The World’s Heart
She scraped the inside of the large cauldron vigorously. Scoured and scrubbed. It was still oily. She sat alone surrounded by heavy layers of dark except for the small light of a thick wax candle. The candlelight glistened in the pot’s residual oil. This was arduous work, serving as the world’s heart. It required tending and care and constant attention. The cooking, the cleaning, the music-making, the poems, the prayers. In essence, though, it all was a prayer. Always. Light, ghostly prayers that perpetually vanished into the ether.
The scrubbing, too, was a prayer. She hummed as she moved, and the notes floated up and away from her. The cauldron didn’t need to be immaculate, just a little cleaner. A little more lustrous for the next meal. There would be a knock on the door, and the unprepared food would appear behind her. This was to be another soup, she felt it in her bones. Carrots with earth still held fast to the skin, roots reaching out, their delicate, skirt-like flowers already removed. Gossamer onions just dug up from the ground. Perfect-sized potatoes with golden skin. Herbs plucked fresh from a far-off garden. They wanted to be a hearty, flavorful root soup. She felt it again.
Her house always changed, was always in flux. One moment, the simple wooden table sat behind her. The next, it was on the other side of the room. No major changes, though. Things would never appear upside down or anything like that. Simply small, instantaneous changes that would happen just out of sight. Since she had always been here, she was used to it. Things just changed. At the same time, they always stayed the same. Always the cooking, the cleaning, the music-making, the poems, the prayers.
She always wondered: if she was the world’s heart, why was she always alone down here in the dark? Why was it always up to her? Who chose her for this task? Did they even know about her labor, her eternity’s work? She knew about them, every single one. She felt their joys, their fears, and she poured all of this into her tasks. She had emotions of her own. She had her own fears, her own joys. But she experienced them all at once, all the time. Every meal was both a harrowing new experience filled with risk and danger and terror. At the same time, it was a familiar friend she had walked beside billions of times before.
With a mix of quiet confidence and slight trepidation, she began to prepare. She chopped each of the vegetables and placed them into a large, clay bowl. They sat together as she prepped the herbs. Next, she added oil to her large, cast-iron cauldron that conveniently moved itself above the hearth’s perfect fire. It began to sizzle, and she added the vegetables and herbs. She then added the stock that appeared next to her, grateful that she didn’t have to make it separately. It filled up the cauldron perfectly, and she let it simmer.
It simmered for what felt like eternity. Maybe it was eternity. But she looked into the pot as it cooked, lost in its slight movements and transformations. She thought of her place in and outside of the world. She thought of this soup and whether it would turn out well, though part of her knew it would. It always would. But the risk was always there. She thought about the those who gathered the food and what they must be like. She never saw them, but it was clear hands touched the ingredients. Sometimes there would be large clumps of earth left on the root vegetables especially; sometimes there would be broken stems in the herbs. She wondered if they were simultaneously content and anxious as she was.
The soup was ready. She always sampled the first bite. Savored it. This one dwelled on her tongue for a moment as she closed her eyes. Notes of rosemary and fennel and thyme. She had cooked the potatoes to perfection; they were soft but still a little firm. Rich and almost buttery.
Just like all the meals before and all that will come after, it slowly vanished after her first taste. Since this was a soup, the level of the liquid would drain from the cauldron as if there were a hole in the bottom of the pot. But there was no hole, no reason for the food to leave her. Every time, however, it did. She watched it with a content passivity until the last of it disappeared, leaving the cauldron a little oily again. Each time, she wondered where it all went.
She offered a small poem and prayer after it had drained completely:
“May we benefit all beings
Both large and small
Both here and gone”
She came to me on a walk, the world’s heart. A hot day walking through a city, I saw her in my mind. Toiling for us in the dark. Did she notice my intrusion? I wrote her story, saw her work. She couldn’t see me. I wanted to stay longer, but noticed the Starbucks barista was sweeping. The coffee shop emptied out except for me and another woman across the way. I will leave the World’s Heart here, lost in prayer for us, feeling guilty that she feels like a slave to me locked away without recompense or thanks or rest. What to do? I want the answers to the questions she asks, that she feels with a slight pang of frustration.