The fireworks, day 1

by sinae park

Sinae (she/her) is an illustrator living in London, who does full time design work at a skin-care company and this is her food of the week. For more, visit @carrotate

Sinae also runs Fortified with Kate.

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We are walking around the dark-lit exhibition space in Camden Arts Centre. Kate is getting picked up soon and I know realistically it might be my last time I see them before the year turns. We had said to talk about Fortified then, as it normally is. The conversations circle around the tender details of each other’s life. The last 20 minutes of our time together, oh, so for Fortified as it always has been, a side trick, making each meeting purposeful, exciting and regular.

I want to do a fortified week, a week of heartbreak food diary. 

Are you heartbroken now? 

Yeah — I was, I am and I am afraid I will be this in the future too. 

I have been carrying a small notepad which I get from a DIY shop or a regular corner shop near the many ‘mine’ dotted around East London. The pad, being filled with small dates and big dates, food and drink shared together, seperately. How small / big each date it feels for the physical duration of it , I always fail to control how much imprint it seems to make on my day-to-day.

With one person I went on a date with, we only drink a half and it is always at the same pub. The text message reflects this routinely nature of date. Phone pings with the text correspondence around the same time each day. Very similar to taking a daily vitamin. One or two pills each day? It is one or two pings in this occasion.

Each message allows the reader (me and the other) to see what each other’s evening plate is filled with, the glasses poured with drinks being had, steamy plastic bags of occasional take-aways after a swim, and the vanilla ice-cream being had with port, watching the rich people doing the filthy, not-great, rich things on screen. 

The following day, inspired by their evening ice-cream, I buy a tub of vanilla ice-cream on my way home and have it with honey and sea salt, but not wanting to see rich people doing filthy, rich things, I am tuned in for watching Catastrophe for the third time.

However, this diary will actually not be a heartbreak diary because I am currently taking a break from being heartbroken. Plus, as you can imagine, some of the stuff might be a little bit too dark to share. I might have to take time to mask the dark and vulnerable bits with my drawings or something so it feels more gestural reading than it being just the blocks of heavy bags. 

This is to say, this week’s food diary will ‘just’ be the food that marks the drowsy routine of my week. Grocery shopping at small tesco, the pack-lunches, half cider at a pub that gets me through journaling after work on monday, and maybe some dinner meals.

I hope you enjoy this and I know it’s been so long since we shared something here. Sometimes it feels too precious to put something out here because we love this space and we want to make sure we share something good and exciting. But then, at a certain point, you should just see what comes up. Maybe my attempt to turn the stove on and see what I rustle up in the meantime.

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It was a day of doing life bits as in, the upkeep of things that help the week ahead. Going to the laundrette, going for a long walk while catching up with M on the phone, cycling for a coffee with L in Shoreditch.

I had always found that I need time alone when I spent the day outside with friends during the day even for an hour. Running is my way of finding a forest in hackney. Returning back to the forest whenever I need it.

I had said no to the fireworks and instead went for a small run in hackney down. V pinged me a text,

There’s a firework rave at anchor and hope!

followed by another, ‘L said you’d love it! Famous dj and cute base!’

My running feet think as they cover the wet pavement. Turned the corner and I text back, ‘On my way!’

I had felt haphazard and upset some days this week and running now, listening to the sound of the fireworks, seeing young people gathered, all looking happy, I am proud I have come to Sunday actually feeling great and I want to be part of this.

I see a swarm of people. Lost. I text V again, ‘I am lost.’

‘Push through’, V texts back. I come through and find my people in the end. J helps me with climbing up on the bench. Beer has been handed from S from below. I am dancing in my running shorts on a bench while J is also having so much fun, both of us are holding a bottle of beer, shouting, ‘a little bit more of the music!’

The music was very in and out so we all stand in silence, our bottles hang low when nothing is happening on the deck or the sky. My mind is at the kitchen. I had marinated chicken with soy sauce + dark sugar + orange + loads of coriander on the previous evening. I see two people in the group leaving then see this as an opportunity to say good-bye, and retire to the stove at my home kitchen.

I run a cold shower and find the beer spill on my hoodie. Eek, this hoodie will have to wait until the next washing-run unless I hand-wash sometime this week.

I cook the green beans and garlic in olive oil then add chicken with all the things that were in the marinating pot. Pressing the chicken with the lid. Pouring the butter beans with its juice from the tin. More and more coriander please. The juice from butter bean tin is what’d make the meal so very flavoursome. I felt weak and hectic the whole week — today is actually the first day in a month time feeling grounded and I see my contours. Feels like a celebration. Dancing in my purple running shorts. Fireworks. Kisses. Welcome to the family. And this orange chicken.

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