Dear Bread Fans,
Ages ago, in my self-darkened twenties — yes, I’m Gen X, and a writer, and thought I needed to be moody to mine the depths of my creativity — a painter friend dismissed holidays as capitalist conspiracies to keep us from digging into our hearts and souls and making great artwork. He had a point. I was giddily making us corned beef and soda bread, and had delightedly made valentines the month before.
Was I just busying myself with celebrations? Why couldn’t I bite the agenbite of inwit right back, and write some stunning short stories?
Agenbite of inwit is James Joyce’s1 phrase for the Middle English ayenbite of inwyt, and means the remorse of conscience. I felt the agony of consciousness keenly, noticing my aliveness and wondering how to cross the bridges of our skin with words and invite each other into a common experience. Being a person was a gigantic thing, and also, so very limiting.
In those doomy days, I did write short stories, and I probably could have written many more if I wasn’t cooking up holiday feasts. As I dive head first into baking treats for the eclipse rather than head for my desk, I remember this connundrum.
Will anyone read the poppy seed spirals I’m making? That is not the right question. I love to bake, to follow ingredients through a recipe and shape dough. To come up with something luscious to share. I write from the same instinct, but the distance between my drafts and my potential readers is much larger, and seems as remote as the sun.
As we get ready for the moon to cross the sun’s path, I give you these musings. I’m grateful I get to make these choices between creative activities, baking and writing, and I hope you have liberty and options too.
I am also thinking of how choices narrow, especially with aging and accidents eclipsing our past selves, temporarily or long term. This is on my mind because a friend had a concussion, and I’ve been helping coordinate their care. I studied head injuries when my dad first had strokes 20 years ago. To try to understand what happened to him, I dove into reading, and got jobs writing about strokes and other insults to the brain. I wrote profiles of people for a newspaper run by the local Independent Living Center — these orgs help folks live on their own when facing different abilities. I was grateful to have the chance to meet with people, some of whom were living with TBI, traumatic brain injury. It was humbling to learn how they lived with revised lives.
Our brains are tender, and if you get a concussion, please, please rest. This busy, buzzy world doesn’t want you to slow down, but brain injuries demand it. Repair is slow, and while that repair is happening, brains are vulnerable to larger injury. So, if you or anyone around you gets concussed, take it seriously. Okay?
Love,
Amy
I took a class Tom Smith taught it at SUNY Albany where we read Ulysses aloud as a group. Anybody else have the great good luck to have been a student of his? Reading this book in community was a powerful, wonderful thing.
PS here’s Olia Hercules poppy seed spiral recipe
https://oliahercules.com/recipes/easter-bread-with-apples-and-a-poppyseed-and-pecan-paste/
You need to write short stories. Often. We need you to be the Wendell Berry from Troy New York. “I am prone to romanticizing the past, but the past might not cure us” Write some short stories about the people that seemed so hopeful in The New Bread Basket. Where are they now? Doesn’t seem like either gluten fear delerium or carbohydrate terror have changed all that much in the last decade. Putting sugar in a wheat based product or slapping an all natural label on something that the well healed can afford seems to be the norm. Romanticize the present. We really need that. It can still be the truth.