love.life.eat
a relentless pursuit of the perfect home + dish
the woman on the hotel bed + the struggle in being faithful to one’s vision
Posted on May 20, 2013
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the stories we tell and how we need to tell them. After taking in Sarah Polley’s documentary aptly titled, Stories We Tell, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and re-reading Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, I’ve been thinking about the convergence of art and life. How the rhythm in which an artist (and by artist I mean anyone who creates something new, challenging, ugly and beautiful) lives and sees the world, and how that movement juts up against the velocity of the world around them. The two are rarely, if ever, in synch, and often times the artist is left lost and confused. The artist wants to keep pace, but it’s a tricky thing when your work is seeing the world as it is, in its moment, breathing it in, altering it somehow, re-defining it, and then drawing the curtains, opening the barn doors to proudly share the harvest. By the time you’ve invited them in to see the world through your eyes, they’re on to something else. They’re playing with this shiny object over here, they’re fixated with this new glossy thing over there.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about balance. Someone presented me with a real, viable pragmatic opportunity. This offer would allow me to breathe a sigh of relief that the bills would be paid and the lights would remain, steadfastly, on, but as I thought about it I realized that taking this offer would put me back where I started nearly four years ago. I would relegate my art to the basement, it would be a grotesque thing, a changeling left to fend for itself in the dark, and the cycle would go on.
It’s a frightening thing to feel something within you grow. After years of having your heart be a desert to find that there is earth, there is a harvest waiting to be cultivated, that there are words ready for the bloom. So I knew in my heart that if I had to choose between writing this very difficult short story (a follow-up to this story) and working toward this very pragmatic opportunity, I will always choose the former. And so I did. And so the great fear of the unknown, of the financially unstable, continues. How to find a way to balance the art and the work. How to make room for all the children in the crib, as it were.
So this story is a little interesting. I’m deliberate with the tense, tone, and POV shifts. I’m also learning that I’m writing something that is not really about adultery or a family unraveling, but about hurt. Hurt that is intentional and non-intentional, physical and mental — how we are affected and in the line of fire, and how we get scorched on the sidelines. I kept that in mind as I was writing this. That hurt for these set of characters is not ephemeral, it’s a constant, and only the form of it mutates and changes shape. So here it is…
tofu fajitas, whole wheat tortillas, pursuing a new book project + the business of leaving
Posted on March 5, 2013
Lately all I can think about is writing a new book and what that means in age of distraction, abbreviation and constant connection. It’s been a long time since I’ve written long form, since I’ve thought about crafting a narrative, developing characters, finding the in of people. Someone once told me that writing is much like an exorcism — you obsess over the things for which you’re most passionate, and writing allows you to write them out, to give your obsession new shape, color and form. Years ago, when I was playing around with being a “line” writer {think Gary Lutz or my friend + prolific author, Kira Henehan, those who are obsessed with the architect of a sentence versus the development of a story}, someone in my Columbia workshop told me that the family story has been done. Naturally, this statement was followed by an exaggerated sigh, to which I responded in laughter. Every story has been told, but it’s the telling and the voice that make it new. I still believe this. Even now, years later, after so many people have asked if I plan to return to the terrain of my previous book.
To which I’ve responded with a very firm, no. I wrote that obsession out, practically underwent a blood-letting, and now I’ve quietly placed a clean sheet over it, kissed its cheek and allowed the waves to carry it out to the ocean.
However, what I have been obsessed with is what I like to call the business of leaving. Years ago, I wrote a story collection, which turned out to be my thesis for the Columbia MFA program, about a series of characters affected by leaving. I don’t do well with loss, abandonment, leaving, and even though I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been, leaving gnaws. When my best friend of seven years got married and excised all contact it took me a full year to barely recover. When a great love laid my heart out to pasture I was devastated. And when my father called me last week and told me his dearest friend of twenty-five years died of leukemia it took everything in me not to race home and cry alongside him.
The interesting part in all of this is that food always plays a part in every story. From ruined restaurants to beloved recipes, food has always been the center, or the character, in my life. Love, loss and what I ate will be the heart of my new project. It won’t be the sort of thing where I tell as story and dump a recipe at the end, as that’s not how I think. I’m not linear {can’t you tell?} in how I tell a story, so food has to be woven throughout, it must be integral. So this has me exploring new forms. New ways of telling a story in a new age.
Let’s see what unfolds…
INGREDIENTS: Recipe courtesy of Blue Apron
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 red onion
1 bunch cilantro (2 tbsp, rough chop)
1 ripe avocado
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 package superfirm tofu (you can opt to use chicken, beef, shrimp or other protein alternatives)
1/4 cup sour cream
4 whole wheat tortillas
2 1/4 tsp fajita dry mix
DIRECTIONS
Prepare all your veggie by slicing all veggies {peppers, onion, avocado} into big chunks or strips. Squeeze some lime juice all over the avocado to prevent it from oxidizing {turning brown}.
Heat some olive oil in a large skillet with the heat set to high. Drain the water from the tofu and cut into strips. Transfer the strips to the pipping hot pan and cook until browned on both sides (4-7 minutes/side). While the tofu is cooking, add the peppers and onions along with the fajita seasoning and stir until well-cooked and combined. You want your veggies softened, but still crunchy and the tofu, browned.
In a separate pan, heat the tortillas on both sides until warmed and set aside.
Distribute the mixture to all your tortillas and add the avocado + sour cream + spritz with lime and serve!
