What I plan for this site every weekend, and what invariably never happens during the week itself, is a smooth, clockwork process that produces Tuesday’s and Thursday’s posts well in advance. It always happens Sunday afternoon at the library or the local Border’s, according to the scene in my mind, on the medium I value most: pen and crinkled scrap paper, later transposed effortlessly to a text file. The actual ritual is far, far different, usually beginning with the startled realization that, truly, the clock reads 11:36 PM on the night of, followed by a hasty login into Blogger. And then, as the great white void begins to expand before me in Word format, there’s a sinking feeling of dismay over a loss of what to discuss.
But tonight will be easy because I want to talk about conversation, something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. For me, silence is most comfortable, a communicative state in which I may seem engaged with inner dialogue or, as far as you’re concerned, be completely mute. You can imagine how small talk would contrast directly with this, and it’s a skill I admire–the ability to weave much out of seemingly nothing. I simply can’t picture a reality wherein I’d ever give a care about the weather in your neck of the woods, catastrophic natural phenomena aside, without coming off as blatantly disingenuous.
Silence, however, can’t be the only course charted, so the question quickly turns to how to fill the space. When I first started paying real attention to how people converse, back in college, I remember sitting in absolute wonderment during a few lunches, listening as everyone rushed to get their own point into the pot. It was a gloriously noisy pile-up, what I later decided to call the “bumper sticker” approach to conversation. That’s really the extent of the interaction, after all: slapping viewpoints out there, with no regard for feedback, before driving into the sunset. There’s just no give-and-take.
Even when there is give-and-take, arguably the next evolutionary step for conversation, there’s also a chance of coming off as rehearsed. I remember interviewing candidates in my previous gig, for instance, and thinking, “Yeah, read that question on Monster.com too.” Obviously I’m guilty of staging discussions as well, and what suffers in this case is original thought. How I currently regard conversation is that the better ones cannot be planned, which is difficult for someone who revels in doing so. Speeches, of course, may benefit from a more deliberate approach. But conversation is its own animal. Certainly you can have your tools handy–your questions, your solutions, your hypotheticals, your conundrums–but the words seem to flow best in the moment.
The verdict on raw milk, which I found hidden at the bottom of today’s cup, is that however pure it may be or right it may taste, it brings with it a unique set of psychological challenges when it hits my system. What begins as an innocent glass of nature’s finest transforms, through twists and turns modern science will never even begin to fathom, into an udderly–oh, yes I did go there–nerve-wracking experience.
Part of the appeal of processed food, it occurred to me, is an easy disavowal of how things began. You’re trading critical thought–not only of how things started, but of future consequences as well–for immediacy. Take a mainstream bag of chicken nuggets, for example. I know I certainly don’t think about the chickens themselves, nor do I ever really consider the statistical improbability of having every piece shaped uncannily like West Virginia. A nugget is merely a noncommittal unit of food to be dipped in any number of artificially flavored sauces, its origins conveniently masked by a veil of crispy coating. Milk, similarly, had simply been the stuff that went well with cereal or oatmeal.
But when I began preparing a bowl of microwaveable oats tonight, the following train of thought rumbled into the station: if all the living organisms are indeed intact in raw milk, wouldn’t I tempt fate by microwaving the stuff and, in the process, risk mutating a particular virus into a superbug? It was a grim Bruckenheimer scenario that ended with the Greater Charlotte-Metro area in ruins, decimated by a horrifically irradiated strain of Beningitis for which there was no cure nor quarter. It’s back to processed organic for me. And if you’re going to suggest I drink a tall glass of milk to calm myself down, well, you know.
The foray into raw milk presses onward with about half a gallon finished, but along with all the nutrients consumed comes a realization that the experiment wasn’t as clean-cut as it could’ve been. Skim milk, arguably the most profound imitation of white water in either organic or processed form, has been my dairy beverage of choice most of my life, which made the raw kind de facto delicious as soon as it registered with my tastebuds. Processed low-fat milk would’ve been a far better starting point, if it were in my lexicon.
You could say it wasn’t an “apples to apples” comparison, were that phrase acceptable, but it’s universally reviled here, so I guess you’ll have to shut up. I never understood the obsession with fruit, you know? It’s, like, who on earth actually compares apples to other apples or–and this is getting really crazy–possibly oranges? I’m no farmer and neither are you, I imagine. Busted experiment aside, the raw variety tastes good in and of itself, and you’ll notice I’ve resisted the urge to work in a line or two about the fruitlessness of crying over the spilled stuff, even though I could’ve milked the opportunity. Hey-o!
I’ve been refreshing election coverage like a fiend, comparing heat maps across multiple websites for discrepancies, tracking liveblogging, and fiddling with charts until consensus, at last, left no doubt. I just poured myself another eight ounces. A celebratory cup, as it were. There’s going to be a speech soon. The speech, and it’s all inexplicably compelling. But when history unfolds during your time, apathy has no choice but to retire for an evening.