I have an abridged version of MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf. The original version was written as a cookbook to stave the wolf of starvation from the door during World War II. It included such ideas as cooking a quiche with sawdust to stretch the recipe.

When she revisited the book sometime later, she included editorial comments in brackets suchly []. So that when I read How to Cook a Wolf, it included that recipe for stretching a recipe with sawdust to feed four and in brackets she included the line “if three are not your friends”.

The line struck me in the haven of my own mind. It was wryly funny, and darkly realistic, and yet. Her re-visitation of the work was something few artists are able to do, we believe, and yet the avenue is open to us all. Think of the painter who reuses a canvas to paint a portrait of a sunrise where once he had painted yet another portrait of his grieving wife. Letters were once written vertically and then horizontally to conserve paper.

A commentary to our past selves is a conversation with a now stranger. Be kind. Don’t light that draft on fire. It says something important, even if you are not the person now that it was speaking to when you wrote it.