The World as Pizza and Representation

I had pizza for dinner tonight. Apparently pizza is couple food - I felt almost gluttonous as I ate a whole pizza alone, while everyone else was sharing one pizza between two. Except for these two men of average build sharing three pizzas between them. Perhaps the link between pizzas and love is alluded to in the names they are given by fast food chains - names such as Meat Lover's, Hawaiian Lover's and so on. This nicely sets up a trinity between the two lovers and the pizza they love in addition to each other.

But pizza is itself a trinity, formed by the base, the toppings, and the cheese that binds the two. A nice metaphor for the two lovers and the pizza. The cheese represents the pizza, ostensibly (at least in the simplest view of things), which leaves us to wonder which one is topping and which is bottoming. Of course, another way of looking at things would be to consider one of the two lovers to be the glue that brings pizza into the world of the other, in which case the pizza is the topping and the introducer is the cheese.

Which of the trinity is most important in a pizza? Superficially, the toppings are what give the pizza identity. Yet the cheese itself may serve as a topping of sorts, such that cheese and base suffice to give a pizza. But without the base the cheese has nowhere to stand.

Yet another trinity is formed by the chef, the pizza and the customer. The chef need not be just one person of course. In this case, the chef could be the cheese, bringing the pizza to the customer. Or to take a more artistic point of view, the pizza could be the cheese, bringing the chef's intentions to the customer's contemplation. Or in the case of the bespoke pizza (or choose your own toppings, as it is known outside of chi-chi pizzerias), the customer could be muse and cheese, bringing the concept of the pizza to the chef.

It is unlikely any of these thoughts crossed the minds of those who made my lovely pizza tonight. They were sadly reduced to cogs in a vast machine, tools to deliver pizza to the customers. However, even this is likely to be an optimistic view. They probably served as the cheese, keeping my money (the toppings) in the company's coffers.

When I was young, pizza was a luxury, only to be had on special occasions. It was my food of choice on my birthdays, and not cakes. The pizza would have been the cheese, adding one more year of experiences to my life thus far.

Right now, the pizza is acting as cheese, fusing new thoughts with my memories. So it is, that the world and things within it can be represented as pizzas. What a delicious thought.