Steam rose from my legs as they stretched out from the water’s surface. For the first time since I moved here (Bolzano, Italy) I managed to appropriately assess the size of the water boiler to the corresponding amount in the tub. Consequently the water perfectly captured that temperature hot enough to increase your heartbeat in that way that, ironically, leads only to relaxation. 

 

I read somewhere that in France, women have for ages used milk in their baths to soften their skin. So like a chocolate chip cookie, I laid there soaking in milky water. It was a moment that captured my recent (bad?) habits, taking long baths and baking cookies. As things sweet goes, I always believed my soft side to be the more dominant side, so cookies were never something I used to bake.

 

My inspiration for this is strikingly obvious. A while back I was home sick in influenza and I managed to catch up on a few years of movie neglect. Then and there I fell madly in love with the movie “Stranger than fiction”. It is borderline perfection as a person portrait, as a love story and as a tribute to literature. One of the most endearing scenes takes place in a cafe, with chocolate chip cookies, miscommunication and a recognition that tragedy wins over comedy. So in some dreamlike state to take part in fiction, perhaps to re-experience a covert fantasy, I started baking cookies. 

 

While this is a silly example, is it not so that we often go to great lengths to relive moments lost, whether real, or from dreams? Reliving, I find myself with Schrödinger’s box before me. If the cat is dead, all but hope becomes rather simple, and if the cat is alive, only hope remains uncomplicated.