AFTERWORD
Washing this Pot
Washing this pot,
metal returns to metal,
flowers brilliant and shining.
In heart work
arms, fingers, toes,
feelings, thoughts, breath,
and pot flower together.
The body sparkles with the flow
of fresh creek water splashing
over and around the rocks,
everywhere reflecting trunk,
branch, leaves, sky.
May all beings flower
in the brightness and clarity
of this heart working.
KNOWING THE LABOR AND ATTENTION THAT GO INTO COOKING, I feel an abiding gratitude for cooks, both those close and near and those far and wide; for all those who shop and wash, cut and grind, bake and sauté; and also for those who plant, hoe, and harvest. I extend this gratitude to cooks throughout time, an ancestral lineage coming down through the centuries: those who know which mushrooms are which and how to cure olives; those who fry, and those who stir.
Over the centuries such a tremendous effort has been made, endless hours of patient and impatient toil, the proverbial hunting and gathering, digging, skinning, shelling, all of which has brought us here today. Our bodies have fed on oysters and clams, pumpkins and corn, deer and quail, creatures and plants we might no longer recognize, but even more intimately our bodies have been fed by countless unacknowledged labors.
During hours and days in sun and rain, hands have become frozen, dried, cracked, lined, so that we may eat, so that we may drink. Looking at your hand, you may catch sight of this, but especially in old, well-used hands you see this, you know this: These hands have worked. They are knowing hands; they know how to cut grapes from the vine, how to rig the fishing line. The aged aunts’ hands in Venice know how to flick gnocchi curls from the mass of dough, and the women laugh as our hands, which are so clever in their own way, fail to display the same easy dexterity.
Sometimes when we are quiet we feel it in our hands, feel it in our bodies, that effort and toil, that resourcefulness and resoluteness which has brought us here. Our bodies, our beings are full of it, replete with it. We aren’t here by chance. Innumerable beings worked their hearts out to bring us here. The body is not just made of skin and bones and tissue, but is also made of this effort and caring of past generations.
Cooks everywhere embody this tradition and transmit this body to us. We arrive in this moment. Gratitude pours forth.
The Chinese Zen master Yueh-shan expressed his life like this: “Awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand, still I go on.”
Thank you for your sincere efforts. I wish you good health, happiness, and well-being.
