Dark physics are occurring in our spice cabinet.
My research has been extensive and the results undeniable; when opening the cabinet, none of the labels, on ANY of our spices, EVER point FORWARD.
A simple need for marjoram immediately necessitates a complex fingertip ballet, where jar after jar is delicately turned around to view its label, which covers about half its surface, but never the half facing me.
And yes, I heard you:
“It’s the way that you put them back in the cabinet!” you said. “You must be looking at the label in your hand, like holding a cell phone, then use it, screw the top on and put it back with the label facing away from you.”
I thought that too, but the thin little plastic part on top with the holes that the spice sprinkles through are in no way consistently positioned, which randomizes the equation.
Why does this happen? I need to know.
I’m gonna apply for government funding.
I will not get government funding.
My deepest and most sincere desire to efficiently flavor a soup is out of step with modern values, as solving this problem will harm an already robust revenue stream where I (quite often) purchase multiple jars of cardamom, onion powder, and mixed Italian Seasoning, filling the cupboard further and exacerbating the problem.
Somebody’s making good money off that, and would rather my spice cupboard remain an X-File. The clarity I desire is an unpatriotic stab in the foot of capitalism.
Of course, I could just get a spice rack for square jars which would always face forward, but we don’t have any room for it in our little kitchen, and the round jars are far less expensive.
So I won’t know which spice is which. Fine. I’ll acquiesce. I’m just a bit of a geek about knowing things, it’s how I was raised, I guess - to boldly go seek out new, well, information.
Now that the Library of Alexandria is in everyone’s pockets, information seems a common resource, not particularly valuable.
Except online, where companies are spending billions to monitor my every keystroke, determine my potential behavior, discover my favorite snack food, and pursue my image and voiceprint with the fury of hungry cats in an alley. Each of my stupid passwords is a digital jewel, desired beyond all imaginable reason. But that’s data, an international primary resource, what we are told is the most important thing about us… just input and incident, without context.
It’s context that turns data into information, personal observation that transforms it further into knowledge, and experimentation that evolves it at last to wisdom: from a recipe – to a first attempt at cooking it – to your own spin on a dish. Theory, practice, innovation.
Does it feel like I’m being metaphorical? I feel like I’m being metaphorical. The last days of Black History Month make me skittish. Let me come at this from another direction.
During junior year of college our dorm room threw a party. Everyone was dancing when suddenly the song “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones came on and everyone began singing… well, speaking the lyrics (it’s kind of a tone poem). I did not know the lyrics to this song. To be in a room where 40 people are all saying the same thing as if I hadn’t studied or gotten the memo was unnerving… even my date was chanting along, smiling at me as if I was going to catch up and remember, which I wasn’t, so I kind of moved my mouth and vigorously nodded.
The same thing occurred a decade later in Las Vegas where Zoe and I had followed some people we did not know through a velvet rope situation and into a secret basement club, where they played the song “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest. Again, we did not know the song, but EVERYONE around us repeated every syllable with rhythmic precision. I vowed there and then to learn that song so if that ever happened again I would not embarrass my family, and I did, although the situation has not, as yet, presented itself again.
I used to think these were stories of feeling left out, which in some ways they are, but more pointedly they impressed upon me the bonding characteristic of shared information, how important it can be to know something in direct interaction with others who know the same thing, how that creates a unique bond where the focus is the information itself. And it’s not just shared data, it’s shared experience, as each person brings their own relationship with the information into their expression of it.
I also used to think this was a phenomenon that occurred only with music, but any common experience based on shared facts holds power. When we ask someone where they’re from and it ends up being our hometown, we immediately begin naming streets and high schools - any commonalities inspire exclamations of “Yeah!” and “Did you have Mr. Pearson for math?” and “That Orange Julius was my FAVORITE!”… and a space is formed where two people not only know the same thing, but for a moment are feeling the same thing.
Just before COVID lockdown I was treated to a performance of Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden by a True Friend… we sang for the entire show along with the folks behind us from Long Island and in front of us from New Jersey (and the whole arena). At one point, people who didn’t know one another held hands and closed their eyes and lifted their heads in harmony like the Charlie Brown characters at the end of the Christmas special performing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”.
That’s not data. Data can’t inspire, or bond like that. The dull reflection of comments, tweets, reels and alerts are not who we are. Our constant digital deluge creates so much clutter, obscuring the essential information about ourselves; packing in important facts, memories, and moments with trivia, detritus, and mayhem.
What I want from my spice cabinet is to be able to open it and recognize what’s there, instantly know what I have to work with. I can’t cook if I can’t find the ingredients. In these confusing times, it is similarly important for me to have my courage, passion, dignity, and empathy clearly labeled, free from clutter, in order to better navigate, communicate, and remember what I’m really made of is not AI and crypto, but Billy Joel and cardamom.
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