Corn Chowder That Isn’t Gloppy
perfectly boring unlike everything else that is happening every day
Things you’ll need: corn, onion, potato, milk. Things you may want: bacon (or just the fat), tomato, parsley, thyme, cayenne, heavy cream, a military coup.
inspired by this recipe from Mark Bittman on NY Times Cooking if you want measurements and stuff.
Chapter 76
You keep listening to old albums from high school. One album in particular. It’s really just one song over and over again. You take breaks, but the song plays like an idea in the background of all your thinking. When you catch yourself between thoughts, your brain just mumbles the lyrics.
You went down a rabbit hole on YouTube the other day, just watched old concert footage and chastised yourself for not going to more live shows before your knees got bad and thrashing, sweaty and angry, amidst a writhing clot of exalting bodies was just a thing you remember being able to do once.
You’ve gotten boring. At least, that’s what you think sometimes. It’s not just that you are older, though that’s part of it too. It’s not just the way every action that you take seems to be throwing bricks into a ball pit, spitting at the ocean, or writing a strongly worded letter to a chaos demon.
The context you live in is fantastical in its horror, but it’s all a true story. Between raging fires, hurricanes, tornados, and hundreds of beached whales in Tazmania, you don’t know which thing is the horrific axis upon which the world ends. That is to say, if it is not the steady march into fascism and nationalism that stinks of unlearned history, internment camps, pogroms, and the horrific lengths that power will go to preserve itself.
Which is all to say, maybe the world is so awful at the moment that boring is ok. Maybe boring is even a blessing. Maybe boring is just the response to shutting everything else down a moment so that the news can’t keep terrorizing you.
Put on that one album, again, and chop some onions and potatoes. Grab several ears of corn and trim the kernels from the cob. Do that thing you keep reading about where you slowly simmer the stripped cobs in water to make a corny broth. Throw in the ends of the onion, because you hate waste. Lose track of time watching your backyard, or stoop view, or something else mundane and without event. Maybe weed your small patch of garden, show up for your zoom meeting, throw in a load of dirty pajamas, or something else boring.
An hour or two later, come back. Once, a while ago, maybe you made bacon and thought to yourself, “I should strain and keep this fat”. If you did, then throw a heavy tablespoon of grease into your favorite soup pot to cook your onions and potatoes until the onions are translucent.
Add your stock and any seasoning you like (which is usually thyme, salt, and pepper), a chopped tomato if you got or want it. Simmer and find something else to do for a little while until your potatoes are tender.
Finally, toss in your corn and some milk, or half and half or full on cream. Salt and pepper (and cayenne) to taste. Simmer briefly until the corn is cooked and top with chopped parsley. There is nothing revolutionary about this chowder and, somehow, that’s exactly why you need it.
You are terrified, or furious, or heartbroken so much of the time. There was a time that you didn’t feel so much like this. There was a time when this was all coming and already happening and everyone was just skimming through the writing on the wall and discussing the signs over endless brunch mimosas. Or, you’ve been Cassandra the whole time, screaming inevitabilities at elite yelpers and aspiring influencers and, now that we are all standing amidst actual old testament plagues and earthly retribution, your voice is so worn and weathered you can barely eke out an “I told you so.” What would be the point, anyway?
You can be numb. You can be perfectly boring. You can rest between bouts of action, civic reform, or community aid, between waves of all that is required of you. You can eat a bowl of basic chowder while watching chipmunks and let the grief, rage, and horror just play quietly like a song in the back of your head.