notes on pig
PIG (a file that has been open for weeks, with little added to in the interim)
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I saw a film the other day. In one of the opening scenes Nicolas Cage makes a mushroom tart. His truffle pig, who lives in his shed in the Oregon woods with him, fossicks around at his feet. He clods flour together, with maybe an egg. The counter is narrow and flour sifts into the dark room, out into the space of the room, its specks lit singly by sunlight. You see it in the air against the dark of the floor, against the ginger of the pig’s bristle. It sits against the skin of the pig’s face.
There is alchemy, there is romance, to what it means to piece clods of something together, to make a form that is outwith the natural order, like a tart is.
He folds the now smooth pastry against a tin, cooks mushrooms over hot coals outside. Now, some has been eaten, and he leaves the remainder in the cooking dish. Places it down on the stoop to his cabin, and lets the pig have their fill.
This man and this animal live in the same space, eat the same food, drink the same water from the brook. The man instructs, suggests, communicates, through a range of burr like clucks and trills. He uses the sides of his mouth, his face twists in ways it needn’t to form human words. There is music, repetition, and the pig understands: some meaning is transmitted.
Some weeks ago, more now, Lisa Robertson, talking about Robert Glück: a sentence is a unit of arousal.
Glück on a sentence: The landscape is my longing materialized; there is no more world; the sentence that describes landscape, clothes, and food goes nowhere––it’s already aroused, a heaven where L. and I are making love.
I reused this formulation later, talking to Sinae: food is a unit of communication. That is, you don’t need to speak or talk about it if you’re sharing food with somebody; the food is a vessel of communication.
The beer is fruity, we drink it in unison.
The food is spicy, clears each of our separate sinuses separately, together, at once.