A Normal Conversation
Hey.
Yeah, been a while. How’ve you been?
Right? Me too, me too.
No, uh, nothing new. Kinda the same-old, haha. You?
Oh.
Oh, yeah?
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Huh.
Russia?
Yeah, I know.
Awful, just awful.
Oh, gas prices?
No, yeah.
Totally, totally. Crazy.
Oh, yeah?
Very cool.
Supposed to be nice out next weekend, I think.
Cool, cool.
So, uh—anyways, good catchin’ up!
Lunch soon?
Definitely, definitely.
Well, see ya.
We’ll Talk About It At Dinner
Sorry for going Internet-silent on You last week, Kind Reader. I’m glad I did, though. I thought we could all use a little break after that series of misfortunate Names (Thing #4 - #7). Besides, we need to be able to spend a little time apart, don’t you think?
That silence might become more of a regularity. Or, should I say, you might be hearing less from me, in coming weeks. I don’t wanna get too clingy, is all.
For real, though. I might make this a Bi-Weekly instead of a Weekly Newsletter/Journal/Column/Internet Thing. That, or, I may make them shorter, more serial. Why?
While I do consider these Things to be Great Exercise—writing Introspective, Philosophical What-Have-Yous and Advanced (Fake) Math Equations are important muscles to flex—I’d like to spend more time writing Fiction, which is, er, more strenuous and therefore vengefully more difficult to produce at a weekly clip, at least for me today.
Transcendental Curmudgeon, Henry David Thoreau, is famously quoted: “How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live.” If You’re going to share with me the most noble gift—that is, Your attention, Kind Reader—I want to make sure I’m bringing You something of Quality; not just good Words, but Ideas.
Don’t let me mislead you. I won’t be venturing off to a reclusive Massachusetts wood, building a one-room wooden cabin with my bare hands, and suggesting that instead of working jobs to earn money, people would be better off living off the land and walking dozens of muddy miles instead of paying for a ride to the city—only partially because public transportation, minimum wage and population growth have, well, progressed since the 1850s (but, don’t @ me if I do, later on in The Future, decide to make a case for abandoning The Modern Age1 in favor of a more Daoist return to Nature).
No, honestly, most of this work of “standing up to live” includes having many A Normal Conversation. Easily-digestible, impersonal but (time-)filling, awkward conversations.
Usually after suffering through enough of those, there’s one or two meaty, juicy, perfectly braised, delectable conversations, gushy marrow dripping from the bone. Conversations that enlighten as much as they entertain, make us question as much as laugh or cry.
Try as we may, not all conversations can be tasty. It’s just a fact of life.
It’s a good way to get worn out, searching relentlessly for Good Conversation. I tried for a few years and always came away dissatisfied; maybe that’s why Daoists don’t recommend it. For one, it’s exhausting. Good Conversation isn’t always Easy Conversation. Actually, most of the time, Good Conversation is quite difficult. Good Conversation challenges us to really listen, question, consider, reflect—active, responsive and attentive. Often we must come prepared for Good Conversation. Other times, it requires us to be caught entirely off-guard, defenseless, open to a spontaneous topic or conclusion—or no conclusion at all2.
Lately, I’m starting to think Good Conversation is not unlike a Good Meal. For me, some of the most satisfying moments in Life come during Good Conversation or a Good Meal.
Christmas Eve 2020, for example.
During what has now become an annual Covid Christmas tradition, my half-Jewish half-Greek-Orthodox family decided to celebrate the eve of the former-Pagan-holiday-turned-Jesus’-birthday in Italian-American fashion: The Feast of the Seven Fishes.
The rules of The Seven Fishes (in our mudblood house, at least) are very simple: serve at least 7 different types of Fish. We’re not really Jewish, as You might’ve guessed, so Fish includes various sea-bugs that most Kosher folk don’t touch. We’re the type of family that gets carried away, so this inaugural year we did eight Fishes. (Year 2, our cart ballooned to 11 varieties of finned-swimmers, crawling crustaceans and stone mollusks before we dwindled it down to the “appropriate” figure.)
Tradition is to serve 7 courses, each with a different Fish, the idea being “We eat seafood in observance of the abstinence of meat ’til Christmas Dinner.” In addition to not being real Jews, we’re not real Christians either, let alone Italian-Americans, so a dish of ours might feature two Fishes and, because we’re impatient, we might serve five dishes as one “course”. Undoubtedly, we’re snacking on cured meats and cheeses as we prepare and plate the dishes. As You can see, we’re not really good at any religion. But we are good eaters.
Besides, my Mushroom-Eating Friend (from Thing #1) is a real Italian-American and he just makes a giant Cioppino, piling all 7 Fishes into one pot of soup. So, cut us Fakers some slack, will ya?
The meals are delicious, yes, but the heart of the tradition is that we’re all in the kitchen, listening to Nat King Cole or Michael Bulbé, filling each other’s space. Youngest Sister is wearing her candy-cane PJ’s trying to hijack the speakers to play Tyler, The Creator’s “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” for the 157th time this hour. Dad is pouring another glass of wine and therefore preventing war; thank you, Dad. Mom is doing most of the actual cooking work, because Mom. Middle Sister is scrolling through her phone pretending she’s not having any fun. Older Sister is with Brother-in-Law’s family enjoying peace & quiet before the five of us 7 Fish Eaters all drunkenly scream at them simultaneously over FaceTime. I’m shucking oysters trying not to break a nail, coyly sneaking an extra glass of the fancy tequila Dad brought out in between the glasses of wine. We’re preparing:
Oysters on the half-shell
Salmon gravlax + Smoked bluefish dip (both store-bought)
Pan-grilled squid + Pan-grilled shrimp
Bacon-wrapped seared scallops (Kosher specialty)
Muscles Provencal
Linguine with crabmeat
We’re all half-full from snacking on the charcuterie plate and picking at the dishes we’ve prepared before they even leave the kitchen. We’re so stuffed by the end of the meal, we all just stare at the last course, regretting the last two hours of indulgence, trying to keep our pants-seams from bursting. While we digest the ocean inside our bellies, we watch Elf, and sip hot chocolate, which, in spirit of Over-Indulgence (and Elf), we load with a couple Hershey’s Kisses and garnish with as many flambéed marshmallows a diner-sized coffee mug can handle. It’s not long after 8pm before everyone’s asleep on the couch.
Obviously, we couldn’t eat like this every meal, three meals a day.
Between the planning, shopping, preparing, cooking, eating and digesting, we’d do nothing but dine for the rest of our lives. We’d all grow lumberously fat, develop all kinds of maladies and sicknesses, and probably die decades early—not to mention: go broke.
That’s why we do this once a year, as a celebration. Of what? No one’s sure. But, “it’s fun!” as Mom would say.
Similarly, not every conversation needs to be a Good Conversation. Could you imagine going for a cup of coffee and the guy in front of you in line initiates a conversation with you via a convoluted monolog on 19th-century Russian literature as the basis for 21st-century godlessness and just when you’re done listening to him rant about how Gogol is more of a philosopher than Nietzsche ever was, you get to the counter and the barista, instead of asking for your order, asks for your thoughts on identity politics in the face of neo-capitalist liberalism—or pulls a Good Will Hunting and states that their “contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could most aptly be characterized as agrarian, pre-capitalist”. Or, imagine being the barista who has to ceaselessly entertain these hifalutin diatribes instead of ringing her customers up for their lattes, interrupted from that new Nora Jones live-album she’s been trying to listen to over the cafe’s speakers.
Most of the time, to just get the latte and get the heck outta there is enough, for everyone. We all have other Stuff To Do.
Similarly, sometimes “how about that weather” isn’t so bad. It might not be food for thought, but, in the very least, it’s sustenance. Like a bowl of cereal, a PB&J, or pasta with jarred red sauce. It’s easy, keeps us going. We don’t need to Feast every meal. Actually, all those sustenance-type meals make the Feasts all the more enjoyable. A Normal Conversation, harmless convention it is, saves room for the main course, Good Conversation (which will be coming out any moment, the kitchen has told me).
Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how we got on this topic, other than I’ve been having more A Normal Conversation of recent, as the world makes yet another attempt to “open back up”, at least for those of us presently out of harm’s way of that maniac in Russia.
More on Language Barriers next time.
Until then, some light Homework:
Watch Season 1, Episode 1 of HBO’s How To with John Wilson, aptly titled “How To Make Small Talk”
Think about this fun quote, from Daoist philosopher, Zhuangzi:
What is It is also Other, what is Other is also It. There they say, "this is true and that is false" from one point of view; here we say, "this is true and that is false" from another point of view. Are there really It and Other? Or really no It and Other? Where neither It nor Other finds its opposite is called the axis of the Way. When the axis is found at the center of the circle there is no limit to responding with either, on the one hand no limit to what is it, on the other no limit to what is not.…
A friend of mine once Instagram-Storied something to the tune of “if I could pick one song to send into space for Aliens to know what life is like now on Earth it would be The Strokes’ ‘The Modern Age’.”
For (Wannabe) Math Nerds, like me, here’s a hypothesis: If conversation were plotted on a graph, they’d probably follow a Normal Distribution (AKA a Bell Curve). A Normal Conversation, also known as Small Talk, would probably fall within one standard deviation of the mean (AKA "the average”). Under normal distribution, A Normal Conversation happens about 68% of the time. Good Conversation, which falls between one and two standard deviations, would occur roughly 16% of the time. Great conversations, in the two-to-three standard deviation range, occur ~2.5% of the time.
How delicious are all those fishes!
You didn't mention bad conversations 😁