I’m still in the kitchen now and then, just struggling less, relying more on the things I know how to do efficiently and well, rather than tackling new recipes on a daily basis. Thanks to a concentrated effort earlier this year, there are things I know how to cook well. They might not impress anyone, but they will ensure that my family receives lots of nutrients in the guise of home-cooked meals. For my own benefit (because sometimes I tend to forget; I can still look in a cupboard or refrigerator and go completely blank) I’m working on a summation of what these things are.
While cooking has grown a bit more matter-of-fact for me, life itself has become more delicious, as I step out of the kitchen now and then, and rediscover literature beyond cookbooks.
I’ve been reading a great deal; all non-fiction, books flowing into each other in the way that reading begets reading. The book of the moment is Letters: Summer 1926, a bit of extraordinary correspondence among the poets Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva and Rainer Maria Rilke. All were suffereing. Pasternak from the ire of the Bolsheviks, Tsvetaeva (in exile in France) from the struggle to survive, raise two children and write poetry, and Rilke from the end stages of leukemia. None of their struggles prevented them from writing to each other, and at length, about love, life, and art.
I never knew such letters as these existed in the world.
We all read for different reasons--whether for enjoyment or companionship or metaphysical reassurance--but I find, more and more, the main reason I read is just to know what is possible.
9:05:48 AM 
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