Home
The smell of the steam when I pulled the lid off the the wok immediately made me think, 'home'.
Which makes no sense...The smokey sesame oil? Ginger? Steamed kale? or together mixing to make me think of green tea, sitting on a couch with my hands around a cup. I grew up in an East Coast city, but my dad did do stirfry often. I lay my dinner over brown rice; tofu, mushrooms and carrots; somehow very like California, home in a stranger's skin.
I have lived here one academic year, and the ice cubes in my freezer have sublimated; too few *on the rocks. Reading Harper's magazine, about Zadie Smith, I feel far away from stuffy New England academia, and I like that.
What does it mean to say 'it feels like home', or 'you feel like home to me'? You can retreat to it, or you can keep running toward it. That life can be reduced to, however briefly, a Jewel reference, or for that matter a country music cliche, makes it no less truly yours.
I was overseas, on the phone long distance to a woman in that painful space between when I thought she was an ex-girlfriend and when she thought so; when she asked me when I was coming home. It was like a fist in the gut. I mumbled something about not knowing, about not having one.
...so Richard got married to a figure skater...
Which makes no sense...The smokey sesame oil? Ginger? Steamed kale? or together mixing to make me think of green tea, sitting on a couch with my hands around a cup. I grew up in an East Coast city, but my dad did do stirfry often. I lay my dinner over brown rice; tofu, mushrooms and carrots; somehow very like California, home in a stranger's skin.
I have lived here one academic year, and the ice cubes in my freezer have sublimated; too few *on the rocks. Reading Harper's magazine, about Zadie Smith, I feel far away from stuffy New England academia, and I like that.
What does it mean to say 'it feels like home', or 'you feel like home to me'? You can retreat to it, or you can keep running toward it. That life can be reduced to, however briefly, a Jewel reference, or for that matter a country music cliche, makes it no less truly yours.
I was overseas, on the phone long distance to a woman in that painful space between when I thought she was an ex-girlfriend and when she thought so; when she asked me when I was coming home. It was like a fist in the gut. I mumbled something about not knowing, about not having one.
...so Richard got married to a figure skater...
posted by ddgregory at 10:45 PM
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