We are sitting at the slim red counter on red stools that try eagerly to be ergonomic. The pizza box atop the counter is open, its customary ribbon hastily cast to its side. In the box is a pizza. A Pizza Hut pizza, no less. The holy grail of pizzas in a land where thin, wafery crust is king. Wood-fired pizzas taste fantastic. They are not thick, though. They are not doughy. They are not propped up by acres of signage and branding that make the first bite a delectable consumerist sin.
For us, it is the nineteenth or twentieth bite. We are nearly halfway into our pizza. The sausage tastes like breakfast sausage. Breakfast sausage tastes good. We begin to talk of other pizzas: relishing Chicago deep dish and St. Louis’ Pi, binge-eating at Cici’s. Our visual cortices key off of past combinations of light and no longer the present one.
The pizza is good. Don’t get me wrong. It is not, though, as good as we thought it would be. Pizza would be solace. It would be salvation. It would fill our stomachs and then fill the rest of us, too. Its gastronomical procession would never end.
Such a thing is impossible. The pizza is finite. Soon enough, in the box remain only peppers between the cracks of the corrugated cardboard. Stomachs, happy for a time, begin eliminating straight away. Comfort recedes. The transparent door swings open and the sidewalk travels up to meet your feet.
Pizza is good. Pizza is temporal.
I believe in the archetype of pizza. The archetype never leaves.
(sunrise) Taiwan (sunset) 