INSTRUCTIONS FOR BOILED POTATOES
Pick up the potatoes and place them in the sink.
Don’t get nervous. Let them lie down, next to each other, calm and still, all by themselves.
Then try brushing them off, one by one, rinsing under running water.
It can be done.
Don’t think too much.
What lies before you can only be summed up like this: a potato and then a potato and then a potato and then a potato.
Continue doing one thing at a time. Use the peeler if necessary. But don’t aim for uniform-sized potatoes. And don’t weigh them for a long time in your hand with the cold water around your fingers.
If possible, avoid looking at them.
It’s just potatoes. And then another potato and they are still hard and firm and they should feel that way.
When the water boils and the potatoes are ready and you’ve counted them, for God’s sake don’t start over, and immediately try to resist the idea of changing saucepans.
Stay in the kitchen.
Try to resist any idea that the potatoes are your own thoughts to be boiled. Don’t let any associations drag you away. Perhaps allow yourself for a moment to think about what your future would look like if you changed your name to Jonas Alströmer, dressed and spoke like him and if you were finally fully convinced that you were him. Then realize that this is a mental dead-end.
Now add the potatoes. Without overanalyzing. Without comparing, weighing, measuring or seeing it as some kind of achievement.
But most of all: don’t let the cooking time take over your life. A life in which everything is measured only in relation to the cooking time of potatoes.
Also, don’t let the fumes from the boiling potatoes give rise to wild fantasies.
It’s just plain potatoes. Potatoes that are done after twenty to thirty minutes. Chubby, capable potatoes.
Then pour off the boiling water with all of the excess of thoughts.
You may notice that your potatoes have a waxy yellow coat. How they appear to let light through, but actually don’t.
Now the potatoes are done.
It’s time to eat potatoes.
You may pick up one and eat it. Eat your way through the system of potatoes.
Per Olvmyr is a writer of absurdist fiction, prose and poetry. He lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by literary magazines in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway.