Everybody Loves Ketchup

I stayed up early past the crack of dawn this morning and went to Rainbow for food stuffs. The deli was just opening so I waited patiently for the novelty of having someone wrap shit up. Eventually deciding on a pot roast I took the first beef hunk in the row and headed home to cook it while I slept. I decided on a Coca-Cola, carrot and onion roast. It turned out pretty bland so I packed some ketchup along with it for my night lunch. I haven’t been a real big fan of ketchup, generally skip it on burgers and hotdogs and use less than the recommended amount for cooking. But, when I dipped some of that bland beef into the tomatoey corn sugar goo – I had a Susan Sontag moment.

I imagined Sontag sitting on some faraway veranda sipping orange juice champagne and gazing out across the edge of an ocean speckled with Palm trees. She stops drinking, sets her book down on the table and for the first time realizes that Palm trees are beautiful, despite their kitsch or saccharine connotations. Despite the fact that she knows they’re ‘supposed to be’ beautiful, a trait that makes them kind of tacky.

With the small floor heater positioned between my legs I lean over my plate and just gaze at the ketchup. It’s disturbingly homogenous. It looks like something squeezed out of a kindergarten class. I imagine it to be what clown blood looks like. I love it. It took my undersalted roast and transformed it into boiled meat candy. I start wrapping my fingers with the slices I had precut before heading to work. Some work more as finger sheaths and others as rings, one particularly long one I’ve taken and made a wristwatch with.

Covering the surfaces with ketchup I ornament my new accessories. Here is a ruby ring! Here, a rare collection of red amethysts have been inlaid into my finger sheath! On my wrist there is now a 24 hour watch without numbers, very cute. I make a fist. The rings and watch stay in place on my hand but my finger sheath has turned into a blade protruding from my knuckles. Without disturbing my prizes I bring my hand back slowly to explore it in detail while I mouth the lyrics to Tool’s Disgustipated as it plays on the screen in front of me.

The music goes silent. Probably a silence brought on by the attempt to create ‘hidden tracks’ that comes from the compact disc era.

I bring the end of the meat blade up against the screen. I rub it on the ‘next’ button on my iTunes. Nothing happens. I’m not surprised. With my unadorned right hand I type out ‘stan ge.’ Girl From Ipanema comes up and I make it play the titular track. I wait. I wait for Astrud Gilberto. I wait, and then I hear her sing talking. I bring the blade about the screen in a fashion that mimics the walking of puppets. I’m leaving wave forms of grease on the screen as it breaks into the first horn solo.

I imagine Joseph Beuys behind me, arms crossed, silently nodding in approval. Through the reflection of the large window in front of me our eyes meet and he mouths “I know.” He says it in German. I know what he means. I know too.