How To Make Potatoes When The Universe Is Out Of Your Control
When the internet and/or universe keeps tugging that “almost-crying” string, the one that feels like a sneeze. When you keep boomeranging between the same two or three URLs, wondering what any of this is for — is life an everlasting news cycle, are problems going to keep retreating and re-emerging, cicada-like, until we die; will we ever eat cake on the beach; are all these words just tiny hamster wheels, distracting us from everything that’s impossible to say? And have you ever experienced a good goodbye, or is that another word we don’t think about, like thoughtsandprayers, or —
Make potatoes.
It doesn’t matter what kind, or what you do with them. Potatoes are potatoes. That’s the good thing about potatoes. You’ll never find a bad ending or an unsteady breath or a misguided political statement inside a potato.
Go to the most normal supermarket at the most normal time on the most normal day of the week. Night, even. Eight, maybe? Thursday. Go in pajamas.
Do you ever feel like you don’t own any of your decisions, you just rent them? My Tamagotchi was lime green, what was yours? Do you ever feel your kidneys beating in the bottom of your back? And what must it feel like to have absolutely no control — like, negative control — over a situation that’s changing your life as it’s changing your life? Unrelated, but how does a gun even work? Asking for a media-consuming human being, i.e. a me.
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Wash the potatoes. Peel the potatoes. Cut the potatoes into thirds. Parboil them in salt water for ten minutes.
Whenever I read sharp serifs on all-caps headlines, whenever I read quippy tweets and angry tweets and compassionate tweets and impartial fact-centric tweets about national disasters, whenever I direct shaky-cam dramatic reenactments in my head, I do what all of us do — I imagine I’m the victim. The person whose chest is a concrete balloon, the person whose heart beats black Morse code, the person who can’t control the tsunami of time and space and motivation happening around them, so they sit in the center and text their mom and stare at a piece of subway tile, wishing they could just—
Coat the bottom of a pan with olive oil. Spread the parboiled potatoes on the pan in a single layer. Drizzle the top with olive oil, too. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 30 minutes.
Try not to look at your laptop for 30 minutes.
Try not to look at anything for 30 minutes.
A friend told me a story recently — nothing horrible, just the kind of minor tragedy that doesn’t qualify as a tragedy and probably never should.
She ran cross-country in high school. It was her life, her Thing. In her senior year, the team’s first meet was on a late afternoon in September. Upstate New York. The course made a figure eight around the high school and an adjacent middle school. She was leading by a quarter mile, almost certainly going to win, when her Latin teacher pointed his big teacher-y arm in the wrong direction. Follow me, said the Latin teacher’s arm. He was directing the runners. She followed, ran into the middle of a field behind the high school — an empty field, alone, in the middle of the race, running.
Do you know that feeling?
Not the almost-winning part, but the well-intentioned-person-of-authority-absentmindedly-pointing-you-to-the-middle-of-an-empty-field part.
Sometimes you follow all the rules and still wonder how you got where you got.
A vibrating blue dot in the wrong place at the wrong time, texting your mom, wishing you were home making potatoes. I keep opening new tabs and closing old tabs and texting my mom and making potatoes. I keep wondering how I’d survive, what I’d do, what corner of my mind I’d retreat to if I were ever in a hostage situation. It’s too easy to empathize. Whoever invented empathy made it too easy. They should put a password on it. Something.
Take your potatoes out of the oven. Scatter garlic and rosemary on top. Bake for another 30 minutes or until golden brown.
