Borrowed Kitchens.
The spaces where I desire the alchemy of usefulness meeting beauty — pleasure.
I am sitting in another borrowed kitchen, a moment out of time where I am exactly here but between the last chapter and the next chapter of my life. I have made a habit of borrowing kitchens or learning to ground myself in them as I move between worlds. This last passing of three moons has taken me into deep, humid and soft summers, melting afternoon thunderstorms, long evening suppers and then black coffee mornings in the icy frost of recent snowstorm. In each place, I have found myself in borrowed kitchens, making coffee or a meal and foraging in the cupboards and drawers for what I need.
And there is my current reflection, as I sit in another borrowed kitchen - one laid out for a life that isn’t mine but I feel at home in regardless. In an hour or so, a quiver of children will come rushing throughPink subway tile and a gleaming black 8 burner stove top, laden with Le Creuset and a view of the sea. A similar kitchen in North Carolina with a view of the lake.
A kitchen is a good place to thrash about it, to rummage up a toasted sandwich at 9pm or set the pace of the day with slow batches of dough rising in the sunny corners. You figure out the rhythm of a life in a kitchen.
I borrow kitchen tables for an office or a make-shift studio on the floor of a scullery cupboard. And when it is my turn to bake or roast some love into the room, I take stock of what I have to work with and make something to satisfy. I’ve been craving all manner of mushrooms lately, caramelised with onions or blue cheese and tossed with roasted cubes of pumpkin or better yet, crispy gnocchi. Chargrilled everything not because I’m longing for the summer again but because a little sear reminds me of the smoky warmth of fire and cast iron. Butter is for all seasons but somehow gives a little more of itself when browned and coating the last of autumnal sage with cracked pepper on the last slice of sourdough with a poached egg and silverbeet.
There is a rummaging, a foraging in the kitchen that suits the end of winter as things slowly pass into scarcity as the the spring flush starts. It’s almost as if early daffodils tell us to just hold on, asparagus is on the way. New spring greens will soon be lush and verdant, for now just savour the fresh acidity of last lemons and grapefruit. The necessary sustenance of oranges will pass to the indulgence of peaches soon enough — it is good to learn patience and to make do.
That is what you learn in a borrowed kitchen, when there is no microplane in sight and the knives are blunt. You adapt your technique and learn to see things differently. A blunt knife encourages a rustic approach rather than precision strokes. We must learn to accept what a lack of precision offers from time to time. New sensations as force dominates the thin edge of the blade, new ways to work your joints and arms to make the cuts. A little physicality to cooking never hurt anyone, I think as I manually pull the lamb from the joint and bone, ready to truss and smoke.
I feel a sense of myself in the flesh being pulled from bone. It has been a year within months, if you sense my meaning. More life and death squashed between January and August than usual, and August is never easy. Still, I am finding my way through the month that has so often offered nothing more than dried beans in an empty pantry. If anything, this August has offered an abundance of early mornings, completed lists and late nights in borrowed kitchens as I am making a feast of what I have on offer. In other, less poignant words, I am making the most I can of the work on offer in hopes of creating something greater than the sum of its parts. As much as I would like to, I cannot live in borrowed kitchens forever. I’m worth more than that. Nor can I be borrowed forever, eventually I belong in a drawer of my own in a kitchen to call home.
The thought struck me in June but has taken til now to find the words — I am the borrowing kitchen myself, as much as the borrower. People rummage through my drawers and take the tools most necessary and vital to their nourishment or meals. I invite them, mostly and I am grateful, mostly. It is better to be useful than to be entirely alone. I would rather be a corkscrew opening a beer bottle than left in the drawer, in the dark. Sometimes I am useful for a moment or a month or a season or two.
We can be guilty of seeing things — objects, people, art— in light of the job we need them to do, their utility and strength instead of entirely as they are. I am looking for a lamp to light the corner of my dining room and I realise how easy it is to look for what is beautiful before what is useful, but in my kitchen I want my objects to be beautiful and useful.
In the deep night, when the lingering sweetness of roasted garlic and crisp potatoes are still in the air and the moon rises outside my window — I wash the dishes and polish the glassware in my kitchen and sometimes the kitchens of others. I reflect on the love I made in a meal for the people around the table. My body warms in the flush of recent memories made.
I drink whisky slowly, savouring where my lip meets the lip of the glass and forms a seal for golden spirit to glide over. There is the alchemy of usefulness when it meets beauty — pleasure. I recognise the sensation: the flick of a blade that manages to shave Parmesan with a satisfying curl, a bowl is just the right size to hold the salad I poured into it in a borrowed kitchen in Marietta. A coffee cup that fits the perfect curve of my hand and lip.
The key to making love in a borrowed kitchen is to find beauty and utility in what you hold in your hand, to do away with comparison. There is no finding love in complaint, you find love and affection in what is possible rather than what is not. Perhaps there is a special kind of creativity and flexibility required for this kind of life — perhaps there is a special kind of creativity required to see me whole, utility and beauty in the curve of my smile and the weight of my hip, the deftness of my hands against dough or with a knife.
There are long seasons of possibility to contend with in life, between kitchens and harvests. There are also long questions that invite curiosity and creativity like, perhaps. I like to imagine that when I see myself at a distance and find beauty in the movement of my body through time and space, the oven doors closed with a hip bump, the plate balanced on forearm and the casual heat scorned by fingertips as I test and flip charred corn from cast iron—in learning to see my own beauty there is that invitation to perhaps. Perhaps I, occasionally borrowed but always returned might one day be Kept. Prized, enjoyed, held. Perhaps, I keep myself for now but knowing I am one day, the gift.