The Words of the Prophets
By Albert Stern
In “The Sound of Silence,” Simon & Garfunkel famously sang, “The words of the prophets are written on subway walls.” In truth, prophets are not doing their best work on subway walls (which are just a mess), but rather on bumper stickers — not so much here in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, where stickers I notice are mostly along the lines of:
or
The memorable bumper stickers I come across these days are not on our rural roads but rather on the information superhighway that is the World Wide Web. The messages pop up randomly on my social media and are good perhaps for a smirk, a nod, or a shrug; but occasionally, one lands weightily, to where you recognize the work of a prophet:
A prophet, or at least a philosopher. Once you open any line of inquiry, sooner or later, if you keep asking questions, you’ll arrive at the deeper existential conundrums. This prophet/philosopher makes the jump efficiently, which is the essential skill of the best bumper-sticker-writers. No matter where you may begin your quest for truth, persist and eventually you’re going to get right down the real nitty-gritty — even if your line of inquiry begins with a question so anodyne as: “What’s for dinner?”
Dinner for me is sometimes chicken chow mein. It was a dish my late mother used to concoct out of canned Chun King Chinese vegetables and leftover Shabbos chicken — you covered everything with a lot of soy sauce and those crispy Chinese noodles and it tasted okay, like a lot of soy sauce and those crispy Chinese noodles. I still order it and think about my mom while I eat it. With a fork.
At the rare restaurants that still do real Cantonese-style cooking, the dish — basically chicken, bok choy, onions, celery, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, garlic, and a little ginger sauteed in a mild gooey sauce — is served over a basket of deep-fried noodles. This traditional preparation used to be a lonely lunch special for me at Jade Mountain on Second Avenue in the East Village, one of the last restaurants in New York City that had a vintage neon “Chow Mein” sign in front testifying to the dish’s bygone popularity. While the dish remains on most Chinese menus, it seems to be a passé order, to the point where almost every time I call it in, I’m reminded by the person on the other end of the line that “chow mein is not noodles. If you want noodles, you want lo mein.” No sir, I want the chicken chow mein. And I want to think of my late mother when I eat it. With a fork.
“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice,” opined Frank Zappa. “There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.” I wouldn’t go that far, but our indulgences in nostalgia can provide cracks in the space-time continuum that malign forces from the other realms use to communicate with us. A chicken chow mein dinner is my nostalgia, and it leaves me vulnerable to their mischief. In this unguarded state, I think of my late mother, of how uninspiring a cook she was. Of our unhappy home in Miami Beach, the Sun and Fun Capital of the World. Of looking forward to her chicken chow mein because it was better than most of the meals she served. Of how she taught our housekeeper how to make it the way the family liked after her terminal cancer diagnosis. Of how she was gone in just six months. Of how much I’ve missed her over these past 40 years.
Suffice it to say, I’m usually kind of down when I eat chicken chow mein. After I’m done, though, I do feel better — as comfort food, it does the trick. The problem I’ve been having lately has been with fortune cookies, a medium of prophecy worked by B-Team seers still in training for the more demanding bumper sticker work.
The Chinese restaurant I take out from has a wasteful practice of overloading each order with inedible condiments (treacly duck sauce, toxic hot mustard, faux soy sauce), unwanted napkins and plastic cutlery, and also several fortune cookies. There are always enough of these extras to accommodate one or two other diners, and I toss all of them into the garbage except for the forks and spoons and one fortune cookie. After my meal, I eat one bite of that cookie nostalgically to remember that they’re still disgusting, and read what the future holds for me.
One blue evening not long ago, I ordered takeout chicken chow mein. I was one of my moods, thinking about the past, pondering my current quagmires. Worried. On edge. A bit hopeless. But the meal, while not stellar, worked its usual magic. When I was done, I was feeling a bit better. I chose one of the three enclosed fortune cookies, unwrapped its cellophane packaging, and cracked it open. And this is what I got. This.
What? Why? How did this happen? How can a loving God cause such agony? I cracked open the remaining two fortune cookies and both were compassionate and uplifting, the kind of messages onto which one can humorously tack on the words “…in bed” and have a chuckle. But mine — an existential imperative wrapped in a crackly ersatz-vanilla shell.
I really didn’t, at first, suspect that the hand of a prophet was in this — I believed I had been victimized by a sociopathic worker at the fortune cookie factory who, bored out of his mind, will occasionally slip a few provocative messages into the mix of meaningless prognostications he is charged with printing out and cutting into little strips. Still, from then on I started to approach fortune cookies a little warily, just in case — you never want to open a fresh can of worms with either Hashem or His prophets.
Last winter, alas, I found myself really going through it. Nothing strange about that — we all go through it at times. But this time, life got me good. Every day found me grappling with some kind of psychic disquiet, struggles made all the worse by a brutal weeks-long sinus infection that migrated to my chest as asthmatic bronchitis and showed no sign of abating even after my antibiotics regimen reached its end. Then, I slipped on some ice and dislocated my shoulder, which activated my fibromyalgia and left me slipping in and out of a mental state my doctor told me is known as “fibro-fog.”
I am, however, truly blessed with friends. While I was feeling exceptionally low and bedraggled, one of them bucked me up by telling me, among other messages of encouragement and solace, simply that I was a good person. “Albert, you’re a good person,” is what she said. That made me feel a little better as, I was sure, would a dinner of chicken chow mein that evening.
I finished my takeout meal and, feeling a bit better, I picked out one of the three fortune cookies in the package and unwrapped it. And this is what I got. This.
My first thought — honestly, this was my first thought — was: “Would this feel any better if I didn’t believe in God?”
Meanwhile, I’m still thinking. I posted about this experience on my Facebook page and female friends responded with an outpouring of sympathy for my woes, Ayurvedic remedies for my persistent cold, and assurances that yes, truly, I was a “terrific person.” In contrast, this, in its entirety, is the message I got from the one male friend who wrote anything: “Chicken chow mein is my go-to lunch combo takeout.” (Typical — the gals respond to offer emotional support, while the guy writes about lunch. Women are from Venus, and Men are from the Chinese Steam Table Buffet.)
Long story short, I got over the bumps and enjoyed a month-long stay on California’s Monterrey Peninsula and then a glorious springtime in the Berkshires. All is well. Even so, a few nights ago I ordered chicken chow mein for dinner. The food tasted fine and I thought of my mom, and since I was starting from a baseline of relative contentment, the meal brought back many fond memories. Then, I arrived at fortune cookie time. Since I was basically uplifted, I thought this might be a good time for an experiment — would the fortune cookie I chose be in some way hurtful?
There were two cookies in the package. I chose one. Then I switched to the other. Then I closed my eyes and mixed the two up. Finally, I unwrapped one and cracked it open.
To prove the veracity of what I’m sharing, here is an image of the two fortune cookies from that meal. The one in the background is still enveloped pristinely in cellophane and, in the foreground, is the one I chose.
Reading it, I could almost hear my late father, Henry Stern, whispering into my ear from the Great Beyond: “That’s very good advice…for a person of your caliber, Albert.”
Many mornings when I lay tefillin, after I recite the Shema, I reflect on past experiences, good and bad, and try to imagine how I might use them to improve my lot. On the day after my experiment, I pondered the message that Hashem was trying to convey through His prophets at the fortune cookie factory. I thought and I thought and, as I wrote earlier, if you keep asking questions, you’ll arrive at deeper existential truths.
And suddenly, Hashem’s message to me was clear: “Next time, order the moo goo gai pan.”
