As promised a couple words/phrases that are interesting to me. The first is "comfort food." You've heard this. What's it supposed to mean? I don't know about you but I can't think of any other kind of food. Well except maybe a really spicy, blow-your-face-off curry that gives me a few minutes, (or seconds), of discomfort on the toilet after I eat it. Almost ALL food I eat is comfort food. I think maybe the phrase is one of many ways people in privileged countries try to process the massive, and massively unfair, inequalities in the world. They manufacture and misplace guilt.
I eat a plate of spaghetti and snap into a trance of Vaseline-lensed vision and body tingles that make me feel like the chair I'm sitting in is a beautiful and/or skilled Thai masseuse. THEY eat a power lunch of salad with spinach, thistle leaves and other assorted twigs and shrubbery then plan some ab crunches as penance for the dressing. "Should be able to squeeze those in before heading back to the office," they justify. Lunches with crunches USED to be a sandwich and a bag of chips.
"Guilty pleasure." This phrase is similar. After mowing the lawn, trimming the hedges, changing the baby, taking daughter to dancing and sons to Kung Fu, changing the baby, going to core exercise class with the wife, changing the baby and tending to all the other self-busying, self-imposed chores to keep me far too occupied to notice it, I'm doing it again. I'm in the den with a frozen mug of fine ale watching NHL playoffs on the big screen in high def. and cherishing the guilt as much as the pleasure. Why not think about a change, baby?
I stood for an hour in the sizzling sauna sunny sogginess of rural Thailand where, far from being in the massage parlour taking a transcendent rocket journey through the holes in my oooohs and aaaaahs, I was sweating - standing still and sweating, while watching half a dozen women harvest rice by hand. RiDONKulously hard work, yet none of them had anywhere near the lather of briny brute that covered me and my "Took Took Thailand" touristy t-shirt. Without warning hand sickles were stuck into the ground to mark places and a mat made of, (what else?), rice chaff was laid on the softER ground off the field where the stubs of cut rice plants couldn't poke through. The break in the action seemed an opportune time for me to move on and give the gals some privacy while they ate. But a couple of them noticed me in my movement and motioned for me to join them on the mat.
As a breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, potatoes, five kinds of fruit, coffee and fresh mango juice was still rolling around in my stomach in early stages of digestion I was offered from well worn plastic and metal containers rice with mixed greens and bits of meat the origins of which I would never have dreamed of being so ungrateful to question. It was handed to me on a leaf and the ladies laughed as I looked around for a fork or knife or even chopsticks. They motioned for me to eat with my hands. One lady provided me with two rice chaffs to use. Whether it was a genuine offer or not we all got a bang out of that. In spite of, and more and more BECAUSE of their genuinely fervent pleas to eat up and have more, and because I was not hungry, but the food was SOOO delicious, this was one of the only meals in my life I really felt guilty about.
Although the ladies spoke little English and could not intimate to me why they would have all gone hungry that afternoon to stuff me to the point of puking, I think I get it now. My offers of money and gifts were refused. I could tell their amusement with me, (and at me), was payment enough. Though I understand no Thai, I knew they were marveling at the whiteness, (and sunburned pinkness), of my skin as much as I was envying the brownness of theirs. Some sneaked a stroke of my hairy arms. All were equally amazed at the free flowing sweat into my glasses, onto my food, everywhere!
With their one-baht bottles of luke-warm water and in their squats and cross-legged positions they might have been as comfortable as the ale-swilling, reclining hockey watcher described above. But they had no guilt. This makes me believe that they felt even MORE pleasure. Besides, I wasn't on TV, I was live in all my stinking, perspiring glory!
But I think it goes beyond the spectacle I was making of myself that day. These women were probably ALL Buddhist. They were resigned to their positions in life no matter how unjust. But they believed that if they led good lives, maybe next time around they would get MY life. And you can bet that every one of them would live their lives of privilege to the hilt if they earned them! When I see people punishing their own prosperity I think of these kindly, fun-loving, hard-working ladies of the field and the big smacks upside the head they'd give those people if they could.
It would be nice to see people allowing themselves more pleasure without the guilt. If it doesn't hurt anyone or the planet, why not do it? Maybe in a past life you EARNED it! Surely for all the people out there who can only dream of the lives we have it's almost a sin to squander them. And if you really feel guilt, genuinely deserved guilt for your life, maybe you should think about doing something more substantial than joining Pilates class to assuage it.
Just some comfort food for thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment