The Art of Disappearing
The machine hums its blue hunger in the corner—wanting, always wanting to devour my morning coffee steam, my flour-dusted apron, my secret smile. But I am learning to starve it. To feed instead the sourdough starter bubbling like a small heartbeat on my kitchen counter.
They are all performing their bright circus acts, these digital acrobats with their perfect breakfast photos and manufactured joy. While I—I am here in my cotton panties at 5 AM, watching dough transform into bread. Ancient alchemy. Sacred and unnamed.
My fingers still hold the memory of kneading—flour ghost-white beneath my nails, the dough yielding like prayer made flesh. The loaves cool on their racks, golden and breathing. I know the exact moment when crust crackles, when steam escapes in small sighs of satisfaction. This knowing—this quiet witnessing—fills me fuller than a thousand artificial hearts could ever hope to.
The books lean heavy on their shelves, spines cracked like old friends' smiles. Millay. Oliver. Volumes of poetry dog-eared and loved into softness. I read them not to quote them clever on a screen but to let their words move through me like weather, like wine.
There is violence in visibility. In the demand to turn your morning light into content, your wildflower bouquet into performance. But oh, the violence of withdrawal is sweeter. Fiercer. I paint watercolors that will never be photographed. I write love letters to the lavender. I exist ungoverned, unmeasured, unwitnessed except by the cardinal at my window and the way afternoon sun gilds my coffee cup.
The world says: prove yourself. Document yourself. Make yourself consumable.
And I say: no.
I choose the radical privacy of being. Of breath and bread and books. Of art made for the pure terrible joy of making. Of mornings that belong only to me and the slowly stirring earth.
This small life. This sacred, sufficient life. Mine.