When you are making food, you are making food. When I first started out, cooking was monotonous and stirring would drive me crazy. So I would multi-task and listen to music, watch television or stream a movie. Anything to alleviate the boredom of cooking. But gradually my entire focus has been shifted to the task at hand and I have come to enjoy the absolute stillness which envelops me whilst focused in the kitchen.
So these days when I am cooking, I am just cooking. Nothing else.
However, there will be moments of stillness where you are waiting for a dish to reach a certain heat or texture and so the mind will wander. Where does it go? Perhaps it will travel to stories from years spent in Russia, to a joke or a turn of phrase. Occasionally, bits of old poems which I had memorised in my youth will resurface. I would originally have memorised these poems “as beautiful ornaments with which to adorn my mind” (a bit pompous I know) but now fragments of them will from time to time come back to me. With several important birthdays recently, Dylan Thomas and his poem of “going out at night” has often been on my mind. How do I feel about this poem today, decades after first reading and memorising large parts of it?
To answer that, let me share a story. Many years ago I worked at a very traditional English company. Naturally a suit and tie was obligatory. That one occasion when I had forgotten mine (I usually put it on only when entering the office) I was sent home to fetch it. One of my more old fashioned colleagues in this office (so you can imagine how particular she was) was responsible for correspondance between our division and the other divisions and entities in the group. Imagine her outrage when an entity would respond to her carefully crafted letter with “just a fax" or, at technology developed, increasingly “just an email”! Her rage was at once both exquisite and futile. “They responded to my letter with an email!” She was convinced that she would not go gently into the night, and response to letters by email was to be her fight.
Progress has marched on, and today, it is unimaginable to even consider sending a letter to a colleague. You would be considered quite mad. Well, I mention this lady and her old ways because sometimes the old ways were better. Not in the matter of responding to a letter with a fax, but in terms of how to frame a response. For instance, how should we respond to a poem which has stirred deep feelings? Well, the only adequate response is with a poem. Unlike Dylan Thomas, my poem is not a villanelle. The mechanics of poetry have become less important to me with age (and I was never much good at it anyway).
Beacon
When I was younger I solemnly promised myself
that I would not go gentle into that good night
Now somewhat older I sometimes ask myself
"why always fight?"
The rage and battle which once filled me with delight
leave me now colder than this professed long dark night
If I were to speak on the matter, I would say now instead
let it shine long, let it shine deep and may it be strong
for it is that which will pass the test
as a better beacon to guide us
than brief explosions in the night