Snippets From An Early Spring Dinner

first The Flâneurs Project dinner, The Realisation Festival, Maggie's drawings

"For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight." - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Beauty lies in all the ways we sense and feel and see the world.

Breaking bread over a candle-lit table, pouring wine to friends, hearing the sound of the cutlery. The questions asked as we pass the salad bowl, the answers received as we enjoy another bite of cheese and think about the next story that we want to tell. The silence that we share when we enjoy the main dish. When we pour another glass of wine and the stories flow, the heart absorbing the experience like a sponge.

March has always been the first month of the new year for me. Maybe because I spend January and February in hibernation, writing, mostly away from the online world and mostly depressed because of the winter blues. Maybe because I am Romanian and on the 1st of March we celebrate Mărțișor and ever since I was a child I loved this tradition with all my heart.

“Mărțișor is an old tradition celebrated all over Romania every year, on March 1st. The name Mărțișor is a diminutive of March (Martie in Romanian).

In the old times, Mărțișor were made of small river pebbles, coloured in white and red, stringed on a thread and worn around the neck. They were worn, to bring good luck and good weather, from March 1 until the first trees would bloom. When the first trees were flowering the Mărțișor were hung on tree branches.

Nowadays, on March 1, Romanians buy silky red-white threads (șnur) tied into a bow to which a small trinket is attached and offer them to their family members, friends and colleagues to show friendship, respect, love, or admiration.”¹

March has always meant giving, blooming flowers, new beginnings, an abundance of hope.

So this year, the first spring in this new home in The Hague, I wanted to start a new tradition, one involving monthly dinners with a theme and inviting friends and friends of friends over for a home salon.

March Theme: New Beginnings

2nd of March 2024

Menu (simple & vegetarian-friendly for my guests)

Caprese skewers, Gruyere cheese, buttery tomato pasta with extra parmigiano, Alina’s homemade mandarin cake, Thorn-Clarke Shotfire Barossa Valley Wine 2020.

Questions

What beginnings are you craving right now?

What beginnings felt like endings?

Tell us a story about a new path that you took that made all the difference.

Main topics explored

Slowing down. Financial security. Sustainable work. Doing the right thing. The ways we look at the narrative of our own life. Are we happy?

I’m preparing the April dinner already so if you know someone who would like to join this type of dinner, please let me know / share this post with them.

This curated week

Maggie Cowles, illustrator based in Brooklyn.

The Realisation Festival 2024

joining a conversation at The Realisation Festival 2023

Last year I had the opportunity to attend this festival and I absolutely loved the emergence of new feelings, new connections, new possibilities. Find out more about this festival here². Sign up to the Perspectiva Substack here.

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Thank you for reading,

Patricia

1. Mărțișor: https://romaniatourism.com/martisor.html

2. The Realisaton Festival: https://realisationfestival.com