Dear Friend Person Internet,
I have no clue what the currently transiting polarity means and I don’t really care. Between baking and cooking for over 12 hours a day from Tuesday to Thursday — no doubt a shock for my system that hasn’t done anything of the sort in almost eight years — my kid at my side for more than half the time plus all of the last three days, and my period starting on Tuesday, I don’t think it’s implausible I wouldn’t have any capacity to find out exactly how what was happening came down to Alertness opposite Realization.
Now I’m thinking about it though, I guess one could say I returned and came to meet the love of my life, the kitchen, in a state of alertness, and was able to rationalize that it makes all the sense in the world to do it as a job and I cannot realistically live without it?? Or something?
Idk man. I think the fact of how deeply, thoroughly satisfying the experience was hasn’t fully sunk in even now. The day after, I was sitting at my computer idly thinking maybe I could write a rough draft for the next letter ahead of time (yet again though I’ve experienced again and again that doesn’t work) since I knew I wouldn’t have the day to myself today to write — naturally, there was nothing to be found at the beginning of the 4th line day but two sentences I am sort of ashamed to quote here (but whatever, it’s the truth)
I fucking rocked the catering thing. I probably couldn’t feel more satisfied if I’d just had sex for a week straight oops sorry did she really say that YES I DID YES I DID1
Okay, but the sex comparison is pretty accurate? Satisfaction is satisfaction. Cooking for a crowd makes me feel as good as — or better than — multiple orgasms. A professional kitchen is a highly respond-able environment. The second I set foot in the unlit door of that kitchen on Wednesday, I was BACK, for lack of a better expression. The Return! 🙂
My mind did not like the situation for the first two or three hours as it was becoming aware of exactly how imperfect it was,2 but when the first few obstacles had been overcome, it relaxed and — dare I say it — did not intrude even one more time.
It would now like to remark: yeah well sure, because there was no time?
Well, yeah. Probably. But the flow state I found myself in was probably also owed to the alchemy of a perfect invitation, watching the decision to commit my energy *get made* instead of mentally trying to “make the right call,” continuous recognition and witnessing the fruits of my labor firsthand, and the wondrous experience of my body doing what needed doing without forcing anything at all.
Back in my hotel days one of the dishwashers, an older Brazilian dude with a matted mop of dark hair and the greatest DGAF disposition of all time, remarked to me once as I was flitting around the cavernous basement kitchen — you’re a bomb, you know that? I responded with suspicion to what seemed like a completely baseless remark meant as a compliment. Maybe I get it now.
There is something that comes over me in kitchens. I become a magnet. One would think though that a magnet repels as much as it attracts.3 If it was simply a matter of my body’s 5th lines being polarizing, well, then the haters would bring some much-needed balance into the equation. What makes these kitchen situations so intoxicating is that it seems nobody doesn’t love me. Positive projection is a drug — and now imagine you’re able to OVER-DELIVER on all of it. It’s cringe to even think about it.
Last week’s kitchen situation was imperfect. I didn’t care. I felt no desire to be perfect. I didn’t care about how well I was doing anything. All that mattered was putting edible food on the table. I wasn’t going to get paid with currency; I didn’t feel the need to prove a thing. My only objective was spurred on purely by what the situation demanded: a semi-large group of highly focused and stressed people’s brains requiring proper sustenance.
During these few days after the fact, it’s dawning on me that perhaps all this time, all my experimentation — my faceplants and fuck-ups in the thousands, probably — were meant to lead me back. Literally everyone close to me in real life has said to me at one point or another over the past few years — ya sure you don’t want to go back to cooking professionally?? Sure sure? Every single time I said no without skipping a beat:
The stress. The stress. The frustration of nobody caring what you do in the end. The way you can watch your neurons getting decimated over the course of just a couple of months. The stress. Needing to sample every food always — all the shit I now know my body can’t handle. The many, many auras I didn’t choose to be in close contact with every day. Needing to function on every level every waking hour of every working day; two days of rest per week aren’t even close to enough. The many addictions (nicotine, alcohol, stimulants, relaxants) that come with the job. Producing and serving food not in line with my values. The incredible, heinous amount of waste.
But now I can see it; the conditions have been made clear. Considering how little I knew myself back then, it’s obvious I was unhappy — even though, if I’m being honest, despite all the crap, back when this was my actual job, I was satisfied. I was glowing inside and out.4 I was exhausted and I felt like I could physically feel my brain atrophying because there was never any room to actually think about anything — but all the while, my body was doing incredible things. I needed to make split-second decisions perhaps hundreds of times daily. And no matter how much energy this requires that one really doesn’t have freely laying around, it is damn amazing to watch oneself repeat this day after day, and to see more of those decisions turn out to be correct than not.
Working in a five-star hotel requires one to be superhuman. It’s not possible. Either you don’t do the best work possible, which is, however, expected of you, or you make yourself superhuman.5 Most cooks and service people are cokeheads. I was on the mild end of the spectrum with my ultra-defined root, I presume, “only” drinking liters of coffee every day, smoking a crapton of cigarettes, and requiring up to a gram of marijuana every night to find rest.
But now, considering what I was capable of without pay, with my kid popping up and yammering about something every ten minutes, bleeding, and with a headache to boot?
… What if destroying my body to survive a day at work isn’t a general requirement to do this job?
What if I don’t have to make food I don’t want to make?
What if I don’t have to suck up to potential clients and literally cater (lol) to their every whim? What if I can say no — I do things the way I do them — and not even feel the need to give them a sweet smile because that is that?
What if I can do this work while respecting the way my energy functions sustainably, both meeting my brain’s requirement for alternating states of idleness and extreme focus and my root pulse’s need for periods of complete rest?
What if I can make good food — not dainty canapés for anonymous persons of wealth who take their lobster with a side of caviar and perfection — for those in need of nourishment, whose highest expectation of the food they’re paying for is that it tastes better than what they clobber together for themselves at home?
What if I could write and cook and make fun visual art and assemble playlists and happy tableware and coffee roasts and tables and chairs and UGH
Could I even stomach that level of fulfillment?
🎭 no morals 🎈
That is all for today! A bit different than usual? Sorry? Idk? Life is even weirder than usual lately. So I’ll just leave it at that. Tty next week!
🥩 devouring 🥩
angus beef burger patties ALL DAY
bacon + cheesy omelettes
succession
adventure time (seasons 1-4 are now on netflix in europe yay)
🐳 throwback!! 🐳
A four-year-old piece of mine on being seen. Relevant considering footnote No.2 — plus, I had a mentoring call this week where it came up. (We were discussing the issue of my mind unconsciously using its bleeding martyring expression as a manipulative tool. (something I will write about in the foreseeable future probably))
I realized later on this was probably my favorite writing experience of all time. You know how people like Mozart et al supposedly just wrote down their works of genius in one go with hardly any edits at all? Like all they were actually doing was being a conduit for whatever they were supposedly producing? That’s how writing this piece felt to me. Something just came over me at 10 pm one night. I sat down and when I looked up an hour later blinking, it was done. I corrected a couple of typos and pressed publish.
“Plucking thoughts from my synapses” is a phrase I’ve thought about quite a bit since. It describes both the simplicity of writing when it simply happens as well as the pain of it when it’s not so easy.
🍰 misc! 🍤
this week’s title is brought to you by another random phrase from New Girl that’s been stuck in my head (ALL DAY, above, is the other one)
I’m slowly, I believe — and this is directly tied to the “what ifs” above — coming around to realizing why writing feels so good and so horrible, and what (maybe) to do about it.
First, “Harvesting words from a lifetime of choking and planting and mold and despair” (see throwback) is not a fun thing in itself. The harvesting may be satisfying, but sticking around to take in and smell and breathe in the choking and mold and despair? Not so much.
Second, these last weeks have shown me more than ever before that my aura, my life force is best suited to **REAL LIFE**. And maybe I’m still too spooked by my entire childhood and youth to realize there is a world out there that not only tolerates but appreciates my physical presence?
aka yeah, all my internet shenanigans are most likely owed to the fear of showing up irl, which in turn consistently translates to that horrible crawling icky feeling following every single part of myself I “give up” by publishing anything at all in any form
Third, maybe the only way to get over myself is to get over myself and be an actual, physical presence in the material world?
and yes, btw, the blaze of glory sandwich fiasco wasn’t mentioned again even once, nobody cared about anything once we were all there. sometimes my ego piped up going HEY YA LOSER WAY TO LET YOURSELF BE MANIPULATED. but ehh, in the end Dude was probably right, it was easier *for us* to go 100% vegetarian. weird how these things can be so both/and. and how different situations play out irl vs purely virtual communication.
A non-exhaustive list of non-ideal stuff: the utter chaos from the Halloween party of the night before the staff hadn’t been able to clean up yet. A malfunctioning dishwashing system. Only one tiny pot to be found amongst way too many pans and deep fryers. A stove that wouldn’t turn on. Me having forgotten my garlic press, cursing the silly and completely impractical custom amongst chefs to never press garlic but always meticulously dice it by hand.
yes I realize now I’ve written it down that the magnetic monopole is such a thing lol.
One of my running jokes with myself about that entire period of my life is that I was just too damn attractive for my own good and had to “manifest” a pregnancy to pull me back down a couple notches so I could breathe. For seven years, it would seem.
I was consistently surprised at the level of DGAF rampant in that place. Sometimes I felt like I was the only one who cared even a little about upholding the standards our pricing demanded.
I just read the medium article and LOL this was me all throughout school and uni. One of my first memories of public speaking was when I was in kindergarten, and my mum wrote a note in as to why i couldn't do it (bcoz I didn't want to). School was then torture as for some reason my school had an obscene amount of speeches that was mandatory?! and what's worse - I wasn't *that* bad at it so I was chosen for a few school competitions. In uni, I didn't show up for a speech assignment because my anxiety literally just wouldn't bring myself to do it... So anyways — I wonder, being a 5th line and all, whether it's the expectations which make me feel like im going to crumble and fail. Because if there's no expectations and I could write/speak into the void forever, it would feel a lot more cosy hah. Anyways. Thnx for reading this mini essay comment.
Also really cool graphics / first image 😍