The Weight of the Table

Hunger is a simple thing. It is the body reminding the mind that we are tethered to the earth. In the north, we eat to keep the cold at bay, a functional necessity, a quiet transaction between the stove and the marrow. But there is another way to eat. A way that is not about fuel, but about the slow accumulation of hours. To sit at a table while the sun moves across the floor is to acknowledge that time is not a line, but a circle. We gather, we break, we share. The plate becomes a map of where we have been and who we are with. It is a fragile peace, held together by the steam rising from a meal and the long, comfortable silences that follow. When the plate is finally empty, what remains? Is it the sustenance, or the memory of the hands that reached across the wood to meet yours?

Catherine Ferraz has captured this stillness in her image titled Tapas in Mallorca. It reminds me that even in the heat of the south, the act of eating is a form of prayer. Does the taste linger longer than the afternoon itself?