cosmiComedy
by lavinia plonka

I’ve decided to have a party. You know, a resplendent feast of savory foods I never have time to make in daily life, a room full of people who don’t know each other, festive decorations—all squeezed in between training my new dog, going to other people’s festive events, and a full time job.

I’m going to prepare a curried rice salad in advance that involves huge amounts of julienned carrots and leeks and grated radishes. To grate and julienne by hand will take forever and I only have my one hour lunch break. My food processor is broken so I dash to my sister’s and pilfer hers. The 10 minutes it takes to rifle her cabinets, find all the attachments is well worth the time, no?

I get home and set it up, ram the carrots through in record time. I grab the grating attachment blade to remove it. It won’t budge. It’s the same food processor as mine, just larger. It should be the same, right? Maybe it’s just suction. I try to loosen one side. It doesn’t budge. I squeeze my fingers under the cutting blades and try to pull up from the center, succeeding only in bruising all my fingers on the sharp edges of the blade.

Visions of sledge hammers start dancing in my head. “It’s not yours,” I tell myself, “You’d better not break it.” I release the bowl and try to pull the attachment up with the bowl. I look at the clock. I could have julienned a pound of carrots by hand in the time it’s taking to struggle with this. I’m sweating. My face is red. I begin to curse the machine. I become my father struggling with the lawn mower. Fighting with his dying car. Battling the vacuum cleaner. Sweat is pouring down. I’m going to be late for work. But I cannot let this machine triumph over me. I go downstairs and get a chisel. Slowly, painstakingly, I work the chisel around the stem, trying to loosen the attachment. I’m muttering incoherent commentary on the uselessness of trying to save time, that the machines of the world have conspired against me, that I went to college in order to be on my knees chiseling the food processor.

For some reason, Madonna floats into my head. I think to myself, “Is this why I never became rich and famous, among the greats? Because I spend too much time wasting my time with time saving devices? I mean, would Madonna be sitting here chiseling her food processor? No! She’d be twisted in an exotic ashtanga yoga pose that ensures her perpetual youth, or be busy envisioning her final album before she begins another career writing children’s books. She has a cook using the food processor. No, her cook probably juliennes vegetables by hand. He chants power mantras as he meticulously cuts each perfect carrot sliver as an act of devotion to his guru, knowing he is well paid for his perfect vegetables. I can’t afford a cook. But wait. Madonna wasn’t always rich. She began as a struggling young performer. Perhaps greatness requires that you sacrifice the food processor and only eat takeout.

But then I think of Martha Stewart, who can probably take apart a food processor and put it back together in less time than it takes me to find the scattered parts in the corners of my kitchen cabinet. Not only that, she could probably finish this rice salad, make a wreath and design a new line of towels for K-Mart during this short lunch break. Lord only knows what innovations she’ll come up with during house arrest.
I begin to feel very small. The hugeness of my insignificance looms over me as if a camera was zooming from a close-up of my hand around the blade to a wide shot of the kitchen, zooming upward over my house, now a dot among other house dots, ever upward, revealing the sea of humanity, and eventually, the famous shot of the globe from space. If I disappeared in this instant, it would not affect the universe one iota. If the rice salad doesn’t get done, if the party gets cancelled, if Madonna’s next album bombs, if Martha Stewart gets out of jail early, none of it ultimately matters. I feel a moment of profound kinship with both Madonna and Martha.

Suddenly, the blade releases. It slides off as if I have pushed a magic button, no effort, no secret password. I dump the carrots into the salad bowl. Without a second thought, I replace the blade, grate the radishes, and go to remove the blade. It’s stuck again. Martha, where are you?

Lavinia Plonka is a certified Feldenkrais practitioner, workshop leader and author of What Are You Afraid Of? A Body/Mind Guide To Courageous Living.
When not wrestling food processors, she is trying to figure out the meaning of life. Solutions to either dilemma are welcomed at laviniaplonka.com.