Curating not creating

A round up of my favourite essays

I usually leave myself two hours to write my Sunday essays. One hour to procrastinate, make endless cups of coffee or find a perfect spot in the sun and listen to music and stare into the distance. The second hour to force something onto the page. Spoiler alert, it has not worked this week. I had a theme, but zero thoughts, lay on the grass in my parents garden, wrote and deleted about three paragraphs and thought, nope there is nothing going on in my brain. When these things happen I tend to go back and read other people’s work I love to inspire me then spiral into self-loathing. As an antidote I then narcissistically go back and read some of my own favourite pieces to remind myself that I’m not as terrible as I think I am in this moment.

In lieu of simply not putting anything out there today, I thought I’d pull together some of my favourite essays of late with quotes. It’s a cop out, I know, but there might be some pieces you haven’t read before. When I cannot write, I round up. When I cannot create, I curate etc. It’s been a good exercise, though. And it made me realise how many pieces I’ve written in the past four years (around 305 according to Substack) It’s the beginning of the last month of dread, and there’s a few new subscribers on here, so please enjoy a few choice essays to go with your (hopefully) sunny Sunday.

To exit my mind and enter my body, I step into the kitchen

Earlier that day I’d collected a large box of vegetables, a loaf of bouncy seeded bread and dark freckled eggs, and trudged through the wet air and wind, convinced that the elements were conspiring against me. Soccer Mommy’s Circle The Drain was on repeat and the more I listened the more I related and I too wanted to be the soft summer rain falling on your back but everything does keep getting colder. Things feel that low sometimes, even when everything is fine, rings in my ears all day.

Not hungry, just empty

To be hungry is to be in search of something. Usually something that will bring you an experience. Often we’re hungry for pleasure or joy. But sometimes we can be hungry for pain or relief. But to be hungry is to be active – actively in want, in pursuit. To be empty is a passive existence. It is to be drain, not to drain yourself. It’s to feel deflated, as if someone has let all the air out of your tyres. It is the essence of defeat. To fill yourself up, you need to do exactly that. Fill yourself. An empty body cannot be filled by someone else. You must take care.

The Symbolism Of White Rice

The symbolism of white rice becomes more stark when one parent differs from the other. My mother is Korean, so it becomes symbolic of her, as opposed to my Lancastrian father (although there are other foods that feel like a direct line to him). In that same way, rice becomes more symbolic when it is taken out of its context; for immigrants living in the West, it becomes a totem of belonging and identity. A cultural differentiator. Something to peel you away from the necessary assimilation.

Kitchen Daydreams: A Love Story

There will be versions of us imprinted on every pan handle, tea towel, plate, glass and dish. Maybe we’ll stop making the gnudi because we’ve argued, but maybe we’ll make something else because we remembered why we always stay. And we’ll never run out of things to say to each other because there’s always something to be made in this kitchen that we built together; the clamour of pans, the clatter of cutlery, the hissing and bubbling and crackling making conversation for us, until we climb into bed, still smelling the chicken – it’s always the chicken – and dreaming up tomorrow and the rest of our lives.

Are we nostalgic or does life just really suck right now?

For a word tinged with hazy, happy memories, the word nostalgia’s etymology speaks more of its malaise. It was coined in the 17th century by a Swiss doctor who “attributed soldiers’ mental and physical maladies to their longing to return home, nostos in Greek, and the accompanying pain, algos.” (New York Times, 2013). Put that together and you get ‘homesickness’. Centuries on, we’ve reimagined nostalgia as ‘perfection in the past’. The ‘good old days’ implies that the days we’re in now are not so good. 

What Makes You Want To Eat?

The advent of restaurants removed that original primal hunger and replaced it with a social kind instead. Far removed from a time (or a place) where we hunted and gathered our food, the act of eating became transactional. We pay for groceries; we save up to dine out. And as the fine-dining industry became more prevalent – just as the poverty gap between rich and poor became stark in more economically developed countries – so grew the elitism which decided who could afford to eat at these establishments. And as we’ve seen from history, with elitism comes prejudice (and a distinct lack of joy). Now, the transactional value of restaurant culture is inherent. The chef is revered, but the diner pays; the critic is respected, but the restaurant picks up the tab. 

My Lonely Kitchen

It’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to learn: how to be ok with being alone. And perhaps I’m a little too good at it. There’s strength in numbers but I’d say; even more in burying into solitude and truly enjoying it. I’m often surprised by how much I need it, only realising it when I’ve taken it away from myself. Over the last few months, I think I’ve been a little scared to spend time alone, fearful that the heartbreak might be too overwhelming, that I’ll start to think about things too much, that I’ll miss the intimacy. Instead, I’ve been numbing myself with constant conversation. I’ve not given myself time to say something new. To miss people. To reset. I know I’m most ‘lonely’ when I haven’t stepped into my kitchen. When the meals I make there are quick and functional; rushed and eaten but not enjoyed. 

Broken hearts and broken appetites

Except when I was 25 years old and lying on the floor of my shed unable to move, feeling like I was being weighed down by my own incompetence or self-hatred, I did not know myself. Not truly. I knew versions of myself that I performed or projected or copied from other people. But now? I’m a whole person and I think it was food and cooking that got me to that place. Years of eating and learning and experimenting. If I had experienced this five years ago, I’d be back on the floor, questioning myself – what I’d done wrong, what I could have done better, hating myself for not being enough for that other person. I would have lost my appetite completely.

The importance of rest, in and out of the kitchen

As someone whose default setting is ‘in bed’ (if you can’t find me there, I’m either sitting down in the shower or eating food at the kitchen counter), rest doesn’t feel like the answer to much. I rest all the time. I feel guilty for extra-curricular resting because there’s always something to read or do or eat or cook. I say yes to every dinner because I worry saying no will make me seem uncaring or selfish. But I forgot what it was like to rest your brain as well as your body. Some meditate (not me); I cook. A huge bowl of glossy linguine tossed in garlic, vermouth, chilli and parmesan on a Thursday lunchtime. A slow-cooked sausage ragu that bubbles in the oven, or a butter-roasted side of salmon that sits on top of mustardy lentils and perfectly diced mirepoix.

Something Whole

So perhaps it’s my own generational mentality (or simply how I value myself) that assumes being wholesome is something to be embarrassed of. Also that my definition is decidedly different to how the generation below me see it and that’s precisely the point. They accept that being ‘wholesome’ is not an entire personality, but that you can also be someone who parties, someone who lives outside the edges of their comfort zones, someone who is extreme, someone who is not boxed in by perceptions. Me? I like to play into the smallness of the whole: I remain indoors, cooking food that keeps me warm, saying no to social outings, willing my world to remain small, perhaps so I can feel big (because that feels better than feeling small in a big world). 

Maybe I am wholesome. But I could also just be a little depressed.