The Ritual Creates the Meaning
Self-Care for Broke Ass Poets by Amber Ridenour Walker
A Wisdom Body Collective Series on Mothering & Winter Traditions
Taking care of myself has never come easily.
From the time I left home, I prepared myself for discomfort — running off with a suitcase into the wide, but extremely poverty-riddled world of poetry will do that to you.
You get accustomed to things like living in places with no heat, ignoring small broken bones (pffff, they turned out fine), and gluing wounds together with Super Glue (chicks dig scars! It’s OK!) But I found that the most difficult thing to get used to was hunger.
At 24, I learned to smoke the cheapest cigarettes I could find (pro tip: go to a gas station and ask if they have any two-for-one deals) and then, voila, like a magic trick, hunger retreated! I had two loaves of bread a week from the bakery I worked at. That, coffee, and condiments were all the food I kept in my apartment.
In the mornings, I drank a pot of coffee and smoked two cigarettes while sitting on the folding chair, which was the only piece of furniture I owned. I would eat lunch at work and that was about it for the day, unless you counted beer. There was always a lot of beer; I learned from my friends to snag abandoned pitchers of beers at poetry readings.
And there were poetry readings more nights than I had days on the schedule at work. I was in my twenties with a college degree, but the recession was on, and this was Portland, Oregon. Thousands of people kept moving there, and the rent was high. After paying rent and electricity and my phone bill, I usually had $20 a week left over for things like groceries.
On the good side, most of my friends were in similar straits, so I never felt deprived. It was just The Way Things Were. Powell’s, the bookstore downtown, would let you sit and read books in The Gold Room for as long as you wanted, and you could use the bathrooms too. And if you wanted to find out where the free food was, you only had to ask a poet.
My friend Sophie tipped me off to the Bhakti group. Every Thursday, I think it was, they cooked enormous Indian meals at the campus downtown, and anyone could eat for free. We would sit with our paper plates for as long as we could, going back for seconds and thirds.
“It tastes just like love!” I said once, rapturously.
Sophie laughed so hard that she almost choked on her blessed rice. From then on, we would say, “Tastes like love!” as sort of our version of Grace, these two ratty-looking poets, all in black, cackling amidst all the apple-cheeked college kids. Poor things: they had no idea what their art degrees and idealism would get them. We were their scruffy, cynical future.
Soph and I turned out lucky, in the long run. We both had disastrous first marriages. We came out as queer (sorry, Ma!). We married again, this time finding sweeter partners. We went on to publish our work in actual books, real ones, like the ones we used to not be able to afford, and we even have heat in our houses!
What sweet, sweet, amazing gifts we stumbled into, on the brink of our forties! But I think the thing that makes both of us feel the luckiest, and the most amazed, would have to be the ability to buy and to make food — wonderful, warm, love-tasting FOOD. I am sure anyone who has ever lived with hunger agrees with this sentiment.
Quite a lot is written these days about the importance of self-care. Usually I see this used as a selling tool, and as somebody who spent quite a long time under the poverty line and now works in the beauty industry, let me tell it to you straight: it will NOT make you feel better to spend money on coffin nail manicures or pink balayage trends if you do not have decent food to eat — it will only make you feel anxious, duped, and more needy than you felt before. Mother yourself by having food to eat first. Then tackle other issues. Trust me on this.
It has taken me years to understand that THE RITUAL CREATES THE MEANING.
Cooking is a ritual. I struggled for years with an “I deserve nothing” complex so I know how hard it can be to spend money on food/cook anything for yourself. But engaging in the ritual of chopping things, putting them in a pan, and then sitting down to eat something that YOU cooked for YOURSELF can become a ritual that transforms you.
If you haven’t made yourself delicious comfort food before, or think cooking is a “waste of time” if it’s just for you, I encourage you to try it. When you perform the act of taking care of yourself as best you can, of feeding yourself, you are granting yourself love at its most embodied and basic.
And hey, if you just can’t get there, at least please order a good, hot meal for yourself. Or ask a poet where the free food is. Even if you are alone, remind yourself that you deserve this food. You deserve this love.
Here is my very favorite winter recipe. The ingredients are mostly cheap. If you’re really strapped for cash, you can find all these ingredients at The Dollar Store, even a pan! They are quick and easy to make, and they really make you feel warm and safe.
I originally found this cookie recipe, or a version of it, in a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook when I was getting my undergrad from The Evergreen State College. I baked a FUCKTON of these during the long dark Western Washington winters.
The black rippy vintage dresses I wore back then would be stained and flour-dusted, but this only added to their effect, I think. Molasses is a great staple for vegans and poor folks to have on hand anyway, it’s a good source of iron. And the fat, sugar, and spices in these cookies give you a happy buzz like a glass of champagne.
When my first book contract fell through because the suddenly press closed, and it was a cold, COVID-quarantined February here in Colorado, I cried for a while, and then put on my Big Girl (pajama) Pants and made these cookies. Sitting on the floor, drinking red wine and watching the cookies slowly puff and crack through the oven door was some powerful medicine.
It got me through. Life went on.
Six months later, after a bit of luck with a new press, I made these cookies while listening to Annie Lennox’s Medusa to celebrate holding my first copy of my first book. I lit candles and offered some cookies and champagne to the spirits of Allen Ginsberg, Diane di Prima, Joan of Arc, and my own beloved dead pals. These cookies have magic.
Recipe for GINGER MOLASSES COOKIES
First, turn your oven to 350 degrees F.
You will need two separate big bowls, and one smaller one. (Use pots and pans if you don’t have bowls).
You will also need some kind of pan that can go in the oven. Don’t worry about greasing it; these cookies are like 50% butter.
In one big bowl, mix together:
2 ½ cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon nutmeg (sometimes I dump in cloves too; really, go nuts if you like spices! A few big shakes of Pumpkin Pie Spice will do nicely too).
In another big-ish bowl, mix together:
¾ cup “butter” (I use Earth Balance), softened enough to stir
¾ cup brown sugar
½ cup dark molasses
Start stirring the flour mixture into the wet stuff. Use a big sturdy spatula and go slow — it’s tough and sticky! I usually end up throwing the spatula aside and smashing it all up with my hands.
Once it’s all mixed together, roll the dough into golf ball-sized balls. Then roll them in a little bowl of sugar so they get nice and coated and plop them into the baking sheet.
Cook them for 9–11 minutes at 350 degrees. The tops will puff a bit and then start to crackle. That means they are done. Take them out and let them firm up for a few minutes on the baking sheet. Then, GO NUTS. They are at their best hot and gooey, but they’ll stay good for days, and they are delicious with any beverage. You can even eat the dough and it’s wonderful, too.
Tastes just like love.
Amber Ridenour Walker’s work has appeared in such places as 20 Minutes in Portland: A Special Edition of The Portland Review, Word Riot, ALARM Magazine, Fast Forward, 580 Split, Tiny Spoon, LEON Literary Review, Local Smoke, and Bombay Gin, among others. Her book, Surfacing, was released through Free Lines Press August 2021. Amber holds an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and she currently lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She works as a hairdresser and as a poetry reader for Split Lip. You can find her on Instagram @amberridenourwalker.
