I am making a compact disc, filled with various Leonard Cohen songs for my neighbor. He is playing here in Tasmania on his tour and there has been a lot of talk, I overhear the talk in stores while I run errands. People who I don't think would normally have his name cross their lips talk about his coming. I find this behavior to be part of the cadent of island living. I have come to understand that this type of reaction could be part of why the people here find me so odd. So much of what has been normal in my life, here seems exotic or worse a fabrication. So I tuck this new realization into the schema that I am building to protect me.
I am searching myself, steeling myself, trying to bring up a bravado that will carry me through this next weekend, and on through the winter in the face of meanness, and willful misunderstanding.
I am thinking about food, about the recipe book I envisioned Zok and I creating. A sort of record of Mara and of the food of his childhood. Of course Zok did not particularly like the Macedonian diet. Yet having no record, no history of my own, I didn't want to see them lost to forgetting.
The last time I was at Mara's house-I had to go through some of the cupboards, full well knowing that most of clutter is hidden in the room next to the garage apartment. She was clever like that.
When I lived in the garage, I would be woken by her shuffling step and the overpowering smell of cooking peppers. To understand the prevalence of peppers (pepetka) in the Macedonian diet, think of how many uses the tomato has, or how often onion is added to a recipe.
As I looked at the reused bottles, and the vast amounts of preserved foods, I had a moment of clarity. The jars and bottles are not filled with secrets. While I would want to use vintage glass jars, Mara used whatever was at hand.
Where I would check out all the books from the library I could find, she just did.
I have a couple of goals this year with Mara in mind, to preserve enough food for next winter and to learn how to knit 'pantofki'. To just do, and not let my fear of failure stop my experience. Just as I need not to let people, so little connected with me, shape my thinking.
I am searching myself, steeling myself, trying to bring up a bravado that will carry me through this next weekend, and on through the winter in the face of meanness, and willful misunderstanding.
I am thinking about food, about the recipe book I envisioned Zok and I creating. A sort of record of Mara and of the food of his childhood. Of course Zok did not particularly like the Macedonian diet. Yet having no record, no history of my own, I didn't want to see them lost to forgetting.
The last time I was at Mara's house-I had to go through some of the cupboards, full well knowing that most of clutter is hidden in the room next to the garage apartment. She was clever like that.
When I lived in the garage, I would be woken by her shuffling step and the overpowering smell of cooking peppers. To understand the prevalence of peppers (pepetka) in the Macedonian diet, think of how many uses the tomato has, or how often onion is added to a recipe.
As I looked at the reused bottles, and the vast amounts of preserved foods, I had a moment of clarity. The jars and bottles are not filled with secrets. While I would want to use vintage glass jars, Mara used whatever was at hand.
Where I would check out all the books from the library I could find, she just did.
I have a couple of goals this year with Mara in mind, to preserve enough food for next winter and to learn how to knit 'pantofki'. To just do, and not let my fear of failure stop my experience. Just as I need not to let people, so little connected with me, shape my thinking.
3 comments:
Love you, lady.
i will have the 2nd pair.
you have to go see him. i went in philadelphia and it was so amazing. i cried.
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