A good way to become a writer is to spend a lot of time by yourself. Then you will think thoughts and have no one to tell them to, so you will end up wanting to write them down and post them to your friends or maybe scatter them to the winds and see if anyone responds.
Like this thought I had when eating lunch by myself today. I used to think that I wasn't a big fan of vegetables and fruit. Now I realize that I was wrong; I just don't like vegetables and fruit in every instance. I am in favor of vegetables and fruit in the abstract. But unfortunately, not all pieces of fruit and vegetables are created equal. (It seems only men have that distinction.) The problem here is not that I don't like vegetables and fruit; I love a good, crisp, sweet apple fresh from the orchard, or a nice bright green broccoli tree cooked al dente, perhaps with a hint of butter. No, the problem is the preponderance of bad fruit and vegetables in today's world. Fruit is grown in massive conglomerate combines that pay no heed to the minute, subtle details that separate a good piece of fruit from a bad piece of fruit. Motherlike, individualized care is what is needed, but they're all just heaped together at the grocery store with no differentiation. And it's not just them; it's us, too. We've forgotten the rhythms of nature; technology is supposed to have done away with the need to hassle with that. But there's an infinite difference between an apple picked at the height of the season and one picked in February, as the Notre Dame dining halls prove. Likewise with vegetables. Carrots seem like they last forever; they just sit there at the bottom of your fridge, so you think, "Well, I can just buy a big bag of carrots and have them on stock, eating a few of them every once in a while." Wrong. Carrots should be eaten right away. Have you ever eaten a baby carrot two months after the "best by" date? They're still edible, but they have this slight, weird sourness to them. The "best by" date doesn't lie. The difference between a carrot fresh out of a newly opened bag and one of those dried-out carrots out of a two-month old bag is tremendous. Vegetables also have the added problem that they are one of the hardest things to cook well. They're always overboiled and mushy, or too oily, or too salty, or too bland. Coming up with the perfect harmony of seasonings for vegetables is nearly impossible.
Plus, vegetables and fruits, being organic, each have their own very distinct and unique taste, like a "flavor fingerprint." But these tastes are very subtle and are easy to be missed when drowned out by mouthfuls of sodium and fat and high fructose corn syrup. You have to pay attention to like vegetables and even fruits; it's like tasting a good wine. Often the flavor might not even strike you as good at first (meaning that it doesn't clamber into your neural ganglia and whack it repeatedly with a big mallet shouting, "YAHHHHH! I'M HERE AND I'M FULL OF CALORIES!"), but then when you start paying attention, you notice all these little subtle details and intricacies of the flavor that you hadn't noticed before, and suddenly the flavor becomes so interesting that you forget about its not being good. You really have to get into the moment and grok the vegetable. So, if you don't like vegetables (unless it's just a bad vegetable), chances are you're just not paying enough attention. One could also say that if you don't like fruits and vegetables, you just aren't hungry enough. (Hunger fires up and sharpens that whole attention thing, so that when you're hungry and you eat food, you notice every. little. detail. of it. That's why anything tastes good when you're hungry.)
Hey, what if this whole post was really a big allegory of life?
-Joey
Like this thought I had when eating lunch by myself today. I used to think that I wasn't a big fan of vegetables and fruit. Now I realize that I was wrong; I just don't like vegetables and fruit in every instance. I am in favor of vegetables and fruit in the abstract. But unfortunately, not all pieces of fruit and vegetables are created equal. (It seems only men have that distinction.) The problem here is not that I don't like vegetables and fruit; I love a good, crisp, sweet apple fresh from the orchard, or a nice bright green broccoli tree cooked al dente, perhaps with a hint of butter. No, the problem is the preponderance of bad fruit and vegetables in today's world. Fruit is grown in massive conglomerate combines that pay no heed to the minute, subtle details that separate a good piece of fruit from a bad piece of fruit. Motherlike, individualized care is what is needed, but they're all just heaped together at the grocery store with no differentiation. And it's not just them; it's us, too. We've forgotten the rhythms of nature; technology is supposed to have done away with the need to hassle with that. But there's an infinite difference between an apple picked at the height of the season and one picked in February, as the Notre Dame dining halls prove. Likewise with vegetables. Carrots seem like they last forever; they just sit there at the bottom of your fridge, so you think, "Well, I can just buy a big bag of carrots and have them on stock, eating a few of them every once in a while." Wrong. Carrots should be eaten right away. Have you ever eaten a baby carrot two months after the "best by" date? They're still edible, but they have this slight, weird sourness to them. The "best by" date doesn't lie. The difference between a carrot fresh out of a newly opened bag and one of those dried-out carrots out of a two-month old bag is tremendous. Vegetables also have the added problem that they are one of the hardest things to cook well. They're always overboiled and mushy, or too oily, or too salty, or too bland. Coming up with the perfect harmony of seasonings for vegetables is nearly impossible.
Plus, vegetables and fruits, being organic, each have their own very distinct and unique taste, like a "flavor fingerprint." But these tastes are very subtle and are easy to be missed when drowned out by mouthfuls of sodium and fat and high fructose corn syrup. You have to pay attention to like vegetables and even fruits; it's like tasting a good wine. Often the flavor might not even strike you as good at first (meaning that it doesn't clamber into your neural ganglia and whack it repeatedly with a big mallet shouting, "YAHHHHH! I'M HERE AND I'M FULL OF CALORIES!"), but then when you start paying attention, you notice all these little subtle details and intricacies of the flavor that you hadn't noticed before, and suddenly the flavor becomes so interesting that you forget about its not being good. You really have to get into the moment and grok the vegetable. So, if you don't like vegetables (unless it's just a bad vegetable), chances are you're just not paying enough attention. One could also say that if you don't like fruits and vegetables, you just aren't hungry enough. (Hunger fires up and sharpens that whole attention thing, so that when you're hungry and you eat food, you notice every. little. detail. of it. That's why anything tastes good when you're hungry.)
Hey, what if this whole post was really a big allegory of life?
-Joey
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