(an explanation the title could be the closing of the book)
Recipes, Inquiries, Fruits, and Letters to my Father
Models (structures): Recipes, Inquiries, Fruits, Memories, Letters
Conversation
Protest
“I remember the days”
Forgive me, Father, for the love in me for you was a silent ocean. Silent, I say in retrospect, with the memory of my eyes, and ears; and silent as I know the ocean today – vibrant, beautiful, dangerous under the surface.
Asking for forgiveness is sadness in itself, as the ask inherently implies remorse for something that had every opportunity of being expressed much earlier. Yet, I was silent.
I ask for forgiveness from both of us, for it is fair to assume that the silence of that ocean on your part, was never as loud, expressive, and explosive, as it could have been. I know you know. Your eyes, your ears could have been louder, wonderfully much louder.
And quietly loud were they, especially your eyes, looking at me, and looking away, those weeks leading to March of 2001.
Emulation detailed
I never wanted to be like you. Well, perhaps I ought to rephrase that. It might be quite common for a young boy to wish to be like his father, walking behind him, doing his best effort to walk like him, perhaps eat like him, drink like him, burp like him. I do reckon, each time you burped, your “excuse me” and your corporeal reaction was to me more than clear evidence, firstly, that it was not your intention to celebrate burping (as many real men fathers appear to do), and, secondly that burping was not to happen as a socially accepted action for the sharing. Excusing yourself in such instances told me time after time that a burp was rather to be kept a private occurrence as much as possible. Coincidentally, just weeks ago, I audibly burped while a friendly customer was standing just behind me. “You burp!?” he exclaimed in astonishment. “All the years I have known you, I have never heard you burp.” He reemphasized.
In any case, well within and beyond that likely period of a boy wanting to be like his father, the young adult me, the coming-of-age me, the adult me, the coming-of-awareness me, did not sense any desire to be like you. It feels today as though I almost always felt as being in the midst of a crucial and difficult learning process, one that could lead this lonely hungry creature at any given second in a number of challenging directions but never one capable of approaching being similar to you. Therefore, any effort to emulate you would have had nothing to do with being me but with a useless effort of being a repetition, even worse, an enhancement, an extension, an improvement of you. Preposterous! However, as sad and disturbing as it may sound today, no mirror I knew even managed to show me as an individual, a proper being. Hungry mind, hungry eyes, and hungry ears were looking in quiet desperation to grasp some essence of truth, yet submissively believing.
To emulate you was also an improbable desire. The admiration was so high that emulation seemed to be nearly a blasphemous consideration.
Actions, some actions, however, I do recall being impressed by. One can peel a grapefruit, orange, or apple by holding the knife towards one’s own body, cutting with a type of backstroke, following through until the fruit has been peeled, backwards. As a child, and as an adult, well passed the age you were when you were terminally diagnosed, I have seen most fruits being peeled by driving the knife with the sharp edge away from the body. There is less control in those movements, making it less dangerous to cut oneself, that is what you told me once. And, even today, there is a slight sensation of achievement (some call it pride) when I peel a fruit according to your instruction.
Just days ago, merely walking the streets of this New York which you no longer know, and would in part not recognize, suddenly I thought of the way you bat eggs. You know well that I detested everything in the realm of eggs, and perhaps for that fact never imagined that I was repeatedly observing you whenever you were beating them in a bowl with a fork. Your wrist movements I have been trying to replicate ever since I felt forced to buy them on my own, once I became responsible for my cooking and living, and had no choice but to implement them in my life to some extent.
Even sweeping continues to call my attention to you as father at home, and as the young determined man you were in Cuba, and in New York, where you were praised for the way you cleaned. The broom, actually just opposite to the knife when peeling, is to be moved away from the body. With your logic and humor you loved to explain that the dust is not to cover your shoes.
Life as completion attempt
These can be seen as a collection of thoughts which surround details from memories. It can be seen as a romantic form of mourning, with aspects of redemption, exorcism, wonder, joy.
One may also see it as an effort to make life complete, and not merely an unfinished presence on earth.
The completion (fulfillment, flourishing) of life seems to me of much greater importance than it is applied to. Whether suddenly imposed or occurring in slow and gradual stages, the passing of an individual does not compare to the withering of a flower. Both, man and flower, begin to grow hidden. Both succeed the metamorphosis of a seed, before becoming the swaddled bairn or bud. Both resist the pressure of the layers that protect them. Once freed, one will begin to breathe, crawl, run, without any guarantee of doing it with beauty, before it falls, dissolving into the soil. The other will open without crawling, without running, and it will be bound to be as much beauty as the seed has predetermined, never withering, never falling to the ground, never dissolving into the soil, before it has reached its climax of being beauty.
Man is to be a life of fulfillment, flourishing into beauty.
thread and/or knot
Laces
fine threads
some of gold
some of silk
They may hang
stretch
sway
gently
beautifully
and there is no need to work
to bother
to arrange
rather leave whichever as is
It is the knot that may occur
call attention
a section which may require attention
the need to be untied
Knots are not a disturbance,
not a mistake
not an interruption
not deterrence
rather the call to adjust
readjust
untangle
point to
go from
allow flow
remind:
Laces are fine
threads
some of gold
some of silk
You created a beast
You created a beast
This is a monster you created
No single human, no friend, no family member
Not you, not me
No one — of this I am certain —
not a single soul could have ever guessed
how so much love emanating from you to me
how so much strength touching me gently
how not answering some of my questions with your answer but with the invitation to answer myself
how all this was going to form me
with confidence,
strength,
softness,
determination,
sooner and later making a monster
detrimental to others in their efforts to read me as love
as caring
as faithful soul
undeterred
in love
and in life
Sila Blume 