A Dream, a Dish, and a Demonstration

I had another dream about getting beaten to death last night, except it wasn't Nazis this time. At first, I thought it was Hated Enemy Steve, but upon closer inspection, the aggressor turned out to be a werewolf. He stood over me, backlit by one of those horror-movie full moons you get--big as a luncheon tray and bright as a halogen lamp--beating me about the head and shoulders with a baseball bat. I groaned, wormed my head under the pillow, and woke up. When I got off the couch, every joint in my body creaked, popped, or cracked. My neck made a particularly disturbing crunching sound. I had, it seemed, slept funny. That would explain the odd dream, I suppose. There was a piece of paper on the floor, a note written to myself at some point during the night. It said:

Death and the maiden (weed strangles a daisy)
Salted rice cakes
Wonton soup

That, I took to be either my to-do list or my shopping list, or a combination of the above, and stuck it to the refrigerator. It fell back off again immediately. My faithful wad of Blu-Tac had lost its stick. I had to use a magnet instead.

Later on in the day, once I'd had breakfast and settled in for a bit of work. I stuck on the radio. A familiar tune came on, a Russian folk song about young men going away to war. It made me think of snow, and cold, and onion domes. And borscht. Borscht. I giggled at the thought of beetroot soup, and said the word aloud: "borscht!" I liked the way the consonants squinched together, so I said it several more times. It sounded funny, and I laughed. Stella laughed, too. It was a companionable moment.

Borscht. I tried to make borscht once. I was nine years old, or maybe ten, and I'd been invited to dinner at a friend's house. Thing was, though, her mother had said we could make dinner ourselves. She must've been out of her mind. For us, of course, it was all very new and exciting. I think we were meant to be making macaroni and cheese out of a packet, but we decided to surprise her family with borscht. I don't know why. We didn't have a recipe, or anything like that. We just dumped two Mason jars of pickled beets into the blender, then heated the resulting mush with milk and two shakes of every spice on the spicerack (including things like cinnamon and sugar, which don't belong in any self-respecting soup). The result was, of course, too horrible to eat, and stunk up the whole house to boot.

To this day, my mental image of borscht is a vinaigrous, vaguely caramelized blob sort of a thing, lurking malodorously in the bottom of a saucepan--a nightmare version of a caramel flan, perhaps, with hedgehoggy basil-leaf spines on its back. This might well explain why, in all of my travels, I've never been to Russia.

Another funny thing happened today, now that I think about it--there was a noisy demonstration of some sort in the streets. I couldn't quite hear what they were saying. It could've been "Stop cream-filled doughnuts now!", or "More police hosers now!", or even "Go away, sweaty cow!" At any rate, it was quite rowdy. It sounded like there were hundreds of people out there, all screaming their lungs out. I put on the TV news to see if anyone was talking about it, but they weren't. Too bad for the rowdy folks--I imagine the whole idea was to get publicity for their cause, but nobody seemed too concerned.

Demonstrations: a couple of years after the borscht incident, my parents went on an epic excursion to buy watches. I think that's why they went, anyhow. My memory of the trip is quite faded. They took me with them, but I did not merit a watch, so I was left in a computer shop while they went to the jeweler's. To my great chagrin, the computer shop shut early, and I found myself in the unfortunate position of having to wait in the street. I hadn't been outside but a minute or two when the road was taken over by a noisily profane pro-choice rally. I'd never seen anything like it in my life. They had signs saying things like "MEN WHO DON'T RESPECT OUR BODIES CAN FUCK THEMSELVES!" I'd heard swear words before, of course, and worse ones than "fuck", but never from adults, and certainly not from an angry mob. I tried to retreat into the doorway, but it had filled with spectators, and I was soon swept up in the throng. Gamely, I chanted "Hey-hey! Ho-ho! [Some politician whose name I've forgotten] has to go!" for a couple of blocks, then escaped down a side-street. I was back in front of the computer shop by the time my parents returned.

"Did you see the protest?", asked my mother.

"I did," I said. "There was a lot of swearing."

"I hope you wouldn't be talking like that," she frowned.

"Of course not."

"Glad to hear it. That kind of language just makes a person look foolish."

"It certainly does," I smiled, adding "you cunty old hooer" under my breath--not because I really thought of my mother that way, but just for the pleasure of saying rude words.