Bleh

Tonight I did something I'd never done before. It has been done for me. Once. By a neighbor. I made chicken soup from scratch. I've been sick for the last four days with a head/chest cold. During daily check-ins with my mother, who keeps asking if I have a fever (no fever: no swine flu), she repeats her mantra of "Drink, drink, drink till you slosh!" (She is referring to water of course...) A couple of days ago she started in on the chicken soup verse of her mantra. Do mantras have verses? I stopped by my local grocery store and picked up some of that "fresh made" soup kept in sealed plastic containers in the deli and a brand of instant chicken soup she recommended. Both were palatable and could be called "chicken soup" in the way that a Mozart concerto and the sound emanating from the back of an ice cream truck may both be referred to as "music".

Around 3 PM I ventured outside to walk my dog and ran into one of my neighbors who had just returned from her plot at a local community garden. I informed her of my contagious nature and she kindly offered me some large green onions and a bunch of dill weed. I decided on the spot to make chicken soup with these fresh ingredients along with bone-in chicken legs for stock made from scratch. The soup was made and later enjoyed with my neighbor, Amy (At the time of this posting she is the only follower of my blog I have. Hi, Amy!) While preparing to make the soup, my mother called to check in. When I informed her I was making soup, she suggested that I use canned broth and some chicken breast. Bleh. While I am certain that I do not know of the specific healing effects of chicken soup, I cannot imagine anything medicinal coming of such a thin, watery concoction.

It made me reflect on my approach to food and cuisine today in comparison to that of my childhood. My mother (who is now retired) was a career woman and never much of a house maker. That isn't to say that she was a poor cook. She is a very good cook. There exists a stable of tried and true staples many of which are comprised in part or entirely from boxes, bags, or cans. Some better than others, but rarely were there any new recipes. But that's okay. I certainly don't want to impune my mother's cooking here on the interwebs. Far from it. I never went hungry and with the exception of two dishes (out of MANY) I never groused about eating. I think it is about rebellion.

Think about it (if you went to a public school): who were the most promiscuous girls in the high school? The ones that went to Catholic School. Whose kids end up being the most out of controll? The offspring of the hard liners. What are my favorite vegetables? The ones my mother n-e-v-e-r prepared for us at home: spinache, lima beans, and brussell sprouts. There you have it. The closest I've ever come to true rebellion is in the produce asile. Sometimes I wonder if I'll just snap and truly rebel and get a motorcycle or something...

As I write this, I don't feel any better. Physically, that is. I do have a distinct sense of accomplishment for having done something that I never really gave much thought to as I opened a can or package of neon yellow powder and a few dried noodles. Trust me. It was worth it. Especially when I walked over a piping hot container of the stuff to my gardening neighbor. She smiled and told me to expect "much more" over the Summer. Score.

Now maybe I should get a chef's hat as a tattoo...

Well begun is half done...

Or something like that...

At right is the current contents of my living room. These boxes are the result of over twenty years of collecting. I have yet to calculate an accurate count (I'll list one in a subsequent post.). Comic books have been my drug of choice since I was eleven. I turned thirty-one last March and have decided that I want to rid myself of as much excess as possible. This may prove to be more difficult than most can imagine as I am the descendant of not one, but two families of pack rat. I won't air my family's dirty laundry here except to state that once, while home for the holidays my sister and I shared a solemn moment while in the family basement and grimly agreed that a good (non-life threatening) fire would serve to do more good than ill.

This afternoon my downstairs neighbor stopped by to return a video game (it occurred to me to change "video game" to "book" in order to sound more sophisticated just now) and expressed great amazement at the sheer volume of the collection. I detected no disgust or sense of waste when he looked at it. In fact, he asked why I would part with it as he reverently leafed through the poly-bagged periodicals.

"I'm trying to rid myself of excess. I just seem to have so much stuff."

When I see these boxes, I see not an accomplishment, but a monument to misspent energy. Let me clarify my position here. I love comic books or graphic novels, if you will. In fact, I've proudly worked at a comic book shop. It isn't the object that I object to. It is the idea that it needs to be kept, saved, and preserved. Sometimes things need to be let go of. A few months ago I was watching the Science channel and saw how they bronze baby shoes. The idea seems ludicrous to me. To preserve the first shoes worn by an infant by dipping them in molten alloy and mounting them on a wooden plaque seems ridiculously sentimental to me. Then again, I am childless and wish to be cremated when I die but I digress... The boxes of comics represent the baggage I've carried around for the last two decades. I am a man of stuff. I have some of the most interesting and unusual stuff you'll find around these here parts. Fossilized sloth poop? Check. Life size replica of Superman's cape? Check. Hand carved and painted cane with flamingo head? Check.

The stuff is irrelevant. There was a time when strange and wonderful experiences were an everyday occurrence. Not a week could go by without someone or something fascinating crossing my path. Until recently, I believed this to be because I had changed somehow. I had become unable to engage with the world as I once had. The degeneration of my spirit had begun as the painter who slowly loses his sight to glaucoma. I had become content to mollify my sense of adventure with the play acting of the shadows in my television. With each successive upgrade in technology, the screen became larger and clearer while I grew smaller and dull.

In truth, I had not changed in the slightest. I had allowed my surroundings to control me. There exists this pendulum in my life that swings from chaos to order. When fully engaged in something, I am oblivious to the minutia of life as I allow it to pile up around me: laundry, dishes, bills, and trash. At the point of critical mass, I snap out of my fog and resolve myself to fix these problems in one fell swoop. Later I find myself swept up in another frenzy of activity and the cycle repeats itself. I eventually recognized this pattern and decided to prevent it by keeping ever vigilant. I became a curator in my own home. A slave to my stuff.

I still have many adventures ahead of me. Ridding myself of all but a few of my favorite comics will not change me or my life. It will however, serve as a reminder of what is irrelevant and more importantly, what I can change.

BTW: Anyone want to buy some comic books?

P.S. Petrified sloth poop not for sale.

-C