If you walk into Chipotle, order a drink, and look at the cup, you might see the following literary text:
TWO-MINUTE SEDUCTION
by TONI MORRISONI took my heart out and gave it to a writer made heartless by fame, someone who needed it to pump blood into veins desiccated by the suck and roar of crowds slobbering or poisoning or licking up the red froth they mistake for happiness because happiness looks just like a heart painted on a valentine cup or tattooed on an arm that has never held a victim or comforted a hurt friend. I took it out and the space it left in my chest was sutured tight like the skin of a drum.
As my own pulse failed, I fell along with a soft shower of rain typical in this place.
Lying there, collapsed under trees bordering the mansion of the famous one I saw a butterfly broken by the slam of a single raindrop on its wings fold and flutter as it hit a pool of water still fighting for the lift that is its nature. I closed my eyes expecting to dissolve into stars or lava or a brutal sequoia when the famous writer appeared and leaned down over me. Lifting my head he put his lips on mine and breathed into my mouth one word and then another, and another words upon words then numbers, then notes. I swallowed it all while my mind filled with language, measure, music, knowledge.
These gifts from the famous writer were so seductive, so all encompassing they seemed to make a heart irrelevant.
Other cups and brown paper bags feature short thoughts by Malcolm Gladwell, George Saunders, Steven Pinker, Michael Lewis, and Sheri Fink, among others. The initiative, dubbed Cultivating Thought, was actually the brainchild of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close). Years ago, he met with Chipotle’s CEO and posed the question: why not give people a little food for thought on your cups and brown paper bags? Just last week, the Cultivating Thought Author series was launched, with Safran Foer serving as its “curator.”
Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison & Steven Pinker Cultivate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don’t miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.
The post Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison & Steven Pinker Cultivate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags appeared first on Open Culture.
Jonathan Safran Foer, Toni Morrison & Steven Pinker Cultivate Thought on Chipotle’s Cups and Bags
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