The Authenticity Polemic

I woke to something very irksome on the culinary web today, which I suppose would serves me right for waking up if only to read and not watch cartoons like the manchildren of mumblecore.  

The fait accompli of said mush was focusing on one man’s journey to find authentic food and then recreate it. Though I’ve no qualms with any sort of recreation, I do, as you all know, have a huge problem with the dangerous snake pit of authenticity. Authenticity is like perfection. It’s a ridiculous, controlling concept. It’s a charmed circle. It might work with one painting that sticks around for a long while, and is the source of copy and profit. Adam’s rib too might be authentic, but a dish certainly can’t be. Or so I like to claim, because it comes and goes. That magic argument, using a little reverse Nietzsche, is made into manure.  But here’s my bigger problem with anything authentic in the food world: authentic food imposes imperialistic ideologies on the less fortunate; it Others cooks, and encourages modes of power. For one White privileged male to spend his time in other parts of an ‘exotic’ world only to come back to the West ‘looking’ for the real thing is a delusional theatric consumers love buying into, specifically because it buys into the Western ideal of the individual, which in and of itself is destructive, because while we cannot find any kind of autonomy from anything authentic because it is a mere fantasy, we continually shell out cash and look for it. Also, it’s lumped under the genre of travel writing, so it’s strictly for entertainment. At least until you decide to impress your friends with a recipe at dinner. And that’s only the political economy of it. I’m not depending on it for making my argument. 

My real problem? My real real problem is this: asinine tripe like this, from a White privileged centre, going out and looking for the authentic and then trying to conquer it, or policing it in a multicultural space couldn’t be more imperial and destructive, especially when you try to own the people doing it to survive through the act of judging the product they prepare as true to the abstract ‘genuine article.’ I hope people know this kind of shit is why museums and zoos exist. So France and Britain could just fight each other like babies and one-up each other by conquering lands and displaying anthropological war trophies. That said, know this: when you go into an ethnic restaurant, or read about a guy who’s going into an ethnic restaurant to see if they made the ‘real thing’, you are entertaining your novel whims, but also Othering those poor ethnic cooks, and rendering them invisible if they can’t do it. This is a huge paradox, aside from a huge slap in the face to the poor folk running their restaurant. Is the Thai cook not making Thai food? Did they not come from their native country and decide to cook their food to make a living here? So how can you argue authenticity when they made it in their land originally, albeit a little variably. That’s why authenticity’s a hoax, man. That’s why it’s so easy to control a submissive party by accepting them or shaming them; unfortunately, if they’re approval seeking, they’ll suffer for it. Unfortunately, if we’re approval seeking, looking for cultural capital to elevate ourselves through consumption, they will suffer, because we’ll judge them on ‘taste,’ not taste. What do these kinds of White shenanigans say for the Thai family I spent two tender years working for? Are they not authentic because something doesn’t taste the same? (A customer once complained the pad thai wasn’t like the pad thai in Thailand- little did he know, pad thai is a Western creation, taken in by Thailand- no peanut butter, no ketchup) Or is their food authentic because they are a specific ethnicity? What does that say for the Chinaman who can cook great, fantastic laab? That’s Othering, man. Ignoring the struggle of a person and disqualifying them if what they offer doesn’t benefit us. 

And if you’re all, ‘Hey, man, no, I mean ingredients are what make some dish authentic.’ Please. Take that shit up with the ghost of Barthes. I shamed an economics professor for trying to tell me Chinese food in China is better than Chinese food here made by Chinese immigrants, in front of a whole Chinese class, so I’ve no bone about doing the same to you. Save that authenticity garbage for 17 year olds reading Thoreau for the first time and somehow, for whatever dumb fuck reason, associating nature with what is real and true and genuine and autonomous. Please. Thoreau didn’t care about wilderness; that’s not why he left. He hated the political climate and wanted to get away from it and try and make his own, only to fail and come back. So, just as an aside, can we stop trying to associate the environment with human autonomy and spirit too? While we’re bringing up the subject. I mean, that’s like me leaving Waterloo’s people for Cambridge’s because, they’re more ‘real.’ Ha. It’s like going to the market to buy Canadian bananas. That’s bananas! It’s like going to China to learn real kung-fu, when everyone knows Mao totally mutilated kung-fu. He destroyed Shaolin, he burned down temples. Now you gotta go to Taiwan, or Japan and find secret masters. Do I sound ridiculous? That’s because I’m being ridiculous. It’s ridiculous! If someone’s good at kung fu, they’re good at kung fu. If they can teach you to defend yourself, then you can defend yourself. Nothing’s more right. And so I make the same claim for taste. 

Seek food not because it’s authentic, because that doesn’t mean it’s literally better! You can allude yourself in thinking that yes, but just seek for tasting good. Period. And there’s the other variability, and even I’m disqualifying myself. Everyone’s palate IS different. Food writing’s just flashy rhetoric, sprinkled with a little bit of credibility. Anyone can eat and say something tastes good or bad. But how well can they convince you? Get out there and eat. Or don’t, but please don’t support any notions of authenticity so some patronizing White butthead can lord his tongue over poor immigrant workers depending on free family labour and illegal workers. Life’s hard enough as it is without categorizing cooks into authentic, not authentic. Can we all PLEASE stop eating the Other? Can we just strike ‘authenticity’ from the lexicon? Call me a communist, but at least I don’t have to listen to another fathead tell me he’s better than me because he had ‘authentic’ poo soup. At least then, I won’t have to see another old Thai woman cry in a corner, knife in hand. 

-w

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また心揺れる。

Ivan Orkin, a white dude in Japan who opened a successful ramen shop e-mailed me back this morning, after a good 3 months of constant e-mail pestering. I wanted to work for free. Unfortunately, I don't speak fluent Japanese and don't have papers, so I am an unlikely candidate. My heart breaks. Is my dream finally over? Who knows, I don't own a crystal ball. And the coffee psychic never said anything. Only things I don't care about, like love. Phh. Geeze. Chinese won't teach me noodling, Laos only teach me about Buddha, and a white dude in Japan won't let me wash his toilets. I'll be stuck readin' books forever. Alas.

-w

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Eating with Uncle

I think I eat anything. When my uncle asks me if I eat something I usually say I do, and my cousin blithey interrupts, 'Weezee eats everything.' And I agree with her. That is, I assume I eat everything without ever really considering if I eat everything. Sometimes I never give things the attention they deserve. I mean, there are things I don't like to eat, and probably won't even bother trying for whatever gastronomic prejudice, and when I say I eat anything, I guess I don't really pay attention to those kinds of things. So when my uncle positioned half the skull of a goat in front of me, it was one of those times when I thought to myself, 'Hmph, I guess I don't eat everything.' Or want to. Out of respect for my uncle however, I chose to be a little liberal- a tiny bit liberal, because when I plucked a piece of brain from the shell of that thing it took a lot of teasing for me to give way. So much so in fact, that if my uncle hadn't teased that he thought I said I ate everything, I probably wouldn't have tried the mush. If he hadn't spun a fork in front of me like a gun with one bullet in its chamber I probably wouldn't have had the urge to play chicken and save a little face.

So there it was; in my mouth. Pressed between my jaws and smoothed out into a paste with my tongue. I tried to chew it. It was certainly soft enough, but at that moment it was hard not to gag. I've read enough to know that being disgusted by what I was eating is a little juvenile and bougie (though that word in this context is itself a paradox); but for whatever reason I couldn't help it. It may have been because I likened the flavour to fish that went sour.

I thought I was done, but after having gathered my things to leave and happily putting my fork in the sink, wondering how in the world something so gross is considered a delicacy- sweet breads, you know?-, my uncle pointed to the mouth of the thing and told me that, there was the tongue and you've eaten beef tongue before so you can eat this. I was backed into a corner yet again, and before I could say anything, I had a piece of the organ thrust between my fore finger and thumb by the knife that had scraped it out of the thing's dead jaw. If it reminded me of anything, it was the texture of a well stewed chicken; and the flavour wasn't too bad, like an off beef. A lot of off stuff today.

But it was neither of those two characteristics that made me rush to the back and hide behind the counter pretending to chew it and spitting as much of it as I could into the garbage. No, no. It was the teeth that somehow found their way onto that piece of tongue and into my mouth. I remembered Guenther's stories about his exploits with his father in the African bush and how they were constantly treated to boiled ox skull, shards of whatever being in the meat. My meal, I thought, was much more glamorous, and probably tasted somewhat better. But I'll never know. I also imagined that this was right up their with being a serial killer- for some brief moment, I thought that's must be what it felt like. Then again, I wouldn't know. I did know one thing, however; eating with my uncle is always an adventure, and it's these things that bring me back to kitchens time and time again, because it certainly isn't the pay.

-w

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Resident Psychic

I won't beat around the bush. There is no moot point. I can earnestly say I came for the coffee, and all I got was a lousy reading. No, no. Not true; I hadn't been to a psychic in a solid 7 years, and the last one I recall being an ex-priest who was homosexual and blind. He read these things that looked like tongue depressors. Anyway, another time, dear readers. Because now I was well on my way to seeing if coffee beans could very well tell the future, or, at least, if I'd let them. Hey, for a cup of properly brewed Turkish coffee, I'd do it. I'm no expert, if I could practically chalk up the amount of time I've personally attributed to Turkish coffee tasting, it'd be a solid 5 minutes and 37 seconds. My first encounter came at the residence of a professor in which I was thoroughly surprised and elated at the concept of an oily black liquid in a demitasse that was sweet and sludgy; the second, no less than 3 months ago at a local festival, where I had bought a cup and been disappointed substantially by something otherwise watery, scolding and lacking any appeasing flavour. In that past moment I had wondered if my recollection of the small cup almost a year ago was so good because I had accompanied it with a solid amount of port and tiramisu (made by yours truly). Fortunately, I can say it was a bad cup of coffee.

My psychic seeking side kick and I were ushered onto the balcony of a small apartment and told to have a seat while we waited for the crude to brew. There, as we did on the ride up, we wondered what, if anything, we could properly ask. When seeing a psychic it is best to be very articulate and smart with words. I liken it to being in the presence of a genie. Popularly, you only have 3 wishes, so choose wisely. Like we did in the car we thought about what we could ask, and what we would want to know. I had assumed that when having our fortunes read we would simply ask questions and have them answered based on what was left on the sludgy bottoms of our cups. But, like the poor saps that we are, we settled for the most generalized questions in career, travel and love; though in retrospect I should have asked why I had no direction in this life. But that's enough emotional pandering.

Haven gotten my things ready (pen and paper), the old woman stiffly pulled herself through the open door and gave us our respective cups. She said to take our time, in which I humbly obliged. I reckoned I wouldn't get a chance to learn how to make good Turkish coffee any time soon, nor would I find a coffee shop that sells it, and in trying to ask her where she bought the stuff only wondered how on earth I was going to understand the broken English that relayed my reading if I very well couldn't understand the broken English that was trying to give me directions to the store that sold it. It didn't matter though, because I was drinking something pleasantly creamy, pleasantly gritty, sweet on the tip of my tongue and chalky in the back of my throat. Perhaps a metaphor for life, though I'm never one to believe such trite cynicism. It is the tough people that outlast the tough situations after all.

As my company and I neared the end of our small, small cups we were interrupted from drinking anymore, our resident psychic telling us to leave the sludge; which for me, was a shame, because it was the sludge i enjoyed smoothing over my tongue like fresh concrete at the end of every past cup. If I could liken it to anything, I would liken it to just that: stone. Patchouli may be a more palatable analogy, but I could liken the flavour of the cup's sludge to nothing other than the smell of the air when rain hits the hot sidewalk, or when, as a child, my friends and I would see just how many stones we could put down our throats without swallowing them. Hey, some kids eat dirt, I sucked on stones.

Respecting the privacy of each reading, our old resident psychic escorted me off the balcony and into her dining room wherein which I was given the luxury of watching Turkish soap operas on satellite TV. She apologized that there were no other channels, but I took it in stride. Having grown up a devoted fan of Passions, I thought I could certainly get into a soap opera with a plot that revolved around a wedding celebration, Turkish women that were, to use the street vernacular: 'fine huneyz', and jealous men with large mustaches pulling guns on loved ones only to be shot in the back by hilariously stereotyped, old Turkish women. that really did happen. Man pulls gone, shoots man, long, long pause, points gun to fine huney, camera shows each back and forth from shoulders up, gun shot sounds, long, long pause, man drops, old woman in shawl and giant framed glasses stands over his limp body with glock (that means gun). Now, it was hard to catch up to the next show that followed, especially having never watched it before, but I'm pretty sure a black smith welded a woman's wedding dress. That's the impression I got when I saw him working in his studio and visited by some young woman after which he went into a back room and pulled out a box with a wedding dress. Did I mention how gorgeous the women were? Don't believe me? well here's the show. The Internet's a big place, and I can find anything if I try.

Now, I don't know if it was the soap operas or my recollection of the coffee, its sediment settling on my tongue as I drudged through it sweet creaminess, but I was getting excited. Maybe knowing coffee was in my future, maybe love, maybe money, maybe everything a psychic likes to humour customers with.

By the time I was glazed over my friend had finished her reading and I was on my way to the balcony. Having finished my coffee before all the crazy soaps I was given the specific instructions to place the saucer over the top of the demitasse and hold the cup with both hands, fingers over the saucer's now flipped bottom, and thumbs under the demitasse's bottom (or was it the other way around?). After, I was to flip the cup over and let the sludge, and the rest of my future settle. I was asked my birth date and to give my left palm, stretch it out, and wait for the resident psychic to pair my hand up with the diagrams in what looked like an old worn out paperback. Guess what came next? I was really hoping for something dope to happen; unfortunately, I was saddened by the news that I would have 2 kids in the future (though after noticing the grimace on my, the psychic comforted me by letting me know that I don't have to have the kids, but will have the kids. Dang). I would have a long healthy life (dang), and was with four women, 2 really breaking my heart in the past, and for that reason am very adverse to loving anyone else- ever. Spot on psychic lady, spot on.

She had informed me that I had grown up being afraid of heights, and though accepting her claim having no real experience with the stuff, I recalled while driving home that I did in fact hate the idea of heights, always refusing to clean the eavestroughs at home and never accepting the invite to climb the roof for fear of falling. I traveled short distances recently, I don't like big cities and one of my friends continuously beats me with a stick. She even showed the figure with the stick in the residue on the inside of the cup. I've been a dropout in the past, and present (which confused me) until I also realized last night I had given up on school in the new year. Damn, she was good. Aside from that, I'd have a wonderful career, but in order to succeed need patience, which I do not have. I am, according to her, very stubborn. I'd also live near the water, but with real estate prices, I don't know how that could possibly work out. Seriously.

She said she saw me at a gathering (strictly metaphor) and that everyone was watching. Many people, she said, are jealous of me. I couldn't understand why. I didn't see it, and when I doubted it, she showed the cup yet again, and aside from the thick sludge on the bottom that she said was my neurotic worrying, she showed me a part on the canvas of the inside that looked like peeks and valleys with dots in each one- people with eyes, she said. Watching me. Always watching me. I'm smart but have terrible esteem and feel myself weak though I am very strong. She kept coming to this point throughout, as if it really irritated her. She couldn't understand why someone like me was. I was flattered. Then again, it could have been the coffee. Somewhere along the line she asked me who 'D' was, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. I still can't. She also saw a woman- not tall or short, and with sandy coloured hair who 'like' likes me. Whoa. Unfortunately, according to her, I don't like her. Alas.

The culmination of all this love talk led to her grabbing my right index finger and telling me to wipe a specific spot on the cup and show me my smudged, coffee beaned index. She asked me who a woman named 'C' was. Again, I had no idea. I didn't know any. And if I did I was confident I weirded them out. We would, she so bluntly put it, fall in love. That's right folks, big victories in love soon enough. I also had to learn to say 'no.' Because it had been a personal vocation of mine to always say 'yes' to people, though I always act as if I'm refusing, which explains my poor progress in life. Maybe the saddest part of the reading was that I was too trusting and that I shouldn't, she informed me, ever trust people. And with that, I wondered how I would ever fall in love? And one last time, I was berated with why I was so down on myself. She assured me that if I was positive, if I believed in myself, in a couple months' time things would change. My life would change, everything would change. And that if anything ever brought me down, to write it down and throw it in a river. I tell you this, dear readers, I would like her to be right, but there are the generalizations I'm leaving out, and my friend feeding her a lot of my life before I went in for my reading (which is no fault of her own, the poor jeunesse thing). We had a lot of the same things said, and I could have very well taken it as hocus pocus, or mumbo jumbo; but I could also take it as being two sides of the same coin, and if I'm to start believing in myself, I should start with that.

We thanked her, paid what we owed and left, but not without remembering to look for a place that sold Turkish coffee by the bag.

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Journey to the South East

The Chinese bakers behind my house sold the business and moved on with their lives. I found out, ironically, and sadly, Monday, the day of the Dragon Boat Festival- the day I would, and had been carefully planning for since March, beg them (yet again) to teach me noodling. With a bag full of tea as ritual gift and sign of my seriousness for tutelage, I arrived at the front door only to have been told the sad, sad news by the new owners, who couldn't have given a flying fuck and a rolling donut about noodles or anything baked by the Chinese. So it goes, comrades. But this brings me to the main action of this story.

I had been turning over in my mind for some time now the idea of staying with the monks at Mommy and Uncle's temple. For days after work I kept driving by the tender place of my old employment and wondered when I'd have the gull to go in and say hello. Tonight, I finally did.

Stepping near the door, Uncle spotted me from the patio and waved me down, thinking I was just walking by. I assured him he was the reason I came, and, the laughing buddha that he was, he told me to go on in, paying no mind to the customers still left outside. I was touched.

I made my way through the dining room, said hello to old kitchen colleagues, and came to the back with Mommy cooking and her sister, as always, cutting vegetables.

As I watched Mommy fry copious amounts of fish I said my venerable hellos and was, as usual, offered all the food in her world. And, as usual, I appreciatively declined, only to have been offered a drink of lemon grace tea by Uncle moments later. I had missed this place, and though I see it in passing almost every day when making my way to my own family's restaurant (in attempts to touch the roots of my own heritage’s food), it was the people in that space at that specific time that made it the place it was and that I had missed. Closing time. After hours. Cooking for each other, cooking as a family, eating together. The time, as far as I've always been concerned, that everyone lived for.

Mommy had explained that she had been preparing food for the monks at temple and that Uncle was going to take it to them; and serendipitously, just like that, I was given the opportunity to ask if Mommy thought that the monks would let me stay with them at temple for a couple days. Mommy said of course, and Uncle, always willing to help, said that there was a night festival soon and that that would be the perfect opportunity because that's when everyone goes. And if that didn't work I could always go another time. Mommy made the decision for me to go with Uncle right then and there to visit the monks late that night just shy of 10 pm as they packed their errand of pad thai, curry and mango salad. Mommy said I could stay, eat with them, and just be. That some nights, when she's too tired, when we're all too tired of the world, we can all just go to temple late at night, meditate and fall asleep, wake up the next day, and leave.

Filling the last bit of basket Uncle held the basket of packed food up to mommy's head, and then her sister's, the two taking turns bowing and saying Buddhist prayers so the alms would happily make their way. Uncle and I then loaded up the car and left.

I'd always daydream about making food delivery trips with Uncle when I worked at the restaurant, and for a brief moment I felt a pang of irony and sadness that the moment had come when I wasn't part of the crew (though today I'm sure they’d still consider me one of their own). With the sounds of Laotian love ballads undulating from uncle's car stereo and oozing in both of our ears like liquid sugar I did my best to catch up with Uncle, telling him that I had been working at my family's restaurant these past couple of months and assuring him that I remembered his teachings on how to descale a fish (a story I'm sure I'll tell you, dear readers, someday), and that yes, I still knew how to cook Thai, though I haven't cooked it much because cooking it for only myself seemed like such a sad thing.

Arriving at temple, Uncle's friend, having been staying with the monks for some time now, greeted us and led us to the kitchen, where I saw a small table full of what looked like fresh noodles. I had recalled the bakers, and thought maybe the monks made their own food. Then, remembering the gold, yellow, pink and white braids on my wrist assumed that what I was coming to was a plethora of Buddhist prayer bracelets, something the monks made for the masses. Uncle enlightened me: the long, thin gold strands were actually candles. Candles for the ceremony coming up that he told me about barely an hour ago. Each long, white string had been dipped in a long dish filled with melted bees wax and hung over the oven fan, the drippings hilling into small dunes below, gathered in a disposable oven tray. When dry, and looking like fresh noodles, they were placed on the small table next to the oven. I listened to the soft clicks of Lao that passed between all the men in the kitchen; I peered in the fridge, looked on the shelves, and noted that the monks never had to cook for themselves because the community did it for them. The bowls alone were enough to supply a small country.

While I lost myself in the curious prayer wheel tatooed on one of the monk's arms, another monk hobbled into the kitchen while pinning his robe over his shoulder. He had just woken up and covered himself in time. Uncle told me that if I wanted to I could speak to him because he could understand some English. I told Uncle I'd wait for the head of whom we quietly passed in the hall for fear of disturbing his meditation in the shadows, lit only by the little light that bounced off the three golden Buddhas which sat ascetically on the hearth, there to not only guide devotees in meditation, but to give them some reflexive perspective.

When he came to and I watched his silhouette approach the kitchen, me peering in and out the door, I readied myself in my chair. He stood at the doorway seemingly awkward, but I realized I had been projecting my own character on to him. He was quiet and his presence was, in all actuality, commanding. I had greeted the monks before, having had no trouble bowing to them, but this time something stopped me.

A beat.

Uncle told me to remove my hat. Embarrassed, I did, and, like a kid, followed the monk into the great hall after Uncle told him I had something to ask and that I should go talk with him in private. I had naively assumed Uncle would do all the talking for me, but the monk was articulate enough to hold conversation, and this I knew, having met and spoken with him years before.

Having sat down before him at the hearth, I pleaded my case and to some confusion had seemed as if I was looking for some spiritual guidance. I had assured the head that although I appreciated the sentiment, I had nothing so serious in mind. I did not want to necessarily become a monk, nor wish to spiritually find myself or reach some deeper understanding of the Buddhist faith, I merely wanted to come and be. I merely wanted to stay there, cook, clean, meander aimlessly, have pretend conversations with the Buddha, and really nothing else. Just spend time with the monks, as boring as that may seem. He told me that that was perfectly fine, but that I should also have some kind of structure and discipline during my stay for the sake of leaving with something. I humbly agreed. From there, the head got to know me better, asked who I was, where I came from. He and I had both been students at the same university at the same time last year and were, in fact, graduating on the same time, just in different departments. I told him about my adventures with food, about having come to temple with Mommy and Uncle and how having seen how food happened there made me think that temple seemed like a good place to be. He understood. And we talked a little longer- about food in Asian faiths, how the Buddhist is always obliged to cook for another, and the Monastic should never cook for himself unless absolutely necessary, but that a dependence on the lay cooker teaches moral obligation and creates a strong bond between monk and community. I remembered the fridge. We spoke more about religion, about his academic work and how the academy can certainly be lonely. We spoke about discourse, the multicultural, my lack of direction, accept when it came to food, and practitioner scholars, something I had heard of, but never really given much attention to.

It had been almost an hour before Uncle came out of the kitchen and politely broke up our conversation, telling us that, unfortunately, we had to leave because mommy was all alone at the restaurant and needed help closing because it was nearing midnight. I thanked the head for his time and consideration, gave a half-assed bow (which I planned to improve), put my shoes on and said goodnight, awaiting his reply for my retreat.

Uncle and I headed home.

Mommy was waiting for us by the front door, unlocking it with one hand, and passing the phone off to Uncle with the other- their grandchild was on the phone and couldn't get to sleep. Cajoling them with the help of his wife, Uncle was talked through the conversation by Mommy, who carolled her usual ois and tall mmMMmm when playing back and forth in witty conversation. They were sounds I dearly missed, especially during the cold winters I recalled them happening in.

I said one last goodbye watching Uncle make his way to the fridge with tubs of cleaned lettuce, and Mommy as always offered me first a drink (yet again) and then some of the food they intended to eat that very night. A humble plate of six quail eggs, greens and rice. I graciously accepted, and Mommy, as democratic as always, gave me two and a mound of rice, cheerily peeping to herself that we all got two eggs each. The act only solidified the already good reputation of Mommy in my own mind; that she could have so little but still share it equally with someone else. And yes, I know she could get food elsewhere, but that wasn't the point; the point was, or at least how I saw it, was that the energy that went into cooking would be reason enough to not want to give so much food away, because it was late and to cook more would take even more spirit. Maybe I can't articulate this thought as well as I can understand it in my mind, but lack of food never stops Mommy or Uncle from always offering me things and telling me to not be shy, to, like the lay or monastic, feel a moral obligation to cook for others before themselves. This makes owning a restaurant, or being a cook, in my heart, a very worthwhile and legitimate thing. I would never have been otherwise able to justify the act in my own life until my conversation with the monk tonight. I always saw cooking as kind of shallow, glamorous, and kind of unimportant air, and though it may all be relative to perceive it the way it is and from the context of Mommy's, Uncle's and the monks' lives, it certainly has made all the difference.

I left thinking more about it. Having finally realized the most sincere and best way to cook in life and how I could cook and be satisfied with myself without feeling utterly hopeless and without meaning.

There may not be any glowing figures, and like Mommy once said, when it comes to faith, she believes it, but doesn't believe it; still, there are certainly things there that make life a lot more liveable. I thought even more about it, at ease with myself for the first time in a while. I thought even more about it. About Mommy, monks, apples and raccoons.

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So the Buddha Said

Mummy: Ssss. Lowa. Der. You smart, I know you finish Masterz.

Me: I dunno. We'll see. If I do quit, it wouldn't be the first time. But it's easy. It'll be easy.

Mummy: What you mean? Easy? Nooo. Everyone always say getting Masterz hahrd.

Me: Well. I think it depends. Y'know. If you have no heart, it's hard. If you like it, then it's easy.

Mummy: Oh yeah, I see.

. . .

Me: You know, it's lonely alot of the time. I just read all day and night. Nothing else. Sometimes I feel like it's for nothing at all. Like I'm not in school for me. I see how hard my mom works, and I can't lose face. A lot of the decisions I make are in part because of my mom. But I mean, what can I do? She gave up a life to raise me.

Mummy: You listen to me. When I make a soup, you go try and you say: Mummy, needs more fish sauce; then, Uncle try and he say: Mummy, need more pepper. But I try and I know it purrfect. When you make soup, only you know when it purrfect. You understand me? Everyone taste different. You make your own soup.


Me: I worry alot mummy. That I won't be able to finish school. That I'll be on my own. Kicked out. On the streets. And I will be unable to continue my education. Or even get to where I wanna go.

Mummy: You are smart. I know you be fine on your own! I see how you work. Mummy know. You good boy.

. . .

Mummy: Ssss. Aw. Mummy back better now. Thank you. Purrfect!

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