11:54 PM
Archived from Aug 27, 2024:
There’s an icy quality to the fridge light that broaches into the dimly lit kitchen. The air cools rapidly in the humid summer apartment and tumbles down - frosty, rolling steam. The clear plastic quickly gains a veneer of condensation and I squint my eyes against the bright, closing them to relish the cool for a moment. Glass and plastic knock into each other as bottles shift around the door shelves and I forget what I was looking for in the first place. A small selection of vegetables, limited by the fact of almost always being alone sit behind foggy plastic. As always, the ones that keep well are joined by something else. I open a drawer to see sad, shrivelled radishes that have fallen behind a head of cabbage. I lift them out and sigh. Weighed down by waste I glance at the door; eggs, a small bit of cheese and condiments. At least six mustards, gochuchjang, mirin, nine bottles of hot sauce and not a decision in sight.
I have the standard habit of only eating when I’m hungry, which comes to fruition after the worse habit of not noticing I was hungry in the first place. Sometimes it’s due to focus, sometimes it’s due to something akin to dissociation but the results are the same; my standard late dinner, pushed even further, almost into another day. When was lunch? 5 hours ago, 7? Have I even eaten since breakfast? Was breakfast more than coffee? Answers vary according to days, weather and mood. Given my affinity for food, you’d expect the answers to be more consistent but frequently circumstances beat out cravings, exhaustion against excitement.
I stand in the kitchen lit by the stove light, morning coffee mug lingering well past its welcome on the counter. I glance around and see only remnants of eggs and toast. A sigh, trying to exhale some of the guilt, the shortcomings, the inability to care for myself in a reliable way. The predictable lack of energy limits my desire to make anything of note and wears down on my ability to look at disparate ingredients and see a meal. I stand and stand, telling myself that going to bed without eating can’t be an option, inviting more failure into a day minutes from end feels like too much to bear.
Other people are easy to cook for, easy to care for. I feel certain that once I loved both cooking and cooking for others, but I am starting to forget what the drive and desire to cook feels like when not driven forward by a need to care, to prove my affection, to be useful. It seems as though the distance between me and any hobby grows wide. Cooking has, over time, become a chore for an audience of one who has ceased to be impressed. I do not want to lose the things I love, but they seem to drift when the obligations of life weigh me down. Or maybe I’m the one who drifted - away and out - into a life alone, to be handled and experienced largely unaccompanied. Maybe food just tastes better in good company. Maybe it always has, but I didn’t notice until the ingredient became quite rare.
Finally a step forward. Radishes make their way into the compost, tomatoes on to the counter. Hardly a stroke of inspiration to make the same thing I eat at least 3 times a week, but it is well past time for trying to impress myself or waiting for inspiration that will not come. Memory takes hold and ingredients are gathered with little thought. I move with inattentive ease, sleep creeping in as chef de cuisine and begin the slow, necessary ritual of taking care of myself.
Pan on the stove. I wonder what it would take to be a person worthy of the effort of a meal. Knife slicing through tomatoes. I wonder how long it will take to become a person worthy of the effort. Garlic in the pan. I wonder if I already am worth the effort, and simply do not, will not see it. A steaming plate of simple shakshuka. Perhaps, dinner is a start.
Thank you for still being here, friends. I know it’s been a while and I appreciate that you have stuck around. Summer has been strange and hot and most of my writing has been in notebooks. My writing has morphed into something distinctly selfish, revolving around and digging into myself. I don’t know how to feel about that, or if any of it is worth anything but I am trying to not turn away from the instinct. This piece isn’t something I wrote in a notebook first, but it still falls in line with the “life writing” approach I seem to be taking; not journaling, something more deliberate and structured than that ever has been for me. I hope you enjoy. What’s your go to dinner?
