Sashimi is velvet dust, verging on silk, or a bit of both, and the extraordinary alchemy of its gossamer essence allows it to preserve a milky density unknown even by clouds.... my cheeks recalled the effects of its profound caress.
Interpretation
This quote captures the delicate and transformative qualities of sashimi, likening it to luxurious textures and evoking deep sensory experiences.
Muriel Barbery's quote intricately describes sashimi, portraying it as a culinary art that transcends ordinary dining through its exquisite textures and flavors. By comparing it to velvet and silk, the author highlights the luxurious, almost ethereal nature of sashimi, suggesting that its preparation and taste evoke profound sensory memories and emotions, akin to a gentle caress that leaves a lasting impression.
In practice
During a cooking class, I quoted Barbery to emphasize the artistry in preparing sashimi.
Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed.
But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.
If, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become...will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?
Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It's the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death.
There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.
We musn't forget old people with their rotten bodies, old people who are so close to death, something that young people don't want to think about. We musn't forget that our bodies decline, friends die, everyone forgets about us, and the end is solitude. Nor must we forget that these old people were young once, that a lifespan is pathetically short, that one day you're twenty and the next day you're eighty.
The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!
Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.
That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.
If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.
I'm more interested in melodic things. I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.
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