The Life of a Meal

Art de la table. Inherent ephemerality. The cooking, the setting, knowing that it is destined to be enjoyed and then to disappear. A table. Colours, flavours, and the aftermath. Food eaten, glasses emptied, candles burned. The imperfections of the traces left behind.

‍

I feel compelled to document it—the ending of my meal, or perhaps its beginnings. I am not sure why, but I find myself doing it every time. Scrolling through my photo albums on my iPhone, my archives of images, these instances reappear over and over. Numerous times, almost redundantly, I have made it a point to try to leave the feeling of the finale of it all at the table—difficult, but necessary. Or maybe not. Maybe these records let me relive the moments differently, in their exactness, not as memories of the experience but as something that feels a bit closer. But if I had not captured them, would their ephemerality be dreamed of a bit divergently, remembered with a faulty precision? Would they linger in my emotions a bit differently? Would they have been a bit more special?

‍

These meals, each fleeting, reveal a kind of excess in their diversity. From airport lounges to airplane trays, from tables full with dishes to scraped-clean plates, from breakfast to dinner and everything in between. Whether eaten indoors, protected, or outdoors, windswept and exposed, meals are a ceremony—sometimes raw, instinctive, and always in tune with the spirit of the moment. Maybe my love for food was shaped by growing up on a farm, or by the emotions and conversations they inevitably awaken. Regardless.

‍

Is it the preparation, the beginning, the completion of it all—the end? I revisit the moments of the meals—the transience that often lingers there. Staying at the table long enough to open another bottle, cut yet another slice of pie or that one last piece of cheese. Squeezing that one last ripe tomato onto the perfect piece of toasted bread, drizzled with the last drops of olive oil staring back at you. Expressing the tension, finding permanence in what’s meant to fade, beauty in what’s about to vanish.