Walking Through the Darkness, by Ghostface Killah
Months later I was moving to Asheville to live with Valeria. There was an adjustment period, the cabin-style house Valeria rented was relatively remote; everything important like grocery stores and gas stations were about twenty minutes away by car. We lived close to Valeria’s job and I made money selling articles freelance to newspapers and websites so I didn’t have an office to go to everyday. Ultimately, it was a good decision for me to be so close to nature and to someone who dedicated her life to understanding nature’s secrets and patterns. Valeria has given me an appreciation for man’s place in the vastness of the universe. Before her, the notion that the Earth is a spec of dust relative to other things out there in space made me justifiably nihilistic; we are essentially the insects we kill flippantly as pests, insects that work and cooperate and organize, that give their lives to the survival of their species, only to be stamped out as insignificant by something bigger whose significance is determined by its physical dominance. But Valeria’s knowledge and understanding of things that occur unfathomable distances from Earth, her ability to quantify and predict the movements of cosmic entities, it demonstrated that us humans may be truly unique in our ability to observe and explain and I find some solace in that notion. There could be other beings in the universe with a sentience, a grasp of reality that allows them to develop language and mathematics, but it’s possible too that the other sentient beings of this universe are incapable of language and math and only on Earth are there books full of human knowledge of the space their world occupies. Our ability to understand and manipulate our environment is the most important evolutionary achievement of humanity; humans need that knowledge to ensure the future of our species because our adaptability comes from it. We are only insignificant if we chose to deny the natural evolutionary calling of our species, to learn and to explore.
I’ve learned all that from Valeria over the course of our relationship, but in the beginning, her love of space made her ethereal to me and I was thankful that she was just as into me as I was her.
That first day that I showed up with my stuff at Valeria’s house, she was in downtown Asheville with my uncle Thomas. He had also arrived that day because he was in talks to become the head chef at a new restaurant. I didn’t know he was in the area until Valeria called me on her drive back and I could hear my uncle saying hello in the background. I put my stuff inside and sat on the porch to wait for them. The weather was still nice so it was definitely pleasant to be outside and now its my habit, to sit with my laptop or tablet outside and catch up on the news or writing.
They finally pulled into the driveway and I carried my uncle’s bag inside.
“I wish I’d known you were coming, I would have planned a meal for you,” I told my uncle who taught me everything I know about the art of gourmet cooking. I only said it to be nice though; if my uncle is around he always insists on cooking. “You’re gonna take the job in Asheville?” I asked him.
“No, doesn’t look like it. They’re looking for something that I’m not really into right now. The owner has this big book of family recipes and he just wants someone to execute it, which is fine but if I’m gonna do it, I need some leeway you know? I gotta make it my own.” Uncle Thomas has an extensive culinary education and though he is most well known for expertly crafted comfort foods, he likes to give his food flare by incorporating techniques and staples from the many culinary traditions he’s encountered. He loves to mix southern US fare with things that he picked up in eastern Europe because he says there is a lot of overlap, namely “sweetened vegetables, and an emphasis on the proverbial meat and potatoes.”
“Are you still at the restaurant in Brooklyn, though?” I asked him, remembering all the times that I got free meals when I was a student in NY and would take the train out to see him.
“Yea, for now I am, but they’re under new management and the new owner isn’t flexible with my schedule.” My uncle travels a lot and to him its an important part of his craft, to see and experience the way people prepare food.
Uncle Thomas seemed sad about the situation, but he refused to let it get him down. He went almost immediately to the kitchen to take inventory of the food situation and then we took Valeria’s car to the store. On the drive my uncle told us how happy he was that the two of us found each other.
“You guys are perfect for each other. How did it happen though, why after all this time?” Uncle Thomas asked.
“We had an amazing night together,” I said dreamily in the back seat as Valeria drove and I could see her brown cheek blush red.
“Wes came to the institute and we had a romantic night under the stars.” She said.
“That’ll do it,” Uncle Thomas said. “You don’t think you’re moving too fast? Already moving in together, I mean. How long’s it been?”
“There’s no such thing as too fast, uncle, life is too short for too fast.”
Uncle Thomas nodded thoughtfully and I wondered what he was thinking, but before he could say anything else, we arrived at the local grocery store.
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