Born to Pasta

I’ve been absent and errant, for many reasons, but global tumult has sifted through everything I am. The other day, I admitted to a friend who masters a special bookshop — which, if forever ambered, could be an Ashurbanipal or Alexandria for our rickety future — that my daily reliance on cooking as thinking, hand-ballet, and even small achievement was waning, and I wanted to end my relationship.
He stopped, struck. As we spoke, he had been sorting books and ephemera in his stor