Days of Fruits, Nights of Lipids

A strange wind this way blows. Our house has become a vortex of late. Things are coming inside. Our door holds none barred. Its become easy. Much of this has to do with a lack of discretion, plane and simple common sense. People are becoming comfortable. And when the people become comfortable, they become lax. Our young Slovak runaway has decided to adopt a young runaway rat. It feels soft but it grows fast. Aarto has brought a puppy into the house. Fleshy jowls wrinkle down from its wet eyes and distract you from its ominously large paws. It gnaws on the metal legs of our outside table as though its just warming up. A late house mate decided it would be a good idea to let an old graff artist friend from Australia stay over for a few days. He said they used to be on the same crew, whatever that means. Now there are 4 of them using our walls outside like the stall of a shitter in some dive dinner's bathroom whenever they can't find a parked train. Every time one of them throws up something I really like, the next day another one covers it up with something else. We have a sort of tiki lounge aesthetic going in the back yard and I thought maybe they could paint something to go along with the theme. I wanted one of them to do something really tasteful for a change. Well now we have some overgrown lizards breathing fire on Shiva. I know that doesn't exactly sound predictable, but it sort of is.

The last dubious addition to the household is all my fault. Coming back from getting food, I spied a large white kitchen appliance. At first I thought it was a rice cooker, which would have been great. I got all giddy and ran up to it. I saw a cord hanging off it, which was exciting because there are a million metal scrappers in this city that would scrap their own mothers if they were made of copper. I have seen so many nifty electronic gizmos on the curb with their electrical umbilical cords prematurely severed: another nickel in some metal mercenaries oily palm. It wasn't a rice cooker. And then it wasn't a bread baker. It was better and worse. It was a deepfrier, in all its dangerous glory. Its reservoir of oil runs parallel with the psyche of the house: sometimes sweet cauliflower tempura fries quietly in fresh sunflower oil, or golly french fries gostle around all rolly-polly. But more often then not more sinister things happen. Late in the night and inebriated, people convince them selves that they are being creative. They scan the kitchen looking for something. Anything. The rat scampers back to its cage and the dog whines by the door as cheese curds are stuffed into wads of pie dough. Croissants are injected with choco filling and then take the plunge. The thickly battered beer battered snausages let off a dank and hazy grease that crawls around room and eventually somebody makes a meek plea for somebody to change out the oil, but instead settles down with hot sauce and an egg deepfried inside a layer of onion.

There is a running list on the walls of experiments to be made, things to be deepfried. I regret to say that this list is growing faster than things can be cooked. But we are making an effort, these thing must be done. When something is fully submerged in boiling oil something special happens. It is an intrusive process, the oil changes it from the outside in to its core. To really appreciate this you have to be there with it, inside this three dimensional invasion. When it happens, when it really happens, something is expunged. Something bad is released and becomes good. Even though the end result is heavy and sodden with vegetable fats, it is somehow cleaner for all of this. Physically, everything is dirty and oily, from the air that we are breathing to whatever we are putting inside our guts, the slick plates and the filthy frier. But something intangible is somehow better. Its just better and its hard to explain why. It is a bitter sweet thing to be inside my house, and it is always there, sitting on the counter. It takes about five minutes for the oil to heat up to frying temperatures and who am I to blow against the wind.