I was cooking some beans the other day and I noticed a purple tinge on my stove, which was lily-white until I started cooking this pot o beans. I looked closer and noticed many spots, in different sizes, and different concentrations. Some translucent, some dark purple. Their thickness is directly related to their ooze-status - they are oozing when the purple splotch is thick.
I was cooking this in advance of this week, my second week of classes in law school. I figure I could make a big pot of black beans and consume it in bowls and plates, with forks and spoons, atop tostadas or inside flour tortillas until I finish it. It worked last week.
It is bubbling, this pot. I realize I had left the cover on and kept it a little warmer than I should have, causing a few bubbles to escape eagerly onto my stovetop. Those bubbles had to be eager to ruin the perfect white of my oven; they saw how clean it was and realized that it needed some character, some flare.
The bubbles and the resulting purple dye that comes when the bubble is burst is a reminder that this perception of reality is never clean, never pure. As I dive into the second week of law school, I’m realizing that these rules, these cases, these strange situations that we are made to think about are about to get more complicated. I read maybe five or so cases last week and they laid out the rules in a nice way. Our laws are increasingly coming out of people’s situations, when someone decides to sue someone else, they are deciding to use law and make it too.
And people are complicated. Our relations and our beliefs and our ambitions are complex. As I see more and more cases - peoples’ stories - coming my way, I also feel the purple soaking in. The more I read, the more it becomes apparent how dirty things are about to get.
