The Cut
On the business end of an active knife is the cut. And similarly, from a distance, it can appear as sharp and clearly defined as the blade that made it. But under close examination it’s messy and untidy. A “clean” cut doesn’t really exist; under magnification it’s a rough valley with debris littering the landscape.
Successful cutting depends on repetition and persistence at a small scale. The tool isn’t truly perfect and neither is the result. Scale and perspective matter.
All Knives Are Serrated
A very sharp knife looks (as seen by the naked eye) to have a perfectly continuous edge formed by the intersection of two perfectly smooth surfaces. But the edge of a very sharp knife is, in fact, (as seen under powerful magnification) a jagged, impassable ridge line formed by the intersection of two rugged slopes.
A knife edge polished to a mirror finish—relatively smooth even at the microscopic level—doesn’t cut better. It may not even cut as well because the tiny imperfections of the edge are what actually do the work of tearing and dividing the material*. A knife does it’s work a little at a time on a very small scale. A little progress here and there, over and over again, over the length of the strokes. Not perfectly, but persistently.
Just like us.
* A note to my wood-working friends: I acknowledge this is not the same for a chisel or other tools with a similar action.
Lasting Effects
The most obvious and well-known danger of using dull knives is that you’ll have to use so much force to cut something that you’ll slip and cut yourself. But a subtler, more problematic danger is getting used to dull knives.
If you’re used to using sharp knives and you find yourself in the situation of having to use a dull knife, you automatically get a warning when you realize that you can’t cut as accurately or efficiently as you expect to. You can then decide to sharpen the knife, find another knife or even proceed at risk.
But if you’re used to using dull knives and you find yourself in the situation of suddenly using a sharp knife, you may be surprised at how efficiently it cuts. “Surprised” here might mean that you cut deeper or differently than you’re expecting. Depending on the exact circumstances, you may even cut something you never intended to.
Using a dull or a bad tool is dangerous each time you use it. But the lasting effects of using a bad, dull tool over and over again can gradually make even a good, sharp tool dangerous.
Layers
Among the many fascinating and clever things Samin Nosrat writes about in her amazing book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is the idea of using those four elements at different times during the preparation of a single dish. She uses the term “layering” to describe the approach of building complex and satisfying flavors this way: layering salt by using it not only to brine, but also to season and finish. Layering acids by using one to marinade and a different one later to drizzle. These layers add depth and dimension to food.
Physical layers create interest and satisfaction as well. Croissants and baklava are famous for their delicate layers. Pizza can be thought of as a large, round, layered dish. And sandwiches aren’t just convenient to make: by stacking ingredients on top of each other they provide contrast in texture and mouthfeel. A sandwich presents with a certain amount of order that we can investigate not only with our eyes but with our mouths: we know a sandwich by the biting and chewing of it.
But the finest example of layering, both in terms of preparation and assembly is the taco. The preparation of the meat involves seasoning with acid from a few tomatoes, salt and of course the heat of the pan sizzling the fat. A bit more fat in the form of cheese or avocado toppings, and likewise a bit more acid in the pico de gallo. Maybe a little more salt in the Tajin sprinkled on top or on a hard taco shell. The physical layers of ingredients, themselves layered with flavors, create one of the most fun and satisfying meals of the week: taco night—or as we like to call it, taco fiesta.
The Economics of Convenience
From classical economics:
The return on land is rent.
The return on labor is wages.
The return on capital is interest.
The return on management is profit.
When I took economics in college, there was some debate about what the return on technology really was. (I’ll throw in my two cents by suggesting that it’s markets.) But it’s a different consideration in personal economics. If we’re already well-off, the return on technologies that make things “quick and easy” is probably just additional leisure time.
But what’s the return on “slow and difficult”?
Performance Art
Art is what happens when you make something better than it needs to be. It would have worked well enough before you put some finishing touches on it. It would have been good enough before you decided to put an extra flourish into it. A little extra effort and care can make it more attractive, elegant, robust, capable, efficient: the work of an artisan.
So why go for a run through difficult terrain, like snow and ice? Why split wood by hand; especially when it’s just for the occasional campfire in your backyard? Why even bother learning to deadlift, do a pull-up or tree pose?
Maybe just as an expression of physical potential and agency. Maybe just for the variety: a challenge that breaks up your routine. Maybe doing it outside just because it’s nice to be outside; whether or not the weather is actually nice. Maybe it’s just to have one difficulty in your life that you get to pick.
Maybe doing things the hard way once in a while makes us a little better in some way: a little stronger, a little more coordinated, a little more aware, a little more alive.
Maybe it’s performance art.
The Velocity of Shallow Angles
I found an old book on the floor of a used bookstore. (The store sold used books, but the bookstore appeared to have been used as well.) The title of the book was The Velocity of Shallow Angles. I thumbed through its pages, scanning for something interesting, remarkable, inspiring.
I found a passage that struck me and read on a while. I went back to that first passage again, but it was different somehow. It didn’t carry the weight it had just a few moments ago. I went further back, thinking I had somehow confused it with another. Flipping forward again, it was different again, but differently this time.
Thinking again that there must be some confusion on my part, I looked at the table of contents; searching for a boundary and title to tether it, but the passage moved. The index was no help and the passage moved again, despite my thumb’s effort to mark its place. (The table and the index did not agree, anyway…)
I struggled to find the passage one last time, and when I finally recognized it, it bore little resemblance to the one I read only minutes (or was it hours?) ago. I read it carefully, again and again, trying to reconcile it with my memory (feelings?) about my first reading of it. It seemed to gradually give under the weight of my scrutiny, becoming flat and lifeless and written for someone else.
I couldn’t bear to read it any more and placed the book back on the floor.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Rock: our basic, inherent nature and needs.
Paper: (mostly) pre-modern technologies that address those needs: food, conversation, hugs, a good book or meaningful, healthy movements , e.g. work, play, exercise.
Scissors: high-technology solutions to our basic needs and problems: NETFLIX, cars, maple bacon doughnuts and anything with a touchscreen.
Paper covers (read: “soothes”) rock, by definition above.
And yes, scissors cuts paper, i.e. makes it look stupid and primitive and inefficient, even though paper works totally fine most of the time. (Paper is a wonderful technology, by the way.)
Rock breaks scissors, but probably only after scissors sits next to rock, distracting it and tricking it into creating an account by presenting an interesting article headline, which the rock knows is probably just clickbait, but the rock is really enjoying a mocha frappachino in an overstuffed chair, procrastinating doing real work, so why not? (As an unusually literal example, I could tell you a story about an ordinarily mild-mannered friend who actually went completely Office Space on an ink jet printer in his driveway after his patience ran out.)
Seems like the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors is itself broken when a computerized laser scissors with soft-touch handles gets to play and starts seriously messing with the rock. Rock may need to get better at recognizing scissors for what they are instead of being fooled by the fancy Kickstarter video presentation that scissors put together. Rock should probably rethink its strategy against scissors, because scissors is not even playing the same game.
Our basic, biological, bedrock nature can be tricked and hacked for our short-term convenience and enjoyment, but the fact is “scissors” are brittle and can’t solve every problem in the long term. They’re an adjunct, not a substitute for “paper”. “Paper” is natural and flexible—a set of holistic approaches that developed with “rock” over a much longer period of time than “scissors” have had. “Paper” is pretty reliable, even if it seems a little boring or tedious at times.
Coffee Makers
Four of us enjoyed a rare gathering outside, spaced several feet distant around a backyard fire pit on a frigid afternoon. Our friends told us that they had tried different coffee brewing methods and settled on a Chemex brewer for their morning cup: ideal for its excellent flavor and fast clean-up.
The subject of coffee preparation has come up a couple of times lately. It’s interesting to note the machines and accessories and techniques people prefer: what makes good coffee, the right amount of coffee, what’s too much fuss, etc. It’s an interesting lens to look through when you consider all the choices available. So what is it we’re making, anyway?
For some people, coffee is just hot brown water that needs to happen—quickly—in order for life to continue. For others, there are subtle flavors to be gently coaxed out. Less often, there are those that value the ritual just as much as the final product, perhaps more—coffee as an act of creation. For some, coffee is a medium for delivering flavored syrups or milk.
To be clear, I try not to judge what anyone likes to drink, even though I sometimes poke fun at the tastes of friends and family. Some people find the very idea that a well-brewed cup of coffee is important to be faintly ridiculous, but I can't hear them over the sound of my conical burr grinder.
It is extremely tempting to equate a particular method or device with a level of discernment and taste, but it’s not always so. A coffee brewer is a lever that you pull. (metaphorically speaking, of course: very few have actual levers) You might just need the lever to efficiently produce coffee. Or you might think that the lever should be especially beautiful to look at or a pleasure to use. The lever might be cheap or durable or small enough to fit on the counter. You might enjoy adjusting and tweaking the lever until it's just right before you pull it with practiced skill.
But we are the coffee makers: we're firmly, if sometimes sleepily, gripping one end of that lever. (And merely pulling that lever is doing subtle work on us, too.) Any of the brewers can be supplied with high or low-quality coffee beans and water, and can be operated with varying levels of care. The gadgets we select are a small subset of a dozen different factors that impact what we use and how we use it to get a good (or maybe just good enough) cup of coffee.
Seasoned
My understanding of cooking has changed a lot in the past year since reading Samin Nosrat’s remarkable book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. In particular, I’ve gained an appreciation for how salt and seasonings are used effectively: ideally, at more than one step in the cooking process.
Salt especially can be added long before the oven is even turned on; in a brine or marinade or just applied directly to the surface of meat. There might be two or three more steps when salt or seasonings are added, depending on the heat being used to cook and how delicate the herbs are. When you think the dish is finished, it always pays to taste it and consider if maybe you need to add a little more of the seasonings called for in the recipe—or even some that aren’t. And many dishes recommend a garnish of an herb like parsley or cilantro, or a final sprinkle of fancy sea salt to complete the dish and give it an added flavor or texture.
Samin refers to this process as “layering”: using different herbs and spices and salts at different times to bring out and create the best flavors. But I also find myself thinking about it as iterating: getting closer and closer to the final product by paying attention to the feedback the food is providing through flavor and appearance at several different times, and then making adjustments.
The word “season” in the sense of flavoring food comes from the French assaisoner (to do something during the proper season) which brings with it the sense of the right time for tilling the soil, planting for the harvest and ripening. When we re-season food as we cook, we stir, taste and add more herbs and spices—and then we wait a while and repeat to see if we’ve arrived: miniature seasons within the process of seasoning.
I’m better in the kitchen now than I when I started, but I could use more time, more tasting, more experience for the food to do the work of seasoning me into a better cook.
The Names of Thoughts
Spoken language is a beautiful, hopeless attempt at expressing thoughts with small movements of our faceparts and air. Out through the mouth; in through the ears. Written language is a beautiful, hopeless attempt at expressing the same thoughts and actions with notation on a surface, made by hand. Out through the hands; in through the eyes.
We come to writing after speaking and spend much longer acquiring it. The thoughts are first and we learn their names. We get more organized on paper, learning to spell the names of our thoughts; arranging them in straight lines, more or less. And this changes us.
By reading, we might learn words that we’ve never heard before and might not ever speak out loud. This is the same as studying a picture of a hotel where we have never stayed: recognizing a place without quite knowing what it feels like to arrive there. Dictate a thought onto a screen and you might feel the strain of trying to adopt the device register. (Perhaps yet another form of language that has yet to be formalized or maybe just a parlor trick, like juggling chainsaws.) In any case, it, too, feels strange: out through the mouth, in through the eyes.
Our speech and writing evolve, but are never quite the same because they can’t be. They are from different worlds; they are different worlds. Where the ears must be quick, the eyes can linger and return. Where the mouth and tongue must be agile, the hands can pause indefinitely to fidget and fumble.
This would probably sound very different if it weren’t written down.
Specialization is for Insects
I have been fond of the passage quoted below for a long time. It isn’t to be taken literally, or perhaps even seriously. I think I like it because it evokes a deep sense of range and potential—of capability and agency. Perhaps it’s also a reminder that we can use our amazing and uniquely human faculties compassionately. (Emphases are mine):
A human being should be able to change a diaper,
plan an invasion,
butcher a hog,
conn a ship,
design a building,
write a sonnet,
balance accounts,
build a wall,
set a bone,
comfort the dying,
take orders,
give orders,
cooperate,
act alone,
solve equations,
analyze a new problem,
pitch manure,
program a computer,
cook a tasty meal,
fight efficiently,
die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Pictures and Words
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why wouldn't it make perfect sense that a gesture, a smile, a shaking of the head—in context, of course—would communicate as much or more than a well-written sentence? Maybe even a paragraph?
What images lack in precision they more than make up for in bandwidth. And besides, reading between the lines is a form of seeing.
Adjustments
When you’re cutting up vegetables or meat and you need to adjust to get a different angle or position, you can move three things:
the knife
the food
your body
The knife moves, of course, as you make the series of cuts along a piece of food. Some small adjustments can be made, but mostly you want the knife to stay in the same area—where your grip is sure and your hand and wrist are comfortable. Where you can confidently control the knife; where you can make smooth and efficient strokes. Think of working your way down a carrot.
Moving the food instead of the knife is necessary when you’re finished with one piece and grab another (duh), or when the cut requires a knife angle that you can’t easily or safely accommodate. Think of dicing a potato or an onion.
Moving your body is usually reserved for big or awkward tasks that don’t lend themselves well to moving the food. But it’s not because you need to change the grip on the knife, necessarily. It’s more likely because you need to see the food better and it might be simpler to move yourself than move the food. Think of moving around to cut up a pork shoulder or getting yourself over the top of a large squash to slice it in half.
Knife, food, eye. Put another way: tool, problem, perspective.
Refresh
Cooling food down is as much a part of cooking—especially baking—as heating it up.
Rest and recovery is as much a part of exercise as the actual workout.
Silence is as much a part of speech as sound, and whitespace is as much a part of writing as words.
So what? So nothing exists without its opposite: big deal. That’s just the rising and setting sun; the tide rolling in and out; inhaling and exhaling.
Where does inspiration come from? How do these things become new again? By breaking the routine, perhaps. By shaking up and disrupting the rhythm with mistakes, with obstacles, with constraints. Maybe even with boredom.
A missing recipe ingredient can trigger an educational search for a substitute ingredient or an alternative recipe.
Anything can be exercise if you carry more weight with you, and it can help you better understand and appreciate the way you move and hold your body.
Haiku poetry requires a specific number and pattern of syllables, forcing a certain kind of economy of words.
There is a difference between the cycle of presence and absence that’s needed to make a thing work in the short term; indeed, to work at all. Over the long term, something different is needed to introduce variety and help form new ideas.
Trays Revisited
Trays are, as I’ve noted before, powerful and efficient tools. But just as they carry coffee and Belgian waffles, they also carry a deeper meaning.
Using a tray is an expression of refinement. This has little or nothing to do with the materials the tray is made of or its provenance. The tray is a symbol as well as a tool and its use signifies a deliberate effort to deliver items with dignity and grace. One could simply gather up several items into one’s hands and arms and armpits like a clumsy, soon-to-be-apprehended cat burglar, but making the small effort to fetch a tray for the errand can transform the struggles of a bungling oaf into an elegant and seemingly effortless gesture. As a result, both the deliverer as well as the recipient take part in something a bit more elevated.
The medium may be the message, but if that message arrives on a tray you can be sure that it’s being delivered with the fullest expression of hospitality.
Are We All Philosophers Now?
Philosophers must be a busy bunch this year; there are so many different things to think about. It isn’t that there is anything completely new to think about, but there are so many very concrete and escalating situations to tackle that deal with perennial issues in the area of moral philosophy, otherwise known as ethics.
I suspect the word “philosophy” probably conjures a very boring university lecture being given by an old white man in most people’s imagination. This is both true and false. (Aha! A paradox!)
It’s true because, yes, that lecture does happen. It is false because that is not the sum total of philosophy. You can see philosophy happening on most television shows that deal with human nature and decision making: any medical drama, any legal drama and any reasonably intelligent police procedural. At some point, a human has to make a decision that is difficult because it isn’t quite clear what the “right” thing to do is. We label this “entertainment” instead of “philosophy” when we watch imaginary characters struggle with these decisions on-screen.
There are myriad questions posed about loyalty (to whom, under what circumstances, despite which consequences?), making a choice that may have potentially devastating effects without complete certainty (will the surgery be successful or kill the patient?) or making a trade-off between two important but difficult-to-compare aspects (appearance or physical ability versus risks to health).
I don’t know if philosophers get hired to consult on these shows to help create interesting situations or describe the work the characters might engage in to find solutions. Probably not: the problems themselves abound quite naturally (they have for some time now) and I suspect that writers are sufficiently clever students of human behavior to find solutions that are satisfying to audiences.
And I’m equally sure that philosophers are not being hired in large enough numbers at influential technology companies or government, where they might skillfully describe potential dangers and other second-order effects of implementing a given technology or policy on an arbitrarily large scale. Or to simply serve as a counselor who can provide illustrative and relevant thought-experiments that help us see the potential problems differently and with a bit more depth; with a bit more humanity. Or even to merely provoke a healthy seriousness in considering the issues at hand.
The truth is that we all have to make difficult decisions sometimes. We have to take up the work of choosing between two or more things that create tension in our values and how we understand the world.
But, of course, everyone thinks they are an above average driver.
Every Problem Looks Like a Full Dishwasher
The skill of being able to effectively and efficiently use a hammer is still valuable, but perhaps less frequently needed than it used to be. Nails and hammers have largely been replaced by screws and cordless screw guns, so the idea that every problem could look like a nail is becoming ever more antiquated. (The need to occasionally smash things with some kind of hammer is perennial, however, which gives me solace.) I would posit that in these days of ubiquitous computing and relative isolation, almost every problem looks either like a login page or Tetris.
The login page is self-evident: nearly everything that we used to do in person in order to trade money for goods or services is now done with the computer as a facilitator. Everything we need to do requires an online account of some kind—even if the service is free. Thus, the login page and attendant username and password.
Every other problem we face, it seems, is some variation on the game Tetris. Tetris is a video game challenge of correctly orienting and positioning colorful shapes on the ground that fall from the sky in order to form that most prized configuration: a perfectly flat surface which then disappears, preventing a growing pile of colorful but distressingly disorganized shapes not unlike the mountains of laundry that parents are regularly faced with. The strategy is, of course, to make these sometimes awkward shapes fit together in the most efficient, continuous form possible.
It is the familiar problem of trying to schedule another Zoom call with all the people whose schedules are already filled with Zoom calls. It is doing dishes for the 3rd time between the 7th and 8th Zoom calls of the day. It is packing endless scraps and leftovers into the refrigerator. It is stuffing a seemingly self-reproducing supply of Tupperware and Pyrex and disposable/reuseable/not-very-environmentally-responsible food containers into the god-dammed cupboard. It is getting the first load of laundry started early enough that the 3rd load of laundry will be dry before bed. It is wedging another 3 dishes into the dishwasher so that there is no need to wash dishes by hand for the 5th time today. (It is, sometimes, the very happy problem of not quite being able to fit all of the M&M cookies into the cookie jar.)
A password manager or a simple pad of Post-It Notes solves the problem of login pages, but we will need to build a hell of a robot to offload all our Tetris problems.
The Source of Tension
The day after Thanksgiving we struck out for the Christmas tree farm and cut down our trees, as is our custom. Trees, plural, because we get a giant one to put in the open stairwell by our front door, and another, more reasonable-sized tree to put in a normal-sized room. Some years it’s been convenient to stick them both in our almost-an-SUV and let the crowns of the trees hang out the back. But when we get a tree that takes advantage of the full height of the entryway (about 18 feet) it seems more appropriate to secure it to the top of the car instead.
Traditionally, this would be done with ropes or baler twine, but now ratchet straps seem to have largely usurped their place in the world of securing loads. Nylon webbing is extremely strong and has the added bonus of getting tangled less easily than a traditional rope, and there’s no question that it’s simpler to use than it is to remember how to tie a trucker’s hitch or even a taut line hitch once a year.
In fact, there are all manner of “new” gadgets for making ropes taut instead of tying a knot or hitch: fixtures with odd geometries that allow one to wrap the rope around it to secure it and others with special cams to hold the rope in place under load. Fun gadgets that offload the job of memory and practice: an outsourcing of skill to clever product design. Any why not? Tension is the key (especially at highway speeds) and the mechanism for creating and maintaining it is secondary.
Maybe next year, just for fun, I’ll bring a long hank of old rope to the farm next year and look up the knots I need on YouTube. After all, neither the rope nor the tree care if I’m skilled or just connected to the internet.