An History Unearthed

My gentleman friend, Siyavash, recently transferred all of our grains and legumes into delicate ceramic urns decorated with Oriental miniatures. Beholding the resulting framework, I realized that the kitchen we share is enchanting. This morning we uncovered today's batch of yogurt and it was bubbling like a sourdough starter. It lives in its jar-home next to the kimchi, the sauerkraut from Frank and Paloma, the sauerreuben, the sour carrots, the kombucha, the kefir, the cheese or paneer in the tongue of his birth. All these things made by our two hands or hands of our beloved friends, and each with its own internal community of living beings making it every day more tasty and more dear to us. What contentment I felt with my own life at that moment!

Siyavash asked me, "What did you eat before you met me?"

"Collard greens, short grain organic brown rice prepard with a ratio of one and one-half cups of water to one cup of rice, dulse, celery, tomatoes, kimchi from Stoddard, a lot of raw garlic."

"And what did you eat when you lived with Abel Santamaria?"

When we share our lives and our home, eat the same thing as our companions every single day for nearly every meal so that even our digestive systems and sweat take on similar characteristics, this makes a great impression on us. There is no more thorough intimacy, because these acts penetrate the orifices beyond the point of any sexual act. They carry shared experience from the outside of the body to the very inside, and, as glucose and then ATP, to every last cell. They are transformed through muscle movement into each action we take as we live our lives. Sometimes it is a bond of romantic love that offers up this solidarity for us to masticate. On occasion, we may discover it as one part of a larger gathering of bodies toiling together, exhausting and rejuvenating themselves according to the same sunny cycle.

"Sriracha, Paul Brothers Roofing Beer, black sesame seeds, ginger chews, baguette and brie with red wine, Cabot cottage cheese, posole, gorditas...cheese sandwiches with tomato raw garlic mayonnaise and nutritional yeast. Anything from the garden. Ice cream."

"Fue de planeta en planeta buscando agua potable"