Archive for March 29th, 2009

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts.  It breathes, it eats, it eats.  It shits and fucks.  What a mistake to have ever said the id.  Everywhere it is machines – real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections.

- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia 

A painting or a print may have so many meanings, but we all know that even the most realist of art forms are flights of fancy and products of an active imagination.  The depressing thing with the surreal is that it is often far more real than we can imagine; they evoke in us feelings that, all too often, we do not want to feel at all.

Awhile ago, I was looking at Richard Lindner’s “Boy With Machine,” and somehow the weight of a lot of things I worry about fell on me.  They call it “hand-wringing,” and that idea led me to think of washing machines; like the wires and levers and pulleys that surround Lindner’s boy conceal – or highlight – the fact that the boy himself is a machine, connected to many others.  I let out a depressed huff just looking at it.

“Under many circumstances the hunger inside you will take over… and you’ll do anything to satisfy it.”

- David Bowie (as John Blaylock)
The Hunger, 1997

There’s something about those packets of instant noodles that please – and at the same time, assault – the senses, especially when cooked.  Instant ramen is nowhere near its Japanese equivalent; it’s just that hulking, dehydrated mass of carbohydrates and sodium, with those tiny morsels of dried herbs that cut the jaundiced mass with refreshing – and depressing – bits of green.  There’s the consolation, too, that the noodles are nutritious.

The mother, after attending to her brood, will now proceed to make the meal of the day.  There’s enough fuel in the very small LPG tank for this one meal, while the rice has to be bought on credit from the nearby carinderia. In goes the noodles, in goes the flavoring packs.  Flavors like “chicken” or “beef” don’t really matter; if they were really honest about it, “monosodium glutamate” makes for bad marketing.  It’s just that: water, flour, and sodium.

Besides, when you water down the noodles enough, whatever flavor is in there disappears.  You don’t follow the ratio that there is in the pack, knowing that it takes two packs of instant noodles to completely satisfy the hunger of one grown person.  Instead, you improvise; the point behind instant noodles is no longer to be a meal in itself, but as a condiment.  It takes practice, but you can water down noodles enough – and cook them in such a way – that everyone gets to flavor their rice with broth.

So I guess it’s time for another one of those really long-winded, complicated posts where I end up telling you a lot of things you already know…