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FROM: Evian
TO: QoraTa Goomaj
Subject: Like water for chocolate?

Now that, my friend, is the infinite dollar question. Infinitely mysterious. So mysterious that even powers-that-be-with-bottled-water trample on and still overlook the thirsty clay and shattered essence of older sister's masero, overlook the smile-less faces of Fathers' soils, the soulless soils of their own (supine) back!

(yards)

Backyards (of those who clutch on bottled water as life's guarantee, that is) where diamonds itch...

And meanwhile, sister's masero wishfully itches for Father's rain.

Oh, the dichotomy!

(I don't mean to ramble. Really, I don't. It's just my way of thanking you for striking a sudden rightness!)

Here's what I'm struggling to articulate. Coming back to the scene with the lady in perfect form, decked in diamonds (ok, I added the diamonds) and older sister with the broken masero: is existence really all about food and water? I think you answered your own question in that muddled scene juxtaposing the two realities. After all, that's what they are, aren't they? Different realities. Food, water, and every other beautiful, mega and minute detail about life's existence is relative. A proverb reads that "with bread, sorrow becomes less". The subjective question remains: what kind of bread? For some people, bread is ye dorro dabo; water can be Evian (and Twix can be Toblerone? Bad analogy. Couldn't resist. Sorry). Some can take for granted the milk that trickles down from their vast, wealthy skies.

The earthbound, on the other hand, can only pray to the godly. Or, when Father's rains fail to come and monkeys and nature play mean to older sister, they turn to the milkofhumankindness to bless them.

Different realities.

So the question now becomes, is there a dearth of milkofhumankindness?

On a lighter note, while you're busy figuring that out, I'd like to skip back to life's plethora of details manifested in sweet subtleties like in water and chocolate. Do you really wish they didn't exist? I used to think that the only delicacy in seafood in the world was our own Nile perch, simply fried with corn oil and served with a dash of lemon. No bread crumbs. Then I discovered that fufu with fish in groundnut sauce was a clever embellishment. That was until my appetite was introduced to my favorite spaghetti with clams cooked in olive oil, perhaps a hint of cream and white wine. Point being, from the Nile to the West African Atlantic rim, to the Mediterranean, even seafood is elegantly detailed, and with the right touch, easily diversified.

So isn't it a beautiful thing that details exist?

Or am I beginning to sound like the lady in diamonds and bottled water?

Humbled,
- Evian -

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FROM: QoraTa Goomaj
TO: Evian

In her mid-thirties. My fourth grade Mathematics teacher, a stable woman. Lecturing the class from a far corner of the room. Incapable of lies in the eyes of her disciplined students who listen to every word she utters in class. All fifty of us captivated by what she was telling us about percentages.

"Your body is seventy-five percent water," she says in Amharic. "Yessew sewinet kemeto sebamstoo wooha nnew." She writes "75% = 75/100" in huge letters on the black board. "It doesn't make sense," I tell her after class, approaching her desk by the blackboard as the 75 and the % grow bigger with every step I take towards her. "Here, shake my hand, touch me! Do I feel 75% water to you?"

I have to wait another three years for the seventh grade science teacher to tell me that we are made of cells, that each cell is mostly made of water. The long forgotten 75% story suddenly makes sense. But the news about how all living creatures are made of cells baffles me. I confront Ato Science Teacher with my dreaded question of how it is possible for hair and nails and liver to be made of the same thing called cells. He mentions something about microscopes and magnification and leaves the room in a hurry. In the next class, the religion teacher, Weizerit Moral Astemari politely asks me to leave the room in the interest of the moral education of the rest of my peers after I raise my hand to ask if angels are also made of cells.

Between percentages, cells and sensitive moral instructors who helped their students master the art of praying between classes while passing candy across the room with eyes closed, it occurs to me that I have almost never paid much attention to the food I ate, always sitting down to eat out of a nameless obligation to entities with invisible powers. In my ever expanding small universe, there is not much place for the professor of Food Studies who has scores of seniors flocking to his office hours in search of advice on how to start a career in wine testing. I pay even less attention to the kids who make a hobby of ordering black caviar over the internet from Iran. It's all reducible to water. The rest is a show, something tells me.

And this whole Seleda thing is a show, too. As are your entries, and mine. Milkofhumankindness??? (Have you considered reading a little less literature and taking a stroll outside with the dog?)

I'll just go to sleep now. After a glass of water. Mildly cold wooha. And in my next entry I'll tell you about how dreams dreamt after a glass of cold wooha are free of the poisonous stuff which fills everyday dreams with doses of desperation.

Looks are deceiving! They come after you in the guise of a beautiful woman. And it's too late when you discover that you've been had. And instead of reading this off the bright screen of your monitor, have you considered printing it out and lying down on your bed to look for the hidden messages?

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