Dagna

Coming home it was later than usual – 2am. I worked the line at a new Brooklyn restaurant. Outside my apartment on the stoop I spotted a red and white thermos in a ‘free stuff’ box , most likely from my neighbor who has a Jack White fixation and only owns things that are red, white, and/or black. I picked it up, taken in by its Marlboro logo. I brought it inside. I set it on my counter, next to the Kombucha starter and the mandolin I was trying to learn. The thing started shaking and spinning and rattling until lo, a genie appeared.

The genie told me to assume a yoga cross legged position and he’d grant three wishes. I thought and thought and was focusing on that Marlboro thermos so I made my first wish: to time travel back to where the thermos was from. The genie looked around at my throwback Southern cookbook, Yamasake whiskey, and culturing butter, laughed and said, it’ll be a real palate cleanser.

Poof! Off we went to a Wisconsin Piggly Wiggly. I could smell the plastic and fluorescent grocery shelves and there on one such shelf was the thermos. Next to it were potato chips and not far off squishy hot dog buns. Other shelves were packed with things to add to casseroles, frozen food, and all manner of tacos and pizza. No bottled water though… I figured I was in square arout 1975.

After Piggly Wiggly we went to a football game where the thermos supplied strong black coffee. I drank Tang from one such thermos and it tasted like coffee flavored Tang. Oh this was getting fun! I needed to make this into an organic popsicle and high tail it to the Flea Market. This genie was genius, this genie was going to make me rich!

Ok enough with the time travel, what was the next wish? I looked over at my bubbling kimchee, my laptop tabs full of the words ‘Taste’, ‘Simple’, ‘Quince’, and ‘Passionate’ and I said for the love of God can you bring me a TV dinner from that Piggly Wiggly where you came from? Poof! There it was in front of me, piping hot. I pealed back the lid and the started chomping away, devouring it in fact. The green peas were salty, the apple pie was weird but sweet and somewhat discernable, and the Salisbury steak reigned supreme in its little tin coffin, stewing in its fatty hot broth.

You’re killing me genie! I’ve got not one but two great ideas to make a buck off of. But the genie was nowhere. Genie? Genie? I thought maybe genie and fermenting things didn’t jibe, something about odor with non-matter or maybe he just wasn’t into odor? He was gone in any case. Maybe he granted me the last wish by leaving me with his thermos. I set it on my shelf. It wasn’t cute enough to be ironic but it did provide inspiration: my fantastic reprieve from my fabulous, fantasy, blood sport, sprouted spelt life. Bring on the coffee Tang!