From the archives: I want to live in the layers

On Stepping Softly Out of a Noisy Life

Where I grew up: Forest Hills, New York

In the 1970s, I was growing up in Forest Hills, New York, in a two bedroom apartment in a fourteen story building the color of a pencil eraser; it was directly across the street from the Long Island Railroad tracks, and when trains went by — which they did at all hour of the day and night — my building shook a little bit. If more than one train barreled past on the express track, things would fall off my bookshelves.

I was attending sleepaway camp in the summers back then, and I had a lot of friends from leafy Long Island and New Jersey suburbs who stayed overnight so that we could do New York-y things together with my parents. I also had a lot of English counselors, and they would sometimes stay with us before flying back to the UK after the summer was over.

The trains would rumble past; the building would shake. If I was awake, I would roll over and look at my friends sleeping on the pullout trundle bed, and they’d be staring at the ceiling, their eyes open wide.

How do you sleep with this noise? they would all ask. And I would say, while the dog snored on the floor next to me, What noise?

I never heard it. Before she married my father, my mother had lived with my grandmother in the building directly across the courtyard, and their living room window looked straight down onto the tracks. She never heard it either.

There’s a famous scene in a 1977 movie by a now-disgraced filmmaker; in it, the main character (played by the filmmaker) remembers back to his childhood in 1942 Brooklyn, where he and his parents lived in a house directly beneath the first drop on the Coney Island Cyclone. Every time the rollercoaster went by, his house would shake, making it impossible for him to eat his soup.

The overdubbed line, paraphrased: My psychiatrist said that living underneath the Coney Island rollercoaster caused my nervous temperament.

It’s like the answer to an SAT question: the rollercoaster, the Long Island Railroad, the shaking buildings, the wide-eyed overnight guests = the screaming parents, the dangerous girl’s bathroom in middle school, Watergate, the cocaine-addled community, the frisky male schoolteacher, the cocktail hour that gets aggressive after the first martini, key parties, Son of Sam, the neighbor’s heroin addicted son who offers to relieve you of your fourteen-year-old virginity during a dinner party.

All of it: noise.

Grow up in a noisy world and you will lead a noisy life. I don’t know if this is entirely true. But what I do know to be true is this: grow up in a noisy world, and you will eventually stop hearing the noise. It will be reduced to a low, dull hum. A buzz. Your body will acclimate to the aural, constitutional assault, and out of self-defense, will grow accustomed to it. Fast forward: you will run the risk of being forever attracted to noise — the chaos and the drama — because it will be your normal. It is what you know; it is how you grew up. It is in your DNA, like eye color.

As you get older, noise will take on different manifestations: frenetic jobs that require you to keep twenty plates spinning all at the same time, for which you receive disproportionately tiny recompense. An overstuffed home, filled with papers and Beanie Babies and things you don’t even know you own. Dealing with health insurance. Clothes you haven’t worn in twenty years. Shoes that make your feet bleed. Relationships with friends built upon a foundation of subtle rage and gossip. Relationships with family members built upon a foundation of ancient furies that you accept because, they tell you, blood trumps emotional terrorism. Romantic relationships that are ensnared in perpetual shouting, anger, financial or sexual deception. Food cooked disrespectfully and in haste, and incinerated. Professional relationships built on coy smiles, bad-mouthing, and schadenfreude.

In other words, noise translates to the expectation and acceptance of chaos as homeostasis.

And when you realize this — if you realize it — you will have to learn how to hear again, how to experience noise differently, how to find peace in a chaotic world. You will have to learn how to walk through life like a baby just beginning to toddle.

---

We all know this line: the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different outcome. It’s simple: drink every night of your life for thirty-five years, and your liver will likely fail, so don’t be surprised. Align yourself with business partners who you know are shady, and they will destroy your work reputation; don’t be surprised. Cultivate friendships with people you know to be historically dangerous, and you will fall victim to lies and gossip; this should not come as a shock. Why on earth should you be surprised? Because we — I; you — always hope for something different to happen. We don’t recognize chaos and drama for what they are because we just don’t hear them as noise anymore; they’re familiar, and comfortable, even while they’re burning the house down.

Recently, I stopped. Just stopped. I’m not sure exactly what happened or when — maybe it was the Covid-related stroke I had in 2020 that caused me to look back at it all: my work, my books, my health, my friendships, my professional relationships, my marriage, my extended family — but my first realization was sheer astonishment at the level of noise I was living with and had become used to, like it was my own personal national anthem. I took a step back — way back — to get a better look at the broader picture, to open the aperture and let in more light and sound, and this was clear: there was a lot of noise that sounded like metaphysical radio station static.

This looking has not been comfortable; I’m examining everything. Recently, I wrote about boundaries — emotional boundaries, creative boundaries — and they are definitely part of the noise issue: when you say No, I’m not allowing you to do that to me anymore, or No, you’re actually going to have to pay me for what my work is worth, or No, I can’t do X Y or Z unless you fulfill your part of the agreement, or No, I won’t let you talk to me that way anymore, or No, I’m not going to make you a gigantic fancy dinner just because you demand it, or No, I just don’t do drama anymore, you can/will be pegged as difficult, unstable, angry, damaged, hard-to-work-with, fill-in-the-blank. Because, as we all know, women-of-a-certain-age don’t get to make choices like these, or to hold fast to our boundaries: we get to take the crumbs that are tossed to us by the Makers of the Noise to which we have grown so accustomed.

Slowly — slowly — this change has touched every part of my life: I’ve given myself permission to live softly and more consciously. I want to do the work that I am good at — writing of a certain kind, in a certain voice that is very much mine — rather than try and shoehorn myself into trend because that’s what The Noise demands. I want to make the food that is quieter, that leaves a softer, less perceptible imprint on the world around me. I want to surround myself with authentic platonic affection in a world that continues to demand remuneration everywhere, and where the value of a friendship is tied more to what someone can do for you than to tenderness itself.

Maybe it’s just age. I want to Live in the layers, not on the litter, as Stanley Kunitz wrote in his excavation of love and the passage of time, and what it means to look back and experience transformation later in life. To turn the volume down on the noise, in an effort to better hear the truth.

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was....

- from The Layers

Recipe

Hetty McKinnon’s Cumin Tofu Stir-Fry

Hetty McKinnon’s Cumin Tofu with green beans

So much of the way I think about food and sustenance has changed, and has become quieter and more intentional. One thing that has happened in my kitchen is the compulsion to make food that is closer to the earth, which means far fewer animal products. I am not a natural vegetarian or vegan cook; I have to learn it like the toddler I mention above. One of the people who is helping me is Hetty McKinnon, the author of the amazing To Asia With Love and the upcoming Tenderheart, who writes the Substack To Vegetables, With Love, contributes regularly to The New York Times, and whose recipes are among our favorites. I have long been a fan of the traditional Szechuan dish, Cumin Lamb. Hetty’s vegan version, adapted by The New York Times and further by me — the original is made with tofu and (in her recipe, cauliflower) — is stunningly delicious. (I swapped out about 3-1/2 cups of greenbeans for the cauliflower, which we didn’t have in the house; it was remarkable.)

Makes four servings

For the Marinade

• 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon shaoxing rice wine (or dry sherry, mirin or white wine)

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt

• 1 (14-ounce) package extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into ¾-inch cubes

• 3 tablespoons cornstarch

For the Spice Mix

• 2 tablespoons ground cumin

• 2 teaspoons gochugaru (Korean red chile flakes), red-pepper flakes or Sichuan chile flakes

• ½ teaspoon granulated sugar

• ½teaspoon kosher salt

For the Stir-fry

• Vegetable oil

• 1 onion, finely sliced

• 1 (½- to 1-inch) red chile, such as serrano (or jalapeno), sliced diagonally (seeds removed if you like less heat)

• 1 (1-inch) piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped

• 1 garlic clove, finely chopped

• 3-1/2 cups green beans, tipped and tailed

• Big handful of cilantro leaves

• 1 tablespoon toasted white sesame seeds

• Kosher salt

• Rice, for serving

1. Prepare the marinated tofu: Combine the tamari or soy sauce, shaoxing rice wine and salt in a bowl. Add the tofu cubes and toss to coat. Allow to marinate at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, make the spice mix: Combine cumin, gochugaru, sugar and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

3. Drain the tofu. Place the cornstarch in an even layer on a plate, add the marinated tofu cubes and turn gently to coat.

4. Heat a large frying pan over high for 3 minutes. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil and add a tofu cube. If the oil sizzles, it’s hot enough. Add all the tofu cubes, being careful of spattering, arranging them in one layer and separating them from one another. Reduce the heat to medium and allow the tofu to cook, undisturbed, for 1 to 2 minutes, until the bottom is golden. Flip the tofu and cook until golden on all sides. Transfer the tofu to a plate lined with paper towels. Wipe out the pan.

5. Add a little more oil to the pan, toss in the onion, chile, ginger and garlic, and stir-fry for about 1 minute until fragrant. Add the beans, season with salt and stir-fry for 4-6 minutes, until the beans are just tender. (Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water, if needed, to help move it along, while still keeping the dish dry.) Add the tofu, along with the spice mix, and stir to combine. Take the pan off the heat.

6. Taste and season with a touch of salt, if needed. Top with the cilantro and sesame seeds, then toss everything together, and serve with rice.