Catching the Burning Smell Before the Pot Handle Melts

Is there a smell coming from the kitchen?

It sounds like a half-finished sentence, and it has saved more than one pot handle. The flame licks sideways, the plastic starts to heat, and the burning reaches you before your eyes catch any smoke. There is something odd about the Vietnamese for it: we say we hear a smell. The nose smells, the ear hears, and yet when we need to describe paying attention, we borrow the word for listening. Hear the burning. Hear the rain coming. Hear that something is not right in the body. Hearing here has nothing to do with ears. It is about a person willing to settle for a moment before everything catches fire.

I like that word, settle. Settling is what happens when the sediment sinks and the clear water appears. Try to listen before anything has settled and it is very hard. Someone says something that grates and I have already put up a fence. Someone corrects a thing I just finished and inside I am muttering: what, am I really that bad at this? Someone offers clumsy feedback and my face stays calm on the outside while inside the stove is already glowing and the handle is starting to go. The generous word for this is sensitive. The more accurate one is that I take offence very fast, faster than my home internet, which is slow exactly when I need it.

There is one view I want to keep: while people are alive, the way we treat each other is the valuable part. Laying out a huge spread after they are gone, crying loudly, doing everything correctly, is moving, and it is a kindness that missed its train. Not giving each other a decent meal while alive, then heaping the altar afterwards. Letting each other feel small while alive, then saying the things that should have been said long ago. Cold ash does not need a warm blanket. The person sitting in front of you does.

I do not say that to criticise anyone. I am the sort who loves people and expresses it badly, who is concerned and looks like he is checking your spelling. Sometimes I mean to say something soft and it leaves my mouth hard. I mean to help and it comes out as an instruction. I mean to ask after someone and it comes out as an interrogation. So listening is not only hearing what the other person is saying. It is hearing what is being loaded inside me, ready to be fired. A kind sentence, or a small stone.

I once heard about someone who lost their mother very young. Growing up, the image of her had faded like a photograph left too long in the sun. But love does not necessarily disappear with a body. It can travel through an uncle, an aunt, another pair of hands, another meal, another reminder to be careful. Hearing that softened something in me. Some losses are truly irreplaceable. And some kinds of love know how to change their position. They no longer live under the old name, and they are still there in the way other people go on caring for you.

It made me think of a vase of flowers. We call them roses, and take them apart a little and there is more than flower in there. There is soil, water, sun, someone's hand cutting the stem, a seller, a buyer, a vase standing still on a table. Red roses, yellow roses, and in another language another name entirely. The same thing, and change its shape and the name changes. Rice cooked becomes a meal, cooked longer becomes porridge, ground becomes flour, steamed becomes cake. And yet if someone calls me a name I do not like, I hold on to it as if it were a certificate. Call me a chicken and I am not one and I am still angry. Quite an achievement. I am not sure I have got far with any real practice, but at turning myself into a chicken inside my own head I appear to be gifted.

Listen a little more carefully and a lot of things lose their edge. Someone adds salt to the soup you just made, and it may not be contempt, their palate is simply saltier. Someone rearranges the flowers you just put in the vase, and it may not be a contest, their eye sees it better that way. Someone tells you a story about a third person, and it is probably not the whole truth, because life is not a plate of fruit you can judge from one side. Hear one side and it is easy to be angry. Hear both and you are steadier. Hear yourself as well, and you may find out whether you are angry because something was wrong, or because the ego was brushed lightly and started ringing like a bell.

I also like the small idea about an old plate, an old disc, an object whose usefulness is finished. Some people cannot bear to throw it out because it once carried a sacred image or held precious words. But if the thing no longer works, sending it to be recycled is a way of letting it stay useful. Respect is not in keeping an object under dust forever. It is in understanding what you are doing. Believing without understanding turns into fumbling. Keeping without understanding fills the house, and the heart along with it.

From a paper plate, a paper cup, a cigarette, to a sentence spoken in anger, everything we use has the shadow of another person in it. Smoke goes into my lungs and then into the breath of whoever is beside me. A heavy word leaves my mouth and stays in the listener far longer than I imagine. A flash of temper feels private and pulls the whole room down. Some things are tiny, and tiny the way a burning smell is tiny. It is a fire announcing itself early, if you are willing to hear it.

I do not think I can be generous all the time. Saying otherwise would make me sound like a man about to open a course in beautiful living, and I am still in kindergarten in the subject of taking less offence. But perhaps each time I am about to lose my temper, slowing by one beat is enough. Asking quietly: is this actually worth it, does that person really want to hurt me, or are they just being clumsy in their own way? I have needed other people to forgive my own awkward moments, so the small things, if they can be let go, should be. In the kitchen, the burning smell usually arrives first. Inside a person, it is the same.