Listen to Big Feels on Spotify, bbs! <3 <3
Big Feels on Having a Little Laugh for Once:
There is only one massage therapist in the entire city who will massage me within an inch of my life, as I require. Because he is a sports massage therapist, he is bound and determined to ask what kind of exercise I do. I say walking. Then, after a pause, and because I can only lie if I plan it out ahead of time, I say, “also dancing.” He asks me what kind of dance. I grasp for the word, “contemporary” (even though, “kitchen dancing” is what it really is), but my brain has been unreliable for over a year now. I say, “interpretive.” We stare at each other for one whole second. He is trying to decide if I am joking, I decide to commit instead.
We move on.
There is a man, middle-aged, who comes into the library with his son. He is a gorgeous man, not for any face-map-celebrity-ratio reason, but because he glows with the energy of a thousand suns. This man could cure cancer with his aura, I’m dead sure of it. I do not speak his language, but he does his best to hold my proverbial hand with context clues and bits of language I do understand. Today he is telling me about a singer who he loves. He adores this singer. He tells me that this singer has a voice I would never forget. He says no one believed in this singer, but he kept believing. He tells me that the singer is from the UK. He is intent on his pursuit to listen to his favourite song by his favourite singer. He says the singer is like Toto when he sings, “Africa.” I recognize the word Toto, and we sing together, “I bless the rains down in Africa!”
Even with all of this, I cannot understand the actual singer’s name or the song that he is trying to find. He calls his son over. His son, annoyed to be pulled away from his graphic novel says, “Shivers! By Ed Sheeran!”
I didn’t know I could love this man even more than I already do, but there it is.
They say that you either have the gene to like cilantro, or you don’t and it tastes like soap. I come from a long line people who say cilantro tastes like soap and dislike that about it. I, against all odds, like cilantro. I buy one big bunch of it every other week and put it on dishes you would never think about adding cilantro to.
The thing is, every now and then, when I’m eating cilantro, a thought flits across my mind, “Mmm. A candle.” As if I am eating a candle, and it tastes good.
So my theory is this: there is no cilantro gene. When we eat cilantro, we all taste the same thing, only some of us like the taste of soap/candles, and others don’t. This gene business is a hollow ploy to save face.
Of course, the other conclusion is that I do have the gene where cilantro tastes like soap and I am the outlier who thinks that’s okay, nay, delicious.
(Please sound off in the comments if you also sometimes think “candle” while eating cilantro and like it!!! I’m trying so hard to be a relatable girlie!!!)
When I was in grade ten, I got a part in the play, Night Mother. I was the elderly mother of a middle-aged woman who would, by the end of the play, kill herself. My friend, Kirsten,* was my daughter. It was meant to be the directorial debut of Lenny,** our student director looking to make a splash in his final year. It was an ambitious choice, by which I mean impossible to execute well. We were the only three-hour-long script in a showcase of 30-minute, one-act plays. Not for lack of trying, Kirsten and I never learned our lines; at least not all together, and not all the way. Instead, during performance week, we played each night as a live re-enactment of a stress dream. We knew at the midpoint I had to come out with the cupcakes that had coconut icing (a makeshift Snoball) and at the end Kirsten had to tell me, “Night, mother,” then lock herself in the room and kill herself. Everything else was loosely scripted and largely improvised. The play ends with me, the elderly mother, banging on the bedroom door, wailing.
A girl in the grade below came up to me after our final show and told me that it was the most powerful performance she had ever seen.
Talk soon,
Natahna
*Kirsten is my friend’s real name, but I just want to note that she helped me fact check because my brain is interpretive dancing near-constantly. Also, it’s worth noting that Kirsten is actually a sensational actor and was the best middle-aged fifteen year old you could imagine.
**Lenny is, in fact, a pseudonym. I hope he’s doing well, wherever he is.
The recommends: Honestly, kitchen dancing, even a little bit, every day.
I think candle BUT yum tooo. I need to investigate the lineage of my family re candle gene to see whether i'm an outlier or if it was my destiny
Rose-flavoured things taste pretty soapy to me and rose is one of my favourite flavours, so... I get it