Are peppers shy?
Weirdly, to me, they look like it. They’re diminutive. They’re nubbly in a teenager-y kind of way, still transforming. But if I snack on one, sauté it, blacken it on the burner—man, that aroma, the electric burn, is intoxicating.
I have a high tolerance and love for peppers, habaneros, the chili family—the nth degrees of Thai cuisine, chicken wings, any dishes using Sichuan pepper. Where does it come from? I don’t know, but I remember how, taking a cooking class once in New Mexico, the chef described the aroma of roasting chiles, how it turns your head, to be the thing she identified most with her childhood, her abuelas, knowing that she was from a specific place.
Here’s where I go with it: age seasons me. Gives me more appetite for living. Now that I’m in my forties, there’s more awareness of time getting shorter—and sure, that was always the case, but I didn’t always pay attention to the case. Chiles, then, make poetic sense here; when I remember the burn will fade, it tends to sharpen the taste.
The poem “Haiku Ambulance” by Richard Brautigan kinda gets at that—
A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?
I went rock climbing with a friend this week. He said afterwards I seemed like I’d been in my head a lot that afternoon, which is pretty unusual for me these days. And it was true—this week my mind’s been swinging between worry and inspiration, listlessness and drive. But his comments brought me back to myself, and have stayed with me since. Maybe we all need alarms occasionally, chili peppers and otherwise? To actually be—be here and be now.
Shyness doesn’t always mean reluctance. Thursday night, I caught mk.gee at the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles. He sang nearly every song off his debut album, and the audience never once saw his face—he and the other musicians stood onstage with lights behind, silhouetting them in fog. The songs were impassioned, caustic. Lots of fire, and not much ego. For me, the heat of the music was enough.
(To the reader who suggested the topic this week: thank you.)
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Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in this newsletter are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a small commission. For more—books, articles, etc—check out rosecransbaldwin.com