//PHOTOGRAPHY: October 2008

Before I taste the rice, I take a couple really long breaths through my nose and out through my mouth and smell the grainy earthy scent of the small amount of rice in my cup. It smells stronger than I imagined it would. I think about the rice before I taste it too. I place with it on the spoon and on my lips before I let it pass into my mouth. The rice is luke warm and sticks to the spoon and my lips. I slowly grains of rice in to my mouth and I can feel a certain excitement or apprehension about doing so, I have taken the last few minutes just feeling out my spoonful and now that I have observed it so, actually tasting it has sort of an excitement about it. I know what rice tastes like, and yet I am excited to try it again now, as if I will discover something new, that I have been missing all these years. As I let the grains of rice past my lips, I taste something very familiar, but it seems more potent now. Usually rice is served with other dishes and so it takes on most of the flavor of the dish you are serving it with, so just tasting the rice, while it feels very familiar, it just seems so potent. The flavor isn't sweet, or sour, spicy, just really earthy and grainy. The rice is cold now, and it feels sticky to touch, even more so than it was before. As I eat a little more rice, I can feel it now sticking to my teeth and getting stuck in the back of my throat as I swallow it. I'm trying to eat it as slow as possible to make my rice last. I am eating grain by grain and each one appears to be a different size, shape and texture even.
I start thinking about the rices' past. Where did this rice come from. I try and think about where rice is grown. I immediately think of China, but who knows in this day and age. For all I know they could be growing rice in Montana. I ignore my cynicism and think instead that my rice was grown in China and that it traveled all the way here to me, my crappy uncle Ben's microwave in a bag rice. It is sort of disturbing to think about that aspect of it. Either way I try and think about how rice is grown and the seasons it saw before it was harvested.
Time is moving slower now and I feel less restless than at the beginning of my meditation on the rice. l think about how present I feel now. I notice that for 20 minutes now I haven't thought about how much homework I have to do, how little sleep I got last night, and how my boyfriend hasn't called or that my friend was being moody tonight. I just feel silent and calm, and glad for all the noise to be stopping. Not just the physical noise but the emotional noise that is constantly going through my head. I finnish the rest of my rice in one last big bite. I feel its cold sticky texture and how each grain sort of resists slightly to my teeth before giving way to my chewing. Each grain has as little life and a little journey to make it here, and I feel grateful for it.