I would be remiss if I did not mention MFK Fisher in this blog. I have no doubt that she inspired me to write about food. After reading the Gastronomical Me, I was convinced that I had found my métier. Having dabbled miserably in political science, art history, and philosophy – all with the faint hope that I would someday enter “the world of ideas”, I finally gave up on the fantasy of writing. I either had no voice, no talent, or anything significant to say. It was all a disorganized regurgitation of what I thought sounded smart, savvy, or avant-garde. But I was wrong and evidentally not thinking clearly or at all for that matter. And therefore, the gates remained closed, my pen remained weak, and my mind grew increasingly sore.
You see my writing was fragmented. It failed to connect its subject matter with the reality of the world. When it did, it appeared forced and unconvincing. No doubt, it possessed some finer truths, but they seemed stale and out of date. I did not know what to do.
I noticed a change in my writing when I began working in the food industry. Soon my writing became more fluid and less forced. It’s as if it suddenly had found its natural circadian rhythm. And I found that the more I wrote, the more I began to understand food and the pivotal role it plays in our lives both as a social and emotional force for good. Yes, it was about pleasure, and taste, but also much more. My hesitation in committing to the craft of food writing began to wane and soon, I stumbled across MFK Fisher, read her biography on Wikipedia and quickly ordered the Gastronomical Me off Amazon. It arrived and I devoured it in one week. I was set and completely convinced of what I had to do.
So in the spirit of Mary Frances Kennedy, writing, and food, I pay my humble respects and leave you with some more food for thought. I have read almost everything by her and now find myself flipping through the pages of “Two Towns in Provence” a collection of essays – two of which appeared in the New Yorker.
Like MFK, I continually feel like a stranger. It comes with the territory of moving and living out of suitcases, the flux of new and old faces, endless montages of hellos and good byes all the while the memory of home looms in the background. Subsequently, I gravitate to what I know best – to what can nourish and sustain me: food. But like taste, the place, the company, and the occasion all carry a different flavor and significance once again revealing that food is more than just filling.
Two Towns in Provence: Map of Another Town and A Considerable Tow
M.F.K. Fisher
Often in the sketch of the a portrait, the invisible lines that bridge on stroke of the pencil or brush to another are what really make it live. This is probably true in a word picture too. The myriad of undrawn unwritten lines are the ones that hold together what the painter and the writer have tried to set down, their own visions of a thing: a town, one town, this town.
Not everything can be told, or need it be, just as the artist himself need not and indeed cannot reveal every outline of this vision.
There before us is what one human being has seems of something many others have viewed differently, and the lines held back are perhaps the ones most vital to the whole.
Here before me now is my picture, my map, of a place and therefore if myself, and much that can never be said and to its reality for me, just as much of its reality is based on my own shadows, my inventions.
Over the years, I have taught myself, and have been taught to be stranger. A stranger usually has the normal five senses, perhaps especially so, ready to protect him and nourish him.
Then there are the extra senses that function only in subconsciousness. These are perhaps a stranger’s best allies, the ones that stay on and grow stronger as time passes and immediacy dwindles.
It is with the invisible ink distilled from all these senses, then that I have drawn this map of a town, a place real in stone and water, and in spirit, which may also be realer.