square one

'Eating with disciplined excellence is a search for wisdom'
---NYRB.

'Somehow, as if

what's missing left me with a mystery,

its absence makes me love it twice over'

--Walser.

You look inside the room, the plates set, the order of a small and known world. We enter the season with great knowingness. Everything and everyone is in their place. For a moment the cosmos has aligned itself with us. And yet there is a fourth shadow, adding a shroud of stillness to the scene.

Outside the decaying hours of the sun, the first ice forming a fragile latticework over the grass. We laze into the afternoon, glutted on memories of former times and forgetfulness. Without any longing for outside, we are ourselves for a few wasteful hours. 

In this winter light, the light that tarries inside our homes, we see ourselves and others less harshly. Leftovers are cherished, images on the screen from many years ago are so familiar that they enhance the belief that nothing has changed-even if the world has moved on. Black and white photographs held in thick, plush covers are brought down and we wonder where all those people have gone, where are our own lives have disappeared to.

We decline, we refuse. No & Yes in everyone's eyes. The small, the last ritual we hold on to as we unbind everything else. 

Save some space for seconds. We take off our hats and become wise. Our second thoughts: what was all the year's striving for, we wonder. We can't even describe it to ourselves. Some nameless sleep that curls up on itself, an imaginary happiness, perhaps? 

We find ourselves again on deep earth and are not sorrowful.