In week 1, we practiced the art of subtext and setting the scene. In week 2, we explored drink metaphors and editing.
This week for #FoodFictionFriday, we’re going to loosen up a bit. Describe an unusual way of eating. This could be grounded in real life, like #MFKFisher’s way of eating tangerines:
Take yesterday's paper...and spread it on the radiator....On the radiator the sections of tangerines have grown even plumper, hot and full. You carry them to the window, pull it open, and leave them for a few minutes on the packed snow on the sill....I cannot tell you why they are so magical. Perhaps it is that little shell, thin as one layer of enamel on a Chinese bowl, that crackles so tinily, so ultimately under your teeth. Or the rush of cold pulp just after it. Or the perfume. I cannot tell.
Or, you can take a more fantastical approach like the #DrSeuss excerpt above or this passage from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”:
”A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
”Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed —
Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed.”
”But not on us!” the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!”
The first approach is like a snapshot of the self. Whether it’s the way you pick apart a Kit Kat, or gnaw a giant bone, our eating quirks are very personal and often reveal parts of the self that otherwise can’t be articulated in words.
Or, you can treat this as permission to get fantastical and strange. Find the joy of creating for creating’s sake. Have fun with this one!