Tales from the Steppes

2004-02-04

12:24 p.m.
cheesecake

Last night, I ate a piece of cheesecake. This might seem even more trivial than my usual drivel, but for me, it was a major step. For you see, I love cheesecake. It is so hard to achieve a cheesecake that is dense, but not dry and just the right degree of tartness, instead of treacly sweetness.

I almost never eat cheesecake because it is almost always a disappointment. Generally I am a believer in the axiom "No guts, no glory" but cheesecake is in a special category. If I am going to consume that many calories, it damn well better be good. Disappointments cost too many stomach crunches to be indulged in more than once or twice a year.

But I suppose the real reason I do not try and find (or even just bake, let's be real here)the perfect cheesecake has more to do with the tension between longing for and the release of achieving. Sometimes having the dream of the perfect cheesecake is better than the reality of the treacly sweet undertextured dessert that I often find.

In some things, tension is absolutely necessary. Think about Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam". What if the fingers were really touching? It would have destroyed the composition. But the funny thing is, we know those fingers will be touching and the painting merely depicts the movement of god towards Adam; the moment before the release. But I wonder what the moment afterwards looked like.

Now playing: Nick Drake "Pink Moon"

Now reading: Nothing that isn't related to my thesis. :(