And sometimes it is a busy Mexican restaurant. Or the monologue of a tired man that will prove the authenticity of the Mexican restaurant. The salsas are made fresh every day. Our employees have been to Mexico to learn how to make tortillas from a Mexican woman who knows everything about tortillas. The tired man points to a mound of yellow dough sitting in the kitchen. The yellow mound is evidence. The warm tortillas that have just been placed on the table have been prepared in the proper (that is to say exceptionally Mexican) way. What you should also know is that the tortillas have no unusual additives and above all are made from very ancient, very Mexican varieties of corn. Sometimes your sadness is a monologue about authentic tortillas in an autumnal European city.
Sometimes your sadness is the sight of a guy in a tight chef’s uniform next to the tortilla dough in the too cramped, too hot kitchen, making perfectly circular tortillas that will shortly be mindlessly chomped and scoffed down by other people during conversations. Sometimes sadness is the way that the guy in the kitchen rotates his wrists as he cooks tortillas. Sometimes sadness is wear caused by repetition. The guy in the tight chef’s uniform also did this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and probably again tomorrow, but with a bit of luck the day after that he might get a day off. Sometimes sadness is a quiet in between repetitions.
Sometimes sadness comes from your right: a toddler crouched under the table next to you in a busy Mexican restaurant shits his nappy whilst his parents above the table nonchalantly spoon guacamole with the tortillas made by the sweating guy in the tight chef’s uniform. Sometimes sadness is nonchalance. Sometimes sadness is like suppressing the smell that escaped from the nappy of the toddler under the table and hangs just above your soup.
Sometimes sadness is the cold, pink cocktail on a long table in a busy Mexican restaurant with the smell of toddler shit to your right. The well-intentioned salt crystals on the rim of the glass into which the cocktail has been poured look good, but they make the contents of the glass no less vile. Sometimes sadness is these well-intentioned salt crystals or the disgusted faces of everyone who tries and turns down the cocktail.
Then sadness is the wet paving stones in a city that you know your way around. Or it is in the library glistening in the drizzle where you once felt at home, where once you stared out of the window and wondered if you would witness the moment when the city would be finished (now you know that cities are never finished. Sometimes sadness just like wisdom comes with age).
Then sadness is a junkie that you first saw a decade ago playing air guitar in a shopping street, now tired and shabby in the drizzle.
Sometimes sadness is a word that comes to you when you close your eyes, a word that slips into your soul letter by letter. Dripping. Fluid. When you open your eyes the word is still there. The word is made of molten sugar. The word is syrupy and hardens as you look at it. Sometimes sadness is hardened caramel or how you can make a hard sweet weapon using heat and sugar.
Sometimes sadness is a building that has been built where another building once stood and where someone lived for twenty years without once shedding a tear.
You can also give sadness a name that begins with H.
Home loan.
Homesickness.
Hotel.
Hoisting crane.
—
[1] from: Happiness by Jack Underwood