The problem is that everything looks so good.  And maybe if I lived in my concept of France, I could be one of those women who chooses one tomato, one cucumber, a small head of lectuce, garlic, one zucchini, and go home to make a lovely and delicious lunch for one.  I would pour a hand-made kombucha, and salute the validity of humanity, life, and food.  Instead I go and reach with my hand to grab several eggplant, add beans, add tomatoes, add kale, add and add until my bag bulges with dinner for four for a week.  And coming home, exhausted, hot and sweaty, cursing the already sky high sun, and eat a cookie, as the vegetables, packed away in the fridge, photographed in their lovely wooden bowl, languish.  Of course, France has nothing to do with it.  It is this self-care I learn again and again to make a meal for one, a meal not to show off culinary prowess borrowed from a score of cookbooks, but simply to feed and fuel myself for the day.

Over the summer, a student taught me to blend chickpeas with kale and broccoli, and make a soup that sits thick on the spoon. I ate some now, and am full.

It is lunch that undoes me, for the easiest thing is to grab two slices aof bread, dill pickle, cheese, a tomato, and call it a meal.I have written about this before, about the deliciousness of cheese sandwiches, cold or grilled. But it all that bread and cheese.   My mother used to make us sandwiches that were really salads in diguise, and sometimes I follow suit. But give me buttered toast, and I am happy.  Give me a sweetened bread and coffee and I am inspired.  Sadly, though I love the beauty of vegetables, I am not in love with them.

How do these words help anyone but me?  Maybe by writing, I can make nutrition happen, care for my body, live better.  Athletics were never interesting to me, but being exhausted is wearisome.  Murakami runs before he writes.  A number of women in New York walk in the park before gathering for coffee, and departing individually to write.  Me, I get in my car and drive, often to buy food or find a place to eat.  The work gets done, but there is so much else to be written, and read.  Here I am embarking on my nineth fall in one apartment, the longest I have ever stayed in one place.  It has taken me years to like where I live, and not miss where I am not.  Of course, the minute one starts to appreciate something, the more one is aware of how quickly it can be taken away.  To practice non-attachment, to place, food, people, to even my work, or the idea of work, that is ,writing books, might take another decade.  I write this to record.  Maybe to read without cringing a year from now.  To make a measure of this lived life.