Self-Reliance (#1)
An excerpt from Daily Bread, a story of Spiritual Bankruptcy through the eyes of the food system
If you are just joining, note that this is an excerpt of a book-in-progress, titled Daily Bread, about the spiritual bankruptcy in America as seen through the lens of the food system. All passages are available for free in sequential order (mostly), though it is perfectly acceptable to read one without the other, should you wish.
As I’m progressing through the writing my thoughts are getting more complicated. I’m working through them in words. I no longer claim these are *polished* drafts… there is a chance none of this makes sense to anyone but me. All the better. In truth this thought is far from finished, but it’s Monday and I owe you something… It’s possible I’ll have a second Daily Bread post this week.
Cheers,
PE
“Let us advance on Chaos and the Dark.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)
I’ve been telling this story in an ordinary fashion. This happened, then that happened, then this. Voila! Chronological. But I feel this next bit more fluidly. It keeps changing inside of me. It hasn’t written itself in stone. How do I tell a story that changes? How can I turn my words into water?
I sat on an untouched and custom-built caramel leather banquette at a wooden table I’d just finished assembling. A stone orb stood in the center of the courtyard encircled in boxwoods bursting with green against the rain of the grey day. Through the large and clean window the quiet garden permeated the new walls I sat within with reverence, like a museum. I was alone as I most often was. I reached for the pen:
I am a teller of stories. Though the stories I tell all join to reveal only one: my own. I am not a narcissist. “I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” These words from a man named Thoreau.
I tell these stories with more than my pen. Each gesture I make has an origin. As my hands knead and roll out the dough and stack the wood and light the fire and grind the meat and stuff the charcuterie… somewhere along the way I’ve forgotten the provenance of my earthly journey. One too many dishes washed. One too many meetings attended. One too many dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s. One too many talks about finances. One too many attempts to make other people happy. Something new is happening within me. I’m walking toward it now.
Self-reliance is a story told with the hands. And in telling this story I’ve met the constant and invisible turbulence of capitalism. Capitalism is a construct that reflects our minds and not our hands. The trouble is our minds are nothing without our hands to first feel our way. Man is not mind alone and we are suffering a quiet catastrophe because of this reduction. The sound from the sharpest knife is hardly heard as it pierces through the heart. A great imbalance has rendered poor our once mighty thoughts. Our minds manufacture thoughts and nothing more. Thoughts alone neither grow food nor feed it to us. My thoughts did not originate from conspiracy. I do not believe in dystopian notions of collapse. Sudden starvation for those of us within the Cupola unlikely. We will always find some other people’s hands to imperialize. My worry is about the soul. We’ve allowed a darkness to descend over us. When was the last time you were fulfilled?
In my pursuit of fulfilment I failed to recognize my participation in the same line of thought that had created unfulfillment. Instead of saving myself I attempted to save the world. Self-righteous missionary. I found and gathered the best of the ingredients around me. I learned to cook them over woodfire. I prepared them simply to allow them to tell their story. The man who was driven to write those words by the divinity of the bursting spring green deserved the confidence he felt. My food was a gift to others as much as it was a gift to myself, like my words. Had I erred? Perhaps not. Sometimes a fox makes footprints in the wrong direction. I engaged in a certain amount of deception. I juxtaposed the smokiness of burning wood with shiny quartz and clean lines and zinc. Is a museum of the highest art not hypocrisy? There is no right or wrong and that is the fluidity of this story that keeps higher thoughts running through our manufactured walls. The higher thought is the true story told and not its contents. What is right today is wrong tomorrow. I failed to achieve self-reliance being beheld by the dollars of my diners. I would have always failed in that regard for I had built a business. But who says I was beholden? The business was. I was not.
So Self-Reliance is the story of Camus’ Sisyphus. I pushed my business up the mountain of society to watch it roll back down. I trudged after it. I collected it. I pushed it back up. I see now “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.” My story has become the story of three men: the man pushing the boulder up the mountain, the man trudging after it, and the man who carries on having acknowledged the futility of the task. In the mornings, after lighting the fire, I always sharpened my knives.