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If you go to any restaurant nowadays, you\u2019ll likely see something that at one time would\u2019ve been considered absurd: People whipping out their smartphones, taking pictures of their food, then forwarding said photograph to their friends, families, followers, catfishes, and Craigslist Killers all over creation through a variety of social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuckling Duckling with B\u00e9arnaise Bilberries\u201d? Gotta-get-an image of that on my Facebook wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cFilleted Fintail in Papillote, served on the Hubcap of a Ford Fairlane\u201d? Snapchat that sucker.<\/p>\n
Home cooking can also turn the dining room into a studio: Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas crown roasts, and Easter glazed hams make it into the gallery. And myriad-colored mixed drinks, with their garnishes du jour, can transform a bar into a photo booth. Without question, a cappuccino cup, captured from above, a delicate caramel pattern carved into the foam, is something that rivals sunrises and sunsets in the pantheon of Pinterest boards, near and far.<\/p>\n
But it doesn\u2019t stop with fancy foods. There\u2019s no cupcake, cookie, or candy bar that doesn\u2019t deserve a portrait if the patron is rockin\u2019 a good mood. When he\u2019s in the right frame of mind, nothing says it better than a half-eaten Kit Kat, crumpled wrapper alongside. Empty Tostitos bags and Dunkin\u2019 Donuts boxes come with confessions that the sender has consumed the whole affair.<\/p>\n
Of course, when it gets right down to it, all of these pre- and post-prandial pictographies are meant to convey one meaning: \u201cI\u2019m happy,\u201d the hashtagger is tweeting, directly or implicitly. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. Life is rough, and a bit of trendy whimsy makes the day go down just a little smoother\u2014a nice chaser after a double shot of the hard stuff.<\/p>\n
Still, it makes a man think.<\/p>\n
We are people of the experience, and have been for a long time. It\u2019s fair to say that the value of a life, as understood in the modern estimation, is often summed up by the number of events we can tally. Not just that we\u2019ve been to X number of places and have X number of friends, but also that we\u2019ve done X number of things. Parasailing and dolphin petting, kayaking and borealis watching, we\u2019re consumed with a worth measured by the encounter.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that gormandizing has always been part of the grand life. But what with all the foodies, and cooking shows, and epicurean vacations these days, it now helps comprise a great portion of the \u201cevents\u201d that we can claim to our credit.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard not to get caught up in that recipe, as we\u2019re fundamentally sensual creatures, both blessed and cursed with imaginations. As much as we tell ourselves that we\u2019re above such a superficial accounting, honesty admits that we rate the occurrence much higher than the reflection: \u201cI read Intimations of Immortality<\/em> and thought deeply about it\u201d just doesn\u2019t get the number of digital thumbs-ups that \u201cI dined at La Tour D\u2019Argent on New Year\u2019s Eve\u2014and here\u2019s my Flickr photostream of it.\u201d Even the diehard romantic must concede.<\/p>\n The modern twist on all this is that it\u2019s not just the tallying with which we buck up our egos and castigate our shames, it\u2019s the \u201csharing\u201d\u2014and by \u201csharing\u201d I don\u2019t mean in the sense of contribution. This kind of sharing is a type of shouting\u2014not necessarily boasting, but often that\u2014by which we can, however innocently, utter the human cri de coeur: \u201cI\u2019m alive\u2014and my life is glorious\u2014for behold the Bananas Foster that I just ate. Isn\u2019t that proof? And if not, here\u2019s an Almond Joy, and an egg roll, and some fried calamari served inside the Greenwich Times<\/em>. I\u2019m alive, I tell you!\u2014I have lived! I didn\u2019t miss a thing!\u201d<\/p>\n Because that is the great fear of us moderns: that we may not have lived. We\u2019ve read the famous tombstone, Et in Arcadia Ego<\/em>, and it paralyzes us with fear. The response is predictable, adaptive: \u201cIf to this favor we must come,\u201d say we latter-day Hamlets, skull brooding, \u201cthen while we have bodies, let us fill them with all that is opposite to the charnel house; let us memorialize our existence and brag of it. Let the echo of our living resound as long as it may, throughout the dark, unforgiving canyons of time that will only swallow it in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n But is this or any other experience really evidence of a life? The more we\u2019ve sucked the bone, the faster we\u2019ve ridden the rollercoaster, the number of bedroom conquests we can notch upon the post\u2014the more of life, rather than the depth of life?<\/p>\n Well, if there\u2019s nothing more to us, then perhaps \u201cyes.\u201d If this is as good as it gets\u2014to have titillated every corner of the tongue must be enough.<\/p>\n But if there is<\/em> more, what is<\/em> that more? And what value lies on the other side of the charnel house? It can cause us all to pause in mid gulp, in half nosh.<\/p>\n For what if the Lenten fast assumes the opposite approach\u2014a rebuke of death not in the frenzied consumption of the material world and all its monuments to the same, but in a steady accession towards the immaterial world, to that which transcends time and the futile attempts to keep apace of it.<\/p>\n What if eschewing the sense-centered, if even for a while, can clear all books, and whet an appetite for a different type of satisfaction? One that doesn\u2019t need to protest quite so loudly about its worthiness.<\/p>\n So while there\u2019s no harm in an Instagram of the greatest chalupa ever served (indeed, there\u2019s nothing quite like the winsomeness of a fresh chalupa, caught at daybreak)\u2014in this time of fasting, a body might become mindful of that which is past taste and measure, that cannot be captured, conveyed, or shared, because it lies well beyond the limits of what anyone has ever known\u2014beyond what eye has seen, or ear heard.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
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