“It was a like getting a love letter from a tree/Eyes closed forever to find you — /There is a life which/If I could have it /I would have chosen for myself from the beginning”
— The Poem, Franz Wright
Keep going.
That’s what I’ve been chanting to myself in my head over the last couple of weeks as I close in on the finish line of cooking school. I’m in a mode now that I can only compare to how a runner must feel in the last mile or so of a marathon: not thinking, not feeling — just doing. Our practical cooking exam is tomorrow, meaning I will make a three-course meal, plus salad, plus flatbread, plus bread, in three hours-ish (they cut us off at four). Then on Friday, we have a four-hour written exam encompassing everything we’ve learned over the past twelve weeks. Though technically I’ll be done with school in about three days, I still feel far from the end, and am only able to concentrate on what’s directly in front of me, which at this exact moment is prep lists, equipment lists, list of edible flowers I need to forage in the morning, and an order of work detailing my every move in the kitchen tomorrow, down to the minute.
This past week especially has flown by, much of it spent in anticipation of the culinary feat I have to pull off and the massive exam I have to study for. I cooked some things, I ate some things, and surely I learned some things, but because I’ve been operating in robot mode for at least ten days, I’m only really able to recall that I spent last Saturday cooking my final meal with the timer set, and that I spent Sunday recovering from the hangover that Saturday evening, flush with adrenaline, wrought.
I did manage to go for a walk after school in the glorious golden light of the early spring evening, and found myself tearing up at how beautiful everything around me looked. The brilliant green grass fields, the low light filtering through the trees, the yellow flowers of the rapeseed plant bending in the wind, the moss on the stone garden walls, the darkening blue sky, the fog creeping in on the horizon. As I walked, I thought about one of my teachers, Rory, and how good he was at cooking and teaching, and how he has been cooking for 40 years, and how it is his calling and I can’t imagine him doing anything else. And I thought about my own life, and what could it have been, and what could I have been, and what can I still be. I wondered if it was enough just to see the sky and hear the birds, to feel the sun on my face and run my hand along the mossy walls, to cook the food and arrange the flowers, to water the garden and pet the dog.
Is it enough?
Everything is so meaningful, but also so fragile, and so fleeting. If I let myself feel the enormity of it all, I’ll crumble.
Keep going.
Thanks for reading, and wish me luck,
Antonia