How very strange it is that one doesn’t look at the bowl while one is eating in the chalice of bounty. In fact, it would strike one’s mind as being quite odd to do otherwise.
Hunger makes one blind to beauty, thankless to life, and deaf to reason. The tongue and the tenebrous moist palace in which it resides are both insensitive to the details that light and its prism bring to the world. Instead, its vocabulary as it relates to beauty conjugates itself through relief, taste, and warmth or lack thereof.
Nourishment, however, makes one forget whom one was when hunger struck. Paradoxes abound when in the presence or absence of food. Lack of food can make a sinner out of any saint, can make a wise man overcome with folly, can make any pacifist belligerent. Truth be told, all three were most likely never as humble as the anonymous hands who made the thankless spoon that fed them.
I myself have never spent time thinking about the hands that crafted the spoon I bring to my mouth. The spoon, curved so lovingly to espouse the delicate arc of my lips without cutting their sensitive scarlet flesh. The perfect spoon is an imperceptible cradle to the tongue and adds to the sensuous velvet pleasures of the mouth whilst balancing itself perfectly between an accusatory index and a judging thumb like the scales of Justice itself. A silver messenger always bringing to the moist temple of desire what it has usurped from the heavens.
The napkin, for its part, is a wrinkled witness-like shroud betraying the civility of the tamed cravat-wearing ape. If not well folded upon itself like a three panel religious scalene to eclipse the profane lunar eye form gazing upon the vestiges of the bestial markings of the soiled saint within us; if not well discarded, scandalously exposing the animal stains left behind in our Hun-like fury to pillage the invesseled bounty; if left insolently on the table or the chair, the napkin is a planted flag which symbol boisterously claims the supremacy of animal hunger over civilized and leashed wolf in the strange savage country of the table, testifying the grotesque in every one of its translucent fat markings trailing like comet tails of light across a paper or cotton sky — sole proof of the Cartesian binary falsehood since we are animals who write and not writers who “ animalize”. The simple truth read in the human stain of the napkin, a common denominator to prince and pauper which power unravels the loose thread of mankind’s yarn cloak — to say that this vulgar wiping cloth is the origin of a vitriolic quodlibet for a Rousseauian debate.
Alone, the napkin tells the story that a monster ate here. The empty bowl, however, tells the story that someone (i.e. an animal) is no longer hungry or is temporarily satiated and thus can now coherently root him or herself in the belief that only animals have savage impulses. It sings its humble delight to have served so faithfully the function for which it was designed. In front of the voracious beast, it is a trough. It extols the giving virtue of the divine intelligence within the digits which crafted it. The bowl, oh so promising of goodness when empty, oh so fulfilling like forgiveness when full, embracing of possibility, a ceramic open prayer, an extension of the cupped simple hands of the craftsman who shaped it, like the hands of the slave, open in communion, capturing refreshing water, ceremoniously giving drink to the thirsty Pharaoh.
Lessons from the Velours Abattoir:
Lessons from the spoon:
-The messenger is more important than the message. The best messenger is one who does not taint the message, keeps imperceptible, doesn’t change the taste of truth as he feeds it to us. Think not of what is being said or done or how, but by whom.
-No matter how insignificant we feel as a people in the face of government or political injustice, we are the ones who tame the social beast, make it seem civilized when it devours our children; we are the ones who carry to its mouth the heavenly gifts of art, beauty and innocence.
Lessons from the bowl:
-When one is dealing with the hunger of others for any kind of earthly or spiritual nourishment, one must assume the altruism of the bowl and answer the call to nourish only if the voice one hears is not that of one’s own hunger.
-No matter if your bowl is golden or made of the simple stone, it is the quality of the food carried that counts.
-When hungry, one often doesn’t care about the details. As much as hunger sieges one’s mind, one must practice observance since one can easily fall prey to a trap and fall in someone else’s bowl…
Lessons from the napkin:
-We all leave behind a memory of our passage. It is inevitable. The question is how much of the animal vestiges of ourselves are we able to honor as much as our “civilized selves”. The other question is on whom we leave these markings and which impact they have on their lives. In this regard, one must really make an effort to order the saint aside and let the benevolent ape take its place. The animal part of oneself lacks intention to hurt or take advantage; it knows only humble compassion.
-If one wishes to be reminded of one’s humble nature, one needs only look at the markings of one’s napkin. Yes, the napkin is proof of our civilized state, but the markings on it are proof that the remains of our animal vestiges always come to the surface. The napkin is only but a shroud of the side of our human stain we wish to discard once we have finished devouring that for which we didn’t take care of thanking.
-The napkin is the reminder of our civilized stained shame on paper maybe but also proof of pleasure. What would happen if we were to sport our pleasure on our faces, leave the drools of fat and red wine on our chins? Wouldn’t we be more frank about our lust for life and food? Wouldn’t we be able to better know the person with whom we are talking if we could tell how he or she eats? Beware of the immaculate mouth! Life and love are clean words in this mouth for it doesn’t know the smudges of lust, nor the pungent golden sun of garlic, nor the earthy rich joy of wine’s stains lingering like laughter in one’s throat after having had a good belly laugh. Beware of the clean mouth: it counts the grains it eats, it measures the kisses it takes, it is a closed door that opens only to let dying words escape. It is the tailor of anachronous love for it lacks its generous velvet.
Vicomte de Velours,
Carte de visite from the Velours Abattoir
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