Someday I will have you over to my house. When you arrive I
will ask for your coat, if indeed you are wearing a coat. Then I will ask
you if you’d like something to drink, and I will tell you your many options.
Probably you will want something to drink, having come a long way to
see me, which was nice of you. Perhaps it is cold out and you’d like a
whiskey or a hot toddy. Maybe you’d like a seltzer with a bit of lime.
Mulled wine. No matter. I have it.
I will retire to another room to prepare your drink, but not before
I ask you to please sit and make yourself comfortable, indeed as if you
were in your own home.
That will be difficult, however, because you soon realize that I have
furnished my home exclusively with hard wooden chairs.
There aren’t even any tables or rugs, and the chairs are not conducive
to reclining; in fact, you must virtually perch on the end of your narrow
seat.
At this point I will re-enter with your drink of choice. I will also
be carrying a platter of burritos, each with an exotic ingredient: curried
yak, chicken feet, fish cheeks.
The air will be a riot of different scents, none of which you can place,
because that would be like trying to smell the warmth of the sun. It’s
something you can only sense. It just is.
Initially you will be wary, but in due time you will succumb to curiosity
(even if it is only feigned interest—after all, you are not rude!), which
in turn transforms into surprise and then delight as you find each burrito
more delicious than the last! These burritos utterly consume you!
It is as though I have seen the secret dream in your heart and then
made burritos out of it. It’s like you were a formerly adrift planet that
has finally found its star and moon.
It’s hard to say exactly because life is mysterious, which I think is
one of the main things that makes it beautiful.
Like for example the relationship between cruelty and beauty, or the
possibility of falling in love with a total stranger, or suffering in general.
How you can slip out one night for a quick pint and never return home,
or wind up in a cemetery kissing someone for the first time and then spending
the rest of your life with that person.
And there’s a sacrifice inherent in such an abdication of self that’s
beautiful precisely because it’s so mysterious. Because really, who on
earth would do such a thing?
That’s also the problem with art. You give and give and give, and what
do you get in return? Mostly a lot of frustration is what I think. You’re
finally ready to walk away from the whole thing because you’re like, this
is for the birds, but then boom, beauty smacks you in the face like a plump
burrito.
The next thing you know it’s full dark and far too late to make the
journey home. How much did you eat? Your legs are unresponsive from hours
of contorted perching and your hindquarters are numb. Your spine is a column
of ice.
But your pain is offset by the loveliest of burrito-induced glows, and
I’m sitting across from you, coolly examining you over the rim of my drink,
memorizing every detail for my masterpiece.
