Thursday, December 21, 2006

The Resemblance between T.S. Eliot and Cilantro

(This came to me while I was eating yummy chicken tikka something for dinner. It had cilantro in.)

I know that I love T.S. Eliot and cilantro. I love them both, in my heart, with a deep and abiding love that looks on tempests and is never shaken. But every time I return to them after an absence, I am at first disappointed. I open up my T.S. Eliot book, or I put a little piece of cilantro into my mouth, and I’m like, Hey. This isn’t that great after all. This is so much less good than I remember it being.

But then T.S. Eliot says something totally brilliant and exactly right; and then the cilantro taste that I love appears once more, even more delicious and wonderful than I could possibly have remembered it, and the world makes sense again.

(I guess that by saying that I am disappointed in the initial return to these things that I love sort of undercuts the tempests never shaken thing. Shut up.)

(I thought of this because I was eating my chicken tikka and rather late on in the chewing process of each bite, I could taste a most amazing and delightful taste that made my tastebuds sing little songs of joy, and I said, Something in this food tastes fantastic and Steve said, Cilantro? and I took another bite and said, Oh. Yeah., and Steve said, You are so predictable. He’s just jealous because he doesn’t like cilantro, so he can never know the delicious perfection of finding cilantro in a dish that would otherwise have been just ordinary.)

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