Dorothy Minder
Padawan Learner
I thought I would post a few poems and a couple of stories that I've written recently. I wrote these for voice, for open mic nights I've been attending, so the poems especially are more straightforward than ones written for the page.
The Lineup:
"The Spells of our Magician" -- a poem based on Gurdjieff's tale of the Evil Magician
"The Trackless Path" -- poem
"Red Pill Premonitions" -- poem
"Party in the Penthouse" -- short allegory
"Pickle House" -- another short allegory
The Spells of our Magician
As a boy I knew the story,
Then forgot for many years,
The evil spells of the Magician;
Now my recollection clears.
As rich as he is evil,
And possessed of many sheep,
Though the flock once feared this master,
Now they’re mired in deceit.
For this rich magician shepherd
Has devised a wicked scheme:
To ensure their skins and mutton,
He has set his sheep to dream.
No need for dogs or fences now,
Hypnosis does the trick,
For the sheep forget their nature,
And the shepherd has his pick.
The flock once knew he ate them,
Butchered sheep for every meal,
And they lived in constant horror,
Hearing every bloody squeal.
Our Magician saw their terror,
Saw them trying to escape,
So he summoned all his magick,
And he bent their minds to shape.
Immortality, he told them,
It was theirs – they need not fret,
And all that gruesome slaughter?
Just a check-up with the vet.
He told his sheep he loved them,
Always worked on their behalf,
And the rumors that he ate them?
He dismissed those with a laugh.
“No harm will come to you,” he said,
“Well, certainly not today,
So just graze upon the pasture,
Everything will be OK.”
Some sheep were still suspicious,
So he added a deception,
He told them they weren’t sheep at all,
That each was an exception.
He told some that they were lions,
He told some that they were men,
He told some to fly as eagles,
High above the shearing pen.
A last group he ensorcelled,
With a twisted sense of glee,
Was a flock of sheep magicians;
All imagined they were free.
The lion sheep sought courage,
Men sheep domesticity,
The eagle sheep believed they flew,
Believed that they could see.
Magician sheep still cast their spells,
And dream their little dreams --
Will any sheep awake to see…
The ax and how it gleams.
Perhaps you recognize at once
The wicked ancient spells,
And remember our Magician,
The illusions he compels.
The Trackless Path
Who owns the news?
Who calls the tune?
Will you stare at the finger,
When it points to the moon?
Fate urges us onward,
Along a trackless path,
But if we stop moving forward,
The ground may collapse.
Will you seek it out there,
Or will you find it within?
The courage to be,
And a future to win.
Do you hear the call?
Do you hear the call?
Remember.
Red Pill Premonitions
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just the TSA security lines…
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just a middle class that’s falling further behind.
It’s not just the media that’s keeping us blind.
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just state and corporate power and the way they’re combined…
Or the torture of citizens illegally confined.
It’s more.
It circles the globe and yet it lives in your mind.
A predator.
Look at any hierarchy and you’re certain to find
The Predator.
So many claims to nobility but lurking behind…
The Predator.
Consider for a moment how your genes were designed:
The Predator.
Be still.
Can you feel the seed of everything that quickens inside?
Awake.
Though many have forgotten others live to remind
Remember…
Truth transforms the Predator and makes a mankind.
Party in the Penthouse
Imagine for a moment that our earth is a stately apartment with penthouse views of the cosmic neighborhood. This grand penthouse came fully furnished and outfitted with a competent and courteous staff ready to entertain even very large parties. Understandably, our hosts promptly threw a lavish gala to christen the place. For a while, everyone behaved admirably. The hosts shared their generous accommodations, and guests accepted graciously, while the staff earned respect and just compensation for their diligence and civility.
As evening turned to night, however, the party took a turn. One of the main hosts had a bit too much and disappeared into a back room with some impressionable young staff and a guest known for vicious “practical jokes.” Losing himself in the grandiosity of the occasion, another host mistook himself for a King and began to grant favors to some guests while punishing others by withholding food and drink. A third host decided to get everyone drunk for his own amusement.
Guests, meanwhile, started ordering staff around. The process began innocently enough. Service was inconsistent without attentive hosts directing the action, so hungry guests nudged and reminded, cajoled, and finally bribed the available staff members to bring this dish or that wine – quick before the best stuff is gone. Aware that co-opted staff might snatch away the lamb tagine or chateau whatevery, some guests began bolting food and guzzling wine, while others piled dishes between them and menaced steak knives.
A cartel quickly formed among the more opportunistic staff, and rumors circulated that the head waiter reported directly to handlers in the back room. No one had seen the missing host for some time, but the staff and few guests who passed back and forth quickly gained authority in the kitchen or at the table. Some of the staff at times seemed to remember their original duties, but conflicting orders from the cartel or this or that guest, generally left them confused and seeking authority. It didn’t help that one of the hosts would occasionally burst forth with, “It’s my birthday! Everybody drink to me!” And so etiquette itself abetted the debauchery.
At some point a host and several very drunk and pushy guests commandeered the stereo from an inexperienced DJ. Noticing that a few of the more sober guests were heading for the exit, these wild men began piling furniture in front of the door. “We’re just clearing room so we can dance. You weren’t planning to leave, were you?” they laughed.
The music grew louder and faster. First arguments and then fistfights erupted at the door. No one heard the neighbors knock. When the police started banging on the door, most heard only the thumping of a wicked subwoofer. A few glimpsed the fireman’s axe break through the door itself, but the blade quickly disappeared again behind the piles of furniture. From the windows overlooking the street, guests and staff began to see first police squads and then SWAT teams assembling.
Recognizing each other amid the chaos, a handful of sane, relatively sober guests gathered in the kitchen to discuss their increasingly precarious situation. Communication was difficult. Even here the dance music made ears ring, and the group also faced frequent interruptions. Cartel staff would threaten to evict them from the kitchen if they didn’t pay a bribe. Drunk guests wandered in and repeatedly asked: “Why aren’t you dancing?” The group managed to impress some of these people with the seriousness of the situation, but most would only listen blankly and then say something like: “Well, if everyone would just come dance, then we wouldn’t have any problems.”
In fact, that seemed to be the party line. Many in the group had tried the exit only to find it barricaded with furniture and guarded by the Dance Crew, who insisted that everyone cut loose, no exceptions. A few times the Crew even physically dragged guests to the dance floor and shook them violently – in time to the music, of course, because such “enhanced vibratory interventions” were “for their own good.”
One of the group members went to the window and reported back that the SWAT team appeared to be preparing an assault. This was desperate news, and fear overcame many in the group. Some ran to hide in closets. Others poured themselves a stiff drink or two and rejoined the dance.
Those who remained took a few deep breaths and then considered their options. They didn’t have the manpower to fight their way past the Dance Crew toughs or remove the barricade in time to esacape. A scout reported that the only other exit, the fire escape, now held a number of very belligerent guests and staff, all of them heckling and gesturing obscenely at the police below. Clearly not the place to be during an assault.
Finally, the group understood their situation. They were hostages, a few held captive to the rampant debaucheries and venality of the many. They also realized, however, that even though the psychopaths running the party had trapped them in the Penthouse, they still retained a little freedom. If put to good use, it might be just enough.
Since the assault was coming no matter what they did, they decided the most important thing was to differentiate themselves somehow, so that the forces of justice might recognize them as conscientious objectors. Looking around the kitchen, inspiration struck.
The dishes. Piles of dirty dishes threatened to topple from every counter. The few staff still actually working had abandoned dish duty entirely, focused as they were on satisfying the often conflicting demands of hosts, guests, and the cartel. Now the group knew what to do. A survey team found a second sink in an unused bathroom. Strategy teams divided the work equally. Tactical circulated instructions for cleaning special items like cast iron pans and pressure cookers. Logistics teams rummaged through closets to find the necessary cleaning supplies – always inviting any survivalists holed up inside to leave the jerkey and seltzer and help with the cleanup.
They knew the assault might come at any moment, so they worked with energy, passion, and strict attention. What fear lingered only fueled their determination, and over the music still blaring in the background, they shouted encouragement and praised the spotless ideal.
They were perhaps a third of the way finished when a series of loud booms echoed through the penthouse and men with guns dropped through holes in the ceiling and burst upward through the floor. Throughout the penthouse people panicked. They slipped on their own vomit and trampled each other at the exits. The most insane fought back, or tried to, and found themselves bathing in their own blood. The assault team broke heads everywhere with ruthless efficiency, but when they reached the kitchen they stopped.
For there, in front of them, they saw a small group of people with their hands in air. All of them holding sponges.
Pickle House
Imagine a house -- but not any house, a mansion, an Elizabethan manor with multiple wings, each with dozens of rooms. Imagine this manor on a vast tract of land with gardens, pastures, orchards, fields and forests. Hundreds of laborers busy themselves about the magnificent grounds.
Now imagine that this house, this land, these people all serve the same master. Though brilliant, the master cares nothing for the people under his charge. Instead, he bribes, manipulates, compels and punishes them all to one purpose: pickles.
The master feasts on pickles day and night, and those who gain power within his operation learn to love pickles to the exclusion of everything else. After many, many years of service to the master’s pickle ideal, senior pickleheads who have proven themselves extremely dedicated to the master’s system may receive an invitation to dine at his private table in the pickle tower. There they feast on all manner of pickles – from cucumbers and carrots to mangos and herring. They sample unusual pickled delicacies like piglet’s ear and pickled gooseberry martinis. They eat until they vomit, and then stuff themselves again. Meanwhile, they compare recipes, and plan new ones. They scheme about the many ways the operation might become a more efficient pickle machine.
This, at least, is what we hear about the master and his pickle elite. None of us have been to the tower, so we can’t say for sure. But we do see the products of their machinations all around us. We, you see, are the cooks -- if you can call us cooks. The only thing we’ve learned to do is pickle. We can each pickle a hundred different ways, and collectively we can prepare pickle dishes in the thousands.
We cooks truly excel at our craft. We breathe vinegar and salt. Guided by the top pickle chefs on the planet, we chop, dice, and dunk. We arrange pickle platters into sacred art, offerings to the master and his pickle gods.
Many cooks really seem to have a taste for pickles. They sneak bites at every stage, and encourage their fellow cooks to exhaust all efforts in the pickle enterprise.
But there is a problem. Some of us don’t like pickles. Despite the master’s power, despite the pickle propaganda, despite a whole system of privileges and punishments specifically created to encourage pickle production, the whole business turns our stomachs. Many of us agree that what we really want is a wholesome meal.
Unfortunately, we don’t really know what a wholesome meal is, because none of us have ever had one. Our picklehead bosses, eager to climb the pantry ladder, ensure that the kitchens are dedicated to pickles and pickles only. If anyone even mentions deviating from the pickle plan, our bosses want to know. And if they hear anything, they pass word to the kitchen’s pickle chief. Now pickle chiefs run the kitchens and compete with each other based entirely on pickle production. They stomp on anyone who might threaten pickle output.
Even so, some of us manage to sample our ingredients now and then – a chunk of raw cucumber here, a slice of tomato there. We nibble the stumps of carrots and imagine a neighborly feast.
But we may yet taste heaven. You see, every kitchen has at least one story about a cook who became a chef. An intrepid Gourmet, driven by his superior taste, who guarded his ingredients, prepared them with a keen blade, and created an immortal feast.
In some older versions of the story, the Gourmet takes one bite, smiles, and dissolves into a haze of light. In other, less miraculous versions, he shares his dish with a select group wannabe chefs, and then all of them walk out the front door of pickle house, never to return. There are many variations, but all these stories end with the following words: “Let everyone cook what he truly desires, because what we cook, we eat. And what we eat, we are.”
So, despite the system, those of us tired of pickles try to cook for ourselves. Our experience with pickling has taught us a fair amount about the kitchen, its utensils, and even a thing or two about our ingredients. So, with wholesome courage, we seek a way.
Occasionally we manage to stash some ingredients, prep them, and begin to cook. It’s a precarious process. Sometimes pickleheads take our ingredients. Sometimes they suspect our motives and keep us away from the stove. Sometimes we actually do start to cook, but burn ourselves because we don’t know how everything works. Nonetheless, every now and then, one of us cooks something tasty. Not a full meal, mind you, but enough to demonstrate the possibility.
Of course, if a pickle chief hears about it, he sets all the powers of the machine against us. He fires some cooks outright for suspected anti-picklism. He accuses undiscovered anti-picklist elements of trying to poison the household. But even as he rants about the dangers of fresh food, he invites a certain number of cooks, those he suspects merely of experimentation, to dine with him and his deputies, to taste the finest pickle fare. In this, his judgment proves uncanny. Almost all of the cooks he invites to dine with him renounce their wholesome inclinations, and become ambitious pickleheads on the up and up.
As for the dish in question, senior pickleheads conclusively prove that it actually included pickles, and that it was the pickles themselves that accounted for the wonderful flavors. They claim that the cooks involved were suffering from delusions, or misleading their colleagues in an underhanded attempt to start their own kitchens. Or, following the pickle chief, they claim that poisoners lurk in every crockpot, and then use the phantom poisoner threat to lock down all kitchen equipment.
But those of us who have tasted know the truth. And others who are curious can discover it for themselves. To begin, simply ask yourself this question: Does it trouble you that every fresh thing we see ends up wrinkled and sour?
Thanks for reading! :D
The Lineup:
"The Spells of our Magician" -- a poem based on Gurdjieff's tale of the Evil Magician
"The Trackless Path" -- poem
"Red Pill Premonitions" -- poem
"Party in the Penthouse" -- short allegory
"Pickle House" -- another short allegory
The Spells of our Magician
As a boy I knew the story,
Then forgot for many years,
The evil spells of the Magician;
Now my recollection clears.
As rich as he is evil,
And possessed of many sheep,
Though the flock once feared this master,
Now they’re mired in deceit.
For this rich magician shepherd
Has devised a wicked scheme:
To ensure their skins and mutton,
He has set his sheep to dream.
No need for dogs or fences now,
Hypnosis does the trick,
For the sheep forget their nature,
And the shepherd has his pick.
The flock once knew he ate them,
Butchered sheep for every meal,
And they lived in constant horror,
Hearing every bloody squeal.
Our Magician saw their terror,
Saw them trying to escape,
So he summoned all his magick,
And he bent their minds to shape.
Immortality, he told them,
It was theirs – they need not fret,
And all that gruesome slaughter?
Just a check-up with the vet.
He told his sheep he loved them,
Always worked on their behalf,
And the rumors that he ate them?
He dismissed those with a laugh.
“No harm will come to you,” he said,
“Well, certainly not today,
So just graze upon the pasture,
Everything will be OK.”
Some sheep were still suspicious,
So he added a deception,
He told them they weren’t sheep at all,
That each was an exception.
He told some that they were lions,
He told some that they were men,
He told some to fly as eagles,
High above the shearing pen.
A last group he ensorcelled,
With a twisted sense of glee,
Was a flock of sheep magicians;
All imagined they were free.
The lion sheep sought courage,
Men sheep domesticity,
The eagle sheep believed they flew,
Believed that they could see.
Magician sheep still cast their spells,
And dream their little dreams --
Will any sheep awake to see…
The ax and how it gleams.
Perhaps you recognize at once
The wicked ancient spells,
And remember our Magician,
The illusions he compels.
The Trackless Path
Who owns the news?
Who calls the tune?
Will you stare at the finger,
When it points to the moon?
Fate urges us onward,
Along a trackless path,
But if we stop moving forward,
The ground may collapse.
Will you seek it out there,
Or will you find it within?
The courage to be,
And a future to win.
Do you hear the call?
Do you hear the call?
Remember.
Red Pill Premonitions
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just the TSA security lines…
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just a middle class that’s falling further behind.
It’s not just the media that’s keeping us blind.
Can you read the signs?
It’s not just state and corporate power and the way they’re combined…
Or the torture of citizens illegally confined.
It’s more.
It circles the globe and yet it lives in your mind.
A predator.
Look at any hierarchy and you’re certain to find
The Predator.
So many claims to nobility but lurking behind…
The Predator.
Consider for a moment how your genes were designed:
The Predator.
Be still.
Can you feel the seed of everything that quickens inside?
Awake.
Though many have forgotten others live to remind
Remember…
Truth transforms the Predator and makes a mankind.
Party in the Penthouse
Imagine for a moment that our earth is a stately apartment with penthouse views of the cosmic neighborhood. This grand penthouse came fully furnished and outfitted with a competent and courteous staff ready to entertain even very large parties. Understandably, our hosts promptly threw a lavish gala to christen the place. For a while, everyone behaved admirably. The hosts shared their generous accommodations, and guests accepted graciously, while the staff earned respect and just compensation for their diligence and civility.
As evening turned to night, however, the party took a turn. One of the main hosts had a bit too much and disappeared into a back room with some impressionable young staff and a guest known for vicious “practical jokes.” Losing himself in the grandiosity of the occasion, another host mistook himself for a King and began to grant favors to some guests while punishing others by withholding food and drink. A third host decided to get everyone drunk for his own amusement.
Guests, meanwhile, started ordering staff around. The process began innocently enough. Service was inconsistent without attentive hosts directing the action, so hungry guests nudged and reminded, cajoled, and finally bribed the available staff members to bring this dish or that wine – quick before the best stuff is gone. Aware that co-opted staff might snatch away the lamb tagine or chateau whatevery, some guests began bolting food and guzzling wine, while others piled dishes between them and menaced steak knives.
A cartel quickly formed among the more opportunistic staff, and rumors circulated that the head waiter reported directly to handlers in the back room. No one had seen the missing host for some time, but the staff and few guests who passed back and forth quickly gained authority in the kitchen or at the table. Some of the staff at times seemed to remember their original duties, but conflicting orders from the cartel or this or that guest, generally left them confused and seeking authority. It didn’t help that one of the hosts would occasionally burst forth with, “It’s my birthday! Everybody drink to me!” And so etiquette itself abetted the debauchery.
At some point a host and several very drunk and pushy guests commandeered the stereo from an inexperienced DJ. Noticing that a few of the more sober guests were heading for the exit, these wild men began piling furniture in front of the door. “We’re just clearing room so we can dance. You weren’t planning to leave, were you?” they laughed.
The music grew louder and faster. First arguments and then fistfights erupted at the door. No one heard the neighbors knock. When the police started banging on the door, most heard only the thumping of a wicked subwoofer. A few glimpsed the fireman’s axe break through the door itself, but the blade quickly disappeared again behind the piles of furniture. From the windows overlooking the street, guests and staff began to see first police squads and then SWAT teams assembling.
Recognizing each other amid the chaos, a handful of sane, relatively sober guests gathered in the kitchen to discuss their increasingly precarious situation. Communication was difficult. Even here the dance music made ears ring, and the group also faced frequent interruptions. Cartel staff would threaten to evict them from the kitchen if they didn’t pay a bribe. Drunk guests wandered in and repeatedly asked: “Why aren’t you dancing?” The group managed to impress some of these people with the seriousness of the situation, but most would only listen blankly and then say something like: “Well, if everyone would just come dance, then we wouldn’t have any problems.”
In fact, that seemed to be the party line. Many in the group had tried the exit only to find it barricaded with furniture and guarded by the Dance Crew, who insisted that everyone cut loose, no exceptions. A few times the Crew even physically dragged guests to the dance floor and shook them violently – in time to the music, of course, because such “enhanced vibratory interventions” were “for their own good.”
One of the group members went to the window and reported back that the SWAT team appeared to be preparing an assault. This was desperate news, and fear overcame many in the group. Some ran to hide in closets. Others poured themselves a stiff drink or two and rejoined the dance.
Those who remained took a few deep breaths and then considered their options. They didn’t have the manpower to fight their way past the Dance Crew toughs or remove the barricade in time to esacape. A scout reported that the only other exit, the fire escape, now held a number of very belligerent guests and staff, all of them heckling and gesturing obscenely at the police below. Clearly not the place to be during an assault.
Finally, the group understood their situation. They were hostages, a few held captive to the rampant debaucheries and venality of the many. They also realized, however, that even though the psychopaths running the party had trapped them in the Penthouse, they still retained a little freedom. If put to good use, it might be just enough.
Since the assault was coming no matter what they did, they decided the most important thing was to differentiate themselves somehow, so that the forces of justice might recognize them as conscientious objectors. Looking around the kitchen, inspiration struck.
The dishes. Piles of dirty dishes threatened to topple from every counter. The few staff still actually working had abandoned dish duty entirely, focused as they were on satisfying the often conflicting demands of hosts, guests, and the cartel. Now the group knew what to do. A survey team found a second sink in an unused bathroom. Strategy teams divided the work equally. Tactical circulated instructions for cleaning special items like cast iron pans and pressure cookers. Logistics teams rummaged through closets to find the necessary cleaning supplies – always inviting any survivalists holed up inside to leave the jerkey and seltzer and help with the cleanup.
They knew the assault might come at any moment, so they worked with energy, passion, and strict attention. What fear lingered only fueled their determination, and over the music still blaring in the background, they shouted encouragement and praised the spotless ideal.
They were perhaps a third of the way finished when a series of loud booms echoed through the penthouse and men with guns dropped through holes in the ceiling and burst upward through the floor. Throughout the penthouse people panicked. They slipped on their own vomit and trampled each other at the exits. The most insane fought back, or tried to, and found themselves bathing in their own blood. The assault team broke heads everywhere with ruthless efficiency, but when they reached the kitchen they stopped.
For there, in front of them, they saw a small group of people with their hands in air. All of them holding sponges.
Pickle House
Imagine a house -- but not any house, a mansion, an Elizabethan manor with multiple wings, each with dozens of rooms. Imagine this manor on a vast tract of land with gardens, pastures, orchards, fields and forests. Hundreds of laborers busy themselves about the magnificent grounds.
Now imagine that this house, this land, these people all serve the same master. Though brilliant, the master cares nothing for the people under his charge. Instead, he bribes, manipulates, compels and punishes them all to one purpose: pickles.
The master feasts on pickles day and night, and those who gain power within his operation learn to love pickles to the exclusion of everything else. After many, many years of service to the master’s pickle ideal, senior pickleheads who have proven themselves extremely dedicated to the master’s system may receive an invitation to dine at his private table in the pickle tower. There they feast on all manner of pickles – from cucumbers and carrots to mangos and herring. They sample unusual pickled delicacies like piglet’s ear and pickled gooseberry martinis. They eat until they vomit, and then stuff themselves again. Meanwhile, they compare recipes, and plan new ones. They scheme about the many ways the operation might become a more efficient pickle machine.
This, at least, is what we hear about the master and his pickle elite. None of us have been to the tower, so we can’t say for sure. But we do see the products of their machinations all around us. We, you see, are the cooks -- if you can call us cooks. The only thing we’ve learned to do is pickle. We can each pickle a hundred different ways, and collectively we can prepare pickle dishes in the thousands.
We cooks truly excel at our craft. We breathe vinegar and salt. Guided by the top pickle chefs on the planet, we chop, dice, and dunk. We arrange pickle platters into sacred art, offerings to the master and his pickle gods.
Many cooks really seem to have a taste for pickles. They sneak bites at every stage, and encourage their fellow cooks to exhaust all efforts in the pickle enterprise.
But there is a problem. Some of us don’t like pickles. Despite the master’s power, despite the pickle propaganda, despite a whole system of privileges and punishments specifically created to encourage pickle production, the whole business turns our stomachs. Many of us agree that what we really want is a wholesome meal.
Unfortunately, we don’t really know what a wholesome meal is, because none of us have ever had one. Our picklehead bosses, eager to climb the pantry ladder, ensure that the kitchens are dedicated to pickles and pickles only. If anyone even mentions deviating from the pickle plan, our bosses want to know. And if they hear anything, they pass word to the kitchen’s pickle chief. Now pickle chiefs run the kitchens and compete with each other based entirely on pickle production. They stomp on anyone who might threaten pickle output.
Even so, some of us manage to sample our ingredients now and then – a chunk of raw cucumber here, a slice of tomato there. We nibble the stumps of carrots and imagine a neighborly feast.
But we may yet taste heaven. You see, every kitchen has at least one story about a cook who became a chef. An intrepid Gourmet, driven by his superior taste, who guarded his ingredients, prepared them with a keen blade, and created an immortal feast.
In some older versions of the story, the Gourmet takes one bite, smiles, and dissolves into a haze of light. In other, less miraculous versions, he shares his dish with a select group wannabe chefs, and then all of them walk out the front door of pickle house, never to return. There are many variations, but all these stories end with the following words: “Let everyone cook what he truly desires, because what we cook, we eat. And what we eat, we are.”
So, despite the system, those of us tired of pickles try to cook for ourselves. Our experience with pickling has taught us a fair amount about the kitchen, its utensils, and even a thing or two about our ingredients. So, with wholesome courage, we seek a way.
Occasionally we manage to stash some ingredients, prep them, and begin to cook. It’s a precarious process. Sometimes pickleheads take our ingredients. Sometimes they suspect our motives and keep us away from the stove. Sometimes we actually do start to cook, but burn ourselves because we don’t know how everything works. Nonetheless, every now and then, one of us cooks something tasty. Not a full meal, mind you, but enough to demonstrate the possibility.
Of course, if a pickle chief hears about it, he sets all the powers of the machine against us. He fires some cooks outright for suspected anti-picklism. He accuses undiscovered anti-picklist elements of trying to poison the household. But even as he rants about the dangers of fresh food, he invites a certain number of cooks, those he suspects merely of experimentation, to dine with him and his deputies, to taste the finest pickle fare. In this, his judgment proves uncanny. Almost all of the cooks he invites to dine with him renounce their wholesome inclinations, and become ambitious pickleheads on the up and up.
As for the dish in question, senior pickleheads conclusively prove that it actually included pickles, and that it was the pickles themselves that accounted for the wonderful flavors. They claim that the cooks involved were suffering from delusions, or misleading their colleagues in an underhanded attempt to start their own kitchens. Or, following the pickle chief, they claim that poisoners lurk in every crockpot, and then use the phantom poisoner threat to lock down all kitchen equipment.
But those of us who have tasted know the truth. And others who are curious can discover it for themselves. To begin, simply ask yourself this question: Does it trouble you that every fresh thing we see ends up wrinkled and sour?
Thanks for reading! :D
