It is one of life’s charming mysteries that I married someone who detests shrimp, when I require it in my bloodstream more or less continuously to function.

My wife Alexis labels them “the cockroaches of the sea.” She notes with a shudder their bottom-feeding nature. She yelps at their exoskeletal spindliness. Yet I yearn to chomp their tender magnificence on the reg.

They may look like gangly aliens, but they comfort me. They soothe me. If I am in mixed company at a restaurant and someone orders a shrimp dish that I did not, I will pay them excess attention, as if they have cocaine and I, Anthony Bourdain in the ’80s, have no money.

Because it is anathema in our shared abode, I have cooked shrimp at home exactly once. It was during the full calendar month Alexis was on a meditation retreat. This was because I had ample time to throw open the windows and spiritually de-shrimp.

Colleagues I don’t even really know that well know that when Alexis goes out of town I have “Shrimp Fest.” This really just means I go somewhere and eat some shrimp, but with a ceremonial voraciousness that evidently embeds into office lore.

In times when I cannot macrodose via Shrimp Fest, I microdose with shrimp snacks. Specifically, I obtain the Calbee Original Flavor Shrimp Chip.

Called kappa ebisen in Japan, they are lattice-ridged wheat-flour batons. Each is like a petite crinkle-cut french fry. They are airy, crackly, and exquisite. They are what I think many people want a Cheeto to be, their circumference girthier and their shell much lighter, pleasingly snappy like the first spoon-strike on the glassy shield of crème brûlée.

Taste-wise, there’s comforting salt and a deep savoriness. Imagine the sweet steam of pan-seared prawn shells embalming a kitchen, but like in a hot way. All of this oceanic minerality is pumped up by a fairy’s dusting of divine MSG. Their umami richness is cultivated, I imagine, in the halls of Poseidon himself.

This might all sound dramatic. I am aware. Let’s make it worse:

Reddit threads showcase deep nostalgic love: “If you’re Asian you grew up eating these... if not, welcome to the world of actually decent tasting snacks ;)”

Of course, Reddit is also full of people calling these chips out for being overwhelming, briny, noxious, or too pungent.

Respectfully: I think they could be shrimpier. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Where I’m also coming from is being an eight-year-old half-Asian child in an Asian grocery store. I’d sneak a bag alongside strawberry Pocky while my mom frenzied at the register.

I am not the only big fan. You’ll find many homages to shrimp chips, including those featuring the iconic Calbee bag, on Redbubble and beyond, on totes, pouches, keychains, and streetwear.

The Calbee brand began right after World War II, in Hiroshima, where founder Takashi Matsuo witnessed widespread food shortages. The shrimp chips I wax poetic about here came years later in 1964; The LA Times describes Matsuo as a “skilled shrimper who loved his mother’s shrimp tempura,” which is exactly the kind of sentence that gets me out of bed in the morning. “He used freshly caught, whole shrimp that were minced and kneaded into a dough that was, in turn, dried into pellets, which were then baked and seasoned.”

Despite the Times’s use of “pellets,” I’m bewitched. Body and soul.

Say “shrimp chip” in a room of folks from Asia and of the Asian diaspora and you will of course get myriad experiences beyond Calbee. There’s krupuk udang, the Indonesian prawn cracker made from ground shrimp, tapioca flour, garlic, and seasonings. It puffs into a pale disc and is eaten across Southeast Asia. There’s saeukkang, the Korean shrimp puff, which looks like the Calbee batons but with a lore and flavor all its own.

I just wanted to write about shrimp, OK? Then I realized that, handily, many cards are present here.

This happens a lot: I identify several archetypes, energies, and esoteric connections when ruminating on a single obsession, even of the snack variety. It’s a way of contemplating tarot almost backwards — beginning with noticing and reverse-engineering what’s present here. It’s something that inspired the concept of this very newsletter.

I think of several tarot cards:

I like that most land in the realms of water and earth: the ocean and the pantry.

Take an experience — a favorite snack, hobby, practice, or person — and jot down tarot cards that connect. If you’re not familiar enough with tarot, make a map of all the aspects of your experience using key words. What arose that surprised you?

Reply and tell me: what's the small, specific, faintly absurd thing you buy for yourself that nobody else in your house understands?

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