride, ecological battles, ethnic inauthenticity, economic flux and jousting connoisseurs, a tale that spans the globe and the centuries.

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Splendor.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Franz Kafka

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Only.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors ...

... but today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Kahlil Gibran

Joy.

As long as the ancient harmonies were sung, the universe would not entirely lose its joy.

Madeleine L'Engle

Rejoice.

joy (n.)

c. 1200, "feeling of pleasure and delight;" c. 1300, "source of pleasure or happiness," from Old French joie "pleasure, delight, erotic pleasure, bliss, joyfulness" (11c.), from Latin gaudia "expressions of pleasure; sensual delight," plural of gaudium "joy, inward joy, gladness, delight; source of pleasure or delight," from gaudere "rejoice," from PIE root *gau- "to rejoice" (cognates: Greek gaio "I rejoice," Middle Irish guaire "noble").

Trifecta.

... a trifecta of smoked fish—sturgeon, sable, and salmon.

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Joy.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Rumi

Master.

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between work and play, labor and leisure, mind and body, education and recreation. There is no distinction. The vision of excellence is pursued through whatever is done, leaving others to determine if it is work or play. It always appears to be both.

Francois Rene De Chateaubriand

Joy.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

John Keats

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Descendants.

The salmon traveled the farthest. Its oldest known ancestor in the genus Salmonidae swam through the waters of the Eocene, back when Australia was still a part of Antarctica, North America was still a part of Europe, and India was just beginning its long and persistent attempt to hump its way over China, smashing itself into the Himalayan mountains in the process.

When the continents began to move, they took the salmon with them. When humans showed up, they noticed the salmon, many of which had developed an eccentric habit of  migrating from freshwater out to the ocean and then back again. Salmon navigate their way back to where they were hatched by the smell of their past. Olfactory memory draws them to their place of origin, until they reproduce, at which point their bodies flood with massive doses of corticosteroids, causing them to disintegrate in the water. This drive to migrate set humans in motion as well. The Celio Falls in Wyoming was, archaeologists say, the Wall Street of the West. For 15,000 years, tribes from all across North America converged there during the spawning season, building platforms to spear and net the 20 million salmon that raced up the Columbia river.

Their smoked and dried carcasses became both food and currency. Preserving the salmon by soaking it in saltwater brine came from the Scandanavians but — inexplicably — caught on with Jewish immigrants from Europe before completely failing to catch on with their descendents. Today, what we call “lox” is almost always smoked — more like what happened at Celio Falls than in Norway. It is sliced about 5 mm thick from the belly of the salmon.

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