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Of War and Ruin

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Ryan Cahill

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“Queenie preps for the morning, simple enough. Two huge Crock-Pots of oatmeal, jars of jam, honey, and brown sugar. She cuts up fruit. In the morning, she'll scramble several dozen eggs and toast several loaves of bread. Baking it from scratch crosses her mind--- she's always loved the meditation of kneading dough--- but only momentarily. She has no way of knowing how many will show. Simple is best until she gets the hang of things. Lunch prep is even simpler. Sandwiches, PB&J, turkey, ham and cheese. She goes light on the mayo. It's hard to use jarred mayo, and even harder not to doctor it up with pesto or cranberry preserves. No arugula. No brie or caramelized onions. Simple, simple, simple. Between breakfast and lunch, she plans to put up a pot of vegetable soup, so she gets to work on the mise en place for that. Store-bought stock, at least for now. Again, until she gets the hang of things. Dinner is lasagna, easy enough to put together and prebake; lasagna is always better for being allowed to sit overnight in the fridge. She hopes she's made enough of everything; sending people home hungry doesn't just go against her mission statement, it goes against every chef nerve in her body. Not a chef. In this kitchen, never. She's a cook now. A soup kitchen cook making nutritious food for people in need. Her mission statement. Her balance.”

SimpleNew LifeFresh StartFood PreparationClean Slate
Book:Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?
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“There was something green between slices of soft bread. Otoha took a bite and sure enough the blend of cucumbers and butter leaped out into her mouth, with a simple, yet deep taste. "Mr. Kinoshita, this is really delicious! It's hard to believe the ingredients are that simple." "Thanks. I just sliced the cucumbers very thin and rubbed them with salt." Otoha tried the roast chicken sandwich next. "This is wonderful too. The chicken is so moist." "I simply added salt and pepper to the chicken breasts as I roasted them, and then a little French dressing before I put it in the sandwich." "They're all very simple flavors. You can really savor all the ingredients." "I think that's how things were back in those times. Plus, I don't think Montgomery, a pastor's wife, would like writing long descriptions of how food tasted." "That makes sense." On top of the flat plate of sandwiches was a small dish with green peas. Otoha tried them and found them softly boiled, with a taste of butter. "Those are green peas sautéed in butter. I finished them by adding a spoonful of sugar. Do you remember how, when they invited Mrs. Morgan to Green Gables, Anne added too much sugar and spoiled the peas?”

SimplePeasBread And ButterCucumbersAnne Of Green GablesRecreating
Book:Dinner at the Night Library
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“But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word "reason" already implies the idea of causal connexion. But, even if we avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume said that causal connexion was not merely unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in shallower waters still, one cannot assign a true reason why water should flow down hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth. Attempts to explain these simple matters always progress into a learned lucidity, and on further analysis retire to a remote stronghold where every thing is irrational and unthinkable. If you cut off a man's head, he dies. Why? Because it kills him. That is really the whole answer. Learned excursions into anatomy and physiology only beg the question; it does not explain why the heart is necessary to life to say that it is a vital organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the trick that is played on every inquiring mind. Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light is necessary to sight. No confusion of that issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical centres, and foci, and lenses, and vibrations is very different to Edwin Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering English language. Knowledge is really confined to experience. The laws of Nature are, as Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as Huxley said, the generalization of observed facts. It is, therefore, no argument against ceremonial magic to say that it is "absurd" to try to raise a thunderstorm by beating a drum; it is not even fair to say that you have tried the experiment, found it would not work, and so perceived it to be "impossible." You might as well claim that, as you had taken paint and canvas, and not produced a Rembrandt, it was evident that the pictures attributed to his painting were really produced in quite a different way. You do not see why the skull of a parricide should help you to raise a dead man, as you do not see why the mercury in a thermometer should rise and fall, though you elaborately pretend that you do; and you could not raise a dead man by the aid of the skull of a parricide, just as you could not play the violin like Kreisler; though in the latter case you might modestly add that you thought you could learn. This is not the special pleading of a professed magician; it boils down to the advice not to judge subjects of which you are perfectly ignorant, and is to be found, stated in clearer and lovelier language, in the Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley.”

LifePhilosophyScienceMagicMystery
Author:Aleister Crowley
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