Then Zarathustra took a cookie into his hands and addressed the bake sale:
Hear me, discerning brethren! You taste with imperfect tongue this imperfect confection, and call it “The World’s Best Cookie,” for you are constrained by limited ideas of flavor, taught to you by recipe-makers who fear that you should surpass them in their art. But behold, my dissatisfaction has birthed a will to direct my own recipe. Rejoice! For I preach unto you the coming of the Supercookie!
- Sweetness we have need of, aye, and two cups of sugar shall provide. Lo! Protest not, “this is excess,” for you have been made fearful, sickly, and perishing by the words of those who deny sweetness. The deniers of sweetness have told you: it will make you sick. But these healthy words are in themselves sickness, for they heed not the desires of the discerning Self. In truth, the deniers of sweetness tremble to consider its delicacy. Be gentle and kind to them—these sick ones, preachers of pretended health—in their convalescence.
- Know you any man who has wrestled life without occasion to weep? But yea—I love these tears and see them as a good to me, for there is no life free of tears, and he who embraces life and roars in its assent must embrace its totality. Even so with the Supercookie. Let your tears fall into the sweet sugar, that the salt may love it. Do not be immoderate in your weeping, but neither deny it entirely: weep until a pinch of salt remains in the bowl.
- Butter ye may know as solid, but we have need of its melting. Apply fire thereto, like the consuming fire of spirit that animates the will of the Self. Just as the spirit changes from a camel, to a lion, to a child, so too shall the stick of butter change from a solid brick to a fountain of gold.
- Though the Supercookie is born from man, yet he must hatch it from the egg of a chicken. Strange husbandry! We have need of a bridge for the crossing from dullness to brilliance, and the sticky albumen shall bind together the sugar, the salt, and all else: it shall be the bridge to the Supercookie. Who has the courage and the will to walk its span? Let me love him.
- Vanilla is dear for purchase, but be not miserly. The worship and envy that wealth inspires is sickness of spirit, but lo! I, though poor, possess a truer wealth: I possess vanilla. And yet I disdain even that, for behold! I pour a dash into my bowl, and attain the Supercookie thereby.
- Now, mix with vigor! Let your passions become your virtue, and do not spare the bowl with gentleness: this occasion calls for violence.
- Honest farmer threshing in the field, though neighbor to the beasts you are also neighbor to the divine; for two-and-a-half cups of your flour will provide the Supercookie its body and its structure, and accordingly I give you my love.
- Mix again! The dough is your best enemy, and therefore your best friend, and you shall become great in overcoming it.
- Stir in a cup of chocolate chips. No aphorisms for this one, I just like chocolate.
- Just as the individual struggles to avoid absorption into the herd, so must each Supercookie be separated from the dough that contains it. Oh, lonesome dough! A ball of one mere inch—I have made you a heretic to yourself. Your terrible aloneness will birth a chewiness both wondrous and mysterious. Go now into the oven, and let the fire bring you to strength! Nine to twelve minutes are all that is needed to transform this mere DOUGHBALL into—the Supercookie!
The work thus accomplished, a new work undertaken: to eat and enjoy the Supercookie even as one enjoys life. And when the plate is empty, happy is he who may say: “Was THAT–a cookie? Well! Once more!”–
Thus baked Zarathustra.
Resources