Manchego

A post in which I try to explain more self-doubt, and also start to doubt my ability to post about self-doubt. I suspect this will be a raw post. Maybe some salt if we are lucky. For those of you who like it so rare it's still a cow, this is your day.

Manchego cheese. A literary cheese. Nobody knew this at my recent get-together. Nobody knew anything about this cheese, or even why I was being so persnickety about the urgency of its place on our sandwich. Mozzarella was used instead, a fine cheese.

It hurt my pride something great. I think that is sometimes part of why I drink, to get rid of part of my excess pride. I was several gin&tonics in, and had a wide variety of other drinks of that persuasion, when I did something I rarely do and felt some ways I rarely feel any more.

First I felt like I couldn't explain anything to anyone, not even why a certain cheese should be on a sandwich. Second, I was filled with a surety that even if I could it wouldn't matter. And being as my companions were probably also belligerent with drink, and the cheese was in fact not all that important, they confirmed my suspicions.

I did something I rarely do. I lost my temper. Over cheese.

In my defense, no there is no defense. But it may interest you to know that Manchego cheese is quite tasty. I could have bought provolone, it would have been cheaper. I flirted with buying fresh mozzarella, because it was of the same price and tried/true. But there was something so romantic about Manchego. I put my own romantic ideals about cheese over the serious concerns of my guest. Besides, I had researched in Fro's Flavor Bible and discovered that ham goes splendidly with manchego with little adornment therefore needed. Really, though, I wasn't trying to impress my friends (as I would say in this case I should have been) I was enraptured with the cheese quite selfishly.

Manchego comes from sheep's milk. Sheep raised only in La Mancha, in the particular climates known to the area. Manchego is most famous, therefore, for being featured in Don Quixote. A book I most certainly need to read probably in both its spanish and english editions. An idea however that is strung throughout other literature and our culture. An idea that I have always loved in the way that one loves ideas. A man I have always imagined myself as.

So in true form, I fought something that wasn't there. A group of people who I thought did not understand me and didn't even want to. It occurred to me at intervals that I was the one who did not understand my friends and cared more about some stupid cheese than trying to do so. Or more exactly, that I had stopped trying to understand other people through some sense of hopelessness of ever relating.

I woke up in the morning above all else humbled. I am trying, with new hope and vigor, to understand my friends better. I am finding it is not so hard as I thought. There is much I may never know, because they are all complex (complexity being a quality I am drawn to) but I now know enough to realize we are made of similar fabric.

My good friend, Fro, has encouraged me toward reading. Now I am reading like the nerd I am, and it always surprises me when I really start reading how completely it satisfies me.

I don't believe that books necessarily help me understand people. I think they more get me into the swing of understanding characters, who are significantly different than people. But I do believe that books make me more awake and more aware. I do believe that books give me a common language to draw upon. I do believe that books refuel whatever magic there is in me.

So in the end I can admit that it was not the cheese that was stupid, nor the cheese that caused problems. It wasn't even the gin. It was me. Something had gone to sleep inside of me. I had gone to sleep inside of me.

I'll try my darndest not to let that happen again. And I'd like to make it up to you in any way I can.