Fortune.
Is it bad that there is no other employment I would rather be pursuing? I've had a number of miserable jobs, but I actually somewhat enjoy the f-&-c, though it defies common logic that I should. I like working with food- preparing it, providing it, seeing the eager, expectant look that people have when they're waiting for their order. The shop isn't too busy, and the product is simple and uniform in preparation, so I can coast through the day without much bother. It's a short walk from home to work, I need no education, no ambition, and a minimum of mental and physical effort is required to excel. No one hassles me and I can think my own thoughts over the familiar popping and sizzling of hot oil. Why should I seek to burden myself with making more of my life?
As as small girl, I wanted to be a film director. As an older girl, I wanted to be a writer. As a woman, I just want to be left alone. How many professions would enable such ease of internal privacy?
I would have made a poor writer, in any case. I can go for months without recording a few paragraphs in a journal- how would I ever manage to write a whole novel? Better that the images of my mind be contained there, with only the occasional flip of the curtain revealing what's onstage. And here are fragments, slivers of time, so I might remember.
I have no further career or creative aspirations, but I do want wealth. Not in money, obviously, or I'd be out selling small plastic bags of naughty stuff, or looking for a rich old man to marry, or scrimping and saving for university (note how I list that option last). The wealth I want is easily acquired, and scattered about for any beggar to scoop up where he will. I want a wealth of observation. Not of grand things- I'll leave the obvious splendours to obvious minds- but of simple, everyday things.
I enjoy each time I crack an egg and watch it bubble in hot butter. I wait in excited anticipation for the high, screaming music of the kettle's whistling boil. I look at my bookshelf as I lay in bed and am calmed by the rows of still, patient books. I let the windows get quite dirty, so I can become familiar with the streaks of grime, and when I clean them, the glass is like light caught and solidified in crystal. I make friends with spiders in the kitchen. I fall in love with the backs of mens' heads in queue at the market. I let myself shed a tear when I'm sad, so that the effect of looking through a liquid prism can distract me from my worry.
There is so much I have, but I want more. I want to collect heartbeats and fluttering eyelashes and dark glances and all the corners of a face and body. I want a pulse to know as well as my own, and how it can be sped and slowed by my ministrations. I want to coax unshed tears to soak into my skin, unexpressed desires to be realised, unconscious tension to be released. I want someone to melt with my warmth. My heart is golden, solid, waiting, a chalice to collect love, a chalice which shines as it is filled.
I'd love to read the rejection letters I would receive with writing like that. Yes, selling fried fish for the foreseeable future is certainly the correct career path for me.
