Smoothie (RE-RELEASE)

Hi, I'm Kate Berlance.

I'm Jacqueline Novak.

And this is poog, an ongoing conversation about wellness between two obsessive reds.

Two untamable intellects.

This is our hobby, this is our hell, this is our naked desire for free products. This is poog Today's topics, loosely speaking toaster oven monuments, smoothie.

I just saw Kate's Kate, nice to see you. I saw your berry lip, and I'm now screaming for one for myself. Chris, will you grab any lipstick at all? You're in the closet, vanity.

Yes, I grabbed my Westpintilier lip God you in the compact. It's just how much time do you spend gazing into a mirror on average?

Almost none.

I gaze constantly, really well as a child. I as an only child, of course, but I spent so much time in the mirror that.

Was like Chris has returned with us with a true red about your only child.

Isn't as well as a child. As an only child, I spent an infinite number of hours in the mirror. And I remember, actually I had a mirror in my room, and then I had a little like play vanity. So I was like in front of the mirror, and then in front of the mirror was like a little vanity mirror. So there were actually two mirrors. But I would constantly. I mean, it's like the average stuff of just you know, lip lip syncing, slipping, lip singing. This always happens to me.

Make sense someone else is singing.

Yeah, I called it lip singing for twenty two years.

Really without you thought everyone was just kind of hitting it hard, hitting the consonant hard.

I thought I was confused, but I also kind of doubled down.

Double down, because you think it should be that.

To me, it was always lip singing, yeah, because I wasn't singing. I was singing just with my lips anyway.

But uh wait, lips singing. No, right, But then that implies that you're singing.

Right right, right, that's true, true, that's true, that's true. I'm not doing another another mirror thing I did. I'll just say from the only Child vault that I'd spend hours doing. And this is what makes me so grateful for having not been exposed to the Internet, or just not having the internet as a youth. Not to mark myself as being in my very very very early thirties, but I used to walk around my house with a

Oh that old gag. I thought it was hypochondria. No, no, no.

I would spend so much time walking around my house imagining I was walking on the ceiling, and it was like utterly I mean I can access that memory somatically. It was like deeply thrilling and terrifying. Is like, oh my god, I'm gonna, you know, walking off up to the certain like ledge to the ceiling and thinking you're going to fall off.

It's great, But wait, let me take that in.

Where did I go just talking about the mirror, And then I have a huge full length I have like a wall in my bedroom is just purely a mirror. I think I've mentioned that.

Actually, of course, a dancer's wall, So it's.

Great sometimes just to look in there and gaze. And I sometimes I've scared myself in the mirror, which is one of the really fun things of mirror work, is actually scaring yourself. Like I've sometimes gotten so close and I convinced myself I'm being possessed. And I've done that actually in an airplane bathroom. Once I took a nap, went pe in the bathroom, and you know, the airplane mirror is like right there if you're a squatting sitting whatnot. And I remember staring into my eyes with such a

I'm worrying about the laughter.

And laughing ecstatically in a mirror two inches from your own face, soaring fifty thousand feet above the earth. Yeah, I highly recommend.

Well, there's a feeling in going to the bathroom in a public place that I love, picularly fair dinner with someone and you go to the bathroom or are left at the table frankly, Yeah, there's this thing that happens. There's this moment when you're no longer wee but I it's very odd. It's like, well, well, similar to maybe there's a better example is when when do you Okay, if you're with someone on the street and say goodbye, Imagine if I was about to say, I'm not and

You carry a smile until you turn.

I think you carry it on the full pivot. I carry it a good. Four seconds post turn, I'm like two steps away before the face is dropped. Okay, wow, my utter generosity of spirit.

I think I I think I drop on the pivot drop instantly.

I can't think I d give you like hearts you get help. I don't know.

I am the pivot sick.

Okay, I'm I'm sick in the head and have this fear almost like I guess that someone else would witness my face drop and and there and things are are

I'm guilty of that. I've seen myself in bit roles on television shows where I see myself and I'm one hundred percent not acting. No, no, it feels too embarrassing to admit. But there's one particular there's one particular and I actually can't believe they like kept it. I'm like, I'm one hundred percent not aware that I'm being that I'm on camera. That's so funny, Like I see myself having completely dropped it.

But is it your best works? Right?

Oh, I was gonna say something about retaining the smile. This just reminded me. I'll just say quickly of an anecdote. John Early once told me of seeing a woman. He was hanging out with some woman he knows and her like new husband, and then three of them were hanging out or something, and then she came in. Because I'm always like the performance of domesticity, right, and like so much of why we all carry at those patterns just literally just because we want to replicate what we saw

That is perfect.

She was completely unobserved, but she retained.

The Smile's what I'm talking about.

That's I'm interested in that when the performance continues when you're alone, because I feel myself continuing to perform alone, right Or I think for me because I spent a lot of time alone as a kid, but as an adult, I tried to kind of dwarf that time as much as possible. Or I it's not as I sometimes I find myself being alone performing being alone of look at me with my journal, oh you know, or it's like me on the bed being like I'm going to read tonight.

Me and my my friend. Growing up, we like we're very aware of this, and as small children, we were like we referred to it as the camera in the upper left corner of the room.

Okay, amazing.

It was like it was like and it was like it was like way we'd like almost call each other out on like brilliant, you know, we were just very aware of, Oh, look at us. We're twelve, and we're look at us like prancing across the street, you know what I mean. Like we were constantly you know, stepping back and whatever. But well, I wanted to respond. I was wildly writing down the word mirror, scary, mirror possessed. So a couple of things. One, there's something I've realized recently.

I'm not kidding nothing. I'm truly complex.

I decided for dramatic effact to just say it plainly, let me know.

I would admit if I were like, I actually love it.

Okay. No, No, this is what's fascinating, Okay, because there's something in your posture where it almost looks like your right hand is resting on a mouse.

My right hand was resting like then.

My family table, on the edge of the table. No, this is a constant issue of I'm like picturing in my mind, I'm imagining a Gmail g chat, a little place you and me aren't afraid to inhabit even though it's not hip anymore.

And it's not two thousand and eight.

Okay, yeah, but who was g chatting mere weeks ago? You and me?

That's true.

Actually, that's the point I'm trying to make, is that we very briefly. You're listen to you, You're ashamed, You're I just I was trying to say.

The way the technology expires so quickly is always interesting to me, and that g chat is just gone.

And so that's why I know, No, that's what's so thrill because somehow you were like are you here or something? You were almost like this old town like it was that kind of vibe.

Yeah, I saw you was available on g chat, and I was like, how utterly kinky.

It wasn't even on purpose, But I love chatting in the corner of g chat, Like there's something like those conversations, you know, in the absence of real space. Real space is to inhabit any more. All we have is windows, right, and so it's sort of like, what does it feel

I'm always afraid I'm gonna tweet like a photo of my vagina. Yeah, yeah, Like somehow it does feel like some desperately personal thought or criticism of a public figure that you're dming is gonna slip into the youth.

Cousin Rachel would do this thing. That's like I think I forget what she called it, you know, twitter rouletta. It wasn't that, but it was it was something like that. It was like it was like she would type in like a crazy like tweet or something okay, and just like hold it up like almost like that there's nothing between you know, right, this tweet going out and extent like just to terrify you like to go on the edge. Yeah,

It's that funny there. There's nothing tactle about the internet. We can't actually feel it, and yet somehow that still becomes translated where Google chat it feels safer, you know, it feels more intimate.

Completely. Well, here's a huge question. Okay, that that no one's amused by but me.

Ooh, someone's at my door, like mister post Is it the milkman or the postman?

Either way, it's a man.

The man. Wait, sorry, what was he just saying?

Because I had something for us?

You were saying g chat.

Oh yeah, here's a big question. Okay, no one's interested but me, but I think you will be in a certain sub section of our listener. What do you imagine the back of a web browser window to look like?

Ooh uh a box?

Okay, so like web browsers right, like you know you have multiple windows open. Let's just say, right, has the mailman left? I see fear in your eye?

Fear in my eyes?

Yeah, you don't want an air it seeing, you know, with your recording equipment. Again, so self conscious about being a terrestrial radio broadcaster, can't believe so every window right is you know, we can move windows so in front of each other, in the back of each other, so we have a sense of them in space, right, Like we have a sense of them behind in front. Whenever go behind a web browser in your mind, what does it look like? To me? It looks like, no, it

Or make sure like the back of a box, like if you were just appear into an empty box. Like what we're seeing is kind of this projection on the front of the box, not brown. I picture a navy.

And you give it dimension. It's not like just a I give it how thick? How thick is a window?

I actually think it goes pretty far back. I think like the back of the of the browser window is like a hallway. To me, it's like peering down a hallway.

This is big fucking news. And this is why I congratulate myself for posing this question.

I love that question.

Okay, wait, so like let's just say, okay, you open Oh my god, I can't even imagine.

The architecture of the Internet is something that undiscussed, Yeah, undiscussed. And yet it's where we spend all our time.

And has the use of words like web, the metaphors right that this is a question of language, metaphor and fuko okay, okay, it is you know, the world Wide Web. Okay. The web has a kind of like any direction, right, Yeah, you hit a link and you shot off somewhere. Is there an organization?

Is it?

So when you say a wholeway behind a Gmail window, what is there.

In the hallway? Like I think a file cabinet, like you know, like a file cabin like the you open it up and it's like all that empty space.

It's empty behind it. It's not filled with your other browser windows in your mind.

No, it's empty, every single one.

This is fascinating every well, the back of a box, right okay, okay.

Like the I think a file cabinet is almost good, Like you're pulling out and file there's the screen, but then you look behind it and it's.

Just and then let's just say you decide to open another window. Is that a new file? Yeah, like that's a new thing, because I feel like I experience it pretty much as like a pretty flat piece of paper. But I give it the the tactile quality that they give us on the edges of the thing. I guess it's like almost like I see the browser window like

Yeah, here's what out like.

Cold laptop in the mornings.

You mean, just the chill of a cold metal of a laptop. I once saw a lizard lounging on my laptop, and in the dead of summer, going into my bedroom, my laptop is next to my bed. There was a lizard, wow,

How big was it?

Was it like a little like it was very adorable. I mean it must have been five inches tail included tail. Well no, let's say, well, it's.

Always a question, you know, is the or not? Because when you if you were to stand up, you know.

Do you ever think about if we had tails? Yes, like proper.

Tails, like not a horse's tail, which is a horse's tail? And I apologize to my rich it's hair from the start. There's no nub there. It's not five inches of a hard tail covered in hair, right, because you get up some animals like that's some can question for goes longer than the than the vertebrates.

By the way, can you believe a horse's tail? No, the main is shocking, like like the sexuality of horses, right is something we all know about and that horses are hot and like and all of that.

Well, they also have those butt plugs that have the horses like you can you can wear a horse's tail, but it is.

Like the just dramatic sexuality of the horse. It's so over the top o the what is it?

Is it the legs?

For me, it's the ass and the tail.

Well, I think the fact that I think, I think.

It's the human ass.

But the tail of folks. Okay, well, this is like the problem with like is it a ring of tans? One of the ones with those really like red like red bulbous a is okay, they're like there their butts like look like pain. Like their butts look so much like pain that you gasp at them. And I actually think this is one of the unfortunate reasons that sometimes people will gasp at, you know, a perceived deformity or something

Imagined pain went down, the imagined pain.

It's like, I mean, it's that classic thing where it's like people think that the person's scar still hurts or something, you know, they touch them gently or like people like right, and it's like, my scars are scars, like I feel nothing. You know, please don't gas as if in generously and your your empathy for the pain this witnessed. But I wonder, I don't know what I'm trying to do. Cut slack. I'm trying to cut slack for the room.

I'm actually horrified that I got a scar on my knee this summer lifting myself out of a swimming pool. Scraped what I thought was a harmless scrape. Let's see, we're clocking in on February. This was in July. Kate, Kate, I scar my knee, Vitamin E oil my ass, and now I have a permanent scar in the center.

Vitamin was the oil, as in they.

Say, you know vitamin oil will take a scar away. Yes, actually I don't think. I think I dabbed it on once.

Vitamin e ass. I thought you said I had a scar here in a vitamin em but okay, and I wanted to know.

I'm sorry, and I said what I'm so, I mean, I have this scar now in the center of my knee.

I want to talk about scars, okay, but I also want to continue about mirrors. When we get back, I'm going to tell you about mirrors, and I'm going to tell you about the scar on my hand that's inexplicably there from the most tiny of injuries. And I'll tell you how it happened when we get back. Welcome back, people. I have a scar on the top of my hand. Okay, it's subtle, but it's there, you know.

And oh my god, sorry, I keep going. You're just reminding me about a scar. Story. Continue, just keep going, keep going.

So there's a rubber band on your wrist and you go to drag it off to use it with like your the middle finger of your other hand, the nail of my own finger lightly scrape the top of my hand. I guess I didn't tend to it or spf it or nothing of blood, no blood, nothing, the tiniest scrape you ever saw in your life. And now it's a full scar. My other hand scars are famously toaster burns from me trying to reach into the microwave and paw a tune in out with the pads of my fingers.

I'm really sorry. I just tune the melt toaster oven. What I feel like, a toaster oven is such a fantasy of like like ninety six yeah, but to me like ninety four the dream, I guess, my childhood dream of like the normal family would be like a Ford Explorer and a toaster oven. And I feel like now, actually toaster o. I'm suddenly shocked by the hygiene of like a toaster. Just those open valves at the top of a toaster is just open for all hell to break loose and enter the toaster.

Wait, there's no open oh to enter.

The top of the toaster is a free for all, to let in in anything, or to let out but in anything, or let out but Kate.

Then it's burnt at three hundred and fifty degrees So who cares?

Okay, Well, I'm referring specifically to a trauma.

What's floating in Well, I'll tell.

You what's floating in Hune. I have never had magically, no mye no cockroaches, no vermin in this home. I recently put a piece of toast in my toaster. This was shocking. It was the English muffin terrified, we'll get ready, I toasted I had, I forgot about it, and then like maybe forty minutes later, I was like, oh, fuck that toast, and I was like, I'll just like just find a way to eat it. I reached it and I grabbed the toast. There is a live cockroach pulsating on

It ran, it ran or advanced? No, no, no, What I mean is did you see its exit? No? Or did you suddenly see the fact that it was gone?

It was just kind of gone, like like it was wiggling wildly. I screamed. I tried to I grab like a broom and I was like kind of hitting around the toaster to try to see if I could like smash it. And by all accounts, it vanished.

By all accounts, yours.

That's okay, okay, this is boring, but no it isn't.

We keep digging ding. I love to every second of it, and we dig in. See you run, you run from the story. But I think the story itself.

Has not a dig through, like I constantly run.

Is it burning alive in there?

We'll never know. But I almost threw away the toaster out of sheer fear. I almost threw away the entire toaster because I can't live with that toaster anymore. Instead, I, you know, took out the toast tray got rid of. I was like, well, any like legs or arms, or eyeballs or any remnants are now gone. You could throw away a perfectly good toaster. Not to step too far. I'd rather just live in filth. Yeah, yeah, and so. But the toaster oven promises that sealed environment.

Which it does not provide. You're saying, on top of.

The toaster is just an open a bird could fly?

Why do I feel like my toasters have absolutely no? Oh my god, I've realized what's happening here. It's a crisis of something else. No, you're saying, toaster oven, are you not?

So I'm trying a toaster.

You're referring to a goddamn fucking too slicer cartoon.

Too slicer, too slicer.

That's not a toaster oven.

I know I'm saying that the toaster is exposed, and I want to sure.

Oh okay, I thought you said toaster oven this whole time.

No, I've never owned I was not raised with a toaster oven. I've never owned one. Were you raised with a toaster oven?

Yes?

Were you raised with a dishwasher?

Yes?

This is I was raised with a dishwasher that was and I'm not exaggerating, never used food washed.

My dad.

That was his you know, domestic labor, so to speak, was the dishes, so much so that he refused to use the dishwasher.

Oh my god.

So I was raised with a deep fear of the dishwasher or like not knowing how to do it, And even now as an adult, I really am still afraid. Oh my god, could this be real. I've never I've never filled a dishwasher alone. I've never like been I've never taken the initiative to fill it up because I feel so nervous about the rules and how to stack them. I've helped, I've handed dishes to someone else here you put them in. But I've never taken upon myself to confidently load the dishwasher.

Like having machinery.

Yeah, it feels very And there's something I think because I'm an only child. There were only three of us, so there weren't like there weren't that many dishes. But something about the dishwasher to me also is like the dream of Christmas morning with like children running around and like Grandma's here, you.

Know, and placing dishes in the dishwasher.

Yeah, and being like, oh my god, wasn't lunch. It's like and oh you know.

Oh god about living in that family, Oh oh god, wasn't lunch devastating? Remember, it's like your dream wasn't lunch. I feel like my family is not big on lunch in general, Like there's just sort of because everyone's sort of eating at different times throughout the you know, mornings slash afternoon. It's all an approach to dinner. For us. Generally, it's dinner. What do you need? Lunch? Lunch disappear.

It's all about dinner. It's always been about dinner.

Well, it's like people talk about about having lunch with friends, want to meet for lunch. I mean a big lunch to give me dinner or give me death, because lunch is hell.

See, I actually prefer huge lunch lighter dinner.

Well, that's the classic eat like a what do they say, a king in the morning, a popper in the evening, Oh.

My god, a king king in the morning, popper in the in the afternoon, and.

Something like that, an apple if you're lucky, right, and that you sneak out and you lick up the scraps of the king's meal.

Right, you have like the tour on the edge of the torn bag at that your lever left on the table.

Me and my cousin. And sometimes, you know, maybe these are ancestral things. We've always talked about the pleasure of kind of eating something that's a little bit unpleasant, like a stale piece of bread or stale crackers crackers, and eating it as if we are you know. Sometimes I mean for us, it's a lot of times Jewish sort

I want you to tell your Holocaust thing I think about all the time, which is one of the funniest In your ankle, but your ankle, my ankle, Wait, the wind hitting your ankle, Please tell.

Right, So I I, you know, jump to well, well, two things, okay, Well, okay, I'll get to the ankle. Okay, But I just want to like say the thing I was going to say first, which is so like the classic is my mother would motivate her yourself to clean up the kitchen speaking of dishes, okay. She would go like almost nightly, okay. It was like, I'm going to pretend that there's ten minutes until the Nazis get here, okay, and I have to clean the kitchen before the Nazis

Pretending the Nazis are coming.

Yeah, And the weird thing about it is that it was never clear. It was just the Nazis are coming in thirteen minutes, that's how long I or ten minutes, that's how long we have to clean, okay, but it was never totally clear like if it's not clean, are they going to take us away? I think that was the implication, right right, right, So that was it's like, it's like Nazis is the.

I thought it was like, how embarrassing the Nazis coming into your house and it's a mess?

Oh right, like they're there, like you're there to host them while whatever.

So yeah, so there was that.

I mean also my mother, you know, famously this is always the image to describe, but it's like it's a hot July day and I want to go to the pool or something like that whenever I'm excited. Just a jewel, Yeah, I know. And it's because what I meant, Okay, what I was tried and imply and I didn't know what time to explain, was this kind of thing I've heard, like the Southern literary tradition of like the July grass

Wow.

She like knows every word's Jaws, and she hears Jaws playing in the next room while she's like doing dishes or something. So like Shindler, it's that thing where there's there's there's historical horrors can be a comfort because they're in the past. It already happened, right, It's like.

I don't know, it's kind of that's interesting.

So you were saying, I'm so sorry. I insisted on saying, well, setting the table so to speak, for the Holocaust stuff, which is just I always jump there. And then there'd be these there's these moments in my life that are completely moments of luxury and comfort. Okay, where I'm clutching, you know, a Starbucks on the streets of New York, Okay,

The ice hitting your ankle. Yeah, And those little moments of well, the.

Could I It's like a moment of minor discomfort becomes a way of them saying, you know, how.

Would I empathy?

I mean, this is part of why I like like watching these, like watching old war movies. I really enjoy asking myself how i'd fare in war, like like if we were drafted in World War Two as men.

Quite well people with high anxiety. I'm just not to interrupt, but I've been told, because I have high anxiety OCD tendencies, that when actual stress is presented, like actual moments of like, oh, this is an emergency, this is chaos, this is oftentimes people with the anxiety actually are really able to manage just moments absolutely.

And that's and I'm sure I've brought this up on poog and I know I talk about it in my depression book, but my grandfather, chaplain in the war, had suffered depression in the war. Never felt better.

Yeah, I felt better of that story.

There was finally reprieve did you go to the.

Because I went to the Holocaust Museum in the eighth grade, and I what I remember the most was it became a competition for who could cry the hardest or grieve I adore hardest at the museum. I was I was going to the Hall Coustmuseum. I went to an all girls school. All of the girls their knees buckling, you know, kind of being like like because I also I went to school with like relative any of them probablyish. Yeah, So like my best friend I had friends whose relatives did perish or were survived.

Do you have any parents and so?

And some of them I had met.

Were not really because they were in Spain.

No, sadly no.

You see, I feel right now this thing tickling in my stomach, which is a desperation to interrupt to let you know that I have direct relations who perished. Oh, I know that you do, but I'm just acknowledging the like the panic, like the how quickly can I get to it? Like the proximity to trauma or or pain as a legitimizing.

Of course, of course, well I had to die, you know that, that kind of that's major. I once had a therapist directly asked me after like I'd been seeing him for a while. He was like, are you Jewish? And I was like yeah, And he was like, you know, because you're processing a lot of ancestral ancestral trauma. And he's like, did you have relatives especially let me g.

Did you lie and say yes? Did you lie and say yes? No?

But I was like I was like no. He's like, oh, he was like, but you know you still I was like, you know, my my father was born in the early forties and his parents took him to Docou hilarious, like to be like this would have been you. And my dad was definitely raised with a lot of that, you know.

Oh yes, okay, well this is like my favorite topic of conversation.

I couldn't cry, and I was like, come on, cry, cry cry, you know, and and I wasn't able when I was devasted.

No, this is hysterical. Okay. I actually didn't go with the school. It was maybe did. I don't know. I can't remember, but I remember first going with my parents and my dad like says this thing to me now, like he's like, I remember you were really like I guess this is like I was eleven or something and my dad says it apparently I was like, I was like, but the Nazis got it in the end, right, Like

Let me guess the passport.

Oh damn it.

The shoes.

The shoes, thank you? Yeah, okay, they like and then you gotta imagine the person who all right, we gotta explain it, right we got Well, well, well I'm.

Gonna say when I saw the shoes, that's when it hit.

That's when it hit. And just for anyone who wasn't brought to our nation's capital to see this, there is a you know, massive pile of shoes.

Okay, brutal that children's shoes.

Huge, huge hues. To give a sense of the scale of the death right is look they had, you know, look at all these Look at this huge pile of jewelry that they took off the bodies before burning them. Whatever.

Look at these shoes and.

You know it was the way it was making the intangible, making the infinite, making huge numbers, you know, visceral, right, And like I just like imagine, imagine knowing the person whose idea it was to do the pile of shoes.

Just knowing the person one knowing them.

And then imagine how hard it is not to bring that up.

Yeah, or you're the person who came up with it and you're like doing like the inaugural tour. You know it took the ribbons being cut and you're like that was me, Like like look at you.

Know, because it's creative insight. Right. Yeah, here's a question how brilliant, how brilliant a piece of work should a monument to a tragedy be?

Interesting?

Question gets in the way hearting when it gets again, you know, it's a problem, right, Like you might brilliate your criticisms of the Freedom Tower, Okay, Chris, Chris hysterically, I just say this really quick, Chris hysterically. That's like a bit about how stupid it is that they like made the Freedom Tower seventeen Fuck, when did we achieve

Wait, is that on the Freedom Tower?

Freedom Dower was made to be seventeen one thousand, seven hundred and sixty six feet high.

Oh my god's so irrelevant your ass. Well, the world of.

The Freedom Tower, let's talk about it.

I don't think watch of it, honey. And first of all, well did you go Because I was I was in I was a freshman sophomore. I would go down at night. I was living in Chinatown, and I would take long walks and go down to the holes. I would go down to ground zero, and at that point it was just still like gutted.

Did you feel alone or did you feel the camera in the upper left corner of the room while you were mourning and walking?

Because I was never alone, of course, I was always with a friend. No, but but there was the curtain, or there was there was a fence around it, right that there was blocked, but there would there would be holes in the fence and I would peer through the hole in the fence. But it was all just narrated by Katie Kuric, Like in my mind, it was all just you know, it was of course televised. That's a pretty tasteful monument.

Right. They didn't build over essentially, right, They retained the absence meaningfully and made it a leave.

The wound open, as Christeva.

Would say, yes, and this is nice. The second time Christeva has come up, resist healing, come up and I love it. And then they built the tower, right, and so it's like, now, what do you think is the tower just like next to the hole?

Must be right, yeah, turn right at the holes. You can't miss it.

I mean I do think like filling it with water is about as good as you can get. Fill filling it with like a fountain.

They're always like water, we have water. Water is always the fallback?

Water is is is tragedies only? Answer?

Like, let's just water.

They're like fountains, fountain time. I mean, you must have taken a trip to the Vietnam Memorial. It's like in one of your trips. Sure, I feel like the Vietnam Memorial was very celebrated for its understated quality or whatever.

Right, yeah, of course, but yeah, like what like devn like, how do you not like?

Okay, it's easy to be uninspired by whatever the Freedom Tower, But if it were a deeply subversive piece of work, I've been kind of fucked up, you know what I mean? No, No, of course, that's what's funny to me. Wait, so is all the.

Business that happened in the World Trade Center now it's all just condensed into the Freedom Tower? Like all the like? Is all the business? Are the businesses still in there?

Well, some chose to move.

Were they like? But some of the businesses.

Are in the Actually, every single business that had existed in the towers was forced into the Freedom Tower. It was a tax break, yes, but they were told they had no other option. No, that's that's a joke, all right.

I actually am unaware of the businesses that went on. Were they they were beyond government? Like there were also people that were just like you had, like companies.

I don't even think there was any government. It's financial.

It was commerce. It was commerce and finance.

World Trade Center Center, Right, No, no, trade is the one I was trying to hit, not center trade, trade as in as in you were like right right the world.

I constantly feel that I focus on the wrong word the seer I placed. Really, I think this is a constant issue for me, is as signing value to the wrong word in the sentence. And it's something what I think I retained from the embarrassment I a public speaker, freeze up, terrified in a classroom setting, of reading passages out of a book, of reading my own work right, utter horror, and for many years also fear of speaking

Do you remember that thing? This was such a hack thing, a hack teacher reference, sort of placing the emphasis on the wrong slabble hacked sucks. Yeah, heard it?

That's yeah, you've never heard that.

You've never heard I've heard it?

Okay, okay, okay, yeah.

Well I know John Early loves this is he loves this like, this is not syncopatient. This is syncopatient syncpation. You never heard John really say this? No, Oh my god. I would think it was like maybe in the first ten minute of meaning, like this would be something you discussed. It's like, no, I can't do the wrong version. But it's like, this is sinc capatient. It's not like this is sinc of patient. It's like Chris is sink capatient.

I've never heard.

Wait, what are other teams? Sorry, okay, we do have to go to break. You may get a snack.

Walk me through what you've eaten today after the break.

I can't wait. You'd like to know what I ate today? So far? Nothing? You know me fast. I had a sleeve of saltines in the in the late night, I had a sleeve of saltines. I remembered they were there.

I was going to bring up saltines earlier, proof that I am in fact psychic.

Why do you enjoy them?

When you were talking about eating the bread and kind of like imagining that you were in some Yeah.

Oh, this is this is what I believe about melburtoast.

Val punis changed.

Is the value of melbots that it resists being eaten, okay, and it's it's something that I long to remember. I want a food that fights back for once I'm tired of the food is just going in so easy and beseechingly. Okay, just enter my mouth. The humiliation of a pizza having a point at the end. Like me, We're a real skinny, so I can just kind of sneak in your mouth and then slowly wide and I'm like, this is pathetic. I will eat I will eat you from the crust in.

Through your mouth.

Melvas the violence of melva, Okay, it is it's like you chewing into it. You go, this can't be right. This can And that's why melba toast is subversive.

Grape nuts similar.

God, I went through a period sign.

Of adulthood, or a sign of like graduating to grape nuts, like adulthood, you know, once you have a mortgage to pay to start pouring grape nuts and.

Are to me heaven, the feeling that they might the way they might break my teeth.

I want it now.

I love it so much.

Really a dangerous food.

God, I kill for some grape nuts and I want them now. There was a period where I would wake up at like like six am, where I'm not supposed to get up till nine am, supposed to you know whatever. Okay, But but I would wake up starving, run downstairs, eat, eat a bowl of grape nuts in like a in a fury, and then go back to bed. And I

I made well? Of course, had a cup of coffee with my steamed oat milk.

I think gets tired of that oat flavor, though.

No, to me, it's pure cream honey. I used to make my own nut milk like every week. And then I bought oat milk one day kind of to be like, let's have fun.

Do you know if someone makes their own oat milk, don't worry, they'll tell you about it or whatever.

I don't know.

How do you know someone's a vegan? Right, don't worry, it'll come up. That's what it is. Don't worry it'll come up.

Yeah, sorry, but I know it was made. Don't apologize, swie, don't apologize, swie. Okay, So coffee with oat milk. And then I made unusual for me. I made a smoothie with oat milk. Frozen blueberries, almond butter.

Pre frozen. They arrived from the store frozen or you frozen them.

Wild organic blueberries arrive pre frozen, pre frozen. Okay. Content The nutritional content of frozen berries are often higher than the freshberry. I repeat, nutritional benefits. The nutritional density of a frozen berry or a frozen vegetable is often higher than that of a.

Like sense, that's just like a baby that's killed is permanently younger.

Okay, okay, okay.

We've got a living adult. Okay, okay, okay, no, no, but what I'm saying is you freeze the very well, it has its most.

Although they chopped the broccoli and then they freeze it immediately, so it retains that kind of degrading in the truck and degrading my shells the frozen and then I have this is.

You about your visualizations of food nutritional degradation on trucks, specifically the belly of a boeing, belly of the.

Bone jets, food transportation.

And water searing and plastic I just water.

Three hundred and fifty degrees in a truck making its way across the rust belt and riding at your door. Yeah, yeah, with a with a plastic leeching into the water beyond comprehension.

Plastic leeching.

Leaching is one of my most I mean, I think about my career, plastic leeching and death.

Wait your career, Oh no, the three things again for a big part of your.

What were we just talking about, I don't remember. It's gone food breakfast? Yeah after that, whoa, I forgot to mention that I had some protein powder in my smoothie, which is not a usual thing for me because I'm afraid of the lead in these protein powers protein powders. Oh, yeah, toxicity. Don't even get me started.

Well, I know, toxicity in general is an issue.

But toxicity in general I fear. But yeah, a lot of the kind of store bought protein powders, they're not screened for heavy.

Metals versus the foraged in the local or just.

Like a very like like a protege a protein powder that might be triple screened for heavy metals. Okay, I want to triple screened protein powder. I mean, I don't drink.

Smooth soft smoothie relevant barely. The smoothie has achieved obviously. And you were one of the early satirists of jama juice. Just to be clear, thank you, Okay, Okay, I really appreciate that the humiliation of of that. You know, however, a few years ago, well, I mean, I mean the first laugh, right, the first laugh about about jama juice was you think you're being healthy as ninety apples, seven hundred berries, six bananas.

I mean, leave the berries out of it. But the issue is the apple density, is what I'm saying.

Okay, can eat the equivalent of sixty bowls of fruit? Yeah, okay, okay in one thing and and have just jacked yourself so high on fruit sugars. Okay, never to come to America's great failing fructose or whatever fruit doose? Sorry okay. And and mango mango. We added we got some more moisture in there with orange juice, like great, great, it's a direct direct juice that it's it was, like, you know, whatever disaster, America grew more metabolically challenged. No, no, I

If it was, I'm not kidding. I swear my phone is over there being plugged in, so it's your nails right now. Just not when I glanced down, I was looking at the table.

That's fine, that is fine. I wanted to know because this is helping me learn, Okay, instead of going now she's done it, well she forward, now she's done it.

Okay, no distractions, No, no, this is great.

All right, Wait, but I was really excited about Yes, so the metabolic syndrome is what most of us suffer from. Here, Okay, in the States, I think it was Reagan and big corn and whatever in the GMOs. Basically we all got fucked okay, and we all have fucked up metabolic dynamics now that are not our fault. And doctor Robert Lustig will tell us all it's not sloth and glutton of course not. We are not, you know, having all these

I love using it as smoothie. I love yes smoothie.

The poetics of smoothie. Okay, be yea juicing, juicing, juicing, juicing smoothie. Though, no, this is my point, right, Okay, all the all the talk is about juicing, right, Oh, don't stress the digestive system. Get the pure serum of the vegetable right into you, et cetera, et cetera. Right, However, you are missing the fiber. Fiber okay, And apparently if you use a strong blender, and which isn't this day. Honestly, you know, the others have caught up. I don't think

Ch generation is that one of the big culprits can't remember.

Well, they do so smoothies as well. But anyway, pulverizing the greens and then dropping I like to drop a few berries, a few red berries into the green smoothie sugar high anioxidae, just exactly to get some of the fruit flavor that I enjoyed to kind of. And I called that the rose Garden, Okay. I self named what I would order at s Miller's okay, and told them, and I think it finally made it under the menu.

No it didn't, Jacqueline.

Yes, they said, like we're getting a new menu and that one's going on, okay. And it was called the rose Garden because it was all greenery then with dabble of red.

That's brilliant. I still I'm like so envious or something that you would have invented a smooth it would end up on the board.

Now, to be clear, I don't recall seeing it on the board yet I recall talk of it.

Yeah, I mean I don't want to be a bitch, but I kind of feel like I didn't really make it.

To them so furious because I don't have the details to support the feeling, and the feeling is one of absolute truth. Okay, but I guess I could be sort of shuffling the truth aside, like in order to barrel towards me explaining that I named it the rose garden because I did think there was sort of an elegance to the word rose garden lovely, even though there was the problem of obviously that could imply that there's a rose flavor. I would too, but then the people wouldn't have it.

I pulled me back.

Hey, I feel myself slipping. I know, I know, oh right, eating food in that way. But yes, last night, but last night I was watching the Terror name C program that I'm enjoying nightly and sort of these men the Terror. Yeah, it's these men on a ship, surprise, surprise, and shows. There's nary a woman to be seen in the program. There's three okay, there's three women that occasionally appear.

Okay, it's just here, just over an oil rig.

What's about that? Right? That is the part of your genius okay, is that you can finish a sentence okay, because you're just you'll go for it. Just say oil rig okay, like a woman bent over an oil rig. Now, an oil rig technically is a massive structure. An oil rig I think is like the entirety of the ship or whatever.

Right, yeah, or it's door one area.

Yeah, Like you're bend over a small barrel.

And bent over some like pip.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're picking, of course, And it's just but it's but I but eating saltines while pretending that I'm in the Arctic m with these men, you know, and and and forcing the saltines into my mouth. It was heaven in the darkness, going one cracker after the next and putting them in and feeling them being so dry, and knowing that I could get up and get a drink of water, but instead enjoying the over

I'm so thirsty harvest for winter. I've barely had water. Yesterday I would say I had a glass and half of water. Today I've had less than a glass. What am I doing thoughts.

I haven't had a single sip of water today, surprised if.

There was spinning. It's not. But I am so thirsty and I'm sorry to sweat my my Juilliard sweatshirt. I'm I'm really hungry, and I think i'm But you know, when you know you're gonna have a really big, amazing dinner.

You have one planned.

I just know I'm gonna eat, yeah, a big old and therefore what you know, No, So so I know I'm gonna order Italian feasts, So I'm like, I don't want to.

You want to be as hungry as you can when you arrive at it.

Yeah, I want to really be able to enjoy that feast, but I'm hungry.

You know it's huge for me and we can leave in a minute. But I just want to say this, which is, yeah, you know, eating socially is hard, okay, or be or knowing that you're supposed to get your sustenance from an event you're attending is stressful to me, particularly if it's you know, cater rikers are not that. I go to a lot of care events, but yeah, I know it's technically speak you.

Can't rely on catering dear God.

Dear God. Okay, they sweep through it speeds unknown whatever. Yeah, okay, But I've found that what works for me is to not show up at events with questionable amounts of food, starving, eat a little something at home, okay, and then when I show up at the event, my eyes are not trailing the cater waiter with a ferocious desperation that alienates those I'm supposed to be having light conversation with.

Yeah. Instead, You're focus is solely on the chicken saute. It's moving quickly away from you. I mean, those events feel like such a thing of the past. Am I Am? I wrong? Now I realize because it's a year now of not eating in front of people, I think my manners have completely They've just completely dissolved. So that food in front of me, it's I think I'm smacking, it's going right in. I mean, I think I've completely lost any kind of social performance of eating.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, And what's there's a been? Oh there's bepeens for me where like there's food on my face. I know there's food on my face, Like Chris is like there's a chip on the top of your lip resting on the top of your lip, and I'm like, I know, I just haven't gotten to it yet.

Like, yeah, I literally know, you know, I can feel food on my chin right and not my chin catches.

A lot and not wipe it away immediately.

Yeah, I'm just like or sometimes I am shocked by how much food there is on my face. I turned to the mirror, I'm like, oh my god, like it's just yeah, well we should we should honestly leave because I'm so hungry now the hunger is taken hold of, starting to now gravitate toward my language skills.

Absolutely, I really enjoyed exploring.

Uh, Judy is of the modern brutality you're on.

The modern brutality is jettisoned.

By the I would kill for bowl of grape nuts with whole milk.

I am going to have that too. Great.

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