Time

Today there is no time. The watch has been lost. It fell off making up for forgotten days - when the ticking was too loud, and the sun never reached its peak. It dove back into sleeping before you could see.

The rice cooks long. It starts between a seed popping and the glass of milk you left on the stove. We leave the rice, let it turn into porridge and notice breakfast isn't ready when we wake up, it talked to lunch and dinner to neglect the schedule. We combine the three of them on a stretched timeless afternoon. I have coffee with my minestrone, take breakfast as dessert.

The stories I read on this day vigorously agree. They visit, but don't hunt me down. I pick up cookbooks and select recipes, randomly. There is no blaming the absent ingredients. I prepare a pumpkin risotto without the rice.

Time peeks in now and then, but I refuse to look up- I keep on combining and mixing, stirring and baking - scale and timepiece behind locks.

With thanks to the Andrew Marvell poem 'To his Coy Mistress and J. Winterson, and the Pascal Campion blog for the picture (see favourites)

The Lonely Life

There are many things you can disagree on: the size of the fish, the shape of the onion, the thickness of the porridge, the kosherness of the meal.

You disagree.
You disagree, because you feel things differently. As a person you want to do things more your way, so you can become balanced, one with your environment. And there you sit, in a fight with him, he, one with his environment. You feel at home in your habits.

Tell me why am I born with an appetite for ice cream in the morning and seeds on the road, why do I prefer tomatoes in the oven, rice cake on the go. Desire for equilibrium I need. Anything else: no.

And so I wait, I wait until I have enough of all these, 'til the ice cream has melted, and birds run away with the seeds. Maybe then I'll be ready for some harmony.

The outside life

There is the life you can see. The house, the job, the food you eat. It tells you what to do after you wake up, it pushes you in the back. You might have forgotten the original reason for doing it after all.

And there is the invisible one. It creeps in from the wet walls and drips on you while you are asleep, you drink it with your coffee and swallow it with your cake. You try to wash it from your dishes, but it comes back and hits you during the meal. You wonder where the taste comes from, you search for weird spices you might have added during cooking, but there is nothing you can find. You do the test and boil plain brown rice, again you discover something you haven't asked for. You sue the rice company for unknown ingredients. You loose the case, your taste buds not enough as evidence.

You try denial. You concen- trate on the house, the job, the never ending meals. You set your alarm, gather the family for lunch, dinner. Oat porridge in the morning. You want a normal life after all.

But the smoke is there. It enters the building through the creaks and crannies. You watch it circling up. It doesn't make an effort to escape your house. From now on you measure the amount of sugar through a haze.

Finally you wonder whether you have any choice at all, who invented this invisible trick. You want to -pleaaase- eat boring tomato soup, and god keep the unknown seasoning.

You keep on figuring it out, inventing the recipes, you don't cease searching for the simple taste.

But then, unexpectedly, during an early nightly morning you can see who stirs the pots. It is you who brings in the flavour, it is you who has to stop.

picture from http://pascalcampion.blogspot.com

Escape

Finally you have made it. You are sitting on that cosy terrace, alone, coffee in front of you, a newspaper. Exactly what you have dreamt of all these weeks, when jumping around between buzzing phones, demanding customers, friends' kids and mandatory gatherings. You devaluated yourself to the background, riding the train you yourself bought a ticket for in the first place. But now you are here and you need to concentrate. You say the word out loud to yourself: con-cen-trate. No time for the newspaper. Only a few hours to re-think, to move your life around and leave the café with a plan in your hands. You want time for yourself, to Live Your Life Fully and Without Compromises. Front cover guru magazine style. You wonder how you ended up like this.
First you start by cancelling all upcoming appointments. Disappointing other people will become a daily routine. You need a wide white open space- that will have to filled up again, fine-tuned to your own needs.
You know beforehand time won't be enough to do everything you have never done. You delete reading books, you plan a cleaning lady, you order take-out. You only do the most efficient sports.

You are working consistently and speedily on your life.
Suddenly you notice you are not enjoying your coffee. You are stressed. You refuse the vegan extravagant apple cake - too many calories, distraction from the list.

You have 45 minutes left to sit, to finish up, to come up with something. After that you have to dive back into the race.
Then you notice something. You are doing it again. A-gain. A big sigh. Disbelief. But time is not up. You reach over, grab the paper, wail the waiter for a giant chocolate fudge and spend your 45 minutes.

picture from http://pascalcampion.blogspot.com

Life

'Are you hungry?'
'Always'.

Feeling

So it was that she was waiting for him to call. Which meant she was doing all other things only to let time pass by- please save me the effort to sugarcoat this. A woman obsessed. Provoked by the silence she started leaving her mobile behind when going for walks and moving around in the house, only to quickly check the screen almost by accident. Having read plentiful in the selfhelp section, she knew she shouldn't do what she was doing, she, the pitiful, waiting for a guy.

'Don't put your life on hold,' her best friend advised her. Nevertheless, there she was, giving it all. And she didn't even care. She managed to sleep through the first two days, explaining her mom it were the effects of leaving behind her caffeine addiction. The third day she looked at her old bedroom walls, feeling comforted by the safe world of teenage posters. The fourth she distracted herself by alcohol and cigarettes, sparing an intervention with the coffee abstinence. The fifth day she googled his name. The sixth she started to wonder why the call was so important to her. So f*ing important. The last day she decided she couldn't find an acceptable, sensible reason for it at all.

A clear indication that some more waiting needed to be done.

No compromises

Some things are worth having. Wisdom. Satisfaction. A silent bedroom. Possibly they are far-fetched, but at least they give you something to do. You know what to strive for.

I'm not so far yet, I am trying to stay calm when served bad food
in an expensive restaurant.

In the beginning I tried an impulsive 'I don't want to eat this'. The
waiter would give me a surprised look and walk away. I would stay behind with the food.
Now I have evolved to negotiating.
I explain the dish is not what I had in mind. That me too I know how to cook.
After that there is the menu translation, allergies, my confused mind. The longterm view.

There is the option of crying. You are hungry. You want good food for a reasonable price.
They just answer with giving the bill.

Finally you can calm down. Or accept what is given to you.

Rather just go to a better restaurant.

Unasked for Advice

There are different ways to spend your life. You can start ploughing your garden, attempt sewing your clothes, you might want to classify your cds. By all means these are useless activities, they don't bring fame. One day you might decide baking your own sourdough bread. This is a complicated process. It takes more than 2 weeks, and the starter needs constant care. It has to be taken to work, on city trips, and you will have to get up for it in the middle of the night. Much flour will have to be thrown away. There is the risk you might have to start the process all over again after a week. It is easy to make mistakes. But when you finally manage to bake the loaf, the result will be gigantic. It will have to be shared with everyone you meet.

There will be many people tasting the bread.
There will be some people who might tell you have better things to do.
They will suggest you have to buy your bread in a shop.
They don't intend you harm, these people.
They only want the best for you.
They want to warn you for the pitfalls in life.

Then take your loaf and start running. There is nothing as dangerous as good advice.

Addiction

She was very critical when going to restaurants. A dish could barely make it to her table. And when she liked it, she surely found a lipstick glass, or a waiter who wasn't fast enough. Music tended to be too loud. Smoke disturbed her, and sometimes she even interfered in the neighbouring table's conversation. 'Please keep your voices down'. The bill was incomprehensible. But she kept coming and the staff had to live with this. She was a loyal customer after all.

Some waiters had found a way to deal with her, smiling and explaining again. Others took the avoidance-track, what was an enterprise in such a small place. The easiest was to put her on the outside table and avoid going out for a smoke.

That evening the steak was too chewy. She had taken one bite and had called the waiter then and there. He hoped it would be too much for her now, he hoped they would have crossed a line. That in the future she would go out to other places.

'You can bring me the piglet instead,' she said, 'because I absolutely love this restaurant'.

True

She couldn't choose, but she didn't know it yet. Guests would come over for dinner and she had decided to prepare it all: the nettle soup and the aubergine cream, the roasted pumpkin and the warm goat cheese salad, the hummus and the duck leg, the stuffed zucchini and the radish pickles, the chocolate mousse and the date truffles, the cheese cake and the raspberry tart. 7pm was approaching quickly and when she scanned her kitchen she realised nothing was ready. The nettles still stingy, the goat cheese too tasty and the raspberries lost during shopping. She regretted having put up her aims so high, now she risked having nada to show. Why not one big gorgeous dish, one plate by which she could prove her culinary guts.

For what there is you have to prove to the world.
yourself. your life. your interests. your existence. the validity of your tram ticket.
She decided not to participate and to stick to the unfinished mess.

Bread

'You have to think rationally', he said.
I had to think rationally.
'All shops are closed now, there is nowhere where I can find bread'.
I had to repeat to myself what he had just said. He couldn't be serious.
There is no way anyone could ever say something like that seriously.
I didn't reply. I still expected him to get dressed and go.
Silently I continued the miso soup, I didn't leave the kitchen. There were no sounds in the apartment, no doors opening or closing. Maybe I got suspicious, but I walked to the bedroom, and a figure was quietly sitting there, staring at a computer screen.
It seems he was attempting to stick to his point. His incomprehensible point. His unacceptable, useless point.
How could I make this clear?
With calm reasoning? Hysteria? A physical act?
'I made a soup, and with it belongs a piece of bread. Find a shop'.
He looked at me, put on his jacket and left.
Sometimes you have to understand each other without saying too much.

Tricked

At some moments in your life, you might have to go with the masses. You might have to descend the stairs amongst the swirling crowds. There will be thousands of you, knowing where to go so early in the morning. You will queue as an obedient citizen, show your pass to the man in blue.

This might get too much. Sooner or later. It might start to dawn on you, somewhere at the back of your head, in your faraway thoughts, even before you reach the end of stairs. But don't worry about it, it's not supposed to be good for you. Besides, preventative measurements have been taken to ensure your passing through. It starts with the alluring bakery smells hitting you full frontal. They make you keep on walking. At the point of no return there is the small hot black. After all, it isn't so bad- you think.

Focusing

During our evening phone chat one of my sister's alarms went off at least every 10 minutes.
‘Excuse me a minute, would you? My cookies are ready and I have to take them out of the oven, otherwise they’ll burn’.
‘Sure, go ahead’.
…
‘Sorry, I'm here. What were you saying?”
“That’s ok. Are they tasty, the cookies?”
“I’ll try one for you”.
5 minutes later another ringing.
“The pumpkins must be ready now. You know, baked pumpkin”.
“For a soup?”
“No, for pumpkin spread. So you were saying, we have to live in the moment”.
“You’re really doing it, no?”
"You mean, living in the moment?"
"No, I mean the cooking. You really take care of yourself. Wonderful"
"It's not a big deal, it's just a shame not to fully use the oven when heating it. I'm preparing six dishes now".
"My goodness. So yes, if you only think about the aim, and never enjoy what you're actually doing, then you miss the whole essence of life'"
"There's lot of truth in that’.
Bell ringing
"Your bread is ready?"
"I'm afraid so".
“Sourdough?”
"Yes, and I even sprouted grains to add to it: brown rice, spelt, buckwheat."
"I wish I was there with you now. Please make one for me when I come home".
"Sure. I wonder how I am going to process all this food now. There is way too much".
"Let's think of something".

We tried to concentrate on life, but the kitchen kept us away from it.

The Right Question

picture from http://pascalcampion.blogspot.com

There are many questions that have to be answered every day.
Today they asked her how they should label her picture.
‘So, what are you? A chef? A teacher?‘
She looked at him, but said nothing.
‘It is important, our readers want to know this’.
‘Your readers want to know what I am’.
‘Yes’.
She hesitated. ‘Drinker of Coffee? Reader of Cookbooks?’
He laughed at her jokes.
She tried again. ‘Lover of Discussions?’
‘What?’
‘Ok then, ‘Writer of Blogs’?
He shook his head.
She sighed. Maybe ‘Chef in the Night? Roaster of seeds? Rice taster? Vegetable-chopper? Learner of Languages?
‘Ok ok ok’, he said. ‘You win. We’ll change the question. Tell me:
What Do You Like?’

Teachers

I wanted to eat an orange, but there was only a Jonared in the basket. It was lying there, looking at me, obviously mocking me. Angrily I looked at it, denying its being. It didn't work. No transformation took place, no help of the universe in whatsoever form. I started loudly wishing its change of form. No success. The craving got intenser, the needing even more. There wouldn't be life today without it.

So there I was, beaten by an apple.
Of course I could dress up, go out, find a job, earn money and buy the f*ing thing. Resistance bubbled up. Some things should be given to you in life, they should be there, naturally. The seriousness of my situation struck me: 'What do you do if you want an orange, but there is only an apple staring at you?"

Peel it, wrap it with polystyrene and paint it orange?
Close my eyes, squeeze my nose, bite and imagine?

Oh no! Let me quickly cover my ears...
I should ACCEPT?

How much do I resent spirituality.