#people would not register it as well because there are fancy hamburger places

[trinketbug]

people getting mad at me for drawing that furry inflation image being at a mcdonalds cuz we're boycotting mcdonalds. first of all mcdonalds is not on the bds boycott list rn. second of all do you think i could afford mcdonalds either way

[tocrackerboxpalace]

Le Rêve - Part 4

Summary: George reflection chapter. What more is there to say?

Warning: R-rated

“Ringo, have you seen me favorite pair of socks? The black ones?”

George tore through his suitcase in agitation, carelessly tossing the clothing into a second-carpet on the hotel floor. He groaned in frustration when an uninterested “uh-uh” came from the other side of the room, where Ringo was changing into his pajamas.

“I can’t bloody find them anywhere.” George let out a defeated huff and sat back on his heels with a pout.

“Where’d you leave ‘em last?”

“If I knew that,” George tried, ever-so-patiently, “I wouldn’t be tearin’ the room apart, now, would I?”

“Did you leave ‘em in John and Paul’s this morning?” Ringo asked in a tone of voice that implied George absolutely did leave them in John and Paul’s that morning.

“I don’t know why you never get things for me when you find them,” George muttered, though the words were less pointed now. He threw his suitcase closed.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, Harrison. You’re a big lad now, you’ve got to be responsible for your own things.” Ringo shot him a grin. “Think of me as your personal… guide. I’ll give you hints and whatnot along the way, but I won’t do it for you.”

“Charming.” George rolled his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet, not bothering to gather up all of the other strewn-about items of clothing. “Well, I’m off to go get them. I can’t get sleep without them.”

Ringo cocked an amused eyebrow as he began to hang his suit. “You’re an odd fella, you know that, George?”

“Bah.” George swatted away the comment and pulled the door open. “Be back in a minute.”

John and Paul’s room was down the hall from theirs, though it was really only a few steps. The hotel was small, the rooms far from luxurious. The hall was a dull mess of gray and beige, the carpet a crisscross pattern and the wallpaper about a thousand years old. He scoffed in distaste of the place. They were the fucking Beatles now, for God’s sakes. You’d think they could afford some better living. George kicked at a spider on the water-stained trim as he approached his mates’ room.

He had just raised his arm to knock when a strange sound caused him to pause his movements. Intrigued, George inched forward and pressed an ear close to the frame. What was the harm in getting a little listen?

There was… moaning. And cursing. George nearly rolled his eyes. It sounded like Paul—richer than John’s voice, and clearer, too. He also ran with the hardly faint memory that Paul was quite vocal in bed. He should almost know the lad’s sounds by now. Part of him wondered where John had gotten side-tracked off to, because he could have sworn the three of them went up in the elevator together.

He half-laughed to himself. This guy was too good. George hadn’t even the slightest clue where Paul could’ve picked a bird up on his way from the lobby to the room. Gonna be sick, my arse, he thought to himself.

As George waited outside of the door, he pondered his options. He could wait until Paul’s little rendezvous was over (which, judging by the sounds, was not far off). He could knock and give them a second to dress or hide the bird. And finally: eh, what the hell. He’d seen worse before. If the door was unlocked, he could just slip in.

Besides, George really wanted those socks.

Ultimately, he decided that sneaking in was his best bet. He’d slip past the door and slither unnoticed to the bathroom, and go—yes! He remembered now!—behind the toilet. Pick up the socks and leave as quickly as he came. In and out in a jiffy.

George reached for the doorknob and gave it a slight twist when an expression from inside stopped him cold.

“Fucking hell, Paul.”

Paul was in there; he knew good and well. The question was what was… the other voice doing there? The boys’ closeness had never warranted anything more than an “Oh, shit, sorry,” when walking in on one another and leaving as swiftly as possible. Was the other voice… watching? Just hanging around in there?

George’s pulse quickened, his grip beginning to slip from the door as he desperately fought the pounding confusion in his head. He had to have misheard. It couldn’t have been that voice. He was delusional, imagining things, that’s all.

The voice called out again, breathless, grainy: “Christ.”

It was unmistakably John.

George remained frozen in front of the door, unable to tear himself away. Faintly, he registered Paul moaning John’s name. John was in there. And so was Paul. He had heard them call out to each other… for each other…

“John, I can’t—” Another pause, and bedsprings creaked incriminatingly. “John, stop, I-I’m gonna come—”

Before a second thought could cross his mind, George threw the door open and stood gaping at the scene in front of him.

The first thing he noticed was the sheer look of terror on Paul’s face. This was almost comical, considering the obvious next thing to notice was that Paul was stark naked, a furious burn in his cheeks as he scrambled to cover his intimacies. Intimacies that John was—was all over.

John had been touching him like a bird should. George’s eyes raked over John’s form. The man didn’t look nearly as terrified as Paul. In fact, he looked almost… smug. His cheeks were flushed pink, his eyes bright and teetering on wild. He laid propped up on one elbow, making the hard-on in his trousers conspicuously evident. Despite throwing himself off of his mate as fast as possible, he looked completely at ease, glaring at George almost daringly as a shadow of a smirk twitched at the corner of his lips.

George took this opportunity to switch stares back to Paul, sickened by whatever fucking game John thought he was playing. The ends of Paul’s hair were curled with the sweat that beaded on his neck and forehead. His hands trembled where they tugged at the bedsheet, which could have done more to hide him. There was something pleading in his eyes, something desperate. If only George knew what it was for.

There was nothing he could think of to say. Rather than waste time standing and waiting for someone to speak up, George turned on his heel and swiftly shut the door behind him.

—

George leaned with palms pressed against the door, chest heaving from exertion and overwhelming bewilderment. The scene had played over and over in his mind since the fervent escape. It was his fault, he knew—that was the worst part.

He had only been going to look for a pair of socks. And they were rather nice socks. His favorite, even. That’s all he had wanted. Socks.

George had heard about these kinds of people before. Seen some of them, even, in Hamburg. He was fairly certain that Brian was one. The ones in Germany always tried to make a move on him and the others, but he never saw why; he didn’t fancy any of them were that attractive, anyroad. George suddenly recalled a conversation, not so long ago, when John had gone on a slight rant about The Homosexuals in Hamburg, and Paul had nodded along disapprovingly. It was Ringo, eventually, who edged them out of the discussion: “Eh, come on lads. It’s none of our business what they do, anyway.”

What the hell just happened?

“Whasamatter, Georgie?” Ringo stepped out of the bathroom, words coming out garbled as a toothbrush dangled from his lips. He tossed it in the trash and turned to spit in the sink. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“J-John and Paul,” George stuttered, his mind working frantically to piece together what had just happened. It seemed to be the only coherent sentence he could form. “I saw—it was John… and Paul. With Paul.”

“No kidding,” Ringo gave him an understanding nod and a slight chuckle. “Intense fellas, they are. They give me a downright scare sometimes, too. Writing a song, then?”

“Ringo, you’re not hearing me,” George tried, his voice unsteady. “I saw them. Doing—together. It was both of them, with each other.”

Ringo’s brow knitted in confusion. George’s ramblings only seemed to perplex him more, draw him farther away from the conclusion. “I… Congratulations?”

George rubbed his forehead shakily. He wasn’t so much frustrated as just helplessly exasperated. There were no connections in his mind that made the situation make sense. He stifled a groan.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, mate.”

“They were shagging,” George blurted. On instinct, a hand flew to cover his mouth as soon as the words left his lips. The phrase sounded so bizarre, so wrong, and was yet the only thing he felt accurately characterized what he just saw. “Almost.”

Ringo blinked. “Shagging who?”

George began to pace back and forth across the small room. “John. Or-or Paul. Each other. They were almost-shagging one another.”

Ringo stared, looking just as baffled as George felt. “What do you mean?”

George continued slowly. “I went to go get my socks. I was gonna knock, but I heard something, and I didn’t know what it was. So I listened for a moment, and I just thought that Paul was in there with a bird. Y’know.”

Ringo nodded, no more convinced.

“But I heard another voice, and they were saying Paul’s name, and then Paul said it back, and it was John. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You went in?” Ringo didn’t sound surprised, just curious.

“I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t believe it. I s’pose I thought I had to see for myself. And-and then I did.” His voice broke a bit. “I don’t know what to do, Ringo. What the fuck?”

“Where are they now?”

“I don’t know. I just left.”

Ringo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We can’t tell anyone.”

“We can’t.”

“We have to talk to them.”

“About what? D’you want me to go in there again and say, ‘John, ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, what were ya doing in there, jerking Paul off? And Paul, ya bloody bastard, what were you doing enjoyin’ it?” George ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck. How are we supposed to talk about this? What about the band?”

“Hey.” Ringo’s voice was gentle as he took a step closer. “One thing at a time, mate. We’ll worry about the band when the band gives us something to worry about. Right now, we need to go promise them that we won’t tell a soul, and that we’re not judging them really, but that they need to be more careful, and—”

“Be more careful?” George was bewildered. “Ringo, they were in the privacy of their own room. How much more careful can you get?”

“Do you want to be the one to tell them to stop?” Ringo raised an eyebrow. “Because one, I don’t think we have the authority to do that. And two, if I know anything about John and Paul, it will only make them want to do it more.”

George pondered this for a second. “They’re going to kill me.”

“No, George, come on—”

“They are.” George began to panic. “I walked in on them. I never should have done it. I should have just left in the first place. I should’ve knocked before anything. Oh, Christ, Ringo. They’re gonna kill me!”

Ringo’s gaze was soft and sympathetic, but George could pick up on a hint of worry in the lines of his face. Not that he would blame him for it. It’d be one thing if George had walked in on Paul and the fantasy bird George had originally thought. It’d be one thing if George had walked in on Paul with a random guy, and it was decriminalized. It’d even be one thing if George had walked in on Paul with a random guy, period.

But none of that was the case.

“Look,” Ringo started, laying a hand on George’s shoulder to temporarily halt his pacing. “Let’s go back to the room. We’ll talk to them. I don’t know about what, yet, but they need to know that I know."

“Okay.” George sighed. “Yeah, okay.”

—

Paul was sitting up, staring off into the distance and frantically nibbling at his thumbnail. His expression was hard, the other hand drumming nervously on the bed beside him. He was almost dressed, but everything carried an air of distractedness: his fly was down, his shirt haphazardly buttoned, his tie draped across his shoulders. He barely acknowledged when George and Ringo entered, lazily casting his gaze in their direction.

“Paul,” George tried, attempting to take hold of the conversation early. Maybe, at least, if he was in control, it would be easier for both of them. No more surprises.

Paul blinked up at him, looking dazed. He didn’t speak.

“I’m not mad.” George spoke quickly: reparations for earlier. “I-I was just shocked. ‘M not angry at all. I didn’t know how to…” He cleared his throat. “Not make it… worse?”

“Hm,” Paul affirmed.

“Where’s John?” Ringo asked suddenly, tentatively, as if he were afraid to stir Paul.

“Fuck if I know,” Paul shot in response.

George and Ringo exchanged a look. This was certainly not the picture George had left only minutes earlier. The air itself was hostile, heaving with McCartney’s own breaths until the others swayed uneasily on their feet.

“We can talk about it,” George offered, despite every nerve screaming at him not to do so. It was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do, but he couldn’t conjure up any other consolation.

“What is there to talk about?” Paul’s voice was cold. He was refusing eye contact.

“Paul,” Ringo tried again, taking a step closer. “It’s all right. George and I, we don’t care if you guys…” He trailed off, looking at George pleadingly.

George filled in. “…Want to be together.” The end of his sentence unintentionally lilted up, posed as a question.

Paul had the audacity to look at them now as if they were mad. “What?”

George watched confusion wash over Ringo’s features, mirroring the perplexity he felt on his own face. He tore his gaze away and focused on Paul, who looked nothing short of furious. The two men stood awkwardly, neither making a move to speak, which George figured was a smart decision. Let McCartney talk his way out of this.

“What?” He said again. George shook his head.

Paul pushed himself to his feet, his eyes sparkling maliciously. “No, George, tell me. Just what do you think you’re implying?”

He began advancing towards them. Though part of him knew, deep down, that Paul would never actually get physical with him, George flinched back noticeably into Ringo, making the older lad stumble as well.

Something changed in Paul’s expression at the interaction. The fury melted into fear, and then, almost… despair. He reached out for George’s arm, then seemed to think better of the choice and pull his searching hand back.

“I’m sorry.” His voice cracked as he retreated. “I’m sorry.”

“Come now, Paul, it’s all right.” Ringo’s voice was unsteady, but his words were comforting and secure. He took a tentative step and placed his hand on their friend’s shoulder. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

“I don’t know, Ritchie,” He near-wailed. “That’s the problem. I don’t know what that was. What happened.” Paul raked a hand through his fringe. “I can’t tell you. And now John’s fucked off to God-knows-where, and he was already in a bad state. Oh, shit. This is bad.”

Again, George and Ringo exchanged a nervous glance. Paul could be moody, manic, bizarre. The lad could go seemingly weeks without expressing a single intimate thought or feeling. He could also have outbursts, usually at John, about the smallest of things. George had always believed it to be pent-up frustration and emotional suppression, but this? This was no typical McCartney venom. This seemed like something entirely different.

“I’m not queer,” Paul suddenly asserted, mostly to himself.

“I believe you,” Ringo lied through his teeth. When Paul’s gaze was cast downward again, Ringo gave George a helpless shrug. “But we can’t just sweep this under the rug if you want to move forward. We have to find John, too, and talk about it. A-and make sure it doesn’t get out, or that you’re caught again. Or—”

“I need a smoke,” Paul interrupted.

And with that, he pushed past the two and disappeared out of frame, leaving George and Ringo trembling in his wake.

[guardian-rocket]

Congrats on the job offer!

Thank you so much!  I am currently working in a formalwear store and it’s just been hell.  They got acquired by a larger company about 4 months after I started.  I had just gotten certified as a formalwear consulted (yeah I know alot about dressin fancy) and was about to start earning commission and then BAM.  New company takes over and no more commission, I was supposed to get 1-3 reviews to get raises (review every 3 months)  BAM.  Reviews are now annual.  Everyone who had been there longer was already getting commission so their pay was calculated by how much they averaged out on commission + 25 cents more-- but since I didn’t even start to get commission, I got NOTHING.  We had a team of five people, and one left to Korea and the other got promoted to run another location as manager.  Now there’s only three of us.  Then they closed a nearby store of the company’s formalwear place which is a whole different store and moves all their orders, inventory, computer and register and just EXPECT us to handle it.  

Think of it this way:  You work a McDonalds and you run it really well.  Good rating on yelp, customers are generally pleased, pace is mild but not too slow, and you come in one day and now you HAVE to run Burger King in there too-- and all these customers you never dealt with before are all upset because it’s SO inconvenient for them to come down the block to get what they were promised at Burger King, and Burger King was sloppy and there’s all these issues you gotta handle, you have to learn a whole new menu and now it’s never fun to work there anymore and everyone is cranky and you’re the ONLY McDonalds who’s doing this.  Also the phone is CONSTANTLY ringing, sometimes both phones are ringing, and you got people inside and in the drive through and now you can’t do anything well and no one wants to apply to work there.  That’s what it became, except with tuxedos and suits instead of hamburgers.  (Also McDonalds workers get paid more than I am.)So I talked to my manager offering to allow him to bump me up to full time because part timers get NOTHING (no vacation, no time and a half on holidays} and I state that I’d require a bump in pay for it (because the wage I get is laughable and I only ever started working there to fill in gaps to make ends meet for my other job) and he said he CAN’T give me a raise-- not that he would see what he could do-- but basically just dropped it.  I warned him I had places wanting to hire me that would pay me more and he said “That’s your choice.”

SO I’M LEAVING AND IT FEELS GOOD.  I feel a little guilty because I do like my manager and coworker, but they really didn’t give me a choice.  I can’t live on the wage I was getting.  I only accepted the job in the first place because of the commission.

[180abroad]

Day 172: Cochem and the Mosel River Valley

Crossing between France and Germany, the Mosel (or Moselle) river valley is known for its sleepy, picturesque villages and premium white wines. Some of the most expensive wines in the world are Mosel Rieslings. But there are plenty of more affordable choices, too, and the Mosel is a popular destination for German wine-lovers and nature-lovers alike.

So of course Jessica and I had to take a look.

Cochem is about as long of a train ride away from Oberwesel as Frankfurt is, but the view is much prettier. After changing trains in Koblenz, we made our way up the Mosel river to Cochem. In his Germany guidebook, Rick Steves describes the Mosel as having the quiet, picturesque calm that people expect the much more industrialized Rhine to have.

Nestled along the outside curve of a horseshoe bend in the river, Cochem is a picturesque old town surrounded by vineyards, filled with charming narrow alleys lined with wine shops, and bustling with somewhat less charming tourists. It was still morning, so we decided to explore the town first and taste wine second.

Making our way through the streets, we soon came to the town's central market square. We found a shop selling a beautiful assortment of gemstones, and Jessica picked out a small turtle carved from iridescent gold obsidian.

We continued on up toward the castle that overlooks the town. The current castle is a fanciful 19th-century Neo-Gothic reconstruction. The original castle was destroyed during the Nine Years' War of the late 17th century, when Louis XIV tried to expand France's borders on all sides, invading Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany all at once. The only thing France ended up winning was Alsace---one of the many times in the last 800 years that land was passed between French and German hands.

We didn't go all the way up to the castle. It was a fairly long and steep walk, and we weren't planning to actually take a tour inside the castle. So we went up until we got a satisfactory view of the castle and surrounding vineyards, then headed back into town for some lunch.

On the way back down, we saw some entertaining storefronts, including wilted wine glasses and a wine shop named "Boos."

Back in the main market square, we stopped at a Rick Steves-recommended butcher for some deliciously fresh hamburgers.

Finally, it was finally time to start tasting some wines. This was actually the first time on the trip that we did wine tasting without being part of a tour group, and it proved more difficult than we expected. We didn't really know the best way to go about it, so rather than get bogged down in decision paralysis, we just started going into any wine shop we passed by that looked interesting.

The first couple of shops were misses. The labels and descriptions were all in German, the few shopkeepers seemed busy helping people who already knew what they wanted, and there didn't seem to be any indication that they actually offered tastings.

Refining our search, we picked out a place with a sign that specifically said "tastings" on it. But when we asked the person behind the counter, she seemed confused and insisted that they did not offer tastings. Well, they did offer tastings, but only if you bought the wine first.

And so on. As we were fast learning, Germany---or at least the Mosel region---seems to have a strikingly different wine culture from the US when it comes to tasting and purchasing wines. As far as we could gather, the expected procedure is to go in, tell the proprietor what kind of wines you like, and buy whichever bottles they recommend. Preferably by the case. Visitors are mainly other Germans who travel to the area periodically to vacation and restock their cellars. A couple of American backpackers looking to buy a bottle or two don't really register. A few shops only sold by the case and weren't interested in selling an individual bottle.

And all the while as we walked around the town, we were constantly pushing our way through groups of tourists and schoolchildren. At one point we ducked into a wine shop just to kill time until a particularly large throng of kids had moved well ahead of us.

As it happened, this was the one shop in town where we were actually able to get a tasting. The wines were mostly all Rieslings---the specialty of the region---but we've come to learn that Riesling is a bit of a chameleon grape. In the hands of an expert German vintner, Riesling can be sweet or dry, fresh and crisp or syrupy-rich. We told the woman at the shop that we like dry wines with a balance of fruitiness and minerality, and the first tasting she gave us was excellent. We tasted a couple more wines, then bought a bottle of the first one. The proprietor seemed a little disappointed that we didn't want to at least buy a half-case (6 bottles), but to her credit she didn't balk or complain.

As cute as it is, Cochem's old town is pretty tiny, and it didn't take more than a few hours for us to feel satisfied with our visit. There was a Rick Steves-recommended vineyard (Familienweingut Rademacher) back near the train station, so we decided to make that our last stop of the day. But first, we took a Rick Steves-recommended detour.

A chairlift on the edge of town carries tourists up to the top of the hills overlooking Cochem. A short but scrambly hike took us to an observation point with a spectacular postcard view of the town and its idyllic little horseshoe bend in the Mosel river valley.

After soaking in the views, we hiked down a trail that lead down into the vineyards by the train station.

Rick Steves described the hike as easy-to-moderate, but we found it to be pretty intense---not especially taxing, but fairly treacherous. The path was rocky and narrow, with steep descents and a point where you need to climb down a steep, narrow, uneven set of carved stairs without any handrail. Jessica and I didn't have any trouble, but we hated to imagine what would have happened if we'd taken my mom on this "easy" hike.

We eventually made it down to the winery, but we had to walk around the place a few times before we were confident enough to go in. The place seemed deserted except for a group of workers playing cards by the back door, completely uninterested in our presence.

We eventually ducked our head inside and found that we were, in fact, in the right place. But not at a great time, the proprietor apologetically explained. We had just missed a major wine festival the weekend before, and they weren't really doing walk-in tastings at the moment.

Jessica and I were prepared to accept this small disappointment as a suitable capstone to our fun but confusing visit to the heart of German wine country. The proprietor seemed far more distraught by this development than we were. After a bit of hemming and hawing, he decided that, yes, we could do a tasting after all. He sat us down at a six-person table and popped open four fresh bottles of wine.

We tasted a quartet of Rieslings---two dry, one semi-sweet, and one very sweet. Each one had a completely different flavor profile form the others, and this tasting actually brought out the differences in our individual tastes more than usual. Jessica loved the driest one, which I wasn't as big a fan of, and I loved the flavors of the semi-sweet wine, which was still too sweet for Jessica.

The second dry wine was just right for both of us, however, and we decided to buy a few bottles---partly to show our gratitude to the proprietor for giving us this two-person tasting and partly because we were really looking forward to drinking them.

We got an extremely generous discount and made our way back to the train station, not sure whether to be grateful or concerned that he'd made a mistake. In any case, we were satisfied with our trip. We'd seen some beautiful places, tasted some fantastic wines, and gained a better understanding for German wine culture and how it differs from what we're used to.

If I were to come back, I would probably stay in Cochem for at least a few days, preferably with a couple companions. That way, we could use Cochem home base to explore the nearby towns, castles, and wineries, then come home each night and sample some wines the German way---by the bottle.

[binsofchaos]

Let’s Go To Jerusalem For Soup Again

In 1994, I spent my first year of college at a university in Israel, in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv. Each Thursday and Saturday night, all of us American students would take a bus or a cab down to Ben Yehuda Street, in Jerusalem, and find the place exploding with the other American students. We sat on the floor of a lounge and drank hot wine in sugar-rimmed glasses. We danced at a club to a playlist that began with Ace of Base and ended with “Hotel California” every single night. We ate pizza made by people who had never met an Italian off of cardboard squares instead of plates. The boys ate shawarma, which I objected to for feminist reasons (meat being showcased on a spit—I don’t know, I felt strongly about this at the time) and we ate our weight in hummus and falafel. A month in, as we wandered the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem, I found a small, cafeteria-style vegetarian café called the Village Green. I ordered the vegetable soup. There was a never-ending loaf of bread that lived on the counter, and you could help yourself to as much as you wanted. “Have you ever had soup like this?” I asked my roommate, Marni. I ordered another bowl.

Marni and I went two times each week—in addition to Thursday and Saturday nights, which were party nights—because I loved this soup so much. Forty minutes to Jerusalem was nothing. We had no children. We had no jobs. We didn’t know what time was: How does a fish know water; how does a human know air? You want some soup? Well, then, go get some soup.

Back in Ramat Gan, we went to the market to try to re-create the soup. We bought carrots and tomatoes and onions and garlic. We bought powdered spices—it didn’t occur to us to use fresh herbs. We bought a root because it looked like something one would put in a soup. Literally, Marni said, “That looks like it belongs in soup.” (Years later I would learn to call this root parsnip.) Every night we didn’t go to the Village Green, we tried to make this soup in our dorm kitchen. Every night it didn’t taste like the soup at the Village Green. All our efforts amounted to something I can only call wet vegetables.

My mother, who lived in Israel until she was a teenager, came to visit me in March that year, bringing along my youngest sister, who was just a toddler. I introduced her to the soup, and she loved it, too. “Let’s go to Jerusalem for soup again,” she said to me on one of her last days there. She thought it was fancy and funny to go to a different city for soup, like saying, “Let’s go to Paris for lunch.” It was just me and her and my tiny sister, all our lives barely started, eating this wonderful soup and the hunks of bread you could just pull off by yourself. June came and Marni and I lay on our backs in the amphitheater, staring up at the sparkling sky, while we waited for a cab to pick us up to take us to the airport.

I can’t tell you exactly how or when it happened, but the sun went up and down and up and down and up and down and the earth tilted on its axis so that it became fall, then winter, then spring. I returned home for college. I wore a graduation gown. I wore a bridesmaid’s dress at Marni’s wedding. I wore a blazer to my first job interview. I wore a wedding dress. I wore maternity jeans, and right when I was ready to put them away I pulled them out again. I pushed a carriage down the street, then I pushed a carriage while I also wore a Baby Björn. I moved from here to there and back. I made hundreds of vegetable soups, and exactly none of them were remarkable. I made these soups and told whomever I served them to about the soup at the Village Green. I told them that every soup I made was an attempt, a tribute, a prayer.

My mother got older and still lovelier and now only eats soups she makes herself because of the salt. My youngest sister got married and had a child and then moved to Jerusalem, from Brooklyn, and had another child. I hadn’t met my new niece yet, so I took my younger son, the one who has picked up a surprising amount of Hebrew, and off we were on an El Al flight to Ben Gurion airport. A day off the plane, we took my sister and her two children to Ben Yehuda Street. “Just you wait,” I told her.

The Village Green has two locations now; neither is the one I remember. The first location closed a year after I left Israel, moving just two blocks away. It remained cafeteria style. A second location, this one with table service, opened just around the corner. It was not just vegetarian but vegan. On a shelf was Diet for a Small Planet, maybe even the same copy I had read over the many soups I ate a million years ago. I spoke with the owner of the restaurant. He told me he and his wife had developed all the soup recipes when they first opened, and that the recipe for the vegetable soup hadn’t varied at all. I ordered some hummus and cucumbers for my son and a bowl of vegetable soup for me.

How can I say this? The soup, it wasn’t familiar to me. It didn’t look like I remembered it. It didn’t smell like home or nostalgia or youth or a memory. I couldn’t find the taste of it anywhere in the neural superhighway of foods that mean something to me: my mother’s tuna sandwich, my father’s mashed potatoes. It was just a soup. It was just a vegetable soup. It wasn’t the thing I’d been chasing all these years (but if it wasn’t, what was?). And really, yes, it was good. It was fine. But I couldn’t reconcile this thing here with the thing I had dreamed of. I sat back in my chair and stared at the bowl. The soup was a stranger to me.

I turned 40 last year. I last ate that soup half my lifetime ago: before I was a mother, before I was a wife, before I was successful enough as a person that you would send me to Israel because I wanted to eat some soup. I have an excellent life. But like all things that grow tall, I’ve become increasingly rigid. I can’t sleep just anywhere anymore: My neck will hurt if I don’t have a particular medium-firm pillow; I started sleeping with an eye mask and earplugs. I can’t eat strawberries because the seeds get in my teeth. I won’t sit in the middle seat; I won’t sit in the back row; I won’t sit near the toilet. I won’t wear heels. I won’t go to the movies after the trailers have started. I won’t see the dentist’s partner because the dentist is sick today.

Everything is off. Everything is boring. Everything is derivative. I read that already.

None of this is about soup, I know, I know. But hear me out. A long time ago, I was someone who was given something simple: water, carrots, tomatoes, a little cumin—and I found delight in it. I was someone who was given something that was good and received it as something that was perfect.

It is impossible to believe now, but I was someone who could be pleased by simple things once. Back then, everything was new to me: all the world and all the people and all the soups. My eyes were open. They haven’t closed since.

But who could know that it was youth and inexperience that was so delicious? Who could know that a condition of your growth and experience in the world would be that soup would go from perfect to good to okay? Who knew that growing taller would actually make you smaller? It would give you more preferences; it would make you too cynical to try something again in a new way. Eventually you would have to choose. If you loved the soup, you could stay with it and be content for life. But also if you loved the soup, you could go in search of it again and again, and each time it would wilt a little more on your tongue until suddenly you needed leeks and dill to make it palatable, until the leeks and the dill stopped working and nothing was good enough anymore.

God, I’ve made it all too complicated. That’s what I thought when I stared down at that soup, devastated by its regularness—by its very soupness. These days, the conditions for me to enjoy a hamburger are contingent on the bun having sesame seeds and astrological order and my menstrual cycle so that I won’t spit it into the sink or sneer at the person who made it for me. These days, I can’t put butter on bread without the bread having a texture to it, and I can’t eat vanilla ice cream unless there is something to bite like a chip or an almond in it. These days, if I am going to eat a vegetable soup, it has to be a vegetable soup that defeats ISIS and fades liver spots and cures belly fat, a vegetable soup that will send people screaming into streets like a postwar victory parade, grabbing women and kissing them and throwing babies in the air and catching them with big whoops. I will never enjoy simplicity again; it will never be good enough for me. I require so many more ingredients; I require so much more technique. I need to be danced for and entertained. I have made the region of my delight a tiny head of a pin. Did anyone tell me that it would be this exhausting to get older?

There’s no hunk of bread at the Village Green anymore. When I returned, the owner told me that people didn’t quite know how to handle the bread. They took too much. There was too much waste. Now they give you two slices at the register. It is still good bread. It is still good soup, really. There is a cream of spinach and broccoli soup I’m going to try next time, though. I turned my attention to my son, who was asking to try my soup, and then more and then more.