This weekend was filled with a multitude of pleasures (that I’m recalling while sipping my afternoon cuppa):
the thrill of a travel adventure, with places new and old
the Museum of Jurassic Technology, followed by tea and cakes with founder David Hildebrand Wilson
giggling (over and over again)
slurping on kosher dills at Junior’s
sunsets
celebrating a friend’s birthday, full of good fortune(s)
breakfasting on Eggs Benedict (yum, Hollandaise)
driving and singing
learning the secret ingredient for some famous guacamole
decoupage art (and a decoupage artist)
coffee with cardamom, after a morning of paddling in the sunshine
There were moments as I drove down Santa Monica Boulevard where the memories were so potent that I was knocked back and forth in time. I was there. I had been there. When things were different. When people were different. When trajectories were different. The 405 freeway. The familiar landmarks. The taste of deli food.
And I knew I would always remember, but it would never be the same again. And I didn’t want it to be.
She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. … Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? … And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.
~Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu