supposed to be writing (#15)

...& it's springtime in paris

Mar 06, 2022

did i say fishsticks out loud ? as we were talkjng about the frozen food store and its prices the prices of eating in this place. i was thinking about des bâtonnets and the organic green and waxy yellow string beans that i accepted for the crazy price of a euro more than the normal kind. but i think i said raspberries. how am i supposed to capture these colors : the vibrancy of my waxy yellowgreen mac and my glowing green glass filled with the fluoresence of emergen-c.

i’ve started peeling my kiwis but the thought goes : i am eating my kiwis differently. i don’t know where it came from or why it started but i miss the old way that turned the brown skin into a fuzzy cup. i would save the sweet center but it requires a spoon, a sharp one at that. if the price of six misshapen glasses is 12€, 12 trips to the bathroom it’s still worth it to flood my routine with some brightness. my spoons are dull and the flowers are dying but the colors are wilting artistically.

the kiwi means something but i can’t articulate it, the ways in which the interaction seems off. ~~still not, not trying,~~ not grasping this difference and living it anyway. can’t really grasp the world empirically or institutionally, have to feel my way around before i can clean up my impressions and stuff them into neat envelopes to be opened by strangers. like those cartoonesque springing snakes that pop out of improbable places.

the kiwi means something and i guess it’s accepting the time that it takes, or that it takes time, to remove layers. how many layers surround the core. we’re back to the part where i feel like writing, and don’t feel like sharing my coffeebaking scales.

writing feels like stealing back time, like stealing away to engorge yourself on something luscious or coveted. writing feels like knocking nails into your wide open eyes, and makes me pull at my flyaways. writing feels like ignoring everything while being sensitive to it all. writing is a monster that i feed on my trips to the grocery stores and my too many km strolls. writing feels like breathing in this polluted city where each breath draws the residue of cigarettes and diesel but if you stop you die. and this you is the one that is itself a monster who needs feeding : an instinct to remember where it came from, to remember what it’s doing, like the parasitic hatchlings you watched in that Ted-Ed (‘would you raise the bird who murdered your children ?’).

you have to celebrate the wins. really unabashedly lean into the highs. i don’t even have the paragraph yet but the idea was real. i danced. i danced around for joy and there was no one there to stop me. i grinned and i danced and i considered printing out proof that i was really onto something. and then i sat back down to write. time is still moving in an onwards direction and i am still running, still alive, still running.

– feed me

do you know what makes february end faster ? chocolate cake. this is now an @carolinagelen stan account. i added chopped up dark chocolate, which was wise.

all i want is soup. cabbage roll soup. udon noodle soup. every eating scene from revolutionary love.

split pea soup (‘sans soucis,’ as my mom would say)

At your favorite crunchy grocery store, fill a surprisingly sturdy brown bag with less than a Bonne Maman jar’s worth of split green peas. Eyeball this now, and weigh out 75g later. Scrub the dirt off of 3 gorgeous baby potatoes (yellow) and then delicately slice them into sort of cubes, small enough to cook quickly. Pick out a medium size branch of celery, reserving the top if you like celery leaves or are out of parsley. Cut the celery and the green tops of a leek into little slivers. Make sure you rinse the leeks, then put all of this in your hot pot (or like, a regular pot, i guess) with a reasonable glug of olive oil. Toast/sweat on low heat. Here’s where you could add *flavor* if you were so inclined, but all i have is smoked paprika and i didn’t think to add it. {bet a bay leaf, dill seed, fennel, would taste good here.} Sprinkle in under 2 tsp bouillon powder—reader beware, The Salt— and the appropriate amount of water (4 cups ? idk bc i am using the fixed space of the hot pot). Bring to a boil, then simmer for ages (or half an hour) but really let it cook until the potatoes are squishable, and the split peas have dissolved and emulisified the broth. Top with verdant spring parsley, a hefty squeeze of lemon, and your tabasco lifeline. Serves 1 for dinner, followed by a small lunch. Eat with bread.