Brief interlude
Last night, I was overcome with a strange sensation, a deep melancholy that lost me in thought.
I rarely send anything back to the kitchen, even if I don't like it. Too shy, perhaps, though some may think this an absurd accusation. The rice was cold, but the Tom Kha Gai was good, and the pineapple curry piquant and sweet, with hints of basil, coconut, galanga and mint.
But the rice was cold, and mushy and altogether unacceptable, and the service, nothing short of spectacularly unattentive.
However, my dissatisfaction was other. There settled over me a wave of sadness and impotence, like the feeling you get when watching a movie in which you know the fate of the protagonist and yet you spend the entire movie in agony, hoping against hope that somehow you were mistaken, that somehow your wishing could revert the inevitable into the realm of mere possibility. I would even take possibility, a glimmer of hope, but no. We are spellbound, in love with the demise of the character, in love with destruction itself, and its knowable desenlace.
And yet we fight it, the dying, the dissappearing, the nothingness, the abyss, the insignificance and we revel in the pain of knowing how it always ends, it is always the same. We hope agaisnt hope that there is something they could do or say, something we could think or feel that would make it all turn out differently.
There is a delicacy in the unfurling that makes the journey worthwhile, nevertheless... nevertheless.
I rarely send anything back to the kitchen, even if I don't like it. Too shy, perhaps, though some may think this an absurd accusation. The rice was cold, but the Tom Kha Gai was good, and the pineapple curry piquant and sweet, with hints of basil, coconut, galanga and mint.
But the rice was cold, and mushy and altogether unacceptable, and the service, nothing short of spectacularly unattentive.
However, my dissatisfaction was other. There settled over me a wave of sadness and impotence, like the feeling you get when watching a movie in which you know the fate of the protagonist and yet you spend the entire movie in agony, hoping against hope that somehow you were mistaken, that somehow your wishing could revert the inevitable into the realm of mere possibility. I would even take possibility, a glimmer of hope, but no. We are spellbound, in love with the demise of the character, in love with destruction itself, and its knowable desenlace.
And yet we fight it, the dying, the dissappearing, the nothingness, the abyss, the insignificance and we revel in the pain of knowing how it always ends, it is always the same. We hope agaisnt hope that there is something they could do or say, something we could think or feel that would make it all turn out differently.
There is a delicacy in the unfurling that makes the journey worthwhile, nevertheless... nevertheless.
posted by ilana at 1:12 p.m.
3 Comments:
Me quedé con las ganas de saber a la cara de quién aventaste la taza de arroz frío y pegajoso. Por lo demás, me hiciste babear como perro de Pavlov con tu descripción de sabores del Tom Kha Gai. Me trajo recuerdos de tiempos idos, de viajes a Tailandia, y de residencia cerca de Chicago donde están los mejores restaurantes Thai que he probado fuera de Tailandia...
En mi caso, cuando me quejé de un platillo en un restaurante tailandés, no logré hincarle el diente una vez "arreglado"; el problema: los empleados de la cocina se asomaron por entre la cortina de bolitas, mirándome intensamente, riéndose con una malicia sospechosa, como la que luce en su retrato Lucrecia Borgia.
Otrova, qué envidia, no conozco el oriente, sino por sus versiones culinarias corrompidas de este país. Salvo la japonesa, tengo que decir que la comida oriental es mejor en la costa este. Lamento decir que apenas conozco Chicago, pasé una noche allí y visité el instituto de arte rumbo a Seattle...
Funny story
Yuré, nos pasó algo semejante, parecía que nos estaban inventando alguna maldad. Esa risita secreta... Terminamos no queriendo nada de arroz por si las dudas
Publicar un comentario
<< Home