I’ve been thinking about how much I dislike that the phone eats first. Sure, plates might look prettier than ever, but the art isn’t in what’s perfectly arranged. I think I’m just in a phase where I’m craving things that feel real.
I keep circling back to this idea of an exhibition. Something avant-garde but soft. Scenes made out of whatever’s left behind. An empty coffee cup with lipstick smudges. Strawberry stems in the bowl. A soupy sundae with two spoons. Those tiny salsa ramekins at El Amigos that somehow multiply across the table. Even the confetti on the floor after a party or the wine ring someone leaves behind while laughing too hard.
It’s always the remnants that hold the part we never thought to notice.
And maybe that’s why, with Thanksgiving coming up, my mind keeps drifting back to our old Friendsgivings in college. All of us crammed into a tiny house with mugs of cheap wine and a mountain of rolls because none of us knew how to make anything else. Everything is warm and chaotic and completely improvised.
The table always looked different by the end of the night. A half-played game. Darts stuck in the wall. A couple of cigarette butts still burning outside. I always appreciated the bag of chips we’d all absentmindedly reach into between sentences.
And the conversations… they didn’t change so much as deepen.
Same people, same jokes, just with a little more truth showing by hour (and bottle) number three.
I would choose those stale chips with those same people over any Hallmark holiday meal. Those nights felt like the truest art- messy, honest, and absolutely alive.
As my world shifts and my purpose reshapes itself, I’m trying to teach myself to savor things as they are instead of curating every moment. That feels like the lost art -remembering that the cluttered tables hold the truth. The scraps, the crumbs, the things we never thought to save… that’s where everything real lives.