I'm now frightened anymore
It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh
It's my mouth that pushes out this breath

Sarah McLachlan, "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy"
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Let me describe to you one of the things I miss: it's a mercurial moment, but fantastic nonetheless, in its simplicity, in its curvature, and its musical effects. I used to be able to stand in my home. My home! That collection of walls and roofs and doors and windows was the result of good fortune, just as my current assortment of wall and roof and door and window is the result of ill. Allow me to run tangentially: in my home, in the center was my kitchen. As Brendan surely knows, the creation of food is an artistic one.

Creation is the most fundamental art, but in reality it's transformation of raw materials into finished ones. Creation is not the same as peace: peace can be found in a void, just as tumult can surround construction. However, peace can co-exist within that empty space; you may even find it through such solitude. But creation is the true opposite of war and destruction. Through the deft illustration of such prepositions, you see that creation happens not with war, but around it.

The kitchen is the creative center of the house, and in that nest is life truly nurtured and fed. Kings and peasants all must dine; they equally lack the photosynthetic prowess necessary to derive nourishment from just being. But let me zoom in further, because I have a favorite moment, and it's a private one. I like reaching below into the bar to find an empty snifter, large enough for cognac, small enough enough for habit. Placed beyond are relics of my history in crystalline form, and in the glasswear I am able to drink from my memories: a wedding, a trip, a project, a purchase, a gift.

The snifter itself is nothing of real consequence; I bought it without real care, and so when I place it sideways on my (mine. all mine) enormous slab of granite, it resonates with the weak and disheartened plink of timid plastic on resolute stone. And one of my favorite moments in my house, in my focal point of creation, using the most insignificant sentry among an army of stemware and shot glasses (all steeped in nostalgia and experience), is the moment when a single malt elixir is poured slowly into the snifter. I like holding it up to the lights, fluorescence immobilized on a track like a spotlight on this stage. Through it, I can see the deep hues of mahogany, of chocolate, of bronze. By sheer association, the liquor seems to have infused the snifter with its majesty, and I use it now to lightly swirl a tiny hurricane in my hand's grip. The storm brews an aroma in its eye (and oenologists refer to as its nose), and it travels through my sinuses like fingers of fog through a valley. Its flavor burns deeply but momentarily, like a ghost that haunts, possesses, channels, and then is exorcized.