1.

In Chicago on October 4^th in Elisabeth’s Focus with Elisabeth driving, watching the skyline and skyscrapers approach, I thought: “Okay, folks, America wins”. Yes, folks, America wins. America wins with her inconceivable grandeur. Here in a big city like Chicago there’s no space for adjectives like “pretty” or “nice”. Here there’s only space for words like “huge” or “powerful” or “pretty strong”. For example when in some place in Riverside, Illinois I ordered an American Breakfast called Eggs Benedicts and they brought me this (“huge”, “powerful”, “pretty strong”) meal with five eggs on five slices of bread with five slices of bacon or when in a Subway fast food place a chunky girl behind the counter prepared a (“huge”, “powerful”, “pretty strong”) tuna sandwich for me and she took a sort of ladle – ‘cause you definitely couldn’t consider that a sort of spoon – and she put the ladle in a sort of tuna jelly and she picked up a bunch of tuna jelly and she squashed tuna jelly on the slice of bread, and then she squeezed a bunch of mustard out, and finally she gave me my (“huge”, “powerful”, “pretty strong”) sandwich. That’s the way America wins. On my second day in Chicago Elisabeth and I went to a Thai restaurant on Lincoln Street. We sat down and immediately the Thai waiter sloshed ice and water in our glasses. In America you don’t must pay to get water. That was pretty impressive for me because in Italy, in France, in England this kind of service doesn’t exist and I thought the sound of the water and ice while they dropped in the glass (a sort of closh-scrush closh-scrush closh-scrush), this kind of huge, powerful, pretty strong sound in my ears, this kind of porno sound in my brain, could be a good analogy for what Chicago and America seem to me now: a closh-scrush exaggerated world!

2.

Here in front of me there’s a bottle of Pepin Heights. It’s apple juice. The bottle is not a simple container: it’s a tank. When I write “tank” I mean exactly “tank”. Actually, the bottle looks just like a petrol tank. The plastic top is red. There’s a handle exactly like the handle on a petrol tank. Observing this object in front of me I start to think American food is like petrol, and people probably are cars. I need food to reload myself and that’s it. I wonder if I have to be worried about this thought association. Is America so mechanistic? Do they consider themselves cars and food petrol to the point of making a juice bottle like a petrol tank? After all, I don’t think I’m able to discover and understand the whole huge American system just from an apple juice bottle, so I must not worry about it. Anyway, yesterday Elisabeth prepared guacamole. It’s a Mexican type of jelly. It’s green. She crushed in the guacamole four avocadoes. She wrung out three limes. She didn’t put in any kind of salt, because I hate salt and she’s very kind to me. We ate the green jelly with black corn taco chips. They weren’t yellow. They were black – and huge, okay. Luckily, we didn’t buy pink corn taco chips. I don’t think I’m ready for pink corn taco chips yet. But I’m ready for any kind of jelly – pink, indigo or brown. I wonder if all these kind of jellies are significant to understand the American psyche. In Elisabeth’s refrigerator there are a bunch of sauces. She’s a very good cook, actually. She cooks Mexican food, Thai food, Chinese food, Japanese Food, Italian food and all kinds of sandwiches. She’s good. In her refrigerator I saw Black Bean Garlic Sauce. I saw Traditional Hoisin Sauce that’s a kind of soybean paste. I saw a jar of Peanut Butter. I saw Horseradish. Hot Chili Oil. Chinese Hot Mustard. Dijon Mustard. Horseradish Mustard. Mustard. I’ve just written “I saw”, not “I tasted”, and truthfully I am not really sure I’ll taste these kinds of sauces in the future. Anyway, the question is: why do American people use all these kinds of jellies? Elisabeth’s refrigerator is lush with different cultures. In my refrigerator there is only Italian food or actually American food like hamburgers and hot dogs. I wonder if the refrigerators of most Italians are lush with different cultures. What I’m trying to say is everything in America is whisked together. Perhaps for that reason American people love these kinds of jellies. In my second day in Chicago Elisabeth’s brother-in-law prepared for us some kind of jelly with rice and brown sugar and milk. That was for breakfast at ten o’clock. It was really disgusting. I didn’t say anything to Paul but I have never eaten anything like that monstrosity in my life.