I Know Something You Don’t Know

By aiche | Published: July 27, 2010

In any culture, through any language, I don’t think a single child has managed to escape the sentiment in a sing-song sort of voice, pronounced with a universal glee by little peers so pleased with the artifice of wisdom that either their cheeks hurt from smiling, or their toes hurt from curling, or both. It’s the kind of neener-neener glee that somehow, despite the strokes of time, experience, and the supposed maturity that comes with these things, seems to stick with people as they age, possibly like visceral fat. Or if you prefer, the particular comforting taste of grandmother’s cookie recipe (though I’m not convinced the two aren’t connected).

“I-know-something-you-don’t know,” so the taunt goes, although it mutates in time to take on any number of cheap and shiny disguises, and these manage to fool a fair amount of people, sometimes on a cyclical track that makes the grind of nine-to-five work look like nothing special. From its overt beginnings on the school grounds, the notion moves to media, and trickles back into the social floatsam when the bright lights of advertising lose a bulb or two. You’ll recognize it easily should you come across the sales pages, squeeze pages, landing pages, bonus pages, or any of the pages possibly attributable to internet marketing, that modern translation of the late-night infomercial the production of which has unfortunately been made accessible to just about anything with an ISP and a drool bucket.

Among the great “secrets” of this “secret” “methodology” is to, well, insist that you know the secret. To a problem that people have, whether it’s a lack of cash, a lack of libido, an excess of appetite, an attachment to some substance, or whatever else tends to stubbornly ail the population at large as it steadfastly ignores its ultimate issue of stagnant, bored defeatism. Promise people that you’ve found the answer and are holding it at arm’s reach, just past the point of payment, and they will get their wallets out, so the idea goes. And it works.

Far from being limited to the consumer magic of the internet, however, the fabrication of the mysterious need not be sought much father than a fetid fast food joint or sauce bottle. Now, I can understand why fast food places would want to keep their constituents mysterious. I’m not so sure why sauces get the same treatment, but maybe people assume they have to give you something extra if you’re buying a product without solids in it. I, for one, could go for a free sauce surprise, sorta like the old Cracker Jacks gimmick, with a toy soldier or a little pea-shooter in the Bearnaise. Anyway, the ages-old allure of the “secret ingredient” looms in many an overpriced mouthful, sating people’s desire to be let in, if only a little, on what the other kids know, if not sating their actual hunger.

People concoct more than over-the-counter items and re-hashed words of advice to masquerade as secrets, though. Entire experiences, statuses, and relationships have been used to perpetuate the separation of people in those parts of life where nature didn’t see fit to make the distinction itself. From tight-lipped initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries to military people fond of citing “clearance,” from the creation of a complicated handshake to the small dictionary of exotic yet paradoxically uninspired nouns of Scientology, we march on, making up secret shit, in flavors only slightly removed from the simple taste of that old childhood taunt.

Yet the self is somehow not included in this popular system of secrets. The idea that someone might know exactly who they are, but is keeping it from you (neener neener!) sounds preposterous. In general, people seem to cling to one of two totems when it comes to the mystery of the self. Either they have no idea about their own identity, and are only too happy to subscribe to lovesong lyrics proposing that a partner knows them better than they know their own self, or else they spend the majority of their free time coming up with contrived ways to “express” themselves to others.

You would think that if there was one great secret truly worth knowing, and truly worth rubbing in the faces of the other kids, it’d be the mystery of your own identity, the essence of who you are. Isn’t that, after all, a thing more powerful than a secret program to quit smoking, seeing as it’s you who carries it out? Isn’t that, after all, more interesting than a spice you’ll savor once or twice and pass through this very self of yours? And isn’t it more valuable than the knowledge of another being, supreme or not, whom you would worship with this self?

I say it is. And that isn’t just some secret I was told.

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The Egg-Woman and the Fish

By aiche | Published: July 22, 2010

The market by the river looked almost like a giant ship; bread and meats at one tip, flowers at the other, and in between an oblong mass of tables with their stacks of fruits and vegetables. Early summer meant a surplus of cherries, though not the sour kind, and strawberries, though the rains had battered them somewhat and those sections of the sellers’ tables evoked butchering stations, even if they smelled considerably better.

My oversized plastic shopping bags grew heavier by the kilogram as I picked up garden tomatoes, bananas freckled like little girls who’d gotten too much sun, paper-covered onions the color of topazes, and gracile if somewhat muddied carrots, all punctuated by a series of eggplants suggesting purple cartoon commas.

The wealth of local farmers filled my bags until the plastic handles dug into my palms and made deep pink paths slick with sweat. I’d saved the less appealing part, for my taste anyway, till last, and hustled down the side of the crowd, frequently interrupted by an errant local stepping five feet back from the merchandise as if the berth afforded a better appraisal of zucchini or chard. Half way down the deck, at last, I found the little cement enclave on top of which had been a sign advertising fresh fish.

In a not-quite-landlocked country, in a town about as far from the coast as you can get, in a place where every store selling every thing all the time hasn’t exactly caught on just yet, fresh fish isn’t easy. I’d asked at shops all around the city, and had been directed to more places than I could pronounce in a sitting, but half the time “fresh” was interpreted as frozen-yet-not-to-the-point-of-qualifying-for-inclusion-in-an-ancient-species-museum-exhibit or else the destination was a “hypermarket,” about as appealing an experience as hanging out at the airport for an hour and a half.

But this little seafood bastion in the market by the river promised to be different; it was small, and close by, and most importantly, almost totally ignored by everyone else. I left my bulking bags outside and edged into the tiny shop, which might have been a bathroom for a larger store next door at some point. Tiles once white and now progressing steadily towards ochre lined the walls, floor, and ceiling, and a couple chests of frozen fish were shoved in no particular order to the right. Beside them, a giant plastic bucket held a few gallons of water and a few more live catfish than could fit, and a somehow pristine glass display case full of variously prepared seafoods installed to the left completed the store’s contents.

Except for a broad metal sink at the back, in front of which was a small chair, upon whose splintered seat was perched the fishseller. In thoughtful repose. A woman somewhere close to forty, decorated with the signs of insecurity that seem to accompany the age: short hair complaining of peroxide, pink lipstick plucked from the pages of an Avon catalog, foundation creating facial crusts where slight wrinkles lurked breathless beneath, and the kind of smile that comes from knowing too much too late, a kind of emotional sportsmanship.

She sat, legs crossed, and grasped a poached egg sporting crumpled toilet paper at the base; a tiny silver spoon dove in and out of the viscous yellow and white within the shell, and there, in the tiny store, surrounded by the unease of faint splashing sounds and the smell of this attempt to bottle the sea, the woman slowly ate her runny egg while my skin begged to crawl away and seek its refuge back in the potatoes and cabbages.

Asking in an uneven voice about the possibility of fresh-cut salmon steaks, I’m given a tour of the many different kinds of products I don’t want, and settle finally for marinated mackerel rolled up with sliced white onions and bay. I pay for my parcel –the least likely item in the shop to consist of fish still or recently living, and make my way, only slightly more weight-impeded, to the line of lazy taxicabs, shipping home for a celebration of the joys of local markets –and a haunting of their unexpected horrors.

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Cum s-ar coji un ou.

By aiche | Published: May 26, 2010

Cum s-ar coji un ou:
In primul rand, alege un ou cu un aspect fericit; ouale fericite sunt mai usor de cojit.
Pui oul puicutei la oala sub apa fierbinte si plina de bule. Acoperi. Faci diagrame complexe de matematica, cartografie, si cartofi care explica cum s-ar coji un ou. Lucrul va fi gata inaintea ta: bucura-te ca nu ai nevoie de a termina. Iar cartofii poti sa-i mananci. Deasupra oului, curge apa rece si plina de soapte inghetate. Gaseste un prieten, loveste-l cu oul in frunte, si spune, ca o gaina:
Boc!

Particip la Concursul de Proza Arhiscurta organizat de Trilema .

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Crafts.

By aiche | Published: February 12, 2010

Isn’t it a little maddening how one seemingly innocent word can pull double agent duty and turn its back on you just when you think you’ve understood the real meaning? It’s a dirty little trick –one that can be fun if you’re a politician or are fond of sitting around making up puns with which to terrorize people at some later point. But if you’re mindless, or overly reliant on the words you use to describe yourself (traits that often come as a two-for-one special), you may feel a little betrayed when the choicest parts of your personal mission statement turn out to be apt descriptions of the horrendous blatant failures you’ve managed to concoct.

Like, say, spending your day off clogging the aisles of a store pushing those little cut-out cardboard things shaped like objects some asshole imagines has anything to do with your children’s recent achievements, pockmarked by various lengths of wire, stamps of letters (some people just can’t seem to adapt to the confangled future tech marvel that is the keyboard), glitters and other eye-irritants, fake flowers, fake birds, fake art, fake fur, and whatever else can be unreasonably stuffed into a “project” that will most likely end in some poor soul saying “oh, you shouldn’t have” on their next birthday.

Crafts. They’re fun. They’re easy. They’re cheap. You don’t really have to have any ideas to make a craft, but if you want some, there are magazines, television shows, classes, conventions, and of course, there’s always someone else’s creative use of tacky glue and tissue paper you can adapt to adhere disparate parts into a total visual abomination. There are some sensible, maybe even practical, uses for crafts; for kids, the occasional romp with colorful bits and pieces in various shapes with different textures might help stir up a little stimulation, especially if you have kids that, like so many in the developed world, spend most of their time contemplating either Sponge Bob Square Pants or else how 2 desighfur th3ir ltst txt. Some people, if a single-digit minority can be called “some,” are genuinely talented with crafting things which, while they may still offer little if any purpose, might be nice to look at from time to time, or could help populate the homes of people who like to leave little trails of stuff everywhere like urban equivalents of Hansel & Gretel’s breadcrumbs. You get to the bathroom by following the paper mache mardi gras masks just past the diorama of Sara Palin in space.

In a time when people were less insulated by objects and more aware of what was going on around them (hey, it’s possible), crafts referred to occupations. To the creation of useful, necessary, or actually handy things. A craft was a sort of expertise, directed towards the making of things that people needed. It cost money, it made money, and in general there weren’t any fruit cozies being thrown into the mix. Crafts required skill –and not the kind of modern “skill” wherein everybody’s level is magically equal because it feels better when you say it that way. Cooking an excellent, affordable, filling meal, building a house, making yourself clothes, or weapons, or a bench –these are results, and, depressingly, goals, that seem less and less pursued as the prevalence of microwave dinners, pre-fabricated vinyl porta-potties masquerading as homes, polyester pimp duds, pawn shop revolvers, and concept chairs capable of resisting destruction for at least thirty days of use makes everything easier and gives people more time to pretend they’re actually making, learning, or contributing anything to the world.

This doesn’t mean there’s something inherently wrong with the occasional investigation of how different colors of sand look layered in a jar. But I’d like to think that knowing how to feed, shelter, protect, educate, and understand yourself as a conscious being takes a bit of precedence.

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A Suspicious Surplus of Kitchen Appliances

By aiche | Published: February 7, 2010

Somehow, in a potentially very sick twist of fate, the kitchen ended up becoming the arena for far more gadgets, strange yet addictively convenient devices, and noisemaking thingamajigs than the bedroom, though arguably some of the items in the standard utensils drawer could easily be transplanted with the right entrepreneurial spirit. Why this seemingly bizarre venue for increasingly ridiculous contraptions has exploded in the past few decades is anyone’s guess, though I might have to stake mine in the vein of aging or jaded wives spending less time in the boudoir and more time compensating for their dissatisfaction with additional trays of brownies and complicated finger foods.

Now, I wouldn’t venture into the kitchen with such scathing words without bringing the heat. Lo:

1. Tater Mitts. Because using a knife, or even a specialized vegetable peeler, just doesn’t have the same appeal as rubbing spuds until they’ve been inexplicably tortured out of every last shred of skin by the merciless nubbins of rubber gloves. I guess these work, however, for cooks who want to deter negative comments about the au gratin come serving time. What do you mean there’s not enough salt?! You eat your potatoes before I rub your nose off!

2. Internal Electric Egg Scrambler. Eggs get a pretty bad rap in the kitchen; there are all sorts of items made to supposedly relieve people of the terrible burden of cutting, peeling, boiling, or in any way considering the things. But last time I checked, swirling the yolk and white together was one of the least intensive or mentally challenging processes performed before noshing on an omelet. This is not, apparently, the case for the creators and fans of the Electric Egg Scrambler, which from its name sounds like it might accomplish the cooking inside the shell. That might be kinda interesting. But no, the device simply pierces the egg with a particularly talented needle, which then whirs around a little like the town drunk and proudly produces a “pre-scrambled” egg fluid. No longer will people have to subject themselves to the misery of moving a fork around for twenty seconds. Can I get an amen?

3. “Pop Art” Toaster Templates. I’m sure it was a heartbreakingly meaningful moment when someone sneezed forth with this brilliant rendition of the modern obsession with personalizing every damn thing (my toast is unique, just like me!), but the appeal is likely to wear off when one realizes they’re insensibly limited to someone else’s idea of good toast brandings, and besides, a cautery pen requires much less counter space.

4. Cookie Scoops. Aside from looking like escapees from the OB-GYN’s office, these charming culinary abuses pretend to have some utility in regards to cookies; that is, they can spare you the unrelenting aggravation of…well, scooping with a spoon. I overheard a baker of some celebrity praising these things for their ability to produce balls of dough with equal amounts to promote even baking, but this makes little sense when one considers that a spoon does the same thing. Only, for less expense, with less fanfare, and without any sort of special “grip” to suggest that you’ve less control over your tools than the average intoxicated seagull.

5. The Aging Parent Surveillance Tea Maker. The creators of this combination tea brewer and total infringement on privacy (now your most common kitchen tasks can be brought together into one!) assure us that since elderly parents are more likely to bitch about being thrown into a nursing home these days, it’s important to compensate with some sort of nifty spy device so you can collect any dead bodies while they’re still fresh. Each time dear old dad or rambling momma make themselves a cuppa tea, this device will transmit related data to a caring if monumentally overbearing child via SMS. It also notes when the tea is being kept warm, so you can have a stern talking-to with the parents over their excessive use of electricity, I guess. Now when they come out with the combination aging parent surveillance tea maker and barking deterrent, I might have another look.

The latest kitchen device to be introduced to my laboratory of sauces, soups, and faildeserts that get eaten anyway because hey! there’s chocolate! is a marble mortar & pestle, which is blessedly not endorsed by anyone on television, doesn’t have any sort of demeaning pump-action, and will never need a warranty of any kind. Here’s to a fad-free dinner.

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In Praise of Criticism

By aiche | Published: January 31, 2010

Criticism, as most of the intellectual or business minded world (as well as those positioned comfortably at the rare intersections of the two) will have you know, is an essential, remarkable, and beautiful thing; something without which we might be hard-pressed to progress, and which can serve as a powerful current against the stream of the ego or the group. Even Octavio Paz had a nicely parceled line about criticism:

“What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.”

If this thing is so important, as it demonstrably is, if the scores of books, academic journals, societies, university departments, hell, entire movements are any indication, I’m left with the query as to why it’s such a source of complaint and conflict when trickled down to the realm of every day, of the common man, of the common experience, if such a thing in fact exists.

Many people are eager to note how accepting of criticism they are, yet they expect it to be of a certain brand, marked by various formalities that respect not an actual objective standard of quality but rather the limits of their own ability to separate themselves from the thing being criticised. Nevertheless, the brand is given a name and a semblance of order, and is referred to as “constructive criticism.” Separating this from what is apparently useless criticism (how this can be determined through any means other than the recipient deciding within the appropriate context is beyond me), proponents of this sort of variety pack pat on the back have a number of diverging ideas about how criticism should be delivered, and about what kind of consistency it out to have. Unfortunately, no one has yet developed a pasta sauce-based criticism consistency scale (I’d probably be a chunky style fan), but there may be larger tragedies in the world.

Frequently, constructive criticism advocates talk about a different yet just as ridiculous food “connection.” The “PNP sandwich,” as possibly coined or at least perpetuated by one Scott Berkun involves ensuring that everything negative one has to say is lovingly panini’d in between two slices of, well, bullshit. I remember this number from a writing course taken several years ago; while the criticism part was genuinely useful, listening to the obligatorily whipped-up warm fuzzies of bored college students was about as constructive as a tuba playing tribute to a bird chirp.

There’s also apparently a holy list of things that cannot be criticised, seeing as they are the unique and individual and irreproducible and indefensible babies of people’s inner children, begotten by some mysterious yet highly personal process or other. In some cases, this probably applies to the way someone looks in a particular aspect or how they’ve behaved, but then, these are often the very same elements that are up for criticism, and anyway, you can apply this defense to pretty much anything once you’ve crossed out of the realm of personhood and into the magical land of personality Jell-O.

Taking criticism as it comes, how it comes, and intelligently making use of it or sending it along on its merry way is a skill many of us seem to be losing in favor of trying to dictate how it gets gift-wrapped before it gets to our gullets. If you need any proof that things are really getting bad, you need but watch a single episode of American Idol, Survivor, the Real World, or any other of the perplexingly successful shows that bank on our greed for watching people get grilled.

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The Preceeding…

By aiche | Published: January 29, 2010

…has been a production of Something Completely Different: my RSL (Romanian as a Second Language) attempt at “Proza Arhiscurta,” which confines one to a cozy 500-character box, packing peanuts not included.
Translations available to commenters who leave me a pic of something cute with something cuter on its head.

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Mesteacanul si Ienupar

By aiche | Published: January 29, 2010

Doi copaci stara in padurea: unul din alb si patat cu argint. Il numira mesteacanul. Si altul, cu multi noduri intinspeste trunchiului, ca ceva ciopartit de mana dumnezeului, avuse smocuri de par mirositor. Il chema ienupar. Cu soare, cei doi copaci ciondanira despre tot: flori, boabe, pasari, si Kant. Dar cu luna, copacii iubira unul altuia.

Intr-o zi, un om veni si taia pe amandoi. Si ei dormira. Dupa un timp necunoscut, trezira intr-un acoperis. Si ei retinura mainilor peste familia in jos.

Particip la Concursul de Proza Arhiscurta organizat de Trilema.

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Swallow it Down

By aiche | Published: January 28, 2010

I grew up being, for the most part, a vegetarian whose diet was never riddled with the sorts of nightmarish foods that children are typically forced to eat. You know, the occasional bit of gizzard or tongue, or the venison burger when dad either went hunting or relieved his vague sense of bare-chested masculinity by ordering something with a rugged name from the “gourmet” section of the in-flight catalogue. Nobody ever fed me a hot dog only to then tell me what was actually in it; all in all it was a fairly trauma-free gastronomic existence. I never even had to eat liver.

Until recently. Far removed from the slaughter-free days of my youth, I now consume a fair amount of meat, and recently added poultry liver to my diet. Now, there are several things that bother me about this particular part of the entrails which might not so offend a kid who’d had the occasional session of suck-it-up-or-starve. For one, it’s enmeshed in this whole “entrails” business, something I’m used to thinking about only when I’m sick. Then there’s the fact that it has “lobes” (why segments seem benign and lobes evil I’ve no clear idea, unfortunately), and is shaped somewhat like an alcoholic grandpa’s flabby chin. But none of these complaints compare to the taste, which is not all that identifiable beyond an immediate and pervasive impression of slightly burnt garbage and rotting garden hedges (or would be, if a garden hedge could rot).

I’ll admit that the bitching is fun, like a last bastion of juvenile resistance to the inevitable. But it’s something I have to swallow down, like the livers, so that I can get past the shrieking of my tongue and stomach as I get much-needed doses of iron. I get a dose of reality, too, upon finally managing to eat a plate of the things without holding my nose or stomping my feet. It’s something I can do, and something that will be done. I’m not sure why all the fanfare seems so necessary at the outset, but I imagine it’s responsible for a lot of stupidity in my own life, and in the lives of others who create the same sort of obstacles for themselves.

Life has a lot of objects, tangible and otherwise, waiting to be swallowed, and in some cases, to be shoved down our throats. Some people don’t seem to have to swallow quite as much quite as fast –but then it’s hard to tell if they’re being served everything through a straw or have simply learned how to get it all down efficiently, talking or posing for the camera between gulps. Sometimes, we declare that we simply can’t swallow something. It’s too big, or too scandalous. We haven’t thought about it enough, and its foreignness makes our throats dry and unaccommodating. But you can’t mash up someone’s death, or your own physical pain, or a tragic event somewhere far away, into a spoonful of jelly and cross your fingers in the hope you’ll miss out on most of the taste. Life will simply pulverise you, and the jelly, well, you’ll probably make yourself.

Often, people seem to attempt swallowing something unpleasant with an inherently faulty approach; they’ll rub their necks to get a pill down, or practice affirmations to accept something emotionally difficult. Just as there are endless ways to create reasons why swallowing won’t work, there are also endless ways to tell yourself you’re trying while the thing itself still sits, lamely, in your mouth.

If you let go of both your resistance and your sense of difficulty, so that there is nothing left, you’ll find that you can swallow just about anything. And if you aim to live, experience, progress, breathe, and go on unfettered, this will be a good thing.

What happens once your parcel reaches the stomach, of course, is an entirely different story.

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In the Kitchen of the Unmentionable Mr. Stewitt (installment three)

By aiche | Published: January 10, 2010

(note: this is Installment No. 3 in a series. If you’ve missed earlier installments, you can find them by wandering here for the first, or thither for the second.)

Margaret ran from the kitchen into the parlor, where she found Mr. Stewitt out of his recliner and standing beside the window, looking out at the falling snow with one hand firmly planted on his hip. He didn’t turn around when Margaret came through the French doors of the kitchen. “Mr. Stewitt!” gasped Margaret. “Look! Look what was in your box of Puff Its! These aren’t Puff Its at all!” Margaret reached into her pocket and thrust her hand at Mr. Stewitt, who turned and made a face at the black, ink-stained hand before him.

“Did you get into my stationery drawer, Margaret? I hope you didn’t spill ink all over the ivory stock cards.” Mr. Stewitt was frowning. Margaret was frowning too. There was no fuzz in her hand, no remnant of the recently very annoyed and certainly animated creature she’d put into her pocket. “Your kitchen is –there’s something wrong with it, Mr Stewitt,” announced Margaret. She looked at her toes as she said it, bracing for the string of questions that was bound to follow, if her previous experiences of adults mixed with extraordinary stories was any indication. She’d end up describing everything she’d seen, only to be told to stop fibbing or to behave more like a grown up.

When she had finished telling Mr. Stewitt all about the anomalies she’d seen in the kitchen, Margaret was quite surprised to find a look of complete acceptance on the man’s face. “Well yes, girl. My kitchen is enchanted. In fact, that’s precisely what I was going to tell you a story about –how it came to be enchanted, I mean– were you to ever finish with your cereal. Margaret could barely contain her excitement. Finally, a glimpse of the worlds she’d seen beyond the overt and the terribly boring was being confirmed by someone else –someone older and stronger and wiser than herself. She had the sense that with the possibility of Mr. Stewitt’s enchanted kitchen came millions of other tiny possibilities, carrying all the juice and hue and energy of the rainbow back into the gray landscape described by the chattering of old women and the customs of old men.

“I’ll be right back,” said Margaret, in a forced whisper (for how loud her voice might come were she to let it dictate volume on its own Margaret had no idea, but she was afraid that it might be a little like the uncontrolled throatsong of sobbing). She raced back inside the kitchen’s awkward light, and fetched the blue-ribboned box, the first bowl she saw (this one sporting a mane around its middle, though there was no animal owner identifiable), and a pitcher of milk –unblemished!– from the refrigerator. Just as she was about to kick the doors open to give berth to her breakfast armload, Margaret remembered that she’d need a spoon. She turned and began opening drawers, finding all manner of meticulously-arranged crickets, ducklings, and cinnabar-colored treefrogs inside, until finally coming to a tray festooned with flatware in every style Margaret had ever seen or imagined. She hooked a small baby blue ceramic spoon into her grip with a pinky finger and made her way back out the kitchen’s doors, breathlessly laying the ensemble down on the small table near Mr. Stewitt’s favorite chair.

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