Friday, December 28, 2018

good vibes

Meditation

You’ve read the studies and downloaded the apps, but for those of us married to keyboards and smartphones, slipping into that mind-clearing state is easier said than done. 


Sound therapy may sound far-fetched, but an increasing number of urbanites are seeking out its restorative powers. 

Friday, December 21, 2018

origins of the Pinoy queso de bola

Holland shop with assorted Edam cheeses

What’s shiny, red, and almost always bound to make an appearance around the holiday season? Not Rudolph’s nose, but queso de bola - a cheese hailing from Holland, where it is known as Edam - named after its city of origin. 


In the Philippines, though the labels on balls of Edam still tout the marker “Imported from Holland,” queso de bola is inseparable from Noche Buena, and Noche Buena is just Filipino tradition - though it came from the Spanish, Filipinos have made it our own. 


Though the story of queso de bola is part of a much larger history, at face value, queso de bola is definitely distinctly Filipino

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Sylvia Plath | stripped bare

Reading Sylvia Plath was very much part of our rites of passage growing up.

wonder | wander | world greatly anticipates the recent release of two volumes of her letters published by Harper Collins.


Between February 18, 1960, and February 4, 1963, a week before Sylvia Plath committed suicide, at the age of thirty.

She sent a series of candid letters to her close friend and former psychiatrist, Ruth Beuscher. What has happened to these documents in the intervening years is a case study in Plath’s legacy.


The fiftieth anniversary of Plath’s death came and went in 2013. Almost all the major players in this story are now dead.

[F]or most of Plath’s readers a vexed affinity endures. When I discovered Plath in high school (as many still do), I remember the feeling of being an interloper in a totally absorbing story.

Much of Plath’s letter-writing is consumed with a day-by-day account of rents, leases, meals, of diaper-changing, bicycle-hawking, bill-paying.

These onerous preconditions for writing and mothering and being a wife had to be brokered all by herself, all for herself.

Plath had none of the leisure for contemplation that we associate with male writers. Her muses were economy, thrift, and the clock.

[W]e see Plath stripped of the mythos that her creativity has accrued, and more astonishing without it.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Mahala's art

This week wonder | wander | world is proud to present Mahala's latest art. 

Posted on her Peregrinalia blog and Aspect2Aspect illustration page. 

'Tis the season. . . .to wrap up! And be snug as a bug! Enjoy! 


Other people dress up for winter, I dress for a space flight to an ice planet. This is the regular version; the snow day version adds a coat that looks like a duvet Slanket, an interstitial fleece layer and polar boots with ice grips.

Created with layers in Photoshop and animated in Clip Studio Paint Pro.