HERBS FOR THE COLOSSAL SWEDE

On the west side of the White House, there is a service entrance that leads into giant chasms of kitchens, with ice storage sheds built into the walls and whole staircases of spice racks.  There are thick wooden tables for meat.  The pots hang next to the pans in decreasing order of volume, like a choir.  The executive chef is a colossal Swede.  He inspects the pots and pans with and dribbles them with sizzling oil and watches over their heat like a sergeant.  At each breakfast, lunch, and dinner, he leads the kitchen wares into battle with complete confidence, utensils slung about his belt like weaponry.  Sometimes, when I’m working in the lilacs, and I want to get across the estate, I cut through the kitchens and pause to watch the Swede cook.

He doesn’t mind me coming in because I always bring him fresh herbs from my private reserve.  They beat the hell out of the standard garden herbs.  I grow standards in quantity, for increase of harvest and for mass consumption.  I keep them occupied with board games and children’s songs.  I have them memorize multiplication tables, and then quiz each other on them.  When the garden herbs bunch up their leaflets to flower, I pinch them back to encourage secondary growth on lower branches.  I throw the flower heads into the weed pile.  The effect is that the herbs grow up simply and directly, but lacking any quality of consciousness.  In other words, although they are scientifically herbs, they don’t really understand what it’s like to be an herb.

It isn’t something I discuss with the President, because I don’t think he’d be able to comprehend it.  If the President would come up to me one day, and mention that the herb selections in his meals tasted like they were students sitting through a Greek history lecture, like they were 33 year old virgins whose interests in life revolved around squirrel hunting and tying up cats, I would explain to him the reasons why.

The herbs in my private reserve know the reasons why.  They know the why of everything.  They start asking why as soon as they grow their first true leaves, and they think about each question, no matter how minor, for days, without sleeping or eating.  It is for this reason that I water the garden herbs daily, but I water my own herbs weekly.  It is because they continue to ask about the nature of suffering.  When they flower, it is not the result of biological momentum, but is the creation of an idea.  The flowers hold all the conclusions, the calculations and laws that connect all the answers together, and the seeds hold the most concentrated of all these.  When I cook for myself, the flowers are the only thing I will use.  I save only three seeds from each plant.

So when the colossal Swede sees me cutting through the kitchen, I am carrying reinforcements of a thousand men.  I am carrying huge cannon ammunition dumps.  I am carrying the new uniforms made of heavy winter wool, in a small bundle tied together with gardening twine, wrapped in a wet cloth.  And after he claps me on the back and examines my bringings, he cries out in his gibberish Swiss to the kitchen staff, raising his arms high above his head and shaking his giant hands.  Watching him prepare a meal after that is like watching Napoleon and Alexander the Great play a tennis match, where the rackets are held under low flame, and Napolean slices fish fillets in a white smock, and Alexander the Great returns all serves two moves in advance.

Andrew Jackson doesn’t know how lucky he is.