I rinse my knife and put it aside, and then sponge down the two or three dishes left in the sink. It is satisfying to rinse the soap off, to watch the water drain away until the surface tension buckles, and to see my reflection fragment into globules. I don’t need to dry my dishes in this heat, so I let a bit more water dribble off and then I put each plate up in the cabinet. Empty sink.
I pull out my veggies, fresh from the market, and begin rinsing them too… and I’m thinking back over the week—like just yesterday, when I was analyzing what seemed like two hundred datasets. Projects with many scattered parts; to-do lists scribbled here and there and then abandoned in progress, some tasks completed, others bowled over. Too many goals, too many worries. I didn’t write the blog I intended to last week, finish that paper, read that book, cash those checks, pay those bills, respond to that friend’s email, and the worst, I haven’t renewed my visa yet, because I need the papers which require the letter which requires…
I’ve put my tomatoes to the right of the sink in my small kitchen, filling a glass bowl with the red orbs. Cucumbers pile on top. I wash them all with soap, because in the shuk they wash them with sewage water... a few more veggies to wash and I’m done, and now I’ve taken out my cutting board and I’m dicing. Tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mint and parsley, red onion: I mix it all in a bowl and I squeeze on some lemon and add olive oil, salt and pepper.
How can it all seem so complicated when really, it’s so simple? I pull out a tub of fresh humus and spread it thick around a bowl, drop on a spoonful of tehini I mixed up with lemon and garlic, and then shake on fresh cumin and paprika. Raw, sliced onion and a few olives go in a dish to the side. A glass of water, a sprig of mint. I lay out lunch on my coffee table.
The salad goes well with the mint-water. My neighbor is practicing her violin again, stopping and redoing parts here and there... which for some reason relaxes me… and I eat a forkful of humus and an olive… and it strikes me that these unscripted days are the most natural ones, that schedules and stressors aren’t real, and that life isn’t about polish…
I’m scooping up the last of my humus with some challah. Later on, the time of schedules will start again. But even then, it’ll be good to remember I can see through them. And now I’m back at the sink with my bowl, watching the water bubble and then become smooth and then dribble off again, before I place the bowl in my high cabinet. I have goals, dreams, and desires, and they all require discipline and schedules. But not for right now. Today isn't about schedules. All I have left to do today is to meet some friends at the beach.
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