Hello! I’m back. I haven’t written in a while because when I started this I wanted to do it as a project solely for myself (because what are personal blogs if not wildly self-indulgent?) and part of that meant not writing when I didn’t want to just because I felt like I should. So I didn’t.
So what brings me back are two great words. Kintsugi and Byzantium. They have basically no connection to each other besides the fact that I’m into both right now. I guess you could kintsugi some Byzantine artifacts? I’d go to an exhibit of those.
Kintsugi is a Japanese art – they repair broken beloved pottery with lacquer and gold dust so the cracks make the piece more beautiful than it was before it was broken. And I was thinking about what an apt metaphor that could be for people, as a way to think about truly rebounding from your struggles better than you were before. Then it just so happens I came across this book, Kintsugi Wellness by Candice Kumai. It’s sort of half self-help and half cookbook. And I do love Japanese food.
Candice Kumai’s mother is Japanese so she has extended family in Japan and has spent a lot of time there. The book has pictures of her as a kid with her sister, mother and grandmother because she talks about the ways certain Japanese values influenced her life as a child and her philosophy of wellness and how her mother taught her to cook. She dedicated the book to her grandmother, who died at 96 years old while Candice was writing it.
The other part of this post is The History of Byzantium podcast. It’s a continuance of The History of Rome podcast, which, to quote its creator, Mike Duncan, “remains one of the most popular and influential history podcasts in the history of history podcasting.” I’m sure that’s as true as it is fun to say. But I haven’t listened to The History of Rome. I got into the Byzantium one first and they’re both huge time commitments and I’ll get to it eventually I’m sure.
One of the things I find really interesting about The History of Byzantium podcast isn’t actually the history of Byzantium. The guy who makes it, Robin Pierson, isn’t an academic or historian at all. He was just so inspired by The History of Rome podcast that he decided to keep it going and has taught himself this major crash course in 1,000 years of history. I wouldn’t be able to tell if he were completely making it up, but considering the fan base and listener questions and interviews he does, I feel like it has to be pretty good.
I honestly started listening to it to help me fall asleep at night, but then it got me. I still have to listen to most episodes several times before I make it through the whole thing and remember what happened, but I keep coming back.
So that’s my yin and yang lately. Emotional and physical wellness as a delicate art of matrilineal healing balanced with stoic war histories of a fallen empire created by a non-expert who did it anyway just because he could.
The Abecedarium 