*Laundered ice cream*
At the back of the fridge, there is a tin of Israeli pickles bought at the big grocery store at Bathurst and Lawrence on a Purim bissli run.
They're good. In order of deliciousness starting from most tasty, they fall: Smoke, Taco, Barbecue - which also has the best rotini / fusili shape - Pizza, Onion, and then Falafel. Falafel would be right after Barbecue but the cumin ripe-underarm poof that bloomed from the package every time it was nudged at all, even from the slight vibrations caused by walking lightly across the floor when it was squished way in the back of the cedar cupboards, clammed preventatively with a clothespeg, still, even then, *poof*, like a tiny Hiroshima, lands it at the end. Running up the stairs to catch the cat and put her on the deck before she throws up - *poof*. Drop a bag of onions on your foot - *poof*. Tasted pretty nice, though. Savoury, like the falafel course might diffuse through the mouth in Willy Wonka's Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum, but in a little chiplet. The crunch, perfection.
Also along the same aisle as the bissli were the Israeli pickles, which were inexpensive. Everyone else in the grocery store picked up a tin like a grocery store holy grail item**, and since it is nice to have pickles around, I did as well. I called jarring and pickling as the new knitting two years ago, and I felt slightly smug for it. Now I see I am wrong: jarring and pickling is the new cupcakes. Sorry. When we came home, a couple of pickles were eaten, and they were good. They were very salty, not too tart, with no garlic to speak of. Made from wild cucumbers, my experience eating them while alone was a little different. Mostly oblong and slightly curved, there was not a single aspect of the little pickles that was directly indicative of something rude, but rather several subtle things combined to be vaguely rude all at once. I pulled the biggest pickle out of the tin with my fingers. I bit it, and it squirted cold brine down my chin and dribbled onto the floor. It was brownish green, and a little soft. The pickles floated loose and locomoted just barely, wobbling in their light khaki bath. I was alone: I could have licked the pickle if I had wanted to, making it last longer, making it less squirty and drippy, but just couldn't.
So these little goodies were pushed to the back of the fridge with some vitamin supplements and while not forgotten entirely, they certainly were not invited back out into the open to air themselves. Yet every day, when I would open the fridge and gawk for some moments, I could see them peripherally green-lighting themselves with their packaging. These cucumbers have been somewhere in my mind, squashed conveniently into my subconscious, for months.
When it came time to buy soap recently, I blundered around the Dove shelves for a few moments. I feel about Dove soap the way I feel about Courtney Love. So good, so effective yet soft, so dear to my heart, comes so close and...a little disappointing. But I love Dove and I love Love and I'll stand by both for whatever stupid campaign or train-wreck they blossom from, because love is forgiving. My sister was born when I was in grade 7, and suddenly there were cloudy bars of Baby Dove like powdered white chocolate in the bathroom on special reserve. It is like ice cream. It is such a nice, lush thing, as an object, deposits its weight in the hand with a design-wise contour, and good for dry skin. It's wonderful, I love it. I don't love their ad campaign. I used to take walking trips to the drugstore to buy my own soap just after this time, and bought all the flavours of Dove to have lined up in my closet to choose from, all frosted pastel like a line-up of Lawrence Welk ladies or a group of sister mermaids. You choose your favourite. Light purple, if you could find it, was rare and special.
Also in grade 7, Courtney Love started dotting up my radar, and at that time, she was pretty intoxicating and interesting, like a messy Barbie with a real heart and she knew, it seemed, just about everything. Things change, it is ok, and still I'll love her always, because there aren't conditions on real love.
(in this article, the interviewer speaks to her while she is in the bath, and I will never forget the way he described her breasts as being like cakes of white soap in the water).
So recently, in the drugstore, gaping before the offerings of the Dove empire, I reached for the little box with the photo-real fresh cucumber slice on the the bottom right corner. Why? Now I think it is the mental seep of the Osem pickles. Never feeling quite right about them, put together with soap, the solution is self-contained: soap is clean divisible by cucumber soap = enjoy your pickles. The associations are bled into one another now, so I imagine Courtney Love applying not lipstick out of focus in the Miss World video, but rubbing a salty pickle over her lips. This was an action that was hard to avoid when eating them.
This soap is very nice, not too creamy, fresh scent without being marine or musky. I like it quite well. I have a rash right now, but I don't think it is from this.
**wrong metaphor.
No comments:
Post a Comment