Welcome to the Jungle

When my boyfriend and I were on vacation a couple of years ago we decided to eat somewhere nice. I got dressed up in a tropical sundress and we walked across the street to a hotel to find the restaurant we were looking for. There were palm trees and tropical plants everywhere. Somewhere there was a waterfall making splashing noises. It was dark because it was night out and the ceiling of the restaurant was a big skylight to give it the feeling of being outdoors in a real jungle. The only lights were candles in the middle of each table so we could barely see each other, which was charming and cozy but also seemed a little dangerous. The waitress came and took our orders and we started joking around while we anticipated our expensive and delicious food. It seemed to be taking a while and the waiter had filled up our water glasses a few times when we noticed a shadow lurking behind some bamboo and palm tree leaves. It seemed to be zoning in on us yet taking its time like an animal stalking its prey. We gave each other a nervous glance and before we knew it a woman with a giant camera came darting at us. All of a sudden we were being goaded into moving closer together. The woman talked fast and loud and there was no time to protest. She ordered us to pose in complicated and unnatural ways, tilting our heads in every direction and moving our arms around each other like it was some new and even more complicated way to play Twister. She was very precise about what she wanted. We did what she told us so nobody would get hurt. I wondered if the rest of the restaurant was as disturbed by this as I was. When she was finished with us she left as quickly as she had come after telling us she would be back with the prints.  We began to eat. All that frenzied posing had worked up an appetite. By the time we got done with our dessert she was back. She showed us a few samples of what she had taken and in my haste to make her go away I just pointed to one without really looking and we paid her for it. When we got outside to a well-lit area I took the picture out of the bag expecting to see an awkward mess. I slowly pulled it out of the envelope inch by inch. We looked awesome. Like two people in love should. It’s still one of my favorite pictures of us and I keep it in a frame next to my bed. Demented strangers take the best photographs.

A Taste of Hate

When our class was assigned to read M. F. K. Fisher’s essay "Once a Tramp, Always..." I was looking forward to an interesting story that perhaps all human beings would be able to relate to. The title promised some kind of life lesson against persecution or, at least, a scandalous tale.  I began reading it optimistically, ready to savor the words and let them move me in some direction like sympathy or laughter. By the time I got to the third page I started to lose hope. This didn’t seem to be going anywhere. If I were reading this for my own benefit I would have put it down and found something else to read, but I stuck it out for the sake of my assignment hoping the essay would redeem itself by the time I got to the end. It never did. I felt... duped. Like I had truly wasted my time. I was not expecting a culinary essay that had almost nothing, whatsoever, to do with tramps. This essay was insufferable.

Perhaps I was disappointed because the title had prepared my palate for one thing and I got something else, like when you hastily grab the glass of soda you sat on the table only moments ago and drink it, only to realize it’s a glass of milk, so your immediate reaction is to spit it out. After giving it some more thought I knew that wasn’t the reason why. It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand some of what Fisher was trying to say in her essay, but that I had to try too hard to understand it, because I could not relate to her tastes or her reasoning at all. For something by an author who is supposed to be a real food sensualist, I just didn’t feel what I think I should have felt. Being a food person who understands the joy of cooking and eating, I was left cold and unmoved. I could not understand Fisher’s choices in refraining from eating things that she loved for years at a time. It seemed like an overly dramatic thing to do. I have a thing for red curry sauce and tofu. I eat it when I want. I don’t wait two years and feel content in the knowledge that “it’s there.” What kind of crazy masochist does that kind of thing? I also could not relate to her choice of food. Potato chips are okay, I guess. I find them too salty most of the time. And I’ve never had caviar, nor am I interested in trying it, so her description was totally lost on me. I tried relating it to the best spicy crab cake I had in Las Vegas that I will probably never have again, but it was no good because that experience isn’t going to stop me from eating more crab cakes whenever I feel like it. And I’m never going to write a story about it to bore you to death with either.

At times Fisher’s writing reminds me of some prim and delicate lady who hangs on too tightly to the past and mistakes her every romantic remembrance as being interesting to everyone. The kind of person I would avoid for fear of not finding an excuse to be able to leave before they start in with some long family history. She gets passionate but in that exaggerated southern belle way that makes you want to gag a little (Your "belle-soeur"? Don’t you mean your “sister-in-law”?). Maybe I’m missing the point and have to look at it from the perspective of someone who lives for food and all the drama it entails. On second thought, I’m pretty sure I hate it.

What Kind of Personal Essayist Am I?

To tell the truth, I’m not really certain where my strengths lie yet as far as personal essays are concerned -- the main reason being that I don’t have a lot of experience with them. It was not easy for me to glance over the list of qualities and choose one right away thinking "That’s definitely me!" So my method was to try to pinpoint my style by eliminating the qualities I felt I could identify with but was not certain about. Since cheek and irony are the qualities I love to read most in an essay, the first quality I was drawn to was "Do I enjoy making fun of people?" I would say that I definitely do enjoy it but I don’t really make it a point in my essay writing, and I don’t like it to feel forced if it isn’t coming to me, which it doesn’t all the time. It’s a feeling that has to be taken advantage of in the moment if I’m going to commit to it. So then I moved on to celebrating idleness. Though I think there’s nothing wrong with idleness and I put it into practice quite often myself, there’s something about celebrating it that makes me feel guilty. It’s something that I would like to overcome. Using texts to propel my writing seems like a good idea and I wish I did it more often, but I don’t remember quotes that well and sometimes I don’t want to take the time to look for them or match them to the proper context so I don’t misuse them. Therefore, I cannot count this as my favorite method. Looking back at past experiences is an important tool for everyone but I tire of that pretty quickly. Even though I think there is a lot of value in it, there is only so far I can go before I’ve lost interest in talking about it.

Exploring feelings of ambivalence or doubt seems by now to be the most "on target" quality that I possess. I find that I sometimes have very strong opinions about something or almost no opinion at all, only to start to see it in a different way once I begin writing about it. It’s a lot like having a conversation with someone who is always questioning my motives.  I feel comfortable in the change and fluidity of opinions and beliefs while exploring the contradictions in my own mind. Of course, it’s good to have beliefs you hold dear and don’t let go of because they are the things that make you who you are, but having an open mind helps you to grow as a person and that is something I value, even if it’s a rough road to travel.

One of My Flaws

I am not a quick thinker. If I were asked to be on a quiz show with a time limit I would probably head in another direction and not look back. The hamster on the wheel in my head goes at his own pace and the wheel is pretty squeaky. I like to turn things over in my mind slowly and examine them, maybe more than once, before I start spouting off answers. This is also due to my nature of being spacey which makes it hard for me to stay focused, especially in a room full of people. I am always second guessing myself and I find that my answers tend to change the more I think about them, which is not always a bad thing. Sometimes the simplest question like "How was your day?" stops me in my tracks. How was my day? Was my house set on fire? Nope. It was “good.” Although being a slow thinker is definitely not something I’m proud of, I think as long as I’ve given something enough thought at the end of the day and have come to some type of understanding then it’s not something I should worry about, even though I probably don’t come off as a very intelligent person in everyday conversation because of it. I’m not sure how to go about changing it but if it’s just the way my mind works I guess I would rather it worked like this than to jump to conclusions too quickly. 

Putting on Airs

It's easy for me to tell when I'm reading something by someone who is putting on airs when I find myself becoming intensely bored by the second or third paragraph. The kind of bored where I just start skimming for anything interesting instead of actually reading it and taking it in word for word. It's painful to read anything where the author talks only about his or her good points and keeps silent about their faults, or only the victories but not the defeats that may have lead to them. This kind of writing puts a distance between the writer and his or her human audience. Putting on airs causes the essay, as a medium of discovery, to fall far short of its potential.

This pretended behavior is something I struggle with in my own writing. Being unpretentious goes against the instincts of how we think a great writer should be. It's not always easy to expose yourself or to admit that there are things you may not appreciate or fully understand. Montaigne succeeds in this by beginning his essay "On Books" admitting he is no master of the craft and goes on to say that he may not totally appreciate or understand the works of some authors right away. He also admits he cannot tolerate reading anything that is very long and not to the point without needing a break or it all becomes too difficult to process. I am right there with him on that. Discussing a subject in realistic terms like this is a good way to connect with the audience while coming to understand what makes something work, or not work.

On Exploring Uncharted Waters

New experiences don't come around every day, or even every month, but on the occasion that they do I try to make the best of them. The prospect of trying something new is exciting to me and often occupies a good part of  my spacing out time where I imagine various scenarios of experiences I would like to have, such as immersing myself in the culture of a different country. If it's true that the more new experiences one has the more interesting they are, then I am aware that I could use a lot more of them. I've had some pretty good first experiences and I've had some pretty bad ones (like my first waitressing job that I grew to hate so quickly), but just as important as the experience itself is whether or not I can see the value in it and, hopefully, learn something from it so that I can understand myself and the world a little better.