Entering the Portal

Travel, Art & Mining the Past

A brief housekeeping note: I’ve been thinking a lot about my decision to charge for the newsletter, and while I’m not going back on that, I want this week’s to be free. Mostly because it doesn’t include a book or a recipe, just musings. Back to regularly scheduled programming in June!

I’ve just gotten back from three weeks of travel (NYC > London > Paris > Marseille) and, despite the trip including several life highlights, I honestly couldn’t be happier to be home. I have so much to say – about traveling solo and with friends, about food and ingredients, about the life-affirming nature of art, about books and bookstores, about walking and running in different countries – that I’m not sure how I’m going to get to it all. So instead, this week I’m going to tell you about what London (and travel) means to me.

The trip started off with hilarity. I, someone who is obsessed with talking about how strong my immune system is (I should analyze this characteristic)...got bronchitis (the bacterial kind) two days before leaving for New York. Then the bronchitis did me dirty and morphed into double pink eye. Being an adult with pink eye is a humbling experience, especially when – rather than hide in my bedroom and atone to a higher power for all of my past wrongdoings – I had to get on a plane, fly to New York, see friends and have to say, out loud, ‘I have pink eye’ multiple times. Thankfully, my ability to weather humiliation knows no bounds, and I proceeded to eat panisse at King, insalata verde at Via Carota, bento at soba-ya and, yes, join the hoards at Bridges (which I hated, and we can discuss at a later date) – all with eyes that looked as if I’d been bong-ripping rather than post-nasal dripping. I saw so much art it hurt. And by the time I started feeling better it was time to fly to London.

I’ve waxed poetic about my favorite city multiple times in this newsletter over the years, and on this visit my affection felt even more potent. I wanted to explore why.

I have a theory about something I call ‘The Portal.’ The Portal is an experience – mostly of art of any kind – that transports you far outside of yourself (but also…deeper inside?) and into the realm of creative expression of another, thereby allowing you to sort of….see God? Or, more secularly, to fully comprehend what the meaning of creativity (and life?) is through someone else’s eyes. I entered The Portal the first time I saw Stop Making Sense. When I saw Chase Hall’s work at David Kordansky (three times, just to feel the feeling again and again). When I read Gilead. When I visit a famous artist or architect’s home (Charleston House, Barragan, O’Keeffe). Entering The Portal is elemental: I simultaneously feel rooted to myself and something bigger, and also giddy with hope that such creative heights can be achieved by humankind. This trip made me realize that, for me, London is a Portal, too.

The first time I visited London was with my (incredible, intrepid, special) Grandma Elaine when I was 13. For 8th grade graduation she gifted her grandkids trips (lucky, I know); I chose London and off we went in December 1995. One slight wrinkle: She’d recently broken her arm and had made the executive decision that, rather than cancel our trip, I’d simply be responsible for hooking/unhooking her bra every morning and evening (I believe therapists refer to this as ‘root trauma’). Once I’d gotten over the shock of seeing a full-frontal senior I was ready for what followed: days upon days of museums, ballets, theater, food the likes of which I’d never seen (I famously asked my grandma if creme brulee ‘had a lot of calories’) (she said no), soooo many Christmas decorations, my first David Hockney exhibit, my first Doc Martens (red), my first time seeing queer love proudly displayed. My grandma was here for all of it.

We saw Stonehenge, Sunset Boulevard and Giselle, stayed at the Waldorf, trekked across the city to seemingly every art show in existence. The woman exhausted me with her boundless energy for cultural consumption. I have actual journal entries from that time about her ability to just. keep. going. ‘I’m so tired but Grandma won’t stop,’ I wrote. She was truly unhinged! And yet, on this most recent trip, as I clocked multiple days in a row of [REDACTED] miles in search of more, more, more, I realized: I am so much like that woman.

I’ve always attributed my fierce love of London to my first time back there as an adult, in 2014, when I cooked at Nopi (another Portal). Now, eleven years later, I finally understand that my connection goes back further: to me, as an extremely awkward teen, seeing the world for the first time through my grandma’s eyes, a woman who’d already seen a great deal of it, and of life. My grandma taught me what The Portal is and how to get there. In fact, she was my Portal.

Everyone has their version of the Portal. I’d love to hear about yours – be they people, places, art, hikes, etc. Can we bring the comments to life with this one?!

Next installment: All of the books I bought and read on the trip; the food that inspired me; and the dishes I’ve been making since landing back on US soil.