Between Asteroid and Microwave
Wherein a distinction is raised...
Between Asteroid and Microwave
This time of year, I find myself cooking a potato. I used to cook potatos by throwing them in the fire over some hot coals while I lived without a house. There are moments interspurced in these times when I had access to an oven, and I would cook the potato there.
But then it felt weird to heat a whole oven for 1 potato. So I asked the internet for the most energy-efficient way to cook potatoes, and at the time the answer that bubbled up to the top was the "potato" button on your standard microwave.
This felt wrong to me, but I did it anyway. Soon, the oven method was what felt wrong: I was cooking potatoes left and right! Here's what I do.
I reach in to the opposite end of the cupboard and close my hand around the first thing I find. I pull that out and thank the creature inside the cupboard it is a potato and I close the cupboard door without ever looking inside.
I take the potato to the sink, wondering where in the asteroid belt the asteroid that looks like this potato night be, and their story. How might that asteroid have gotten here? How might dust from its last collision have spun out, each ring a series of orbital readings this potato leaves as the rich topsoil my attention grows into.
Corn's ears and potatoes eyes these, all sense from and for plants. Plants are kind to me, and I love plants, especially grass. I like listening-hearing much more than I like seeing-speaking, no offense to the eyes potato has given me. By now, potato is probably clean. I turn off the sink.
At this point, I grab a fork. Everything has risk (especially cooking)! Viewer discretion is advised: what grabs a fork is me. The technique I am told is the most energy-efficient way to cook a potato (the "potato" button), says to take a knife or a fork and stab into the potato, to give its skin big enough pores, for the microwave experience.
My fork-based potato-pore technique has only injured me once, so far. This is that technique: I cover half the potato in the firm grip with one hand. The other hand stabs the potato quick and clean, like a hen's beak. I repeat this stab in a spiral a little ways away from the last stab. Listening to the potato's needs, and not just my needs for the potato, we enter conversation.
In a spiral away from my hand around the potato, I stab. When the spiral I walk begins to feel arbitrary, I know to stop and flip sides.
I grab the other end of the potato. After appreciating the texture change between sides, I repeat the spiral walk into to potato, up to the pole. I then find a place to set the fork down and stick the potato on a bone on a surface (which might be a porcelain plate or ceramic mug or might be the surface of the microwave).
I press the potato button. I press it again. This indicates two potatoes; I have found pressing the potato button twice cooks larger potatoes (like the one I get from the store) thoroughly. The potato's needs are difficult to translate into the strange persistence we call words. Perhaps the number of presses is for level, more than the unit. As in:
this is a level-2 potato.
After the longest time I've ever cooked anything in the microwave has passed, I wait eight seconds to allow things to settle, then open the microwave. What pours out is an upside-down slow-motion waterfall looking the way dust navigating around an asteroid can look (dust that may help grow potato or remain vibration). Pretty.
I place a fork down into the middle and rock the fork toward me. I repeat this process, stepping the fork forward until the potato splays like a butterfly. I place that between lover and window and watch as they stare, mezmerized, into steam. I've created a moment entirely my own.
I add salt, to taste. ⚛⋆𓇼