Street Cookie: Revelations
The street cookie I passed on a sidewalk of Buenos Aires has generated many theories. Divafish offered the scientific explanation that the red jelly is what holds the smiling face together while the rest of its fragile cookie frame crumbled to dust. LL offered a spiritual assessment on the state of the sidewalk cookie: twas karma that formed the cookie that way, and who are we to judge its form, and offer it any type of pity or praise? I delved deeper into what struck me so much about this cookie. I searched real hard why it demanded an explanation, where have I seen this cookie face before? I started to realize that it reminded me of a supernova. See its spiraling arms? For those who don’t know, a supernova is a stellar explosion, different than a nova, so take note JP and you’ll understand the origins of my name. A Nova is “a star that ejects some of its material in the form of a cloud and become more luminous in the process” (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn). So I’m in this Buenos Aires homey restaurant, trying to ignore the paintings on the wall of men with daggers knived into their hearts dripping with blood the same color of the red stew I’m being served (it’s a tango thing, I suppose). The man in the painting is almost smiling as his heart is being stabbed, an Argentinian Mona Lisa, and this reminds me of the cookie too. I left it at that, but six months later I’m still thinking of the cookie, whom I now assign celestial significance. And then the chasm of my nerdiness calls out, it whispers to me in a Yoda-like voice, You know where you’ve seen this street cookie before! Search your heart well… Dear readers, this cookie made an appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode 151, “Timescape”! Its origins are a lapse of temporal narcosis, time travel not being normal, when Captain Picard draws a smiley face in the cloud of a warp core breach as the Enterprise and a Romulan warbird are frozen in a state of absolute destruction.
So my readers, you’ve been subjected to a Trekkie moment, but now that I’ve given you more reflection on Street Cookie, I ask you for your words or pictures: have you ever seen a smiley face on something in the throes of chaos, catastrophe or cataclysm, a gesture utterly displaced from its apocalyptic surroundings?
Street Cookie
The discovery
Let’s start this off with what pushed this blog into script. One of those crazy moments where time slows down, as if to give you opportunity to observe something significant, or something you’re going to make significant. I passed by this cookie on a sidewalk in Buenos Aires, Argentina last year. Cy and I were on our way to a traditional eatery, Ña Serapia, one of those hole-in-the-wall eateries that scrape out delicious food from dimly lit kitchens and soiled pots. The cookie was just sitting there on the street all alone, not looking anything like a cookie at all. Imagine walking down the street and seeing two red eyes staring out at your from the pavement with a wicked smile. I’ve never done drugs but imagine this is the shit you’d see: a concrete demon, the sidewalk smiling at you like, “Awww shit!”.
Here’s what trips me about this cookie, besides how alone and unbothered it was to the crowds passing by: most of it is crushed (it’s cookie dust, really, not a cookie) except for its face! Physicists, engineers, detectives and smarty-pants: tell me how this cookie can be so crushed (look at it!) while its smiling face is intact? Not a crack, look at its cool smile. Why is this cookie still smiling when the rest of it is in shatters?
