Maybe I should just go and open a grocery store
I imagined myself lighter. Less burdened by insecurities, less weighed down by expectations, free from society and yes perhaps a little less round in the face. “Am I living the life I imagined?” is a frustrating question to keep asking yourself because our imaginations run wild and I don’t think mine ever stopped. I actually can’t recall what I imagined for my life now because it’s been reinvented so many times although the past four and half years have played out slow and steady, in one place, one flat, many peaks and troughs, countless roast chickens, many times when I ask this question either hungover or tired or lonely or strung out or excited or grateful or confused or all of the above.
I met up with an old friend recently who had switched up her career and pursued the thing that made her soul feel good. She said she was soul happy and it sounded wonderful.
Alison Roman has opened a grocery store in upstate New York. I look through every picture, zooming into the details and I scan the website. I wonder when I will open a grocery store, a community space that sells local ingredients and serves up a small menu of dishes, and features objects for the kitchen dreamed up by local designers. This is always the thing I return to, but I have become more risk averse as I’ve gotten older and so the thought stays unformed and half baked, although I try to speak it into existence to hold myself accountable. I have always preferred to choose the safe option and it’s my least favourite quality about myself.
My eyelids are heavy and the air is thick and I’m craving ice cold somen noodles drowned in nothing but soy sauce and sesame oil. This would be on the menu at my imaginary grocery store, alongside a monthly crispy rice and roast chicken, my mum’s kimchi and a salad dressed with lime, miso, garlic, ginger and honey.
What happens when you know the destination but not the route?
What if the ‘just one more dream and I’ll be happy’ is simply another version of the capitalist manifesto that seems to be etched into your mind – the constant attainment, short-lived pleasure and inevitable pursuit of something bigger or better or completely different.
Maybe I should just open a grocery store.
Maybe I should have saved my money.
Maybe I should have lived in a city where I could save money.
Maybe I should go home and eat those noodles and think about this another day.
Maybe that’s the solution I usually choose that always causes the problem.
(I ate the noodles: boil one large handful of somen noodles in slightly salted water until soft, run under cold water, transfer to a bowl, pour in soy sauce and sesame oil and any leftover greens you have, add kimchi, go).
I spend a lot of time thinking about cooking somewhere else. In another kitchen, in another city. But in a kitchen that’s mine, a new city that’s mine. I wonder if I’d stop roasting chickens or where I’d get rice from. Whether I’d choose a different vinaigrette to obsess over or who I would be feeding. I wonder if it’s healthy to think about this as much as I do; whether it’s a sign that I should leave. I spend a lot of time waiting for signs.
In my twenties I was not afraid to take risks. I ran away from things but in escaping I always found something else. Now, I am too fearful of the consequences. Too afraid to leave my family in case something happens to them, too afraid to start again with a whole new community. The risks seem greater when you have more at stake.
There will come a time when that flat I’ve lived in for almost five years will be sold, not to me, and I’ll have to decide what happens next. It’s comforting to sometimes allow life to lead you a little, especially when you’ve spent so much of it guiding yourself through dead ends and higher ascents.
Perhaps it’s the heat that is making me feel static. Like I’m trudging through mud a little. I don’t want to confuse this with unhappiness because I am not. Unhappy, that is. I am content, but as the capitalist manifesto quietly echoes under my skin: could there be more?
I’d love to say: I have enough. I’ve had enough. I am enough.
For now it’s time for me to sleep and wake up groggy and meet friends and eat pizza in the park.
“What happens when you know the destination but not the route?” Big fan of this line. A question I desperately wish I had the answer to. Although, as I wrote that, something in my brain said: “you DO know, it’s just the route is scary”.