Sunday, April 13, 2008
The Smell of Deliciousness; The Taste of Inedibility
The song tells us, “what a difference a day makes.” Well then, how much more of a difference can be made by four of them? Since Wednesday I’ve suffered the lows of working my butt off at 2 am on a weekend trying to make sense of poorly executed paperwork for the good of my office, and then seven hours later I was frolicking in the cool waters of Chrissey Field lagoon, watching my beautiful boy making friends, exploring hydrodynamics, and generally delighting himself and thereby me on a sweltering morning the likes of which this town all too rarely sees. Sure, I got a $50 parking ticket, but I also met a friend-of-a-friend and the baby boy she’d just adopted from Korea, and we all wandered through the Conservatory of Flowers where the orchids were thriving in 95 degree heat and 98 percent humidity, and even got to visit the new live butterfly exhibit. Sure, I had trouble finding some of the ingredients I’ll need for passover cookery (first night is coming up on saturday - get yer redemption in gear!), but then again, a very dear old friend stopped by out of the blue and refreshed my soul as I’d almost forgotten such encounters can do. It was not the world’s greatest weekend, but it needn’t have been. It was just a damn fine weekend, and I’m damn well okay with that.
While he was visiting, I asked my old friend (Brian, for those of you keeping track) what my next post should be about. He picked “candy, again” and Kel concurred. Who am I to argue with such wisdom as theirs? Yeah, well, true, I could argue, but I won’t. It’s candy-time, blogville. Let’s have at it:
It’s always a little disconcerting to enter my area through the rear door. Did that come out wrong?
Off the elevator in my office building, turn south and you’ll come to a T-intersection of hallways. My usual route to my cube is to the right, down the hall to a firedoor through which my department is located. Entering thereby, a series of sharp turns will bring you eventually to my desk, near the back of that general area. However, the hallways and department spaces are structured so as also to allow me to turn to the left, to a more closely-placed doorway in the hallway that leads to the finance department, from which I can traverse their warren to an interior pass-through into the depths of my department’s area. This is the “back way” but it does bring me quickly quite near my desk. It’s a handy little walk-around, this rear entry route. But in one important way, it’s a little disconcerting: it smells wrong.
Some office spaces smell of old food, or bleach, or cleanser. Some bear the enervating reek of febreze or faux floral sprays that invariably bring to my mind a question of what’s being hid, and why. Some smell of their inhabitants - sweat and anxiety and the compulsive overapplication of odoriferous handlotions and colognes. I don’t much care for any of these; I like the air I breathe at work to be devoid of scent, especially when that air is recycled and stale and trapped by windows mortared permanently closed. But when I take the back way to my area and open the heavy firedoor into the finance department, I am consistently confused by the smell I smell there. I don’t actually dislike it, that’s not the problem. However, as you might be able to guess, it has begun to weigh a bit on my mind.
When I enter through the back door, why do I smell chocolate?
Milk chocolate, rich, smooth, maybe European. Not the lame chalky stuff that passes for chocolate for so many American palates. It’s a genuinely delicious smell and it’s been there every day, all day long, for at least six months now. There’s no tray of chocolate out on display, no hidden stash (believe me, I have reliable contacts there and they would know). As far as I can tell, the smell has no source. It’s just a scent, hanging heavy in the air, taunting me with intangible deliciousness. It’s there first thing in the java-steeped a.m., and during the tuna-and-meatloaf-laden lunch hours, and in the gloaming of the night when I walk alone amid the deserted countertops and cabinets of that neighboring department. Finance is Chocolate City, or at least, it smells that way right at their doorway - and I have no clue why.
Though it’s hardly overwhelming, most people don’t even seem to notice it - yet I’m actually beginning to tire of it. A whiff of candy is nice for a change, especially when that whiff presages an actual candy-eating experience, but as a permanent fixture it’s gone from amusing, to cloying, to a little nauseating. It’s getting so that I’ve almost grown to appreciate the small stink of cumin and laundryhamper that tends to linger at the door leading into the front entry of my work area. That one does not make me hungry, but at least it delivers what it promises.
oh that’s nice. No you philistine, not the olfactory variations of my office building - I’m talking about the two beautifully roasted chickens, stuffed with lemon and rubbed with garlic and salt, that I just pulled out of the oven. I’ll be carving them up and then boiling the carcasses, together with a third I’ve been saving, for chicken soup. THAT is nice.
However, re-reading the above now makes me wonder if I’ve misrepresented the finance department. They often enough do have candy to put out, and put out they do. It’s usually the standard fare - Costco cookies or CaraMacs from someone’s Hawaiian vacation or a box of nougats from some mysterious confectioner. I take my share. After all, I do bring in schnecken and hamentashen when I have a batch on hand. However, I should note for the record how glad I am that the Sweeten Water Melon has finally been disposed-of.
I like my rock candy; I like my simple syrup; I like my candied pumpkin and my various confections of all colors, textures, and provenances. I’m as big a fan of the solid sugar rush as the next proto-diabetic guy, but there are limits to everything. This Sweeten Water Melon stuff - well, it’s been a long time since I’ve had to stop eating my candy and start spitting it out. “Functionally inedible” is how I once described it, and that still seems accurate.
It came in a clear plastic bag with Chinese writing on it, the only English being the words “Sweeten Water Melon” in a sort of fortune-cookie typeface. The pieces were about the size of a Jolly Rancher candy, but encrusted with granulated sugar and sort of translucent white in color. I’d have expected a watermelon candy to be pinkish but I was not about to quibble with free candy so I was happy to pop one into my mouth. It collapsed between my jaws as if all the joy and self-respect had been centrifuged out of it, leaving a matrix of cellulose and glucose held together by pure exhaustion. With each successive chew the sugar granules roiled and flailed in my mouth, so super-saturated that they never dissolved. I can’t imagine what was the source of that sugar - not cane, or honey, or beets, or any normal crop. Can sugar be distilled from medical waste?
It was - again, I’ve said this before so forgive me if it’s redundant (I’m talking to you, J.M.) - as if someone had bought a box of sugar back in the early ‘60s and left it in a basement to congeal in the damp for as long as I’ve been on this planet, and then served it up as a food product - not the sugar, just the actual cardboard box. Hideous. So hideous, in fact, that no one ate it - not even me, not even the cleaning crew, not even the freaks from I.T. down the hall. Every day it would appear on a little plate on the big central Finance department countertop, and every evening it would be put away, untouched since it had been placed before us that morning morning. Three-quarters of a bag of candy thus lasted, intact, for at least three months. Then it finally recently disappeared, and I’ve never seen it again. I remain convinced that sweetened watermelon candy has real potential. Sweeten Water Melon, though, isn’t even candy. It’s just a way to make little children sad and hyperactive. But now it’s gone. Maybe I should follow suit?
Okay, I get the hint. Catch ya later, candy raider.