by Sheila Heti
Photogenic? Perhaps only in black/white photobooths. I get photobooths and elevators mixed up sometimes. These inventions share a similar constraint of dimensionality—silver modes of time travel. $20 bills feel like a complete experience—coming and going like a breath, a flash, a bell.
What is your favorite sound in the world? This is a nod to your sensibility or perception of the worse sound.
Mulatu Astatke—Tezeta (Nostalgia)
What kind of soap do you use?
Aesop’s body cleansing slab. You need a hot knife to cut it into pieces—something I didn’t know before.
And, would you cross a river for someone whom you do not love? And, cannot love?
This feeling is familiar. I’d rather watch the water from a bridge. I would like to become a stronger swimmer.
Have you berated a haiku before? If not, how would you berate it?
I’m thinking of a serrated knife going through a ripe tomato.
If you could see into the future, what kind of writer/poet would you like to be known for?
I hope to write the book(s) people would want to read on the bus.
Do you like drawstring pants? Have you ever worn them and write a haiku? I love drawstring pants—I always think it’s a fancy version of a garbage bag that can’t be thrown away. That I could not be thrown away so readily.
One day I’ll be as brave as Christine Shan Shan Hou and throw away my pants that don’t have elastic waistbands.
Are you happy with this chapbook? How long did it take you to compose it?
Wendy’s Subway did an amazing job at turning these poems into a beautiful chapbook. I have a very fast morning routine and can get ready to leave the house in about 30 minutes. That’s how I wrote these poems.
Have you been to Đà Lạt before? This chapbook, your fake haikus, made me think of the waterfalls there. You could feel water dropping/flowing before a splash. Your last line in most of your haikus behave like this mermaid splash.
My mother has mentioned it rains very lightly, like mist, in Đà Lạt. Mưa phù. I think I may have been on a small rowboat in Đà Lạt the last time I went to Vietnam (2005). I remember there were many banana trees.
What is a poet to you? Meaning . . . how do you define it? Do you think, other than a different form, a poet is different than a writer? Someone told me once or perhaps it was me that once thought a poet has direct access to God and a writer meanders a bit, takes a long detour before accessing God. What do you think?
A poet eats ramen while walking. Poetry sits with me in sweats on a couch eating a handful of robin’s egg-colored malt milk chocolates until my bottom lip turns blue. A poet reads about the history of shea butter and the healing properties of turmeric. I’m not sure where God is, but my boyfriend dug up my sweet tooth. My favorite poets are very romantic.
What do you think should be the national fruit of Vietnam, if you had to choose one fruit in the world?
Longan. As a child, my mother would make rings out of the seeds. I love that image of my resourceful mother, at a young age, so small yet so strong that she could carve a ring out of the seed and fit her finger into the center of the fruit.
What are you reading right now? Would you recommend them?
We Were Meant to Be a Gentle People, Dao Strom. (“You cannot call yourself a gentle person without simultaneously knowing your own capacity to brutally miss the mark.”)
If you were to make a meal for Marina Abramovic, what is that meal? And, what do you think her response to your dish would be?
Cháo with salted duck egg garnished with chopped green onion.
Why cháo? When I think of Marina Abramovic, I think of fish and bánh bao and fermented rice.
Cháo is a durational piece: cooking rice in water over time and heat. We take turns stirring the pot. I will ask Marina to cut the salted egg in half.
If I had children, I would name one Green Onion and the other Red Onion. Would you name your children after a fruit/vegetable if you had any?
My mother’s neighbors in Vietnam would give their children beautiful names at birth, but never call them by those names. They would have nicknames like Cam or Nhãn so evil spirits wouldn’t take their children away.
If you were to make me a five course dinner . . . ?
Hột vịt lộn & rau răm as an appetizer
Bánh ít trần
Bánh hỏi
Green onion tofu (w/salt & pepper of course)
Sâm bổ lượng for dessert
I believe I would enjoy this elaborate course. Whenever I see this “hột vịt lộn”—I always think that the ducks are having a chicken fight. Why sâm bổ lượng for dessert?
My parents made sâm bổ lượng with seaweed they harvested from the Pacific ocean last summer. It’s the only Vietnamese dessert I am excited about. I associate all of the ingredients with Asian grocery stores—canned longan, canned lychee, tiny dehydrated apples, barley swimming in a simple syrup made from gold rock sugar. The dessert resembles brown glass, which I love.
Is there a poet/writer/philosopher (dead or alive) that you would love to take a shower with nonsexually? Would you wash his/her hair or kneecaps?
Clarice Lispector. I wouldn’t dare get in the middle of Clarice and her hair.
What dead poet would you take a shower with sexually? And, why?
Clarice Lispector. See above.
If you could come up with a pen name, what name would you want it to be . . . ?
Thủy Tinh
I think flossing someone’s teeth is really tender (going to the dentist isn’t tender and dentists in general are not tender), would you floss Hồ Xuân Hương’s teeth? What kind of remnants would you pull out of her mouth?
The smell of incense
Burning beside a lake
Springtime
What is the most clever way for one writer to insult another writer? Didn’t Thoreau do that in his opening of Walden? He insulted the readers, I believe, in the most respectable way.
Cut up the book and rearrange it with fewer words. That’s a kind of compliment.
If you were to do a performance art from a literary standpoint, what would that performance look like in words?
Stacey Tran in conversation with Vi Khi Nao.
What was the best performance art you have seen? What happened in it?
Okwui Okpokwasili’s Bronx Gothic. She performed this piece in the corner of a building where I took an art history class in college. She was moving the whole time. When she used her voice I felt like I was very small, like I feel in mountains or caves. She sweat through her purple dress.
DIEGO ENRIQUE OSORNO
■
Come and Eat the World’s Largest Shrimp Cocktail in Mexico’s Massacre Capital
Translated from Spanish by Christina MacSweeney
FROM Freeman’s
IN THE LAGUNA MADRE, a vast area of salt water that crosses the dividing line between Mexico and the United States and comprises a dozen communities in Tamaulipas and Texas, an army of fishermen caught over 17,000 penaeid shrimp so the local government could organize a Festival del Mar at La Carbonera beach, and prepare a shrimp cocktail weighing 2,257 pounds. The aim was to change the negative image of San Fernando, where, in 2010, on an August afternoon, 72 mostly Central American migrants were massacred in the storehouse of a ranch, and where one April morning in 2011, the tortured bodies of 196 people were found buried in the shimmering green pastures. In the following weeks mass graves were discovered containing an as yet unverified number of corpses, which some local authorities estimate to be around 500. A macabre joke circulated on Facebook and Twitter at the time: “Come to San Fernando, we’ll welcome you with open graves.” During Holy Week 2014, in this place where Mexico’s most awful 21st-century massacres have occurred, the governor of Tamaulipas state, Egidio Torre Cantú, accompanied by a dozen regional mayors, would stand around a monumental glass tumbler to celebrate a new record: the largest shrimp cocktail in
the world.
Along with agriculture, fishing was one of the main economic activities in San Fernando until the war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, plus the military and naval presence, brought life in the town to a standstill, and caused the cessation of mass celebrations between 2009 and 2013. And that is why the Festival del Mar became an important event for the people of the region, some of whom could not believe they would have the opportunity to see in the flesh Mariana Seoane, an actress on the Televisa channel who once posed in the nude for gentlemen’s magazines and has a single entitled “I’ll Be a Good Girl.” Seoane would be the festival queen and, at the behest of the euphoric crowd, would sing her three hits, turning to give the crowd a view of her figure. Another important moment would be the appearance of Sonora Dinamita, among whose members were two “mulattoes” who, according to the mayor of San Fernando, would give the women of the town a visual experience equivalent to that offered by Seoane to the men.
But the star of Good Friday would be the penaeid shrimp, a small crustacean whose bulging black eyes contrast with its curved, cylindrical body from which sprout two pairs of antennae—one long, one short—and five pairs of legs. Its body ends in a pointed tail that, along with the head, is removed before it is eaten. With just ten or twelve of these crustaceans, water and ketchup, it is possible to prepare a small seafood cocktail, although in Tamaulipas and many other places it is usual to include avocado, garlic and lime juice; in neighboring Texas, they also add cucumber and serrano chili. When oysters and clams are added, this hangover cure is generally known as “Back to Life,” a name that in present-day San Fernando is not particularly appropriate.
During the festival I had a discussion with a man who was convinced that shrimp had been created for no other reason than to be ingested in a cocktail. According to him, when placed in a glass tumbler, they have a better flavor than when deviled, cooked in chipotle sauce, or garlic, or butter; served with Philadelphia; or wrapped in bacon and cheese; or a la Veracruzana. Or even when served with that chili pepper water they make so well in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, which once held the Guinness record for the largest shrimp cocktail in the world. In northeast Mexico you can find this expensive delicacy sold dried by the highway at incredibly low prices. The roadblocks installed by the military in the region, supposedly to reduce violence, have benefited this small sector of the economy, since the shrimp vendors are able to sell their product to the lines of impatient, fearful motorists. On the journey from Reynosa to San Fernando, I came across one of these roadside vendors, and asked if his shrimp were from San Fernando, to which he replied in the affirmative; they came from the Laguna Madre. He uttered that toponym in such a solemn, respectful tone, it was as if he was referring to some species of Aridoamerican deity. The same tone was adopted by the announcers on regional radio stations every time they mentioned the lagoon. Between the Ramón Ayala corridos and Julión Álvarez ballads saturating the airwaves, there was no mention of anything but shrimp, and the great feat about to be accomplished in San Fernando. On the morning of Good Friday, just outside the center of town, caravans of pickup trucks crammed with families formed in the Loma Colorada gas station before heading off together for La Carbonera, less than 30 miles distant. The sound of Banda Sinaloense music filled the whole place, because the quick workers in the convenience store adjoining the gas station had decided to install huge speakers to liven up the morning. A mile or two farther on, three state police patrols were waiting for a group of men armed to the teeth: the latter were the governor’s bodyguards and had arrived the night before by road, without their boss. The governor was coming by helicopter but needed his security team for the three-minute drive from the soccer field that formed an improvised heliport to the venue at which the feat of prowess was to take place.
The police officers agreed to pose for the photojournalist Victor Hugo Valdivia while they waited for the governor’s bodyguards, whom they themselves would escort along with a naval patrol, just in case. “There’s a lot of movement,” said the head of the police squad with an enormous smile, pointing his machine gun toward the highway—toward a former cattle ranch that a few years before had been requisitioned by the Navy as its local headquarters. It was also in this spot that both the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, and even some equis—as greenhorn delinquents are disparagingly known—set up roadblocks to keep watch over who was entering and leaving San Fernando. On Good Friday it was the police and soldiers who had mounted the series of checkpoints. For the occasion, the Army decided to roll out its most recent acquisition from the arms market: the SandCat, a very fast, highly armored truck with a diverse array of weaponry. It is the vehicle with which the regional military forces hope to confront the monstruos: vehicular monstrosities designed by the Zetas that have already been operating in the area for some time. The lieutenant in charge of the group was carrying a 7.62-mm MAG rifle, and didn’t allow many photos to be taken of his SandCat, “because the criminals will copy it.” “How can they when the vehicle’s designed in the United States?” I asked with not a little naïveté. “They kidnap the people who can, and make them do it.” While we were talking, the governor’s security team passed, escorted by the state patrols, in turn escorted by the Navy patrols.
At the entrance to La Carbonera there was an old boat, on which a number of workmen were hanging a banner advertising the presence of Mariana Seoane. The event was scheduled to start at 10am; to hold it in the afternoon, or worse still after dark, would have been too risky, however many bodyguards, police officers and military roadblocks were in place. La Carbonera is a shrimp-fishing village with a single, unpaved main street, and this was packed with cars waiting for a parking space. Very soon a long line had formed, advancing at a snail’s pace, thus allowing some of the drivers to get out of their vehicles to buy the dried shrimp sold by fishing families outside their houses. These fishermen use a trap known as a charanga: a net attached to a V-shaped structure, which is dropped in the marine channels through which the shrimp are expected to pass. Some fishermen work at night, when the crustaceans are most active.
When we reached the shores of the Laguna Madre, where a buzz of anticipation was already running through the crowd, a bunch of youths wearing T-shirts with the message “We are all Tamaulipas” passed by. These mass-produced tees, and plastic glasses with shrimp-inspired designs, were being handed out at the entrance. By walking along the estuary, you arrived at a pavilion, with the first rows of seats occupied by government officials dressed in shrimp-orange T-shirts, and a smattering of army bigwigs in field dress. The show had not yet started, but the emcee took the microphone from time to time and, in a guttural voice, mouthed such historic comments as: “A beautiful crystal clear tumbler that will draw the eyes of the whole world, with a shrimp cocktail weighing more than a tooooon.” If his aim was to animate those present, he didn’t achieve it; after his interventions, the buzz from the crowd remained unchanged, and his words evaporated into the warm morning air. Only when a couple of municipal workers removed the plastic wrapping that had protected the tumbler from accidental scratches during its journey from Mexico City did the crowd quiet a little, perhaps because everyone thought the governor was about to arrive on the scene; he did in fact turn up, approximately two hours later than initially expected. But the emcee took advantage of the silence: “Today, more than ever, we are proud of the resources provided by the waters of our Laguna Madreeeee.” Around ten yards away, sitting with a quasi-scientific air behind an aged laptop, the notary who was to adjudge the record was explaining that the glass tumbler weighed 825 pounds.
Of all the shrimp-orange T-shirt wearers in the first rows, the most euphoric was Mario de la Garza, a dentist who was also the mayor of San Fernando. While waiting for the governor, he spoke with five reporters, one of them from the state press office, who asked the prearranged questions. “This is going to be highly beneficial for San Fernando,” the mayor insisted several times, after admitting that lately the economy had been goin
g from bad to worse; and all this without ever mentioning the words violence, kidnapping or war, much less narco. When I spoke to him, and confessed that despite living in Monterrey, I’d had no idea San Fernando produced shrimp, the mayor cordially replied that San Fernando’s shrimp were highly valued by Mexican experts but were not widely known on the commercial market: “That’s why we want the whole world to know about and eat San Fernando shrimp.” The mayor was extremely enthusiastic about preparing the largest shrimp cocktail in the world; he also promised that in the coming years San Fernando would become a powerful Mexican energy producer. The municipality, he vehemently explained, was already the largest extractor of natural gas from the rich Burgos Basin that runs through Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and Coahuila.
In addition the mayor triumphantly informed me that the special guests included Thomas Mittmasht, a man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and a wide-brimmed sun hat who was leaning back, idly inspecting the gigantic tumbler before the 17,000 or so small crustaceans were poured into it. Mittmasht is the United States consul in Matamoros, and when faced with questions from reporters about whether his government would now advise its citizens to visit Tamaulipas, he asked them to kindly read the information on the consular website. The document found there warns US citizens that if they should need to travel through Tamaulipas, it is recommended they do so during daylight hours, and avoid “displays of wealth that might draw attention.” I asked Mittmasht when he had last visited San Fernando, and he replied that he had passed through the year before on his way back from the Governor’s Report in Ciudad Victoria. “I guess you’re more relaxed on this occasion,” I commented, with a glance at his beachwear. “Well, less formal,” he answered. He had made the journey with an escort of only four armored vehicles.