I worked late each night this week till Thursday night came and I enrolled in Amy Weiskopf’s still life oil-painting class Color is Light is Color at the Art Students League. Using a palette knife, I laid down the shadows first and the lights second, finishing with the red beneath it. I hadn’t eaten all day so I ate the apple.

“If you don’t like struggle, painting is not for you!” Amy said.

Down in the subway after class got out last night, I marveled at the wet painting in my hands. I loved Amy’s approach of being very critical and at the end of class going “great painting!” lol

The next day I worked from home, had a long meeting with Fordham University, and ate strawberries in my strawberry sweater while I waited for a Mexican restaurant to open for lunch because I want their $3 birria tacos and my stomach was rumbling from morning French Press coffee and no food.

Slightly satiated by the strawberries but deranged with hunger nonetheless, I stop at a churro cart on my way to the taco shop. I order two birria tacos and a chorizo tostada and sit down to write my dispatch, interrupted when they bring me the best flan I’ve ever had in my life. Out of respect, and with much reverence, I close my laptop and finish the flan.

Eating is a necessity but cooking is an art.