the most marvelous legume...er, allium!

here's an oldie but a goodie (read it out loud. you need to hear it in order to get it):

q: how do you make potato leek soup?
a: first you take a leek...

(courtesy of kahtah)

right then. this is a food post. as most of my friends know, i love to cook, and i'm really good at it. i made a huge pot of broth a few weeks ago, and froze most of it, which has given me the opportunity to make lots of different soups. these soups last for days, and they are cheap. and of course, they taste a-MAZ-iiiing.

today i decided to make a potato leek soup, which is not only the subject of my favorite crappy joke, but also a delicious soup. i used the joy of cooking recipe. the potatoes make the texture, and the broth adds the depth, but the leeks! oh the leeks - if you cook them right, they get a little caramelized and give the soup that complex, smokey, and citrusy illusion that no other allium can provide.

as i learned today while blindfolded, the leek is an illusion in another profound way. i have interacted with them before, and always thought that, viewed from the top, they look sort of like the cross-section of an onion. well, i put on my blindfold and took those suckers out of the refrigerator to try and gain a new, tactile understanding of the allium. (looking through the fridge was hilarious in itself: i live with two other people, and all of our food is in there. how do you tell a fake-blind person to find the leeks in a crowded refrigerator?)

i took the first leek out of the bag and laid it on the counter: it is long and has tiny little bumps all over it. not smooth. i find the tiny slit where the ends meet, and i gently pull it apart. it yields with the tiniest bit of papery resistance. there is a bit of slime left behind that layer, and i believe this must be part of the layer itself that i have failed to remove entirely. i move my hand back to the top of the stalk, and expect to find another slit in the same place. quelle choque! it is not there! i feel around the top, and notice there is something on the other side - a tiny opening. could it be? mais non ... mais oui! it is there! so i peel away that layer as well. it is a little more tender than the previous one, and i do not leave behind any trace of it on the next layer. i expect the slit incident must have been some sort of anomaly, so i go back to the other side of this layer, and sure enough, the slit is there (but in my head, i think, this could also indicate a pattern). looking for the counter-intuitive, i reach for the other side of the next layer, and the slit is there! there you have it, folks, the genius of the leek. each layer protects its opening by being positioned opposite the opening of the layer around it.

as a seer, i am simply a user of the leek. i purchase it, i bring it home, i cut the ends, i wash it, i cut it, i cook it. in that order. i do not engage with the leek. there is no ethics of the leek because i have not really understood it. sure, the final product tastes good, and the leek is certainly there, but perhaps it is not fully present....

digression: when i go to the market, the leek is laid in an eloquently conceived pile (particularly if i am buying the leek from josh's produce department). under strategically positioned lights it lies. i look. i see. it will taste great. but i have already imagined the taste based on my vision. i have been encouraged to do so by the grocery store, and by whoever produced the leek (this is particularly true in a corporate supermarket). thus, cooking becomes a visual process in ways that we may not even consider. if this sounds weird, think about the ravenous fans of the food network, or shows like top chef: we cannot smell the food, we cannot taste the food, we can not digest the food and will not be nourished by it, but we watch with watering mouths. "IT LOOKS DELICIOUS! CAT CORA IS A GENIUS!"

....back to the presence and ethics of the leek. what i found today is that i interacted with the leek on a totally different level. i did not grow it myself, which would be the most tactile way of engaging the food, but i did appreciate its qualities in a new way. i was actually stunned by the intricacy of the leek, and next time i buy one, i might look at it while i fondle it. but i respect the leeks i put in the soup, and i feel we developed an understanding. without concentrating on vision, i was able to rethink what the leek is to me and to the world and perhaps most importantly, what the leek is to itself. without this dynamic between two entities, how is understanding possible?

btw, the soup was fantastic. thank you leeks.

also, big thanks to irigaray on this post.

cash rules everything around me

tonight i did my first sustained blindfold experience. i pulled my black hat over my eyes at the pearl street night club and checked out some hip hop, including raekwon the chef from wu tang, and sean price. this was my first time at a live show by any member wu tang, so i was a little sad to pull the hat over my eyes. in a certain sense it's ridiculous that i spent a bunch of money for a concert ticket to a legendary rapper who i think is pretty brilliant, and i decided to spend the whole time not looking. but to be honest, when he came out and started doing 'c.r.e.a.m.' i decided to watch for a little while. the rest of the time i stood there blindfolded, like a good little blogger.

at first it was very exciting, so i felt a kind of rush over my body - but also, the bass was so heavy that my skin and my insides were vibrating. maybe you've felt this. when i was little, and i would go to a parade i would feel the marching band's drums rip up my chest - it scared me. tonight i was very focused on the feeling of the vibrations and the different sounds that came to me. it was also the first time i can ever remember being at a concert and hearing people around me having conversations during a loud song. usually i hear a faint background noise in the crowd, but tonight i heard people talking pretty clearly. this came after about 20 minutes without vision.

later a couple of strange things happened almost simultaneously: 1. i started hearing the overtones of raekwon's voice, and the voices of the d.j. and the hype-man. 2. i started feeling like my body was levitating a little bit. 3. the smell of the room shifted from a very acute smell of alcohol to a beautiful, purple sticky smell. i assure you, i was not smoking the purpleness. but i smelled it and it was nice.

i also noticed that i was fidgeting with a rolled up piece of paper in my pocket (once again, not that kind of rolled up paper) for nearly the entire show. i don't know why i was doing this. i do have a tendency to play with the things around me, but i decided to try and take my hands out of my pockets and dance. why not? the air on my hands was nice, but i started wondering what people thought of this weirdo dancing with a hat pulled over his eyes. oh well. nothing much to report regarding touch, as it applies to my hands. but i can say there was something about the way inner touch and hearing were swirling around together... it's not easy to explain, but it felt pretty substantial. obviously for raekwon the bass is pretty prominent, so that really moved my skin, and i could feel that thing where your arm hairs start to stand-up too. the drums were not as loud in the old wu tang songs like 'wu tang clan ain't nuthin ta fuck wit', but on his new songs and songs from 'the w' and 'only built for cuban linx', the drums were enough to put my hair on end too.

and the mix of the 3 voices together, with all the different overtones and mixtures... that helped too. but i guess raekwon must be an expert in understanding the sounds of a group by now. at times, it even sounded like there were more than three people up there (and i may never know for sure if that was the case).

i don't have much analysis yet. i just wanted to get this all on the computer before going to sleep. maybe something will come to me in my dreams.

suggestion box

okay, so i'm bad at html and i'm new to making my blog accessible. i want to put a "gadget" on the sidebar of my blog with a textbox that allows people to make suggestions without emailing me. i can't figure out how yet. so please, if you have any suggestions for blindfold activities, or for how to add a text box to my sidebar, please enter them in the comments here, or on any other post.

once again, tonight: raekwon show in northampton. blind.

a minor test

i had my first test today: taking a picture of myself for the website banner... while blindfolded. thankfully i did not try to put the banner together with my blindfold on, as i have become dreadful with photoshop, after years with no practice. you can see the fruits of my labor above. it's alright - not the best thing i've ever done with photoshop. whatevs.

anytime i've had a blog (all 4 of them have been clandestine - even my close friends have not known), the first post has always been less a manifesto, more a routine entry. this way i can put less pressure on myself to live up to the early standards i may be tempted to set in a more formal introduction. this blog will obviously need to depart from the informal because i am also not keeping this one a secret. there is an about page, so that can hold any rules i decide to set and my autobiographical information; though the ephemerality of the internet may tempt sporadic (perhaps habitual) rule- or autobiography-changing.

so this is it. my blindfolding extravaganza. my sensory sensey sense thing. tomorrow: raekwon show in northampton. blind.