Eyes in fingertips

föstudagur, febrúar 01, 2008

The Pickles of Memory

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What is writing if not an act of pickling ?
Words are dipped in ink and spread on flat jars called pages. They are labelled, stored in books and put on shelves. And whenever you want, you can open them and taste the flavours of past memories, forever preserved on sheets of paper - or almost : for pickling isn't an exact science. Compare tomatoes and pickled tomatoes : they aren't completely alike. Pickling alters memories, distorts history, changes fruits, especially if you like your pickles spicy.
Pickles are 'licious, but they appear more like agents of metamorphosis than of preservation. And like pickles, like history.
We are all reconstructing our own history, pickling our stories, and we end up with a pickled, spicy self on the shelf of our minds. Who are we, what are we ? What's our (his)story ? Let us dine pickles together.
Nobody described the process of pickling ("chutnification") better than Salman Rushdie in Midnight's Children, a novel in which the narrator ends up running a pickle factory. The chapters are the jars, and Saleem fills them with his story. Thoughts and emotions keep seeping into food, especially chutney. Food becomes the stuff of life, the matter of history.
Here's a quote from the last pages :


To pickle is to give immortality, after all : fish,
vegetables, fruit hang embalmed in spice-and-vinegar; a certain alteration, a
slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely ? The art is to
change the flavor in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty* jars
and a jar) to give it shape and form - that is to say, meaning. (I have
mentioned my fear of absurdity.)

One day, perhaps, the world may taste the pickles of
history. They may be too strong for some palates, their smell may be
overpowering, tears may rise to eyes; I hope nevertheless that it will be
possible to say of them that they possess the authentic taste of
truth...


*the novel has thirty chapters. The remaining jar is for the ending, but Saleem doesn't quite know how to end his story at this point.

What does your story taste like ?

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