At the Table

a poetic place

I look over my left shoulder, out the window to let my eyes get lost in the thick canopy of oak and elm leaves that divide our backyard from the parking lot for another apartment building. This is the view from where I sit to write. It’s also where I eat breakfast, alone, before leaving for work, and my place for the dinner that I share with my husband at the end of the day. Behind me is the stove; sometimes I find myself monitoring a simmering pot while reading or writing on my laptop or in my journal. The table is cluttered, in a comforting, lived-in way: a loaf of bread here, a stray book there, perhaps a birthday or holiday card propped up against our hoya plant, whose longest vine has twisted itself around the window blind wand as if to establish its place in the home.

This is not the first time my kitchen table has served so many functions. Growing up, we’d clear the dinner table in order to settle back into our chairs, my sister and I doing our homework while my parents graded their students’ papers. The kitchen table in my tiny apartment in grad school was at once a place to eat, to work, and to prep ingredients for dinners and baking projects. It was the only spot in the apartment that I had for all of those activities, and it was well-used for them. 

I sit in this kitchen spot to write, partly out of necessity, partly out of comfort. In our two-bedroom apartment, where our second bedroom serves as my husband’s work-from-home office, the kitchen table is the most suitable, the most comfortable spot for me. On an ergonomic level, the chair is cushioned and the height of the table doesn’t strain my muscles, allowing me to sit here for hours to read, write, and think. In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard writes, “Over-picturesqueness in a house can conceal its intimacy. This is also true in life. But it is truer still in daydreams.” To be intimate with a person, or in a space, implies a deep feeling of comfort, a full feeling of acceptance. When Bachelard writes of intimacy, it’s not solely in the sense of having a close, deep relationship; delving into imaginativity in new, radical ways is a form of intimacy, too. This writing spot is not picture-perfect. As much as I can gaze out the window at the canopy of trees, I can look in the opposite direction, to the counter space where we leave our house keys, wallets, lip balms. It’s not overly picturesque because it’s not staged or sterile. It’s full of these everyday items — I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it clutter — because it’s lived in. My comfort in this spot — a comfort that has been fostered by this room containing so much everyday activity — surely helps my mind explore new thoughts, expand understandings, my musings able to become more imaginative, more intimate. Here, I can settle into my thoughts, run with them, find my means of articulation, of self-expression.

I’ve long considered the kitchen a site of self-expression. On a date when I was 21 or 22, I was asked if I had any creative pursuits; I replied, “I cook.” This was the first time that I articulated, in describing myself, the joy that I found in the kitchen as a source of creativity. That year was the start of my treating the kitchen as a space of experimentation and that I spent intentional, meaningful time in the kitchen, dedicating part of my weekends to procuring ingredients and cooking with or for friends. Bachelard writes, “Through poems, perhaps more than through recollections, we touch the ultimate poetic depth of the space of the house.” In Bachelard’s view, the comfort that shelter provides allows for such imagination, daydreaming, creative self-expression.

That the kitchen serves as a site for both the private, self-contained moments via thought and reflection as well as for socializing, for sharing with others gives it a multi-dimensional intimate quality. Although much of the reading, thinking, and writing happen in solitude, that it happens in a space that is common, multifunctional, and social establishes connections between activities that are otherwise mostly in isolation from each other. The common, everyday nature of the space gains new meaning; the kitchen table’s significance is in its quotidian nature, in its multi-functionality. Using the space socially, in a way, invites guests into the privacy and the interiority that the space holds when it is used for writing and thinking, and this deepens the space’s intimate potentials. 

The space of the room and the table itself take on a palimpsestic quality: each function of the room re-inscribes it with new meaning, but not without borrowing from its other uses. The table may be cleared of dishes from a meal to function as a writing site, or vice versa. Subtly, these seemingly disparate activities influence each other. Being in the kitchen to engage in thought work has allowed me to take small breaks to prepare dinner ingredients; last week, I made a rhubarb compote while starting to work on this piece. The multifunctionality of the space keeps my mind stimulated. Likewise, the space of the kitchen, the activities that take place in a kitchen – cooking, eating, communing — has impacted my perspectives on issues including domestic labor, ingredient sourcing and food access, and community-building. 

As a student, I tended to stay away from studying and writing in the cubicles tucked away into the library stacks, instead opting for cafés and semi-social library spaces: computer labs, study rooms, student lounges. I found the stacks and cages too isolated, too sterile, needing the mental stimulation that a more dynamic space offers. Ultimately, isn’t writing a social act? The thoughts that influence a piece of writing are always influenced by things external to ourselves; much writing is done in order to share thoughts with others, perhaps generating new connections, new intimacies. 

My kitchen table, and most frequent writing spot