USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
Life does not determine our character,,, it reveals it 🙏🏾
As someone who battled addiction and is in recovery and fights every day,,, I applaud everyone who speaks up and makes people feel like they ain’t alone. Be kind,,, you never know what battle someone else is going thru ✊🏾
I’ll never forget the time an interviewer asked Johnny Knoxville about the homoerotic subtext in Jackass and he got mad at them for calling it subtext.
Met a young person who can't find a job bc of AI. His mom is sick and needs home care. He drives Uber to pay rent, but is barely getting by. I told him the White House pool is going to be longer than skyscrapers and he burst out crying. "Thank you sir," he said, "I needed that."
Ohhh look at me I'm New York City. I have an awesome basketball team with likeable players and a mayor that cares about making life better for every citizen man fuck you