THESE NEW OLD TRADITIONS

Seedless

As I sit here, having just finished my winter grapefruit, savoring the tingly succulence of my newly awakened tongue, I think of all the times I’ve eaten fruit when my experience was hindered by the presence of overzealous seeds.

Call them “pits,” call them “pips,” either way you label them, these little necessities of life have remained a thorn in my otherwise comfortable critique of genetically modified foods and the idea of “civilization” as a whole. I am aware of the role they play, and yet still sometimes loath their presence. I get frustrated with interrupted bites, but am aware of the lesser, worse option: edible laboratories. And yet, still, seeds are an example of the tiny points at which my allegiance to comfort rests on the idea that the world around me should be redesigned to fit my own desires.

I know fruit tastes better when the seeds are present. I know watermelon is really just a sopping box of red Styrofoam without its sexuality. I know a concord grape without its bitter stones does not a concord make. But, my emotional connection to the uninterrupted bite of a spherical red grape, often gets the better of me. I secretly crave the seed-free juicy clementine. Deep in the recesses of my brain I want all fruits to be seedless. But, I know this is wrong.

I know that wanting the seedless grape while simultaneously wanting an unmediated natural anarchic paradise is hypocritical. And yet the desire is there. I can almost feel its sinews tied to a previous ignorance, constantly reminding me of “the other path” my mind could have taken. I think to myself, in what other areas am I unconsciously attached to subjective notions of comfort that in some way can be traced to the Fall of all that was?

It is the same with salads. It took me a long time to appreciate what a good salad should be. After years piling on blue cheese dressing upon bacon bits and tomatoes as a child at a “Steak & Ale” chain near my house, and then having to march through the unnatural wasteland that is the vegan diet for a few years, I have finally come to welcome the very basic, very delicious garden salad. But, like with seeds, the salad must be catered to my own comforts. And by that I mean, it must be made by someone else.

For years I dabbled with the made-by-me salad, and time after time I was disappointed, left feeling empty inside, as if the leaves and vegetables on my plate weren’t worth the water used to rinse them. For whatever reason a salad made by someone else, and ideally in a restaurant, always tastes better than a salad made by me. This is not true of other meals, and I have recreated, down to the herb, salads that friends have made for me, but the feeling still remains.

I am still hooked.

But, my brain gets it: seedless fruit = a reliance on science, which in turn requires a reliance on non-neutral technologies. Similarly, the restaurant salad = the restaurant, which in turn requires an unnecessary work force put in place to serve me food the ways kings of long ago would have had done unto them. I get it. But…

The pull to civilization, the emotion of it all, is a chord hard to cut.

Hang out with hardcore anti-civs and you’ll sometimes find them eating whatever is on the menu regardless of fashionable eco-activist stances. I have witnessed this in a number of instances. The logic being: eating an ideological diet isn’t going to bring down the system, so why waste your time ordering tofu instead of chicken? I can get that. Don’t sweat the small stuff. I too abhor ideological diets, but not because they aren’t doing any good in the struggle to rewild ourselves (which I do attempt to do). I don’t like ideological diets, because an identity based on food is unfortunate at best, and down right pathetic at the other end. I just want to kick the habit!

Enter an old friend…

Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh was an early hero of mine, and when I came across his book Being Peace at the spiritually ripe age of sixteen, I was hooked. To me, the give thanks and smile while you pooh / the present moment is now ethos was a radical idea, and something much needed in my arsenal against the throngs of straight edge krishnacore punk kids I was increasingly surrounded by. Hanh’s approach to zen was practical with a hint of Buddhist trickery. For example, as a way of getting the mind to be present in an organic and random way, Hanh advised hanging a small bell outside your window or door. When the wind would blow the bell would sound, and at that moment it is advised that you stop what you are doing and come into your body. Appreciate this moment, if only for that moment. I of course wondered what that experience would have been like during a raging storm, but the idea on the whole was a rebellious one: leave presence to the wind and your mind will follow.

Today, after so many years, and having moved on to other more explicitly “antinomian” spiritual teachings, I am reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings as I encounter these pits in my grapefruit. The seeds become my zen bell. In an effort to confront my attachment to the GMO-ification of all our foods I try and come into the present, appreciate the is-ness of the natural fruit, as my bite is interupted by a knobby pip. I try to love the seed for what it suggests about life. I try to come back into my body, and know that this fruit came from another seed that now becomes part of my body. I try to not try. I try to be. I try to feel. In short, I try to eat food.