Eat. Drink. Dance.

                                                        Eat. Drink. Dance.

                                                        by Marco M. Pardi

Note: All comments are appreciated, read, and responded to accordingly.  The comments sections for all previous articles have been opened for use.  I will certainly look forward to your comments.

While still quite young I decided eating must be the oddest of human behaviors (I had not yet learned how people make people). It’s not that I was unenthusiastic or picky.  It was that the mechanical process seemed so very strange: Objects appear on plate; purpose designed utensils are used to manipulate and lift the objects; an opening in the face is made; objects placed in it; utensil is withdrawn; facial opening is closed and objects are crushed by bony stumps inside; and, the mash is swallowed.  The oft expressed meme was This will make you big and strong (a clear forerunner of Richard Burton’s masterful performance in Hammersmith Is Out!, “I can make you rich and strong, strong and rich.”)  Repeated after dinner trips to the mirror put the lie to the adult caretaker’s meme.

I also learned that many people said they dislike eating alone.  Aside from the obvious benefit of watching your partner to see if the food’s gone off, there is an ill defined sense of security in vulnerable moments.  Dog companions see this when the dog takes food from his dish and goes elsewhere to eat it.  Dogs also often go to the end of the leash to defecate; once in the squat, even the most aggressive dog is momentarily helpless.

I saw similar security behavior at the Texas Correctional Intake/Classification Center where I did the STD clinic once a week.  After their last fling at freedom, the newly incarcerated lined up for mouth, tongue, penis, and anus exam (don’t these guys ever wipe?).  Diagnose, treat, interview for contacts. Can’t go throwing an infectious fish into an overcrowded pond, can we.  At lunchtime they assembled in a cafeteria with long tables and picnic bench seating.  No one clambered over the bench to sit down; they all stood with one foot resting on the bench and slightly bent over to the table.  Being in the seat was an almost helpless position should someone attack or a fight break out.  For political relations I ate with the jailers, wondering what the prisoner/cooks had put in my food.  Not an unreasonable thought, given that an Army cook had recently caused a large Hepatitis A outbreak by mixing his feces in the gravy. 

The prison cafeteria was not different from many schools.  Even the military school I attended used long tables, albeit with chairs.  One morning I sat across from Winthrop.  Winthrop McSorley. Winthrop McSorley the Third. Future CEO.  Sister Margaret-Mary, Order of the Ongoing Agony, stood watch.  As if cued by the bell closing breakfast,  Winthrop ejected a large bolus of Pâté de Petit Dejeuner upon his formerly clean plate.  No splash, no drip, and Sister Margaret-Mary looking ecstatically agonized.  Well done, Winthrop! Milk all round!

Of course, reaching adulthood and studying Anthropology brought awareness of and even exposure to various eating and drinking practices.  For a while based mainly in northern Libya, I worked with members of the Saff al-Bahar confederation of tribes, including the Saff al-Bahar, the Magarha, and the Mahamid al-Sharqiyin.  A particular drink, pronounced in Hamitic Arabic as “shay-hee” (in contrast to what I found among the Tuaregs of Morocco as “shei-hee”) is an interesting social mechanism: served in a tiny glass immediately as you enter the home (perhaps tent), it is an extremely concentrated tea/sugar mixture with the consistency of syrup.  The first time effect is intense. I felt as if grabbed by the ankles and shaken for loose change.  At that point it is a welcoming drink.  Then, we ate from a common bowl on a carpet (my legs are just not made for this position), using only the right hand and the meal was followed by another shot.  The conversation flows and, when the host wishes to signal the evening is over, the third shot is served. Knowing these signals precludes any clumsiness.  

Knowing the circumstances of the meal is another matter.  Lamb is favored, though I’ve eaten camel,  donkey meat and other things I won’t specify.  Whatever the animal, it must be slaughtered according to Halal rules; it must be fully conscious while it’s throat is slit.  I did see a man use a sugar cube to entice a lamb into reach, give it a “loving” hug, and then slit its throat. The lamb staggered around, blood spurting freely on the ground as little children stood nearby giggling.  An unseen but huge trade exists between Australia and many Muslim countries.  Live sheep are packed aboard ship and sent to the ports of the purchasing countries.  Those that die or become sick along the way are thrown overboard, making the sea lanes look something like highways with white lane markers floating at intervals.  This is done so the surviving sheep can have their throats slit and bleed out for the customer, satisfying the religious dictum which is almost identical to Jewish Kosher slaughter.

Those who know me understand that while I could go on for 1,000 pages on such things as beating and strangling dogs to activate “tasty” stress hormones, boiling cats alive for the same effect, and many other horrendous practices of the cancer known as humanity, I choose not to do so. Nowhere on this planet is immune, despite the elegant presentation in grocery stores.

What interests me here is the communal theatrics of eating and drinking.  These can be quite basic.  In a remote village high in the Andes I entered a building presented as a place to get a meal.  Basic tables and chairs. No menu. Once seated a girl brought a bowl of what appeared to be chicken and vegetable soup.  Pushing around the contents I found a heart and a mass of what must have been respiratory tissue.  So, I resolved myself and ate my cardio-pulmonary soup. Quite good. Then, on the Steppes of Central Asia, there was another encounter with a social drink: koumiss, fermented mare’s milk.  Served ostensibly as a welcoming drink it is at least as much a testing drink – to see if you can handle it.  The smell is so overpoweringly horrible it is difficult to not gag as the cup is passed.  So, use the back of the tongue against the palate to close internal air to the nose, hold your breath, gulp it quickly and sharply exhale through the mouth, as in “Whew, that’s good!”  Failure will bring up everything you have eaten three days past.  Take that, Winthrop McSorley the Third!

Visiting in-laws in southern Norway I had a breakfast of homemade fiskeboller, fish balls made from compacted fish parts. Ordinarily these are good with a cream sauce. Unfortunately, the ones I got that morning included quite a few bones, leaving me feeling I had a throat full of barbed wire. I took my daughter outside to feed stale bread to the ducks and slipped pieces into my mouth to clear my throat.  The matron saw me and tried to hurry me back into the house for more fiskeboller, certain I had not had enough to eat.

When I took my daughter to the United Kingdom to meet her paternal relatives I made sure we avoided the haggis, a pudding of sheep’s heart, liver and lungs mixed with various vegetables.

But on the first of several trips, for various reasons, to Germany I stumbled into something unexpected.  Playing tourist, I took a train from Wiesbaden to Rüdesheim am Rhein, a seemingly Potemkin village in the wine country.  At that time I had no idea Germans were so involved with wine.  I arrived at the annual September Wine Festival.  Entering the village I found posts with fliers specifying times for activities over a 24 hour period:

(briefly) – 12:00hrs – Eat

                 13:00hrs – Drink

                 14:00hrs – Dance

The entire 24 hour period was specified.  But, German cuisine gives me almost instant diarrhea.  I do not drink unless absolutely necessary to the task.  And I was never any good at dancing.  So, I wandered about as if moving from one activity to another, while doing my job.  What I found most interesting was the strict adherence to the schedule.  Watching people made my wristwatch unnecessary.  I continually wondered if these people perceived this as fun, and if so, why.  Was this regimentation some form of security? Several more trips throughout Germany confirmed my dislike of the culture, a lesson apparently not fully internalized as my current wife is Swiss/German.

Internalizing lessons seems to escape some people at times.  The past few years have seen an increase in “vegans”, abstaining from consumption of all animal products.  Yet, I’ve met people who describe themselves as vegan and as observant Catholics.  My questions:

1. Do you take communion?
2. Do you believe Jesus was fully and wholly man and god?
3. Do you believe the transubstantiaton changes the wafer and the wine into the body and blood of Jesus?

Answering in the affirmative, particularly question 3, means the person is certainly not vegan.  Answering with a “but, ah…” means the person is not Catholic. Sorry, you can’t have it both ways.

Buddhism encourages us to achieve and maintain mindfulness in all we do. Alan Watts, while not espousing vegetarianism for the masses, encouraged us to experience reverence in the kitchen not for some imagined creator who made the turkey we are carving, but for the turkey itself and its relationship to us.  Perhaps with a moment of meditation we can honestly eat, drink and dance.