On November 2022

a story of rainfalls, beans, soupy dinners and moving on; memorabilia, remembering the aquamarine kitchen

I have a vivid memory of a paddling pool. A garden, long but not as wide, high pine trees at the upper end and a terrace made of cement and left bare on the other side, stretching at the front of a house. A kid’s pool is located at the sunniest corner, painted with the same blue as the one of the sky on a pupil’s drawing – exhilarated – its humidity has stained the ground over the years. The shape imitates the one of a clam shell, abandoned, it has filled-up with rain water, unmoved and greenish; tadpoles have transformed it into a nursery home. I can match the house with shots from my family’s photo albums – my first home – but I’m unsure about how reliable the memory of the shell-shaped pool is. 

I lived there once.

Over the last two weeks, I have thought about the blue pool often. In bed, the musicality of rain hitting the window at the back of my head; by my side, inside my old and unreliable flat where the ceiling leaked, water tearing inside buckets.

This November has been wet.

It’s hard not to welcome the rain after months of drought, but the human heart has a tendency to sink in stressful times. I don’t want to be wet – ‘ça pue le chien mouillé’, my mother used to say of things she wanted to get rid of when I was a child, it stinks of wet dog – the after taste of rain. I like it on grass when leaves start melting and the air stings, the moment when my body registers a change of season has occurred. I love summer rainfalls the most, sitting on a pebbly beach, the sun blasting through clouds and the thick odour of evaporating water, a grill for the senses.

The rain is falling through the mist of sorrow that surrounded me
The sun could never thaw away the the bliss that lays around me

The new moon in November is Sagittarius, one for freedom and deemed as a favourable time to cut ties. It stood high in the sky last night – the Mourning Moon – and I hope you could catch a sight of it. The horizon is low and bright, winter tiptoes, and I am relieved to be cold. The night drops like a surprise every day, earlier than the previous evening, twenty-four hours stretch into the deep navy of nighttime. This is the gardener’s last call for any tasks in allotments. Chicory and endives, paired with walnuts and sweet chestnuts, introduce winter salads while pumpkins gift cooks with brilliant gnocchi. I will also be serving myself a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau.   

In November 2022, I had to move house. 

Despite the mountains of boxes inside my flat, I only reconciled with the second effect of my displacement after spotting one of my dresses in the front window of the charity shop around the corner of my old street. Knee length, green and grey motifs with a turquoise pad at the front, I had bought that dress for my seventeenth birthday. I can’t remember the last time I wore it, yet I felt an irrational malaise at the sight of it on display. I won’t miss wearing it – this style is far removed from my current wardrobe – but I regret getting rid of it. Moving house, packing my clothes away, a movement that leaves stains behind me. 

It was raining, again. 

I kept walking home, wet, wheezing and swearing at the mist that had settled on my glasses. I thought hard to remember every single home I have ever lived in. One had a bedroom twice the size of the living room (light exposure sketches the night of an insomniac), or there was the house in Montréal I shared with so many people that we needed three fridges and two hobs, a blur, and before that? I can see wallpapers clearly: cherries in the first kitchen I remember, the lavender colour of my teenager’s bedroom, addresses for the sake of postage and postcodes sealing deals with habits. Visual details satisfy my photographic memory and enhance the stories I tell myself – recollections accommodate a home for the self.

Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.
— Zazie dans le métro by Raymond Queneau

While packing my belongings, I was grateful for the French pocket books that are small and malleable enough to use cardboard boxes efficiently. I approached the library with enthusiasm and got lost amongst the tides of storytelling. There I stood at the surprise of recalling the experience of reading each one of the books I own for the first time: dreaming with Mondo by Le Clézio, wishing I could twist words the way Zazie and Queneau do, the sweet peaches Françoise Sagan gave me a bite of in Bonjour tristesse. To The Lighthouse, a dash of Woolf when I feel like I might be drowning in angst, and Kafka’s Metamorphosis to soothe another bout of insomnia. Zola celebrated the first Parisian department store, Au bonheur des dames, and I questioned how many objects can a person own? I have been thinking about the physicality of items versus the stories we tell about them – and thus the narratives we dress our identities with in the process.

packing books, November 2022

This newsletter is for a final ode to the aquamarine kitchen, two meals simmered while packing boxes, recipes from cupboard leftovers. 

Beany soup, a tin and cupboard equation: 
800g broth
100g farro 
1 can of Cannellini beans, drained (but 1 tbsp or so preserved) 
1 bunch of cavolo nero, stem removed and cut roughly
1 leek, sliced
1 handful of cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 tbsp of oat cream

Start with chopping all the veggies, preserving the stems and tips. Bring the scraps to the boil with a pinch of salt, reduce the heat and leave to simmer.

In a large casserole, heat up some olive oil with cavolo nero, leek and cherry tomatoes. Swirl the veggies around with a wooden spoon so they don’t burn (it’ll take some time for the cavolo nero to soften). Once the veggies are looking shiny and juicy, add the cannellini beans along with a tablespoon of water from the can. Give it a rapid pulse with an immersion blender – one is enough as you don’t want a mash either, only velvet.

Pour in the farro and the broth. Bring everything to a jaunty boil before reducing to a low heat: cook until the farro is ready. One tablespoon of oat cream to conceal, stir and sip a dream of a soup. 

farro and cannellini beans soup, simmered while packing

One of the most immersive exhibitions I have ever seen is Amazônia, a photo documentary of the Brazilian rainforest by Sebastião Salgado. I caught it at the London Science Museum in November 2021. Dark rooms, silence was preserved from the rest of the venue where children ran through discoveries, large panels featuring black-and-white photos of the forest’s landscapes and the people who live there. Waters play a stitching role, sacred cascades, streams spreading rumours, the mist thick like nightmares when water meets warm air and enhances storms. Amazônia continues its tour around the world and the soundtrack is by Jean-Michel Jarre.

Amazônia at the London Science Museum, November 2021

In the aquamarine kitchen, there was no double glazing and a gas hob. When I simmered a casserole dish, water would evaporate and pearls fell down the window. Some nights the condensation made me anxious, claustrophobic and gasping for air, while on other occasions it was like living inside a cloud. I couldn’t see outside the window, only projections from my imagination. It would often be a conversation between me and my pots in the small aquamarine kitchen, pottering around and perhaps having a little dance as I got on with dinner.

Veggie orzo with red pepper and asparagus:
180-200g mixed vegetable orzo
1 bunch of green asparagus, tougher parts removed and roughly chopped
1 red pepper, sliced lengthwise
1 handful of cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 gulp of red wine
1 tsp paprika
1 veggie stock cube, dissolved in approx. 800 ml of boiling water  

Start with making a broth. In a pot, bring water, veggie scraps and one cube of vegetable stock to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the potion.

Heat up some oil inside a large pan. Gently fry the asparagus, then add the red pepper and the cherry tomatoes. You can add a ladle of stock if the veggies start sticking to the pan. Cook for 2 minutes or so. Add the orzo and pour in a gulp of red wine. Once the wine has evaporated (when you can’t smell it anymore), start adding the broth, one ladle at the time, stirring continuously and until tender. Add one teaspoon of paprika, stir, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

If you’d rather not cook with alcohol, you can substitute the red wine for oat cream. Either way, the result is creamy and there are no leftovers to pack. 

last cooked meal in the aquamarine kitchen, November 2022

At the end of a long week spent packing my flat away, I realised that the last box – the one composed of objects that cannot be grouped under a single room name – is the box that testifies of my days. I had wanted the kitchen items and the number of boxes I was able to fill-up with books to summarise what make my home and therefore rhythm my days; a frivolous thought, a sly sip of water. These boxes, in theory, fulfil the same social-facing purpose as my social media timelines do: a curated story about myself to tell others. Truth be told, the trivial stuff anyone other than me would suggest dumping, are the ones that write up the memory of where and how I have lived. I, for one, remember when and why I have picked each one of them. They are my witnesses.

November rain! November rain!
Fitfully beating the window pane:
Creeping in pools across the street;
Clinging in slush to dainty feet;
Shrouding in black the sun at noon;
Wrapping a pall about the moon.
— Ellen P. Allerton

Last Friday, I watched one final sunrise from the living room of the flat with the aquamarine kitchen. The weather was overcast and the spoiled experience rejoiced me — I can go then, I thought selfishly. Memory can also be short when one needs to forget.

I moved out and this is a farewell to the aquamarine kitchen, a room of one’s own, a space to knead, think and taste. I type this from the kitchen of a short-term accommodation in Livorno, in which a few utensils populate the cupboards. I must slide open four drawers before I can find what I’m looking for; I need Google maps to run errands. On the second day there, I bought chard, leeks and chickpeas and improvised some dinner so I could tell myself that it starts feeling like home again: 
1 can of chickpeas (water preserved)
1 leek, sliced
1 handful of chard, roughly cut
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped thinly
1 tsp of chilli powder

In a large pot, heat up some olive oil, garlic and chilli powder. Add the leek and chard, swirl for two minutes or so. Pour in the chickpeas and the water from the can, simmer. 

dinner for new beginnings, still November 2022

The kitchen here is painted in navy blue, the colour of a healing bruise, a Tuscan evening sky in winter. As I upload this edition of The Onion Papers on Substack, I remember that inside my memorabilia box, I also packed a wide clam shell that I hung on my bedroom’s wall once. Perhaps this is how the memory of the shell-shaped paddle pool originated? If I’m not fooling myself, I collected the empty clam shell on a beach in Somerset back in November 2020. 

I brew my living into picturable memories, moving on but streaming the story of my name.

Tuscan sky, photographed from the train between the Pisa and Livorno

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P.S. I’m on a deadline (something exciting I can’t wait to share with you!), which means that I won’t be able to publish this newsletter as regularly for the rest of the year. I’ll miss writing this but, in the meantime, you can find me on Instagram or inside The Yellow Kitchen.