Eggplant, Magpie, Ice
ABOUT THREE years ago, when we were both trying to figure out if we could write, R. sent me a vignette he drafted in Seoul. Through his essay, titled “Eggplant,” I learned that R. could write. I also learned about “the opposite of Proustian,” a phrase he coined to describe one particular evening trip to the grocer's. Staring at the produce, seven thousand miles from home, he felt tears rise to his eyes. He was struck in particular by the eponymous eggplants of his essay—there they were, row upon row, stacked one atop the other, their deep purples segueing into an unbroken canvas of color. Nothing but eggplant in his field of vision. Because he was far from home, the eggplant collective seemed untethered, a singular blob floating in space and time, free of context and therefore free from memory. He would not get more than what he came to get. Only after he collected himself was he able to select two “healthy-looking eggplants” to take home for dinner.
As a response, I sketched an anthropomorphic eggplant with a cherubic face. The sketch was, in hindsight, an indictment of my artistic understanding of eggplant, health, and perhaps memory. Nonetheless, I was rather proud of it then. I sent a photo to R. on a lark. It would not cheer him up, of course—he was already back in New York, dealing with an altogether different sort of dislocation, the sort that you might feel when you have set your heart on becoming an art gallerist, only to realize that in this vocation wealth, connections, and birthright count for more than you had imagined. You might say it was too late then. But in a way, many things are too late.
Every Wednesday now, before my morning class in the art history building, I have an experience that is close to the opposite of Proustian. Someone here loves Miro, so as
