My name is Melanie.
For most of my life, by most people in my life, this is shortened
to "Mel". My mother
used to joke that eventually, it would be shortened to "Muh". This is
the way that it happens, just as it happens with ideas, acronyms, brand
names: By first
becoming known to a small group, then, gradually, a larger group, it is repeated
over and over again until it becomes a common, simplified cultural shorthand of
sorts:
Hi-Fi.
Jell-O.
MPH.
URL.
Kleenex.
Marshmallow.
Althaea Officinalis Malvaceae is an unassuming plant
with gray, velvety, heart-shaped leaves and large, buttercup-like flowers of
white, pale pink or, most rarely, scarlet. Like mints, cresses and Melanies, the
wild marsh mallow thrives in strong sun and prefers wet feet. Mallows have provided food
and medicine to humans for thousands of years. For the Romans, it was a cherished
delicacy. The
Chinese and ancient Egyptians used the Mallow as a food and medicine
plant. In modern
Syria, where the poor must sometimes subsist for weeks on foraged herbs, the
Marsh Mallow is a staple.
The roots are delicious, stripped and boiled until tender, then
roasted with onions until caramelized. In France, the young tops and tender new leaves
are added to spring salads as part of an invigorating tonic against the
ravages of winter.
The entire plant is filled with viscous mucilage that is used to
treat inflammation, sore throat, coughs and hoarseness.
At some point, French druggists formulated a paste-like confection,
Pâét de Guimauve, from the roots of the
Marsh Mallow.
English sweet-makers took up the practice and the divinity-like
substance became a popular candy. Eventually the medicinal pastilles were
understood merely as sweetmeats:
the Marsh Mallow became the marshmallow. Like modern root beer that
has nothing to do with roots, nor with fermentation, the marshmallows sold by
the plastic bagful in modern supermarkets are a mixture of flour, gum,
egg-albumin and so forth, but not a trace of mallow. The original concept was
generalized and truncated over the years. The candy no longer holds any resemblance to
its' namesake. Cars
zoom past bogs and roadside ditches filled with lovely pink and white flowers,
never even noticing them, much less connecting them to the bag of anemic, sugary
puffs in the trunk.
Marshmallows are common knowledge, but it is a deeply incomplete
knowledge. So it
goes with catchphrases:
of necessity they are deeply carved. Sometimes the core is carved away in the
process.
I am Mel, and Althaea.
I have my usefulness and my deep inner meaningfulness. I have regions of utter
simplicity. Every
pair of eyes settling on me picks up a different angle. Every heart opening to me
receives a different message.
It's all true, and it's all false because incomplete. Every message is inevitably
truncated in the translation. What other choice is there, besides
continuing to speak, continuing to try to get as much content through as
possible? Silence? Perhaps. It is not for me,
though.
This is a new blog for me. Here's to silencing truncation,
and truncating silence.
