An April Morning

Ariel Knoebel

This time of year, there aren’t any birds chirping their hellos in the early light, still slanting low and blue-tinged through the half-shuttered windows. The quiet almost insists on solitude, on a cup of steaming coffee or tea brewed in that half-light and a book or a blank page to capture the sleepy ramble of one’s thoughts. Maybe there’s companionable silence with another, paired with some secret language spoken with only eyes or tired smiles or the soft touch of gentle fingers. Today, it’s just me. The only sound is the gentle padding of my feet across uneven floors. A soft sigh from the dog still sleeping on the couch, stretching his long legs in a dream until his toes inch over the edge of the sagging cushions. The rustle of the blanket wrapped around me to keep out the cold of the still-night air. I watch the steam from my cup of over-brewed tea drift up from its glassy surface like smoke from a chimney. It coalesces in the crisp air like a cloud. 

The quiet morning bites at toes, fingers, and nose tips with frosty teeth, but I know that nip will melt by midday. The spring sun rises into a world wet and cold, still whispering of winter, and transforms the landscape a little each day. In a few sweeps across the sky, it has turned scraggly, naked twigs into doilies laced with delicate buds. Flowers have forced free of frosty soil to turn their sweet faces towards the sun, a rainbow palette appearing from nothing one morning last week. I have to remind myself to look around each time I go outside, so as to not miss the entire world transforming. 

These spring days make me manic. I get drunk on the promises of the season to come. This pastel-colored seasonal changeover feels full of the same possibility of those pre-dawn hours, full of the same otherworldly potential. The in-between time is so sweet, as is each blindingly bright afternoon where the world seems to pause on a precipice, the blue of the sky deepening from the cold slate of winter to a deep sapphire. The light starts to thicken — not all the way to the syrupy golds of midsummer, but into a crisp-edged glow sharpening the many colors of new life.  

Somehow, the days melt to fit hours outside with a book, an afternoon squinting into the breeze, relishing in the novel feeling of warm air on bare skin. It’s funny how we forget that feeling every year, in the months we stay covered against the sharp cold. I find myself just walking, searching for new paths through the city or seeking out long walks in the woods. I’m trying to hear the soft-spoken language of the season. It speaks only in the sun’s glances off the rare clouds in the sky, the stretching smile of a blooming flower, the gentle touch of dewy grasses against bare ankles. It’s in these moments that I turn my face to the sun, like a flower, and I hope to grow.

An April Morning, prose

Interview by C. VanWinkle
April 21, 2023

What was the prompt that we sent you? Can you describe it for me?

Yeah. I received a photograph of an oval-shaped painting against a natural backdrop. It was a landscape with some really beautiful yellow flowers in the foreground looking out at the viewer, and then a pastoral landscape behind them with a little cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney, and mountains in the background. And then a big, beautiful moon in the sky overseeing the whole picture. Very peaceful. Very beautiful.

What was your first impression of it?

I sat with it for a while. At first, I didn't have a super strong emotion or thought attached to it. It was a very peaceful moment, so my reaction to it was more subtle. It was just so lovely, but you know, sometimes you see something and it sparks a specific memory or a feeling, and this felt more like a sigh, a little bit quieter, a little bit more subdued in whatever it was stirring up. I spent some time wondering, “What do I do with that?”

So how did you get started actually responding to it?

As you know, I’ve done this process a couple times before. We're given two weeks to respond, and generally my practice is: as soon as I get the prompt, I interact with it right away, see what happens, what thoughts immediately come up, and then I put it away for several days, just let it percolate, live my life, and see when it re-emerges.

I live in Maine, it's April, the world is just starting to come alive. In the period of time that I was working with this piece were those first couple of really beautiful spring days that just change everyone's consciousness from winter to summer. I kept coming back to the faces of these flowers in the piece. They’re all turned up towards the sky, very open, these very smiley, almost sunflower-like faces. That became where I started from when sitting down to craft my response.

And what's that process like? Are there regular exercises you turn to? What do you do?

I am a sporadic and guilt-ridden practitioner of morning pages. I'll go through phases where I do a really good job of it and phases where I don't open my notebook for days or weeks at a time. This happened to catch me at a time when I'm trying to be back in the practice. So I sat down one morning, took a look at the piece, and used that as my prompt just for my morning writing practice. I let that flow without necessarily intending that to become the final piece. I just wrote freehand in my notebook with that piece in mind. Then, a couple days later, I took that writing and sat down at my computer to write what I was actually gonna send. Some things made it in, other things didn't, other things emerged that weren’t in that initial exercise, and then the final piece came from there.

How does this piece relate to the rest of your work?

I tend to write about food, but I think of my writing as being about material culture and the Everyday as a lens into broader history/society/culture/whatever it may be. In writing about food and cooking and agriculture, I explore domesticity and gender and all of the things that go with that. So this final piece ended up feeling very intimate and domestic, this quiet moment at home. That's the cabin in the painting that I was responding to. It just felt like a sweet little place to be. I would love to live there, spend a weekend there, anything like that.

I usually write nonfiction, more reported or more historical pieces. One of the things I love about participating in this project is getting to try something different. I can write fiction or something more personal. This piece is not necessarily ME. I sat down thinking I was writing a piece of fiction. It's a bit more of a personal essay than it was initially going to be, but it's by no means fully grounded in actual reality.

I wondered about that! I’d assumed that it was fully grounded in actual reality, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t know that for sure.

I don't really know for sure either! This piece is more like what I normally do than what I’ve done in the past with Bait/Switch. But I don't know. Is it? What is reality, really? [Cody laughs] You know? Is this all true? Probably. But I definitely wasn't fact-checking myself as I went.

I see. This isn't an autobiography.

No. It's a creative memoir… ish.

That's my kind of memoir! One line says, “I have to remind myself to look around each time I go outside, so as to not miss the entire world transforming.” I think that’s really powerful. Are you in that habit of remembering to look around?

Yeah, I think I am. I'm in a state of transition in several ways: professionally, personally, I recently moved… lots of things are changing with the changing of the seasons, which is relevant to this piece. I feel like springtime always reminds me to do this. Truly, every day is so different and is this new awakening. I see it on my daily walks around the neighborhood with my dog this time of year. If you’re in your phone one morning, the next day you look up and the whole world is truly different. Where it was kind of dark and brown and gray is suddenly green, and a riot of color, and just so joyful that it can really hit you that you missed something the day before by not having noticed. I think it's a reminder we all need in modern society. I like to think that I'm hopefully more present than most, but it's always a practice for everyone.

Do you spend much time in nature?

I try to as much as I can. I live in the city, but it's a small city, and I take as many opportunities as I can to get to the beach, get to the woods, get outside, and really, really love it whenever I do.

I think Maine is a great place to be for that. I think anyone who reads your piece would know that you’re touched by this sort or appreciation of the natural world. This was a pretty appropriate prompt for you, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was a fun one, and I think it felt pretty personally relevant and seasonally relevant. Just a lovely meditation to have presented to me.

“A lovely meditation.” I’m writing that down. Do you have any more advice for newbies coming to this project?

I think it's so fun and it's a really great opportunity to play, especially if your craft is your livelihood in any way. Sometimes you can lose that sense of play and it's really nice to have an opportunity to get out of the normal box that you're in. So take it and do something weird that’s fun for you. Try something new. Just see where it takes you.

Call Number: C96VA | C98PP.knoAn

Ariel Knoebel is a food historian and writer based out of the Northeast. In her free time, you’ll find her walking her dog through town or in the woods, traveling to farms across the country, and throwing dinner parties for good friends. For more of her work, pictures of her dog, and occasional musings about food and life, follow her on instagram @sipandspoonful.