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Still trying to get the armpits to open…

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Thought is like a snowball. The longer you live, the more it melts.

- Rod Steiger

Wittgenstein, who had received extensive training in music, would not listen to any composer later than Brahms, [and] was indifferent to, if not openly hostile toward, his poetic contemporaries… In an impulsive act of legendary generosity, he bequeathed, in 1914, one hundred thousand kronen (roughly the equivalent of one hundred thousand dollars today) to Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of the literary magazine Der Brenner, instructing Ficker to distribute the money ‘among Austrian artists who are without means.’ But of the three main beneficiaries — Rilke, Trakl, and Carl Dallago — Rilke was the only poet with whose work Wittgenstein was at all familiar… When Ficker sent him a posthumously published edition of Trakl’s works, Wittgenstein’s only comment was that they were ‘probably very good’ but that, just now, he had ‘no desire to assimilate foreign thoughts.’

- Wittgenstein’s Ladder, by Marjorie Perloff

There is nothing which can be said or made evident. There is just the omnipresent voidness of the real self-existent Nature of everything, and no more. Therefore, saying that there is no Dharma to be explained in words is called preaching the Dharma.

- Huang Po

Here are some pictures. First off, a lovely closeup:

So pretty. Look at the colors — the drier strands look more like the kind of pasta you buy in a box. It starts off doughy and opaque, but quickly dries to a more translucent golden color. Making pasta is very much like making sculpture: messy, three-dimensional, a little detail-oriented. It was a pleasure.

I was a little unnerved at first — the machine makes a LOT of noise as it extrudes the dough. I’d read a few horror stories of people burning out machines, but those seemed to revolve around the use of too much semolina in the dough, which makes it very dense. I decided to stick with all-purpose flour for the first attempt, so I could learn how the machine sounds with normal use. Then I can start adding semolina to the mix, and hopefully be able to hear if it gets too stressful for the mixer.

Yeah, so the mixer makes this kind of squealing sound as it works. I waited until it was about time for The Cop to get up before I began making pasta. In the meantime, though, I made a loaf of bread and some pizza dough which I froze for use later on in the week. Yay, me!

Also made a list of all the things my slacker kitchen is missing: measuring spoons, measuring cups, cannisters for flour. Oh, and a pasta drying rack. For the time being, Saran Wrap over a broomstick will do. My grandmother had a full-size wooden door that lay over two sawhorses in the cellar. That’s where the pasta dried. She rolled the dough out on the door, too — using a broomstick. And then cut all the pieces by hand. I admire the effort, in retrospect. Didn’t think about it when I was a kid — just ate the pasta. I wonder now, though, if I would like to spend that kind of time making pasta. Instead of the current day job… It’s kind of interesting to consider. I whine about my job sometimes, wish I’d win the lottery. But what if the alternative was making pasta for the family all day? It’d seem idyllic for the first day, I’m sure. After that, though, I suspect I’d miss the office…

Anyhow, here’s the pasta drying over a broomstick slung between the microwave and the coffeemaker (two things my grandmother definitely did not have).

And here’s The Cop, recently awakened and immediately messing with the pasta. Is it my imagination, or is he clowning around exactly the same way a 6 year old boy would?