If hospitals are the place of antibiotic resistant
bacteria, then this house is the cure.
-Katherine Anne Ceronsky
-Katherine Anne Ceronsky
When I lived here, wide-mouth jars of kombucha, kimchi, and hard cider sat preserved on various shelves. The shelves where smaller jars of bulgur wheat and powdered milk sat, home to larva of some kind, blending into other jars of white sushi rice. The shelves where Erlenmeyer flasks and approved science experiments used to live, before the physical plant sale. The shelves that I'm sure are still covered in a sticky film of dust and spilled grade-A Vermont maple syrup. I unstuck one of the empty jars and took it with me.
This is how we make it on Penrose Ave.
Kombucha:
Bring 12 cups of water (preferably wrung from the towel that was shoved in the corner where the two faces of ground-level cabinets meet to catch the water that spills from the counter and then you forgot about it until weeks later when that red-headed boy asked, "Is that smell my socks?") to a boil in a large metal pot. Allow 5-7 teabags of your choice to fully steep for 12 minutes. (If you like honey, add 20-28 tablespoons of honey.) Add one cup of sugar. (Substitute honey--Yes! More honey!, jam, or cheesy biscuits if on a sugar-free diet. We all gave up sugar for the first four hours of Lent). Allow tea to cool. Pour off the tea, sans teabags, into a large wide-mouth jar. Best if the jar is empty to start. With preferably unwashed hands, take the symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, or zoogleal mat if you wish, ("mother" and "baby" terminology may be too confusing for warranted use), and place the gelatinous blob in the jar of tea. It should float on top like a jellyfish. Cover the vessel with an old bicycle-chain-cleaning rag and place in a dank, dark place for 6-8 days. The basement will work. Drew the short straw on room-pickin' did ya? Kombucha should have a sparkling, somewhat sweet, cidery taste. Enjoy! Fill your mug! And after consumption, I hope to God that you don't end up thinking you can use poppers as asthma medication. Or worse, that you find yourself unable to figure out where the little buttons on the side of the steering wheel are that make the horn honk.
We've got these jars of things that require pickling and fermenting and those processes that if fucked up, will fuck you up. Your GI makes something that looks like the unidentifiable muck you might find in the clogged shower drain. The grimy plastic shower curtain shows a map of the world, now properly updated with "The Democratic Republic of Zaire" scrawled in permanent pen. We're quite worldly. One shower for twelve people and "I'm at the commmbination Pizza-Hut- and-Taco-Bell" blaring from the living room. This is no place for "mothers" or "babies," unless you count the baby who was also a mother. The slimy mother who produced the slimy baby after a week in the basement. Or the really big baby next door whose sarcasm miraculously doesn't fly over my head. Live the revolution, comrade. Art projects. Throw a blanket over that will you? Themed parties. I sleep through them but if I'm there, I'll be in the lion costume, regardless of the theme. Ugh, a beverage that breeds.
I don't live there anymore. And I kind of miss worrying whether there will be toilet paper, questioning if it'll shorten my life to cook in a pot with popcorn charred on the bottom, wondering why I sit in that one unsteady chair at breakfast. I think about the beginning ceramicists whose non-flat-bottom mugs might tip, scalding coffee nightmare. I remember once riding into the night for an ice cream run, but first into and over the camouflaged slackline, face hugging the ground. I think about bikinis made of tripe and "sketchy cheese" and the threat of Double Bubble suffocation. I laugh, crossing Isaacs one more time to go home for dinner, closing my eyes and walking without second guessing that someone might not stop.
I miss hearing arguments justifying why anyone would ever drink it. "I heard it can cure cancer." "It's just brimming with essential vitamins and minerals!" "It's about the image." "One cup and I've got energy for the day!"
"It's a communal thing." That's what's good for you. Fill it up.
I'm invincible. I love it. Even I can touch the ceiling and write crude, passive aggressive things like "Do your dishes, fuckers." I love those shelves, and that shower, and falling asleep to the sounds of a Come As Your Favorite One Hit Wonder Party overhead. I love the dripping countertop, and finding gum wrappers in my pockets, and waking up to the rumble of the spin cycle. I love these stories, and these people, and these jars filled with sushi rice, and critters that like bulgur wheat, and memories. They fill me up. This place fills me up.
This is surely no place for mothers or babies. But I'm no mother, and I'm certainly not a baby, and the one empty jar that I have is filling up with everything about that place and those people that makes me smile. I'll have to go back and unstuck another to catch the overflow.