Uncertain Work

Uncertain Work Patrizia Cavalli (bio) Translated from Italian by Gregory Mellen Keywords transformation, connections, drive, perception IF YOU WANT to stop engaging in a given task, first you must perfect the instrument by means of which you carry out said task. My kitchen was highly imperfect. As a result, I cooked often, and quite well, too. And I was spending tons of money and time toiling over the perfect dinners that issued forth from my imperfect kitchen. So I said to myself, "There's only one way to stop cooking all these damn dinners: design a perfect kitchen, a kitchen so perfect that it'd die of its own perfection." To be honest, that's not exactly what I told myself; in truth, I suspect I was prompted by a longing for functionality—a functionality that would allow me to prepare even more magnificent dinners, and without too much effort at that. I imagined a sublime synchronicity of culinary gestures: the kind of thing that occurs when, without even moving one's eyes, the hands find exactly what they need, so perfectly is each object situated for its every future use. I was an excellent cook. Or at least that's what my guests thought. In this sort of thing reputation naturally plays a big role, fostering a benevolent predisposition both in the taste buds and in the discussion that follows. Still, my renown was well established and well maintained: I would regularly arrive at excesses of culinary magnificence so ostentatious that I was draining myself of money and energy. Considered in and of itself, though, my culinary world—that is, the physical space in which I carried out my culinary work—was extremely imperfect. There were all those utensils; there wasn't enough counterspace; I was groping around in a chaotic abyss. Where could I set down the pots? And the ingredients—what about the ingredients? Often I would be overcome by intense confusion and exhaustion, so much so that if my guests were happy with the meal, I would start to hate them, and by the end of the dinner I'd be so irritated that I'd go off by myself into another room, pretending to be busy, but in fact just sitting there, maybe gazing out the window. I needed to breathe. I was compelled, therefore, to envisage some improvements, at first, and then, ultimately, perfection itself. Leaning against the doorjamb, I gazed at that irrational and disastrous space. I watched as it transformed [End Page 136] before my eyes, little by little, as my needs required, until, with mounting ambition, I allowed myself to go all in, to yield to the vision of perfection: the total overhaul. I made up my mind. I was swept along by my project—and not only because I imagined the new conveniences which would give my culinary gestures that supreme efficiency, that rhythmic elegance possessed only by certain expert baristas. It was more than that. In fact, I began to glimpse a dazzling spectacle of audacious beauty. I pictured effortless movements, expertly executed, within a space designed to accommodate and assist all the maneuvers my cooking might possibly require. I dreamt and dreamt, I assessed and assessed, I made calculation after calcuation, with the measuring tape, and with my mind's eye. In cases like this one, a single careless decision—a single vague thought—can turn out to be fatal. Like an actress perfecting her modest role, like a tyrannical choreographer or director, I enumerated every single necessary movement, I executed scrupulous rehearsals with my entire body: this hand will need to grasp the salt, which has to be waiting there by the burners—but it also needs to be comfortably close to the spot where the ingredients will be prepared before the actual cooking begins. Pots, ladles, spices, cutting boards, plates, trays, knives—like ballerinas in a line, ready to glide forth into the spotlight without too much prompting, at the slightest motion of the hand, at the extension of the arm, at a two-step pirouette; but ready, also, and in the same effortless way, to return to their proper place, the place where they will...