A Happy Birthday

Photo by Nina Leen (1950). Courtesy of LIFE.com

We are still in our infancy here at Cake and Cordial, so please be patient with us as we ease into a schedule of posting. In the meantime, know that we are brainstorming lots of sunshiny material for your future enjoyment.

In current happy events, it is Alison - the Irish member of this blogging team's - birthday! Please join me in wishing her the happiest of days!

Even though we cannot celebrate this occasion together in person, I want to express how glad I am that she has come into my life. I greatly look forward to the next time we can enjoy a treat together - similar to the lovely young ladies above.

I remember hearing this poem recited in a film some years ago, and although the movie has now escaped me (can anyone help me here?) the poem remains. I find its quiet attitude of wonder, in how the course of things comes together, both comforting and enchanting.    

The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer

by Eugenio Montejo
translated by Peter Boyle

The earth turned to bring us closer,
it spun on itself and within us,
and finally joined us together in this dream
as written in the Symposium.
Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices;
time passed in minutes and millennia.
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh
arrived in Nebraska.
A rooster was singing some distance from the world,
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers.
The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board;
it didn't stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that's miraculous
was only an adagio written long ago
in the Symposium's score.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

Spring in High Park, Toronto (2009). Gina.

Spring has sprung, and with it - this blog!

There's two of us here, behind the curtain. Two friends who found each other working at this wonderful store. Alison had arrived in Toronto, Canada from County Sligo, Ireland for a year's worth of new experiences. I (Gina) had been kicking around the city for ages already. Looking for a project to keep us both inspired and motivated, we agreed to start this blog as a way to explore what makes us happy. And perhaps more importantly, to keep in touch.

Alison returned to Ireland (fittingly on St. Patrick's Day). As she reacquaintaned herself with the rainy, green hills I've been in sunny TO participating in an art project - Building Together, curated by Amber Landgraff, hosted by Toronto Free Gallery and part of Portland, Oregan-based artist Zach Springer's larger-encompassing project Build Something Together.  (Phew! Did you get all that?) Zach helped me put the site together so that it looks as beautiful as it does. Thanks Zach! And thanks Amber for bringing him here to Toronto!

You can view the project page for the blog here.

What can you expect to see on this blog? Well, we hope to keep it a living, breathing thing - a constant work in progress - but if we must give criteria our focuses are such: Pleasure, Camaraderie, Creativity and Frugality. There will also probably be a lot of food (NB: how we met). We hope to bring light to our cross-Atlantic perspectives, while still find synchronicity in the small things that make us smile.

In here life is beautiful.