I’m reading with MPW students Susannah Luthi, Sarah Dzida, Susan Kacvinsky, Josh Feldman, and Russell Nakamura.

The Last Bookstore is at 453 South Spring Street, Los Angeles.

Phone number: 213.488.0599

Street parking is free after 7PM.

Photo credit: Pablo Gonzalez Vargas http://mrg.bz/PNvVWc

–Genesis 4:1 (JPS translation)

Here’s a poem for Parashat B’reishit, and for our neighbors, who recently welcomed a new son (their third!).

Eve

1.

When my body forced the child out
I drew him into my arms and felt my warmth
cooling from him, and his own beginning;
and the child looked at me and I was pierced
by his look:
it was pure and not amazed,
it was naked, it was perfectly intent,

and I thought: We are still loved,
we must be loved still;

and I thought I knew what He knew when,
the world begun, He spoke and heard
a small, new answering sound.

2.

But I have never seen creation.
Only what is created.
Did not hear the first sound
of the answering voice.
I have never seen destruction;

only what is destroyed, forced
out of itself, into ash, into rubble;

Into the body lying lifeless,
sight fled from the eyes,
strength fled from the hand.

Image by bosela http://www.morguefile.com/creative/bosela.

The month before Rosh Hashanah is a traditional time for visiting the graves of our loved ones.  All four of my grandparents are buried in Baltimore, so I’m making those visits only in my thoughts.  Here’s a poem about placing and unveiling a matzevah (monument) at a grave.

Unveiling

When after eight months we’re allowed to return,

the grave no longer looks like an error

in the neat lawn.  It seems to belong there,

with others like itself in their lengthening rows.

We’ve come to place the new stone: it’s not clear

whether to shore up our grief, or weigh it down:

I’m certain it’s to measure something by—but not

the plot’s width, nor the years of his life.

Perhaps it’s to show how much can happen

in a few bare months.  Affections shift,

thousands of words are read; one part of the world

bursts into flame, while one part rises from ash;

and no way to tell him any of this, no way

to sweep back the evening creeping toward the lawn.

We have to go on making mistakes, marrying, burying,

inventing stories, some of which are never told.

Beneath the polished granite surface

millions of granules crowd and throng,

but the hand can’t feel a single one.

In each letter, though, lies a deep roughened groove.

Across the road stand some trees we planted as children:

they’ve grown too big for anyone to carry.

And at home the mirrors seem unfairly bright,

showing each one of us what we look like now.

Nan Cohen

from Rope Bridge (Cherry Grove, 2005)

http://www.cherry-grove.com/cohen.html

If you are mourning someone now, I wish you comfort.

The contestants begin as ambitious home cooks, people who’ve clearly been “the chef” in their families and among their friends.   (We get glimpses of what their amateur cooking lives have been like up to now, as when contestant Ben Starr–who was eliminated last week, much to our dismay–volunteered that he makes eggs Benedict “every weekend,” or when Christian, from Gloucester, Mass., lights up at any sign of ocean-based protein, whether it’s a pan of scallops or a live lobster.)

Then the challenges begin.  Ingredients the cooks have never worked with (a whole Alaskan king salmon, complete with scales–too bad Christian was exempt from that one, and we didn’t get to watch him filet it, though we did get to watch judge Gordon Ramsay).  Or familiar dishes that the contestants must reinvent without destroying their essential nature (tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich, judged against seven other renditions of the same dish).  And group challenges, working together in strange kitchens, taking turns being team leader, recovering from the inevitable failures.

Time becomes a tyrant.  The judges are restaurant owners, and they never let the contestants forget that someone is waiting for the food.  On set, in the MasterChef kitchen, every challenge is timed–forty-five minutes, an hour, starting –now!  Out in the field, hungry customers are on their way.  The longer you keep them waiting, the better your dish needs to be–and sometimes they still won’t forgive you the wait.

Areas of strength, areas of weakness.  Alejandra, who left the show two weeks ago, had a gifted hand with flavors, but could falter on the technical niceties of applying heat to food.  Adrien has real talent with food and knows how to make a beautiful dish, but at least twice he’s come up with attractive dishes that didn’t address required elements of the challenge–plating “creatively” when he was supposed to copy another chef’s plating, for example.  (It was a memorable, and painful, moment when judge Joe Bastianich erupted, “Let me win this challenge for you,” grabbing Adrien’s fried catfish, coleslaw and sweet potato fries and heaping them on the plate in the approved presentation.)

And brilliance does not consistently make up for lack of people skills.  Is anyone rooting for Christian to win?  Maybe some people see themselves in him, the unacknowledged genius (and he is a kickass cook) who can’t register criticism–anyone who criticizes his work, including the three judges, is just wrong.  Not the rest of us, who have to work with, or around, people like him.

One of the most satisfying parts of watching is that over the weeks, as the “home cooks” (as the program calls them) gain in skill, they make accompanying gains in humility. Confidence dips and then rises in a more direct proportion to reality.  But you get to see each contestant realize how much he or she doesn’t know–and you get to see how this recognition helps them become better cooks.  They get better at drawing on their strengths, and the risks they take become, overall, more meaningful.  They come not out of jealousy, overconfidence or panic, but out of knowledge.  This is a sign of creative growth.  As you see how much more you have to learn, your ambitions get much more specific, much more informed.

Suzy has never been my favorite contestant, but she’s become more interesting as she’s recognized her own limitations.  I cheered for her last week when she produced the best plate of venison despite never having cooked that meat before.  I’d love to hear her explain how she figured that one out–what combination of intellect, instinct, knowledge, and nerve brought her through.  Her plate was gorgeous–well, she’s a neural engineer, and I’m not surprised that she could replicate the plating.  But something really came together for her with that plate.  Even though the challenge was to reproduce Gordon’s dish exactly, I think Suzy figured out something about who she is as a cook, how to get the best out of herself.

Another effect of the contestants’ growth is that the farewells also get more richly emotional and nuanced.  You feel that the ones walking away have been changed by the experience, and not just because they say so.  They know something more about who they are, what thrills them about cooking.  They have affirmed publicly, and at risk of embarrassment on TV, how much it matters to them.  Maybe this is naïve of me, but I would like to think that when they gasp, “This experience has changed my life,” they’re not really talking about being watched by millions on TV, but about the recentering of their lives around this thing that matters so much to them.  I’m not much of a cook, as my family and friends can attest, but I know about recentering yourself around the thing you have to do, and what a scary and impractical and altogether wonderful experience it can be.

I’ll be sad when this show is over.

In the classroom, where Dr. Whittaker was almost as much at home as in his study, this would not have happened; there each sentence lived its appointed term, died mourned by its people, and was succeeded by a legitimate heir.

Usually, I read novels cover to cover in as short a time as possible, but I’m finding this book works best as a leisurely read–I’ve been picking it up and putting it down again for a few days, not running out of interest, but unable to linger in the acid bath for long.

So: hi.

*All lovely: the company, the food, and the conversation**.  Less lovely: having to stay for 45 minutes when the restaurant’s computer went down after the check was generated but before the bill was paid.  Everyone was a good sport, though we were in a side room and we did get a little nervous about 35 minutes in, when they slid the big door closed…

**Book recs: from Giselle, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman.  From me, the many books in the Paris Review Interviews series (when David mentioned reading the one with Mary Karr in the Winter 2009 issue: look, it’s here!).

The LAPL site says that the event is full, but it’s often possible to walk in; they release seats if people on the reservations list don’t show up.  Park in the Fifth Street garage at the downtown Central Library and head early to the Mark Taper Auditorium.  Central Library is also just a few blocks from the 7th and Metro stop of the Red Line.  Exit to Hope Street; this is the northwest corner of Hope and 7th, and if you turn around and start walking north, a few blocks’  stroll brings you to the stairs to the Hope entrance.   Wheelchair access is from the Fifth Street entrance.

Auden says in the elegy for Yeats, ”The death of the poet was kept from his poems,” but picking up the book for the first time since hearing of the death (in this case, a tandem reprint edition of Cruelty/Killing Floor, Thunder’s Mouth Press), one notices change as well as lack of change.  The poems are still vigorous, sinewy; their effects are immediate.  But they are touched around the edges with something–a little gilt, a little glue? (“Sad friend, you cannot change”).

It’s rather like teaching.  Lots of freedom to do whatever you like and in whatever way you want to do it, provided you get hold of two tons of coal every day.

(Oh, and you should stay away from writing “loser” on your students’ papers.  But you probably already knew that.)