23. Mixture
A grab-bag; or: thoughts on the mix
It was a busy fall and winter— fall and winter being seasons that aren’t exactly right: it was a busy November and December— no, my heart doesn’t run on Gregorian time— it was a busy few colder months—
with a lot of travel— and also a lot of visitors, family, and guests—
and so I can’t pinpoint exactly when it was that I kept hearing the phrase MIXTURE instead of “mix”— the first time it took me a minute, which always makes me feel so foreign, “pardon me?” “come again?” “sorry?” all ways to say— I don’t understand, please try again, I’m listening—
and then I got it— mixture! like mix! Like you might say Bombay Mix or Kerala Mix or Chex Mix! I was puzzled to get the full form but then I loved it. So literal, so ready-made. Yes: mixture of gathiya and barik sev and nuts and fried moong; yes, moreish mixture.
A mixture today— as you can tell from the dashes I am basically incapable of completing a thought but wanted to anyway just park some of the half-formed ones here— for your delectation.
“It is all over the place, incoherent, intolerable, impossible—And I am sick of it.” — Virginia Woolf editing Orlando, and also me, proofreading my book. The anxiety spiral is so boring!!! And there’s nothing I can do to fix it! Like when our cat would poop outside the litterbox and we would plop her back in the litterbox and she would look back at us like: what do you expect me to do NOW? Yes. The work is done but somehow it still continues.
Baader-Meinhof Syndrome: otherwise known as the frequency illusion, where you learn something new, and then you start seeing it everywhere. For me— it’s… the argument of my book ahhhhh.
That second picture was from a fairly glorious day out—at extremely hip /posh food fest The Gathering, where an extremely inspiring crew held forth in “the Salon.” Got to meet Meher Mirza whose point of view is so incisive and keen, learn from Taiyaba Ali who reminded me that when you need to get 100 plates out on time it’s not about vibes, hug Rini Singhi, and see the one and only (legendary?) Sharanya Deepak whom I basically admire the hell out of. Dinner at Trishna, obviously.
Our panel about GLORIOUS DISOBEDIENCE in Indian cuisine was so fun but unfortunately midway through I fully dissociated and have no idea what I was on about. At one point someone asked about frameworks and I explained the term “Kobayashi Maru” in an attempt to describe the central rhetorical move in my schezwan essay— rejecting “bad” as a category and substituting instead “bhayanak.” I asked: “any Trekkies in the house?” and got blank stares which threw me a little, I’ll admit.
Schezwan essay is out in the world! Vittles Bad Food is so gorgeous and I am so proud to be in it and you should get a copy. Joe Zadeh’s essay alone with the price of admission!
Pune in the Epstein files!!!!
There’s more to be said— about schezwan sauce, about microbes, soil art in the zeitgeist, a peep of our project on NDTV even, the wow! momo fire tragedy, about disposability, capitalism, zukunftswissenschaft, Ernst Bloch, the importance of rest, friendship as a radical politics, witnessing and escaping, more heartache than a heart can hold. None of these thoughts coheres into a single mass. None of the sayable queues to be said. Perhaps the answer is to read a little poetry. Perhaps the answer is tea. Perhaps there is no answer but only the well-worn injunction to live the questions now. Well. Here we are. I’m here with you.
