Incubation and lone wolves
Purchased myself some linen recently, khaki and stone. Linen and stone, the way I move these days. The house asks for it. It needs to conjure its own tales, sweeping gestures, art (abstract mostly), hints of colour, background brick and walls still cream from another chapter. I know it is time to make it fresh again. How long does it take to paint a wall? About three years I think.
I stare at the wall every day, imagine stacking the bookshelf of magazines on a table, imagine pushing it all to the middle of the room, imagine the new prints I will buy and the frames of canvas I might need to actually paint, imagine the roller up and down, up and down. I imagine this until the glass is empty and the magazine closed, again.
So I buy the linen and I buy the time to imagine what may happen, hopefully sometime soon. There is nothing wrong with it right now in a certain way. It still appeals, still holds still.
I press a lemon into my palm hoping to release the juice, extract it somehow. Winter that time of resolving, reflection. I find myself in a dream, frosty mornings, inept gas heater, longer mornings laying prone when that isn't normally my way. I usually hurl myself off the mattress, ready, excited by the pursuit of coffee and the journal page. Just twelve minutes to get it down, alarm myself, wake myself up.
In the meantime, I wander through my cookbooks extracting ingredients for a life well lived. Images and words fly out at me. I like what MFK Fisher should say in her cookbook How to Cook a Wolf....... “The ability to choose what food you must eat, and knowingly, will make you able to choose other less transitory things with courage and finesse”.
Leaning into winter and the fuzzy edges I try to hide, the house that never feels clean, the art that lays on the floor I skip past, and the need to boil the chicken to make the stock. Good whole hearted stock is the foundation for a generous winter at home. Nothing else can bring the calm and joy that good soup can. Sour dough dipped into a plate of sweet potato soup with spices and cream warm will tempt patience.
At home I am alone, I am not lonely. The flowers talk to me, the garden reminds me, the fire restores me. A wolf is kinder once sated. Gratitude and deep warmth keeps the spirit strong. I open Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries III: A Year of Good Eating wondering about winter options, the Introduction concurs, “We are not here for long. So let’s at least make ourselves something good to eat”.
Podcast I am listening to, the perfect winter companion: Dispatch To A Friend
I adore the spirit of this podcast and feel like I am hanging out with two friends in their daily lives, is good for the lone wolf, a worthy companion for a domestic day.