Sundays

"It is Sunday evening. Sometimes I feel I'd like to write a whole book of short stories and call each one Sunday. Women are far more 'sensitive' to Sundays than to the moon or their monthly period- Does Sunday mean to you someting vivid and strange and remembered with longing-- The description sounds rather like the habits contracted by Jean Jacques Rousseau when his blood was inflamed by his youth- or like Gordon Campbell lying on his bed reading the Police Court News- but I don't mean that- Sunday is what these talking people call a rare state of conciousness- and what I would call- the feeling that sweeps me away when I hear an unseen piano."
-Mansfield to Beatrice Campbell, 14 May 1916

I guess I've never explained why my blog is called Strawberries and a Sailing Ship. Like the awesome quote above, I lifted it from some of Mansfield's personal writing. I thought it was kind of fitting and mainly beautiful.

Today is certainly one of those Sundays when you feel slightly nostalgic about everything and the world is full of vibrant greens and blues and reds and fast-moving, fluffy clouds. Earlier, I went to a produce market in town with my friend Jill and got tons of bell peppers, fruits and lettuce. Everything was so fresh and so cheap- and a lot of it was really foreign looking, too. You should see the massive, bumpy sweet potatoes they have here, called kumara. Three different types, too, looking like three different wrinkly old men. I like to think of them shouting at each other from their respective bins in the market. I just spent like five minutes trying to think of what one old man kumara would say to the other, but I think I need to work on my old man dialogue. Or get a life.

After the produce market, Jill and I went to some home stores b/c she's moving into a new flat today and needed things like a comforter. I got some hangers and a laundry basket, then came home, baked a squash and did some laundry. Apparently in New Zealand every kind of squash is called a pumpkin, and they don't have American orange pumpkins. My flatmate Blair said this a little too zealously, like "Oh, and we don't make jack-o-lanterns here, either." I'll show him. We'll just have a green or brown one, come Halloween. Or maybe a butternut squash jack-o-lantern. I could make it look like a totem pole.

The squash I'm currently eating looks like a flattened pumpkin and an acorn squash put together, but it doesn't really taste like either. It tastes like...heaven. Sweet and nutty and orange. I'm going to chop some up and add it to some couscous with raisins and dates and walnuts and cinnamon and chili flakes. Maybe a little sauteed onion, if I'm feeling ambitious. I've lost some weight since coming to New Zealand, and I'd like to chalk it up to my healthy cooking, although I think really it was just because I was deathly ill last week. Too bad.

My friends and I went to a beer festival downtown yesterday. I'd like to say that I found a few favorites and selected all the local breweries, but by the time I tried three different beers I was smashed, and I don't remember much of what I tried. After all, it was two in the afternoon when we got there. Also in the middle of a tropical storm. I don't think I've hung out in that much rain ever before.

Classes start this week, and although that really doesn't mean much to me since I'm not taking any, it does mean I should start working on my project like a nine to five job. Starting...tomorrow. I don't want to mess up the romance of this beautiful Sunday, so I'll read something for fun instead.