User:KiefKief/A Personal Essay

A Personal Essay
By Kiefer Moll

What exactly does make me tick? Or maybe you're more interested in what makes me stop ticking? Well, through this journey I hope to satisfy the criterion pertaining to both of these questions; leaving yourself, the reader, both comfortably satiated yet inexplicably yearning for more and more. It's going to be exhilarating and exhausting, enlightening yet gruelling; it'll take you to the darkest recesses of your soul before enveloping you in joy and convincing you that you've been reborn into a second life as the most beautiful butterfly on earth. If, by the end of this essay, your head hasn't exploded, spontaneously morphed into an enlarged strand of DNA or both, then chances are you're me... or Hugo Weaving.

The Beginning
It started, as all stories do, with a jar of pesto. This particular jar contained green pesto, and had only just been opened for the very first time. This is important to note - when a jar of pesto is first opened, before it has been met with human contact, you will find that a thin layer of oil that has separated and formed across the top of the jar. It covers the pesto in its entirety, and is the source of great pleasure upon penetrating with a spoon and stirring to reunite it with the sticky, nutty goodness beneath. This motion thickens and moistens contents, giving it that oily texture and sheen that we know and love. Now the pesto is ready for dolloping, spreading, drizzling, or whatever you have planned for your little jar of happiness. And it is a jar of happiness. It can save lives. Trust me.

As it happens, I was planning to both dollop and spread my jar - on toast with strong, melted cheddar - but from here it becomes irrelevant to the story. What happened between between these two events is what matters.

The problem with that oily layer and its separation is that pesto jars are often filled very close to the brim, and when you push a spoon/fork/spork into it with the innocent intention of mixing, it can tend to rise and overflow in a green, lipid-fuelled rage. This is in fact exactly what happened to me. Unfortunately, being the stocky, don't-know-my-own-strength gorilla that I am, I stirred far too vigirously for the jars own good and sent a cacophony of juice hurtling through the air in my immediate vicinity, some of which thought it reasonable to terminate upon my person. Pieces of pine nut, basil and garlic painted my fresh white work shirt in a Picasso-esque mural, staining deep into the stitching and illiciting a clear, commanding FUCKING... TITS!!!!!1111 from my mouth. The shirt would inexorably need to be changed. My highly anticipated dining experience would be delayed. Man v. Food Nation was starting in 5 minutes. The day was a disaster, no question.