1. Let others shop
2. Let them eat cake
3. Let it be
I. Let others shop
Ms. S. drove to work shortly before 11 last night and a bit later texted how insane the Walmart parking lot, past which she drove, already was.
I have a cultish, kitsch fascination with spectacles like Black Friday … wait, let me erase the question begging. To the extent that I am fascinated by Black Friday, it’s insofar as I see it as a mass spectacle, perhaps something Mikhail Bakhtin (see also: the carnivalesque) or Walter Benjamin might in some way recognize. In graduate school we had a Thanksgiving dinner for those who stayed in town (rathe than travel to distant family) for the holiday, a bit of a potluck but anchored by the host house, and after much eating and drinking and the like some went home in the freezing Wisconsin cold while others prepared a convoy to the mall or some other shopping center. In a way it’s not unlike lining up to see a rock star after a concert or waiting a couple days in line for some movie.
But then I also see the mindless consumerism of it — something Benjamin and others aossciated with the Frankfurt School or critical theory would also note — and I feel revulsion. But it is not the cause but rather just a symptom of our society. For years politicians, when speaking of the economy and improving it, speak of ‘consumer confidence.’ We are ‘consumers’ … and it does us a double disservice, positively and as negative space. Positively it defines us by the action of consuming, taking in, eating, mere targets for sales and advertising, and not producers. But beyond that the overwhelming use of the term ‘consumer’ (and tax payer … which is furthermore a surrogate for the historically problematic ‘property owner’) should be contrasted with that which is not mentioned: citizen (forget ‘voter,’ which shows up once every couple years during an election cycle). We are defined by our interchangeable economic function rather than by our integrated, organic, part-of-the-whole relationship to society through politics. Or ‘individual,’ ‘member of the public,’ and so on. Every so often when observing public discourse, take note of the generic term used to refer to ‘us’ as a group. And this is where Benjamin, along with Kafka and, earlier, Marx would recognize another trend in modernity: alientation (through a reduction to functions rather than roles).
If in 2012 you want a treatise on social and individual wellness, you could do worse than returning to 1927 and Hermann Hesse’s “Steppenwolf.”
II. Let them eat cake
I’ll have pie.
Pie, like pizza and soups & stews, is better the next day. And so breakfast was a relatively well-balanced mixture of coffee & tea, eggs sunny-side-up, and a slice of pumpkin pie.
Ah, eggs. They are something I constantly practice, the prepration of which I constantly alter. It’s not just (hard) boiled (should you boil? or barely simmer? for how long? acid in the water or not, and so on), but also omelets and the ‘fried’ egg. These days I warm the eggs, more or less to room temperature, before I crack them. Then I crack them into a custard cup (one of my kitchen multi-taskers: good for misen-en-place, especially spices, as well as puddings, soup, single-serving casseroles and the like, servings of nuts, etc.) before adding them to the hot skillet. Then, which fat to use, how much, and so on. No bacon fat these days, though occaionally I use butter, more frequently olive or canola oil, and by default a spriz or two of spray. A lid or not to help ‘steam’ the egg and give the yolk a cloudy appearance … and how firm to cook the whites? These days I’ve simplified to [1] warmed eggs, cracked, [2] heat to medium, a spray of oil, and reduced to medium-low, [3] eggs poured in and a pinch each of salt, pepper, and paprika, and [4] I let them be until the white nearest the yolk is almost set.
I should probably poach more eggs.
But I don’t have much time for cake these days. I have, however, for some time been wanting to return to two old favorites: poppy seed cake and Sacher Torte. For the latter I just recommend using Wolfgang Puck’s recipe, which is easy enough to find online. For the former I use a recipe an Austrian friend and colleague gave me a few years ago. It’s never let me down. Both are basically ‘foam cakes’, employing very little flour and using only whipped egg whites as leavening.
Pie may be a bit of a splurge, but when it’s pumpkin you at least get your daily dose of vitamin A.
III. Let it be
Ms. S. is a better person than I. She works out every day. Sometimes I do … for a while. A week, two. Then there’s a day off … perhaps I’m out of town … and one day becomes two, becomes three.
But Ms. S. doesn’t love working out. Or rather, she does. The equivocation is simple: it takes time, if outside (like a run or walk) it may take time to get to the right location, it requires preparation and a shower afterward, so even half an hour of working out takes 45 minutes or an hour, and so on. But the working out itself, and the feeling afterward, the high and the rush …
… but this Friday is relatively lax. Sure, Ms. S. will get up and go for a walk or run, but the evening is about down-time and together-time. And my day is — perhaps ‘alas’ — sedentary, focused on book and computer work.
I almost want a treadmill desk. Or at least a basic manual treadmill an the materials to make my own standing desk. The first thought is that which echoes all the other articles out there on such devices: it brings extra movement to a sedentary lifestyle or at least work environment. But the question then pokes itself into my consciousness: left to my own devices, would I use it or just idealize it (and then feel guilty for not using it) … or use it and leave the house less?
But it’s Black Friday, I’m staying home and eating leftovers, I have good books to read, and I can think about this next week.
