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Musings Report 2021-45 11-6-21 In Praise of Things That Take a Long Time
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In Praise of Things That Take a Long Time
One of the pre-pandemic ads on PBS pitched luxury European river cruises to wealthy Americans. In one staged scene, an overfed American couple pulled a tray of fresh-baked rolls from a vintage oven, much to the delight of an attractive young woman in a Bavarian-style uniform. The intent of the scene was obviously to suggest that the Americans who ponied up the thousands of dollars for the cruise would be treated to a taste of traditional crafts and cuisine in quaint European river towns replete with castles, bakeries staffed by attractive young women in Bavarian-style uniforms, etc.
The scene always reminded me of the real-world bakery in the small village in the south of France where my brother lived for many years. As you no doubt know, to get the croissants and loaves ready for early morning shoppers requires going to work in the wee hours of the morning, and on occasion the village's sole baker would sleep in a bit due to an evening enjoying the liquid output of local vineyards. Early morning shoppers had to cool their heels for a few hours, much to their dismay.
To get a real taste of traditional cuisine, the overfed American tourists would have to be awakened and delivered to the bakery no later than 3 am to help with the tedious mixing, kneading, etc. This would be all too real, as wealthy Americans are accustomed to low-paid workers doing all the hard stuff to enable their many conveniences.
As you probably know, the number of people willing to do all the hard stuff at odd hours for low pay is collapsing. Who wants learn a difficult craft and start work at 2 am when there are much easier ways to make money? It's not just a shortage of bakers; there's also a shortage of taxi drivers in London, and in hundreds of other jobs doing the hard stuff for low pay.
The super-wealthy will always be able to pony up whatever sums are required to hire people to do the hard work of making real food to traditional standards, but the upper-middle class that has become accustomed to easily affording conveniences performed by low-paid people will increasingly find the service is sporadic, unavailable, or the cost is no longer affordable.
That's one reason to start doing things that take a long time, i.e. tasks that produce traditional quality, taste, etc., oneself.
Since making food from scratch takes a long time, something must be sacrificed to free up the time, and it seems the obvious choice is the inordinately large number of hours Americans spend staring at screens: their mobile phones, iPads, monitors and TVs. I watch a fair share of escapist TV (I still miss the Japanese mystery series that went off the air when Honolulu station KIKU closed), but there is no way I could consume the vast amount of programming, YouTube videos, etc. that Americans watch and be even remotely productive in writing, house and yard work and growing, harvesting, prepping and making real food.
A friend recently rattled off the long list of programming services he subscribes to and then listed one series after another than I "just had to watch." Sorry, I don't have time for even one, as I'm busy doing things that take a long time, things that offer far more satisfactory results and feelings than watching a screen for hours.
Just to state the obvious, paying attention to crops and animals has been selected in human behavior for at least 30,000 years. This genetic heritage finds expression in great comfort and satisfaction in raising animals and food. The modern developed-world urban human finds animal companionship in pets, and very little in growing food. This impoverishment has a visible manifestation: a derealized life of disconnection, mental disorders and derangement.
It is not accidental that prisoners offered the opportunity to care for animals and gardens prosper in ways that surprise institutionalized authorities.
The process of doing things that take a long time has its own numerous rewards. Since the processes can rarely be rushed, one gains patience. Since even simple tasks require attention, one gains the mindset treasured by Taoists, Buddhists, sadhus and monks. And since the results are magical, one gains great satisfaction.
Baking bread is one example. Another is growing vegetables, harvesting them, washing them gently and thoroughly, prepping them (slicing into strips, etc.), cooking them and delivering them to the table to enjoy. Another example is grating fresh coconut just removed from the shell. Here are a few photos of the process, which takes a few hours. We use the coconut chips in granola and the grated coconut in baked goods such as cookies, pies, cakes or tarts (shown).
There is another potential reward in doing things that take a long time. One might come to realize that true wealth is mastery freely shared. If this sounds obscure, it is not intended to be so, any more than saying "wealth that seeks only to expand wealth is not true wealth."
Here's an example. We were fortunate to have two international chefs interning at Chez Panisse (in Berkeley, California) join our Thanksgiving celebration some years ago, as my wife had befriended one via email before her arrival in California.
Chez Panisse is unique in the world of restaurants, not for the quality of its cuisine (there are hundreds of restaurants serving up "fine dining" for a hefty price around the world) but for the reach of its influence. It is no understatement to say that it is undoubtedly the most influential restaurant in the U.S.
This is the result of its philosophy of using locally produced ingredients and preparing them with artful sincerity, i.e. "simply" but with authority, authenticity and with an eye on presentation. The effect is intentionally informal rather than "fancy."
Our flat was small, less than 800 square feet, and our kitchen was even smaller. We had to combine two households (our friend / neighbor and our own) of tables, chairs and dishes to host 23 people, and we used her oven and our propane-fired burner outside to augment our overworked stove.
There were already about six people crammed into the tiny kitchen, and the two chefs immediately found a tiny length of counter to start work. One magically located my favorite old Japanese knife (gifted to me by correspondent Ishabaka), and I was pleased to note she set her own knife aside to use this one.
This chef quickly assembled the sort of fresh greens with accents (pomegranate seeds, etc.) that would grace the cover of a fancy magazine, while I apologized to the other chef for asking her to do the lowly task of preparing the mashed potatoes and gravy. Rather than be offended by our request, she cheerfully set about making extraordinary mashed potatoes and gravy.
This was true mastery: no small thing done badly. In the usual "fancy meal," the mashed potatoes and gravy would be ignored or dressed up in some sort of exotica. Here, the chef kept to "simple" mashed potatoes and gravy, but did so with full mastery.
As I said, our kitchen was crowded and old. Despite these limitations, it was a well-stocked kitchen because we cook a lot, and the chefs' ease in locating all the tools of their trade was a gratifying compliment. I watched in amazement as they seemed to already know where to find whisks, cast-iron pans, etc. in our crowded kitchen.
Mastery is not a brand, nor is it exclusive. It is not perfection, it is the pursuit that counts. Everyone has an equal opportunity to master some small slice of life's basic crafts, gardening, food preparation, entertaining, etc. It doesn't take much money, it takes time, effort, focus and discipline in service of real rewards that cannot be bought.
It's not about flaunting something, it's about the quiet, private pleasures and rewards gained.
Someone with plentiful money (paper, gold, crypto, NFTs, whatever) could "buy" each dish at a restaurant or order a private chef to prepare it, but they could not "buy" such a gathering because the caring and generosity at its heart cannot be bought at any price.
True wealth is what cannot be bought. There may be exceptions, but I personally do not know anyone with a showy mansion who has any real friends or who entertains out of love rather than for show. They may have a multitude of acquaintances, but no real friends, for friendship cannot be bought, and the nurturing of friendship lies on a completely different path than the acquisition of "wealth."
What is presented as "wealth" is in fact a sad form of extreme poverty.
It is only as a participant that one can enjoy freely shared mastery. Someone with abundant money can sit down and passively consume a masterfully prepared dish, but passive consumption can never "taste" mastery, much less understand it as the pure expression of pleasure.
Highlights of the Blog
One Solution to Soaring Food Prices: Start Your 2022 Garden Now 11/6/21
Whistleblowers Torpedo Facebook and Pfizer: Who's Next? 11/4/21
Revenge of the Real World 11/2/21
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Recorded a new song for the first time in a year with my friend and musical mentor of 48 years, S.T. It was fun to play a classic Gretsch hollow-body and a Gibson ES-335.
From Left Field
The harmonium was born in Europe – so how did it become synonymous with Indian music?
Jim Chanos: China's "Leveraged Prosperity" Model is Doomed. And That’s Not the Worst -- so all the households that currently own three empty flats will own six, and that "prosperity" is sustainable?
In Tackling China’s Real-Estate Bubble, Xi Jinping Faces Resistance to Property-Tax Plan
Untethered: It's time to get very worried about Tether, the "stablecoin" at the center of the crypto economy.
The U.S. budget deficit hit $2.8 trillion in 2021, the second highest on record. -- we're borrowing 41% of spending and 70% of tax revenues, no problem, it's clearly sustainable forever....
What We Think We Know About Metabolism May Be Wrong-- yes, there's a cliff around 60 years of age...
How the Supply Chain Broke, and Why It Won’t Be Fixed Anytime Soon--only it's much worse than this overview suggests...
Net Zero and Carbon Neutrality: Unscientific Myths for an US and THEM World--all those private jets and virtue-signaling wealthy "leaders"...
The American Exodus: Why I believe that America will soon lose many of the best and brightest people.--harsh, but hard to deny...
David Graeber Knew Ordinary People Could Remake the World
Technofeudalism: Yanis Varoufakis explaining to Slavoj Zizek why I think capitalism has evolved into something worse (13 minutes)
Every New Car You Can Still Buy with a Manual Transmission (via Maoxian)-- who knew there was a 305 HP version of the Honda Civic? Crikey, my low-end Civic has 158 HP, more than enough...
"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." Joseph Campbell (via nitch.com)
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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