In collaboration with Local Grocery Store.
A grocery shop is simply a store that retails a range of products, fresh or packaged. An hour ago, I made a trip, and a note on my phone reminded me to get a jar of creamy peanut butter. I found this ramen recipe on Facebook that I now enjoy. I do not remember the cook and the science is solid, the sauce is always creamy. The instructions are as follows; (1) cook noodles without the seasoning packet, drain, and save that water. (2) In a separate pan, heat vegetable oil with added chili flakes, cloves of garlic, soy sauce, and the seasoning packet; keep mixing for about thirty seconds to avoid burning. (3) Add the saved water and creamy peanut butter, and reduce this. (4) Once you are satisfied with the consistency of this sauce, add your noodles and enjoy it hot. Whoever came up with the recipe asked a question: ramen in peanut butter? The cook who passionately told me to try also asked himself that same question in the beginning. I started watching this video with that very question: ramen in peanut butter?
As a jar of creamy peanut butter changed its place from the shelf to my basket, I realized how often we are our questions. Shadows and illusions today will become definitions and meanings of tomorrow. They say understanding fundamental particles help us understand our universe, is it because how often we steal from the dark matter that things today are working in ways they have never worked before? I suppose it is simply how I tell my story and how I understand another’s story.
If something like a sign attached to a ceiling indicating an aisle of canned food and jars was a charged balloon, it will deflect an approaching charged balloon like the one that escapes a child’s hand in the previous aisle. There will be two charges: the one on the sign that turned into a balloon and the one on the balloon that escaped. This situation will be similar to Rutherford’s scattering experiment modeled using charged balloons; his questions about seemingly simple repulsions tell us that sometimes we can know things by their effects, not by seeing.
I do and don’t get plundering this universe. It’s like that song which is nice so it becomes a hit but it won’t make any sense. So you let it go.
The one thing this peanut butter ramen recipe, the balloons and that song have in common is curiosity, a superpower albeit consequences. Curious people will plunder this universe to escape into infinity. To be able to disintegrate and reintegrate. To no longer care about the things that make the past or the future. Mind you, escaping into infinity is no solution; it’s about being present under the stars that a ceiling hides. It’s an urge to be a sin at the event horizon of a black hole. Is there a need to know the consequences of stealing infinity? Well, the universe is complicated. And I am not sure it’s a matter of failing or succeeding; it’s a matter of traveling at the edge of time and space – I can slow down to observe the relativity or I can be so fast that I don’t even notice.
Today I was reminded of the many stolen properties I possess, once belonging to the dark energy unraveling between stars and the unlocked monsters hiding in the night sky. How does a situation so wrong feels so right?
Occasionally I forget to marvel at the duality, the infinity in finite moments we steal from existence. Well that is hardly efficient, won’t you say?