The Nature of Bean
Last Saturday
at a cookout, some roommate-gossip brought to light the fact that a friend
of mine, during the time when was roommates with this other guy, used to
eat sandwiches made of canned ravioli between two Eggo waffles. A
few people were shocked by the news of this Earl of Boyardee concoction,
but, as a person who has eaten store-brand refried beans straight from
the can, I withheld judgment.
Making food
is a hassle. Even buying food isn’t easy, especially on Sunday afternoons
when the Carrboro Harris Teeter is overrun with hippies and the elderly.
Last Sunday when I was there, some hippie guy was staring intently at the
eggs, hindering my access to the Grade A Jumbos. After several moments,
a hippie woman appeared and the hippie guy said to her, “these eggs are
‘cert-i-fied or-gan-ic’, but they’re brown-- these ones are white and they’re
called ‘all nat-u-ral.’”
A few feet
away, an elderly, retired-professor-looking gentleman was resting against
a table of discounted Little Debbie Snack Cakes. His chin was tucked
to his chest and, with the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights on
his spectacles, it was hard to say whether he was sleeping or awake.
Before I could find out how the hippie egg situation
was resolved, the retired-professor-looking guy lifted his head and smiled
at a passing sorority girl, who reacted with a look of confusion and alarm.
Her facial expression seemed to say “No. Way. That old man is so
not my type.”
I laughed
and went to the aisle where the refried beans are, but as time went on,
I couldn't help but puzzle over the sorority girl's reaction to the seemingly
harmless old man.
The free-range
hippies, the drowsy old man, the shaken sorority sister, this can of cheap-ass
beans... what did it all mean? Over time, the answer began
to come to me, as answers so often do, in the form of a poem:
Poo-logy for a VIC Item:
Each of us carries in our basket or cart
A drive, a wish, to set ourselves apart
But what goes up must come down
From all colors mixed must come brown
To mold and create we try as we must
But ash to ash and dust to dust
Each body repays what was lent her
The whirlpool’s edge becomes its center
Refrieds in and refrieds out
That’s what life is all about
In conclusion, the sorority girl was not taken aback by the old man himself, so much as by the stark ontological reality that he represented:
on·tol·o·gy
n.
The branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being.
Matt Purdy. Chapel Hill, NC