Heat
I’m sitting by the fireplace in my family room on the wooden floor, where it’s bright with sun reflections across the floor. Must be why the dogs and I find the floor so inviting. For once, Ziggy––a grey, lanky pitbull who has a 3-foot radius of chaos––has the courage to come into the room. My father must have done something that unsettled him enough to drive him from the room. My mother and I try to get my dad to tell us what happened, but he only shrugs it off. “Nothing,” he says.
It’s a wonderful thing to have dogs for company. Much different from humans, they reliably like you and will express it in ways that’d be weird for humans to do: licking legs, showing bellies, stalking you, chewing shoes and socks. In Ziggy’s case, sinking his body onto any part of me that’s available, then farting. It’s what he’s been doing for the past hour, and I’m slightly afraid the fireplace will explode.
Lately, I’ve been reading cookbooks to understand the basic chemistry behind deliciousness. Cooking has made me realize I miss being in the science field. Though I’m certain of my current path, at times I wish I were back in the Chemistry lab, mixing reagents, playing with heat, and transforming molecules, creating new things. It’s perhaps why I’m attached to cooking; it allows me to apply science in a tasteful way and to show affection toward people (more acceptable than licking legs). I admit I’ve never been one to precisely measure ingredients. My eyes have been good enough for me, but my tongue is the best judge in cooking. Cooking’s flexibility, unlike in Chemistry labs, is where the passion comes from. There’s room for marginal error without causing toxic fumes or an explosion––or eye rolls from lab mates because you added too much of the solute to the solvent (from personal experience).
Like everything in my life, there must be a balance between rules and intuition. In figure skating, photography, oil pastels, writing, cooking, or any craft, heat is an element that can’t be taught. One must find it within oneself. My poetry instructor from Sophomore year of college started class with this idea, one that I’ve innately carried with me. She explained that stars are bright. They carry a shape. But what makes a star, a star? What’s a star if we can’t feel the heat of it? It’s bare, empty, and incomplete. The heat is the source of my life, becoming a guiding light in what I choose. Without it, how would I be human? How could the untamable motion of life ever reflect my soul back to me?
