Every bread you make

It feels good. I mean creating something. Anything. A short story, a drawing, a baby, a brick wall, a turd. A loaf of bread. You pick a few things from around you and then produce something with a shape, a texture, a character. You can give them a name. Take photos of them. Buy them accessories. Take them out for a walk. Maybe these last proposals wouldn’t really work for the turd, or the brick wall, but even so. What I really mean is, I don’t think I can cope with a baby right now, not to mention I can’t draw. I can write stories but I don’t get my hands dirty by doing that. I started baking bread because I can’t draw. Yeah, that’s how it all happened.
I’ve made two decent drawings in my life, both on the same day: one of a guy and one of a seagull. I called them “Guy” and “Seagull”. Since them I haven’t been able to draw properly again, but I still need to do it sometimes. Some things you can’t describe, it doesn’t work, they lose all the spirit you’ve seen in them in that very moment, the art gets spoiled. Creating means projecting onto an object a sudden glimpse of comprehension of the world you live in. Sometimes writing can express this, but sometimes you need something else. Taking a picture, or shooting a film, composing a song, arranging a choreography, building a wall and ruining your hands doing it. Or drawing a picture. It’s clear that expressing oneself takes more than one skill. That’s why my notebooks are full of written babies, drawings and walls, detailed descriptions, useless as literary material, of things I will never be able to produce.
Then the bread machine appeared out of nowhere and I knew my frustrations had come to a provisional end. I took it off a shelf in the supermarket and, as I was holding the cardboard box, I already felt like a goddess. I understood it would be to me a top hat I could put feelings into and pull some bread out. They might not become a work of art, but the ideas and thoughts that are not meant to be written would have a shape, a body. And the smell of yeast invading all the corners of my flat would be their soul.
I just have to pick all the ingredients and leave the machine do all the kneading. Then I can talk to the dough for a couple of hours or so, or put some suitable music on. I can tell it jokes or cry a little. I can show it my boobs. I can do whatever it takes. Then my hands will give it the right shape and bake it. Three hours later I’ll be holding in my hands the warm result of that process, and give it a name. My first bread was a white ciabatta, with olives and herbs. I told it a secret and called it Renata. Then came Rita, which was quite a sad whole grain bread with raisins, that was raised listening to Portishead. Later I made a rye bread with beer and sunflower seeds and I called it Lou, and then a nut and chocolate bread and named it Thomas. I danced for both of them. And they have all existed just because I can’t draw, but they have done the trick as well as the drawing would have done. They stop all the noise of the world in my head for a while, and make me feel so good, just like washing machines in motion, or the embrace of a man in a flannel shirt. I eat them on their own, though most people insist on saying how bland it is to eat bread without oil or ham or cheese or butter. They could never imagine how good it tastes to eat all my affection.

A mile in my mother's trousers

I'm in my parent’s dining room, sitting on a chair, in front of the dining table. There’s hot, thick green stuff all over me. My parents are sitting on the sofa, staring at me; their mouths wide open. None of us knows exactly where the cat is but, by now, he must have found the greatest hiding place ever. He knows he has been bad, though I don’t really think he planned to bathe me in spinach soup. But when he decided he would take a run-up to execute a great jump from the floor and skid on the table, he was clearly looking for some kind of effect.

My parents start apologising as if everything was their fault. They also start calling the cat, saying “where are you, you naughty thing?” as if they were speaking to a little child. No heads will roll, so I just say “It’s ok” and go to the bathroom to try to clean my clothes, but there’s no way. I decide I’ll take them off, stuff them into a plastic bag and put them in the washing machine when I get home. Then I go into what used to be my bedroom and I realise I don’t have any clothes to wear. I didn’t leave anything at my parent’s, not a single t-shirt. My mum comes into what is now her room, looks at me just wearing my underwear and a pair of orange and blue striped socks and says:

“I’ll get you something of mine”.

Uh-oh. The prospect of wearing my mum’s clothes is not especially exciting, but I don’t think I have a choice. Five minutes later she is passing me out a red top –very nice, I bought it myself and gave it to her last Christmas- and a pair of black trousers. As I’m trying to button them up and going through the humiliating process of accepting my mum is slimmer than me, I can hear her saying:

“You can keep them if you want. I never wear them.”
“They don’t fit you, right?”
“Oh, it’s not that. It’s just I only wear them at funerals.”

Brilliant. I sense some kind of bad omen behind this fact, which becomes a reality when I put on my trainers and everything starts to go downhill. The trousers are far too short for me, so my flashy striped socks show between them and the trainers. My green coat doesn’t go with the rest of my attire. My blue and orange socks weren’t intended to be visible. Apart from that, I can’t breathe with the trousers on, so I won’t be able to sit down on the metro unless I undo them. Saying that I look absolutely ridiculous is an understatement. But my mum looks at me absent-mindedly because her favourite tv quiz show has started and says:

“You look very pretty, love.”

But I know that if I go outside in these trousers I’ll be attending my dignity’s funeral. And I do it anyway. And I feel as if I have accepted a stupid bet and I’m just finding out that the reward isn’t worth it. And I feel slightly scared when I put my feet on the pavement, exactly like when I was a child and I had to walk to school in a homemade fancy dress costume. I pray that I won’t meet any friends or acquaintances, especially those that would judge me, either for my trousers or for my lack of confidence. It’s a long way to my place, so on the metro I discreetly undo the trousers and take a seat, in front of an old lady who stares at my multicoloured socks with serious concern, then stares at me frowning from behind her extra thick glasses and goes back to the socks again. I look at her and think “At least I don’t smell of pee”, but it doesn’t make me feel better. I look at my socks and suddenly feel happy to be wearing them today, because they’re an act of defiance to those trousers I want to get rid of. I can’t help but see them as a prelude to a life in front of tv quiz shows. And I decide I’ll throw them away and I’ll get my mum a pair of striped socks.

“Only wear them for funerals”, I’ll say to her. And she will smile, and know what I mean.