Writers' Meat

Last night marks the first time that I shared any part of my novel with other human beings.  My parents have not seen any part of it.  My friends have not seen any part of it.  My reading of the first two pages of my novel was a world premier event.

It took place at a Writer's Meetup that I belong to, the first meetup for this group I have been able to attend (and that wasn't canceled).  Seven other people shared parts of their stories that night.  All are incredible writers.  I felt my piece did not measure up to their brilliance.  And yet mine was discussed by the others as much as any of the other pieces were.  My child did not falter in his first introduction to the world.  I must not falter in finishing this novel.

The host of this event asked me, since I told them I have been working on it for eight years writing and many more years planning, if I ever worried that I wouldn't finish it.  The answer is "yes."  My other fear is that I thrust it out into the world before it's ready, just to get it out there.  But, at some point past the due date, birth must be induced.  This year the inducing process begins.

The meetup followed a French theme: we ate blood sausage and drank red wine, sampled Israeli cous-cous and indulged in some sort of massive pie with plums in it.  There was also absinthe to try (the legal stuff, not the stuff that'll make you cut off your ear and mail it to a prostitute).  The legal stuff, however, is still quite potent: one of the bottles I picked up was 62% alcohol.  I meant to try some, but the process of drinking it was so complicated that I couldn't be bothered.  It involves gizmos and sugar and cold water and measuring, which should be followed for the full effect, but which can be tiresome to set up.  Also, who knows how powerfully it would affect me.  I mean, 62%!  I often top out at two beers.

Blood sausage is meant to be eaten with horse radish, which I didn't know the first time I tried it.  I ate my second sausage with horse radish, however, and it made it that much better.  Here's what my plate looked like, sans cous-cous, horse radish, and the awesome pie:

I felt energized after last night's meetup, and still do.  I needed that energy, too, as it has been sagging as of late.  Job hunting with a crappy Internet connection will do that to you.  Of course, the view out the host's front window, which encompasses Lake Washington and several mountains (the Cascades?), didn't hurt.  Now I wish I had taken a photo of that view, rather than of this nasty-looking (but rather tasty) blood sausage.

Is this the beginning of the story proper?  Something tells me this is going to be quite a year.

Correction:  Actual absinthe has been legal in the U.S. since 2007 (thanks, desk calendar!), so this was the stuff that, if drunk in sufficient quantities, could cause you to cut off your ear and mail it to a prostitute.

Cooking As a Pastime

Heart onigiri at Bar Eden.

Until I went to Japan, I wasn't much into cooking. The most complex dish I made was Rice-a-Roni. Not that I'm making gourmet dishes now; I'm not. But, I wonder if I should be, or at least learning how.

My cooking...

Three of the people I lived with while in Japan were excellent cooks. I know; I got to eat some of their creations. The first person was my roommate when I lived in a NOVA apartment (NOVA is the name of the first company I worked for in Japan, since gone bankrupt and bought out by another company). The other two were housemates when I lived in BB House, which, sadly, ceased to exist soon after the death of the owner, may she rest in peace.

The one thing the three of them had in common was preparing complex-looking, delicious Asian cuisine. Only one of them prepared Japanese cuisine; my roommate was originally from Indonesia (he's Australian), and one of the housemates was from Myanmar.

For the sake of not embarrassing them, let's call my roommate M, my housemate from Myanmar Y, and the housemate from Japan K. M often made more food than he could eat, so I got to try much of what he made. Of Y's food, I only got to eat an occasional soup, but they were tasty. The one who did the most cooking, however, and whose food I ate the most of, was K. In fact, K cooked for the whole house on occasion, and also spent a whole night making food for a hanami matsuri (cherry-blossom viewing). If not for her, I wouldn't have eaten my final day in Japan, since I spent most of that day making my room look immaculate.

...versus K's cooking.

I bought a Japanese cookbook while at the Tokyo Animation Exposition. Not surprisingly, it had a manga slant to it, its title being (wait for it), The Manga Cookbook. So far, the most complex recipe I have tried is a bento, but due to the amount of resources (food) required and the amount of time it takes to prepare, I have not tried many of the advanced recipes in the book--like okonomiyaki--and the ones I have tried, I haven't done often. In fact, most of my cooking in American (and in Japan, too) has been relegated to cooking spaghetti in a pot and adding spices to the sauce. I also make a mean tuna for sandwiches.

My attempt at bento.

Cooking is a lot like writing. It involves creativity, the look and taste (style and substance) must be appetizing, and the best cooks, like the best writers, aren't afraid to experiment. And ultimately, food and books are labors of love, which are then turned loose on the public in order to await judgment--though their verdict doesn't much matter, in the end. The process is what's important.

I remember watching the anime for Video Girl Ai, where Moemi cooks for Yota, who is secretly in love with her. Even though she cooks for him out of kindness, and not love, I thought (and still do) that a woman cooking for me--out of love--would be the most wonderful thing in the world. Hmm, maybe the way to a man's heart really is through his stomach. The reason I find such a declaration of love so moving is because of the work involved in making a meal for someone. You are devoting your time and energy (lots of it) to someone else's happiness. Time and energy are what we give to endeavors that we love, and to people that we love. To spend so much time making something that will disappear so quickly is, in effect, the ultimate sacrifice that one can make for another human being.

Sashimi (raw meat) in a restaurant in Sapporo.
(note: those are my friend's hands, not mine)

Getting back to my original thought, I have been thinking recently that I should learn how to cook like my friends in Japan. The timing has to do with the Korean soap opera that I've been watching, since the main character is a pastry chef, but I feel that the show is just stoking flames that have long been smoldering in my soul. Cooking and preparing food appeal to my sense of creativity, as well as my love of solitude--though cooking is never as solitary a pursuit as writing is, even when done alone. Plus, none of the jobs I have looked at since I returned from Japan have captured my imagination. Cooking would. Maybe not in a crowded restaurant where the patrons care how hot or cold their meal is over whether it's a masterpiece of cuisine, but rather in a bakery or a cake shop, or at a small restaurant with a dedicated staff. If nothing else, I can cook at home, relieving the stresses of the day with a culinary delight created with my own hands.

I don't know. All I know is that I can't keep doing what I'm doing. Writers may need rooms of their own in which to write (to paraphrase Virginia Woolf), but they need a life beyond their rooms in which to live.