It’s easy in this season for my mind to turn to artichokes. They are at every market here in France, big ones with hues of purple and green which I buy, one at a time, to steam for myself for dinner. I will eat strawberries in fall and tomatoes in winter, but I will only eat artichokes in spring. Such is the way it’s always been. Growing up, we would eat artichokes exactly once a year, always on a day which seemed to last a little longer than the one before it. What I know now is that artichokes are remarkably slow to cook, extremely difficult to eat and it could be said that their end does not justify the means. But I do love them. Their taste is one of coming out of hibernation.
When my mother would make us artichokes, she would pair them with a side of melted butter mixed with lemon which she portioned for us into small ramekins. It was not beyond us at an early age to realize how indulgent this was. And such was the rule that once you ran out of butter, you had to eat whatever was left of your artichoke plain. It is easy to want to eat all of those stiff outer leaves dipped in butter first. You could fold them in half and create a sort of spoon with which to lap up the sauce, and the bitterness of the artichoke complimented the sweetness of the butter perfectly. But, if this was your approach, by the time you got to the heart, the meaty center that was rich on its own and absolutely sublime, you wouldn’t have any left. And a plain artichoke heart is fine. But one lathered in butter and lemon was always the best thing I’ve ever eaten. An i-waited-all-year-for-this sort of taste.
If patience is a virtue–one which we are taught young–why is it so easily negotiable to those other values of productivity, resolution, moving forward and moving on? We are as quick to forget that things take time as we are to slap a bandaid on a gushing wound.
The other weekend, I rented a car to drive out to the country. Franck–the man at the dealership who mentioned that he had once spent time on Staten Island–upgraded me for free to a model that was–he assured me–new and also discontinued. The first and last of its kind. I was reminded then of how much I love driving. Its feeling has become less and less familiar to me, a natural symptom of living in New York. But there is something about turning on the playlist which you had accidentally perfectly prepared for the occasion and rolling down the windows as you yield onto the freeway that remains uniquely exhilarating. Although most of my drive was actually around the sharp bends of unpaved roads, past endless plots of vineyards, through cow laden fields and small towns sprung from the gum-drop minds of gingerbread men.
And it’s easy on long drives for my mind to turn time and the way it means different things in different places. Like how 40 minutes in New York gets me, by foot, to Tribeca. But 40 minutes in Burgundy, gets me, by car, to a whole other way of existing. All of the people I passed as I drove were either standing in the doorways of cafes or sitting under the swooping canopies of patio umbrellas. Everything and everyone was suspended in stillness.
And it’s easy to think about the way things change like the landscape I drove through and my relationships with friends and my relationship to turtlenecks and how I used to not like cake but now I make them for a living. Or about the things that have changed me, like the fish and rice I had at a bistro in Paris last month that was wonderfully simple and the writing of Anthony Bourdain and the writing of the books I’ve just read and the books I read in high school and the teachers who gave me them who have become my closest friends. And sometimes when I drive, I practice reciting eulogies out loud. A constant reacquainting with the way things end.
But when I finally arrived where I was going, a vineyard on the edge of Macôn, I was surprised to discover that things were, actually, just beginning. It was just past noon and people were gathered around drinking wine, listening to music and smoking hand rolled cigarettes. The day was slow and patient in the way I imagine falling in love to be. Heat hung over us like a mistletoe.
After some time, the group of us were taken down the road to the fields. Uniform rows of grapes were grafted to chicken wire as far as the eye could see. To our right, a man marched paths through Chardonnay behind a horse that was hitched with a plough. They—the man and the horse—trudged at the pace of molasses, leaving earth behind them as they went. To our left, three men stood around a pile of limestone contemplating which to lay first. In all directions, there was an obvious resignation to the past and an obvious preoccupation with the future. I couldn’t help but wonder where that left us.
As the horse continued through the fields, row by row, I would come to learn that the men who stood around the rocks were tasked with rebuilding a small section of a large wall. Part of which had, with time and weather, crumbled into the pile of sand and stone from which it’d sprung. The part of the wall that remained, they informed us, was over 1,000 years old. I can’t conceive of time in this increment. My life seems to fall apart and rebuild every fifteen minutes or so.
But rebuilding is meant to be a slow process. Slabs of stone were placed and crevices were filled with smaller stones that were crafted, at random, with a hammer. And not like a special hammer. The type of hammer you would use to knock nails into plaster. The work was a form of manual labor that can only be described as medieval. And the men’s commitment to its process astounded me in the same way religion astounds me. The way it was once our penchant to inch closer to things we cannot know to exist, whose outcome we cannot promise. It’s our need for arrival that spawns the fanaticism we need to keep us going. Or, its this same need that leads us to believe we already have. In the case of the wall, the former is mostly likely true. In the case of our lives, it’s likely the latter.
I am not a patient person. It’s one of the first things I ever knew about myself, like the fact that I’m happiest by the ocean and that my eyes are uniquely green. I am not a patient person nor am I a hopeful person. But I currently find myself at a point in my life I could have only dreamed of getting to—I have a job I love, I’m traveling often, I am writing often, I have the most amazing friends. And I think I did dream of it. Like I think I could picture it when I was sixteen and sad. I just didn’t believe it would ever be real. But, as it goes, life springs from groundwork, like moss on aged limestone, even when we think it won’t.
And it’s easy from this vantage to reflect on those long and dreadful summers when I thought things were good. And I feel sorry for the girl who conflated excitement with happiness, and company for friendship. And I am coming to understand that the difference between delusion and disillusionment is believing that things are good versus learning that truly good things, invariably, take time. In fact, I’m starting to think that our constant need for resolution is making us numb to Quality. That, generally, we are inclined to mistake things that happen quickly with things that have value. We don’t like to lay stones. We don’t consider that lives forged from patient processes might actually turn out wonderfully. So I have to wonder, what are we always rushing toward? Whatever it is, I’m coming to accept, it pales in comparison to the things we wait for.
Sometimes I think that my life can only be so good now because of how broken things once were. And it’s taken time. And I’m not a patient person. And I’ve been ill with waiting. But if this is its reward, then I am starting to understand its value. I can only hope this lasts 1000 years or so. It won’t. But then again, what do I know?
Because I now eat my artichokes with a drizzle of olive oil. And I eat them more than once a year, as often as I can during peak season, one of the advantages of adulthood and being able to cook for oneself. Although I must admit, it never tastes the same as the way my mother made them. And I can’t help but wonder if they were sweeter then because they tasted, too, of patience. An early lesson in what it meant for things to be Worth the Wait. A certain promise that they will be.
this brought me to tears, I love your writing! been silently subscribed for a while now and grateful you exist
beautiful and thought-provoking. it took a long time for me to understand that the little joys in life, whenever they appear, are often the most meaningful. your perspective is lovely (and now i'm craving artichokes 🤭)!