I had a dream this week that I was with a group of people in a survival situation in the jungle. Someone said that all the fruit was edible so I pulled one off a branch, peeled back the skin, bit in …
The fruit was meat. Like, meat meat. It had the texture and appearance of roast duck but not the taste. The taste was closer to bland beef. Either my subconscious is manifesting cravings from my trying to eat healthier or I have foreseen the next culinary trend to sweep through Brooklyn. Let us have portable pork sausage sheathed in banana. Let medallions of filet mignon hang like grapes from the vine. Let there be chicken in oranges …
I’ve written to you in my past few letters about the meaning one finds after some event in one’s life. Inextricably linked is the meaning one creates in anticipation of something yet to happen. Several times this week I’ve gone into a situation bracing for the worst, only to notice that the moment-to-moment experience is quite different, more complex, never as severe. Once I’m aware of how I actually feel, then there is suddenly room for joy and magic to emerge. And once I get used to the seeming invincibility of that joy, immediately discomfort knocks me back down the mountain. It’s as though when we identify with a singular emotion we create a filter within us, a membrane that only allows the one emotion to pass through. All other emotion particles catch, clog up the filter, and eventually prevent even the emotion we want to get through from getting through. Then we put up a new filter while we shake clean the old one. Or something shakes it clean for us.
Bill Callahan says: “All things spawn from an even place and reside in equal measure. To deny an emotion weakens the opposite emotion.”
What the meat-fruit says, maybe, is that the nourishment you get is always different from the nourishment you expect.