There are people starving in China. I'm not sure who they are. I've never seen a picture with a face to attach to this starvation, but ever since I was a child I've been told that they exist. They are always a topic of conversation when there is still food on my plate but my stomach is stretched beyond capacity.
If I don't clean my plate by eating that last piece of chicken or 3 lonely green beans, then I have somehow failed as a human being and let these poor starving Chinese people down. I have often wished that there were a service to overnight my leftovers to china. It would make me feel much better about my wastefulness.
I bring this topic up, because there is a burrito in my fridge that taunts me like the tell tale heart. It is a half eaten shrimp and steak burrito that I keep meaning to eat and now I think it may be unsalvageable. If I throw it away, then I have admitted my failure and disgraced my honor. If I eat it, it could quite possibly make me hurl.
I am a wasteful American and I feel shame.
Last night I was back in the studio with David editing and rerecording some vocals for 'Well Formed Man'. This is quite possibly my most experimental work to date and has been a sort of painful process. The entire song is comprised of only vocals with multiple layers. It has seen multiple incarnations and I have scrapped so many different versions of it, but I have finally hit the home stretch and it is coming together splendidly. I think the final version for the album will be sorted out by next week, which is so exciting.
photo credit-Carrie Thomas
2 comments:
Isn't that funny in a country full of finish your dinner, obesity is now one of the leading causes of death? Throw it out Robert, that starving child doesn't want it anyway.
Today, I orded that same burrito and ate the whole thing. After I was finished, I tossed out the half-eaten burrito in my fridge with a slight sense of shame but ultimately acceptance of my wastefulness.
I blame the great depression for part of the obesity problem. My parents both struggle with their weight. My grandparents experienced absolute poverty in Oklahoma during the great depression, so if you had food on your plate you finished it and if you had the money to eat, then you ate as if you were a camel storing the calories for some long desert voyage.
I remember as a child, my grandmother had this big black skillet and she would fry eggs and bacon and on top of that she would feed me cereal and biscuits and fruit and cottage cheese and make me eat until my stomach hurt.
There is a midwestern feast or famine culture that I think has its roots in a time when there really was famine in a way that many of us can't even imagine from our very comfortable modern cash or credit perspective.
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