Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cute coffee shops + tactile experiences



First up, a super adorable teapot filled with loose leaf peppermint tea. Perfect.

Drink #2 is a green tea frappucino. Smooth, sweet, cold, and decadent. Yum. 

Cafe Roma is a good place to go. 

While waiting for our drinks, we started making boats and fortune tellers out of the receipt paper. Then we got more paper and tea time turned into a full-on origami session. Which will continue today, with proper pretty paper. 

I love making things with my hands. It's so satisfying, crafty, fun, and just very tactile. I suppose people used their hands way more in the past to do everyday tasks and just out of necessity. These days, we have technology, kitchen gadgets, appliances, factories, and automatic super fast everything so we don't have to touch a thing. While I do love the dishwasher as much as anyone, I kind of wish some things weren't quite so easy. 

Take cooking for example. If I just buy some food and eat it, sure it might be delicious but on a certain level it's not satisfying and I feel a bit disconnected, having no idea what kind of process led to this meal appearing on my plate. But if I buy all the separate ingredients, wash, chop, cook, smell, season, put the food on the plate myself, share, and eat - wow! It's the most satisfying thing ever! 

I can only imagine what it would feel like to grow some of my own veggies, to sew and knit some of my clothes, to paint my own picture and hang it on the wall, to play the guitar for musical entertainment rather than pressing 'play', to experience life in a more direct, tactile way that fills the smallest of actions with meaning. I know this would mean a lot more hard work, but I think it would be worth it. Too many things have become too easy, the process of getting there has been erased, and the instant results feel a bit empty.

So, what to do about it?

Today, origami - paper cranes, here I come!

Tomorrow, relearning how to knit.

Near future, growing tomatoes.

It's all about baby steps. And doing what feels right.

No comments:

Post a Comment