Saturday night, what do you want with me? The sun’s been gone for three long hours and I’m taking solace in the fact I’ve at least started dinner. By “started dinner” I mean I’ve removed a gallon ZipLoc bag from the freezer and dumped its frosty contents into a pot of water—onion skins, garlic skins, green herby stems, the drab orange peels of a carrot. These are the little keepsakes from dinners past. They plop into the water and bob at its surface, an arctic island of would-be compost, could-be broth. I turn the burner to high and shake in some salt, grab a wooden spoon and prod at it until the water pours over all surfaces and welcomes the scraps into its aquatic home.
*
I’m recklessly postponing what I actually want. What I want is to write—to sit down in the lamplight with something to drink, maybe take a match to a candle, maybe burn some incense, get comfortable and cozy, minimize all of my windows or go absolutely wild and close all of my tabs, trust that if I give my mind over to the creative flow I can find my way back when I need to, open that white window of potential and just say The Most Perfect Thing.
Perfectionism—what a drag! I’m so messy I never imagine myself as a perfectionist. When I try to picture one, I see this girl from my elementary class—we’ll call her Isabelle—who was so calm and polite and good at everything it infuriated me. Her cursive was stunning, her math was always right, her papers were neat and in order. Every day, her perfect mom packed her lunch with a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Usually it was a banana, wrapped in foil so it wouldn’t make the rest of the lunchbox smell. Meanwhile, my lunchbox smelled like an old microwave or an open package of ham. Once, when I went over to her house, Isabelle’s mom carefully combed out the massive tangle of hair that always lived at the back of my neck. Isabelle’s hair probably didn’t get tangled because she probably brushed it every day.
Around the time I knew Isabelle I collected Bonne Bell Lip Smackers. I’d get them as gifts or buy them with my allowance. One gift set came with a case, which I used to arrange my chapsticks in order of my favorite to least favorite scent. My top-tier Lip Smackers were so precious to me that I wanted to save them for as long as I could, so I picked the most underwhelming scents to start with. Which is to say instead of using Strawberry Kiwi Comet, I was stuck (by choice) with Cookie Dough.
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In a perfect world, I would have spent time writing this morning. I’d have woken up at 8 a.m. and gotten straight out of bed, phone be damned. I would have brewed a black tea and made the sleepy walk to my desk to sit and work for a few hours, a true testament to my devotion. But it’s not a perfect world and never will be. I’m a tired girl who loves straddling the fine line between doing nothing and something. I am a tinkerer.
Tinkering is a semi-productive idleness that makes me feel grounded in a space. It’s observing little details, making sense of little messes. Nothing about it is too consequential so nothing major ever gets done, but it feels like something big could happen at any point. Like fiddling with a car that might start some day.
I like to tinker, especially where kitchens and words are concerned. While I wait for the water of scraps to boil, I open cabinets and pull out all the jars and see if there are lids to match each of them, clean off the table by moving the indecisive mess onto a different surface in a different room, move things around in the pantry and think of ways we might use them.
In the mornings, I lay in bed and tinker with my thoughts. I open windows in my brain and see what comes in and what flows out. I catch ideas and write them down in my Notes app to work on later when I finally get up to go write. Which I don’t.
Wooden spoon in hand, I push the soft and wilted vegetable scraps around the boiling water and turn down the heat.
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I’m not writing because I’m not whole. I’m not whole because I’m not writing.
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My ideas are my Bonne Bell chapsticks of adulthood—the ones that call to me the most seem so precious and important that I won’t write about them until the circumstances are perfect and deserving. The temperature should be comfortable, the clothes loose fitting, the energy right, the hunger satiated, the distractions gone. Everything needs to be perfect in order for me to really hold them. Perfect circumstances will yield the perfect outcome. I’m waiting to be handed a banana wrapped in foil.
People get stuck in this rut all the time. We tell each other, there is no perfect and we know it’s true but we still don’t listen. Experienced writers will tell you the value of making do with what you have. There are scraps, you see, that you tinker with and save up and make into something, like broth for your dinner or words for your story. They speak of taking walks and recording voice notes that become novels,1 writing fragments of ideas in their Notes app on the subway and later turning those pieces into published poems.
There is tinkering and there is doing and the roadblock in between is the proof that you don’t need perfect cursive to be a perfectionist.
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I let the broth develop for much longer then I need to. While it simmers, I start collecting my fragmented thoughts on scraps of paper. The best part of writing is actually the act of writing, and I feel better as soon as I’ve remembered that. I’ve knocked down the road block with my big wooden spoon. Now I can focus on finishing dinner—a great big shepherd’s pie—and actually bring this meal the fruition.
Thinking here of Melissa Broder who has written some of her novels through dictation while driving. Imagine!
Isn't it annoying when we have the answers and still ignore them? Soup goes well with writing. Keep cooking.
You make art even when you describe thawing your broth. Made for a lovely mind painting! By the way, sorry about the lunch box.😉