Meaningful Mud's Monthly Mu - Inaugural Edition - April 2024
"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)"
Hey there,
I am very grateful to welcome you to the inaugural newsletter of Meaningful Mud’s Monthly Mu. However you arrived here, please know that your presence is recognized and deeply appreciated.
In the weeks gone by, for reasons both known and unknown, I have found myself thinking an unusual amount about hearts, both mine and others (bearing in mind that I do think about other organs that much on a weekly basis). Whilst armed only with an imperfect intuitive stethoscope and romanticized nostalgia, it seems to me that hearts around the world, those I have the privilege of seeing and the privilege of being protected from seeing, are beating in erratically haphazard fast and slow rhythms.
Perhaps this has always been so - an inherent part of the perennial human condition.
Perhaps, just as George Orwell adroitly observed that “every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it and wiser than the one that comes after it,” maybe every generation too feels its pains, pressures, complexities, accomplishments, torments and heartbeats to be unique and sui generis.
Nonetheless, swallowed into an equally tissuey and captivating rabbit hole, in the past weeks I learnt more about cardiomyocytes and the fibrous skeleton than is probably warranted or helpful. Amidst all I explored, what sat with me, and continues to sit with me, is the idea that the average human heart beats over 3 billion times in the course of a life.
That’s 80 beats per minute
4,800 beats per hour
115,200 beats per day
42,048,000 beats per year
Whilst ‘average’ callously obfuscates so much in the simultaneously fragile, unequally fractured and stirringly alive worlds we both world and don’t world, I have found myself pondering the makeup of these heartbeats; the varied combinations of joys, disappointments, laughs, loves, learnings, dreamings and sufferings that shape the lub dubs vibrating in our insides.
What percentage can we place in the jar of hugs and inspiration and meaningful conversation and sipping tea and moist biscuits and a stranger smiling at you and seeing the ocean and sharing meals and doing a down-dog and jumping into bed and those moments where a child laughs and when the music deities shine down on you and that song comes on and consumes your senses?
And what sliver of the heartbeats pie chart consists of the daily unrelenting toils of just getting by?
In this inaugural edition that lies before you, you will find a few of the tiny modest offerings that have caused my heart to beat for the better in the past month. Whilst just a poem, recipe and song, I hope the petite sojourn that is this newsletter can provide you with even a microscopic morsel of emotional, physical and creative nourishment for the coming hour, day or month ahead.
Again, I thank you for your being here and for your accompaniment and wish you all a month of healthy beating hearts and being the reason for the wholesome beating of another’s.
And lastly, may we always be stuck in Meaningful Mud.
Tyler
“I'm a little nervous 'bout what you'll think
When you see me in my swimming trunks”
The Avett Brothers
“What They Did Yesterday Afternoon”
by Warsan Shire
“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”
The menu ain’t the meal but give it a bash anyway
William Carlos Williams
(1883–1963)
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Inspired by William’s poem and because we’re all a bit upside down, here is an Upside Down Plum Tarte Tatin recipe:
Ingredients
40gm butter
90gm sugar
2 full tbls date honey or maple syrup
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of black pepper
Two bay leaves
1 tsp vanilla extract
10 plums (weight approx. 750gm) – stones removed and cut lengthways
1 x 250gm sheet puff pastry (preferably butter puff pastry)
Method
Preheat oven to 180°C
Heat butter in a pot on stovetop and add bay leaves.. allow to melt and bubble
Add the sugar and syrup and stir quickly until dissolved
Add cinnamon and vanilla
Turn off the heat and remove the bay leaves
Pour this mixture into your cake pan or pie dish
Place the plums cut side down until the dish/tin is filled
Drape the puff pastry over the plums tucking in edges
(optional – brush pastry with egg yolk with a sprinkling of cinnamon)
Bake for 25 minutes until golden brown
Flip the plum tarte tatin onto a serving plate
Serve with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream
ENJOY
#deliciousness can still be savored even when upside down
Sonic Suggestions
Over the past month this song has been the source of a somewhat liberation of self, causing me to move in what I believe can be described as a jive. I am hesitant to use the word dance but then again, the gym I go to exercises no restraint or shame in calling itself a country club!
Alas, sharing with you all the only good type of night sweats I know. I hope you enjoy!
Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats: I Need Never Get Old
Thank you for your reading and for your being here. It is not taken for granted!
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Feel free to reach out should you wish to share any comments, critiques or suggestions. Alternatively, do not hesitate to send a message if you believe I have not abided by any set of newsletter principles that I never committed to in the first place.
Wishing you all an awesome and awe-filled April!