Guess what I’ve just done. If you read any of the previous ramblings, you guesses would probably include food, and you’re quite right. I had already typed up this blog entry when I got interrupted… by food.
You see, I’m in South Africa and we have an entire culture built around the BBQ, or as we call it here: a Braai. South Africans will braai for any reason, and sometimes for no reason at all. It’s social, gives you something to stand around during a rugby or cricket match, it’s the perfect excuse to crack a beer and besides… you get so see wood burn, and secretly, as humans, we all have a little bit of arsonistic tendencies.
But my neighbours go beyond reason. They Braai every day. And sometimes, they braai twice a day. In fact I doubt that they have a convetional oven or stove. They are obsessed. Every evening before dusk you will hear the familiar thumping of wood-and-axe on the chopping block as they produce tinder to light the fire. Shortly after that the smell of smoke will fill the air and then you know… there goes the Braai. Memories are conjured up from when you were small and your dad let you flip your first chop, or later when you were a bit older taking your first sip of beer, then your first romantic braai with your girlfriend, and memories of more deborturous evenings which also started around the braai….
Every night I have to live through this nostelgia, but the worse part is the fact I don’t eat as early as they do, and all the smells and sounds are associated with one main event. FOOD. Once the wood has sufficiently burnt to produce enough glowing coals, out comes the meat, be it beef, lamb, chicken or pork, usually marinated overnight in your family’s secret recipe, and sssssssss it goes as it gets placed on the redhot grid.
Then its over for hungry stomachs everywhere, because even vegetarians find it hard to resist the smell of meat on a Braai. Do I have a choice not to be hungry? Can I choose not to salivate? As Pavlov discovered, dog and human have that in common – the glands that produce saliva are short circuited past our concious control and connected directly to sensory triggers. So, either I get up and go cook my dinner, or I sit here slobbering over my keyboard. I often just go cook.
But I too have my obessions, and unlike my neighbours I have done something about it. You see, I’m not proud to admin, but I abandoned my wife and child earlier this year, the pressures of mistakes I made in our relationshiop combined with me moving to Malaysia and having to take a job with lower pay and lower prospects than what I prevously had, just got too much for me. So I left, angry at first, but then with the intention of making money here and returning. But I’ve stayed away too long, caused too much anger, and now my soon-to-be-ex-wife is seeining another man who makes her happy.
I’m relatively ok with it now, but this only follows a good month of obession. You know how you think about something a little, and then some more, and then more and more until you think of nothing else. The type of thought that keeps you up until 2 am searching the internet with any keyword that could possibly link to this new man of hers so that you can find him and phone him and tell him exactly what you think of him until you find nothing but his friend’s number and you phone the friend in the middle of the night because you think they might be out together and he could pass on your message only to realise… I am the villian in this story.
I left; I made the mistakes; I dissapointed my wife. All he did was do what any man would do, fall head over heels for this beautiful woman. So there is really only one person to be angry at, and that is myself. Wonderful when you realise things like this, instead of living in denail, because admitting such a thing is a big deal, especially when you admit it to yourself.
So now at least my anger is directed and that way it’s easier to handle. Obsessions are nasty, all-consuming past-times, and if they were of any benefit they would have been called… hobbies. At least I got that monkey off my back.
Hey, anyone for a snack?