Sunday 10 May 2015

Kahlil at the deli




This is really a note for us city dwellers, regarding how we procure things in the physical world—how we get hold of our groceries, our books and records.


I work in Manhattan, and commute in from Brooklyn every day. It takes about 45 minutes, and in order for me to meditate and practice and eat before leaving the house, I get up around 7am, and usually get home around 8pm. It doesn't leave a lot of time for embarking on any kind of project beyond unwinding in the evening.


I know a lot of us function like this, and I fully see the sense in all the new online culinary services that have been popping up lately that allow you to get ingredients delivered to your door which you then throw in a pan—thus, you get to cook your evening meal yourself. A good thing, to be sure.


But a few nights ago I went to my local deli to pick up some vegetables and thyme to make dinner and I got talking to the owner, a man called Kahlil. He said, it's good that you cook. I said yes, I like it. He told me his mother used to make the family's butter and cheese back home in Israel. He rang up my thyme on the register and said that as a little boy, he remembers going up into the mountains to get thyme, and the smell of it in the air. Can you imagine?


And I said that I think the getting of things— the gathering of your ingredients—is important. Squeezing the fruit, getting a sense of where it came from, seeing inside the store, sniffing the smells—being part of the journey. The actual making of the meal is just a tiny part of its ingredients’ journey, and of your journey to the food on your plate.


I think the same is true of books and records. Some of my most profound literary discoveries have been in bookstores when I'm just absorbing what’s going on, coasting along with my intuition and letting the experience unfold and the pages turn.


I have no doubt that this is part of the reason that “Record Store Day” (April 18) exists. To get us out there, in the real world, seeing, hearing, sensing and being part of it.


Now, none of this means that I magically have more time to go shopping or that I live near a sweet smelling mountain. But it does make me appreciate the opportunities I do have—to smell the air, touch the fruit, feel the feelings, be part of a process that's bigger than getting my dinner.


We don't have to behave as machines shovelling food into our bodies or words into our brains. We are alive. The great poet Kahlil Gibran was born and raised in Lebanon and emigrated to America aged 11. His profound relationship with nature is described beautifully here [http://www.alhewar.com/Gibran_Eco.htm]  in Dr. Suheil Bushrui’s essay, Poet of the Ecology of Life. For now, I’d like to give you this lovely quote from Gibran’s best known work, The Prophet (1923). It’s perhaps something to tuck into a pocket in your heart and re-trace next time you’re in the deli, patting a nice grapefruit.


“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”

―Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

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