I did finally make it into said literary magazine after actually completing the comp. This piece is from the first round of round two of said comp. As for how I'm feeling now... lol, things got worse actually, but that's okay. Again, not edited, so pardon what follows.
Eternal Ramen.
Can I talk to you about something?
There was once a time, not too long ago, and by which I mean less than a month ago, in which I would tell people that the only thing I truly loved in the world was a Japanese noodle dish. Ramen. One day, while watching the first specks of snow descend outside my dorm-room window, I had an epiphany. Ramen is the only thing that makes me want to continue living. Perhaps it was during one of those days in which I was late for my Japanese class and hadn't yet memorized the words that would be on the ever-impending vocabulary quiz. If it was one of those days, then I most certainly skipped that class, and that quiz, and ran wild across the street to go get ramen. I hear people do things like that when they're in love.
"Believe it!"
I want you to know that I wasn't always like this. There were other things that I used to love besides noodles bathed in steam-water. What were the things that I used to love? That slow time in the world, back home, when my old music teacher asked me a question at a parents-teacher conference.
What's your most favourite sound in the world?
She listened.
Soft piano keys.
I think that day it rained. The soil squished soft and new. Perhaps an even slower time, it felt quicker then, with another old music teacher. The marimba band was playing in assembly. I heard his voice croak soft and new at the back of the stage. He cha-cha'd with shakers in both his hands. If the skin of the shakers split, his palms would have been filled with dried fruit seeds. Not too long after- those hands, those palms- he turned into soil. When was the funeral? The slowest time: the present: a different country: the hot fog of noodles in my face. The chopsticks dive into the boiling spring. I don't want you to ask me how many times this month. I wasn't always like this. I promise. Maybe I was worried about turning twenty. Maybe it was because I started college and college is hard. Maybe it was because, after more than a year here, I still don't understand you America.
"Believe it!"
America, did you ever watch Naruto? It’s an anime about the number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja, Naruto Uzumaki! He lives in the Hidden Leaf Village but wears a bright orange jumpsuit. His name is Japanese but he has blonde hair and blue eyes. He starts off by being the worst ninja in the Hidden Leaf but works hard and becomes the best ninja in the world. His favourite food is ramen. On a little box on one of my college applications that asked, 'Who inspires you the most?' I skipped through Obama and Einstein and Aung San Suu Kyi and Socrates and Buddha and typed up, quietly, 'Naruto Uzumaki', clicked the 'submit' button and gave a little fist pump and felt my eyes glitter. During that slow time my sister and I were visiting my uncle and aunt in Toronto, who both haven't been home for god-knows-how-long and their kids don't know where they come from, and spent the weeks before the application deadline watching Naruto with my twelve-year old cousin on his bed. Outside, it snowed and snowed thicker than my dreaming eyes could process. Inside the Netflix world, Naruto is fighting Gaara, a lonely emo kid from the Hidden Sand Village during the Chunin Exams, the qualifying process for all aspiring ninjas. Both of them grew up without parents. Naruto has turned the pain from his orphanhood into an unshakable desire to make his whole village recognize him as a great ninja, despite his incompetence. Gaara, meanwhile, wants to kill everything he regards as weak and unfit to bear the pain of life, of existence itself. For him, this includes Naruto, who he is beating to a bloody pulp across the little laptop screen. With their fists, two prepubescent boys debate the philosophies of men. Gaara stares coldly while Naruto lifts his frail, crumpled body from the ground to keep fighting. The number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja says something to the effect of how he will never give up. How he will become the best ninja in the Hidden Leaf village. He gives a little fist pump and his eyes glitter. He then says those magic words, the words that we hear in every episode, but still my heart and my little cousin's heart murmur in inspired acknowledgment. Believe it. The episode ends. I imagine that a few episodes later he will return to the local ramen stand in his village and slurp his noodles in triumphant victory, as he must. Naruto resolves to never give up, to always keep fighting. My little cousin and I resolve to go get some ramen.
"Believe it!"
When one is about the same age as my little cousin, it is easy to believe that the life trajectory of Naruto is realistic and replicable. I suppose this is why, for him, our venture to go and cop some ramen would merely be finding a fun, anime-inspired meal; whereas for me it would feel like a pilgrimage. There is unique logic that supports this. He is still young enough to hope that the world will be filled with the possibility of constant ninja-like self-improvement. The bowl of ramen in front of him, the same favorite food of our shared hero, is a signifier of this possibility. If it exists in that world surely it can exist in this world too. I am a little less young enough to see that these worlds don’t quite intersect in this way. But. For me, the ramen bowl is not just a signifier of a world of ninjas- it is the world of dreams itself. For me, somehow, that bowl is everything that exists only in the world of possibility, all at once, never again. It exists in that world, but it exists only for a moment in this one. This desperate feeling cannot be experienced through the two minute sachet-and-packet variety of ramen. It is only available through ramen prepared by intensely sweating Japanese men-amongst-all-men. And once I slurp up the last noodle, gulp up the last swallow of lukewarm broth; there is nothing left to believe in. Nothing at all. Not even you.
“Believe it!”
I did America, I did. I did believe in you. I believed in your skyscraper skies the same way you believed in your homeless, who beg for dreams outside the ground floor lobby. I believed in your children the same way you believed that your guns would save them, though they shiver under their schools desks while waiting for the bullets to run out. I believed in your technicolor screens the same way you believed in my monochrome skin, the blackness of which we will both always misunderstand because of how we are made to see it. I believed in you the same way I believed in a certain number-one hyperactive knucklehead ninja, who was written to keep dreaming, no matter what. No matter what. I believed in you the same way I believed in a bowl of ramen, which I can’t possibly afford another bowl of, but still I slurp, slurp, slurp. Absurd, I know. But.
Would you mind if I talked to you a bit more about it?
One can think of ramen as a metaphor for the world. How far this metaphor goes depends on the type of broth or the size of the bowl it is contained by. The broth of being is much. Consider a few examples. God and the snap of his fingers, or the Big Bang and the four fundamental forces of physics , or the relentless march of evolutionary biology to produce the all-perfect all-environment surviving species- these can all be thought of as analogous to the mighty, universal taste of ramen broth and the way it is made. You toss a bunch of pig bones and salt and boil for hours and hours and hours. God created the world in seven days, the Big Bang happened about 13.6 billion years ago, the first homo sapiens evolved into being about 200 000 years ago- it takes a bit of time for things to turn out the way that they do. How long did it take for Beethoven to compose Symphony No. 9? Years of ego-filled crescendos that beat his ear drums into a silent dull, in which the eternal quiet of deaf nothing consumed him. And then a fight to conduct the scream of a choir unioned with an orchestra that he could not hear. How long did it take for Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Some time arguing with the Pope that he was primarily a sculptor, not a painter, and then a war with the French and then after all that, four more years and a few assistants. It takes a while for ramen broth to develop its beautiful and characteristic full flavour. Sometimes as long as eternity. One must wait until this broth is ready to transition from meagre soup to life-affirming meal. Only then, America, can you add the noodles.
There exists approximately 220 episodes of Naruto and 498 episodes of its follow up series, Naruto Shippuden. The anime has been running since 2005. The manga series it is based on consists of 72 volumes of 700 chapters and has been running since 1997, the same year I was born. You, America, have been around since 1776 and have gone through 44 presidents. There exists no clear date of origin of ramen, though the date probably lies somewhere in the early 20th century. Remember: God created the world in 7 days. The Big Bang happened 13.6 billion years ago. Homo sapiens first evolved into being about 200 000 years ago. This is the broth of the world. I don’t know when to add the noodles.
***
I just want to point out the somewhat obvious absurdity in the sentence "Ramen is the only thing that makes me want to continue living." At the time of thinking that, I did mean it, but not in the sense that the absence of ramen meant the genuine absence of life for me. It's painfully melodramatic, and is therefore supposed to be taken as a very bad joke. I think I'm funnier than I actually am; I'm the funniest person I know.
