Firsts

Sister, run

Seasons of poetry, hooked.

To every learning

David

Will divide were Ariel to quit.

and Yet.

A prompt I got from a book on creativity. To compose a poem using only the first word of a chosen number of books on your bookshelf. I like how I worked my words around to make this quick little ambiguous piece of nothing. If you enjoy this prompt please share your own poem with me in the comments so I can bask in the little acts of communal creativity.

An Ode to a Winter Morning

The first morning when the weather turns. You know it well. There is a bite in the air as you unbury your body from the bosom of your bedding. A blanket that feels like safety. The best part of your day is that last moment of wake brain at night that keeps you going sometimes just a little. The little death, tousling up within the downy embrace and losing your consciousness to the longed for sleep state. Rest. Tingling shivers begin to lattice their way up and down your exposed skin as you swing your feet out to start the day.

The air is an edge and you thin paper being pressed upon it.

As you move through your home that coarse, grey, chilled light sits in the corners of the rooms and watches you awaken to it. The temperature has dropped and the cosy has deserted you, leaving the rooms alien and enlivening. Dry chapped lips and flaking skin kindle a fire of their own as you rub your hands against one another hopping foot to foot into socks, sweatpants, slippers and hoodies to hide the exposed human hide from the grip of the wintering.

In these hours, the world is you and your family alone. You knock a cup in the sink and the oceans quake.

Bundle up and brace those peepers. Holy white-light peeks in along the outskirts of the window blind. “Musta snowed” you murmur as you lace-ish up the snow boots and sort the hot goods, the precious parcel, the ambrosia for the awakened ones-coffee. The season is beginning, long it will last and come and go. There will be days when it feels like summer in the deep midwinter because the blue sky is singing a song of sunshine and the white snow is solid and fluffy and the chill is hiding. Temperatures soar; you remove your down jacket and hat and feel the unfurling of a seedling soul. Those winters are the magic, releasing ones. There will be days when the darkness endures beyond what you think you can handle. When the wind cuts the skin from the bone-a carvery-and the sludge of the leeched brown snow-shit hybrid clings to your clothes, you feel damp and dismayed as the empty grey above beseeches you, “why bother?” Those winters are the impossible, keening ones.

The door inches open, a resistance you shake the crusted ice from the frame and clap those air filled puffed cheeks of the winter wind in on themselves. Release.

Standing outside, a cronch that reverberates through the bone stuff. Snap, crackle and pops give underfoot and a giggle rises up. Raising your eyes you look about, ears tuned to the heavy silence that enshrouds and absorbs. Aliveness. Though winter usually comes with much death, but maybe a death to a layer needed to shed to release what comes next. It’s all great and it’s fucking cold. The skin grows taut across the face, the nose reddening, the ear tips supernaturally toasty in their fluff cave of wonders.

Sigh. A puff of the coldest exhale, the cutest breath to strike you all year. Blackened, naked tree limbs ache towards the earth, the sky. Dig in, she thrills.

Alright winter, let’s be having you.

My first American Home

South Bend, Indiana.

January 2019.

A brief word…

We are officially ten-ish days past the American 2024 presidential election and all I can say to that is thank fuck. I don’t know about you my dearest but I am so dang tired of being smacked in the face by everyone’s unsolicited political opinions and advice it has been unceasing. I honestly couldn’t even collect my thoughts these past few weeks to write personally because my internal world felt ruptured by this tirade of the all-or-nothing, end-of-the-world, ideologists on both sides of the political aisle. Surely, surely we can exist, think, reflect, make a choice, and engage with politics and not conform to this insane game being played out? I don’t yet know how and I have mostly tried to remove myself in the aftermath.

I know, I know we are supposed to be informed citizens of the world. I understand it’s a privilege to choose ignorance and to move on and I am aware that great injustice and harm is occuring on a daily basis in this world. However, we were not simply put here on this earth for battle and we cannot exist in perpetuity within a state of alarm and aggression. There just is no way to peaceably create a better world from so much overwhelm, disembodiment, informational berating, and division. I refuse to be part of perpetuating that. I want to choose how and where I become informed and I will act how I see fit to better things within my capacity. If that causes me to appear to others as that I am apathetic, well then I pity their limited scope on the complexity of the human practice of learning and growing. It is really hard to live in all of this, it’s really hard to figure out how to spend your time and energy with what you truly believe and value. It takes time.

I respect that there are people who are grieving, I am grieving for all the hardship and challenges coming our way with these changes, many of them harmful. Also, I respect that there are people who are celebrating. I am not celebrating, but I am curious and open-minded to see if there can be any positive change to come. This country’s political system needs an overhaul and sometimes that can only happen after a great trial. Also, I am trying not to shut anyone out even if they are being obnoxious about their political side being ‘picked’. I know I have been obnoxious in the past and am continuing to learn how to navigate a more…grace-filled path.

That’s all I wish to say here on this matter. Just know I am always open for respectful discussion so never feel afraid to approach and engage with me.

On how we feel about light

There are some lights that move us so deeply it resets who we are for an entire day. For me, wind-dispersed-light is one of those. Oh how it pushes my spirit into a place of feeling. This morning was a morning like that. It inspired me, calmed me and assured me that I am ok, we are ok and helped me shake the melancholy for a little bit. Thank you wind-light, I wrote this today.

on how we feel about light

I cannot help but stop

Staring-I am moved lifted and blown into the tree tops

No longer human, a being of bone-light and feather-led

A cold, blue wind-dispersed smattering

A mattering

Deep inside some stirring

I have a life it is full and short and so is yours

A snapshot of a morning, ordinary and still but for a howling

echoing with years of longing and living

Many lands it has seen many histories many re-writings and the deep dark

today it greets and bathes and blows out the dust of sufferings

Kin, we welcome you take us sublime and we refreshed turn face to endure

The CakeUp Artist

Bah bah da baaahhhh…….I present to you our first ever guest creative contributor.

Each month my featured delight of a human will have an opportunity to share a little bitta info about their sweet selves and satiate my nosy curious nature. I have the pleasure of launching this space with a one-on-one interview with my favourite young baker extraordinaire.

1.) So baby sister, give us some background?

My name is Brónach. I am 18 years of age and I like….da rain. Ehhh I’m finished school and I don’t know what I am doing with my life or what else to say. This is kind of awkward.

3.) Yes it is awkward…..let’s carry on. When did you first start getting interested in baking?

I kind of always have been into baking. Eilidh (our sister) liked to bake and she always let me do it with her. We had to bake routinely for school bake sales and so when she left school I kept up the practice. When I left school I kept baking for our youngest brother who had his own bake sales to turn up at. So I can’t pinpoint an exact time, I just have always done it.

4.) Very nice. So why do you like baking?

Because it calms me. Whenever I am upset about something or something is weighing on me it’s an external task to focus on, a different space to be in so I don’t have to dwell on other things. Also I love having a project that I have been investing time in be enjoyed by others. Their satisfaction makes me happy, that people find my works tasty and that they admire the finished result. It is nice to be proud of something you make.

5.) So you like making pretty things eh?

I do yeah I do. I like having something that I can show off, and then smash and eat and fill my belly with yeah.

6.) What’s your favourite part of the baking process?

The decorating.

7.) What has been your biggest influence as a creative person and would you call yourself a creative?

I don’t know. Yeah I do consider myself creative because it’s like a form of art when you are decorating and making. It took a long time for me to be able to own that title, to talk about myself as an artist. That takes a lot of confidence and I still have days where I struggle to own that identity but I know it’s in me.

As for my biggest influence its not like there is any one person I follow who has shaped my baking but it’s like the energy of the creative spirit that is alive here in Ireland. Social media, in a positive way, is full of great Irish startups and people just sharing their works in new and motivating ways. For me I draw from this shared love of celebration and beauty that is all around and use it to encourage me. I also get a lot of ideas from new upcoming Irish bakers and bakeries. I love that they post what they are doing and they share about their mistakes and it’s fun and honest. I like going on Instagram and seeing something somebody made and it looks interesting and sparks that energy of “Ooh I think I want to try that!”.

8.) What is your opinion of the Great British Bake-Off (Great British Baking Show for the Americans)?

I fucking love it.

9.) Would you ever try out for it?

Yes but I don’t know everybody on it is so…they have had practice you know? So maybe one day. *Brónach stares wistfully into the distance and mimes a Paul Hollywood handshake to herself

10.) Mary Berry or Prue?

Prue.

OOOh controversial choice

Not controversial because I started watching it when Prue was a judge so she is like my lady baker that I recall most.

11.) Ok so what is your favourite thing to make?

Hmmmm. Good question. I really like making drip cake, it doesn’t matter so much what’s inside whether it’s sponge or biscuit but I love how glazes can look. Like a painting on top of the cake and I think it’s fun the variety of what you can do.

12.) What is your least favourite thing to make?

Emmmm pastries. They are really difficult. Like shortcrust pastry, it’s a very specific thing you have to do. Your utensils have to be cold and you can’t touch it for too long or you mess it up. Or like choux pastry ooooh that stuff is so finicky and delicate. That’s the thing with Bake-Off I would need to be confident undertaking making these difficult things in a highly pressurised environment. I would want to work towards a more perfected rigorous pattern of baking.

13.) When you are baking do you ever feel a creative flow? Do you feel yourself disconnecting from being present and from the focus of time or is it more of a hyper concentration on presence?

It definitely feels more like a disconnection from the external world. I completely lose sense of time, I feel like I am in a different world. I could spend hours decorating something and not notice time has gone by and suddenly its 3am and I’m like oh fuck I should go to bed. The cool thing about the being in the flow part is like you can plan how something is going to look but when you are deep in that zone of near meditative concentration you can actually make a mistake and then end up joining up with that random creative energy and following it to see how it turns out and sometimes it can even be better than you thought.

14.) Whats you favourite time of day to bake?

Oh 3am haha I love the privacy of the very late evening/early morning. Everyone is asleep and I can just listen to my podcasts and my music.

15.) What has been your favourite cake you have made?

I really like the marbled one I made. It was like pouring paint on top and having the colours mixing and it was wild around the edges where the browns were producing a variety of shades. More recently I made a cake for a friend’s birthday, it was a pink cake and I really liked doing that one. I used Kim-Joy’s baking book you gave me and it was really different the flavours and colours and I had to go to a special shop to find rosewater to pair with the lemon and it was like a super refreshing flavour combo and everyone who ate it was like “ohhh” and I was like “oooooooh”.

16.) Is she a source of inspiration for you?

I really enjoy her book actually she makes baking approachable and accessible and fun. A thing that she does that I have not found in other recipes is she scales her ingredients, every single one to fit your desired outcome. For icing and stuff like that she will write her measurements out to an exact number so you can adapt it for your own baking outcome. In most books the cake styles are old where they ran thin and they don’t always scale well to a more modern approach to baking.

17.) What is the downside to having baking as a creative hobby?

Well the cost, both in terms of time and money. Like I can only afford so much so I can’t risk messing up as much and doing endless bakes over and over. I have to be careful and guard my resources. Hopefully one day when I am in school for it I can relax a little about that because I will have greater resources to pull from and the time to invest in practicing.

18.) What are your plans for your baking?
Well I want to study and eventually I would want to open up a bakery so I can do cakes for events and stuff like that. Also I would like my store to be a coffee shop that people can come in and sit with their family and chat over my home made baked goods that are yummy and not crappy like frozen factory made brownies.

While I’m saving up I want to get a job in the baking sector will be massively beneficial to be around the industry. To learn and see how the baking world works, to build connections and observe bakers in a professional capacity. It’s cool to see everything in action.

That obviously is not going to happen in the near future, I don’t know if I would do it in Ireland I want to try it in an economy that supports growing small businesses so we shall see.

19.) What do you believe in?

I believe god is a croissant, sitting on the back of a pain au chocolat riding atop a giant Tarte au Tatin.

20.) Describe your perfect sandwich.

Ooooh ok so you have got some bread with chia seeds in it. Ok. We have got a thick ass layer of green pesto. On top of that there is baby spinach leaves, mozzarella cheese, then some cold roast chicken or hot because this sambo is gonna be toasted. On top of that there is cucumber. TOAST IT.

21.) Have you made cakes to order? Or can you?

I do yeah I did one for a girl in my year’s birthday, I’ve done some for people in our house estate. I did one for a joint 18th. I’m always up for making cakes for people, as practice and ways of being able to afford to make more.

22.) Ok I have some tough rapid fire quick choice questions because why not.

Coffee or tea?

Don’t you dare make me choose. How could you? NOT fair…..I suppose depends on what version of Bronach needs to be present that day.

Barry’s or Lyons?

Lyons.

You are dead to me.

Pat the Baker or Brennans?

God obviously Brennans what kind of monster do you take me for?

23.) When you look back at your younger self what is one thing you want to say to her?

In relation to baking, I would tell myself to do it more because I never really got into it on my own. I think my younger self would have enjoyed exploring it more.

24.) What brings you meaning?

Can I be corny and say my friends? Oh also making people happy.

25.) Finally, sorry that was a lot I LOVE TALKING. Ok what is one thing you learned about yourself during the pandemic?

I have a lot of distractions in my life that I did not realise were distractions. Like there were so many big parts of my life that I used as an escape and I didn’t even notice I was pouring so much of myself into them. I have been deconstructing the noise I have and hiding, avoiding uncomfortable things.

That’s deep. I shall call you Buddha Brónach now.

Ok I’m done. God that was like much more intense and deep than I thought. Make me sound smart.

If you make me many baked goods.

Friends, I hope you enjoyed the insight into this little muse of mine, sister dearest that she is. Follow the CakeUp Artist on Instagram to watch her journey of growth from amateur baker to private baker for moi. JUST KIDDING. For any possible inquiries for custom bakes you can reach out to her over private message on her Instagram or send me an email and I shall connect you.