In America they invited me to the State Fair. I have carried a portable shrine on my shoulders for eight hours in July. I understood the fair to be a similar affair, only with corn. I understood nothing. The whole county smelled like oil. A holy oil. The oil of an entire nation deciding, on the same day, to fry. At the gate a woman handed me a map. Forty-two food vendors were marked on it. I asked her which one was the most important. She said, "Honey, they're all important." That answer haunts me still. The first sign said FRIED OREO. I stopped. An Oreo is a completed object. It has been baked. It has been assembled. It has been sealed in a package. Someone in this country looked at that finished thing and decided it was not yet fried enough. I bought one. It was, I am sorry to say, perfect. I turned the corner. FRIED TWINKIE. FRIED SNICKERS. FRIED PICKLE. FRIED BUTTER. I stopped longer this time. Butter is fat. They were frying fat in fat. In my country we have Zen koans that take a monk a lifetime to answer. This was a Zen koan a nation had answered in a parking lot. A very large, very kind man saw me staring. He said, "First time?" I nodded. He said, "You gotta get it on a stick." I said, "What?" He said, "Everything's better on a stick, brother." I bought the butter on a stick. He watched me eat it. He was proud of me the way a father is proud of a son leaving home for the first time. I asked him, carefully: "Sir. Is there anything at the fair that is not fried?" He thought about it. He genuinely thought about it. He looked at the sky. He looked at the ground. He looked at his own hands, as if the answer might be written there. After a long moment, he said, "The air, I guess." Then he added, "But they're working on it." I laughed from the belly, which I had not done in public in forty years. He laughed too. We were two men laughing about the possibility of frying air. He clapped me on the shoulder as if we had gone to war together. Then I saw the turkey leg. It was the size of my forearm. A child was carrying one. The child was smaller than the leg. In my country this would be a weapon. Here it was a snack. Then I saw the sign that said FRIED COCA-COLA. I stood in front of it for a very long time. Coca-Cola is a liquid. Liquid, by definition, cannot be fried. To fry a thing you must be able to hold it in your hand. And yet the sign was there. People were buying it. The vendor was cheerful, the way a man is cheerful when he has made something out of an impossibility. I bought one. I did not ask how. I did not want to know how. Some things are better as miracles. While I was eating it, a girl of perhaps six ran past me. She had powdered sugar on her nose and a stick of something battered in one hand and chocolate, I think, in the other. She was laughing so hard she was nearly falling. Her mother caught her elbow, wiped the sugar off her face with a thumb, and said, "Slow down, baby. The fair ain't going nowhere." The girl said, "I know, Mama. But I am." And she ran on. I stood in the middle of that fairground holding a fried liquid, and I understood something I had not understood before. In my country, food is a discipline. It is arranged. It is quiet. A grain of rice is not wasted. Here, food is a shout. It is a joke. It is too much. Half of it is on your face. And you are running, because the fair is not going anywhere, but you are. I have eaten in restaurants with three stars. I ate slowly. I ate carefully. I remember nothing. I will remember that little girl until I die. They fried the joy, America. They put it on a stick. I ate it with my hands. I did not bow. I think, for once, that was correct.