A few weeks ago, I was trapped in a room with a pot of plastic flowers. The room was warm; the air was stale and did not move. The impeachment trial droned from a radio in the corner. One of the house managers was speaking; he kept saying “William Jefferson Clinton,” repeating all three names. Weak afternoon sunlight was filtered through a layer of ice that had condensed on the inside of the storm window. Magazines, dull when new and now outdated, lay strewn on low tables.
Usually, once a glance has told me flowers are plastic, I don’t pay any more attention to the space they occupy. Now I was trapped in a grim room where my most promising companion was a clutch of pink plastic. Which variety of flower was rendered in low-density polyethylene, I am at a loss to say. They seemed to be something more than carnations and less than roses. The leaves were medium green, the shade reminded me of toy soldiers I played with as a child. The half-dozen stems were stuck in a foam block, the kind that dry out and disintegrate in your hands.
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Gastro-Imperialism
I have a friend who grew up in Bengal. When he reached adolescence, instead of sneaking out behind the house to smoke a cigarette, he sneaked out and ate meat. Although his vice was different, the result was the same. He choked and gagged and began to feel ill. Not only that, he was busted. “My mother could tell as soon as I walked in the house,” he said. “She could see it in my face.”
That was almost 30 years ago; this generation of Asian mothers are more accustomed to having their children come home smelling of fried animals. There was an Associated Press photo in the paper a few weeks ago, showing a chubby child in Thailand shoving a hamburger into her mouth with both hands. The wire story said all across Asia, a thousand-year-old tradition of vegetarianism is falling apart, a victim of American fast-food franchises. Overweight kids, stuptified as their stomachs digest all that McDonald’s and KFC stagger through the streets of Bangkok and Bombay.
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