"This Above All, To Thy Own Self . . ." To Thy Own Self WHAT?

I’ve been obsessing over a litany of contradictory aphorisms lately.It starts with Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Yeah, but what about the saying “practice makes perfect”? Take that, Waldo. And then of course Voltaire kicks in: But “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” What the fuck.

It all started with something deceptively simple: Yam Fritters. It’s a dish that causes me existential angst, causing me to kneel on the kitchen floor channeling the Wayne’s World line “We’re Not Worthy.” The dish starts out innocuously enough: peel the sweet potatoes, dice, cook in boiling water until soft, pull off the stove, drain, mix with soy sauce, salt, sugar, and flour until you have something that looks reasonably close to pancake batter. It is then that the trouble starts, which sucks because you are already way down the fucking road with the prep. The objective is simple: make nice little mini-pancakes with this sweet potato batter. Right. Too much oil/batter in the skillet and the fritters float like Donald Trump in a sea of controversy. Too little oil and you get a sticky mess. Too much heat, well I don’t need to tell you. Too little heat and my fritters look like a metaphor for the US population soaking up Covid-19 cases.

Today, praise be to God, I got the damn thing right. Not perfect, but good enough. I will make peace offerings to my aphorism gods.