oriana

anyway. here's a recipe for a marinated portobello sandwich. don't follow it without changing a lot, i haven't made this since 2014 and i don't actually know how to cook anymore

step 1: get some portobellos and scoop out the gills and pop off the stalk. cut into thin strips and soak in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, and spices overnight.

step 2: once it's done marinading, toss the mushrooms into a pan with more olive oil on a decent heat and cook through, watch them shrink and gain a bit of color. probably don't salt them until they're done cooking, apparently that's bad

step 2.5: consider turning the leftover marinade liquids into a sauce. heat and add your favorite thickening agent, and maybe add some extra flavor like a fancy soy sauce. once it's thick, add it to the pan with the cooked mushrooms.

step 3: assemble sandwich. preferably using a bread sturdy enough to not go soggy easily. you can toast the bread if you like. add a layer of pesto on each slice, then add the mushrooms, top with a mix of salad greens, slivered onions, roasted red pepper, and feta. if you like raw tomato on your sandwich they'd probably work too. put the other bread slice on top

step 4: serve with fried tofu, carrot sticks, a plum, and cashews. consider either a strong tea or a weak cider.

did you find me in a fairy circle, ringed by amantia, red and white heralding the meeting place of your mundane life and my grandiose elysian paradise? do you look at me and see impossibility, ineffability, someone who cannot be questioned because the answers do not belong to this world? and does your heart pledge to protect my ferngully home in the name of a beauty that brings you so much comfort?

or did you watch me descend from heaven? did you see the halos and heralds and stairs of light? when my feet stepped upon your soil, did you weep? does your mind race like cooped up doves as you await the proclamation of the god whose words you know perfectly? do you conceal a knife in the bouquet, waiting to determine if this prophet can prophesy to your strict standards?

i promise you that i came from neither of these places. i was shoved headfirst through a pile of flesh just like you. i am nothing but a human. no fairy, no angel, no machine, no devil, no legion. and many of you will say you believe me, and perhaps you think you do, but i do not, cannot believe you in turn.

this is why i must become grander than myself. if these ethereal robes are to be draped upon me, i will choose which robes i wear for myself. this is why, at least in part, i call myself a cloud - a cloud that obscures the heavens so often assumed to be perfect, a fog weaving through haunted forests, the rain that brings the sprouts you've cultivated in your garden.

and when the dichotomies and hierarchies are left to rot, when the expectations we hang on ourselves and others collapse, when humans are allowed to simply be human, i can be human again.

but given the choice, i guess i'd appreciate you thinking of me in the fairy circle. just think deep about why you want that.