The Dreamer's Pen

I am not Japanese. My blood is German and American, stitched together across continents, languages, and histories. And yet tonight, standing in my kitchen, I found myself making Japanese curry for the very first time, a dish I had never even tasted before.

Cooking it felt almost like crossing a threshold, as though I were stepping into someone else’s memory. The onions caramelizing, the carrots softening, the potatoes absorbing flavor, they were ordinary movements, yet I felt like I was brushing against something that did not belong to me, but welcomed me anyway.

When I finally tasted the curry, I was startled. I had expected sharpness, spice, something demanding. Instead, it was gentle. Deep, but soft. Comforting, but not in the way of nostalgia, since I had no memories to attach to it. Rather, it was comforting in the way of discovery, like hearing a piece of music for the first time and somehow feeling as though it had been written for you all along.

Tonight I realized that perhaps food doesn’t demand belonging; it offers connection. It asks only for openness, for attention, for presence.

This bowl of curry was more than dinner. It was a quiet reminder that the world holds infinite doors, and each time I step through one, I am both more myself and less bound by myself. I didn’t just eat—I touched another thread in the vast tapestry of human experience, and let it touch me back.

And in that moment, with the steam rising and the first bite still lingering, I felt the strange, tender truth of it: we are nourished not only by what is ours, but by what we dare to receive.