DUFF GOLDMAN: In the midst of the plain beige walls and the antique furniture mom inherited from grandma, one corner of the room has been painted bright blue. It looks like it was painted quickly, just one coat with a roller. It’s not quite turquoise, it’s a deeper blue. Like the sky. Mounted in this blue corner, hanging from little wires — hundreds of butterflies. All different colors. A bit of sunlight shines through their translucent, fibrous wings as they explode out of this cerulean portal. It’s dazzling.

ROHAN GUNATILLAKE: Almost from birth, pastry chef Duff Goldman is driven by his desire to create and put things out into the world. Whether it’s as a wayward teenage street artist or a successful baker on the Food Network, he strives to deliver a visceral sensation that’s hard to express in words alone. This week, Duff shares the story of how the things we create often communicate our thoughts and feelings much more clearly than we otherwise could with words.

In this series, we combine immersive first-person stories, breathtaking music, and mindfulness prompts so that we may see our lives reflected back to us in other people’s stories. And that can lead to improvements in our own inner lives.

From WaitWhat, this is Meditative Story. I’m Rohan, and I’ll be your guide.

The body relaxed. The body breathing. Your senses open, your mind open, meeting the world.

GOLDMAN: I step off the walking path and onto the forest floor. The leaf-covered ground feels spongy beneath my black, low top, sneakers, Chucks. It smells like loam and moss and mushrooms. That woodsy smell of decay. I breathe it in.

Carefully, I climb down the steep 12-foot slope, down to the stream that runs underneath the bridge.

It’s hard to keep my balance while carrying a grocery bag full of spray paint, but I’m used to it by now. I’m 14-years-old. I come out here a lot. This beautiful little glen with no people or houses around — this is my spot. This is where I come to practice graffiti.

Underneath the bridge is a big cement wall — my canvas. I step onto the three-foot ledge that runs along the side of the stream. It’s just wide enough for me to stand while I paint. It’s quiet down here. Other than the rushing sound of the stream and the occasional car that passes overhead. It’s peaceful.

Except for today. Today, I didn’t come alone.

From the ledge, I look back up the slope at my mom, still standing on the footpath. She’s short and blonde. It’s the 80’s, but mom still dresses like a hippie. Flowy dresses, chunky sweaters. She stares at me through her massive sunglasses. They’re angular. Like weird Octagons. Earlier today, she finds plastic milk crates filled with 60 spray paint cans I’ve been hiding in my closet. She’s furious. She demands I bring her out here to see what I’ve been doing.

Even from this distance I can see the look on her face is concerned. Here I am, her “baby boy”, standing in front of a wall I’ve covered in illegal graffiti countless times. What parent wouldn’t be worried?

And it’s not like this is the first time I’ve broken the rules. I’ve had a few run-ins with the law. I’ve been arrested for shoplifting. I’ve been in juvie. I’m pretty feral. I don’t have much supervision at home. As a single parent, mom isn’t around a lot. We don’t have a lot of money. She didn’t think she was going to be bringing up two kids on her own and she’s busting her ass at work to make sure we can eat. At this age, I don’t think about the future too much. I don’t think about consequences. The thing I’m doing right here, right in front of me, is so much more interesting.

So, I don’t really care what my mom thinks about my graffiti. I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m not doing it for them. I’m not into graffiti because I want to be a rebel or offend people. I just see a wall and I know that something has to go there.

I have these two books at home: Subway Art and Spray Can Art. They’re filled with images of graffiti from all over. The stuff is mind blowing. On my wall under the bridge, I copy these images. I teach myself new types of lettering. How to make things look 3D. Step by step, I figure out a whole new vocabulary.

I take the spray paint out of my bag to show my mom how it’s done. The marble rattles in the can as I shake it up — clack clack clack! I press down on the cap and I hear the familiar hiss. Each brand of spray paint has its own smell. Sharp and strong, like gasoline, but not unpleasant. I actually kinda love it. My arm moves to the right in one smooth motion.

Mom calls down to me from above: “How do you see what you’re doing?”

I smirk a little. I know what she means. The ledge I’m standing on is so small, I can’t step back far enough to see the full painting, to really grasp the perspective.

I shrug and call back, “Trial and error!” I outline, color, and fill. If it’s not right, I cover the whole thing with white latex paint, reset the canvas, and start again.

Using the black paint, I double back and add a few more lines. I switch to the red paint and then the blue.

I can feel my mom critiquing my work over my shoulder. I come from a family of artists. My great-grandmother was a milner and weaver. My grandmother was a silversmith and a photographer. My mom works with stained glass and mosaics. From a young age, it’s assumed that I’ll be artistic too. Everyone is just waiting for me to figure out what my thing is.

I take art classes. But I don’t really like’em. I don’t want to paint a bowl of fruit. I hate people telling me what to do. I feel frustrated. Like I don’t know where my place is.

I just want space. Space to figure things out.

As I put the finishing touches on my outline, I lean back a little to take it all in.  I see the image I had in my head, now 30 feet long and in vibrant color. It looks awesome. That frustration I feel at home and in school is sometimes hard to articulate. I don’t have words for what it is or how to solve it. But this, this is clear to me. It gives me an immediate, visceral feeling. Graffiti is mine. It’s not my mom’s. It’s not my family’s. It’s not something I can learn in school. This is my thing.

GUNATILLAKE: If graffiti is a young Duff’s thing, what’s yours? What is the one thing that comes to mind as a way you expressed yourself as a younger person? And how does it feel in the body to think about it in this moment? What is here to be learned?

GOLDMAN: “You want something to eat?” I ask my brother.

He thinks for a second and says, “Uh, yeah. Can I get a steak and cheese?” Willie is two years older than me. He’s short like me and dresses in recycled hippie fashion. Braided belt, leather Birkenstocks, and a Dave Matthews Band t-shirt.

We’re in a long galley kitchen. Willie leans against the high flat top counter where I spend all day making calzones and hot sandwiches. There isn’t a ton of room. But it’s cool that I can bring my brother back here. Behind the scenes.

“Steak and cheese, coming up.” I walk across the brown quarry tile, through the swinging door into the main dining area of Sandwich Pizza. It’s a funny sounding name, but it’s really just a pizza place named after the small town I live in, Sandwich, Massachusetts. I’m 18 years old. I’ve been working here as a cook for 7 months or so. It’s just after lunch. A few of the red vinyl booths are still filled with customers. I grab the block of shaved beef from the deli case before retreating back to the kitchen where my brother waits for his lunch.

Willie and I have always been close. We’ve always had each others’ backs. In second grade, our parents go through a really disgusting divorce. There’s a lot of violence. Cops get called. It’s messy. Things are unstable. I can’t be certain about anything. But, through it all, Willie and I are there for each other.

Now it’s the summer after my senior year in high school. I’ve been accepted to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Willie’s here to help me pack and give me a ride down south.

I feel a huge weight resting on my shoulders. I’m packing up my childhood, starting a new chapter and I have no idea what I’m doing. I never thought about the future before. Now, my future’s here. I still don’t really fit in anywhere. I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Figure out who I am.

I set the block of shaved beef on the counter as Willie starts talking about what route we’ll take tomorrow. I grab a knife, an onion, a bottle of oil. My hands move quickly and confidently. I shave off a few slices of meat and start chopping it all together. Making a steak and cheese is noisy. There’s a rhythm that’s happening. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

The whole time I’m chopping, I’m talking to my brother. I ask him about school. He asks me about girls. Just surface level stuff.

My hands keep moving. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. I’m in the flow.

Now I’m on the griddle. I spread the steak out nice and thin to get as much surface area as possible. I know where all the griddle’s hotspots are. I start working the edges of the beef to those spots, getting it really crispy. That’s the way my brother likes his steak and cheese. Crispy.

I turn to say something to Willie, and when I turn back, I realize I’ve already added the cheese, and it’s getting nice and melty. My hands just know what they’re doing.

That’s when it hits me. I’m good at this. Like, really good at this. Time stops. That uncertainty I feel about everything, it starts to fade a little. Suddenly I know, this is what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to be a chef.

I plate up the sandwich and bring it over to Willie. As soon as he takes a bite he looks up, mouth full, and says, “God damn that’s good.”

There’s something beautiful in the fact that I know exactly how my brother likes his sandwich. He’s the only other person in the world that understands my point of view, that understands exactly what I went through when we were kids. And vice versa. Somehow, I’m able to tell him everything I want through food. I’m communicating in a different language. It’s not English.I start to think, maybe there’s a language that exists between our mouth and our brain. Between our fingers and our brain. Our eyes and our brain. I feel like there’s a way to communicate my thoughts that’s clearer than words. More immediate. Like a bite of a delicious sandwich made with love.

The windows in my mom’s dining room look out onto the backyard. She lives in Palm Springs, so it’s super deserty. Tons of cacti. You occasionally see road runners. And in the distance there’s a wind farm. 500 or so windmills. Rotating around and around and around.

But today, I’m not focused on what’s outside. My entire attention is grabbed by what’s happening in the corner of the room.

In the midst of the plain beige walls and the antique furniture mom inherited from grandma, one corner of the room has been painted bright blue. It looks like it was painted quickly, just one coat with a roller. It’s not quite turquoise. It’s a deeper blue. Like the sky.

Mounted in this blue corner, hanging from little wires — hundreds of butterflies. All different colors. Orange, pink, green, and white. A bit of sunlight shines through their translucent, fibrous wings as they explode out of this cerulean portal. It’s dazzling.

None of this was here last time I came to visit. I turn to my mom and ask, “Where’d that come from? Why did you do this?”

She gives a slight shrug. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see what it looked like.”

In my head I’m thinking, you just woke up one morning and decided to drill a bunch of holes in your wall?

But I also know exactly what she means. I’m in my 30s now, and I know that my mom and I are alike in a lot of ways. We’ve both been broke for most of our life. There have definitely been times when we should have been thinking ahead. Looking at the big picture. But the thing that’s right in front of us is so much more interesting. We have that same drive. Just like my grandmother and my great-grandmother had. The drive to create. Seeing my mom’s talent on display I’m proud to be her son.

And I can imagine her thought process. Every day, she walks in and out of this room 30 times. And everytime, she finds herself looking into this corner. Something inside of her, something unspoken, says, “That corner’s not right.” Then one day, that same subconscious feeling says, “Blue. With butterflies.” It tells her what it needs.

And the finished product says something too. That dazzling sensation I get seeing the butterflies pop out every which way. I feel it, even if it’s impossible to fully put into words.

Over the years, my creativity takes many forms. Graffiti, cooking, baking, music, and woodworking just to name a few. Lately, my bakery in Baltimore has taken off. We specialize in outrageous cakes that require architecture and power tools. But whether I’m decorating a cake or tagging a wall, I embrace that same wordless language of expression. Just like my grandmother did. Just like my mom does here in this room. In everything I put into the world, there’s a feeling that’s guiding me and there’s a feeling that I’m trying to convey. You can call it something. You can give it a name. But that diminishes it a little. It’s ironic that, in telling a story like this, I have to put words to something that’s wordless.

But the feelings and sensations I can express through that wordless language are potent. Like love. Like excitement. Like being enveloped by hundreds of butterflies in the clear blue sky.

GUNATILLAKE: What Duff is pointing too here is beyond words, it’s the realm of feelings, vibrations, beingness. Take some time now to sense into your feelings, your vibrations. And now smile. Through this simple expression you can communicate no matter how complex things may be, in this moment you are okay. Notice what is here and let it be here.

GOLDMAN: The ceiling of my woodshop is made of corrugated plastic. Overhead there’s a pink peppercorn tree. The natural light shines through all the little leaves and peppercorns that have fallen on the roof. Everything in here is made of wood and covered with a thin layer of sawdust. It smells a little earthy, like old linseed oil. It’s April 2023. Passover. And I’m here to show my mom what I’ve been working on.

I lead her over to my workbench where a two-foot rectangular box is sitting. I run my hands along the smooth, polished surface before gently opening it to reveal blocks. Twenty six wooden blocks, each hand-painted with a different letter of the alphabet in a large, almost storybook font. The colors are all light blues, oranges, and pinks, and purples. Then, on each side, there are images depicting things that each letter can stand for.

I pull out the “L” block. I spin it around to show my mom. Leaf. Lion. Ladybug. Lightning.

And then the “I” block. Island. Iceberg. Iguana. Ice cream. The brightly colored objects almost pop off the surface.

I explain the whole process as I go. The blocks are made of poplar. I cut, mill, sand, and prime each one. I’m just an ok carpenter, so it takes a long time. Then, I paint them. Some of the details are so small, I have to use a magnifying glass with a light in it to see what I’m doing.

The box is made of a different wood called bubinga. It’s a very dense, very hard wood. Making the lid, which has such a thin lip, is mind-blowingly difficult. I almost give up a few times out of frustration.

As I’m explaining, I see a smile start to spread across my mom’s face. “You’re really proud of these,” she says. “I can tell.”

My own grin widens. “Hell yeah, I’m proud. Honestly, this might be the best thing I’ve ever made.”

These blocks aren’t perfect. I can see every single flaw. The ugly hinge that I had to use on the back. The lines that aren’t quite straight. All the bubbles in the lacquer.

But in spite of the flaws, I’m really happy with how these blocks turned out. Especially because they’re not for me. They’re for my daughter, Josephine.

I get the idea a few days after she’s born. I’m a dad now and I’m thrilled. But I also know, I’m not going to be around forever. I want to make something for her. Something special and unique. It takes me almost two and half years to finish the blocks and the treasure-chest-like box I make to hold them. But I eventually do finish.

After showing my mom the last block, I place it back in its place, nestled into the red velvet lining. I reach to close the lid and watch the light play off of the painting I did on the underside.

There’s a mosaic half-moon, half-sun in the center, dividing night from day. Dark green vines twist and curl around the edges. On the day side they’re dotted with pink flowers. On the night side the flowers are white. And across the middle, I’ve handwritten a line from a Dire Straits song — “I love you like the stars above.”

I tell my daughter I love her every day. But I know I’ll never be able to express in words just how much I love her. Someday she’ll be able to look at these blocks, even decades from now, and say, “God damn, my dad loved me.” That’s why I like making things. When I’m cooking for somebody or making them a painting or just unclogging their bathroom sink , I’m loving on ‘em. That action expresses something clearer than I could ever articulate in words.

There are ways that we can all communicate without words. Ways in which we can express our thoughts and feelings in a personal language we may not even be totally aware of. A language that exists between our senses and our brain. That’s been inside us since we were born. It’s in that wordless language that we can express ourselves in a way that’s clear, visceral, and undeniable. We can make something that speaks for us even after we’re gone.

Rohan’s closing meditation

GUNATILLAKE: Thank you Duff.

I love what Duff is pointing to in his story. Non-verbals forms of communications, languages which are personal to us but at the same time expressible to others.

Also when Duff talks about how he expresses himself, that you can give it a name but it diminishes it a little. I love that.

So in honor of Duff and his wordless forms of expression, for our short closing meditation together I’m going to take you on a tour of some of the most common non-verbal ways we communicate to others. Oftentimes we may not be aware how we’re expressing ourselves non-verbally, so by bringing attention to them each in turn, we can be.

And we’ll start with our face.

Our facial expression so often tells others how we’re feeling.

So eyes open or closed — it’s up to you — become aware of how your face is.

Aware of and interested in what stories this arrangement of twenty/thirty muscles tells the world outside about how you are inside.

What story is it telling now?

Another form of physical communication is our posture.

Notice how just my mentioning your posture brings up the urge to change it.

Relax that for now and just know the posture, the position of the body.

Know the posture and sense into what it is communicating.

Now if you’d like to adjust your posture to communicate something different, go ahead.

Feeling the change as you do.

The third form of nonverbal communication, and the one we’ll finish on is a bit less tangible, let’s call it vibes.

What are the vibes that you can feel within yourself?

You might call it energy, or mood, your way of being — I call it vibes.

Whatever name you know it by.

Feel it.

Feel the vibes present in your experience right now.

Feel the vibes.

And get a sense what they are expressing of you into the world.

As we finish up, if you’d like join me in an intention for the week ahead you’d be very welcome.

The intention of being aware of what our various modes of expression are communicating out into the world and also aware of our ability to adapt and change those messages however we want to.

Thank you again Duff for your story of course and your endless creativity.

And thank you, go well.

We’d love to hear your personal reflections from Duff’s episode. How did you relate to his story? You can find us on all your social media platforms through our handle @MeditativeStory. Or, you can email us at: [email protected].