The Shape of Discontent

One of my teammates I was just on the road with for two weeks has some unusual eating habits. First of all he is an aspiring vegetarian, but can't seem to work it out. While some people tread that dietary path for reasons of health or conscience, my chum is on it because meat seems kind of weird to him. Just some meat. If it seems to meaty. Or isn't disguised enough. Or something like that.

He has a bunch of foibles like that. This is too stringy, that smell reminds him of something he doesnt like, that thing is just creepy. It goes on and on. The one I was thinking about today was that he doesn't like cashews because of their shape.

Now, I respect taking a strong stance against an oddly-shaped foodstuff. Eggplant seems kind of weird to me like that so I steer clear of it. But the delicious cashew? It's shape seems full of warm character. Like a comma, but really I picture it more of an apostrophe or teamed up to make a semi colon. It seems to have something to say. The quote marks of the nut world.

Perhaps they are curled up take a nap? We often see them in the can spooning each other. That's generally pleasant. Does my friend think that they are up to something? That their curvy shape implies some sort of moral ickiness? Like they might do their business around corners.

When I pressed him on the matter, he said that he wasn't sure: that they were just weird.

So, I got bought some at the store today and took a closer look.

Now, with most things under the 300mm zoom lens, stuff looks a little different. You see the details you overlook in day to day life. I started seeing things in the cashew that I didn't like: in some of the shots they had a grub-worm aspect. Little nodes looking like tiny feet. It was all-too organic. They were too bumpy, too malformed. I started to get a creepy feeling too. Where was the happy smooth quotation mark that I pictured?

But I know that everything you shoot that tight ends up with a certain amount of that going on. We see things as tidy from a distance, but up close we see the flaws and lose our comfortable sense of overall form. I find it with flowers; from a distance we see the idea of them, grace and form. But in tight they are a mess: pollen all over the place and stuff falling all over. Very untidy. I like that about flowers, they pull it off.

My man the cashew was giving me doubt, though.

Symmetrical nuts like the almond have it made. They form a nice teardrop, and they have very gentle, graceful slopes. It's easy to admire the almond. Cashews in comparison are unmade bed, like a peanut that went wrong somehow.

I frowned at the cashew and paused to reflect.

Absently, I popped my subject matter's mate into my mouth and munched away on a few.

Delicious.

All was forgiven.