American Swan
I’m not hungry anymore. Food’s become irrelevant. There is nothing I like the taste of, nothing I feel the texture of on my tongue, nothing I lick my lips for. There is no sweet that rouses me, no salt that inspires a known tingle. The juice of a fruit used to feel like magic but now it leaves a sticky, unsatisfying resin on my fingers and mind.
I remember these words when they were stated. The woman who said it was old—she was reaching for her own death. Her senses spent their time dead already—a mere body left behind, she continued. The satin between her fingers crumbled and the ants came to eat it away. This is what happens when we can no longer taste. This is what happens when we remove the spirit of a thing and make it nothing. There are many philosophies that tell us to release want and desire. There is much that tells us to simplify, to detach, to remove our wonderment. If we do not want loss we cannot start with expectation, we cannot rouse ourselves. If we do not want pain we cannot believe in pleasure, eroticize our lives, imbibe the imaginative.
What does it mean when food becomes a tasteless chore? Maybe it is us who have taken so much away from the thing we crave that we no longer sense its glory. Maybe it has nothing to do with letting go and everything to do with holding on—believing in the magic of being human, embracing the fantasy, reveling in the connectedness. When did feeling nothing get put on a pedestal? We have decided to accept the chemicals fed to us, believe the detachment theory—call it intellectual even, call it evolved. Are a people who cannot even keep their food from being contaminated evolved? What taste will be left for us to remember when we go? The taste of detachment? They say we are animals and its animalistic to live in the physical—they say we think too much—they say we need too much—they say we put too much on it. What if they are wrong.
The woman was ninety nine years old when she told me she could no longer taste. She was my grandmother. We were on an island in front of kitchen windows with turquoise shutters and no screens. I could taste the salt from the ocean, smell the cleansing qualities of its brine. She told me that without taste there was no reason for life. She said she would be happier in death now that taste was no longer on the table. She asked me to peel a hard boiled egg for her. Said it was the one food she was consistently repulsed by—the stench of yoke made her nauseous, every time she got a whiff of someone else’s yoke she thought of bodies rotting. I handed her the egg and watched her break it in half. She brought it to her nose—I can’t even smell the stench of rotting bodies she said. She looked out the window for a moment and then placed both pieces of the egg into her mouth at the same time. I had never seen her do anything so sloppily.
A chameleon ran across the windowsill and paused, Looked at my grandmother and then continued on its path. I guess that’s what I did too. She was my pause. A moment of wonder. I thought I had no choice but to deny. What if she had never been able to taste the yoke or smell the flesh. Would she have been less bothered or more bothered? Would she have felt more of a loss or less of a loss? What if when my grandmother told me she couldn’t taste or smell anyomre I had put my hands on her face and told her to feel my touch. What if I let my hands slide down to her shoulders and massaged her there. What if I put my head to her bosom and nuzzled into it— told her I could hear her heart. What if I licked the back of her hand over and over like a dog does to the inside of a pups ear to calm it. Would she have been able to feel me?
My grandmother died at ninety nine—she did not make it to one hundred. She wore a bandaid on her forehead when she slept to try to stop her skin from frowning. She stopped saying I love you somehwere in her 80’s. She stopped hugging somewhere in her 70’s. Her favorite thing to do when she stopped touching or loving was eat ice cream. She never wanted anyone to see her do it so she snuck into her kitchen in the middle of the night—even though she lived alone. She still felt as though someone might catch her. I tiptoed out and saw her once. She stood in front of that same window with the turquoise shutters and no screen. She dug into the pint of Dunkleys ice cream with a delicate silver spoon that looked like it was meant for children. She’d told me many times that if you use a smaller spoon and plate you will eat less. It’s a good practice for a woman she said. As I watched her I could see her nightgown and the silk scarf she wrapped her hair in trickle in the wind. It was that same ocean air I smelled so vividly the day of the egg. She leaned over the sink, towards the window, and breathed in. She closed her eyes as she sucked on the milky flavors. She made noises as she ate it and spoke to herself in a whispers. Mmmmmm mmmmmmm, she hummed in between bites. She said, it’s okay, I’ll eat apples and those rancid boiled eggs tomorrow, that will be my punishment. I remember sitting there smiling silently. Something about seeing this woman who refused to love me or hug me in such a pleasure-some state made me happy. Reminded me that she and I shared something. Said we were connected. I went back to bed that night and never said anything about it in the morning. She made me eat an egg and apple with her that day. We ate it over the sink in front of that same window— there was no wind, it was humid and the stench of the egg grew stronger in the wet heat. She spoke in a little kids voice and held her nose as she put the egg in her mouth. I did the same thing. We kept our fingers on our noses as we chewed.
Somewhere throughout my grandmothers life she decided that her overwhelming desire for ice cream was something to be hidden—tiptoed to in the night when the eyes of others were closed. I knew about this secret pleasure of hers but never felt comfortable enough to join her. I have to wonder how many other pleasures she kept hidden and whether or not she did so out of desire or because of some sort of fear. A fear that being seen in her natural state, in front of that window, moaning in delight over a pint of Dunkley’s might cause someone to think less of her. Might cause someone to see how in love she was.
Today, as I sit here and write this, I struggle to think of a human who shows their love outwardly. I have no idea what love for something looks like on other people. They say a mother loves her child and that is the easiest place to see love but when I think of mothers and children I don’t see love as much as I see attachment. They say people can fall in love and that if you look closely you can see it on their faces and in their words and touches but I look at most couples and I see distance more than I see love—I see them desperately trying to hide the ice cream they eat in the night, desperately hoping that they will be defined by the eggs and the apples and that no one will see the invisible bandaid they place to stop the wrinkles from forming while they sleep.
Transmissions Circa 2018
