GREENS

My sister has celebrated today the Romanian National Day. I don’t do anniversaries. But while she was sporting the same Romanian national costume blouse as she had on some 40 years ago, commenting on Facebook that she hadn’t grown much since then, I was having a Romanian moment myself. Albeit, a twisted Romanian moment, as I rightly consider myself between the worlds, neither here, nor there.

In fact I almost blurted at her caption for her picture, something about how being a Romanian is either a blessed curse or a cursed blessing. Honestly I can't care less about what being a Romanian means - and technically speaking I'm a Dane now. I believe that what matters is how the others see us. I wanted to say to my sister that she had better reflect on perception, than on entertaining the illusion of belonging. If you ask the Danes, among whom we now both live, about Romanians, they’d tell you that all Romanians are a bunch of criminals and thieves. If you ask the Romanians themselves, ah, well, there’s nothing like a Romanian, they’d tell you, without necessarily specifying anything by it, but happily suggesting that it’s a good thing. I said nothing, however, simply because I was busy with my own perceptions: Of the culinary kind. Now that is something I am much more fond of than either politics or cognitive philosophy. And I don't like to waste my time investing great effort in proving people wrong when they decided that they are right - about what kind of lot you're made of.


I was cooking some green stuff the way my mother used to cook it, though my soup in the end had absolutely nothing to do with either what I used to eat in Romania or what my mother used to concoct. Quite befitting, as I’m not in Romania anymore. 

I kept throwing more green stuff into the pot, one and two and three and twenty different kinds, while thinking of the day I mourned for three days the day the best chef on the planet, Keith Floyd, died. Now Keith had the same style of cooking as me: throw into the pot neither too much nor too little, but just exactly as much as it's necessary. But then he'd keep pouring some more vodka into it plus more garlic and more ginger. No measuring. None. The only proof of perfection being that after you eat the stuff in the end, you simply just die and go to heaven. - Don't call me.

To Keith: 'Hello lover, how do you like this soup I’ve just made, while thinking of you and your art of eating?'

Keith to me: 'Shut up and enjoy death. I'm dying again, as we speak. Thank you, thank you.'




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