It was the soup that saved me. (I much prefer the typewriter to this thing, but I fear the noise.)
I cut with scissors, since I have no good knives, the plastic casing of the chicken, pink with diluted blood, inoffensive; a matter of fact. I rinsed it, pulled it’s insides outside, thoughtlessly on the counter, and then back in the bag not to be bothered with. Water high in a tall pot, in went the bird, bottom stretched open to fill and sink rather than float, bobbing as it would, a mockery it would be. Ridiculous. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (as they sing), rainbow peppercorns, pink salt. Any salt would do; it just happened to be pink, so all right. The onion half, diced as I’d been taught, heat, lid, a book. (Not just any book, it should be said that this book was written by a poet in France, written, even, about a poet in France. The book itself was a gift. A first edition, though I can’t stand to read anything in sleeves.) There is a slipperiness that a good book will lend me, an ease on my feet, time lubed up. I move more fluidly, more, it seems, importantly. There is a meaning to my motions, my endless reaching, tidying, surviving little by little, for I have not finished the chapter yet, and really, I must get back. My voice wakes up, too. I narrate myself along, as if all I needed was a soundtrack, some background noise, something against which I can stand in relief.
But it was, really, the soup which saved me. I pryed off the lid, stuck as it was with hot water and steam, more powerfull than we credit it. With a great metal set of tongs with teeth, a wonderfully utilitarian machine, a tool for doing Things in the Kitchen, I pulled out the chicken’s body, now cooked and soft, and disintegrating itself from the great structure beneath. Careful was I to tilt the cavity down, pour out the soup, and then splat the thing onto the plate. Plucking, plucking, I pull the two femurs snap out of thigh meat like the release of a suction, relief. Thump in the trash, thump. I am tugging and poking and tearing the meat in search of bones and I think that we think of muscles more in terms of dinner than of body. A rib breaks like a toe. I tug at the skin which slaps back against the meat which had before been so well protected by it. It is slimy, shiny, and its wetness is sexual, not like the muscles. When it falls back into the soup, I think of the sounds of a neighbor and his lover through thin old walls in an apartment building where no one speaks to each other. Bone by bone I tear the meat into pieces and in tongfulls splat the meat back into the broth. I have a steaming skeleton on the plate on the range, and I laugh thinking “What if a neighbor sees this in my trash and thinks it is a human baby corpse, and that I am some devil-bowing witch! Ha!”
After some time, a good amount of time, celery, carrots. Another carrot. I so like cooked carrots. More thyme, bunched as it is in clumps on its twigs, and it appears to me to be right that it should be called something which is so difficult to get a grip on. I think to myself, that, indeed is a universal struggle, is it not? It can’t be just me, no. Rosemary, rosemary, how I admire your intensity. How, sometimes intimidating, and yet always a comfort, never so mean as I fear an herb of your grandeur could be. When, as it happens, I find too much of the sprigs in my spoon, or on my palate, I am never, as I am wont to be with other things, ashamed to fish it out, splay it half-muddled on the lip of my plate, a napkin, the bare table. Not so with chili flakes, not so with garlic or mint or that curly parsley when raw. I feel a pressure to imbibe it, but rosemary, so strong as it is, is perfectly happy to be thumbed out of the gums, and wiped on the brown paper bag which lines the trash can beneath the table. Along with the carrots and celery stalks, I poured the grains of orzo from their plastic. They heaped atop the chicken meat like sand in an hourglass and I shook my head. It’s just soup.
Stirrr. Feel the steam, herbacious on my face, against my eyelids, a slight burn in my nostrils. More pepper, salt. I sit again with the book, the gift, and tap my foot. Ten minutes. Or so.
When I have gotten my bowl, and sit again on the couch, legs crossed like a child sitting but too excited to sit, I arrange the pillows beneath the bowl, the spoon, wide in my right hand and the book in my left, and my smile is loose, effortless, and honest. The broth is thick with the starchy orzo, minimally diluted, and so fatty. I slurp some skin. Sexual. I discover, with relish, the single carrot piece which I had cut differently than the rest, a treasure, silly and satisfying. It is true that its better for your soup be wanting salt than in excess of it. I think, “I’ve got to write.”
