In this blog post, I will be responding to this questionnaire post below about Chef's Table: Francis Mallman.
Question #1: How does this episode fit into the narrative mode? Questions #2: How does Mallman's story connect to the hiraeth story you are writing in this class? Consider his discussions about home and childhood. Question #3: What major ideas/themes from this episode connect to ideas/themes from our composition course? Consider Mallmann's argument about composing a good dish, examining his life environments, and being productive. Telling a personal story about his childhood, he shows and tells his story. Tells a specific story about a specific scene. A scene is shown of his small kitchen. His kitchen. Alone in a single chair, facing a desk, ingredients stacked on a beat up shelf. He is stoking the flame of a wood-burning oven, pouring what looks like hot tea in a yellow cup, with a matching plate underneath. There is a small house he walks out of in the countryside. A single house on a small island. Sets a scene of him driving down a dirt road, waving to people on the side of the road of where he lives. He and his sister had a restaurant for about 15 years that she basically lived at. His sister loved that place. She can't return to it, because the memories takes a toll on her. “The feeling of Patagonia I feel, is my deepest rooted feeling for home.“ His home reminds him a lot of his childhood. He was first interested in music. He explains a scene of his childhood of when 4 girls from Australia played music from The Monkees and started dancing on top of a low table. He was stubborn about his freedom. He would dream about whatever he wanted. He creates his "chef's table" as decor, similar like his childhood. He talks about his childhood friendship and how growing up changed him to tell the truth and to show who you are. Explaining, it's okay to lose friendships. The memories they had, he will forever cherish, but they can't make the memories again, because they are at different points in their lives to continue a friendship over 30 years of passing. He related his cooking days a lot about being a cocky chef with a giant white hat. However, a chef once told him he was not making the right thing, just copying everything he learned. It weighed heavily on him, and he never forgot it, because that chef was right. He explained his cooking with his past. His argument about composing a good dish is what captured my attention and they way he looked at certain things of life. He explains the passion of making fires compared to making love. “It goes from zero to ten in strength. He talks about love with such a passion, however, showed he is divorced. You would think of love as loving one person for the rest of your life. He wants freedom of love. To love more than one person. He sees love as loving women as much as possible, without chasing girls left and right.He explains the process of living together, is feeling like a caged animal. He is explained as a hopeless romantic. He explains the process of cooking a steak. Gypsy of chefs, he doesn’t cook alone. They take young apprentices instead of experienced chefs. He likes creating leaders within these groups. "Maestranza" he said, means, "the people who are around you helping." He, however, doesn't like spending time with people he doesn't like. He very seldomly, invites people to eat with him. He used the environment around him, to create his food.
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Writing reflections on the work accomplished, makes me believe I can become a better writer just by asking myself a few questions. Sometimes, YOU can be your own worst critic. So criticizing yourself to great lengths, you know, you can always do better. Here’s a list at to what I saw could better and what I did, to write my own personal academic mindset.
The Process. How did I do it? What was my thinking process up to that point of the final sentence of my project? From start to finish. Who did I work with? A better question, who was my inspiration? We had a class period when we had to write about loss. I didn’t realize how much of an impact that night had on me as a child, and still to this day. Hearing people in class talk about their stories, made me want to share my own experience with it. I wrote this fully off of what I could remember from that night and prior memories that stood out to me, leading up to that moment.
What was the most difficult part of the process? I think people struggle with the thought of actually picking the topic, but for me, it was actually sitting down and gathering my thoughts and feelings of that night that he died. Memories of pure fear and panic. Writing about it made it more like a realistic flashback. When did I write this project? I wrote it in class a week before and felt like it was a subject that intrigued me because I haven’t really talked about it, and that is a memory that comes back to me so easily because it was so traumatizing for me. I believe it was a good approach. I had my thoughts written down from a week before that I only had so much time to write on, so it hit the main ideas of the story that I used to write and tell my story with. Where did I write this project? I wrote the idea and notes down in class in a short story form, then carried over to my bedroom, where I sat peacefully and quietly to gather my thoughts. Fully focusing on the memories I had in my childhood that stand out, both good and bad. It was a good approach, I was concentrated in my own thoughts, seeing this memory like a movie in my head, and telling the reader, the plot and what happened throughout it. Why did I choose to write about this topic? It is something very dear to me and something I think about often as it was over ten years ago now. The last grandfather I have left,my dad’s step-dad, is not doing well at all at the moment. It just makes me think of my other grandfather and how taking time for granted is actually a real thing. My only, actual blood-related grandfather that I knew. How involved he would to be in our lives and really showed that he cared for each of his grandchildren. It was a time in my life that I truly remember being so scared, so afraid, and so sad, all at the same time. I wanted to reflect a time in my life, now that is has been some time, to reflect on the past that I haven’t thought of thoroughly, for a while. How will I revise my future drafts to come? I hope to be more descriptive in my emotions I was feeling that night. Reminisce more on memories I can get from my head, without having to look back at some photographs or home videos. Talk about more of the fact that every time I see Monopoly, the board game, I think of him and how he was the one who taught me how to play this game, and win! I wasn’t distracted like I thought I would be, writing my hiraeth, however, it took me a while to start it. I knew what I wanted to say, so it wasn’t gonna take me as long to write it then a story that length would normally take. Stick to picking a day of the week, starting early, and write that day. That way, if you get distracted or can’t do it that day, it’s not a big deal, because you are not cramming and doing it last minute. |
Melanie
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