Fred Aiken Writing

art supplies

i kept all my art supplies
from college,
back when i had a lot more energy
from energy drinks and cigarettes,
to fuel 2am sessions of drawing and painting 
for hours at a time
because some sort of inspiration came on,
and it never seemed to matter
that i did not have any artistic talent,
that my figures and scenes were hackneyed or distorted,
or that my color scheme was haphazard,
none of it mattered,
because it was college
and i liked drawing,
but now i no longer do it
because it never feels like i have time
and i definitely don’t have talent,
so all my art supplies sit in the corner of my home office
and mock me from their vantage point

Favorite Recipe; Simple and Out of Reach

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite recipe?

View all responses

I do not like to cook. But I do like to eat. Not to excess. Or at least I don’t like to think that I eat excessively. Just the three meals and the occasional snack. But I do cook, both for myself and my wife–and she for me. We cook for each other. But it’s not like a thing that we do because we like cooking. I married someone almost exactly like me in that regard. We both enjoy eating and we don’t mind making meals, but it’s not our favorite activity. It’s sustenance. Cooking is a form of boredom for us both. And I suppose because of that reason, we tend to stick to recipes that are super simple and generally take less than 15minutes from start to finish.

This isn’t to say that my wife and I haven’t tried to cook more complicated meals. We have. But by the end of those super fancy meals that taste really nice and required a lot of effort because of all the different ingredients and cooking techniques and equipment needed, we’re exhausted. Our energies are spent, and we end up staying in bed for the rest of the night until we fall asleep.

But if the meals had something like 5 or less ingredients, and we can make it in about 10minutes or so, especially if we only need to use the microwave, then I am all over that recipe. There are a lot of meals that one can make that fall under this category. But yeah, I guess if I were to say which is my favorite, then it would be the Simplest Meal of Them All.

With that said, I do not do meal prep. I’m not a sociopath that eats the same meal six days in a row.

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August 15, 2024

notecard in a used book

i bought a used copy of
the flower of evil, and on page 207
i found a notecard with a name and a number,
and while the sensible side of my mush-filled brain
says it would be unwise,
unhinged, 
not-v-e-r-y-advisable,
to call the person,
i can't help but recall
that little jingle from my childhood,
would you be mine? could you be mine?
won't you be my neighbor?