Pretty Much Just Pasta with Shrimp, Garlic, and Parmesan
it’s nothing perfect or never before seen, but it might be genius anyway
Chapter 58
You went into this believing that you would come out with some brand-new skill or mastery. That was the plan. Now you realize that you haven’t or maybe aren’t yet amazing, but it’s ok because, as Denzel Washington said, “Quarantine ain't over get back inside.”
There are many reasons you haven’t started or completed this vast learning, this great mastering, this new skill honing. It could be all the laundry or the dishes or the heat or the protesting and grief and rage, but you are likely learning in your own way.
Maybe you think that the goal is something perfect, always original and brilliant, and never before imagined genius that shall never be repeated. You forget sometimes how long people have been peopling and how hard it is to do things never before done when people have been doing new things for eons. You forget sometimes that learning takes a long time and there is a sprawling plane of boring repetition littered with attention diverting traps and great tides of inadequacies and failures along the way.
Here’s a tip: You, likely, are not a genius. There aren’t that many of them. If you are wondering if you are secretly a genius, the only way to even find out is by doing a bunch of things well or poorly until you find a genius moment. If you are a genius, you are likely not good at everything, just like the rest of everybody.
Doing a thing well doesn’t even guarantee that you will enjoy it. Maybe you most enjoy a thing you do poorly. Maybe you hate doing anything that you are not good at, but you are lucky enough to be good at many things and so you have no idea which thing you are “best” at and, therefore, SHOULD be doing.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it? Is this why you haven’t started? If there is something to learn from the US Navy, it’s to keep it simple stupid. Let go of this perfect should and best and never before genius. Be like pasta. Just being pasta is good enough.
That’s comfort food, really. At the heart of comfort is something simple that doesn’t try too hard to be anything other than what it is. Maybe that’s what makes us comforted. Maybe that’s something to try more: just being as you are.
Boil some pasta in well-seasoned water.
If you happened to make bacon that morning, use the leftover grease. If not, use a little olive oil or butter in a cold pan. Add slices of garlic from a couple of cloves and slowly bring it up to a medium-ish heat. Toss in some red pepper flake if you are feeling spicy. Starting with a cold pan will slowly infuse your fat with the flavor and gently toast the garlic so that it doesn’t burn and become bitter.
Once the garlic is toasted, remove it with a slotted spoon and set aside. If you want shrimp, toss that in the pan now and sauté until the meat is opaque (check along the deveined “spine” for the proper color).
Drain your pasta and throw it in the pan with some salt and a good dose of pepper. Toss until coated. Add some good parmesan and toss until melted.
Put all that in a bowl and top with more cheese, because you deserve it and people spent 1,000s of years inventing cheese and it would be disrespectful to not to honor their labor. Top with your perfectly toasted garlic.
None of this is revolutionary. None of this is a thing never done. None of this is a thing you have previously made or mastered, but it is good. There is time to learn more. You can keep learning even after this is done… in however long that takes.
You are likely just a person. Maybe that’s better though. Maybe just being the thing that you are means that you don’t have to do anything so much better than anyone else. So just try new things when you want to (or have time to) and be whatever kind of good at it. Maybe you’ll find out that you are a genius at trying.