SOUP IS ON

 It's funny how often the word "SOUP" has shown up in my life. In really unexpected places. Like not just a restaurant, I see soup everywhere. It's like a sixth sense. Saw it on a bumper sticker the other day.  I loved that word when I was a kid.  I don’t know when I first heard the story of stone soup , its an old folk tale about a person pushing a stone around in a big pot in a town of starving people and everyone peeks in and calls them crazy and says “we can’t eat that” but slowly each person realizes they have something to contribute. “I have a few carrots” someone offers from their garden, and I have an onion someone exclaims , and another person had a bulb of garlic and just a few beans not enough to really feed anyone, but then someone else has a few beans and another and another and suddenly there is a big pot of soup with enough to nourish the whole town.

I have held onto that story because I see us in it. Not as if we are the starving townspeople. No, I see us as the beans. We are the old onion in the back of the pantry, and the little flakes of sea salt, and sometimes we are even the plump chicken, we all are the thing that can be made into a soup. We are the mix, the exciting masala, the cool gazpacho, the ancient healing medicine of grandma's chicken soup. Everyday we come together with what we have, and the magical kismet of existence is who we run into, think of, meet, break bread with, write letters to and interact with.The soup of the Day, we create together. 

The idea of a melting pot is one of my absolute favorite descriptions of humanity. That's part of what I love about New York City or even every random bus and crowded elevator.The uniqueness of how we all show up and create a new unwritten recipe with every combination of who we are.. And it's one of the many reasons this political administration scares me. We can not make stone soup without everyone's gifts and skills. We will die of blandness. We need all the different types of people with all their own complexities to flavor the pot. Sweet,sour, salty, bitter, umami, peppery piquance, even the tastes of metal and calcium, new tastes and flavors are being discovered everyday. I am not saying we will die of blandness because deporting all the Latino deports the flavor they bring to the pozole. Although yes that will happen. I am saying the diversity of thought and knowledge is what makes us great. We die without the input, we die without the argument and conversation of different perspectives. That's the melting pot to me. We can not survive on a soup of just salt. 

When I was a kid I loved the word Soup so much, I wrote it on my backpack, I scribbled it on walls, it was like my “tag” if I was ever brave enough to vandalize a wall, that's what I wrote, before There was "Milktoast" (My first love) Soup is what I carved into trees and scraped in the pavement with the chalk of other rocks, If you were ever walking around the tiny hamlet of Doylestown in the late 80s you might have seen my work. A small scribble of soup in the alleyways, or adorning the famous walls of the County Movie Theater men's bathroom. "Soup". That was me. Don't ask me how it came to be that the men's room of a movie theater renowned for its crass perverted doodles, was the Hangout of my teenage years, just know that the small bowl of Soup drawn betwixt a bevy of dancing penises, that's where I began my career as an illustrator.

Soup, spoon. Those were the words that formed my early cottage core vibe . I think it’s funny that I love that word and also tango with depression. The very word soup seems to be the antidote to everything , but especially depression. It has the remedy contained within itself… Soup. it spells it out for you S O U P . So Up . So Get Up already , Stand On Up !!! I don’t know, maybe I put down my soup spoon because I don’t like to be told what to do. Don’t tell me what to do soup, I’ll cry if I want to!!!

I moved on to other words as a teenager, Paradox was my word, then "Amygdala" a part of the brain that controls emotion, then "Trichotillomania" the disordered behavior of pulling out ones own hair, I liked the fancy and the obscure words, The party words, the ones that i just knew would impress someone at a party. Some people turn to party drugs, for me, it was words. I turned my nose down at the simplicity of lowly soup. These grown up years my fondness for words led me to the ones for which there is no real English Translation ."Kintsugi " the Japanese art of mending of cracks with gold , "Kummerspeck" The German word for the weight you gain from eating sorrow, literally "Grief Bacon" . The internet feeds me all the obscure party words I could dream of. I forget them instantly. And then soup. There it is again, whispering from the old canvas knapsack of yesteryear. A ghost word dragging its chains across my memory.

I keep being reminded of it. Really it pops up everywhere or maybe I’m just particularly attuned. I’m like a dog resting comfortably until I hear my buzzword . I have a pavlovian head tilt. Soup? What ? Huh? Did someone say soup?

Yes that happens with the word bathtub as well. If you don't know, I am The Bathtub Bandit. The self proclaimed world renowned connoisseur of bathtubs, If you invite me to your home, I'm taking a bath. If you're talking about a bathtub at the table next to me, I am pulling up a chair. I love them, and maybe soup is the reason why? We all know bathtubs are just the soup of ourselves right? That’s the joke anyway. It’s why all the bathtub antagonists are against them. "Those people" are always like “baths are disgusting, you are just stewing in your own filth”. But for me , nothing sounds better than a warm bath full of epsom salts and the worries of my day washed off in the water. Its not filth, its experience, its the traffic jam and broken jar and furtive glance and save the children infomercial and that Prince song on repeat and the thought that I should really look into building a Capybara Motel, or maybe selling Knishes out of a cart and that's how Hugs and Knishes could have started. The bathtub is the whole day unfolded, the actual Soup of the Soul.

So today I was listening to a show in the background of my studio. It’s The Guardian. From the early 2000 flip phone era about a lawyer with a drug charge forced to do community service for children in the court system. Usually I listen to books or podcasts or movies when I draw . Especially on long coloring days , 8 -12 hours of coloring goes by real fast when the “Sons of Anarchy “ is playing in the background!” A few days ago one of my friends suggested The Guardian during a conversation about the Mentalist. Anyway, this episode was about the infuriating case of a young girl from Thailand being used as a drug mule. People would fill balloons with drugs and make the kids ingest them and then when they arrived in the states force feed them laxatives to retrieve. This little girl is seeking asylum, but is not granted and a lawyer gives an impassioned speech trying to get the judge to change his mind , in it he says “Your honor, we can not let this girl return to her country and be used as a human suitcase for drugs.” I know he says this because I rewind and listen thrice. Because he doesn’t say suitcase. He says soup case. He says “human soup case for drugs “ ….”Soup Case”!

I can not stop thinking about it. It’s such a wonderful weirdness. The most spoonery of spoonerisms. Just thought I would mention it so that if it ever comes up in conversation you’ll know what I am talking about. You’ll understand my new band name, you’ll hop on board the Soup Case Hose bandwagon should I be so lucky to adopt a child or a puppy or an amnesiac. Be forewarned if you forget your name, I am introducing you as my friend Soup Case. 

I really just wanted to share one of my small joys, a good curious twist of phrase.

I also really like how you can have Nut Case.... a derogatory term for a crazy person. And now you can have a Soup Case, a term yet to be defined... and that's really a Soup to Nuts Case...which is pretty great if you like things that run the whole gamut.

I really do feel a little lift when I hear Soup. But mostly I liked the reminder of soup today, because like I said. I see myself in it. I see myself as an ingredient of a big empty pot, thrown together with whoever else shows up for the creation of the day, all the wonderful flavors we can create together. And I realize this….. I don’t leave my house. These past 5 years that I have let depression live with me have really changed my patterns. Sometimes I don’t venture past the front door for weeks, days. I have taken myself out of the soup. I try to share my ingredients from afar, the thoughts and prayers equivalent to actual sustenance . I’m the absurdly soft old lone potato sprouting in the dark.

And that is not my destiny. So I really like the reminder to stir it up. To get out. To engage, to climb in the chaos and create nourishment with other people. That’s the very secret to the universe and I have been closing my door and my eyes to it. As an epiphany haver and an epiphany forgetter, visual clues are a lifeline. Any reminder that can bring me back , is a gift.

Today it's Soup. S O U P, stand on up . Stand On Up, it is on and it is good.