On Cheesemaking & The Existence of Evil in the World
In the beginning, there was Age and Flow... and it was Goud.
“Are my wrinkles starting to show?” she asked applying some thick crème of a medicinal cosmetic scent to her neck. Some kind of clinical strength Eva Ltd brand Collagen. No answer was the correct one, so I gave her a peck on the cheek and told Breana we’d better get a move on. I didn’t want to add that we weren’t you know getting-any-younger, or that I was growing a beard, or otherwise invoke the Time Bomb of mankind. I am peaceable fellow, keen on the observation of the order of things and on what it is that makes people tick.
Our hosts were naturally of very important lineage, well formed in all aspects of the County’s cultural ferment and not ones to be kept waiting. And I like to be punctual.
The invitation had arrived on cream colored cold pressed card stock two weeks ago. Top notch. Not to be dismissed or refused. Like milk comes from the mother’s udder or whatever that archaic utterance is, the appointment had to be kept, as a matter of Family pride. We put our best Worsted wrappers on and waddled out. Instinct told me it was better to be early, for best seating. Nobody wanted to suffer through the evening beside an incessant Fondue of blubbering wisdom, nor next to some tasteless Debutant all powdered and perfumed.
As it was, we were sandwiched between the Americans and the Swiss, and fortunately the Swiss left gaps for getting a word in edgewise. But otherwise, mostly the atmosphere was stifling. And this one, and that one, spent too long debating whether it was mold or mould. I tried to support Free Form, but my voice crumbled under the velvety postulations poured out by our pugnacious companions.
As you can infer, the Dinner was tedium, but we muddled through the 6 courses: the amuse-bouche, the soupe, the appetizer, the salade, the main dish, and the dessert. My stomach had soured on observation that at each of these servings, there was one ingredient that always appeared, as chief, or as garnish, as staple to All the staples. It bothered me, but I could not quite identify the source of my ills. Conversation swirled around proud old questions of Human Exploits, global, local and across the table, and was washed down with copious Wine.
My missus and I were relieved to make our escape into the cool night wind, where I could finally gather my thoughts.
I held the door, then we hopped into the cab. Settled in, I began to narrate affairs from earlier in the week, and she put her head in her hand, with elbow on windowsill to listen, eyes closed, as I made sense of themes to myself, aloud:
I came out of the school gate the other day, and met a fellow teacher, smoking a cigarette, the way he does outside of school grounds, when things are too bad. My friend was upset and outraged, but not for the state of the world, or the incompetence that humanity so unwavering excels at.
No. My heroic friend teaches high school brats! And that is a fate worse than death!
Where my primary schoolers are a horde of cannibals, his is a far greater frustration, for his lot are a veritable garden patch; Uncaring, unfeeling, disinterested, and disaffect by anything AT ALL. They are quiet, sure, but they drive you down to the depth of great depression with their zombie, soul-deprived adolescence.
And yet this is not what drove my friend’s tirades and indignation that day. What had upset him so is a particular student. This one goes against the grain of his peers and talks incessantly all through class. His English is remarkable, and he uses it mercilessly to contradict and interfere with whatever the class is being taught. If they are taught that night is dark, he shall say it is daytime that is in shadow. If he says the world is polluted, he shall talk about increasing energy output and consumer demand. I shall offer no further examples. You must know of such an obnoxious fellow from your life, as well.
And what did this prodigy stir up today?
Well my friend reports that somehow, the lesson devolved in to the question of evil in the world. Does evil exist or is it just a product of predictable drives?
The idiot. As if this there is any doubt!!
Oh the ignorance of youth! My friend’s outrage was quite contagious; To think that they spent an entire lesson with that guy constantly bringing up that obvious topic!
But I would handle it better, so I told my friend. All that is needed is to remind that young cherub that there is a very good reason why parents all over the world made up stories about hungry wolves and witches with bubbling cauldrons. Show the kid his error straight up.
Perhaps, later on, there would be a chance to reflect on the conversation. It would have been even better if he just needed to tell him the truth. The only thing he really needed was to silence that irritant teen.
To tell him of The Cheese-maker.
You see...
First man lived with a feeling of emptiness in his life. Since it could stand and walk erect, since it could flake off sharp pieces of stone as cutting implements, and rub sticks together, man walked with an UNEASE.
Man tried to cover for that with hunting; thinking that big game brought down, will appease this hole they felt inside. Those mastodons and glyptodonts DID NOT alleviate the feeling. No. It just made man busy, being occupied in stripping meat of the bone and fashioning more weapons. it was a poor distraction. It solved nothing.
Sitting in the dark night, man stared at the flames and wondered what is it all for.
Love came and went. Romance felt right, but these escapades fell short as well, eventually. Man was satisfied of much, with a woman in his arm, and a slab of meat sizzling over the fire (or vice versa). He felt warm and safe, and yet he felt as if he wasn't feeling at all. There was more to life, he was sure.
Man built a hut, next-a cabin, followed by house , mansion, castle and palace. He cleared land, raised fields, he milled flour and brewed beer. Yet it was still there! Like a stringy piece of meat stuck between his teeth. Ever present, the emptiness.
Man next took some rendered fat, mixed in pigment and drew animals and trees upon the walls. He drew amorous depictions of ladies he yearned for and of his exploits in the wilderness.
He sang songs. He put on amateur theater productions, he sculpted in clay and marble.
And yet it was still just not enough. If anything, it made things worse.
Art of that time seemed to hold on to this gap and enlarge on the cracks instead of healing them. This void that was irritating and unrelenting and growing every day.
Then man got to thinking: All this time, I worry and toil, all this time I celebrate and please myself; but I still fail to find that which will fill this emptiness. That thing which I can’t even name!
It was then, that man tried to think systemically for the first time and answer the ageless question;
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS LIFE?
Eons passed and the question remained unanswered.
Then one day, A cheese-maker stumbled upon the answer.
You must understand, that the invaluable art of Cheese-making was still very new then. Not developed in science and lore, nor varied in tastes and textures. All that people understood back then (and very few even that) of the process of the making of cheese, was that given proper conditions, milk could turn into cheese.
Milk COULD be induced to turn to cheese, but it MIGHT not. It WOULD turn to curds if treated properly and SHALL spoil if treated improperly. There was much ambiguity regarding how all this occurred.
It was then that this ancient cheese-maker stumbled upon a new thought; Milk can clot or coagulate, given the right conditions. And what else clots and congeals?
BLOOD!
Blood, that very liquid of life, that flows through the veins and courses through arteries. Until it flows no more. What better, sanguine expression could there be to the duality of the world?
Oh, that ancient cheese-maker knew all too well that liquid blood is life and solidified blood is death...
And since milk can undergo the exact same metamorphosis, it is also a substance that can be life, and enliven a weary spirit, and yet...
Could it, like blood be death..?
With tremendous curiosity, the ancient cheese-maker proceeded to test, if that could be so.
Over the weeks curiosity turned to enticement. Enticement turned to passion. Passion turned to arousal.
His eyes wide open, the cheese-maker carefully examined substances and added. Here this, there that. Arsenic, venom, and all poison known to him. There was much failure in this. Often, adding much of one thing would disrupt the delicate curdling process. The result would then be a loathsome boggy mess. In other times the cheese set well and firm, yet produced not even an uneasy stomach for those that took it in.
People being served cheese were a new, unknown quantity for this pioneer; As they received the cheese, they must have noticed him staring hungrily, and turned a pass on his offering, feeling somewhat nervous.
The great project required of the cheese-maker not only a great advance in the skill of his profession, but also a learning of concealing his anticipation and zeal from the recipients.
Such was the achievement, the moment when deftness and art came together to produce a proof that milk CAN be turned to death in solid form!
The ancient cheese-maker did not know the emotions that moved him. The world was young then and despite the many dangers, terrors and misfortunes of the world, there was never before such a thing as this; EVIL.
The cheese-maker experienced what many would later develop upon and expand. He now knew what it was that was missing from the lives of men. He could not define it any better than the others. He could not put into words what he had felt and yearned for. He certainly would not expand to others the intensity and sensation that was the culmination of such hard, meticulous work.
All the cheese-maker knew, seeing his friends their eyes open, frozen in horror and pain, their stomachs distended, all that he could think, was that he wanted more!
It is a known fact that Cheese is highly addictive. The digestion of the protein Casein releases Opiates of a form know as Casomorphins.
By this time, Bree and I had arrived back at our flat and were making the customary preparations to retire for the night. I was brushing my teeth and was now grimacing at myself silently in the mirror, and she was scrolling through her mobile, looking sleepily at snapshots from the soiree, lying away on the carpet in her tank and undies when I peeked around the bathroom door.
“Is that why they say, ‘Say Cheese,’ to the camera?” she said pressingly, making it clear that she was still digesting my narrative. Say Cheese; It certainly seemed like an empty phrase, meaningless, in all honesty, heartless even. I was finishing up with my floss and tooth picking, gargling summarily with mouth rinse. I had to pause, after tossing the strings like poly-o into the trash bin, and spitting.
--There, the person is, baring teeth and soul, with nothing on their tongue but the word “Cheese;” exposed and preserved, all in a moment conserved for eternity on film or digital media. The Cheese and the Cheese-Maker. Life and the Live’D... The Devil, in the detail, always d’ Evil festering in between... the Enzyme. The mix-in of the foreign agent, the unknown enemy that turns life giving milk into glue. For there is such a thing. The Casein. Odiferous and strange: milk paint with its opaque coverage and excess of smell and stain. Spilled, wasted; curd and whey where it does not belong.
I picked up my razor and started to Philosophically shave. “I don’t know, Bree, maybe we should suggest something else... I read it’s better anyway if it’s something that ends in an ugh rather than eese sound... more natural for the face,” I added stretching the skin of my cheek to the left down to the jaw, almost done.
“Like what...?” she queried grabbing her toiletries, body sprays, douche, antiperspirant soaps, and whatnot that she kept in that see through perforated baggie that suddenly struck me as a modern cheesecloth, “Butter?” she teased pronouncing it buh-duh... as she passed the sink and closed the door to the shower.
The corner of my mouth rose in involuntary reflex. Uh, I cut myself with the razor blade shaving a bit of stray hairs on the chin, and I hurriedly tamped it with a wad of tissue to stopper the bleeding... knowing full well it would curdle by itself, if let alone.
And suddenly a delicious word creeps in. One that also sounds like buttuh...
Another tiny blood drop glistens on my cheek. Drool. I am in the moment. Present tension.
"How about sodUH?" she says in the distance.
"Huh?"
"You know, words that have an 'Uh' sound."
"Oh that..." I say, looking at the drops pooling, growing, mixing. Pink. An ancient idea creeps into my mind. One of intense curiosity...
"Gou-duH" she says..
I look at the razor and how dropletts are clinging to the edge. Condensing, or just my imagination? Fascinating... Blood and water. Curd and whey. Things are separating into constitutional elements.
"Bud-dha" she offers, cracking open the steam covered door.
"Go on" I say... looking at her from the mirror admiring the blunt and fatty portions.
I am so interested in how it would play out. She is shaving her underarm with one of those girlie curved pink razors for Venus’s.
"Gir-duh"...she giggles, then she nicks herself good, and it’s pouring out of her. Hot and steady. Red. Her eyes fully dilatated. Fear, or arousal, I ask myself, again?
"..mur-duh..." I suggest, pulling in around the hip to investigate and lick her arm pit. She’s melting beneath the slightest heat, like Fontina.
Yes. this is going to be very interesting...
“What are you doing? … I don’t have any deodorant on!” Uh. And I drop the razor--
“God Dammit.”
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04.24.2023
Batmaninwuhan/7v7
Collaboration Challenge @Prose