Nomadic Tribe Soup

Sunlight has a way with kitchens. It bathes everything in dazzling surrender, sweeps the unswept floors, swallows bothersome details in sleek minimalism in hues of bright. Dishes in the sink? No worries! Pour a little sun! I think our dishwashing liquid is actually called "Sunlight" but we see no use for it. A winter's morning or afternoon is never complete without those rays that assure us all's just swell. There is surely some action out there in the world but here inside we are safe, reptile-like, gladly missing out. This kitchen hails me when I greet it in sweet and sour moods. It speaks Portugo-Italian cockney and knows how to handle a fussy Mediterranean. On its walls are tubular tape-drawings by Coco. They exhale a collective human angst in red, the untold stories of the Spanish Civil War. The ceiling is tilted, to gently sleigh away the snow accumulating on the top of it. There is a gas stove, a concrete counter top, hardwood floors, w...

I'm having a hard time waking up. My roommate Zoya, volunteering to get me on my feet no matter how foul tempered I may be for the next few hours, pulls the duvet, tickles my feet and threatens me : "This is the third and last warning: next forty five minutes I'm doing qi gong!" (Note: I'm observing some serenity and movement involved. To me it's all yoga and scenes from Karate Kid.) When I finally descend from the heavens to our shabby-chic-rustic kitchen with a sloped roof and no heating, I feel in my bones that I need to be hibernating instead. Grind beans, whistle the kettle, sniff, slurp, sniff my morning coffee. In slow motion I climb back the stairs and Zoya is already in our study/art room at the desk, next to the plastic leopard on the windowsill. I tell her I still have a soft spot for the beauty of a man who, like mercury, fills the cracks of my psyche and leaves without a trace. I mutter classic proportions, universal beauty...takes nanoseconds...