Flow

January lands like a pile of dishes in the sink. There’s something so nice about December and its buildup to an ending, but January doesn’t feel so much like a beginning as it does a cold plunge back into continuousness, into routine, into filling the fridge with vegetables and cooking them into leftovers and clearing out the leftovers and filling it again. Routine isn’t really so bad, it holds me when I let it. But the initial shock makes me both tired and restless. My calendar looks too empty though I know my days will be full. Routine will turn my time into water, it will rush through the gaps between breakfast, nap, lunch, and dinner, eddying now and then in a moment of boredom, and then rush some more until it spills into February.

I watched Anatomy of a Fall over the break, and it was pretty good (I don’t think she did it), but I found myself replaying the argument between Sandra and Samuel, which at its core was about time. Samuel’s anger was over lost time: time that he put into moving them into the wilderness and home schooling Daniel because he couldn’t face his inability to write (from Sandra’s perspective) or time that Sandra stole from him, just as she stole his ideas, for her own professional success. I rarely feel even passing murderousness toward Anthony, but I can relate to that tension around time. Every hour not filled with Miro is given by (taken from?) Anthony or paid for ($25/hour). Time has become a scarce resource, which makes me anxious whenever I have it. Once a week we employ a nanny for the day, and I pile up my hours with things to get done, partly because I have things I need to get done but also because doing “nothing” is expensive.

Does a home hold a finite amount of time? If you live alone it can be too much. With two people, you can share it more comfortably. Now with three, there never seems to be enough for everyone.

This isn’t a useful train of thought. It comes to me while I watch Miro at the playground. There is no time for anything but there is somehow too much time alone in my head. You don’t do a lot of speaking when you’re watching a toddler. Or rather, you talk all the time, narrate everything constantly, but all the conversation you get in return is “Up!” and “Duck.” So you narrate back to yourself, you make up stories about the people around you, you entertain short flights of imagination that are usually cut off by the baby falling down or trying to take someone’s toy or disappearing completely while you stared at a tree.

I put Miro in his stroller and walk back home by way of the grocery store because we need more bananas and yogurt. I don’t know what I’ll do for dinner tonight. I want to have something nice, but I need time on my computer to answer emails, to write lesson plans, to write this newsletter, and as much as cooking calms me, it also just takes so much time. It’s too much to think about right now, so all I buy is an onion, because you can always use an onion.

The other thing I’ve been watching is Severance, which is also about time. If you haven’t watched it, the premise hinges on the familiar desire to jump ahead through a boring workday to the point at which time is once again your own. I’ve felt this desire so strongly that I quit my career four years ago because of it. I’m considerably happier now. But I think in small ways we crave dissociation all the time — or else why do we look at our phones so much? We don’t want to be around for the boring parts, whether we think of them as working or cooking or waiting in line at the grocery store or washing the dishes. We want more time for ourselves. There’s this tension of wanting to hurry time along while also being dismayed by its loss, which seems to follow no matter how you occupy your days.

It can be helpful to think of time as a resource in the context of labor and compensation, but less helpful in the day-to-day experience of living. If time is a resource, then life is a tragedy, because its foundational promise is that our time will keep on leaving us. If only some of the time is “mine,” then where am I during the time that is not? Still here. Obviously. Time is the river, not the water it carries. It’s a force, continuous, just like I’m continuous no matter what I’m doing. If I can let go of trying to use it, can I make better use?

Back home, I take off Miro’s shoes, coat, pants, and socks, wash his hands and give him a banana. I change his diaper and we read three books in his room. I leave him for his nap. In the kitchen, I dice the onion and some carrots and sauté them in oil. I add tomato paste and let it caramelize. I add lentils and stock and bring it to a simmer. I sit down at my computer and after a moment, Miro is awake. We eat lunch; we go out again. And time moves like a river, carrying me from one task to the next.

What I’m Cooking