Published December 2007 (link)
There's a scar at the top of my right leg. It looks
like the British Isles, maybe Denmark, maybe Iceland. I'm not sure, I'm
not a geographer, but it's a cluster of small brown shapes, some
merging together, some trailing off to the left. The little dots look
like the tail end of a comet compared to the big center of the scar,
like the dust cast off by one giant moment.
That's what the scar reminds me of. It is the dust cast off by one
giant moment, by a life I was living, by a drawing that I owned. I got
the scar in the kitchen of my house, a house I lived in for eight
months before I couldn't live in that house anymore. I got the scar
while I was cooking Peas in a Creamy Red Sauce, the recipe by Madhur
Jaffery, given to me by the stepmother who became my stepmother four
years ago, the recipe one she cooked in the kitchen of the house she
and my father bought together when they decided to admit to one another
that this was it, for real, for keeps. I was on the last part of the
recipe, the part where you heat three tablespoons of vegetable oil and
throw in a tablespoon of mustard seeds and a tablespoon of coriander,
wait for them to pop and then pour in two packs of defrosted peas.
I lit the gas with the match the way we had to because the stove
couldn't catch because a mouse liked to live there and with its tail
turn off the pilot light, and it made the vegetable oil hot, three
tablespoons of it. I'm used to cooking with olive oil — the Columela
brand was the best, I read in Cook's Illustrated, those illustrations
so part of that life I lived — so the vegetable oil confused my visual
cortex for a minute. The oil was on the front burner of the stove in
the kitchen I was sharing with the man whose life I was living, in the
pan that belonged to his mother and his grandmother before her, a New
Orleans line. The pan was big and old and perfect for this recipe,
large enough to be able to spin the mustard seeds around while they
popped. I'd cooked this dish four or five times and every time I made
it the kitchen got covered in the cast away debris, like the dust from
the scar.
The vegetable oil got hot, I guess, but I couldn't tell because it
stays inert unless you throw water in it or, as my stepfather who
taught me how to cook taught me, spit in it. I noticed the smell, then,
and how something wasn't quite right about it. I thought maybe the pan,
which we had just picked up from his mother's house after she had
picked it up in Texas, packing up in preparation, that maybe it wasn't
clean enough, or maybe something had been left over from the last time
I'd made the Peas in a Creamy Red Sauce, and I thought maybe it was
time to throw out the oil and start over.
I picked up the pan but my visual cortex was confused and where it
should have seen a layer of hot oil it saw inert, clear liquid, mistook
it for water. I picked up the pan and I picked it up too quickly and I
meant to take it to the sink and pour out the liquid, the burning hot
oil, but instead the oil slopped over the side and into my leg. I was
wearing yoga pants because I was trying to change my life and yoga
seemed to be a good way of going about that, but the drawback to my
chakras being realigned and my energies being good and my practice
having been dedicated and my having accepted into my life Shiva, the
God of destruction, was that the pants were cotton and when the hot oil
fell on them they only pulled it closer to my skin.
The oil began to cook the top of my leg, in the shape of Iceland or the
British Isles or maybe Denmark, I do not know because I am not a
geographer, but I do know that it hurt.
It doesn't hurt anymore, the scar, but it reminds me of the life I was
living, and it reminds me of the things I left behind. It reminds me of
the drawing that we bought, and how it's there and I'm here, here for
now being a transient space, in between, dislocated. I'm living now
like the dust cast off from the comet of that life, and it's a
beautiful dust, and I can see that it's on its way to the complete part
of the scar. The scar reminds me of the drawing, Lead Pencil Studio's ,After,
the piece we bought together in Seattle's Lawrimore Project after a
dinner we had there hosted by an architect where we ate bento boxes
provided by a chef who is very famous in Japan, we promise.
The scar reminds me of that moment of buying that art, the purchase of
culture in some way more of a sign of togetherness than the purchase of
real estate or furniture, but when I see the scar now I don't think of
how much I wish I had the art — although, sometimes, I do — but of how
quickly we can recover from these things. When I see the scar now I
remember how hopeful I felt when I bought the art, thinking that maybe
that was part of the life that I was wanting to live but for some
reason couldn't, a reason I couldn't figure out why until I realized
that I had to cast myself off from that main island of my life and be
like the comet dust.
The scar reminds me of the other scars and the other art, of the time I
cried in a restaurant in Yountville after falling into Richard Serra's
gravity, and of the time he cried in a restaurant in Chicago after I
felt that Anish Kapoor would fall on me. The scar reminds me of all the
scars we pick up, of all the memories of food and art — because it all,
in the end, comes down to the three of food and art and sex and we do
not write about the third, not here or now — and the scar reminds me
that it is those scars we carry, those little bits of comet dust, that
those are the art that we'll really take with us, that doesn't need to
be split or divided or fought over. The scar reminds me that I'm about
to and do already live a life of food and art — and sex, although we
not write about that, not here or now — and it'll fade and blend and
leave, and so will the memories, and even though sometimes I'll wish
the scar was brighter or the memories were different, it will all be
good.
And the scar reminds me that I know there's a comet, that I won't always be dust.
