Test Kitchen

messy desk

I spend a lot of time in my own head. This doesn’t, as one might fear, result in oblivion. On the contrary, it is often because of my hyper awareness that I wind up in my head, processing, adding a pinch of analogy here, a dash of example there.

I’m a morning runner. I have used the same park for twelve years, yet I am not confident about being there each day. I have known people and dogs to be mauled by pit bulls, robbed at knifepoint and gunpoint, run over by ATVs, threatened, cursed at, and flashed. I have seen vandals destroying cars; couples fornicating; thieves stealing; addicts shooting heroin or lying, passed out, in the grass; drunks staggering along the path; and kids cutting school. A friend of mine was almost raped. My husband rode by a gang of youths* on his bike, and they attempted to pull him off; they missed and were eventually arrested. Many years later, all of the windows of his VW Vanagon were smashed with a golf club. My seven-year-old daughter was called a “white bitch.” I have been flashed, robbed by two gun-pointing teens, threatened, and chased.

patience

I usually run with my dogs, though I am not so fond of it. They’re mostly pokey (one has arthritis) or else they’re in my way. But without them, I could run into more trouble. A few days ago, while my dogs waited in the car, I passed a guy with spikes tattooed on his neck and a pit bull straining his lead. Most of the time, the dogs (and owners) are friendly, and I give them a pat on the head or a playful tousle as I run by. Turns out this dog was just a pup and very playful, but once I passed, my head stayed. I thought of being mauled by a dog, bleeding, hurt, wondering if I’d have the strength to strangle it, the ability to sit on it to keep it from biting until help arrived.

Fortunately, the thoughts only last a minute, and I begin plotting my next essay—one about judging books by their covers or about color blindness or tattoos.

On the good days—and most of them are, despite the highlighted low points of the past decade—I cruise by with my headphones or run to the sound of birds, check out the wildlife, work out some personal puzzles. I spy a bluebird, the first since '02, when those damned English sparrows chased them out of a grove of trees by Hooper’s Field, and fly with it for awhile.

Sometimes I start a poem. As I run, I repeat the ideas, the phrases. Sometimes I call my answering machine when I have a particularly juicy thought I need to save, but I can remember pretty well. I hold it all there, in my test kitchen, let it slosh around until I get home.

I can be sweaty and smelly, itchy, wet, uncomfortable. My chair and my desk, in the dining room, don’t care. They wait for me every day, with yesterday’s crumbs, sometimes, an empty glass, sometimes, DVDs of Willy Porter that my husband didn’t return to their proper spot and that I’ve been too lazy to put back, Post-It notes of varied importance, and a gift in plain sight that I’m trying to hide from someone. Sometimes my desk is spotless. (I like it best that way.)

curous zap

Running is a great creativity jogger. My best work comes from pounding the pavement in my motion-control Sauconys. My body, even if it hurts a little, rewards my brain for its hard work. But I don’t run every day. I use days like today—when, at 7:30 a.m., the temperature is already 80 degrees and the humidity 98 percent—to socialize with park regulars, like Bran and her defense-attorney owner; Kim and her crazy brown dogs; Ed, dad of the dearly departed Victor, my second favorite dog ever; and whomever happens to be there at the time. Often this is writing fodder, and I will mull it over in the car on the way home.

In my head, where I spend quite a bit of quality time, especially in the morning, I make a stew of words and sentences and ideas. I stir them up, let them settle, shake them again. I flip them over. And then, after all the flavors have melded, and I think the recipe might be a keeper, I come to my desk and cook.

I always hope that what I’ve made will suit everyone’s palate; after all, that’s the true joy of cooking. It is a pleasure when, during an appetizer of fiction, an entree of essay, a sweet post-sup poem, I can hear the grunting—a guttural mmm—and the chewing, see nodding heads. But if this one wasn’t your dish, I know I’ll get you next time.

Or I could just add some coconut.



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*Youths used to mean young persons; it is now the PC term for juvenile delinquents.