sugar, salt, earth, sea
I am seven years old in my grandparent’s kitchen, just a block down from the Bay. Salt crystallizes on your body the moment you step outside. My grandpa packs crab cakes into imperfect little circular patties, dispersing them on a silver tray lathered in oil. They mold to themselves, because of intentional ingredient choices, like egg and bread crumbs or what you would call binders. He leisurely whisks together a chutney, made with fruits I cannot remember, to dress the cakes with. Sugar and salt, earth and sea.
Since a child, the world has both terrified me and fascinated me. Born with a painfully romantic heart, I have a knack for seeing both the beauty and tragedy in nearly everything, with a few exceptions. I believe nearly all poets and artists alike experience this to some degree. “A visceral reaction to the melodrama of human duality.”, a friend described my poetry as.
I am eleven, which is my lucky number, as my birthday is in November, the eleventh month of the year. I am at my father’s apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The luminescence of the city pours through the window, facing the Hudson, like stars inched a bit closer to us, just for the night. Rustic guitar and jazz fill the room in a way that feels like we are the first to find it. Like it’s ours for the moment, for the night. That’s the thing about cities, nothing is yours unless you can afford it. Every experience, every apartment, every night, is just a bug in a jar you’ll need to release eventually. But nights-in at my dad’s, cooking a meal with his playlist humming around us, felt forever. It still does. I hear crackling in the kitchen. The result of cold scallops in a hot pan. My dad moves around his tiny kitchen with a flow I could only describe as dancing. A smokiness surprises my senses. Bacon. “Im wrapping them in bacon”, he confirms with a wide, excited smile. We consume them on the high-top bar table overlooking the Hudson under the glow of big, electric stars, which were ours (for the night.)
As you grow, so does your art. Like a child, it molds around our attention and nurture. Left avoided and that is what it will be. And when I said there are exceptions to my romantic, dual-faced perspective…this is one. This is a tragedy. But this here, is the start of something; as I weave stories of my life into a thick braid. The adults forgot to tell us that at a certain point, life starts flowing from us instead of at us. Growing up, the dominos are lined up for us and we are told: “push”. Now, I need to find my own dominos and the process is quite numbing. I am forced to take responsibility for the creator within me, and not resent it for its constant ask. Duality can be a task, as is balance. Though I feel the words teeter on a hair-lined difference, one references the black and white, and one references the grey area. I’m working on the grey area part. But I seemed to have been influenced by sugar and salt, earth and sea.
I am 24, and in the kitchen of my current apartment. It is by far the most beautiful apartment I have ever lived in. It is humble in size, but it has an old, gentle character to it, like a grandmother. It’s on the 3rd floor. Funny enough, in all of my three NYC apartments, I have lived on the 3rd floor. The number 3 represents harmony and balance, ironically. It also my life path number if you’re into that kind of thing. Each apartment represents a new era in my life, as apartments tend to do. My first was freedom. My second was safety. My third…I’m still figuring it out. Before I moved into this spot, I planned on moving to California. Due to some left brain thinking and my entire support system being on the East Coast, I pussied out. Life is still beautiful, visually. But internally, there is something missing. And I’ve learned, it is that feeling of watching my dad and grandfather cook. Witnessing something unfold I cannot control but can surely feel. The primal freedom that comes with creating with our eyes closed. (Not so literally)
As I explore this clear duality within myself,
the black and white,
The child and the boundary,
The sugar
The salt
The earth
The sea
I see that I’ve been camping on just one shore for too long
Basking in one sun
I’ve forgotten how to play
How to make a mess
How the word “wild” has meanings beyond my darker pasts
And how wild is actually the purest thing we can be
It was in the wild
That we learned to cook
