2.3.26

in the soil

One really warm, sunny day, and we act as though winter is blown away for ever, that winter of endless rain and grey skies that kept me skulking indoors for most of February. Now here on a cooler day, with vague gusts of rain or really just damp air threatening, you can see the warmth coming through the soil, everything pushing upwards, awake at last after winter’s torpor; the broad beans are big and sturdy, fluttering in the wind, some onions I don’t remember planting have appeared in the fallow bed next to the cardoon, and the upturned bucket I had placed over my rhubarb has been knocked sideways by the growth of the stalks upwards in search of light. Spring, yes, spring is here, it seems, with all of its hope and its plans, but as I dig a whole to plant out a little pot of lemonbalm I see how the wet winter is still there in the soil, the heavy clumps of clay which come out and stick to everything, gloves and tools and trousers. Patience, a little longer, first let the daffodils pass and the nettles run riot and hope that the sun persists.

in the kitchen

Away from the daily routine of a restaurant kitchen I find it is very easy to get into a habit of not cooking, I never really eat breakfast anyway and lunch can be a bought sandwich or something eaten on the go or if I am packing myself a lunch for the studio then an odd assortment of leftovers and picky bits, a boiled egg, a piece of cheese, some of that daikon kimchi, cold rice, pasta salad, smoked mackerel, a piece of pork pie, some crackers, four radishes, a pear; whenever I go through a phase like this I worry that I am forgetting how to cook properly - how to dice, slice, sweat, braise, season - and am not particularly disabused of this worry by a solo dinner I make of leek and cabbage orzo, the vegetables finely sliced and sweated soft in olive oil with a little caraway, some ham stock from the freezer added along with a parmesan rind and then the pasta cooked directly in the resulting soup to which, forgetting that the ham stock is very salty, I add a big pinch of salt and then burn my tongue tasting it anyway and eat the whole panful more to dispose of the evidence than out of any particular hunger or enjoyment.

on the page

It says something still about the state of the canon and all the prejudices it involves conscious or otherwise that despite studying American Literature and specifically the Beats and their offshoots for a number of years I had never (I thought) read much or any Diane di Prima, although I did recognise a few bits of Dinners and Nightmares I must have seen quoted or anthologised somewhere, the menstrual stew, the very good indeed iced coffee, the artist who will stick to landscapes and still life. In any case it is the kind of writing to make you immediately feel you know the writer well, carelessly intimate and confessional, her lost bohemian New York City of meals scraped together or feasts luxuriated in, at home, in diners, in cold apartments with friends and disappointing lovers.