The month of August is rapidly coming to an end. I’m beginning to think of the intentions that I set for this month, a simple prayer. Acceptance. A willingness to be torn down and reborn by the unknown. Beginning this journey of understanding and reclaiming collective memory sent me on this winding path. Some days felt like the top of a convertible had been let down and my locs were flowing in the wind with no place to be, falling, moving, bending the way they desire. I indulged in pleasure, allowing myself not to only remember the painful memories and stifle them down, but to remember what joy feels like, to seek out delight and pleasure. Other days were unidentifiable rage and grief that laid across my chest like words that never got the chance to be said. A deep knowing, knowing what wailing feels like. The burn of having your children ripped away from you based upon someone else’s assessment of your treasure, your golden jewels, bronze skin that melts like chocolate.
I was on a trip I hadn’t packed for. How does one even pack for such an event. Do you pack the old worn t-shirts that though faded, you can still recall the stories they tell. A scent that transports you back to the last time you were in love? I let life take the wheel and lead me where it may.
One question that kept humming in the back of my mind was “I still haven’t talked about food.” An awareness, a fact, more than a question. Over the course of the last few days I gave myself permission to ask why. No longer concerned with the idea of failure. Failure to live up to the name for this space. The failure to spend more time talking about food than I did my own reawakening and the sentiments they carry. Is this a cookbook club? What is a cookbook club?
This is my invitation to figure it out together. To wind together down uncharted paths. It is my belief, my prayer that this place grows into it’s name. That we come to know what a cookbook club can be, rather what we have labeled it, preconceived notions we have created.
Enjoy this interview with myself. Why aren’t I talking about food and other questions that I ask myself. A self-interview.
Until next week.
Peace.
[Transcript:]
Interviewer: Do you feel lost?
I feel like a doe in the meadow. I feel the grass stretching up my calf. I feel the tiny drops of curiosity melting against my skin. I feel vulnerable in the large lands of my imagination. I feel like sometimes I lose my sense of direction, but I know I am always headed somewhere. I smell the fear in the air and I still follow it anyway.
Interviewer: Do you wonder if your efforts will be good enough?
My therapist believe that I have this disorder that causes me to consistently, repetitiously rehearse mental notes stickied to my mind. She says that these obsessive pursuits lead me to the bottom of a hill that I rode down just after I stepped off the mountain top, I felt invincible. Only somehow I always end up at the bottom looking up. I find myself climbing in and out of the same hole, rehearsing the first time that I stole. I was five years old, and I wanted to win the prize for helping the children with cancer. Now my best friend has cancer. We’re twenty-eight and twenty-nine and I rehearse that moment in time. The moment I stopped trusting myself and doubting my motives. I realized my capacity to hurt people, to be so consumed by my desire that I chose to abandon you when you need it most and I only show up when guilt makes me leave. Whether it be a variant in a strand of my DNA, or the result of violent acts against my soul, somewhere I became obsessed with finding pleasure in other people. Trying to atone for my sinful nature, trying to repent from my desire to want to lean into what pleasures my flesh.
Interviewer: What do you feel when someone affirms your gifts?
At some point I became so independent that I tried to convince myself that I no longer needed people. I didn’t need affirmation. I didn’t need to be longed for, desired. I didn’t need to feel good to do good. And then this girl tried my food. She allowed me to cook for her, she trusted my ability to feed her. To allow herself to be served by me. I saw the glimmer in her eye. I saw the way pleasure took over her body and I desperately tried to live vicariously through her. I tried to reconnect myself to my body, my senses. I wanted to feel again.
Interviewer: Do you feel?
Of course I feel. I feel, but those feelings often do not feel like mine. They do not feel like the same spirit that currently possesses this body. Survival and sensitivity cannot coexist in the same body. I chase the vices of my pleasure like a child chases after its father. I know what it’s like when you can him daddy and want him to walk all over you, until he walks out of your life with the occasional text just to keep that reminder that there is still authority over you. I feel rage, I feel the urge to see the world burned by fire. And I still see the possibility for redemption in every sad soul I see. Everyone has been hurt. I feel the hands of my grandmother over mine. I fear the day that I notice her smell has faded. I desperately want to keep her memories alive. And one day I did realize that there are only a few memories of her left to remember. Some how memories have faded time time passed on. I have began to forget the things that made me feel alive, who made me feel like all things are possible when you remember who you are. And I just want to remember who you thought I was, who you saw through your eyes. I feel, but feelings fade, quickly just like memories.
Interviewer: What makes you shrink?
When something makes me light up and it fills me with such joy and delight that I begin to tell someone about it. I feel the tingling of electricity through my body as the words exit my mouth. I feel the ecstasy of release just about to climax when your words rain down on me like assault rifles, they tear holes in my imagination. Your lack of understanding and questioning standing over me like shadows cold like standing in between walls and the sidewalk. You walked into my house of creativity and started to critique my chose of windows. How I see the world. You didn’t even bother to take off your shoes before you walked all over my floors, the foundation to my confidence. I fear being seen. I fear the pressure of the eyes gazing back at me. I’m not sure if I can bear the weight of them staring, peering directly into my soul. I fear man, I rather fight the grizzly.
Interviewer: When’s the last time you felt small?
Yesterday. I immediately felt small when the same room that felt like purpose, felt like community became the same room I realize I was not the best in. I was conditioned to finding pleasure in being misunderstood. For being sympathetic of people’s unwillingness to understand me. Pacifying myself with the nipple of chapped commitment. I no longed for rooms that I no longer felt the smartest in. Where I didn’t feel like I had the highest capacity for forgiveness and evolution. Where I understood peoples infinity to throw stones at each other. And when I caught a whiff of her aroma I instantly got sick. I hurled at the first opportunity to become small, so no one could see that at some point I believed in myself enough to be big enough to demand more. That I had the audacity to see me believe that there had to be more.
Interviewer: What’s your comfort meal?
My comfort food is the lies I tell myself. My favorite comfort food is that I believe there is still the capacity to change, and what I’m witnessing is not systematic cycles of repetitive behavior, but of the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. But, if I was going to cook something it would have to have a lot of butter. And it must include something French. It would have to be connected to a memory that made me feel like a child again. Before I ever realized what life had done to me. Before I was introduced to how black the berry could get. And how sweet blood tastes to some.
Interviewer: When do you feel the closest to your grandmother?
I feel the closest when I feel crazy. When I feel connected to feelings of wanting to abandon all responsibility. When I stop believing that I have to be the responsible one. When I feel like being reckless and chose not to give into my inhibitions even when I watch the people who love me give into theirs. I watch their faces seemingly unchanged. They had been giving into their inhibition well before I realized I had a choice. I feel closest to her when they call me a pushover, when they sat that I’m just like you. I feel the closest when I set myself on fire, cackling like cracklings in the fire. Just so you could hear me, just so you could see me. When you could no longer deny the things you did to me. I feel her breath next to my cheek when I imagine ending it all. When I imagine getting in the car and never coming back. When I prove to them that I’m not the woman they said I was.
Interviewer: Did food save you?
I often wonder if I’m a glutton. I wonder if I’m consuming too much or if I’m addicted to the feeling of being able to escape. To go into a space that no one else was qualified to be in. I don’t know it it saved me, I’m still unsure if I need rescuing or if I’ve finally began to figure things out. I’m not sure if I’m intelligent or if I just speak in riddles. I don’t know if through food I’ll be remembered or forgotten. But what I do know is I feel like somebody when I cook. I feel like maybe I start to remember who I am. I remember that it’s okay to receive compliments and to be praised. When I don’t worship oppression. I feel both the past and the future calling my name, when I try to figure out how to present myself on a plate.
Interviewer: What would you say to the version of you that first in encountered this dream?
I would say to her to imagine herself with bigger audiences. I would tell her to stop imagining herself skinny so she won’t be disappointed when she doesn’t lose the weight. Don’t let them convince you that it’s normal not to see yourself. I would tell her that her thoughts aren’t the only place to be loud. That pleasantries and swallowing your thoughts don’t feel pleasant even if you sip water to help it go down, or something with carbonation to help it dissolve. I would tell her that the dream never goes away. That of all the things that she cannot remember, or all the things she wishes to remember again, she will never be able to forget when she started to picture herself on big screens doing the thing she loved, where she thought that maybe if she was courageous enough to step into the light that she could exchange her dreams for a one way express to reality.
[End of Transcript.]
Why Aren't You Talking About Food?