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NOTE
I had this idea some time ago about the fundamental unit of eating, a bite. I don’t fully agree with my thoughts here but I am exploring them.
Pigeon Bites
On the Atlantic Terminal I was watching this pigeon. Someone had a portion of a roll on the station. This pigeon flew down and began to peck at it. My mind wandered off, and when it came back to the scene with the pigeon, multiple pigeons had landed. They would peck the piece of bread, and it would fly off and they’d continue to chase it almost like they were playing ball. This really must be a routine way of eating for them (here imagining how strange it would be for my food to be tossed around, and collectively eaten. Now it occurs to me this might be precisely what is happening in my life, just on a different level - food from the source being pecked at, kicked around through lines of production and consumption.)
I thought of the size of a pigeons and their tiny beaks, which didn’t allow for a “human bite” - their units of experiencing a meal were much smaller, probably the size of plump grains if we were to imagine.
Pleasure Unit
Understanding a bite as a unit of an experience, you can search more broadly. Like a mega-rich human who owns multiple properties can only functionally exist in one room at a time. The backlogged bibliophile might have a stack of books to read but can only read a page at a time (really one sentence, one word, one morpheme). That’s not to say there isn’t some value in having excess in the present time, like the choice of what book to read, or the context books provide, or even the simple joy of anticipation. But in terms of sensory experience, the bandwidth of the eyes is just a word and the rest is potential and the mind. That single (albeit often nourishing, if not life giving) drip of experience compared to the torrent of the possible.
Similar, a bitesized memory. I have this sense of the past stored within me, but if I call upon a past memory I’ll come up with one single moment, in this case recalling this time as a boy when I slipped at the arboretum. It is a completely minor moment in the stream of memories of that day, and yet the only one of that day I can recall vividly. The selection of this moment, is also arbitrary. It feels like memory lacunae, such a great swath of my chronology is lost to me and I’m left with subjective impressions. I have these memories, but the compared to the data present in the event it is nothing.
When interested in photos I’m also very conscious of my focus, and it is just that a focus on the details while the greater periphery is left to impressions.
Bites are present when watching a film. When watching two character reacting to an event, if they are both on screen I can just watch the reaction of a single character. Imagine a gift is given, and I can look at the initial reaction of the recipient or the giver. Once you decide the other is lost.
The wandering movements of the eyes provide a distinct experience to all watchers of the film, even the same watcher in subsequent watches - where they might deliberately focus on a character the entire time as an exercise. In the theater, even the sequence of eyeblinks perform edits and cuts.
Aside
During a film screening, I wonder if there was ever a moment of synchronization of blinks such that for even a microsecond the majority, if not all, of the audience had their eyes closed. I’m picturing it like the synchronized blinks of a firefly. I remember Philip Glass talking about this during one of his group’s performances, where the various cellular units of their live composition so happened to align in rest, leaving no leader or guidance. Four American Composers
A director might try to induce this, by making an audience cry or flashing a white light so that part of the film is always hidden. They can display a message here.
It is like if I hid a message here, in this part that nobody would read. Or a song I’ve spent time writing, which I’ll post somewhere, and nobody will even get midway through. Why not leave a message there in that no man’s land?
In Rubix cube “fewest moves” challenges, there are quintillion possible states but all states can be solved in 20 moves or less optimally. The current speed cubing record is 3.13 seconds which was done solving the puzzle in 33 moves, which is still more than the minimum. What happens here is that the participants are given 15 second “bites” to examine the cube prior to the timing, which just doesn’t give enough time to deduce an optimized path with the complexity of combinations.
Dimension of touch
To step beyond the bite is to push into a new dimension. What is a complete, whole touch? (where you cannot touch any further)
The only serious thing I can consider is eroticism. This is an old idea of mine, explained by the fact that a tactile sensation that envelopes all sides of an object “approaches” a four-dimensional tactile sensation — because, of courses, none of our senses have any-four dimensional application, except perhaps touch, and there fore the act of love as a tactile sublimation could allow us to glimpse, or rather to intertouch a physical interpretation of the fourth dimension
- Duchamp
Have you ever touched something so soft, that your hands don’t feel anything at all?
The Controlling Chef
But about my experience of the meal, let me think from the perspective of a chef. This would be a chef who would be attempt the ultimate meal. His vision, to some extent, would constantly be limited to human anatomy, the bite. He could compose a massive plate, filled with various flavors, but ultimately what that meal is reduced down to is a single bite (as in you cannot “absorb” the meal, engulf it - it must be done piecemeal and with limits.) Does a slime have the purest sense of a meal?
There are concessions to this. A meal “spiritually” is more than the bite. It is the company, it is presentation etc. You could even argue that a bite can be affected by the order of bites (you drink something, you mix this and that.) But all of this randomness also would be difficult for the ultimate controlling chef to attempt to master. (He might require a certain level of starvation, no talking, ordered bites.)
I’m going off, but I’m really stressing that limit of anatomy on experiencing the meal. I’m also wary of using this term, a limit, because I feel all the other parts are so important and controlling the consumers can be to the detriment.
I’m not too familiar but perhaps this is just the entire point of these high end “bites” of meals. I’m not sure what it says of me that I’ve experienced very little of this, but the practice of “soulful” food means more to me.
I was dining at Per Se… where I was served a minimalist bouillon by no fewer than 7 waiters. The room was fussy and minimal. The bouillon was made out of veal bones that had been carved by kitchen artisans into 40 precise 1-inch cubes, then boiled for exactly 4 hours, allowing for the maximum gelatin extraction with minimum boil of. In Keller’s kitchen nothing is left to chance. Everything is subject to precise rules of repetition, which act as a flavor enhancer. Seven Controlled Vocabularies Tan Lin
Sequence of eating
One other thing that is somewhat related, sequential eating. When I go out I tend to eat in units. So if my plate has a chicken sandwich, fries and coleslaw, I’ll eat each in order (likely attempting to eat my favorite item last.) My process is deliberate.
Compare this to someone who will just gradually take in all of the items on the plate. The taste order is completely different. They’ll unconsciously take some fries, perhaps even toss them into the sandwich, and just eat from the selection. It’s impulsive. The mixing of the flavors in the mouth is different, almost to the extent it’s a different meal (imagine the mash versus a single compressed item).
Starving Dish
But also what about a kind of starving dish, where you’ll experience the entire meal but the consuming of it. All acts surrounding eating are fair game, but you cannot put a single item down your throat (If you want to push this further, you can imagine having a french fry and just allowing the fry to hover in the mouth and columns of saliva artfully dodging it.)
The idea here is that since a meal is composed of so many elements outside actually eating, this experiment would isolate them in an interesting way.
I do this sometimes with my niece. She’s prepare a meal for me over the course of a few minutes, and it’s completely imaginary or bits of imagination mixed with plastic fruits. She’ll taste bits as she prepares, performing all of the actions. But there’s no actual taste here of course, at least for me. But when I watch her I wonder what she’s thinking, stirring this bowl of nothing and putting her heart into making me my strawberry sandwich. What elements of a meal do she see here? Does she actually see the heart of the dish, or even imaginary food itself?
Though it is a starving dish, when I play eat it I will make sure that she knows that it is the best thing I have ever tasted. And maybe it is.
Time spent
When you see recipes online the ingredients of the meal are on the page. One of the ingredients is also time, expected duration of the meal. But what about time being a cost for the meal?
So this will be a restaurant where prices also include the time spent. It would require a degree of waiting, as a form of cooking, which will semi-starve the guest so as to augment the meal. Everyone has experienced this with a Gatorade or water. Having Gatorade after running multiple miles in the heat, is a completely different culinary experience to drinking it on a regular day.
Also I’m sure it has been done (as in experimentation with “darkness” eating seems common now) but what about a deliberately slow meal?
Long ago a man out walking encountered a hungry tiger, which proceeded to chase and corner him at the edge of a small precipice. The man jumped to avoid the impending danger and in so doing managed to catch the limb of a tree growing from the small escarpment, waiting for him to fall. As his strength began to wane the man noticed a wild strawberry that was growing within his reach. He gently brought it to his lips with the full knowledge that it would be the last thing he ever ate — how sweet it was.
Papa’s rice and beans
Papa’s arroz con pollo would be different every time with variations based on what he had in the freezer. I think I recall once coming and it had spaghetti in it.
But when you arrived he’d immediately feed you. Dropping what he was doing on giving you a plate of whatever he was having.
When Papa died I realized that I had lost someone, maybe one of the last people who really actively thought I was special. I don’t think I am special. I wouldn’t like to think that.
When I was asked what my favorite food was, I realized that it was something that I could never have again. I cannot bite this.
Thirst
I was watching this video of a few skaters performing outside. They did tricks and the camera tracked them. At one point a skater disappeared from the camera, only for the camera to swing back while tracking a shot.
It revealed the skater, drinking with a sense of desperate thirst that comes from physical activity in the heat. The head was knocked back, exposing the throat which surged. There was a sense that water couldn’t get down quick enough.
I watched this really inconsequential segment, a few times. It just felt so relatable. That feeling of thirsting for something, attempting to slake it, but it also not being enough.
Then I observed this whaleshark. Not thirsty necessarily, but this process.
Being with Someone
To be in the presence of someone isn’t an image of a person and a list of qualities. It is an inner and outer experience and very full for this. Sometimes I Think About Dying with the closed eyes you see someone. I think when you are with someone, you are mostly in your head. It allows you to bite further than you would regularly. I think I have walked with people, and then realized I didn’t look at them. How often did I look at them?
When I am reading a text or learning to play a song, this is a bite. How my mouth warps over the surface of these objects, and my level of fatigue is the dimensions of my bite. These are choices that are made, by my teeth and my tongue.
Good Taste
The saying “you have good taste.” I was unable to find references for early use.
There seems to be discrepancy with what this is intended to mean. Some use this to roughly mean “your choices and my choices align” or “I agree with your opinions.”
This does work conversationally (I probably would even use this more as a compliment than I would accurately appraising someone’s taste), but I feel it’s missing something.
Others will see “good taste” as more of a consensus, say with those who are informed within a certain domain (“good taste in film, so you are making informed decisions and from that have selected some favorites that are popularly considered good”).
I do think that good taste isn’t just a selection from a collection of those common, but it is also reaching.
Delivered Eats
The common modern thought meme on delivered food is “you are purchasing a taxi drive for your burrito.” This is the context we are placed in. Driving into work I listen to podcasters speak of how delivery food feels wrong.
In reading Remember The Hand by Catherine Brown I see this monk quote I initially think of as brutal,
we do not eat bread for nothing but in labor and exhaustion, working by night and day
who does not wish to work should not eat
I say, all should be allowed to enjoy as they wish.
But reflecting upon it further, I think of these instances where we have food delivered. We are segmented from that action which deserves the rewards. The money makers would gladly have us consume past our need, even in absence of hunger, with as large of bites as possible. They really are not even concerned with hunger, but eating. The purpose is subverted, and taken over.
It becomes a mental thing.
I think of a hike, a day of sweat and steps. Biting into an apple after that. Thirst so strong that I can only appease in time.
But even this, what is this effort? Is it really work, or is it justification? You chose the hike, so you could feel this way.