Ashley Benson – Creative Nonfiction Prize

Portraits, VIII

There is a monk in South Korea named Jeong Kwan. I learn about her from the Nextflix original “Chef’s Table,” although she is a monk, not a chef (she would say), and prepares meals solely for the others at her monastery in the mountains and in the courses that she teaches from time to time at the nearby university.

She calls what she cooks ‘temple food’ and tells the person interviewing her that it is her meditation, her connection to the mindfulness of the present moment.

When I watch the episode, I weep.

She lists off the five senses a meal must appeal to: body, feeling, perception, intention, and consciousness.

I commit them to memory.

So, then, silverlocks, old caballero retired from tiltyard, golden words all spent, among cold ashes now called to account, long though the telling, tell over again such tale of graces as best may be told in silence, crowned last with chaplet of prayers, each bead unbidden yet all told for her save one prayer only, and that for oneself.