The Art Of Destruction

As I write, Luis and Brandon are upstairs creating havoc. They are deconstructing my kitchen amid lots of pounding and sawing, making the dust of ages fly as they take apart the old cupboards, pry up the hideous tiles that I have always hated, and carry away the sad, broken cooktop. While it looks like chaos, there is art to the work they are doing now.

We are pretty useless in this stage of the work, so we just come downstairs to our office with Cora, partly to escape the noise and mostly just to stay out of the way. Our contribution this morning was to show the guys where the bathroom is and to bring them a cup of hot, black coffee to fuel their hard work.

No cooking will happen today, even though we have a countertop stove. Instead, we are taking our young friends Naomi and Sam to Chez Panisse for a farewell dinner. Naomi has completed her Ph.D. in Classics at Cal and has accepted an exciting professorship at Harvard, so they will be moving to the Boston area in midsummer. 

Selfishly, we will miss their young presence, but we always knew that Naomi is a rock star of her specialty, so we knew it was unlikely that they would stay here. Sam is a shining star in his specialty, too, so they will go far, both physically and academically. 

There is an art to what happens in the kitchens at Chez Panisse, too, so it will be interesting to compare the art of destruction with the art of consumption, all in the same day.