Alternate Tongues
On long, holiday weekends, I cook and I take a break from writing. On Sunday, I sweat wondering what I have to say. It's the ingredients that speak to me, the vegetables travel like the seeds that bore them.
It's Thanksgiving weekend and voices abound. Some say continue. Others say we can't go back. As if the words, much less the languages, understand what each other is talking about. Somehow, the idea of potatoes mashed into thinness and provided only with memory whipped in air is fitting.
Native American Poetry and Culture https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144560/native-american-poetry-and-culture?fbclid=IwAR2-7EPGznCS2im9lmARDmp-1FiQkC-uPflnjwI2ogpscL2ZRwJRgtOc_9A
But why post about this conflict. I could simply omit the day. I feasted for other reasons for ten years in a small village in Guatemala. I was invited to house after house. I ate too much. I ate turkey and potatoes, but they were cloaked in the corn masa thickness of pulique tomato.
Feria Patronal Santa Catarina Palopó https://santacatarinapalopo.com/blog/feria-patronal-santa-catarina/
Afterall, Thanksgiving does not hold the only day this time of year when darkness blankets seeds and a miracle of lasting light is shared in wicks instead of roots. We can still be acknowledge miracles, and held accountable to sharing with others we believe. Dishes served, including latkes, are optional and chosen by family and not authority, but this does not take away from the pain of sustained movement nor the savory sizzle in the oil miracle.
Potatoes have eyes after all. They see. They remember. No matter how far they travel. Voices sprinkle flavor both on and through alternate tongues. The flesh remains a sameness under even potato skins.
