I am going to eat a pound of gold.

Adam Bignell, 2023

Gold provides no nutritional value. It is non-reactive, and doesn’t get taken up by the bloodstream. When you consume it in your vodka and chocolate, it contributes exactly nothing to your physical health. It passes through your digestive tract without undergoing any changes. It is unaffected by stomach acids or enzymes. As your body absorbs essential nutrients from the mashed bundles of carrots, the 22 karat is left untouched and unutilized. Ultimately, it is excreted from the body as waste, a discarded element of the digestive process.

E-175. That’s the name of the gold you can eat. El Dorado es un mito. E-175 is real. Picture this: gloved workers in a pristine French kitchen, delicately placing each tiny gold leaf. Their movements calculated, their focus unwavering. They carry out their duties with reverence. They are precious. It is a symphony of precision and artistry, a testament to human vision, human capacity to hammer beauty out of ore. Gold is mother Earth’s concession to opulence.

And I am going to eat it.

Raised eyebrows, criticisms of prodigality. Cautionary tales of perforated intestines. I have stomached them all. The allure of E-175 prevails. I will stomach it too. One pound of it will pass through me.

There is a historical precedent for this kind of thing. Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, father of the medical renaissance, believed that gold held potent medicinal properties. He prescribed his patients elixirs of gold, golden powders, and delicate gold leaf, imbued with the promise of health and vitality. To PATBvH, gold was a paragon of purity and perfection. So perfect, in fact, that it might eradicate illness, even of the mind, in those lucky enough to consume it.

I am no alchemist. I am not pursuing something “holistic” or “alternative.” I suspect my body will be the same before and after this endeavour. What I am pursuing is the transmutation of my soul. At this moment, I am the type of person who might attempt to eat a pound of gold. Soon, I will be the person who has. It will demand attention. Metallic strands will become woven into the fabric of my identity. People’s behaviour will bend around the gravity of my undertaking. Whether vitriol or praise or sheer bewilderment, they will have something to say. At family reunions and funerals. Perhaps for generations to come. Gold. The word alone will invoke me. Who else comes to mind?

Aquillius, the Roman senator, died with a throatful of molten gold. But unlike Aquillius, I will not perish. I will carry forward a ritual that echoes through the ages. I will embark on a journey that transcends ordinary consumption. I will become an archon of Aurumphagia. I will partake in a feast fit for the gods, where the primaeval act of ingestion is elevated to art.

Is it pointless? No more than the suffocating complexity of contemporary existence, where the pursuit of happiness is reduced to somnambulance while the clock ticks relentlessly. Brothers are killing sisters overseas, over fantastic national metaphors. We’ve forgotten where the signposts point, forgotten where we came from. Ingesting a pound of gold, with its ponderous heft and radiant lustre, is an act of reclamation, a defiance via precious metal. Let us return to the palpable and the corporeal. The substantive. The real.

I have commissioned a chryselephantine effigy of myself. I will have completed my project when nothing but ivory bones remain.

I am going to eat a pound of gold. And I will become.