F&W The House of the Spirits

>>So I was reading one of my favorite novels over for the second time, and with this food and writing class in mind I have decided to pick out foods from it as they're mentioned and discuss them.

>>Allende doesn't mention food often, but I did often notice that when it was brought up, it was tea, aside from one almost grotesque mentioning of a roasted pig with a carrot put in a very awkward location and some poisoned wine. Granted I am only two and a half chapters in.

>>The first tea I noticed was "barley water flavored with almonds." Nothing else is said about the drink other than that it was "made on holidays", and so I was curious to know more. Upon some googling I discovered that people take the grain, boil it, pour the hot water over the pulp and skin of a fruit (usually lemon or lime, I imagine an orange may be good), and then add sugar and maybe some of the fruit's juice for flavor. Better instructions and health benefits are listed here:

http://www.tandurust.com/health-faq/barley-water-benefits-to-health.html

>>The next tea mentioned is linden tea, which in the novel was drank for its therapeutic effects, despite all the sweating it can cause. Although, I suppose perspiration can be considered therapeutic, otherwise why would we have saunas? To bake ourselves? Anyway, I've ordered some out of curiosity; I'll give a report on a later date how it tastes and if it actually helps with fever and airway inflammation. (I'm 90% sure I have asthma, so a natural remedy may be nice to try.)

>>The last tea I've seen so far is cinnamon tea. Allende's translator (the novel wasoriginally written in Spanish) and editor definitely misspelled cinnamon as cinammon. The English major in me winced, the dyslexic stutterer in me thought "cinnaminamon" as I read it to myself, but it is just a typo so I kept reading. Apparently all cinnamon tea is is hot water and pure cinnamon. It's supposed to lower your cholesterol if you have a half teaspoon of cinnamon a day. It either sounds very potent or very bland. I plan to try it too.

>>Stay tuned! The House of the Spirits may bring to my attention more odd foods from 1960s-1970s Spanish haciendas.

F&W Grief

>>does a funny thing to one's stomach.

>>Unfortunately, I have experienced this sensation so I can describe it first-hand. It's rather odd. When I was a kid, I could go to a buffet and get 2 or 3 plates of food before stopping, but now I have maybe 1 and I'm done. They say that the grieving forget to eat, and they meant it.

>>At first my hunger was nonexistent because of the emotional distress. It was like I didn't have a stomach at all. Maybe it's the chest pain from all the heartache of losing someone so close forever that distracts you from hunger enough that you think the nerve endings are cut, or maybe it's the gut-wrenching physical reaction to the intense stress induced by the loss which simply overrides hunger because the pain is more obvious. Perhaps it's just that someone who is mourning can't focus on something as ritualistic as eating without making an effort out of it. Whatever it is, it severs your senses of touch and taste forever and distorts them into a whole new personality of their own.

>>For the longest time, at least a year (and still to this day sometimes), everything I put in my mouth tasted like cardboard. I had no lure toward food no matter what it was, in fact looking at food made me feel a little nauseous at first. I ate because my boyfriend at the time was a dream come true and was making sure I ate daily. (It's not like I was going to remember to. The natural drive was gone.) When I did eat, a bit of the nerve endings worked in my stomach, but it felt more like an upcoming illness than that satisfaction of being full.

>>I had a brief period where sweets, particularly Reese's peanut butter cups, tasted exactly what they used to taste like when I was a child. What a wonder! The rich sweetness of the chocolate meshing with the salty peanut butter was the first thing that had tasted edible in months, and it was superb. I would eat 8-packs at a time I was so thrilled to taste something. The only issue was is that I hadn't had Reese's in years (since my childhood probably), and it made me worry if the grief was making my mind revert back to a simpler conscious to reduce the pain by creating a childlike denial of it.

>>I'm still not really sure if that's true or why Reese's became delicious again, but slowly other foods gained flavor. None of them have the same luster that they used to, but it's better than cardboard. That occasional rumble gurgles in my stomach, and on those days I'm thankful that the stress weighs a little bit less with each passing day.

Amurikin

>>Wait, wait, wait: you didn't understand? "Amurikin" is an emerging language used often in today's times. It's what English (or "Engrish" in Amurikin) is turning into, slowly but surely. Working at Arby's I get examples of this often:

(Through the drive-thru speakers.) "Hello, welcome to Arby's, may I take your order please?"
"Yes, could I get a Jamocha shake?"
"Certainly. What size?"
"Jamocha."
At this point I have to stop myself for a moment, catch my breath, and remember that in Amurikin it is common to replace words you hear as you see fit for communication efficiency. What they imagined I asked was the flavor again. So I take a deep breath and attempt to ask with a straight face, "I'm sorry, but what size? We have Value, Small, Medium, and Large." They then get the picture.

>>Another Amurikin word-swap: Again, I'm taking a drive-thru order and they tell me they want whatever size shake. So I ask, "What flavor would you like that to be?" "Jamaica." Perhaps instead of it being a word swap it's merely a vowel swap: "oh" for "ay" in this case. Either way Amurikin is very versatile in the sense that it has no logical patterns.

>>The language has even reinvented contractions! Things like "we'ze", "I'mma", "youz"...the rule, I think, is to add extra unrelated letters and if you feel so inclined remove some from the original Engrish word. Well, I suppose that works for all nouns in the Amurikin dictionary as well: "Git in the core!" translates to "Get in the car!" It's really fascinating.

>>Btw? The National Adult Literacy Survey of 1993 stated the following findings:

Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simply tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.

>>So it makes sense that now in 2011, those people in the early 90s who raised children...out of this emerges the new Amurikin language complimented by our already distorted American dream of selfishness and individualism.

Analyzing Stephen King's "Why We Crave Horror"

>>The philosophical question of “What is moral?” has always been looming in the back of human minds. Different cultures pose their own theories on what is “good”—religions of all kinds give guidelines, societies’ views form rules as a whole per society, and both groups’ acceptance of whatever action is on the spotlight. So the idea of a true hero or true villain is difficult to fathom if it must be universal, considering what the hero or villain stands for can only be seen as “right” or “wrong” by a limited amount of eyes. In analyzing horror film audiences, Stephen King has given an intriguing hypothesis to this conundrum that there is no hero who can walk the Earth: instead, the planet is populated by antiheroes.

>>King did not blatantly state this of course—he was not even writing in terms of heroes and villains—but it is clear that when he brings up the boy and the “chocolate-covered graham crackers” that he is discussing if the boy chooses to be “good” or “bad” to society’s standards, which translates into if he is acting heroic or villainous (or at least in which direction he is growing). An antihero is a hero who may deontologically not have the best ethics and often he or she is very flawed, but this person still works toward their sense of order (which for an antihero would be society’s heroic sense of order). To continue with King’s example, the boy would be an antihero because he does the “right” thing for others (adoring his little sister), but he is flawed since he still commits acts of violence (slamming his little sister’s fingers in a door for fun) and he only does the “right” thing because he knows there will be a reward (the chocolate-covered graham crackers). He may not act that way otherwise. This is his flaw, but he still is in society’s eye as “good” because he is still learning and abides by his family when they punish him.

>>The purpose of “Why We Crave Horror” was to subtly say that all people are dualistic in the sense we both possess “good” and “evil” inside: normally people act to their society’s standards, but once in awhile they must let their evil which exists inside “be let loose to scream and roll around in the grass.” (King) King argues that the majority of people are more “good” than “evil”, but that the “evil” part of us manifests itself as “emotional muscles” (King) that “demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone.” (King) Translation? We all have the flaw of being somewhat “evil” alongside our “good” nature, and that everyone is a bit morbid—his example was the existence of dead baby jokes. They are repulsive but for some reason they still make people laugh.

>>Horror films take this concept a bit further—instead of your average person merely thinking of something considered politically incorrect as amusing, “the fun comes from seeing others menaced—sometimes killed.” (King) In most societies (and certainly the American society King writes from), murder is considered taboo and there is an array of punishments for doing such a thing, such as life in prison or being sentenced to death. Yet watching it on screen for entertainment is okay. It introduces a dark element to any individual yet simultaneously to the masses—after all, who skips on watching scary movies? King is correct when he states, “we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better.” When thinking that all people are antiheroes, heroes who seek their “good” while deontologically flawed, this makes perfect sense: horror film audiences are flawed since they enjoy watching the suffering they are supposed to be against.

>>Of course even with this flaw the antihero can be heroic, “[a]s long as you keep the gators fed,” King concludes. What he is referring to is that the antihero must use those “emotional muscles” (King) fueled by evil once in awhile in order to keep the evil within at bay. After all, one evil action here or there does not mean a person is no longer “constrained by an ethic” (Alsford 83) as any society’s hero is supposed to be. It is just that we must acknowledge the “‘beast within’, a lawless predatory creature that wills to do all the reckless wickedness that civilization, society, religion and ethics are designed to keep submerged and suppressed,” (110) which Alsford brings to our attention. What it all boils down to is if our antiheroes of society choose to let their “good” or “evil” natures rule their actions and thus their effect on the society.

>>Works Cited

Alsford, Mike. Heroes & Villains. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2006. Print.

King, Stephen. “Why We Crave Horror.” http://drmarkwomack.com/pdfs/horrormovies.pdf

Hope

>>So I recently discovered that I was wrong about some geeky information. It had to do with whether or not hope was left in Pandora's box or if it was the one good thing that escaped (if hope can be called positive). It turns out that it actually does stay in the box and horrible things such as death, disease, and well evil in general are unleashed from the box.

>>What doesn't make sense to me is why anyone other than Pandora herself could have hope if she didn't unleash it and thus did not share it.

>>But is hope a good thing to have? Yes people hope with all their might that some event or circumstance may happen, but it could also be a mask for procrastination and laziness. "I hope I'll make it to grad school." Don't hope. Make a 4.0, be interactive, find an internship, study abroad, be impressive, and go apply. "I hope I'll find someone who loves me for me." Make yourself worth loving by first loving yourself and being someone people are naturally drawn to. Have nothing to hide.

>>The point is you decide your destiny. It's called "free choice" or "will" for a reason.

Talent

>>No one ever said talent was geared toward progressive areas only, such as singing or dancing or anything really where something good is created rather than collapse. Frankly, people can be geared toward calamity. I know I have a lot of useless talents: losing my keys, losing my phone, clumsiness, and lately naivety.

>>Although there would be two things that I could say are positive talents. The first, GPA management, which is more or less useful. The second would be my ability to think. Often times it's useless (and a lot of times it's hard to explain things because it's hard to narrow down the big picture), but sometimes it actually leads me somewhere.

>>A recent epiphany I've reached through the help of several others is a debate over the existence of "good" and "bad", or "right" and "wrong". You see, we say that helping an old lady across the street is good. We have young boy scouts do it, or at least we used to. But who said that was a "good" thing to do? What if the old lady is offended that the boy thought she was unable to walk on her own, something she's been doing for longer than the boy has been alive? In India, cows are sacred. They aren't eaten and if one is in the road, you wait until it passes in its time before proceeding. Here in America, we've got slaughterhouses loaded with them.

>>My point? It is all a matter of perception. Also, these things that have been labeled as "right" and "wrong" were just that--labeled. People said it was so. I think a lot of people don't realize that ethics falls into questioning human morals, not morals concerning reality in general.

>>Can reality even have morals? It's just existence; the world is a mass of matter populated somehow by billions of organisms, some with more intelligence than others...anxiety plagues so many people (myself included), but is the fuss even worth it when there's so much more than the speck of dust we are in the galaxy?

>>If God created all of space and then took the time to put all these details into Earth, shouldn't we be grateful? That is, if you believe in some form of deity. If you don't then the world is incredibly brutal: here it is, have at this crazy for awhile, and then death.

>>Scariest question of all: does an omniscient being exist, or did we as people make one up in order to bring some sort of order to the chaos of early civilizations? Think about it. In the Watchmen, Dr. Manhattan lies to the inhabitants of Earth and chooses to be the bad guy in their eyes so as to form peace treaties all over the globe. Yes, it's fictional, but what if one wise guy in early civilization made up God so his tribe would have common goals and work as a unit?

>>Just some food for thought.