So For Christmas

i give you pink marshmallows--because they are my thing.


Pink marshmallows are my thing. Marshmallows are nothing special--they are simple, composed of three ingredients, sugar, sugar, and sugar. They do not require any skill, any real innovation, they are just marshmallows. I never buy pink marshmallows, though when i visit my family there is always a bag in the cupboard, fluffy pinkies mixed in among the white. I sit and pick out the pink, neglecting the white as tasteless. My brother raises an eyebrow, they taste the exact same you crazy, but what does he know. They taste nothing alike. My disdain for white? I don't know where it came from. Strange non? A marshmallow is a petite cloud, a nouage, and as one who spends the vast majority of consciousness up in the abyss of clouds dreaming of a cabbage patch, I can't bring myself to touch them. Either way, I suppose, a pink marshmallow is nothing but a white one caught in a blush, just as there are those who claim the dove to be just a white pigeon. But even if it is, why tell it. Why force one out of the cabbage patch before they have to. why, why, why, who made the rules. So let the Dove be a Dove for a little bit longer, and let the pink parade around as--as, well, pink.

I have been back in the US now for six months, Paris seems at times like it never happened. For a reason unknown to me, i am thrown at this time of holiday into homesickness for the city of lights. But why? My last year's Christmas was...well far less than the stereotypical picture book Christmas that many picture as the ideal noel. Not that i would complain--two different floors, a couch, and a stranger's apartment in Lille, all within a week! But seeing the lights, I miss her, Paris. I watch small films taken, comb through the thousands of photos, and read back the posts that created inside her borders, posts with terrible photography, zero comments, few readers, and yet my heart still bleeds. It is alright to miss, I miss more than I realize. Missing is part of the day, it is just merely at Christmas that we are made more acutely aware of our missing.

You can miss a taste, miss a smell, a sight. The sound of a siren which for me brings to the surface a bag so deeply saturated of memory that I nearly suppress a laugh. I miss the terrifying wind on the Sein on a rainy day, each ruined umbrella was yet one more everlasting trophy. I miss the terrible radio station played in my small G-20 grocery market. I miss the cat calls of the friendly construction workers along Avenue de Versailles as I jog by at 5h00 in the morning. I miss counting down the line 10 metro stops in my head on my way home; La Motte Piquette, Emile Zola, Charles-Michels, Javel-Andre Citroen, Eglise d'Auteuil. I miss Abdel every day at lunch, salut mallory ma puce, un salad de quoi aujourd'hui? Poulet ou thon? I miss la Canal Saint Martin, and I miss the Champs de Mars. Les Jardins d'Auteuil, and the tiny Square Berlioz down the street from Florielle's. I miss walking to class along Rue de Rennes past the ever-changing store front windows. I miss the guy playing the violin in the metro tunnel at Sevres-Babylon. I miss little Flo, Antoine, Nico, Tar Tar, Diogo, and the others. I miss the cooking section at the Fnac, and the crowded aisles of Carrefour that no matter what section of the store, smelled of cheese. And more than it all, I miss waking up in the morning knowing that no matter what i do or where i decide to go, this day will be an adventure, this day will be new, and this day will be alright because i have been given it as a gift. Paris didn't give me myself, Paris let me be myself. So i miss it, i miss something so terribly that i have lived. But i miss all the same what i haven't lived, what i haven't seen, and who i haven't met. But perhaps missing has been given a bad reputation, i would rather miss Paris than not have her at all, and the same goes for you. So happy Christmas everyone, may the new year bring what you hope for. Thank you for your steadfast literary patronage, we will see you in the new year. And take a pink marshmallow, they are my thingão, yes so very dorky. But take one anyways, because they do taste better, even if you don't know it yet.

pink marshmallows:
ingredients: 3 cups sugar ~ 4 packets of gelatin ~ 1.25 cups light corn syrup ~ 2 tsps raspberry extract ~ .25 tsp red powder dye ~ .75 cups water ~ .25 tsp salt
method: 1) dissolve gelatin in cold water in bowl of electric mixer 2) boil sugar, salt, and corn syrup until 238 on candy thermometer 3) slowly pour hot syrup into gelatin in mixer on low speed 4) after five minutes turn up speed and add extract and dye, mix on high for 5 more minutes 5) pour fluffy stuff into greased (do not use parchment paper!) casserole dish, leave out overnight, turn out onto powdered sugar, cut, and coat sides with powdered sugar. done.

as always,
à bientôt