Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, ca. 1480–1490. Photograph by Anonymous, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage Photolibrary. Public domain.

The Garden of Earthly Delights taught me the consequences of looking at something for too long. It was pitch-black in the auditorium where we had art history class, save for my professor’s beacon of pointer light and the vivid glow of the piece on the giant smartboard. We started by looking at the middle panel, then the left panel, then the right one, and, finally, the exterior of the piece—bewildering. An almost sci-fi design on what looked to be a wooden cabinet, which contained the sprawl of the three panels. Why, I still wonder, did we start with the middle?

This work, a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch (1500–1505), is at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The left panel depicts paradise (Eve, the fountain of life), while the right panel shows hell. The central panel shows life’s delights and pleasures: there is a crystal ball on the left, which likely alludes to the Flemish saying “Happiness is like glass; it soon breaks.”

The left panel, compared with the rest of the triptych, is minimalist. God introduces Eve to Adam; they are naked and shy. Around them are green fields, lakes, animals. There is a fantastical pink structure in the middle, and the sky is clear.

The middle frame features the same landscape but holds exponentially more life. It is bursting. Everyone is naked and doing activities of all sorts, in pink bubbles, upside down in ponds with berries between their legs, cavorting about amid mussel shells and fish heads. The eye moves upward, landing on inexplicable floating fruits, lazing mermaids, and jubilant, fantastical pink towers—thumbtacks indicating utopian societies. Cherries, raspberries, and blackberries are all plopped like trifle tops on people’s heads. Many bodies everywhere—upside down, dancing, amorous, generating friction. It’s like the feeling one gets watching wrestling dogs: are they playing or fighting?

The eye moves to the rightmost panel, where there seems to be no sun or sky. It’s a hellscape—impressive but quite unpleasant: cities aflame, horrid bodies and body parts, strange demons, knives, fire. Animals punish and eat humans. There is a tree-man—a man made of tree—with a bagpipe phallus on his head, who looks very wistful.

We are supposed to read triptychs from left to right: Adam and Eve → sexy fruit playground of jubilant behavior → decay and hell. Scholars have mostly concluded that it is a linear interpretation of sin and the consequences of succumbing to temptation. But the middle panel, where the temptation is happening, is so fun and funny. On the middle right, for example, three people’s butts—shimmering with silver glitter—shine from the opening of what one can only imagine is the body of a crustacean. Atop, a man rides the vessel like a bronco while a cute-looking raccoon or baby bear sits, tail up, thoughtful. Below, their friends carry the whole thing as if it’s a chariot. I love this stuff: the berries, the bodies, everything bright and pink and close to popping. When I learned that this playful scene was meant to lead directly into hell, I wondered why Bosch decided to make these little guys so cute. Why would he spend so much time and space depicting enjoyment, if it was meant as warning? Something makes me feel we’re getting it wrong—that though endings are inevitable, the middle panel might be where we’re meant to linger. What if the mystery of play is that it may not result in destruction?

The Traitors

One form of play that certainly results in destruction is the show The Traitors, which you can find streaming—diabolically, transcendently—on Peacock.

Much joy has been derived from watching this show. It’s a reality program originally inspired by the Dutch TV series De Verraders, which came to the States in 2023. Hosted by a heavily kilted Alan Cumming, The Traitors is a social-deduction show, or one giant televised game of mafia. Traitors (two or three are chosen and summoned by a tap on the shoulder from Cumming) are responsible for committing a “murder” of a Faithful (the amazing word for regular players) every night. If and when they kill all the Faithfuls, they win the game and all the money in the prize pot. If the Faithfuls suss out the Traitors, they win. Sometimes a Faithful can get converted into a Traitor, but Traitordom comes at great risk. At first I didn’t understand why anyone would want to be a Traitor at all, and then I realized: you get, by far, the most screen time.

The contestants are reality-television stars, often from the Bravoverse. There are Housewives and then there are Gamers (people from shows like Survivor, Big Brother, et cetera). There are famous athletes and Love Island–ers and Drag Race alums. Season four (currently streaming) even featured Donna Kelce—Travis Kelce’s mom—though Real Housewife Dorinda said she was afraid of going after her “because of the Swifties.”

They all stay at Alan Cumming’s castle in the Scottish Highlands, where he lives with his dog, Lala. They dress in tartan and little caps, doing their best to turn looks in a campy, communal atmosphere. They dine together fireside, perching plates of food on their knees as they whisper about killings. They fake-poison a fellow player’s chalice of Pinot Noir, then grab a tiny ginger shot from the fridge and drink it in one gulp. They compete in challenges that engage their physical and psychological strength: they must traverse a demented fun house where clowns jump out when they walk through the wrong door. Players submit to other trials: having termites dumped on their heads, being buried alive, or even being hoisted aloft in cages or up into trees (where one can see across the moors).

Sometimes it really does look scary. There are masked guards holding axes. From campy to sinister, no one breaks character.

At the end of the day, they sit at the Round Table and accuse one another of being Traitors. We find out whether they’ve colluded properly when the ousted star steps into the Circle of Truth. Have they been who they said they were?

But all is not what it seems, in a more mundane way, which I love. I recently learned that not only is this not actually Cumming’s castle (not terribly surprising) but they don’t even stay there at night. Instead, they are shuttled back and forth to a hotel near Inverness Airport, most likely the Courtyard by Marriott. At night, Ardross Castle, a sprawling nineteenth-century estate on the Alness River, stays empty and waiting.

As Alan Cumming himself says: “What is good telly and what is a good game? Most often, they coincide.”

When I was fourteen, I visited the area quite close to there—it was vast, quiet, spirited, old. We stayed at a Victorian B&B that was two blocks from the river. I would walk to the water in the early morning and crane my neck to peer south—where the river becomes the Loch, the great monster lying beneath.

My Mandoline

When I first started working in kitchens and my chefs asked if I had a mandoline, I knew they were not talking about the musical instrument, which meant I did not know what they were talking about at all. I didn’t know what anything was, really. I had decided to become a line cook on a dare to myself.

The first time I had a slicing task on my prep list, my sous-chef showed me the mandoline—it is a long rectangle, made of plastic, with vertical ridges and a perpendicular blade. She showed me how to move a whole ingredient down the mandoline, palm flat, in order to transform it into a product sliced with profound speed and consistency. She told me, to hums of agreement by fellow line cooks, that people lose fingers on this thing. This sentiment sounded familiar: I had also been told of severed hands when they introduced me to the meat slicer. So, like the meat slicer, the mandoline felt like something I had no business being around. They came in cute colors, though: soft tan or mint green. I learned about the secret knife store in Midtown, and when I went, I knew I would be taking the mint green one home. Crisp!

I ended up quite liking my mint-green mandoline, and found using it one of the most pleasant tasks on my prep list. Swiping almost any item through the blade produced a clean sound, and it was remarkable how pressure and sharpness created geometric consistency. I sliced cucumbers, celery, and fennel, activating bright, fresh smells as I went. It felt, sometimes, like slicing against stone.

During brunch service, I was on garde manger. Brunch is hellish and busy and sort of arbitrary—the best part was biking to the restaurant at 5:30 A.M. in the cold, watching the sun bounce off corner windows I rode past, hinting at the day. Service began at eight thirty, and I sliced apples, celery, and radishes for salad sets. Suddenly, a gasp and a wetness: I caught the ring finger of my right hand on the blade. Remember the Bosch painting? What the Flemish said? “Happiness is like glass; it soon breaks.”

I am disgusted by blood, so I looked away but felt the strange catharsis of bodily chaos. Red on my cutting board, rushing down the kitchen drain, on my porter shirt. My sous-chef took me downstairs to the office, which was also the wine room. It was winter and the space was filled with citrus—grapefruits, pomelos, cara caras—because it was the most temperate room. Bottles and bright aromatics everywhere; it was somehow lovely. I held my hand above my head and was given orange juice and five Advil (the community average). I asked if this was something people went to the hospital for. Maybe—but we needed a body to finish brunch.

My sous-chef was sweet, wincing, and delicately wrapped my finger. I went upstairs and—fingernail gone—finished service.

The next morning, I posted two slides on Instagram: the first, of cubed beef tartare I had helped cut. Then a photograph of my finger—sliced, diced. Obsessed with my bravery, desensitized by something. I was twenty-three—what else was there to do?

When I use a mandoline now, I do it carefully and slowly, to a different rhythm, with a flat palm. When I remember taking that picture and posting it, I wince—not just at the pain of the cut but of what I see now as an obsession with my own chaos. I archived it long ago, and I try to forgive myself. Digits intact, I recall what Man Ray said of his Rayographs: “I would photograph an idea rather than an object, a dream rather than an idea.”

Rosa Shipley is a cook and writer living in Brooklyn. She writes the Substack Palate Cleanse.