So I'm getting hugged a lot these days. And it isn't just online. Although those feel just fine too so thanks y'all. And the coolest bit is, no explanations required. For why I look like my sweatpants gave birth to Shylock.
The truth is, when things happen, they hit us pretty hard. And I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong with security blankets. Without blaming myself or cycling around in vicious circles (since that was so much fun in the first place) and how real, or unreal they can be. This will be my last musing on misery for a while... because sometimes, when something is really painful, you need to grit, grin and get a life. And that is real. That is life. I'm not faking repair but I am saying that it is hard enough being overwhelmed with feeling pain all the time. Healing lies in writing/ talking/ figuring out the rest of what is great about the one life you have. It's quite far from being easy, but it really is the must-do this season. Particularly when I realize that I had been living in a bubble. And I had nobody to blame for the bubble getting pricked, because thats what bubbles (and pricks) are prone to do. I also realize it's hardest to lose a friend. Any other relationship, business, romantic, maybe even family...is simpler.
******
Very few people know how much I love food. Food has changed for me. I’m only just figuring myself out where it is concerned.
I have a bit of a history. Most people gape when I order the most at a table. The most. Enough to feed the next table too. Friends have given up, and try and look the other way or distract mildly amused/surprised company and my usually being a very average eater doesn’t help. My earnest belief in doggy bags seems to not lessen their burdens either. But I cannot explain the connection that I have with food. Menus talk to me, they do. Long after the main course has been ordered and conversation has resumed its usual energy, I enjoy the details of each italicized explanation on which greens lie alongside what fish and what berries line the delicate middle layer of the in house special cheesecake.
I read food blogs daily. And have my favourites. And gaze for long minutes at each glorious photo. And read their archives and wait for updates as expectantly as I watch the breakfast news. I eat at new places constantly. Tiny, undiscovered eateries excite me. Their smells and sights and menus and salt-of-the-earth food meke me happy. I live for discovering and rediscovering different little places, known for the best in what they make. I’ve eaten as happily off tiny carts as I have exploring different cuisine. Japanese food sings to my soul. Sweets make me feel like I may never need to eat them, as long as I can just look. Indian food is like the museum I can never finish making glorious, wide eyed discoveries in… ….I’ve lived my atlas through menus and just writing about how I feel about looking, tasting touching and even creating food makes me feel a deep, warm excitement inside.
Only lately have I embraced and fully respected this feeling. I’ve become more aware of my interest, read about food with more pleasure than I can describe, looked at food more closely. Eating, as strange as it may seem, is an integral but secondary part of what I’m trying so hard to articulate. It’s the food itself that really, really speaks to who I intrinsically am.
It's a big, big part of me, and it's beautiful, not at all wasteful and needs the right company. And happily enough, I have one ally in edible arms. Together, we gaze meaningfully into menus and everything wonderful falls into place. We must, must eat together more often my friend.
I miss Mono. Who loves food like I do, is a true gourmet and never leaves room for people to stare at my overflowing table.
As a present to myself and anyone else who feels this deliciously, I've linked up all my favourite food blogs. These are the best ones and I must have visited, revisited, forgotten, loved hundreds more so I'll keep updating regularly. Secondly, please pass on your own delicious pages that you write on/visit often. Make my day, why dont you;)
Monday, February 25, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Pop went the weasel…
I don’t feel like it at all. Not right now, not in bit, not yesterday, last week or tomorrow. Writing has always been personal, even when it’s about someone else’s something else. However, I don’t feel personal at all. Or rather, I don’t feel like being personal at all. It’s been a sad, stressful time…and I feel like I would like to bury my sand in some cool, clammy sand, legs blissfully stretched out behind me and a martini that I will drink when I wish to, within reach.
The truth is, I’m one of those people who quite hate being miserable. Its quite simple, when someone or something gives me grief (the special sort of heartburn that only the chosen few can inflict), I just cant get it out of my head. Or heart, system, mealtimes, workplace, dinners, drinks, flights, books. I’m miserable. Period. And you would never guess it. Because I’m also talented. And supremely so, when it comes to covering up. Every performing skill that the greats have ever talked, written or thought about, I have watched myself demonstrate with perfect words, a warm smile and a slightly superior tone. It is an out of body, akin to floating kind of dance that you watch yourself execute, noiselessly, formlessly…If I knew how to do the exact same onstage, this might have been chapter two of a bestselling biography.
So right now I’m stewing. Cooked to perfection in a still simmering sauce of bitterness and resentment, and roasted for luck by malignant misery. Dear one, of years of trust and love has turned out to be the royal rat. And things are not black and white as I would wish and pray. No, things instead are every peachy and ugly and honey and brown, all in the same twisted chuckle of the coughing crystal ballerina. Go figure.
So there’s rage. Names that I cannot stop calling in my head. That are making me a sad, sad, lesser person. A tremendous amount of hurt that I cannot begin to deal with. And a desire to leave these images behind. An image of the beloved past having turned into an ugly, cruel present. Images of the laughter shared, the pure, child like quality of the moments. And now images of something that for me, has truly changed. Foe the first time in my life, I have regret and a feeling that I mistook a bad human being for a good one. Because to be terrible sometimes is human, to be devious, is an altogether different proposition. And when you meet that apple in your basket, the idea is to run Lola run.
I do know things are never quite so simple. And that everyone has some good. But I’m genuinely not interested anymore. I’m tired of looking for beauty where there was none. I’m tired of a bicep flexing reflection being a stronger memory than a conversation. And if someone else finds the needle, good luck to them and their roll in the hay.
I’m glad I wrote because I have deadlines for certain other writings that this might just help begin and people who may not feel indulgent of my martinis, cubist scribbles or sand. The past needs to be left behind rightfully. It really is time to change the music and get on with it.
The truth is, I’m one of those people who quite hate being miserable. Its quite simple, when someone or something gives me grief (the special sort of heartburn that only the chosen few can inflict), I just cant get it out of my head. Or heart, system, mealtimes, workplace, dinners, drinks, flights, books. I’m miserable. Period. And you would never guess it. Because I’m also talented. And supremely so, when it comes to covering up. Every performing skill that the greats have ever talked, written or thought about, I have watched myself demonstrate with perfect words, a warm smile and a slightly superior tone. It is an out of body, akin to floating kind of dance that you watch yourself execute, noiselessly, formlessly…If I knew how to do the exact same onstage, this might have been chapter two of a bestselling biography.
So right now I’m stewing. Cooked to perfection in a still simmering sauce of bitterness and resentment, and roasted for luck by malignant misery. Dear one, of years of trust and love has turned out to be the royal rat. And things are not black and white as I would wish and pray. No, things instead are every peachy and ugly and honey and brown, all in the same twisted chuckle of the coughing crystal ballerina. Go figure.
So there’s rage. Names that I cannot stop calling in my head. That are making me a sad, sad, lesser person. A tremendous amount of hurt that I cannot begin to deal with. And a desire to leave these images behind. An image of the beloved past having turned into an ugly, cruel present. Images of the laughter shared, the pure, child like quality of the moments. And now images of something that for me, has truly changed. Foe the first time in my life, I have regret and a feeling that I mistook a bad human being for a good one. Because to be terrible sometimes is human, to be devious, is an altogether different proposition. And when you meet that apple in your basket, the idea is to run Lola run.
I do know things are never quite so simple. And that everyone has some good. But I’m genuinely not interested anymore. I’m tired of looking for beauty where there was none. I’m tired of a bicep flexing reflection being a stronger memory than a conversation. And if someone else finds the needle, good luck to them and their roll in the hay.
I’m glad I wrote because I have deadlines for certain other writings that this might just help begin and people who may not feel indulgent of my martinis, cubist scribbles or sand. The past needs to be left behind rightfully. It really is time to change the music and get on with it.
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