Today I had a particularly challenging lunch. I thought I'd try the new fusion restaurant -- a combination of pizza and Korean chicken. Perhaps, I should have listened to the intuition that this is a weird mix of foods. Instead, in some sort of tired/distracted daze, I ordered the 9 piece chicken dish with the cabbage.
To my dismay, my food was pretty much chicken wings, in a powerfully sweet and sticky sauce -- and copious amount of it. Now, I have no high-falutin judgements about foods that other folks eat--well, except for junk or fast food, but that's another story....There is nothing conceptually wrong with chicken wings and I'm aware that they are popular. What follows is my own unique reactions to what, for me, was less than ideal.
I've always been adverse to getting messy when I eat. When I visited India, I had a couple of meals with the consistency of stew without any silver wear, or even bread sop it up. I thought that was tough. But this was worse.
At first, I tried to eat the chicken with a knife and fork--as I am want to do with all meals (I also dislike when Asian restaurants only give you a fork), however this quickly proved too frustrating. The chicken was too tough, there were too many bones -- After about five minutes of struggling with my plastic utensils, I gave up.
Alas, I had to use my hands. Did I also mention that I had been a vegetarian for 16 years and was unaccustomed to touching meat with my hands? Egads! The thick, sticky sauce quickly covered the first half of all my fingers and each time I raised a piece to my mouth, to gingerly bite some meat off, it kept getting on my cheeks, chin and even my nose. Then there were other problems: bones, lots of them, and in such inconsistent, odd clusters, that I kept wondering what part of the bird is this? There were other parts--clumps of hard-ish tissue -- I didn't even want to consider what they were. Am I eating franken-chicken? This only heightened my anxiety. I ping-ponged between that and revulsion, oh and did I forget to mention the embarrassment? It was fascinating to me that this experience triggered a feeling of being an incompetent, uncoordinated toddler and I hated that.
To my dismay, my food was pretty much chicken wings, in a powerfully sweet and sticky sauce -- and copious amount of it. Now, I have no high-falutin judgements about foods that other folks eat--well, except for junk or fast food, but that's another story....There is nothing conceptually wrong with chicken wings and I'm aware that they are popular. What follows is my own unique reactions to what, for me, was less than ideal.
I've always been adverse to getting messy when I eat. When I visited India, I had a couple of meals with the consistency of stew without any silver wear, or even bread sop it up. I thought that was tough. But this was worse.
At first, I tried to eat the chicken with a knife and fork--as I am want to do with all meals (I also dislike when Asian restaurants only give you a fork), however this quickly proved too frustrating. The chicken was too tough, there were too many bones -- After about five minutes of struggling with my plastic utensils, I gave up.
Alas, I had to use my hands. Did I also mention that I had been a vegetarian for 16 years and was unaccustomed to touching meat with my hands? Egads! The thick, sticky sauce quickly covered the first half of all my fingers and each time I raised a piece to my mouth, to gingerly bite some meat off, it kept getting on my cheeks, chin and even my nose. Then there were other problems: bones, lots of them, and in such inconsistent, odd clusters, that I kept wondering what part of the bird is this? There were other parts--clumps of hard-ish tissue -- I didn't even want to consider what they were. Am I eating franken-chicken? This only heightened my anxiety. I ping-ponged between that and revulsion, oh and did I forget to mention the embarrassment? It was fascinating to me that this experience triggered a feeling of being an incompetent, uncoordinated toddler and I hated that.
As I continued to eat, determined to waste nothing (another of my "issues"), my awareness kept stepping back and watching my aversions with a removed sense of amazement. Wow! Look, I'm really getting upset. Are my hands shaking? Is everyone staring at me? (I refused to look). Look at how stubborn I am, but also how it's not making this easier. Why don't I just stop...no I want to see it through to the end.
In the end, I mostly finished -- not cleaning the bones completely, but making the attempt with all 9 pieces of chicken. All along, my revulsion never dissipated, even when I was observing it. I also had intruding thought that perhaps I was getting more extreme in my freak-out against getting messy -- sliding somewhere toward the OCD realm. If that were so, it would just be another of my interesting quirks, just as my aversion to standing in long lines, or trying to make myself heard in big, loud groups. It's fun being me!
The entire experience was a 5 napkin dance of the samskaras that once again reminded me what an amusing and intriguing trip it is to be me, but also that I have the power to disengage, even while engaging on the surface. A good exercise. However, I don't think I'll be repeating it any time soon.
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