Becoming a Jackal

Whenever I make myself something to eat, something from scratch, I always wish that there was someone to share it with. Not because I am the sort of person who always needs someone to share something with. On the contrary, I love my own company just fine. But in this fantasy of mine, the person who eats the miracle that I have created gets to tell me in minute details how the food tastes like. They have an uncanny ability to describe the specific texture of [rice] as they put a spoonful into their mouth, how this texture changes as they chew, how various flavours burst into their mouth and how they finally realise it is time to swallow. I want to compare their description to my experience and if there are discrepancies, where do they come from? Could it be that our saliva are different, in taste and smell? In real life, I think that would be a weird thing to ask someone.

I have narcissistic tendencies. I don't know if this is a bad thing. But I dedicate my favourite love songs to myself. I am attracted to people like me. I want my future partner to be a reader, an avid reader. I want them to read and reply to everything I send them -that's a minimum of five articles and short stories per day. I want them to read everything I write. I want them to have an opinion on everything, because I am very opinionated. I want them to be self aware, like I am, or aspire to be. I want them to find and appreciate the underrated joys of window shopping. I want them to be a story teller -to tell me about that poster they saw while in transit and what memories it brought back, that specific line in a book that made them cry, that line in a song they always wait to hear, to tell me that point while eavesdropping in a conversation they stop and think, 'if I were the one telling this story, would I have used those exact words? if not, what would be different, the word order, different words altogether?' This is a very specific list, I realise. A list that specifies my attributes, attributes that I find attractive in myself and want to find them in someone else.

Some time back,  I went to the Immigration's office to run an errand. I sat listening to one of the immigration officers explaining to a middle aged man why his passport application had not followed through. Apparently, he had written in his application that he was married to a woman who had written in her application that she was divorced to this same man. As I sat there pretending not to listen, I thought to myself, 'how can something that looks straightforward to me, that should be straightforward, elicit such different responses to the people it concerns? surely, both parties in a marriage should be able to know if and when they got a divorce.' But I was an outsider, with a little bit of contract law knowledge (in which marriage is defined as a contract). Then, all of a sudden, my fantasy of someone telling me how exactly the food we are both eating tastes to them isn't weird at all. In a whole new light, I saw the need to question (again and again), to be answered in black and white, to never make assumptions, to (sometimes) listen through silence.

The title of this post is from the Villagers' album Becoming a Jackal (and the song from which the album gets its name)

Memories

A few years ago there was this girl who, for a whole semester, sat behind me in Ethics class. Or it could have been Theology class. My memories of this class and what I learnt are blurry, but I remember the lecturer was a Spanish priest who (and this is where my memory becomes particularly unclear) we called Father Juan because of his uncanny resemblance to the character of Father Juan in the most popular Mexican soap opera at the time. Other times though, I remember the lecturer not as Father Juan but another younger priest, who was also Spanish. To this day, every time I think about a priest, the picture that comes to mind is of those Spanish priests. I don't know why this is the case. For instance, in my last semester in university, I took Sociology of Mass Communication and this was taught by a priest, who despite having an African name, who despite being the Dean of Students, who despite me having seen him before I registered for the class still surprised me with his being African, with him coming to class in jeans instead of those priestly garments. So one day in this Theology class that might have been an Ethics class, the lecturer who might or might not have been Father Juan showed us a video of this disabled woman who did her own chores. The woman couldn't use her hands but did everything using her legs. There was this part where the woman was preparing an omelette and this girl who always sat behind me whispered to the person she was sitting next to, 'Don't tell me the omelette won't break. My omelette always breaks,' a little bit too loudly that I could hear it.

Now every time I make an omelette,  I remember that girl. And every time I turn my omelette over without it breaking, I hate myself for the missed opportunity of sharing my technique with her.