jillibean!

all the fear in me amounting

to the tribulations and the trials I have got.

“Finally,” I said unbothered,

“only me and not another”

This upon the midnight hour I believed and spake my thought.

“Thank heavens I’m alone and safe here in my comfy bedroom spot.”

“mox antiquos deos excitabimus qui nobis adiuvabunt ut peluches faciamus”

Our guests this eve all gathered in a line,

And I, your host, mayhaps have made a fright,

But hath been standing hither all the time!

At hand the program is “A Changèd Game”

Where trials shift and shuffle every show.

And yet I, Samuel Reich, do still remain,

And joined by lovely players, three in tow.

Are they aware of rulesets yet to come?

A no, a no, a no across the board.

Our players, then, arrivèd here quite dumb,

But that is how this works, they are assured.

To play the game’s the only way to learn;

To learn the game’s the only way to win;

By this a total grows of points all earned.

yall i’m still thinking about pasta.

for context. a couple weeks ago i was trying to figure out what defines macaroni, distinctly from other pasta shapes (and from other foods, and other objects). the dictionary definition gave me effectively two facts on which to base my theory: that the macaronus is a pasta, and that its shape is a slender tube. this made perfect sense to me as the best way to describe the macaronus, and i then categorized various subjects in a taxonomy based on how well they fit the criteria of “pasta” and “tube.”

now, i had gone down this rabbit hole after having a conversation about pasta with my mutual and real-life friend @jillibean-exclamation-point. they also, independently, decided to make a pastapoint (because we’re just besties like that 🫶) so it was very fun that when we hung out, we were each like “surprise! i made a powerpoint about our pasta conversation”.

now, jillibean has a different style of both analysis and powerpointing than i. and while i stand by my pastapoint, i must say they considered something i had never really thought about in my many years of eating copious amounts of macaroni.

the tube is there to hold the sauce.

it’s quite possible this is only news to me. maybe everyone else is perfectly aware that the tube is for the cheese, and maybe that’s what defines macaroni, it’s how well it holds the sauce. either way, a good portion of jilli’s pastapoint was an exploration of the interaction with the sauce, so at least by the end of their presentation i had the gist of the pasta/sauce duality.

all this i understood, and i introduced my pastapoint afterwards by saying, well yes it’s all well and good to look at what goes onto the pasta, but let’s step closer and look at the pasta itself.

it is only now that i realize the depth of my error.

if you’ll humor me a bit longer, allow me to explain my logic. macaroni is almost conceptually inseparable from cheese. to the point where mac and cheese is a dish, rather than are a dish - this much i know, i’m not an idiot. but i wanted to look at the component parts. i was interested in mac, and i was willing to leave behind cheese for the sake of the study. the two may be frequently combined, yes, but they must then exist as independent individuals, before being mixed. and so i considered the macaronus only as the shape of the pasta.

perhaps i should have asked myself, why is the tube such a prominent feature? why is it that cartoon mac n cheese has holes in each unit of pasta, each pastum a skeleton of some character, all walls and gaps? these products, going still under the name of macaroni, give up the elbow shape entirely and focus only on the tubes. what did they know that i don’t?

it was the sauce. it was always the sauce. cheese or pesto or whatever you prefer (but hereafter assumed to be cheese), macaroni is nothing without its sauce. and this is coming from someone who eats cereal dry. the shape of it is perfect to cradle and carry the sauce, making any individual bite an effective combination of ingredients. this may be true of all or most pasta, but especially the macaronus.

mac and cheese didn’t become the beautiful phenomenon it is because the pasta just happens to hold the sauce very well, either - this is intentional. this is, perhaps, the only intention. the macaronus is created, prepared, and destroyed, all with the cheese in mind.

i can only imagine the moment they meet, from the pastum’s perspective. this is after cooking the pasta, of course; the macaronus just recently traumatized from many minutes swirling in a boiling whirlpool which took its strength and structure - or perhaps it just feels softened by a nice warm swim. i wouldn’t know, i haven’t asked. either way, it is changed forever by the water, and shortly after, it is abandoned by this same water, its former friend leaving through a colander. it really was a strained relationship anyway, pun violently intended. the pasta is left alone either way, changed eternally by its experience.

and then it meets the sauce. perhaps they come together immediately, perhaps the cheese must mix and form around the pasta, it all depends how you cook your dish. but one way or another they meet. and this is when i must wonder, does the macaronus know? does it say to the cheese,

“oh, so this is what i was made for. you are what i was made for. i was made to hold you close as you hold me too, and we each were made with each other in mind, to live and die in mixture.”

in my research, i tried to remove the cheese from mac and cheese. but, oh so close, that leaves “mac and”. there is that remnant memory of an also, calling out to its companion. you can, in theory, have a box or bowl of elbow pasta without sauce, and it would still be, i’d say, macaroni. but it is macaroni because - and only because - it is made for, it silently yearns for, the cheese.

we consider ourselves as individuals which interact. i say i am a self, and my self happens to know many others, and so on. but we are, in our very definitions, in our very beings, entirely conceptually inseparable from the people around us. discreteness is an illusion cast by the walls of the body. the shape of your soul is formed by the amalgamated imprints and negative spaces of everyone who has ever pressed against it, who has ever loved or cared about you.