Episode 8: The Instant Gram Recipe
Hi everyone, I hope you’re doing as well as you can be. I’m so excited to share the first episode of 2024 with you. In the setting of a cozy kitchen, this poem captures our moments on social media with a twist. It explores the “Favourites” feature on Instagram, namely one way in which to use it mindfully: curating your relationship with social media. For example, carefully choosing a recipe of art, music, joy, passion, humour, social justice, activism, news, media, and environmental advocacy accounts (from diverse voices) for your 50 favourites, and returning to these for most of your daily social media allotment. Of course, this list is not exhaustive but hopefully is inspiring.
I’ll share it with you now:
Breathe in beneath
the tented oak beams and
droopy, pendulous lanterns,
inside four walls carpeted in oven-charred stone brick.
Let your face absorb both the sparkling, aureate
rays of both dawn and dusk, through maple-framed
radius windows. Allow the cloak of smoke
from last evening’s supper to sink your shoulders into calm.
Listen to the ceiling—a swaying
wheatfield plafond of brass-hooked
pots, pans, measuring cups, burlap packs,
crisp plants, and painted portraits—portals
to the kitchen’s music.
Someone forgot to close the window.
Softly shake your head and smile.
Pluck a slice—a leaf—of mint to nibble,
and climb the creaky ladder to the pantry of cookbooks
above the table, stools, and stove.
It’s the laminated one—
glossy and slick with clear plastic coils
when peeled from its silicone case.
Flip to chapter 20, recipe 24: Infinite Instant Grams
Description: a nutritional 50-fragment finger food favourite
Prep & cook time: 20-30 minutes.
Measure and mix together:
1 ½ cups of social justice and activism
3 ½ cups of reliable news and media
2 ¼ tsps of environmental advocacy
Stir in:
4 cups of awareness chips
to ensure
a diverse blend.
In a separate bowl, combine:
2 tbsps of humour
1 cup of art and music
1 ¼ cup of melted passion and joy
Fuse both mixtures in a cosmic bowl,
crafting a smooth paste
without overmixing.
Bake at 375°F for 20-30 minutes.
This loaf will last forever if, like fruit-flavoured candy
vitamins you chew just one bite each day.
Each bite should last twenty minutes.
Each piece packs a bitter, salty, sour, sweet, astringent, and savoury punch.
Each bit bridges devastation, rage, vulnerability, courage, hope, and liberation.
Breathe the words in. What do they make you feel or think? How did they connect with your senses? What colours or symbols did you notice? What meaning did you draw? Metaphors? Interpretations? Clarity? Messages?
