A case of The Shoulds.

 

Dear Betty,

I never knew, as a youth, while enjoying cooking and baking, that I was a part of the gender role wars.  I just liked it, and I didn't concern myself with the notion that I might be enslaving women with my pleasure in cooking.  I have asked myself many times since "what have I done?!"  And I have seen also that being good at something can often make you an object of envy and hatred.  And so, so what?  So I only cook for a very few people, and I keep it a dark secret that I enjoy it.  I don't go quite so far as to complain about cooking, but when pals start to talk about cooking, I don't join in the conversation, and I don't let on how much I know about reduction sauces, pâte à choux, or making tortillas.  

Recently, I was asked to use a little paper wheel with spaces to fill in the things that made up my 'identity.'  Well, like anyone would, I crafted this thing oh so carefully!  I kept out anything that might make me look house-wifey, or home-makery, or crafty;  everyone hates Martha Stewart Perfection, and creative, expressive women who are doing the 'real' work, women who are 'leaning in' do not have time for such things.  Consequently, this wheel was missing a lot of the things I like to do on it.  I picked only the most boyish and intellectual of the things I spend my time on.  I avoided anything that smacked of excess or obsession, and tried to stay inside the tidy lines of 'passion.'  I am not proud of my fabricated self as detailed in the identity wheel exercise, and looking at it, I didn't even like this safe, careful person I had built of six safe, careful hobbies.

And so, again.  I am enjoying (from a comfortable, safe distance, and behind my blind of anonymity), the shifting sands around cooking these days.  I hope you will read this article by Laura Shapiro about Sam Sifton's cookbook and popularity.  Shapiro has excellent criticisms, and worthwhile issues to consider.  I also sympathize with Sifton, and I enjoy his relentless positivity and cajoling.  He reminds me of these pages, in fact.  And so, I hope that I haven't, in my enthusiasm, produced a case of the 'shoulds' in you.  As in, you should cook without (or with) a recipe, or you should read the article mentioned above.

Watch for more on my favorite topic of Not Doing soon!

Love & Envy

Stop Looking Like a Sweater,

wool, 142 x 65 x 5cm, 2013,

Celia Pym

Dear Dying of Envy,

Oh I know how you feel!  You plod along for years, you think you are getting somewhere, you feel, 'yes, this little square of felt with threads through it is really saying things, this is it, I have made something relevant!' 

And then.  You find someone like Celia Pym and you know that you have wasted your efforts, because here is a her that is really making beautiful, poignant, elegant, expressive objects.  The kind you have always wished to make.

Well, tough cookies.  There is nothing you can do but try to bury your hurt and soldier on making things that are not as clearly distilled as these.  A better one made by someone else is just that; a better one made by someone else, and our job here it to minimize the suffering we cause, and that includes our endless, whingeing self-suffering.  So let's rewind, and re-phrase this post:


Dear Looking Out for Beauty,

Here it is, an artist and maker who is sending me over the moon with the wonderful things she has made!  I know you will love them too.  Let's run and get our needles right now, and start to stitch together the beautiful old broken and tattered scraps.  Let's not worry about it coming out good, let's just let each stich come like a drop of rain, with only gravity to guide it where to fall.  Let's just make little marks until we have daubed out a poem of plenty, an elegant pile of eraser rubbings, a page of smudges that mean that time happened here, and it was.









PS
Be sure you investigate a piece titled Blue Knitting.