Three hundred trout are required to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, which must consume 27 million grasshoppers, which live off of 1,000 tons of grass.
— Jeremy Rifkin, The The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (St. Martin’s Press, October 4, 2011)
When bodies are discussed, especially in popular culture, it has often meant a very circumscribed set of themes, largely to do with what the body looks like or how to maintain it at a pinnacle of health. The body as a set of surfaces, of more or less pleasing aspect. The perfect, unattainable body, so smooth and gleaming it is practically alien. What to feed it, how to groom it, the multiple dismaying ways in which it might fail to fit in or measure up. But the element of the body that interested me was the experience of living inside it, inhabiting a vehicle that was so cataclysmically vulnerable, so unreliably subject to pleasure and pain, hatred and desire…
I wanted to formalise my understanding of the body, and I was fascinated too by the idea that it might have its own language, distant from speech but just as eloquent and meaningful, composed of symptoms and sensations rather than words… Over the next two years, I drew every bone, muscle and organ in the body, memorising their functions and their names, right down to the tiny bones of the hand: lunate and pisiform, named for their resemblance to moons and peas. On sheets of butcher’s paper, I mapped the metabolic transformations that went on inside the miniature factory of each cell. At the beginning I had only the crudest notion of how the body worked, but I struggled gamely on, fascinated and a little appalled by how much of my life happened beneath the Plimsoll line of conscious control. Gradually it all came into focus. The body was a device for processing the external world; a conversion machine, hoarding, transforming, discarding, stripping for parts.
— Olivia Laing, Everybody: A Book About Freedom (W. W. Norton & Company, May 4, 2021)
This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.
~ Marge Piercy, from “The Art of Blessing the Day” in The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme. © Knopf, 1999.
Notes: Photo – Katharine Hanna with Organic vine-ripened tomatoes. Poem – A Year of Being Here
Credit: The Inspired Home: 29 Fancy Grill Cheese For the Ultimate Cheesiest Meal Ever (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)
I open my eyes. 5:35 a.m. I close my eyes, and take inventory.
Right groin, an old catcher’s mitt, stiff, cracks in the leather.
Knees, throb.
Three middle toes on right foot, blistered. Raw.
This is about where Tanya Donelly would say: “But you can change your story / And throw a hand up from the mud.”
But that’s not how we roll here. No Tanya. No.
This story (or catalyst) starts Wednesday after dinner. The 7 pm to 8:30 pm witching hour(s). The Big Cat starts to pace, and circle. I want it. I need it. I crave it.
After taking inventory in the fridge, the cupboards, the pantry, none of the required provisions are available. I jump into the car and head to Palmer’s Market. Talenti Mint Chocolate Chip Gelato. (4 Pints). Nacho Cheese Doritos (Extra Large Bag). Chobani Fruit on the Bottom Yogurt, Pineapple flavored. Stonewall Kitchen Sour Cherry Jam (to chase the Yogurt). And, then, in the glass case: Donuts. Strawberry Jelly filled donuts.
The belt pulls the items towards the clerk. “Good evening Sir. Do you have a Palmer’s Card?” A wee bit of junk food with Dinner, Sir? “Sir, I don’t see a 2 pound bag of Domino Premium Pure Cane Granulated Sugar here. Shall I run and get it for you? And, Sir, in Aisle 3, we have hypodermic needles and rubber hose tie-offs. Step behind the counter here with me, and I’ll inject it for you, it will only take a minute. [Read more…]
But if anything will soften me, it is food: dumplings, apple pie, sweet tea. A huge silent relief that is stillness passes through me like sun, a warm tongue on the cub’s crown, the thought of being thought of. Breath becomes easy.
~ A. K. Benjamin, Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Mind
Notes: Photo via ilyfood
These urban wanderings are punctuated by brief pauses in the cafés of Neukölln to down a quick beer; prolonged pauses in the lines outside kebab shops at lunchtime, long queues…there are more kebab shops here than McDonald’s. Mauro will taste more than thirty during his stay, finally deciding on his favorite—made in a van at the Mehringdamm U-Bahn station. Crunchy slices of meat, sweet grilled onions, crisp fries, soft bread, the smooth sauce soaking through all of it, and hot, hot, hot: the perfect fuel.
~ Maylis de Kerangal, The Cook (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 26, 2019)
Photo: geschmacks of Döner Kebab Groß
In a system as perfect as this, you only have to be deprived of breakfast to become unpredictable.
–Jean Baudrillard, from “Cool Memories II, 1987-1990”
Notes: Quote via finita–la–commedia. Photo: Count Gracula by ostdrossel.com. What a Grackle?
We have a bad situation here. (Very)
One needs to take personal accountability. Yet, if I could, I would, find anyone, anything, to blame.
The digital Nokia scale (Nokia Body Cardio WiFi Smart Scale in Black) was a Christmas gift from the kids last year. The gift wasn’t a subliminal message, but a blow with a blunt instrument. They see it, I can’t hide it. Man boobs. Pooch maturing to hang belly. And everything else, sliding, down, down, down.
So, for the next ~320 days, the morning ritual is the same. Step on the scale. Step off the scale. The Scale wirelessly sends the data to the iPhone app. The app fires off a notification:
“New weight measurement available. Stepping on the scale every morning and opening Health Mate regularly will help you stay on track.”
Right. Right.
Tuesday:
Nokia alert: “Good job. Your weight is up only 0.3 lbs from the day before.” Monday. Box of chocolates from colleague as a holiday gift along with a thank you note. A constant beckoning presence on my desk, a siren call. I put the conference call on mute. Pop a chocolate covered caramel in my mouth. Close my eyes. Let that blessing melt down my throat. [Read more…]
It’s 3:12 pm. I’m in the middle of a meeting. I sneak a peak at my emails…it’s Christie: “looks like this would be a hit…” (She’s thinking Pavlov’s Dog)
She attaches a link for Peach Cobbler Cheesecake.
I tuck my phone out of sight under the conference table and click the link. It springs open on the photo.
And for the next 3 hours:
Thought Spiral! Peaches, Cream Cheese, Golden Graham Crust, Butter, and more.
Rating: Can’t stop at 2 servings!
Notes: (1) Inspiration: Thank you Christie. (2) Photo: Susan; Baker: Susan. Thank you! (3) “NADT”: Not a Damn Thing!
Think back to when you were a child, it’s Christmas Eve, and your eyes scan the packages under the tree. “Not before 7 am!” The hands on the clock are stuck in some alien, viscous slurry.
Now, place yourself at the gates of Epcot, the opening day of the International Food & Wine Festival. It’s 7:45 a.m., the gates open at 8 a.m. Throngs of tourists mingle anxiously. Selfies. Smartphones. Strollers. And, Scooters, so many scooters, for the less mobile. (And I’m being kind here.)
There was the new ride Soarin‘. Warnings: Motion sickness? Fear of Heights? I look left and right and find no one but me griping the armrests. When did you get so fearful? So timid? Then there was The Seas and the Bomouth Guitarfish, a scary looking cross between Shark and Manta Ray. Then Frozen. Then Nemo. Then Living with the Land, a ride through horticulture and aquaculture. This was followed by a one-hour guided tour called Behind the Seeds. Hydroponics, a subset of hydroculture, a method of growing plants without soil using mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. And Aeroponics, the process of growing plants in air or mist without the use of soil.
It is here that the tour seems to hit bone. We are walking through four greenhouses. Plants spinning on mechanical pulleys. And, plants growing in white sand, being fed nutrient drips. And fish, in tanks – sturgeon, bass, catfish, tilapia. Circling round and round, being fed on the clock.
This World, sterile, Man-Manufactured. No insects. No birds. No dark, rich soil. [Read more…]
Later on, in the Depression thirties, the summers seemed even hotter. Out West, it was the time of the red sun and the dust storms, when whole desiccated farms blew away and sent the Okies, whom Steinbeck immortalized, out on their desperate treks toward the Pacific. My father had a small coat factory on Thirty-ninth Street then, with about a dozen men working sewing machines. Just to watch them handling thick woollen winter coats in that heat was, for me, a torture. The cutters were on piecework, paid by the number of seams they finished, so their lunch break was short—fifteen or twenty minutes. They brought their own food: bunches of radishes, a tomato perhaps, cucumbers, and a jar of thick sour cream, which went into a bowl they kept under the machines. A small loaf of pumpernickel also materialized, which they tore apart and used as a spoon to scoop up the cream and vegetables.
~ Arthur Miller, Before Air-Conditioning (The New Yorker, June 22, 1998)
Notes:
Yesterday I was shucking corn
for supper – pulling off the green sheaths
and brushing away the silks –
and suddenly in my hand I feel the naked cob
so cool, sweet, intimate, smooth, like skin I’m holding.
And I am deeply touched with surprise and rapture.
And I think how it is to feel life in the skin,
in the touch of plant flesh (sweet milk swelling the seeds) –
and how mostly people go for days
without touching anything from the earth…
Like ivory keys
I play the kernels with my tongue:
OH
OH
~ M.C. Richards, from “Sweet Corn” (1994) in Opening our Moral Eye
Photo: Stephen Ritchie with i love corn on the cob
What do you excel at?
A) Habitual repeating. (Professional kind)
Consistent, effective execution. Compulsive in following through on commitments. Dependable. You can count on him.
And that’s life isn’t it, the antithesis of what makes you effective at “A”, makes you a disaster a “B”.
B) Habitual repeating, in bulk. (Personal kind. Random, exculpatory list below.)
How many times can you spout on about the same sh*t? Let’s see. Let’s use metaphors, not your own of course. Because that would take talent, effort. How many times? Richard Powers, “A thousand—a thousand thousand—green-tipped, splitting fingerlings.”
So here we go again. [Read more…]
Here’s Pavarotti copied from an interview somewhere:
“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Published April 17, 2018)
Photo: BonAppétit, Pappardelle with Arugula and Prosciutto
It is the season of the meruňka—apricot time. It’s unclear when, exactly, she had time to make the dough for the little pillows of these dumplings, when she managed to buy the apricots… She pours melted butter over the ivory lumps in our shallow soup plates, then a brief snowstorm of sugar and crumbled white cheese, dry and salty. We pierce the puffery of the dough with big dessert spoons. Out comes the yellow-orange fruit, melting from the dumpling’s creamy white, like a perfectly coddled egg. Oh my, I say. They both beam at me. You see, you see, Anna says, as if I have finally seen the light she keeps trying to show me. My pleasure is proof that, in spite of everything I get wrong, maybe I’m learning after all what matters in life.
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day (Published April 17, 2018)
Notes:
Live & Learn 