"from the cunt to the head is/ a Mobius strip/ that connects us to death" --Eleni Sikelianos, excerpted from "Notes Toward the Township of Cause of Trouble (Venus Cabinet Revealed)"
I haven't been to the grocery store or farmer's market it over two weeks. The weather reports at which I looked predicted flurries today and a little bit of accumulation in the afternoon. Instead, we got what looks to be about four inches of snow that fell in fat, fluffy clumps all day. Needless to say, I got hungry and had to make do with rations I'd reserved in my freezer. Because I'm a genius, however, my concoction turned out most delicious. And so, I give you my "recipe."
Chicken and Black-eyed Pea Chili
2 chicken breasts, poached and shredded (1 qt poaching liquid reserved) 2 tbsp EVOO 1 medium yellow onion, chopped 1 green bell pepper, chopped 1 sweet red pepper, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 qt broth (I used vegetable because it's what I had, but I probably would have used chicken, were it available.) 1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes 1 1/2 lbs pre-cooked black-eyed peas 3 tbsp chipotle in adobo, minced 2 tsp cumin 2 tsp Mexican oregano (Conventional oregano will NOT do. It's not the same thing.) 1 tsp chili powder salt and (tellicherry, of course) pepper to taste 3 cups pre-cooked rice (I used basmati because it's what I had and it's my favorite, but any rice will do.)
1. In the bottom of your Dutch oven, sauté the onions and red and green peppers in olive oil until they begin to soften. Add garlic and sauté for a minute or two more.
2. Add can of tomatoes, broth and reserved poaching liquid and bring to a boil.
3. Add the shredded chicken, black-eyed peas, chipotle and other spices. Bring the whole shebang back up to a boil. Reduce heat to a pretty serious simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes until the flavors meld.
4. Spoon 1/2 cup or so of rice into the bottom of a bowl. Ladle soup/chili over the top.
5. Slurp hungrily.
If you have it, it would probably be pretty tasty if you garnished it with chopped cilantro, fresh minced jalapeños and a squeeze of lime juice, but, alas, I didn't have any of that stuff.
No joke. This turned out really well and I'm trés impressed with myself that I just made it up with random crap I had in the house. Not too shabby, considering my limited resources.
I wrote because it was fun. Because I was an inordinately verbal child -- demonstrably so, early. Because there were stories of pink monsters, who lived in pink houses and slept in the top drawer of my pink dresser, in dire need of telling. I wrote because I was told to, for school. I wrote because some short piece I'd dashed off moved my fourth-grade teacher to tears as she read it aloud to the class -- and that was really something. And then I wrote because people told me I did it well. For a long time, I did it simply because of that -- for the praise from grown-ups.
I wrote because I read. I read a lot. Somewhere in all the reading, the writing about reading became habit. Responding became habit.
Sometimes I didn't write and sometimes I did.
I wrote because someone said, "You wrote exactly what I felt." Or because someone said, "No one else could have said that the way you did." Or because someone said, "These are real poems." I wrote because I was unhappy -- with myself, my life, my world. I wrote because things outside of myself made me angry -- crazy angry -- or inconsolable. Because dissatisfaction gave me fuel and fire. Because I have always been solitary but needed to talk about it. Occasionally, I wrote in spite of being happy, though that's always been harder.
I wrote just to finish the goddamn manuscript. I wrote in spite of disappointment with myself. Or maybe I wrote to write myself out of that disappointment. I wrote because I went to grad school for the sole purpose of writing and I. Do. Not. Give up. I wrote to come to terms with what it means to be a white girl from the American south. I wrote because my body was teaching me something new every day -- things I deeply desired to shape into language. I wrote out of a desire to make something pretty, even trinket-like. I wrote because I'd fallen so madly in love with the oddities of my mother tongue. I wrote because I was supposed to be good at it, even though I wasn't. I wrote to get better. I used writing as a vehicle for sorting out how I wasn't in love anymore. To tell the tale of the demise of a relationship I'd held dear, and to obfuscate the tale with politics and some fancy Sanskrit words. I wrote to get a handle on my own sexual identity, which defied both the relationship and the world beyond the relationship. I wrote to know myself, then, right?
And then I didn't write. I didn't miss it. I didn't need it. Until I did. So, then, I wrote. For practice. And also, to keep from fighting with a friend about movies.
And then, I wrote to respond and to engage and to partake in so-called conversations with a world I never thought would answer me. Which were really just conversations with myself. Obviously. I wrote because I wanted the writing to serve as beacon, of sorts. Because what if someone else out there was working similar stones smooth? I wrote because I had a "project" and because the Internet is a fascinating, immersive place. Because the Internet is provocative, in one way or another, every damn minute. And so is the world that isn't the Internet. And I wrote and I wrote. For 10 days, I wrote just because I was really hungry. Other days, I wrote because I was heart-broken. Others still, because I was amped beyond cranial capacity. I wrote because it was the most important thing to me. And as I wrote, the writing became ever more so.
Sometimes, I wrote because I was turned on. Because I wanted to turn other people on. Because I had this fantasy that my writing could be so charged that it would draw folks to my bed in droves. At times, I thought I wrote simply in service of this fantasy. As though the writing amounted to so much sublimating, which, I'd secretly hoped, would inspire folks to provide me opportunity to sublimate no more. Or less, at least.
At some point along this trajectory, I began to write because I thought I was a writer. Because writing is what writers do. What I mean is that I wrote because doing so had become a facet of my identity, my personhood. Because if I didn't, what am I? I'm a girl with a job, that's what. Not a bad job -- a job that sustains me and for which I'm grateful -- but a job I wouldn't miss, for itself, if I didn't have it. I wrote because being a writer meant that my job didn't have to matter as much. And neither did my lack of investment in my obtuse notion of "career." And again, I wrote because I needed to. Because it made me part of conversations bigger than my own experience. Or because I wanted it to do that for me, maybe.
So, then, it's really a pain in my ass that it occurred to me that I don't actually need it. That, kinda, I don't miss it. Not enough. Or maybe just not often enough. And while I can enumerate a hundred and one reasons I once wrote, I can't name any for why I will or would write again. Save this nagging grunt in my mind that nudges, "Oh, but you should." What is this "should" business? What's the basis for "should?" Why should I? Because writers write. It's what they do.
So what, then, if I'm not a writer?
What if this role I've (at times, forcibly) adhered to my identity is bogus? What should I do then? Huh, mind? Huh? What fucking then?
Now, I write this not because I'm in need of a pep talk or because I'm feeling particularly inadequate in terms of my chops (though I do feel that way, and often). I'm writing this because, last night, a friend asked me why I wrote and he put it in past tense, just like that: "I want to come back to this. Why you wrote." In the moment, his past tense sunk me -- and then it kept me up all night, stewing. Of course, he clarified and said he meant for me to answer the question with a comparison between why I used to write and why I'll write in the future, but it's not like I'm not keenly aware that I am not writing at present. And that, besides this niggling feeling that I should be posting something, anything, because I've established expectations that I would (mainly from myself, but also from the handful of you out there who have so kindly asked me for more), I haven't felt any real tremendous compulsion to write, really, at all, lately. Therefore, though this may be just another bout of blockage, of the likes I've encountered in many iterations before, I think the question of how integral my writing is to me bears consideration.
So, that's what I'm doing. Considering. Because I can't help but notice that a nauseatingly high percentage of those reasons for which I've written in the past seem to be all about seeking external approval and cosseting my puny li'l ego. And I'm considering because I've never nursed any serious aspirations to get paid for my writing (likely out of chickenshittedness) anyway. Given that cold light, I think asking myself just exactly how much I profit from adopting a writerly persona at this juncture is entirely appropriate. Funny how I have to use words to do that, though, eh?
