a toast to sharing, to generosity

A record of two communal festive moments.

Today is the day after our annual supra - a Georgian feast celebrating Georgian music - passed down through generations in the mountain villages of Georgia and still so powerful today even though the languages have changed so much that the meanings of the words have often been lost. Incredible polyphonic singing in which the voices stay close together - a social singing where the solo voice is no more important or superior to for example the resounding and never ending drone of a bass part - sung in such unison that the snatches of breath taken to maintain that sound cannot be heard.

The warmth of the supra, and the remembered aftertaste and after sound of the delicious foods - layered Georgian honey cream cake, spinach, pomegranate, beans, cheese bread, a quince concoction, the Georgian toasting call and punctuations of Georgian song  - is combined in my case with the warmth of an earlier meeting on the same day of a small group of haiku writers - sharing our own and others' haiku. In this small group, gentle and uninterruptive, the theme is the senses, the topic of discussion moves to quite deep philosophical territory as we consider the place of the senses in an experience of residing in the now, the here, the immediate, untrammeled by thoughts of past or future.
The haiku are superb as is the willingness to discuss comment and alter to get the words and feeling exactly where we would like them to be. Topped off by a small delicious repast which includes both Christmas cake and homemade butter bean hummus...

There is something about the bringing and sharing of food in an atmosphere of artistic openness, generosity and yes again sharing that warms and warms so deeply

To friendship! To generosity! To sharing!