Thai Food and a Salad

1600 words, 8 minute read

When Thai food first came to Boston, yup way back then, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Asian, spicy, fresh, what’s not to like? Even so, I was absolutely blown away by my first experience. All I can remember now is that it was a light shrimp dish that lit up my mouth like a bonfire…a good bonfire. I never tasted shrimp (or anything) quite like this before…or since. I was in heaven (literally, as it turns out).

So I called my dad with whom I had a ‘complicated’ relationship, “You’ve got to try this!” And so we did, and it was good, very good, and I was crestfallen. And so began a 50 (yes, 50) year quest to duplicate ‘my first time’.

A lot of meals, mostly mediocre, a few awful, with a couple of great surprises mixed in…but nothing with anything in common with my original.

I won’t (further) bore you with details of my life’s other quests; suffice to say, they are legion…and they’ve all come up snake eyes, which has led me to draw some conclusions about life itself:

Mysticism aside, there is no such thing as ‘present experience’. As much as I seem to ‘be here now’ (Ram Dass), I am in fact almost anywhere else. Whenever I ‘should’ (who says so) be lost in a luscious swill or sumptuous bite, I am instead comparing it to other tastes I’ve had at other times and other places. “Good, but not as good as Prague.”

If my experience is net positive, I immediately begin to redecorate the room, revise the menu (or at least our orders), train new wait staff, soften the lighting, and sorry my friend, make some changes to the guest list.

I seem to be enjoying myself here and now, but actually I am savoring the experience I imagine I will have at the same venue on some future date. Of course no such experience will ever occur. Most likely, I’ll never set foot in this restaurant again but, if I do, I can be certain of one thing: it will disappoint.

On the other hand, if my experience is even a titch below par, ‘I dream a dream in time gone by’ (Les Mis): the last time I had veal parm, the first time I had this wine, and oh, remember the 1963 Margaux we paired with foie gras on that rainy afternoon in Lyon?  

I’m not a curmudgeon, copious testimony to the contrary; in fact, I have been criticized for conferring ‘exaggerated praise’. But I know good and I recognize it in many places: Giotto and Gaugin, Wagyu and Big Mac, Neiman’s and Walmart…you get the picture. I know good, but I also know best, and this dish, sir, is NOT the best! (Lloyd Bentsen)

A few disappointing culinary experiences will not rob life of all value and purpose. But applying this ethic beyond the protective gaze of the maître d’ just might. Suppose Georgie and Mandy’s first marriage is just ‘prep’ for their second; suppose Henry decided after all that he loved his first wife best; suppose you work 80,000 hours at a job that is not the job you wanted to be doing.

Recently, however, I experienced something that forces me to revise my outlook: a salad! Not metaphorically, literally ‘a salad’, and not my first salad, not by a long shot. In fact, I would describe myself as something of an aficionado: Lobster Cobb in NYC, Antipasto in Boston’s North End, Greek Salad in Tarpon Springs, Pizza Topping in London. I’ve even fantasized opening a super high end restaurant called Salads, Salads, Salads where every item on the menu would be…

But the salad that changed my life was made at home, thanks to my amazing spouse. Granted, it featured ‘local farm fresh’ veg and ‘up market’ versions of everything else…but nothing out of the ordinary. (No, I won’t be sharing the recipe: that’s not the point!)

On a particular day, a particular combination of thoughtfully curated ingredients, mixed and dressed in a particular way, changed my view, not just of salads but of life itself. Unlike most everything else I’ve enjoyed in my life, the experience of ‘this salad’ was incomparable.

No point asking my spouse to make it again. It wouldn’t be the same. No question of tweaking the ingredients; there’s nothing to tweak. It’s perfect and, drum roll please, it can’t be made more perfect!

Everything else, from salads to sunsets, is something else. Not better, not worse, but incomparable.

My recent experience with this perfect salad will never be repeated or surpassed, but perhaps I may have other experiences of perfection. Some of those experiences may even include ‘local farm fresh veg’, but none of them will be the same as, or comparable to, what I now call my Salad Zero (S/0)…although some may be ‘incomparably perfect’ on their own. 

Now, you wouldn’t be reading this on Aletheia Today unless my experience resonated beyond the dining room. What if we can apply my culinary epiphany to, well, everything?

***

Good comes in comparative forms (better, best); perfect does not. Something cannot be ‘more perfect’ than something else unless that something else is imperfect. ‘Perfect’  cannot be compared with ‘perfect’. There is only one Perfect and whatever is ‘perfect’ reflects (or shares in) that Perfect.

So who do we know who’s perfect? Oh yah, God! God is perfect, a trait shared with S/0, but God is also Perfection per se - something a salad, even a perfect salad, cannot be.

God is perfect. God is Perfection. As such God is singular, unique, and incomparable. Other entities (e.g. salads) can be perfect; they are also singular, unique, and incomparable. But they are not Perfection per se. That’s uniquely God.

Whenever I have an experience, my immediate tendency is to evaluate that experience by comparing it with others. The moment I do, I am no longer ‘here now’ - I am no longer living my ‘present’ life. But very occasionally, one encounters something that ‘pushes back’, that refuses ‘comparative valuation’, i.e. something like S/0.

I cannot compare Salad Zero to ‘other salads’; it only bears a superficial relationship to any of them. What then can I say about S/0? “I had it once and I will never have that experience again.”

I cannot compare S/0 to other salads or dining fare because it defines its own category, a category of one. Other experiences may be perfect; if so, each of them in its perfection will have defined its own ‘category of perfection’ of which it will be the sole non-null member.

Nerd Corner: There is a set of ‘things that are perfect’ (Whitehead’s Kingdom of Heaven). God is the paradigmatic member of that set, so is S/0, so is everything else that is perfect. But these things are not mere elements, they are also sets, but unlike the Set of All Things Bright and Beautiful, they are sets that contain, and can contain, only one non-null member.

What defines a salad as ‘perfect’? It is any salad for which no addition or subtraction of ingredients or modification of technique would produce a ‘better’ product. Different, certainly; good, possibly; but better? Impossible or, ‘better’ still, meaningless.

I hope to have many more salads in my lifetime and some of them will probably be good, perhaps very good. A few may even be ‘perfect’ in their own right. But none will be the ‘same as or better than’ Salad Zero.

Improving on a bad experience should be easy; improving on a good experience is harder. But improving on a perfect experience is impossible. In fact, the concept itself is meaningless. Obviously, you can’t improve what is already perfect.

***

But I beg your pardon, I promised you a rose garden, and I have not delivered…yet:

Ray Stevens was right after all, “Everything is beautiful…in its own way.” (The beautiful manifests the Good but Beauty per se is a manifestation of Perfection, God.)

For most experiences, we lack a unique conceptual category: “There are no words for this.” We are left to assign each new experience to a familiar if ill-fitting category. Every time we do so, we fall prey to Whitehead’s Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, the original sin of the human condition. 

In that ‘misplaced’ context we find something comparatively good…or not. But perhaps there exists a category, undefined and for now at least ineffable, that has ‘this experience’ as its only non-null member. 

Leap: The Universe consists not of naked events but of sets of events. Each event is a member of a unique set of which it is the only non-null member. Each event is ‘perfect’ in relation to that set. Every event is its own paradigm. Therefore, the Universe consists of sets of events, each of which is perfect in the context of that set.

Postscript: Have I become a Platonist? Not really. My perfect sets are not Plato’s pre-existent Forms. In my model, events create their own categories, their own sets, their own Forms. In the full flower of my grandiosity, I might even say, “I stood Plato on his head (apologies to Marx and Hegel). Forgive me, everyone!