Eggplants and Anomie
Jan. 28th, 2009 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I’ve been writing about eggplants. They have a fascinating history, the only edible member of the Nightshade family to originate in the First World. (They came originally from India.) From the start eggplants were on the front lines of the culinary class war: a staple throughout southern Europe as far back as the 13th century, they were dubbed Mad Apples in the north. Thomas Jefferson introduced the plant to the United States as an ornamental.
Little old ladies in black who scuttle down cobblestone alleys (like my paternal grandmother, dead these 20 years or more) thought there were male eggplants and female eggplants, distinguishable by the shape of the dimple on the blossom end: females have an oval depression; males, a sickle-shaped. Male eggplants are the ones you want to eat.
Eggplants are kind of the staple of Sicilian cookery, a cuisine that’s a culinary mosaic of the island’s many conquerors over the centuries. I’ve been craving them recently, frying them with tofu from which they’re practically indistinguishable in terms of texture and taste. Of course, nobody else in the house will eat them – more for me! Max when he was here last weekend made a very nice eggplant bruschetta with ricotta and tomatoes.
In other news, I’m finally back to doing all the practical errands that life and business entail. For the past six months or so I’ve been so depressed that I stopped doing anything. It didn’t matter that I was doing my very best to be organized and stay on top of things: it was all falling apart anyway. I don’t think I’m any less depressed now. Possibly less self-pitying.
But of course once I finally got it together to go back to doing practical stuff, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of all the stuff I have to do. And stressed. I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart beating fast, shooting pains in my jaw from grinding my teeth so relentlessly. I watch hours and hours of bad television until finally I fall back to sleep.
I don’t know how to get myself out of the Hole. Honestly, I don’t.
Max is the only person I can talk about it with. And he initiates the conversations -- otherwise I wouldn't. I think of myself as a terrible drag these days, avoid all my friends -- which is ironic in a way because if I had a friend who was going through what I'm going through, I'd reach out to them any way that I could.
“I’m a failure, pure and simple,” I told Max as we were driving home from Aptos. “It’s hard to find the humility to live with that.”
“’Failure’ is such a relative term, isn’t it?” said Max. “What’s success? You’re healthy, a lot of people love you.”
“Maybe. But I feel like I’ve made such a mess of the practical end of things –“
“Sure. But you can walk away from that. Do something else.”
“At my age? Harder than you think.”
“You didn't make the economic crisis. You're one of literally millions of sad footnotes to it. And you could teach. You could do social work. I’ve always kind of wondered why you haven’t, frankly. You’re really empathetic.”
I just shook my head. I was trying to keep from crying.
“I want to be there for you, Mom,” said Max. “In any way I can be. Even on the worst days, life is just so crazy beautiful if you can just make yourself look outside yourself –“
True enough.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 05:46 pm (UTC)