Squiggles

One day Andrew and I had been charged with picking up some ingredients for dinner at the Turkish grocery store just down the street from where all three of our friends lived at the time. We had to get cheese, and I remember savoring the experience of standing in front of the cheese selection with perfect ignorance of everything before me. The labels weren't in my language, not even my alphabet, and I got the feeling that even if they had been it wouldn't have helped much; none of them were going to say 'cheddar' anyway.

Andrew came up and announced the name of a package of cheese that he'd randomly picked up. My eyebrows shot up; then I remembered he'd done Greek at school. Ancient Greek, surely? But still, isn't it like Iceland where people can read the old sagas as easily as they can the newspaper? Besides, even if Andrew's pronunciation was misremembered or outdated, it hardly mattered: his audience wasn't Greek, it was me.

And I was, am, and wil be merely enthralled and envious "I don't know what it means!" he said, which of course was to be expected, but still to me the performance was nothing but magic. "But that's how you say it." He looked at squiggles and read them out! Confident, if a bit old-fashioned (I had to trust, having no means to verify, that he was reasonably sure he knew what he was doing).

I learned to read at such a young age that I do not remember learning how. I was confused, a few years later, to watch my parents helping my brother struggle with his kindergarten reading books. How could he not know? I thought. It's so obvious! I didn't know it was something that needed to be learned. Now I know how he felt; now I see the tantalizing mystery of this sort of magic, conjuring meaning from these inscrutable squggles!

Now I want to do that kind of magic. I want to know what all the squiggles mean!

Save me from the Force

For such a long time I did what my parents expected of me or what someone else wanted of me, that it's left me bewildered and worried just trying to find out what I want, much less actually doing it. Nothing new. So I'm going to start writing things down here, in hopes that I stop forgetting these things and get a little closer to actually doing them.

So, here's an easy one.

I want to be a better cook.

I'm not too stupid and I don't like ready meals but I did have about a week recently where I don't think I ate much other than grilled cheese. I'm not just lazy, I'm also uninspired. Or clueless.

I grew up with hamburger as a main ingredient and cream of mushroom as the Force, which runs through everything and binds it all together and I'm trying to avoid that.

When I got to college I made a lot of friends who could cook. Especially the veg(etari)an ones: I tink once you get rid of the pound-of-hamburger crutch you are more likely to know about the sorts of things that my mom would consider dangerously exotic. I envied them a lot and learned a little but forgot most of it.

I know I can google for recipes as easily as I can ask this, but I'd like to know what actually works for you, and anyway now that I have explained my latest Thing I Wanna Do I figure it won't hurt to ask: what's good for someone who might go so far as to eat poultry on special occasions and doesn't like mushrooms or tofu and doesn't know what she's doing? You can be as vague ("try risotto!") or specific ("look at this website!") as you like.

C'mon, I want my mom to think I'm dangerously exotic!