A Table for Every Story
8/13/20266 min read
What Do I Want to Write? Everything and Nothing at the Same Time.
When I started this blog, I chose the name Kisah Table. Kisah means tale, or story, in Bahasa Indonesia. And table is... well, a table. But I think there is more to it than that.
I wanted Kisah Table to be a place where I can be. A place where I can tell stories, whether people are sitting around the dining table with me or whether it's just me. It could be an elaborate, glamorous lunch spread, a quiet candlelight dinner, a smoky BBQ, melted raclette cheese, scrumptious desserts, breadcrumbs scattered everywhere, wine spilled on the table, or something as simple as a piece of chocolatine and a cup of espresso with a dash of soy milk.
A table has always felt like a place where stories happen. So what did I imagine this page would be? Food reviews? Telling stories through food? Travel? Life? I honestly didn't know.
Maybe everything. Maybe nothing.
The Beginning
When I started, I tried to begin from day one. You can read that in my first post, From Flat White to Sauvignon Blanc: How New Zealand Taught Me to Taste the World.
Why did I choose to do that? I guess I needed some time to reflect on my life. The funny thing is, the moment I started writing, sure, I wrote about food here and there. But every time I wrote, I realised something I didn't quite expect: Kisah Table had become a quiet, calm, safe space for me to just... be.
My memories are almost cinematic
I think I have always experienced things a little too deeply. When I remember a meal I had with a friend, I don't only remember the food. And I don't only remember the conversation.
I remember everything: The ambience. The lighting. The feeling I had sitting there. The warmth and laughter we shared. The little nerdy guessing game of trying to figure out what spices they used in the dish. The cultural exchange that happened somewhere between bites. The way the food somehow tasted different because of who I was eating it with.
Sometimes I can replay the whole thing in my head like a movie. And maybe that's why food and tables keep finding their way into my stories.
Food, a table, a meal—it's never only about the food.
It's a kisah.
A tale.
I am a perfectly-imperfect Type A person
In the beginning, I wanted to write everything in chronological order. Being the Type A person that I am, I wanted things to be organised from year to year, all the way to the exact day of today. Of course I did.
I like knowing where things belong. I like having a plan (or planS— multiple!). I like control. I'm still a control freak, by the way. But somehow, writing doesn't work that way for me. Every time I wrote about my then-life, I stopped for a bit. First, because it felt good to relive the experience. Second, because I realised that the life I was writing about—no matter how much I loved it, and how much I still long for parts of it—isn't fully me anymore.
It was me.
It still is a part of me.
But it doesn't fully serve me anymore.
And perhaps that's why chronology stopped making sense.
Because when I write, I let myself be imperfect. The drafts are imperfect. Sometimes my handwriting is terrible. I write too quickly and misspell half the words because my hand simply cannot keep up with my thoughts.
I don't stop to fix them.
I let the words follow the rhythm of my heart.
Sometimes it's slow.
Sometimes it's fast.
Sometimes it's rapid, like I have so much to paint onto a canvas and I'm afraid I'll lose the image if I don't get it out quickly enough.
My bad habit is that I live in only two timelines:
The past and the future.
I can be incredibly nostalgic, and I can be incredibly far ahead.
Being present? Being present is the struggle.
I've always known that about myself, and it's something I've worked hard on. Yet I still fall down the rabbit hole far too many times.
The Past
I can still replay conversations I had with my first love. I can remember how he dressed, how he smiled, what we ate, whether it was hot outside, or whether we were cold because the restaurant's air conditioning was turned up far too high.
I can tell you exactly what the current felt like underwater when I dove in Labuan Bajo.
I remember the warm water in Morotai. I remember the chill and the adrenaline when black-tip sharks surrounded me. I wanted to scream with joy, but I couldn't make a sudden movement. I had to stay calm, stay present, even while my whole body was screaming, look at this, look at that, and look at this!
The Future
And then, somehow, I can also live in a future that doesn't exist yet.
I can tell you exactly what the wooden floor in my dream home will feel like underneath my toes. I can tell you the exact temperature I imagine on my skin on a spring morning, sitting on my balcony with a hot espresso, watching my children run around the backyard with a beautiful mountain in the background. I can feel the warmth of the fresh eggs I'll gather from the chicken coop.
I can see it.
I can almost feel it.
Unless...
I can't, can I?
About Today
Because that's the thing, I can remember yesterday so vividly. I can imagine tomorrow as if it were here.
But today? Today is the one thing I can't replay or preview. I can only live it.
And maybe that's what I want to do now.
I want to be present.
I want to blow on my soup so I don't put boiling liquid straight into my mouth and burn my tongue because my mind is somewhere else.
I want to have time to let homemade bread rise slowly.
I want to take hours to make dinner and then sit, tête-à-tête, with my partner, without thinking about where I need to be next.
I want an apron full of spilled flour and chocolate.
Actually, no.
I won't.
I'm very clean.
Years of professional pastry training will not allow that.
But I do want to spend hours making a birthday cake for a friend because I have the time to do it.
I want the mundane existence.
The things that don't necessarily become big memories until years later, when I suddenly realise how much they meant to me.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I won't let the fact that these stories don't come in a logical order stop me anymore.
I want to write about how travel, food, and the people I've met along the way have brought me here.
I'll tell you about Denmark, Spain, Portugal, France, and how I somehow ended up back in France.
Spoiler alert: I've dreamed of this day since I was at least eight years old.
My last post was about how scuba diving saved my soul, and then I stopped. Not because I don't have stories to tell. I have too many. There will come a time when I revisit how my ambition led me to Copenhagen, and how I eventually realised that the life I had worked so hard to build wasn't actually the life I wanted.
There are stories about places I've lived, people I've loved, food I've eaten, dreams I've chased, and versions of myself I've had to leave behind.
They will come.
But maybe they don't have to come in order.
Maybe I don't have to organise my life before I am allowed to write about it.
Maybe I can simply write about what is alive in me right now.
Because today, and hopefully for many days forward, I want to finally be... present.
To be who I am now.
Not defining myself by my past.
Not by the future I cannot yet see.
Just being here.
At the table.
And maybe that's what Kisah Table was meant to be all along.
Not a food blog.
Not a travel blog.
Not even a journal.
Just a table.
A place where stories unfold whenever they're ready.
Sometimes with a feast.
Sometimes with a glass of wine.
Sometimes with crumbs on the table.
And sometimes with a cup of hot chocolate and exactly two pieces of marshmallow (one white and one pink).
Every table carries a story.
I think I just needed time to learn how to tell (and live) mine.