15. Dear Gran,

I'm going to the opera today!

Remember how last Christmas we went to see Pretty Woman: THE MUSICAL! in Stockton to celebrate the refurbishment of the local theatre? There’s that famous scene, just like in the film, where Julia Roberts’ character goes to the opera with Richard Gere and she dresses up in a beautiful red dress and wears long, sleeved gloves and a borrowed necklace. She cries all throughout it as she realises the opera is a simile of her own life. La Traviata is what they saw, La Traviata is not what I am going to see today. It is opera nonetheless and when in Rome… I’m not hoping to find a mirror into my life, of course. I’m just excited about going to the Teatro del Opera here in Rome and in all honesty, knowing myself, I will probably doze off here and there, but it will be an experience. Just like in my first week I was channeling my inner Greta Gerwig and somewhere in the middle I channeled Nigella, today I will channel Julia and wear a dress. Not red and not fancy, but a dress nonetheless.

Unctuous preserved lemon and agretti (monksbeard) pasta. I got my mantecato down to a t thanks to Giorgia. And I haven’t been doing pilates. So. Yeah, perhaps I don’t need to do pilates to have strength in my arms. Perhaps I just need to mantecar a shit ton of pasta so that I can get the gestures and movements memorised and develop strength through pasta. Yes, i’ll do that.

Classico spaghetti al suco. Oil, two garlic cloves, one tin of tomatoes (we use 2kg tins) and basil from the garden. A bit of pasta water. Parmesan on the side to taste.

Rick Steins dream. Lemon posset. I didn’t try it as I am a strict no lactose human, but it looked nice and just as how he described it. Smooth, lemony but not too much and just set. Just set.

Elderflower cordial with elderflower from our garden. Two parts water to one part sugar, elderflower, lemon and orange. Bring the water to the boil, pour over the sugar and let cool. Once cooled, add the flowers and the citrus and leave covered for 24h at room temperature. Strain, bottle and refrigerate.

Elderflower, once again! DEEP FRIED. What a revelation. We served as part of a antipasto sharing plate for dinner this week. The batter is sparkling water, flour and a bit of olive oil. You mix and rest in the fridge for around two hours. The batter can be used for anything really, but in this case it coats the flowers perfectly and keeps the perfumy but not soapy flavour of the flower. I really enjoyed these.

Giorgias take on slow cooked beef with spring vegetables and a raw salsa of onion and mint. She said she got inspired from the taco night, with the raw onion and coriander salsa we used to top the tacos that is used everywhere in Mexico. It’s nice to see that we can bring something to the table, from what we know and have experienced before.

This table specifically is a table where the possibilities are infinite, always considering the seasons and the locality of ingredients, the techniques and flavours and ultimately, how it will sit with whoever is eating. it. The idea is not to overwhelm the eater, rather to nurture them with a lot of thought and care in all of the process that revolves around cooking. Imagine, as an artist, what you’d be able to create, if you have five days a week catered for by artists behind the scenes who, just like in a painting or a sonnet or a sculpture, put two and two together, smudge something here and there, intensify a note in the beginning and at the end and present you with what will become your fuel to sustain yourself? I find it quite powerful and equally intimidating and equally humbling.

I have decided, after these first three months, that we cooks are also artists and belong in the same category all together.

My friend Laura recommended I read June Jordan. And my friend Christina brought me June Jordan back from NYC. And I read June Jordan and cried and laughed and felt held and moved and nurtured, just as I would eating a bowl of the most hearty soup. You see? We are the same people. We feed the soul, in the end.

Free Flight by June Jordan

Nothing fills me up at night
I fall asleep for one or two hours then
up against my gut
alarms
I must arise
and wandering into the refrigerator
think about evaporated milk homemade vanilla ice cream
cherry pie hot from the oven with Something Like Vermont
Cheddar Cheese disintegrating luscious
on the top while
mildly
I devour almonds and raisins mixed to mathematical
criteria or celery or my very own sweet and sour snack
composed of brie peanut butter honey and
a minuscule slice of party size salami
on a single whole wheat cracker no salt added
Or I read Cesar Vallejo/Gabriela Mistral/last year’s
complete anthology or
I might begin another list of things to do
that starts with toilet paper and
I notice that I never jot down fresh
strawberry shortcake: never
even though fresh strawberry shortcake shoots down
raisins and almonds 6 to nothing
effortlessly
effortlessly
is this poem on my list?
light bulbs lemons envelopes ballpoint refill
post office and zucchini
oranges no
it’s not
I guess that means I just forgot
walking my dog around the block leads
to a space in my mind where
during the newspaper strike questions
sizzle through suddenly like
Is there an earthquake down in Ecuador?
Did a T.W.A. supersaver flight to San Francisco
land in Philadelphia instead
Or
whatever happened to human rights
in Washington D.C.? Or what about downward destabilization
of the consumer price index
and I was in this school P.S. Tum-Ta-Tum and time came
for me to leave but
No! I couldn’t leave: The Rule was anybody leaving
the premises without having taught somebody something
valuable would be henceforth proscribed from the
premises would be forever null and void/dull and
vilified well
I had stood in front of 40 or 50 students running my
mouth and I had been generous with deceitful smiles/soft-
spoken and pseudo-gentle wiles if and when forced
into discourse amongst such adults as constitutes
the regular treacheries of On The Job Behavior
ON THE JOB BEHAVIOR
is this poem on that list
polish shoes file nails coordinate tops and bottoms
lipstick control no
screaming I’m bored because
this is whoring away the hours of god’s creation
pay attention to your eyes your hands the twilight
sky in the institutional big windows
no
I did not presume I was not so bold as to put this
poem on that list
then at the end of the class this boy gives me Mahler’s 9^th
symphony the double album listen
to it let it seep into you he
says transcendental love
he says
I think naw
I been angry all day long/nobody did the assignment
I am not prepared
I am not prepared for so much grace
the catapulting music of surprise that makes me
hideaway my face
nothing fills me up at night
yesterday the houseguest left a brown
towel in the bathroom for tonight
I set out a blue one and
an off-white washcloth seriously
I don’t need no houseguest
I don’t need no towels/lovers
I just need a dog

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Maybe I’m kidding

Maybe I need a woman
a woman be so well you know so wifelike
so more or less motherly so listening so much
the universal skin you love to touch and who the
closer she gets to you the better she looks to me/somebody
say yes and make me laugh and tell me she know she
been there she spit bullets at my enemies she say you
need to sail around Alaska fuck it all try this new
cerebral tea and take a long bath

Maybe I need a man
a man be so well you know so manly so lifelike
so more or less virile so sure so much the deep
voice of opinion and the shoulders like a window
seat and cheeks so closely shaven by a twin-edged
razor blade no oily hair and no dandruff besides/
somebody say yes and make
me laugh and tell me he know he been there he spit
bullets at my enemies he say you need to sail around
Alaska fuck it all and take a long bath

la-ti-dah and lah-ti-dum
what’s this socialized obsession with the bathtub

Maybe I just need to love myself myself
(anyhow I’m more familiar with the subject)
Maybe when my cousin tells me you remind me
of a woman past her prime maybe I need
to hustle my cousin into a hammerlock
position make her cry out uncle and
I’m sorry
Maybe when I feel this horrible
inclination to kiss folks I despise
because the party’s like that
an occasion to be kissing people
you despise maybe I should tell them kindly
kiss my

Maybe when I wake up in the middle of the night
I should go downstairs
dump the refrigerator contents on the floor
and stand there in the middle of the spilled milk
and the wasted butter spread beneath my dirty feet
writing poems
writing poems
maybe I just need to love myself myself and
anyway
I’m working on it