Photos By :
Susan Marque
1
T
he sound of the rice cooking is so familiar to me that I have forgotten that it is sound that
I use to determine when to turn off the heat. When I began cooking rice I used a timer. Forty-five
minutes from the boiling point. The boiling point is when I toss in the salt, put on the lid and turn
down the heat and let things simmer. The rice is barely audible as it takes on water, and I go about
cleaning, or attending to the Internet interactions that can fill a morning, until the sound changes. If it
gets louder and I ignore it, there will be a crackling sound of the rice browning at the bottom of the
pan. I often like browned rice the best, and wait on purpose to hear that sound. Lifting the lid and
peering into the pot, I cannot always see slightly dark edges that would signify a sweet and chewy layer
at the bottom, but you can hear it, if you wait past the forty-five minute marker of time.
I should have heard my life passing. It was easy to ignore the signs. Grey hairs came early and
were dyed ritualistically, and my way of eating trimmed the fat from my body so that I stayed the same
size I was in high school. I looked young, sounded younger, and lived in L.A. Los Angeles is a place
where no one really ages. You do not see life moving through time in Southern California. Kids do not
play in the streets or on the lawns. No one is walking up and down the sidewalks like in New York,
Chicago, Miami, or Harbor Island. Much of L.A. looks like a movie set waiting for the cameras, with
trimmed hedges, and palm trees sweeping up to the perfectly blue sky. The sun shines day after day,
and the temperatures don’t vary greatly. Things stay pretty much the same. Without dramatic seasons,
there are fewer markers of time that told me I was not the girl who ran to southern California after
high school.
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THE CONE - ISSUE #8 - WINTER 2016