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lots of things to celebrate – sahar’s arrival in our house, giulia’s last night in santa cruz, 6 months of united states behind our teeth and a beautiful house – and so we must have an iranian dinner. sahar came well equiped, with spices and utensiles, to cook us some amazing food. (ah, remember that it’s the iranian cuisine that gave the first unmendable blow to my vegetarianism…) |
i’d write you down the recipes for tachin and more if my thoughts were not so preoccupied with recipes of living together and hospitality. remember that sociability and conceptions of living and doing life together are “different” in this place? join me in considering two events around our iranian dinner as an educational excercise.
first there was sweet leta who, yesterday evening when we announced that sahar would make us an iranian meal, jokingly asked whether we’d be eating eye balls. (in another conversation she had asked where sahar was from and subsequently inquired if tehran was a town. the kind of naivity that apparently has its legitimate place in santa cruz). we came up with the perfect response: after having called the family to table and before serving the delicious food, we put a “specially for leta” small plate on the table with ammon’s creation of two halves of litchis in which pieces of black olives made the irises. the “you got me” laughter of leta and the rest of our table guests made clear we scored.
then there was lost-in-the-new-age cynthia who ran into the kitchen while talking on her cellphone, looking for something in the fridge and exchanging some things with us while still talking on her cell phone, and as she heard me say that we had quite some guests tonite, she said that we shouldn’t forget that guests should chip in for the food. all of this while she was still talking on her cell phone and sahar was cooking an elaborate iranian meal for the house. i started to feel angry. “well, there are different ways to relate to money,” was the first thing that came to my mind. (as mihui says, for somebody who’s all about spirituality the level of materialism and attachment to money is amazing… a spirituality which is all about money…) she probably had no clue of what i could be refering to; in any case she insisted on asking guests for money again. i told her that this was so offensive. she was gone soon after that, and since then i’m having fantasies about the next house meeting in less than a week… to be continued…