Carlos Fentanes

Conversations with Virgin Mary

Tuesday, January 5th

Your ketchup is leaving a bad smell in your pantry. When was the last time you poured ketchup on your food? Was it with Thai takeout or French fries? I bet it was the second. You pulled out a bag of McCain’s frozen fries, tossed them in the microwave, squeezed ketchup on top, and started binge-watching TV — a game, maybe, or a soap opera. Nothing memorable.

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Thai food, on the other hand, is alive with spice and fragrance — coconut, mango, bright herbs, a whisper of curry or heat. Never ketchup. If you ever find a Thai recipe that includes ketchup, I promise you it’s wrong. Don’t pour ketchup on your Thai food. You’ll ruin it. Ketchup is the condiment of laziness and bad taste.

A good meal asks you to sit down. It asks for cutlery, not fingers. Good china helps, low light too — small details that bring out the flavor and make you present. But you don’t want to bring out the smell of ketchup or fries. A real chef curates ingredients carefully, balancing flavors and aromas. They know that ketchup will smother every other note on the plate.

The same goes for your friends. A ketchup friend will ruin every other friend at your table — unless all your friends are burgers and fries. But my advice is to avoid that kind of meal, and that kind of company too. Curate your friendships the way a gallery curates a show for Frieze.

Have you noticed the small cracks in your precious life?
The rejections, the invitations that stopped coming, the dull ache of neglect — maybe you, too, have started to smell like ketchup. Don’t be the greasy sardines; be the smoked salmon. At work, do the small things you wish others would do. Seek the right condiment for your feast — the best friends, the best environment, the best taste. You deserve it.

So clean your pantry.
Dump your ketchup friend.
And start curating new flavors.

I’m sure you have seen those small Heinz Ketchup pouches that you can find in any fast food chain, well that’s my messenger this week. What can be more memorable that a pouch of ketchup?

That letter leaves me thinking about my own rejections in the art world, maybe my work is the ketchup of the gallery, what ingredients I’m using? or maybe it’s just that I want to sell sushi at an Italian restaurant, I don’t know but it’s time to look inside and clean my own pantry.

Jorge was doing the garden and leave me alone with this letter and a cup of tea, why did he choose tea?

He was trimming an old bonsai, so I took my teacup and went out to the garden.

Without stop looking his bonsai he asked me directly: “What do you think?”

I responded, “Well, comparing friends with ketchup is irreverent but I never thought of them on these terms I should say”.

He looked back at me with a questioning look, “I’m asking about my tree not the letter, I have been growing these trees since I was at the faculty, and when I decided to move to Canada I have to leave behind a collection of more than thirty trees, now that I have more time I decided to start over again, this Ficus was the first one in my new collection. I decided to get a new tree with every new occasion. This is for when I turned 50. But I see that you are still thinking on the Conversations with Virgin Mary, let me pack all this.”

He had a fabric case with all the surgeon instruments for his bonsais; he put them back together and zip it up. He seated and started to talk. “Yes, is curious how these letters had punch me in the face more than once, the examples are devastating, you cannot avoid them once you see them.”

“How did you come with all these ideas, you’re a genius”.

“I don’t know how many times I have to repeat you, I don’t do anything, those letters were written by Virgin Mary, I’m just the custodian of them and she is the one that wanted to give them to you. I hope you’re working on something with all this information”.

“But the ketchup? Mary should talk about the teachings of her son, love, bread wine converted in the body of Christ, you know, that’s the Divine voice.”

“Yes, and then you would leave it for the old lady that broom the entrance of the church, that will not be for you. The message should be directed to the public she wanted to reach, in this case you, a farebox designer that happens to make Nude paintings and write about censorship, if she starts to talk you about the body of Christ and all that stuff you would leave the room immediately.

Don’t try to find explanations, just start dumping your ketchup”