therefore I am

sitting in a chair minding my business in front of a weird dish (recipe below)

1.

I do not know how to sit correctly. I am equally bad at standing, lying down, and walking. At kneeling, I’m a disaster, squatting too, especially these last three months, as I have tendonitis in the gluteus muscles of my right hip.

One of life’s greatest pleasures, eating, the simplest of actions – food, mouth, chew, swallow – dead wrong, every step. Drinking? A fiasco, just ask my friends and family. Bodily functions functional at best. Sleeping, a total shit show. Breathing? You don’t want to know.

But sitting.

This is all I want to focus on today because my sitting – adopting and then being in a position in which my back is upright but my weight is fully supported by my buttocks – is entirely its own utterly disconcerting thing. Largely because when I occupy a chair I fidget constantly, especially in public. Concerts, plays, readings, I tap my foot and fingers, cross and uncross my legs, make fists, roll my wrists, rub an eye, rub my knees, slap my temples, flex and unflex my nostrils, scrunch my forehead, scratch my scalp, rub my tongue across my teeth, dig a fingernail into the palm of my hand, pull an earlobe, rub my nose, pick my nose, crack my fingers, crack my neck. Crack my jaw.

Sometimes, I do these things because I am bored. Other times, because I am overstimulated. Mostly, however, it is because I find it impossible to sit still for more than five seconds and, because, well, I suppose, if I’m honest, fidgeting feels good.

Not feels good, that’s not right; just feels, period. Physical sensation. Being aware of something happening. Being aware of discomfort, tenseness, tightness, pain. Being aware of myself, examining and experiencing myself.

None of this merits any discussion or thought. It certainly does not deserve seven paragraphs. The Gettysburg Address, after all, was only three.

But then, these days, what does merit seven paragraphs or even a moment’s discussion or thought? More to the point, what’s the difference between my fidgeting and my writing about my fidgeting? Isn’t writing just a way of self-regulating, self-occupying, self-stimulating? Like hand flapping or rocking back and forth, or banging your head against a wall. For me, yes. Writing eases my anxieties. It lets me manage overwhelming sensory input and regulate intense experiences. At its best, it enhances my understanding, encourages positive feelings, and gives me a sense of security.

Too bad I suck at it, too.

2.

I can’t sing, either. But I hum a lot, and I sing a lot, especially when cooking, which I’ll get to in a bit, and, what’s more, for the first time in three Substacked years, I will be providing a recipe – for a most excellent dish of my own invention that I made just this Friday night for ten people – but also (back to my singing) while bicycling, and then just randomly throughout a day, like right now, The Sound of Music, “the hills are alive, and they’re really scary.” I often change the lyrics. For example, if someone says, “I gotta go pee”, I instantly and involuntarily sing – to the tune of Sammy Davis Jr’s “I've Gotta Be Me” –

“I gotta go pee /I just gotta go pee / Daring to try, to do it or die / I gotta go pee.”

Just as often, I repeat things people say to me and then belt them back out like Frank Sinatra. For example, if someone says to me, “I was just about to go to the store”, I will croon back:

I was just about to go to the store,
to get two bottles of whiskey, or maybe even four.

---

Something like that. Little bits of dither turned into Rat Packed gibberish. Sometimes, the melody is original; other times, like with Sammy above, I borrow from a known song, especially when the words the person utters remind me of a song or, more often than not, a jingle. For example, if I hear “puppy”, I sing “chow, for a full year, till he’s full grown”.

If I hear someone say, “Ready when you are”, I immediately belt out:

and even when you’re not
that’s Betty Crocker Ready-to-Spread 
Fros – ting.

If this elicits a blank look, I continue:

Smooth and spreadable 
and what’s so incredible, 
it’s ready when you are 
and when you’re not.

---

Every single time, without fail. Is there a term for this? Is it in the DSM-5-TR?

3.

Thailand and Spain started trading directly in 1598, when Thailand was Siam, and the various kingdoms of Spain were under the central authority of Castille. That year, a treaty was signed in the royal court of Ayutthaya between King Chulalongkorn the Great and Francisco de Tello de Guzmán, the eighth Spanish governor of the Philippines.

Among the first recorded trades was a junk-load of rice for a galleon’s worth of Andalusian olive oil, acorn-fed sausages from La Rioja, and hot chillies from Mexico. The Siamese were familiar with chillies – the Portuguese had brought them to the kingdom years before, and they had since become a staple of Thai cuisine, as had a number of other Portuguese agricultural exports: tomatoes, potatoes, corn, lettuce, cabbage, papaya, guava, pineapples, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, cashews, peanuts, and tobacco.

However, the intense spiciness of the Mexican chillies astounded them, as did the quality of the Spanish oil and pork.

The Spanish were less than pleased with the exchange. They considered the Thais’ rice far inferior to their bomba, which, when cooked, absorbs two to three times its volume in liquid, thus taking on more flavour from the stock in which it is cooked. It also expands widthwise, nearly doubling in size, while maintaining, because of its high starch content, a firm yet tender texture without becoming sticky or mushy. However, the bomba plant grows tall (up to 1.5 metres), is sensitive to nutrients, and is prone to fungal diseases, which makes it challenging to cultivate. These factors meant that it was rarely exported. The Spanish, therefore, for whom rice had been a staple since its introduction by the Moors in the 8^th century, had to rely on Asian varieties for its colonies.

Formal diplomatic ties between the two countries were established in 1870. Ever since, their relations have been largely peaceful. Siam, as we know, became Thailand in 1939 and was neutral at the start of WWII, but then Japan invaded and a month later forced Thailand to declare war on the United Kingdom and the United States. Meanwhile, in Spain, reliance on U.S. imports and British diplomatic pressure kept Franco’s regime officially neutral. However, Franco supplied Germany with tungsten for its armoured vehicles, sent troops to fight alongside Germany on the Eastern Front, and allowed German submarines to use Spanish ports. He also provided refuge for thousands of Jews and issued citizenship to Sephardic Jews across occupied Europe, but that’s a story for another occasion because today’s post is about a recent, little-known conflict between Spain and Thailand that took place on the Friday night that I spoke of above, when the two countries’ cuisines collided and fused in my kitchen, resulting in an aberration that will have all proud Spaniards and Thais, should they read what follows, reeling.

Photo by Hermon Mehari, who also made the Thai green curry “sofrito”

THAIELLA

By Christopher Mooney (Thai green curry “sofrito” by Hermon Mehari)

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Prep Time: 50-60 minutes

Cook Time: 30-40 minutes

YIELD: 10 Servings

EQUIPMENT

Paella pan for 10 people (42-46 cm)

If you want to go smaller, or only have a 4-6 person pan, just divide the proportions appropriately.

INGREDIENTS

THAI “SOFRITO”

Note from Hermon: “I used some of the Moroccan green chiles from the Handsome Man [locals’ name for the greengrocer on rue de Belleville just up from rue Rebevel who looks like a Hong Kong movie star and has the best veg in the neighbourhood (and is open all day Sunday!)] for the rest of the "serranos" in addition to what you had, and the “green Thai chiles” were the green birds’ eyes I picked up at the Chinese store on my street [Superstore on Belleville?]. I left a few of the birds’ eyes with stems and seeds intact.”