This month’s poetrysciencetalk
featured Mackenzie Amara, a grad student in Clinical Psychology at Teacher’s
College, whose area of interest is mind-body theory. She is working on a project looking at the occurrence of major depressive episodes in emerging adults and
the relationship of this to developing a spiritual worldview. She’s a tattooed
Millennial with a past history of adolescent turmoil that so deeply traumatized
her she lost, she feels, several years of her life. She is passionate about
helping teen-agers have an easier time than she.
Youth
haze as sport, gang bang, use guns, drugs, and drink to excess. College tuition is prohibitive. There
are no jobs. Dis-ease is inflamed by the belief we can fulfill ourselves
acquiring material goods. High-speed communication makes us think we can know
any and everything. Mackenzie thinks we are adrift in a rapidly shifting landscape
with little to ground us, and blurry expectations.
Historically, ceremonial rites of
passage fostered transformative growth by subjecting initiates to terrifying tests
of endurance and strength. In the process aspects of the self metaphorically
died only to reemerge transformed before being reintegrated in a new role within
prescribed possibilities. Elders gave us just enough rope to leap without
hanging, tested our mettle, then guided us back to the fold. I’m not sure this was all good, by my cultural standards it seems
limited, but there must have been tremendous fulfillment completing the ritual,
and comfort knowing the expectations.
The pst supper was to play with the idea of
rites. Celebration foods are easy
to come by and some also serve to mark passages. Our main course was couscous
with seven vegetables. Folklore has it that each grain of couscous represents a
blessing while the number seven represents completeness, as G-d created the
Universe in so many days. This North African dish, eaten by Muslims, Christians
and Jews alike is popular at any kind of gathering—it is celebratory, humble
and comforting.
Hot
round pancakes eaten on Fat Tuesday symbolize the sun and represent Light and Fertility
conquering Winter’s darkness. I made crispy golden discs of Spanakopita filled
with herbs and greens. Also
hard-boiled eggs stained red with beet juice—ersatz ritual, a show without
meaning to represent our current lack of traditions. For dessert: iconic
layered birthday cake with icing.
Mackenzie wondered if the meal could represent the stages traveled during a rite of passage:
separation, initiation, and re-integration. I picked peanuts as a representative food. Peanuts stand
variously for health, growth, and prosperity. I liked that you needed to
crack them to separate the nuts. Along with a bowl of roasted peanuts I served shots of Coke with salted peanuts. This is a Southern tradition, a
unique quirky regional treat passed from one generation to the next. Peanuts
baptized in cola effervescence, a marriage of salty and sweet. Down south they
push the nuts directly into the pop bottle before taking a long refreshing
slug. Instead I served tiny plastic shot cups reminiscent of Kiddush during an Oneg Shabbat. I liked the action required to
imbibe, lifting the cup, tilting back the head, simultaneous eating and drinking—made
me think of Alice's trip adventures in Wonderland. Finally, peanuts decoratively encircled
the cake, integrating flavor and aesthetics into the chocolate buttery
sweetness of the buttercream.
It’s
well and good thinking about food as symbol and metaphor—this menu used ingredients
and the process of eating them as a kind of word play, one thing representing
another. Given that the pst meal serves as a preamble to the speaker’s
presentation, it was more than adequate to spark interest in the topic. I’m
wondering though how food can be used in a deeper way to create an embodied
experience that functions the way a rite of passage does, by transforming the
initiate.
Over
time tastes change. We graduate from soft and bland to complex flavors and
textures; baby food companies have lines of products based on this—but transformative
eating experiences also incorporate memory and social interaction. When
I think of my own life it is seldom a particular food that stands out—though
there have been moments where tastes, smells or acts of cooking have roused forgotten
memories, and foods have become emblematic of certain times—the Spring of first
love summed up with North Indian stir-fries, my mid-twenties tasting of cigarettes and whisky
spiked coffee, and so on. Done mindfully, cooking roots you in nature, and ties
you to culture, family, and your body. Participating in daily family meals reinforces
social values, but they’re not particularly transformative.
When
I think about ways food has helped me grow while also rooting me to a community,
I think of the potlucks I’ve made a part of my life each place I’ve lived since
leaving my mother’s home. These are casual work-a-day evenings (sometimes as
often as once a week) cooking with friends and friends of friends; the group
evolving through each transition—college, marriage and divorce, growing kids,
empty nest. People bring covered dishes, but also ingredients so there ends up
being collaborative cooking. Children contribute too—helping in
the kitchen or setting and clearing the space. Usually the kitchen fills with women--though sometimes men join.
Participating
in these meals feels like stepping outside the confines of regular life into a
liminal space where traditional familial roles, the division of labor, even the
foods on our plates operate differently. I love that they transform supper into
a feast, that they’ve created family beyond my own family (but without the
tensions) and that my sons now set tables in their own homes to include their
larger communities—that it is a given for them, our tradition of collectivity.
Mackenzie
believes the traditional rites of passage eased transition from adolescence
into adulthood. Without an equivalent in our culture we remain perpetually
adolescent, unable to undertake adult responsibilities. She spoke of a need for
our “Elders” to step up and catch the teen-agers as they make their precarious
leap.
The space we sail through before landing is filled with such glorious
potential. Its in this liminal place that transformation occurs and it is worth
pausing a moment to take it all in before getting caught up in the landing. A
place at the table with a shifting community of friends opens the world, fans
our hunger even while offering nourishment and comfort, then sends us on our
way. It too is a place worth pausing.
