CULACCINO: RITUALISING MONOTONY
Noticing the small, satisfying and silly through daily wins.
The brain wants to solve problems;
I want to (someday) finish a sudoku.
Behind this wish is a friend’s pocket-sized-puzzle-book-turned-coaster on her bedside table. In my head, the mug stain gives the same fascinating, silly allure as the coquette trend but instead of putting bows on things, leaving circular tea stains is iconography for ceramic collectors like myself that think (and overthink) way too much, falling in to the bad habit of having to brush their teeth again before bed because they had another cuppa.
culaccino m (plural culaccini)
a water ring, a mark left on a surface by the bottom of a wet glass or vessel (of tea, water, etc.)
In my notes app is a buried collection of words that don’t have an English equivalent. I collect these like those ornate tea spoons that clatter together when you open the cutlery drawer. (Sugar, anyone?)
Culaccino is a word that only truly started resonating when I moved into my first apartment and started curating my own furniture that I’ve become embarrassingly attached to; each piece is secondhand and curated with so much love that coasters are a must in my household.
A forgiveness of tea stains on wood is something of the past; how much I had grown to start caring about leaving marks on wood and if it was a good idea to add another sugar to my tea, and what do both these things have in common? I’ll tell you: a focus on the negative.
Culaccini is a symbol of clarity and conversation– a cup of tea is a pocket out of my day for mindfulness, the stain a witness to a couple of minutes of connection. There is a yearning to turn a stain on the wood into a boon, to recalibrate my mind to not solve problems by automatically reaching for the negative, but seeing unexpected merit in a seemingly mundane, and sometimes displeasing situation. I call this “counting my daily wins.”
The beauty you see in anything is a reflection of the beauty you see in you.
– Jalaluddin Rumi
Vedere il bicchiere mezzo pieno!
Seeing the glass half full
A surge of impulse replaced my morning cuppa on the way to work one day with a $5 sudoku book from the news agency.
Remembering my intense dislike for numbers (I’m a writer… I can’t have it all!) and the fact that the last time I tried to solve one was circa 2009 playing Dr Kawashima's Brain Training for the Nintendo DS, I decided to add to a list on my notes app, pinned with 900 other memos (nothing is more elusive than a woman’s notes app) my daily win for the day despite my caffeine withdrawal.
“My friend and I have matching coasters on our bedside table now!” I wrote. “Better that than the wood. What a fucking win.”
After writing this realisation down, even on the shitty days my cup of tea before bed begun to look more half full than empty. I’ve become oddly appreciative that the turn of events made me purchase a sudoku book (even if I don’t plan on using it.)
Daily wins are tangible ways to practice mindfulness. They can be anything and come from anywhere; at times what they are isn’t the important part, but how they make you feel is.
There is an illusion that victory needs to be grand; success looks different to us all. Perhaps you’ve made half a step towards a new goal, was swept up in gratitude when someone opened the door for you, or noticed something that put a smile on your face. A daily win is whatever you would like it to be. Thank you Jalaluddin Rumi for the reminder!
Daily wins also do not need to be documented or kept; at times simply enjoying the moment is enough. It can be special and fleeting at the same time. But as a writer and self-diagnosed type A person, I have a shortcut on my phone that directs me to my notes app. The act of noticing something so minute, acknowledging it made you happy, sitting in that feeling, and writing it down is a very intentional practice for me. I have ritualised the art of noticing.
Recent entries include:
I’ve reached 50 subscribers on this Substack
A lady I sat next to on the bus after work the other day shared her Pringles with me
Raisin toast was on special
I took two friends to a yoga nidra class
The weather is cooling down (hello Autumn!)
Now what to all of these random things have in common? A focus on the positive. Let’s look at the glass half full – vedere il bicchiere mezzo pieno!
Grappling With Unpredictability & Mystery
Curbing Cynicism
It would be a boring existence if I didn’t have to challenge my mind to notice both the positive and the negative around me. Ritualising small moments in our day grants us a second, third, fourth wind in an ever pessimistic world. Noticing the world and allowing it to pass by us in its most authentic form is very different to seeing everything with a sickly sweet sheen. Grounded in reality, daily wins are a ritual.
Existential dread is prevalent now more than ever. As our consciousness and understanding of the world grows, so too do the mysteries and paradoxes; we have only discovered five percent of the ocean– never mind venturing into space, we still have a lot of work to do here on earth!
When we contemplate things that are much grander than us, we feel as if the weight of the world can swallow us. Complexities feed an overwhelming cynicism– nothing is as it seems, nothing is as simple as we’d like, nothing goes our way.
Rituals are pockets of devotion to the self. They are the separation between time passing uneventful and us existing in it authentically and beautifully. A pendulum that rocks but is stopped momentarily for a breath, a word, a thought, a mundane detail. Once given attention, the mundane becomes the extraordinary. We are enriched by the art of noticing.
But daily wins are a small shout of defiance against the echo chamber of the Universe. I have become much less of a pessimist since ritualising pockets and moments and memories that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t mean anything, but to me mean the world.
Poetry In The Mundane Everyday
Words that don’t translate into English certainly have a poetic allure to them. Upon discovering the culaccino on my friend’s sudoku book, I started considering how I see the world under a different lens– daily wins become more apparent as we practice the habit, and begin finding metaphor and relatability in the world around us.
Here’s another word to consider:
datsuzoku m
A break from daily routine or habit, a certain freedom from the commonplace. It involves a feeling of transcending the ordinary and conventional. The result of datsuzoku is pleasant surprise and unexpected amazement. A certain reprieve from convention.
The mundane, boring, trivial, becomes revitalised through daily wins as opposed to being swallowed by indifference.
In between the onslaught of day-in-my-life videos, “that girl” morning and evening routines, and the clutter in your camera roll of trying to live a cinematic life, daily wins remain authentic, unimportant, and blissfully small. I don’t want to reflect on the grandiose of life all the time or pressure myself into making my life into a movie or embodying my main character energy, I just want to live and be at peace with my small existence.
It becomes a comforting thought. The daily wins list continues to grow. Life becomes a little brighter. The culaccino begins to represent how simple joy can be.
Eclectic Creative is the newsletter to read with your morning coffee or evening tea. Writer and creative freelancer Jada De Luca grapples with a small corner of the internet, shaping it into a celestial creative non-fiction realm that is dedicated to her favourite topics and ever expansive creativity.
If you are interested in art, writing, spirituality, tarot, travel, and books, you are warmly invited to enjoy Eclectic Creative weekly.
About The Writer
Jada De Luca doesn’t go anywhere without her kindle and interprets tarot cards for the spiritually curious. She is a long time writer and in-house collage witch for the Aussie based travel publication Astray, best known for her piece The Writer’s Routine.
Jada tells stories through an eclectic mix of both written and visual narration, creating magical, surreal, and intensely personal landscapes for her audiences.
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In the meantime,
Lots of love,
Jada
Happy 50 subscribers!!
this was such a pleasure to read, thank you from a fellow chronic notes app user🥰