curiosity, impulse, and pork

I recently attended a birthday party for a friend of a friend who was turning twenty-four years old (gasp). When the birthday girl arrived with a few friends, it was clear there was an unspoken and unintentional chasm in the group: those in their twenties and those over thirty. It was evident in the offerings the respective groups brought to the party; I brought a bottle of bottle of rosé and the birthday girl’s friend came with a 12-pack of mango Pepsi (who knew this was a thing) and various clear liquors with which to mix it. It was evident in the song choices for karaoke and the words each of us knew to these songs. This isn’t to say there was any kind of animosity between the groups. In fact, the spectrum of ages in the group made the night more fun than it would have been had we all been born in the same decade.

At one point, we wanted to honor the birthday girl by telling her how much she meant to us. Having not known her for very long, I opted instead to offer advice. I told her to follow every impulse. I told her to let curiosity be her driver. I told her what I wish someone had told me when I was turning twenty-four. When I was her age, I was a year away from graduating from my MFA program at UCLA, having not given myself any time between my undergraduate and graduate studies. I went back into academia the first time because it’s what I thought I was supposed to do for my career and I gave little thought to what I wanted to do with my life (two things I’ve never been great at separating). I don’t regret those choices, but since then I’ve often created speculative futures. What would I have done had I taken time to explore my innate curiosity and let it lead me? Perhaps I would have made all the same decisions and perhaps I would have made different ones. What I do know is that I’ve spent most of my adult life dampening my impulses in the name of safety, and what it’s ultimately done is given me age without the sensation of having aged. Living with my head down created an arrested development I’m only now starting to emerge from.

Humans that are naturally curious have been shown to possess both high levels of intelligence and creativity while simultaneously being at a higher risk of behavioral issues and substance abuse. Curiosity and impulsivity are closely linked in their behavioral measurements. Dampening one can dampen the other. I’ve never fancied myself an impulsive person but I have always thought of myself as an innately curious person. I recently started examining what my curiosity looks like and have come to the conclusion that it takes the form of over-intellectualizing ideas or situations and, more often than not, doesn’t result in any action for fear of the unknown. In that unknown, however, is the experience. The unknown is where the story lives. I spent a lot of the last year living in an unknown and uncomfortable reality and the only times I’ve been able to make any sense of it was when I acted on impulses to find more. The incompleteness is where the peak curiosity lives. We’re driven by the impulse to complete. We’re driven by the impulse to know. We’re driven by the impulse to feel or to connect. Of course that means we run the risk of negative feelings or experiences, but isn’t that what ultimately connects us all?

I’ve chosen recently to focus instead on curiosity in the pursuit of joy because where there is shadow, I want to believe there is light. When Evan died, I tore through his notebooks and found something he wrote just before his official diagnosis, though if I know anything about Evan, he knew more about what was going on long before any doctor explained the science. He said that if he were to die tomorrow, that I should “sell [his] shit and live [my] life to the fullest.” I’ve thought a lot about what the definition of a full life meant to Evan and how to live more in the light that shone brightly on me for so many years. Spontaneity was a quality in him that I always admired because it was one that I could never figure out. He wasn’t a person with a ten-year or five-year or even a one-week plan, but for some reason he was always able to manufacture moments of brilliance everyday. I saw in him what I wanted to see in myself but was never quite able to find. There are a lot of people who would say here that’s why we worked so well; my over-measured nature balanced his impulsiveness. In his physical absence, however, I have to believe there’s a part of me that thrived on the thrill of leaping before thinking. My relationship with him and his essence lives in my depths, and after a lot of digging, I’m starting to pull at threads of what he would describe as fullness. Perhaps these threads will one day tie together to create something where I was sure there was nothing.

I thought a lot about this idea of following impulse in the pursuit of joy on a recent trip to Don Don Korean Barbecue. I was meeting with Nate before a Broadway show, and while I typically stay away from midtown when choosing a dining excursion, the proximity to the theater and my curiosity about KBBQ outside of Koreatown brought us here. My typical KBBQ order consists mainly of beef because I generally don’t (read: never) make it at home or order it on a menu at any other restaurant. Even on visits to Musso & Frank in LA, I’d opt for grilled salmon instead of a cut of beef, which I’m ashamed to admit. I could spend hours musing about the reasons behind this, and I imagine it all comes down to a mix of eating a lot of (honestly, sub par) steak as a child and a feminine conditioning I still regularly psychoanalyze.

The specialty at Don Don, however, is pork, as referenced in the name of the restaurant, which translates to “pig.” Outside, there’s a neon sign lit with a cartoon pig. Upon entering, the diner is transported to anything but a typical Korean BBQ experience. The tables are low to the ground and circular and the burners on the table are small. In a glass case near the kitchen are cuts of pork in various stages of aging. 90s-inspired K-Pop music blasts from the speakers and bright red and blue accents around the restaurant evoke a feeling of an exclusive after-hours establishment. There’s an intimacy to the ambiance that’s hard to come by in midtown Manhattan.

I didn’t know when I chose Don Don that the specialty was pork. Pork isn’t a meat I readily choose, but in an attempt to open my mind, my heart, and my palette to new things, we ordered the dry aged pork tasting, which consisted of fresh pork belly, 14-day aged collar, and 21-day aged belly, along with banchan, ssam veggies, egg souffle, and a choice of stew. “Pigs are often seen as a symbols of luck, fortune, fertility, abundance and wealth in Korean culture, we took that idea to wish for good fortune and happiness for our guests, by creating a space where they are happily surrounded by their loved ones,” chef Sungchul Shim has said. “Like the slogan found on the decor around the restaurant, Don Don was created to be a space where joy blossoms.” And thus, curiosity led to joy. Each cut of pork brought flavors that were inviting and intriguing. The texture of the belly, which is usually what sways me from choosing that cut, wasn’t off putting, but decadent in a way I hadn’t tasted in some time.

The focus on dry-aging at Don Don isn’t common in many KBBQ restaurants in New York City. The result is a pork that with a more intense flavor, pleasant texture, increased tenderness, and flavorful fat. Dry-aging, or exposing the pork to cold, dry air, is not unlike (in my overly analytical brain) that of experience. When exposed to elements, whether they be literal or figurative, what are we doing but creating a life that is more flavorful, more tender, more pleasant? Of course the result of this exposure in the human life can be risky, but what if it’s not? What if by exposing ourselves to things which age us, rather than those which stifle us, we are at risk of joy?

The meal ended with a cup of soft serve ice cream, a dish I generally stray from (unless vegan), after a particularly fatal stomach ache from cup of ice cream that made me believe for many years that I wasn’t able to process such heavy cream. Perhaps it was the company, perhaps the delightful presentation, perhaps just the right amount of soju had been consumed, but that night I eschewed fear and ate the ice cream. I’m happy to report, my stomach felt fine and it was maybe the best soft serve I’ve had.