Oh, there you are! On identification, action, and inaction

I rarely do anything without first envisioning myself doing that very thing. Take driving. I would never, could never, just get into the car and drive because I needed something or needed to be somewhere. I'd need, instead, to first see myself getting into my car, pulling out to the street and (hopefully) making it to wherever I needed or was expected to be. I imagine myself getting into the car, hearing NPR, pulling onto the street, encountering stop signs and stop lights, and detours (and how in the case of detours, I'd just turn around and go back home), and I always imagine how grateful and lucky and accomplished I'll feel if/when I arrive back home safely.

Or take writing my dissertation: I knew I had to do it, and I wanted to do it, but I was unable to do anything until I could see myself writing a diss. [Of course, part of the problem here was that I hadn't really seen or even read a diss till I audited a class with Peter Mortensen, so part of the problem was not even knowing what I was going for--what I was supposed to envision and then envision myself doing.]

I've written elsewhere about the moment when I knew I'd have to interview people for this new book project--that it made little sense for me to write exclusively about what cookbook authors said should or shouldn't happen in the kitchen. Yet before I could imagine myself even interviewing people (a daunting prospect for me because I'm shy and always assume people will be very mean to me for no reason, but not quite as scary as the prospect of getting in a car), I needed first to envision myself going through another equally daunting process, the IRB approval process, something which, in turn, would eventually allow me to begin envisioning myself interviewing people about their lived experiences in and around the kitchen.

As I detailed in that earlier post, the catalyst for all these actions, for all this necessary envisioning, began pretty much seconds after I read this line in the 1932 edition of Ida Bailey Allen's Modern Cookbook: "By her kitchen shall she be known." My first thought: I don't know that that's true, but I like the way the line sounds--if I could ever really envision myself writing another book, it would make for a good chapter title or epigraph. My second thought: Oh shit, having read this line, having considered this thought (can people really be known by/through their kitchens?), I know that I cannot not interview people. Put otherwise, the book I had been trying to envision myself writing just became dependent on still other envisionings.

*Apologies in advance for the second sentence of this next part if anyone I've interviewed 

for this project is actually reading this post and has expressed interest in learning what I find!*

At this point, I've interviewed about 39 people for this project, with another 47-50 interviews scheduled to take place in the next month and a half. Nothing makes me more anxious than when an interviewee asks when I'll be sharing my results and/or expresses interest in seeing the finished product/s, in learning what I find, in looking forward to reading what I find. With regard to the first question my answer has been "at CCCC 2020, I suppose. . .I mean, if I get in," and with regard to the matter of being interested in what the final product will be, in what I find/learn, all I can say is, "yeah. me too. tee-hee."

In all fairness, I knew the nice, smooth, tidy rug I'd begin fashioning for myself based on the cookbooks I was reading would be pulled out from under me when I started listening to what women (and men) actually did in the kitchen, how they learned who, what, and how to be with food, and how they felt about baking/cooking/food. So it makes sense to say that I know way less now about this project than I did (than I could begin to envision) before reading that page in Ida Bailey Allen's text which caused me to begin envisioning everything leading me to the point at which I am currently at now. In fact, I might know just a little bit less with each and every interview I do. But this is, I believe, ultimately a good thing. A great thing, in fact. A thing that will make for a much better book, something that underscores for me that there is so much about these complex worlds of cooking and baking and food that I hadn't imagined being possible (that the cookbooks couldn't help me imagine), that I hadn't thought to ask about, that I wasn't aware of even mattering. So, I'm okay with not knowing what the data, these stories, these lives, will ultimately suggest or reveal. 

My bigger problem (and what really unnerved me about people expressing interest in my findings) is that it wasn't until this morning (yes, really, this very morning) that I could actually envision myself *really* writing another book, this book, the point of which (at least insofar as the interview data is concerned) is, of course, still tbd. My biggest source of anxiety since starting the interview process  has been this: While I knew there was decidedly a book here--even a good book here (and this is something that seems a bit more clear with every interview I do), I worried that I would choke, that I not be able, ultimately, to help it come together. That, in the end, I would just not be able to see myself doing so. 

Just as Bailey's line triggered something that allowed me to begin envisioning the steps I've have to take to help ensure this would be a more successful book project (compared, for instance, to one that just dealt with the cookbooks), a line from page 168 of Sarah Walden's Tasteful Domesticity triggered something in me that has (finally) allowed me to begin envisioning--not, of course, the book I will eventually, finally complete (again, it's too early in the interview process to see what, specifically that will be), but the one I will begin--and, insofar as I've spent the past two years thinking and writing about cookbooks, the one I have already begun--to write. There is nothing particularly revealing or revelatory about the line itself (save for the fact that it, just like this very blog post, is about the relationship between identification and action/inaction), but I include it here, mainly so I don't have to go looking for it again: "Cookbooks guided women to form a sense of collective identity and turn that identification into action."

And so, with the help of Walden's words, I finally sat down this morning to begin drafting the prospectus, writing down ideas for chapters, chapter titles, epigraphs, arguments, and authors that I can envision using in certain parts of the book, leaving blank the portions of the prospectus that deal specifically with the interview data.  And for me, at least when it comes to the envisioning of a book, it's all a matter of prospectus. If I can prospectus it, I can see it. And vice versa. 

on eating, leaving, returning

It was six years ago yesterday (as Facebook reminds) that I returned (for the first and only time) to a place I had left behind almost 25 years ago. As I've detailed elsewhere, not much had changed except for the front door. And this too: Everyone I knew or worked with at the time had left, simply moved on, or (the more likely scenario) had been replaced. Had this not been the case, I'm not sure I'd have returned at all. Then again, perhaps I would have. I just really needed to see that front door again.

This place was, for me, for thirteen years, a kind of home. A food home. (I remember some afternoons looking out the window facing the parking lot, touching the white stucco wall and thinking that I could stay here, somewhat happily, forever--I remember thinking this expression in my head--"snug as a bug.") And insomuch as my memory has always been most alive, most vibrant, most feeling when it comes to food, a memory place. And it was a place where I lived, where I embodied, where I practiced daily, many of the concepts, theories, and ideas I'd go on to learn names for and read more about in graduate school: available means of persuasion, play, affect, embodiment, pedagogy, variations on a theme, re-purposing/remediation, transfer, rhetorical situation, code-shifting/meshing, composing, performance.

At some point, maybe ten years in, I recall asking the owner for permission to take some classes at the local community college. I had no other career plans or aspirations (however horrible the day-to-day could be with the owner and some co-workers, the restaurant money was terrific and many of the regular customers had come to feel like family), I recall "just wanting to know things." (For reasons I still cannot make sense of, reading Oedipus Rex and learning the periodic table of elements stand out in my mind as things I needed to do.) I'd routinely overhear customers talking about things about which I knew nothing, and I just wanted to know some things too. I wanted to be interesting. To know things. To have something for me. I wanted to speak as passionately about some things as some of my customers did. But I think part of me needed to understand that things outside the restaurant, or who I was (or could be) outside the restaurant, could be different. Other. Better. But mainly just different.

In the end, I was given permission to take some classes (but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays--the deal was that he'd build the schedule around that, but no more than that), but cautioned me to "be careful not to get to smart," or rather, "to watch how smart I think I'm becoming."  

Once I became an assistant professor, I recall someone asking me how one goes from being a 13-year career waitress to a grad student and then assistant professor--as though that journey is somehow miraculous or at least anomalous. What surprises me is not that fact of this journey/translation (others have certainly left careers, gone to grad school, changed careers, etc.), but that it was a transition that I was actually able to make. Truth is, if it hadn't gotten so bad that I felt I had no other choice, I'd have stayed. I have stayed until I'd been replaced. And that's what scares me most--to think of what I'd have done after I had been replaced. At least in leaving, I felt that I'd exercised at least a little agency.

What's hard to explain to others are the reasons for staying. So, usually, I don't even try. It's easier to say nothing, to cherry-pick and share only the details of those years that give me joy or that resonate with certain aspects of my academic journey, and keeping silent about others. As a result, there are times when those 13 years feel like they have nothing to do with who I am now, who I've become. At other times, I suspect they have everything to do with who I am now, and the person I fear I haven't quite yet become.

I recall that when things were especially rough, one of the hostesses, Parvin, would try to comfort me by saying, "this will make you strong--like bull." And often times staying felt like the greatest act of resistance. . .or power. That nothing that the owner did (or, largely owning to his management style, helped to occasion) could break me or impact me. That I was proving that I strong and resilient enough to stay. To endure. To keep silent.

And the money. The money and the "job [in]security" (i.e., as long as you were feeling insecure/replaceable, your job was secure) were always reasons for staying. As I'd come to understand, having had it stated directly or routinely implied by the owner for so many years, there was nothing else, really, for someone me--for people like us--besides or beyond this job. It was something I learned (however grudgingly at times) to be grateful for. At least I had this. No matter how bad it got, it was something I could count on, something I knew.

And the customers. I wanted to stay for the customers because they were kind and generous and because I often felt like I could be my best and most diverse me when interacting with them. Some would even think to ask me what I wanted to be, to do, someday. But where school was concerned, I took care, especially, never to get too smart. Or to think I was getting too smart.

As of yesterday, I'd completed 27 interviews for a new book project that deals, in part, with people's memories and experiences with cooking and/or baking--and with food, more generally. Even during (or maybe even especially during) my waitressing years, my best dream, my life goal, was to write a book. Even back then (or maybe especially back then) writing was always a way to manage emotions, to feel more in control, a space to imagine alternatives, and a place to be my best self or at least something more like the self I wanted to be.

The book I imagined myself writing then is like, yet totally unlike, the book I'm working on now. The book I imagined myself writing then would have been comprised of stories (short stories) that had little, if anything, to do with food. The book I'm writing now will also be comprised of stories (of lived experience, taken from cookbooks) that will have so much, if not everything, to do with food.