Dear Jinhwa,
 

I was starving when class ended. I simultaneously did and didn’t want to eat anything. I was torn between gulping down a slice of pizza before taking the subway or just sleeping off my hunger at home. That’s the moment I got your mail. You’re actually watching everything, aren’t you? Please appear before me, Jinhwa. I miss you.

I arrived home firmly holding the word “glitter” in your letter. Upon arrival I drank a warm glass of water and turned on the gas. Heating up and eating the leftover tofu stew with rice gave me strength to unpack my bag and do laundry. I felt energized enough to turn on my laptop and sit in front of the screen. Then I looked up glittering in the dictionary: sparkling, dazzling, splendid. The word drew into itself all things bright and beautiful. Sure Jinhwa. Even if the day soon comes when the epithet doesn’t become fall any more, let’s greet the season as we see fit.

You said we seemed to be playing a game of cat’s cradle on the wireless web. Do you know how to make a trap out of string? My dexterous friends never failed to weave a trap, shoving it in front of me with a wide grin. It was designed so that, however I twisted my thumb and forefinger, the moment I hooked them in the strings, they would come unraveled. What were you feeling as you wove your last letter? Cow flesh for beef. Myeong for mari. Women and men pigs for sows and boars. Baby cows for calves. What emotions you must have experienced writing with a firm hand about a little-known disaster. Come to think of it, you Jinhwa are the one with a large liver. Thanks to having a big-livered friend, I’m rolling the thread of my thoughts into uncharted territory: onto the streets, inside the refrigerator, into my body. I’m dying to see the look on your face right now.

Behind my deliberately impassive expression, I’m hiding my queasiness. I can’t say I never thought of the matter before because I was made aware through reading and friends. I can’t even say I tried to look away because I never tried. The questions I lingered over yesterday before the egg shelves at the supermarket were whether the eggs were sufficiently fresh and whether I should buy a carton of six or eight. In a sense, this mold glitters so. If what we considered dead and gone is actually this dazzlingly alive, what on earth can we do before its presence? What thoughts are possible? I merely face it, standing stock-still.

Truth be told, I’m concerned about the price of chicken. I know people who every day are put on the lookout for discount flyers in order to open their wallets for a single bucket. Hopefully there’ll come a day when all of us will encounter a disaster and recognize it as such. Some people, however, may be fighting too great a battle in their respective daily lives to have any room left for the consideration of others. For their sake I do worry about chicken prices. But Jinhwa, this is a letter you wove just for me. I’m grateful for your sending the letter, fully knowing this side of me.

I coveted the words picnic and potluck party so much so that I read aloud the last paragraph of your letter over and over again. I’ve never once seasoned vegetables myself. In fact, I used the rice cooker for the first time in New York. Soaring prices made a cook out of me. My Harlem tteokbokki tastes like melted rice cake covered with red pepper paste and soy sauce with a modicum of sugar. The recipe works for me, but I wouldn’t serve it to friends. Nowadays I regret not having cooked more. But I’ll try to perfect a dish or two before I become an oldster. Perhaps you, an oldster yourself, will guffaw and say, “You seasoned all this expensive spinach. What a big liver you’ve got!”

P.S. I asked about the fire hydrant to a friend who lives here. They told me it’s a New York tradition. That’s why the movies from the 70s and 80s set in Harlem typically feature water gushing out of fireplugs. For average Harlemites, especially black residents, there was no better way to avoid the heat. The few swimming pools were always crowded, and those that were available were segregated. Hydrants were the people’s only alternative against the sweltering summer sun. Now here in East Harlem more diverse races live together than before, but some things still persist.

A novice cook craving your recipe,
July