no death no sex no love no drugs no violence

[everythingisruinedforever]

Gratitude

My pain lives only in two bodies:

Now and not now

Now and I become a vessel

Now and my mind narrows

into a pinprick of light before 

cutting 

out

Now and I am on my knees,

My body opening into a prayer

Time is not real

The body nothing but a blank hole,

breathing in a soft tunnel

In the Not Now, I

can only comprehend only lightness,

Flung into the sun

[everythingisruinedforever]

February 8, 2024

Maybe this is how I get back to writing, I think, pulling smoothly into another dark lot on the edge of the highway. Just one other car stopped in this one, a pale face turned away, so still it could be dead. 

I’m relieved to so improbably see feet in another stall in the woman’s bathroom. The door gap is a wide enough slit that my stomach jumps before I process the flash of needle and the hand that holds it. 

Maybe they were just taking insulin, Indiana says as I’m back at the car. I watch the same boy I passed on the way into the stop- sad and shining under one of the low lamps against the trucker lot down-a-ways - climb down from another of the long truck cabins, hoist up his backpack again, and move back towards the bathroom. I’m remembering how once that cop wanted to arrest me for having a backpack while I waited in the car outside the motel. “Real boyfriends get real hotel rooms.” 

Something about danger feels like being sixteen. Always more alive at night, under the moon, bordering on mania. Lost in the night on endless highway. M asking me on the phone, every time I talk to you now, I feel so dizzy and nervous in my stomach, like almost sick, and I get feel so desperate at the thought of hanging up. Is that love? Is this what love feels like? And me saying yes, yes, YES—- just because I so wanted her to love me. 

Is this dizzy in tonight’s dark love or fear or aging, the steady build to vertigo? Trying to remember the words that came to me last week when I was pulling the beets out of their skins, scalding hot from the oven still. Fingers careful and quick. The light through the window purple-clear against the bowl. Something about jewel-like. Ribboned. Dizzy, realizing the narrator voice was back in my head. Just those few moments, hope. 

[overheard-in-aa]

“We’re dying by the droves out there. There are people who think, well I can always come back to A.A. And then they don’t.”

— anonymous

[everythingisruinedforever]

On Not Logging into Instagram for (4) Days

It's 1am and I miss drugs

Suddenly wondering in the middle of the night if the real reason I don’t write anymore is because I never give my head any space. No empty pauses. I’m not even sure there are empty pauses now, 4 days in. 

I’m not on the phone any less, I think, so far. I keep picking it up and picking it up and picking it up. I don’t even feel the movements in my mind, nor feel the fingers grip and touch and swipe- I only know I’m doing this because each time now suddenly I’m jolted out, staring at the blank phone background thinking, wait, what?

(Just checked. Monday I picked up my phone 130 times and today, 132.) 

Last year (or 2020?) I read that novel the poet wrote that was a completely unreal book, spatially strange and full of art and rippling dimensions- to those who didn’t know Instagram. To those who did, it was a perfect capture of the slow roll, the eye that goes grey in the dopamine scroll. An addict, I stopped reading the book only to log onto the scroll and scroll and scroll.  

The protagonist is abruptly forced offline by real life tragedy.The real world in her eyes is sharp and harsh and too much. It reminds me of my life the last time I quit something. What’s the lesson? It didn’t make me think, man oh man, I need to quit this. It made me think, oh please let me back. 

Though I’ve been in pain for years now. And all my art and words are gone. They don’t even come to me anymore.

Is Instagram why I can no longer feel happiness? My fleeting but deep presses of joy? I even miss mania but I’ve lost that long ago too. 

Four days in, though, despite all the picking up--- I am almost seeing shapes in my mind. Remembering old ideas: a series of drunken, miserable fools stumbling home from the carnival of New Orleans, parade of shapes and colors. A full lip in an upturned face. Thinking, do I want these to be black and white,Do I want amorphous shapes like shadows in the face? Then a dazzle of colored brilliance all around, halos of gold and neon and sparkle- stretching out beyond dumb eyes of tears into pure and radiant sainthood. 

I’m remembering I wanted to 

Wait, I’ve only had 

Remembering it’s the full moon tonight.

Just checked. I’ve been spending 5 hours, then 6 hours, then 5 hours on the phone the last 3 days. (It used to be 11 hours a day.) I’ve been 

This last day I’ve found my fingers trying to substitute Facebook into the ritual, logging me in without my brain or permission engaged over and over and over-- although there’s never any notifications, because I don’t use it anymore. No no no no no. An old piano teacher used to say I’d have to play it right 5 times for each 1 time I’d play it wrong, or else my fingers would only remember the wrong. It's something I think about sometimes.

I've had a lot of caffeine this last few days. I've been up almost until the sun. If it's not one addiction, it's another. It is not enough because nothing ever is.

-November 9, 2022

[everythingisruinedforever]

august 6th, quarantine

i.

Mourning my lost language today

Eight years ago, i knew the names of all the bones

-

I would sleep curled around Indiana

I would touch my fingers to the tip of his spine

and walk them down, naming all the bones

-

Tip of my tongue

How much else have i lost

and known?

ii.

Remembering, seven years ago,

reading christian wiman’s

meditations on dying

as I detoxed from speed, sick-shivering

in bed and wet with sweat

-

His love, human and sacred

in my mind wild

-

Something about quarantine

reminds me of

walking close with death

[everythingisruinedforever]

I Wrote This in January, 2010

PEPPERONI ROLLS

My life, before we all dispersed for winter break, was quite the introduction to slovenly living. With an emptier fridge and fewer bookshelves, we could have been bohemians, evenings beginning with the usual rummaging through spare sheets, gold sneakers, rolls of paper towels, for my old black heels, since forgotten in the early hours of New Years Day in some Brooklyn dive. Old-money-now-no-money, weary glamour eating bits of bean slop out of cups in the backs of classrooms, dreaming of sushi and champagne.

With the end of the semester, inevitably, came sleeplessness, frozen fingers, a feet-deep swamp of belongings my boy and I had to wade through to make it to our mattress, and the deep-rooted, fuck-all frustration that comes from the severe lack of real, hearty meals. Against everyone's better judgment, it was out of this pure, raw need that I planned a dinner party in the midst of finals. I wanted to gather together a group of favorites and feed them, fill them with the fresh and heavy, leave them feeling fat and happy. The menu was grilled asparagus, shake-and-bake chicken, hasselback potatoes and Mezgaldi onions.

It was a disaster from the beginning: we'd double-booked the dorm kitchen and the stove top with some club's ethnic dinner, a crowd of girls drunkenly deep-frying pork chops in a vat of sizzling oil and Jack Daniels, who drowned out our jazz and banter with hip-hop and screaming. My friend Dan said it best, as we waited quietly beside our prepped ingredients for an hour for the counter to free up, looking ruefully at our platter piled high with breasts, "Raw beef looks GOOD, raw chicken just...I don't want to sink my teeth into that."

In the hassle over sharing the oven, the potatoes came out undercooked, the onions too sweet, and the asparagus cooled thirty minutes before I completed the rest of the dinner. The chicken was the fall-back savior- rolled in beaten egg, rubbed with flour, paprika and chipotle, and gently simmered in butter, it came out gorgeously tender, flavorful, juicy. A dish, that, for all its name, is neither shaken nor baked, is easy, cheap, and without fail a wowzer, as any spices in the flour turn out equally delicious. But we were a harried group, hurried, bored and hungry for too long, and I was left with the need for a gluttonous, rich meal still unsatisfied.

But I'm a brothel madam, a matron in an apron, a beefy-armed boarding house mistress with two sinks worth of dirty dishes and half a handle of vodka under the desk. My countertops are continuously covered in wine glasses, coffee mugs, a huge tray of baklava that draws people in like flies, and I'd one night left to entertain.

Pepperoni rolls are cheap, easy lovers, sleazy greaseballs slicked with charm and butter, hiding heart attacks in their back pockets. The recipe promised me a real crowd pleaser, the-bang-for-ya-buck where the kids wouldn’t know what hit ‘em. On our worn kitchen counter, one long stretch of bread dough rolled out with a dented can of pork & beans, rubbing it down with buttery fingers, the sprinkling of the elusively named “Italian seasoning”, and then layers of pepperoni and shredded mozzarella, both straight from the packet. Apart from the butter, spread liberally from my imagination, this felt like blasphemy, but it baked slowly, the dough rising, the however-manufactured cheese oozing out of browning corners until I forgot, and waited with a crowd of watering mouths behind me, to tear off a piece of melting cheese and meat. I sliced thinly and served the pieces up hot with a smile and a cup of warm marinara sauce. They don't call me Grandma Claire for nothing.

[everythingisruinedforever]

Writing Group: Week Three

August 21st

Not realizing until later, when clicking through his photographs from the dinner, that the camera was right there beside us, snapping away, the whole time she told me about her son and I repeated, I’m so sorry. As I said, I am an addict too, so I get it-- and she gripped my wrist so tightly it left a mark, and turned her head away.

-

I didn’t look at the eclipse. I just couldn’t make myself care enough.

August 23rd

I hear the kettle boil from the living room and come back in.

August 27th

I was at work when she called and I’d missed the last two calls and the facility doesn’t accept incoming calls and I raced outside. I am busy and yes I will talk to you. The strangest sensation of slowly losing a person. Thank you, she says, for all the things. She says, they won’t let me be alone and I’m losing it here. She says, I can’t wait to get out so I can use again.

She says, I have to remember to call you instead of my mother, because you always make me laugh.

Trying to let go. Trying to be present. Twenty minutes of ravaging each time.

Thinking, I’ll just let in the pieces of her while she’s still here. Thinking, I’ll just bask. I’ll let back out the glow. Thinking, how do you let go of hoping they’ll live?

I remember reading in a novel that once you’ve loved a person, you’ll do anything for them except fall in love with them again.

It wasn’t true for most, but it’s true for me with her.

[everythingisruinedforever]

Speculations on the Missing

The bottom of the boat scraped against the shore. A million hands reached out and pushed it out to sea. The Magdalene came ashore in Bretagne. The boat, of flimsy construction, had muddy insides and fell to pieces on the shore as she scaled a cliff and took refuge in a cave with purple walls. She fell into a fire and half her body turned to ash; she was still exquisite, crying out to insects, lying pierced by stalagmites. Or, she developed seizure disorder. Pilgrims stumbled upon her in her dark rooms. The Magdalene trembled and turned white in the eyes. Out of her mouth came forth tongues until her feet no longer touched ground. They left her with pressed lilies that opened their mouths and sucked down the carbon prints of her fingertips. When she came to, she read the pilgrims' palms and sent them, dizzy, out of the dark. Or, The Magdalene never left Africa. She held the head of the locust between her thumb and forefinger carefully but firmly; the black in their eyes met. The body crunched under her teeth like the splitting of a coyote skull. She washed carcasses down with honey comb and sweet, sweet milk. But no swallows sang. Or, the boat was a house boat. She held the echo of the moon in her hands and divided it among her palms. She had gathered the silver from the temple floor, and filled her pockets with bloodmoney. After his body was taken down, and after she rubbed it cold with balms and wrapped it with white bandages, she knew they would come for her. She left no note, but a single footprint and an empty tomb, and she pushed offshore herself.

[everythingisruinedforever]

June 9th

The groom who is in love with me and cried the first time I cooked at the farm stopped me on the dusty path. She was wearing her riding helmet; she took hold of my arm and stroked it. “I’m so sorry we forgot your birthday yesterday,” she said. “We’ll make it up to you at lunch on Friday. I promise!”

Two days later, she called out, “Claire! Come sit beside me!” as I set down the last of the meal’s dishes on the picnic table across the grass. When I slid in, one person away, she beamed at me with a wide open face. Young. Trusting. I wondered if I should find some way to bring up I---. She made an awkward joke about boyfriends and the table laughed and she smiled at me, grateful and hungry.

She doesn’t even know what this is, I thought.

[everythingisruinedforever]

lines second week of January, 2017

thursday

mixing a chocolate cake in the early morning hours

pattering around in the dark

naked against the refrigerator door, elderberry cordial

I wrapped in two sweaters and brought back from the motherland

spooned into boiling water

putting milk into the oven

herbs into the dishwasher,

strung out on pain

the fever breaks

i keep trying to work my way around this headache

this full-on face ache, dull and deep,

feeling my thoughts as moving outward, gingerly, like fingers

hitting up hard each time like a shock

heady visions of falling into a deep softness

light triangulating

after sitting in a hot steaming,

back in bed unfollowing anyone who posts pictures of mixed drinks

or hashtags anything about jesus on their instagram

today i read that legally, in the states, you can take your amputated limbs home. a woman in the comments posted pictures of a bloody human rib, muscled, torn. carnage. i then cleaned and bleached it with a taxidermy kit, she said. it was very hard to touch even though it is my rib. 

my grandmother wanted me to have her bones

to reassemble her in my bedroom at home

it’s not the same, ashes deep in a graveled grave plot an ocean away

wistful,

I wonder what it’s like to hold a bag of bones

... I’ve hugged junkies but it’s probably not the same

I decide to tell people my new year’s resolution is to eat more delicious things

even though i am quietly starving myself again

if you tell your secrets, you drain their power over you

tuesday

this is the first time in my life that i wouldn’t rather be dead

I don’t know what to do with this revelation

I am fucking terrified

how do people live like this?

[everythingisruinedforever]

notes on my phone

10/08/2016

I heard about her murder this morning, a week after everyone else.

Such a fucking unbelievably senseless thing. Such a bright light.

All our desperate little lives.

10/06/2016

Since I moved to Philadelphia, I’ve been pretending to be dead at night,

so I can go to sleep. Crossed hands over my lower stomach, casket-style. Eyelids heavy.

Everything is over. Nothing matters. Everything is over. Nothing matters.

Everything is over. Nothing matters.

10/05/2016

Always yearning for the 22nd nowadays. Whenever I’m feeling stagnant,

I find myself checking the calendar.

How much longer until another month of sobriety?

Every 22nd hurts and helps my heart.

10/03/2016

I’ve been thinking about blood a lot lately. The stretch of Indiana’s soft neck making my jaw ache. The rumor that Angelina wore a vial of his blood around her neck, the disappointment of finding out it was only a pinprick, asmear. Wanting to eat a steak during restaurant week, but not knowing what to pair it with, as a sober person.

“Milk or blood,” I say to Indiana. “Pig’s blood?” he says.

“Too tannic. I was thinking human blood.”

9/22/2016

27 months sober today. Things falling apart. Tightly wound.

9/1/2016

The wind blew and a dried leaf

crawled along the ground like a rat

8/23/2016

“I don’t share often but I feel compelled to today. I lost my fiance to this disease this morning.

So...This is real.”

7/28/2016

A melatonin poem: black rice, edible moss, heads of flowers grown from seed, sage, thyme, mint, curly parsley, that other kind of lavender, dill blossoms, upside-down mushrooms, soft cheese balls rolled in forest floor, agar agar, soft tongued rosy, peach nectar & watermelon juice, tomato juice rivers, something blue and cold

7/23/2016

One hour awake, softly tracing the contours of Indiana’s face with the back of my hand, whispering

Poetry about them.

7/15/2016

The cashier looks at my backpack and up at me again and calls me “baby” lightly, endearingly.

She might be a grandmother, thinking she knows I’m just a kid.

I ask Indiana about this when he gets home. He says my younger pictures just look like a different person. I grew up a decade into a different teenager.

7/14/2016

Streets filled with people slowly staggering around, red-faced, hair straggly and wet. Lot of drunks,

I think, before realizing it’s the heat.

7/11/2016

Thought i saw legs but it was just light

shaped against the brick wall

6/30/2016

Would you rather be happy or would you rather be right?

5/21/2016

Eat Your Grief

chocolate panna cotta

rhubarb sorbet

strawberries in lavender vinegar

10/08/2016

I heard about her murder only this morning, a week after everyone else. Such a fucking unbelievably senseless thing.

Such a bright light.

////////////////////////////////////////////

All our desperate little lives.

[everythingisruinedforever]

self know

a hard struggle against the first steps of enlightenment, as i’d always been determinedly a Good Person. 

you have a lot of anger. 

that can’t be it. i want to help. i have always wanted to help. 

(are these mutually exclusive?)

i have a lot of anger. i tried saying it to myself, i have a lot of anger.

eventually it became a question, then a prayer, a mantra i repeated to myself like a rosary on the subway to work, in grocery store aisles, in my dark bedroom at night.

i have a lot of anger.

it became strangely freeing. 

[everythingisruinedforever]

I thought about heroin and thought maybe i could just do it once. it would be worth recounting days. i thought about heroin and thought,

we were on the highway this past friday going over the brooklyn bridge, listening to the red hot chili peppers on repeat because it was the only thing in the cd player.  i looked at the side of a new, tall building with pretend white-washed brick (it was yellow in the sun) and i said, it’s probably the best way to die though, right?

indiana looked at me sideways. i suppose...

i leaned my head against the window. the expanse of sky over the road was so wide and blue it hurt. living between buildings, i’d forgotten the sky.

i mean, it’s a long orgasm, i said.

without all the disgust and sadness that follows. a long orgasm into the sun. that makes me feel better about the people we’ve lost,

i said.

hmmmm, he said, his voice hard. then softer, forgiving.

this morning i remembered this conversation after coming and i tried to look at justin’s profile and remembered i had unfriended my dead friends because it was too sad the way facebook cycled them through my newsfeed like anyone else.

i wrote all these words down and cried. said the serenity prayer.

[everythingisruinedforever]

my body where my dungeon is

10/21/15

get lemons out of bottles with wire

-

girl with the beautiful big natural hair and really really good voice in the subway at metropolitan, cutting me up on the inside. reminds me of that new year’s i was on coke and i fell in love with the coat check girl and gave her all my money. just kept laughing and talking about the lights behind her and the shape of her face and stuffing bills into her deep pockets.

i can’t make out much across the two tracks except

beautiful red wide mouth

maybe it’s her, i think. i can’t remember anything real.

everyone is spellbound. she finishes a song and people

are clapping and crying.

goosebumps.

11/1/15

a pop-up: last meal of original revolutionaries in marie antoinette’s chapel in concierge prison

11/8/15

a short history of women

11/22/15

different apartments each time-

people are curious about how other people live

12/1/15

Do 45 of each appetizer!

12/3/15

“vivre est une chute horizontale.”

jean couteau, opium

12/15/15

having an imaginary conversation in my head with a new acquaintance about why i have a fake name on facebook. practicing shrugging casually, which doesn’t come naturally for a reason. “ha! oh that was when i was an active addict and alcoholic, so the police or teachers or parents or employers wouldn’t ever find out what i’d done.” today i’m still someone who did all those things, i think tightly. i feel heady, a warm rush of gratitude, and then i’m weeping in my fruit and veg shop.

concerned eyes, what the actual fuck.

flashback a decade ago to crying over the vulnerability of pears and the soft insides of bread rolls. a decade before my meds, my brain still rolling all around inside still.

what the actual fuck.

12/23/15

i looked in the mirror at starbucks after wrestling my cooler all down the three subways and thought i look like a freakin gazelle.

everyone is always very interested in the cooler on the streets of new york. and they won’t look up for much.

12/26/15

found this note i wrote to myself when i was half-asleep:

“all i need now is a meat grinder

and your heart”

1/3/16

resolutions!

meditate

no phone

stop complaining

1/3/16

“if the solution works,

you probably have the problem.”

1/13/16

please

1/17/16

the hallway smells like someone

who has been drunk for two days

1/19/16

up too late again earnestly telling

strangers on the interwebs intense

things about their art

1/21/16

facebook tells me it’s the birthday of my first RA,

the one who asked if he could photograph me pissing naked for a photo class it later turned out he wasn’t taking. I remember being so, so young. the fear wasn’t fully woken but it grew and became real.

morgan said no for me, don’t you think that’s a little inappropriate? and he said i couldn’t say no after i had said yes and that was my first lesson in the shapes consent takes in the real world.

so,

so young.

i think my face was softer then.

[ancientchrome]

Dear Abby

for all I’ve gotten and all I’ve given

Don’t talk about how many people you’ve been with and show him your pretty tits, get some mugwort soon, if you scratch his,  he better treat yours right, count how many of his felonies involved theft before you let him tie you up in a house full of pawnable shit. Maybe assume you misheard, since “In my eyes” seems  an unlikely directive, which is another way of saying, investigate before you act. Wheatgrass and racism are both turn-offs, though only one breaks the deal.

Fuck them if they can’t take a joke, but always fuck them better if they can.

You can always apply the advice they give to drunks and junkies if you’re in dire need of guidance–Keep coming back,  It works if (girl) you work it.

Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but “Can I piss on you” seems like more of a third-date question, like how you give crystal on the fifteenth anniversary, if his

ego is bruised about it, you can have threesomes with him, too, but you don’t need  to regret anyone that went– or came–before.

Save declarations of love or intentions to break up for in person, think of how little impact Edmund’s speech imploring gods to “Stand up for the bastards” would have had if he’d said it in a text, do not send Shakespeare or your heart by satellite, but pictures  of you naked are fine, though only tell your true friends that you just recycle the same photo when anyone asks to see. You have no future in either politics or modeling, so this should change nothing.

Don’t trust a man who say’s he’s read only two books and one of them was the Bible, he will kill you for your impurity before he’ll ever get you off. It is okay to lie when someone asks what you’re wearing, but nothing is tackier than saying nothing 

Remember that people are not porn, their hearts are porous, their faces reflect light and their sheets absorb fluid, flip

the comforter over if there isn’t time to wash it between dates, make sure the batteries are out of the vibrator before you have help packing  the moving boxes, wash  your hands  before you touch anyone, always pee after intercourse, trust only yourself but give everyone a try,

tell me about your body but say it with mine

[everythingisruinedforever]

i never reblog things, but this!!! by lily

[everythingisruinedforever]

THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL IS ALWAYS THE SAME DISTANCE AWAY

[everythingisruinedforever]

Aug 17th, 2015

Saturday early evening. As I turned the corner onto my street, a still body on the sidewalk turned his head very suddenly to me just as I was wondering, junk? There was something terrible in his eyes.

-

Yesterday, walking down Manhattan Ave to the plant shop finally having an herb sale. Facetious, a woman’s voice walking by says, like she’s trying it out. Facetious. Fac-e-tious.

_

Then today. Walking through the subway tunnel to Penn station, imagining an immersive nyc movie experience- following a character through the tunnel, a blast of wet hot into the audience, the sour rankness of piss against a wall then seeping out into the crowd too, the tiled white narrowness of vision in front then breaking open into a cornucopia of colors, overly bright neon lights, people moving swiftly in determined singular paths that weave in and out and around. This immediate smell is warm and yeasty, then various sharpnesses jumbling into a mash.

The audience swirls and skids. sensory overload. we all want to be plunged into an icebath. We all want not to be touched and we all want to be loved.

Two older women sit beside me in what Amtrak pretends is a waiting room. We’re in area B of a crush of sweaty bodies and those loud, lazy stand-up fans. The women talk in precise-sounding French about temptations of the grimy Pizza Hut/Nathan’s Hot Dogs they can see through the curtained window.

Even a shot of espresso has become too much for me nowadays. What a very, very weird thing. Velocity Girl, my first girlfriend (the formative one, the one who morphed into a best friend who now pretends We never happened) used to call me back when we were 15 and the speedfreak thing wasn’t yet real- just a vision everyone close to me could see, could articulate with their minds and tongues, the skittering of the way I collided with each piece of the day, each thought, each emotion that ripped me up and over the edge.

I order a small iced latte and suck it straight down absentmindedly and immediately start jivvering inside. Small particles shivering unpleasantly over on the inside of my skin. 

I almost miss my train because I am finally reading Sean’s book in full, rather than for free in the bookstore in snippets. 

– I am putting a poetry manuscript together for at least Luis. It is taking longer than I thought it would because I keep getting lost in all the feelings. Sorting through my archive is a sad and historical strangeness. Remembering all the dangerous and disgusting things I did not write down, lurking between the lines.  So much violence. 

–

The train pulls away, slowly jangling in an underground tunnel of rails. I remember a documentary I saw in college about a community of homeless people who lived way under the tracks in what was essentially a vast byproduct cave of a complex man-made system. they had each dragged together junk - scrap metal, furniture limbs, garbage- to piece together little huts. an underground shanty town, perpetually in the dark. Some of them had been living there for 40 years. It was living out a real-life apocalypse …except the world still continued on as always way above, an unreachable, untraceable, uncompassionate past-life.

- - -

These past two weeks, I have said to each new student, a girl I adored once told me, “all you need is an onion and you have a meal.” I have them wrap a hand around the onion before I teach them how to slice it open, peel it, manipulate it around the chopping board with strong fingers, bent inward away from the knife. To learn to feed yourself, you must start at the very beginning. This is an onion. This is how you hold the knife. Rest the tip against the board, then follow through with the rest of the knife. The strength should come from your arm, not your wrist. Lean into it. 

I have started thinking, maybe I could actually live like this- getting up to each day full of cooking lessons. Going to my favorite little fruit and vegetable shop in the morning, stopping by the grocery on the way home for store brand tomato sauce, buying  meat in bulk, thick and heavy packages for delivery. Slowly building up my arm muscles heaving the rolly cart of vegetables and measuring cups and saucepans up all the flights of stairs to each student’s home and kitchen. 

Do you want to learn to cook? Tell me and I'll teach you.