Wednesday, April 22, 2015

cookies whenever you want

The one chief bummer about childhood was having no control and every little thing under someone else's control even so far as diet. I'd come in starving and Mum would be peeling potatoes, one little bite of raw potato would stave my starvation, but no, that would ruin my appetite for dinner so suffer for thirty more minutes unless I beg and beg and beg and beg and beg or else put on my adorable face and ask if there is anything I can do to assist in hastening the project along. Set the table. Ugh.

Even such things as cookies were doled. At nine years old I thought it would be great if I could make cookies whenever I want to, any day of the week at my whim. I couldn't wait to grow up and be free of these surly bonds of parental suppression. I had no idea how supportive my parents were. And they were. They devoted themselves to us. All I cared about was what they kept me from doing. Couldn't have a bow and arrow, couldn't have a bb gun, couldn't model in Tokyo, couldn't have a rabbit hutch, couldn't have an owl, couldn't own a hawk, couldn't launch my paper balloon on base, always keeping me back, It annoys me still, and I thought back then, "Man, when I grow up Imma gonna make cookies and treats and eat them whenever I want. I can't wait to get out of this chickenshit outfit."

That would be a term overheard since infancy. Dad applied it to radar sites that were not airbases as part of his dialogue about cleaning them up, he, the hero of all his own work-related tales, I heard this term a lot. Later, after encountering the term in a film, captivated by it, British comic artists at B3ta depicted various versions of men's suits in the shape of a plop of chicken shit, made of chicken shit, with chicken shit on them, with chicken hats and splotches all over, various chickeny shitty costumes too numerous to show and all that amused me tremendously because of my dad.


No wonder he wanted to get out (by sinisterduck)

My dad had no idea how hilarious he was. He would launch into a diatribe wholeheartedly so well reasoned so thorough in interconnected detail that although he was deadly serious and mean looking in delivery  it was actually comical so I'd laugh and that encouraged him to continue along his bitter track. It's truly funny. Younger brother James did not understand this at all and still doesn't. He still talks about this. My pov is if you saw this act on stage you too would be cracking up laughing. Stop taking everything so seriously and personally.

I can buy chocolate chips whenever I want and just throw them in the shopping trolly. Get two. Get four. Get ten pounds. Who cares? Yesterday I thought, why not make cookies? Then popped off the chair and did so, just like that, opened the refrigerator, grabbed eggs and butter and away I went popping things into a bowl without moving from the spot doing a familiar thing like cleaning a gun or shoving battens into hang glider wing slots to make them more rigid, part of set up, or grooming a Belgian Groenendale down to their toe nails, or frying an egg perfectly, preparing a plaster, painting a fresco, it is ritualistic, highly ritualistic, and it is meditative and while standing there performing the familiar I felt my brainwaves dip from alpha to beta waves and momentarily I slipped into a sort of creative standing trance while preforming the ritual of cookies and was transported to childhood on another continent and feeling myself in that time and that place back then thinking how ace it will be when I grow up and make cookies whenever I want to and here I am at the same time standing in a kitchen grown up doing it with no resistance from anyone whatsoever and this loop it is truly a beautiful thing. Boy, your dream, this one is realized. And I'm back.


3 comments:

MamaM said...

Yes.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Matrix cookie baking.

rcocean said...

Yep, that's the great thing about Adulthood - Freedom. That is until you get a child.