5X5: #5- The New Life

This is the fifth and final of the series of thoughts from the coronavirus quarantine, looking within, outward, and ahead.  Instead of five in five days, or even five weeks, we've had plenty of time to make the fisstu' and let it simmer. 

Food

We've been fortunate with regard to access to quality local options to get food, and no excessive restrictions.  I want to give my greatest praise for the modern supermarket, especially the ultramodern one, which was ready for the logistical challenge. There were those who went crazy with the overstocking of certain items, but that was corrected before long.  The idea that toilet paper would be something to hoard--even with the supply chain inertia around the industrial/commercial rolls--is an example of a kind of craziness that has been the exception rather than the rule.  

I consider the past few years to have been the Golden Age of Global Food.  The downside is its cost; not all could access it.  One reads of the feasts of the kings of the Middle Ages, or in classic Roman times; this kind of plentiful variety is accessible to a much broader population today, but will it continue?  I have my doubts.  Though we can still insist on quality--or not, as many will opt--the quantity and variety of food ingredients and products may decrease. Instead, I expect less fresh produce brought in by airplane from exotic climes, and less fresh meat from distant factory farms.  

Meanwhile, I've been putting in a lot more time developing my cooking skills.  We now have the time, the material, and the information needed to try new dishes, though most of my designs for them start with the basic ingredients of olive oil, onion, and garlic, and going from there.  I have drifted a little into Thai, Korean, and Chinese methods, but I have to restrain myself with regard to the chiles and such. 

I have also started a diet for the self-quarantine period.   My 'Covid-19 Diet' has the objective of losing 19 pounds; I'm a little more than halfway there.  The concept is the mini-fast; by eating nothing for more than half the day (at least 12 hours, preferably 14-16), the body burns off pounds gradually.  I do it roughly the opposite of the Muslim Ramadan approach:  my last food should be around sunset, then I have nothing (except water, and coffee--black, no sugar--in the morning) until around 10-11 a.m.  I then eat freely during the remaining daylight hours.  I've always been a brunch fan--now I can have a brunch-like meal seven days a week, the daily schedule allows it (no alcohol, though). 

Buildings

Shelter--the right kind, in the right place--has never been more important in modern life.  Thus, those who do not have "all the comforts" are especially at a disadvantage for their mental well-being, though we see very little of that in the televised reporting from these elite individuals' personal home offices.  Peloton has never seemed more appealing, though they seem to have pulled back on their ads--cash flow crisis?--in favor of ubiquitous adds for insurance of all kinds and pharmaceuticals. 

Still, I feel quite certain that humanity will have little trouble adapting to Coronavirus Rules, even if they are with us for decades. I am reminded of a science fiction story I read once but can't place:  was it Asimov, or Arthur C. Clarke, maybe?  It posits a distant future where people rarely, if ever, meet up in person.  Instead, their holograms meet up in a safe place.  The quality of that very possible future lifestyle will depend on a lot more development of what we refer to today as virtual reality.  VR is more of a gimmick than something with convincing verisimilitude and the full range of sensory input today, but give it time:  Artificial intelligence used to be a sore disappointment, almost an oxymoron, but no one is laughing at the idea of AI today. 

The problem with people's lives being limited to being physically at home all the time is what is sometimes referred to as "nature deprivation".  Even during this crisis, it has been critically important, for mental and physical health, to get out and get some sunlight and some exercise in a natural setting.  In that regard, I am very sympathetic to those in the big cities with the stay-at-home orders and feel that the trade-off required has been (net) harmful to many, while being relatively safe here+, and still able to go out--working in the yard, taking hikes or bike rides--has been a comfort. 

The Eponymous Novel (Orhan Pamuk, 1997)

I'd had this paperback in the house for some years, didn't know where it came from, but when I ran across it in my little bookcase for potential reads or partially-read ones, I figured this is the time.  Orhan Pamuk is the Turkish novelist awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007; this novel was first published in 1994, one of his earlier efforts, and translated into English in 1997.

The opening grabbed me.  Its first sentence:  "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed."  Yes, I could identify. A young male student sees a book carried by a beautiful woman colleague, tracks it down, and reads it obsessively, day and night, and can think of nothing else. The book offers the promise of a new life, and in that life everything that was before, though it remains still, is somehow different when framed by this. 

We come to realize that the ideas of the book will be shown only through the course of our young man's impetuous adventures.  In 1990's Turkey, this takes the form of going, on buses operated by a variety of private bus lines, to the most obscure areas in the country's vast interior.  Searching for that woman, with or without that equally mysterious man seen with her, who may well be other atoms, following the same kind of random movement patterns.  We're not sure, though, as our guy saw her companion, Mehmet, shot and then disappear from sight. This wandering goes on, with great Pamukian embellishment, for fifty pages or so. 

Then Boom!  The inevitable head-on crash of buses,* and somehow our protagonist and the object of affection are literally thrown near to each other.  Operating Platonically (i.e., no sex, despite himself), they begin working together to try to decode and translate into practical action the precepts of the book, which leads them to a conspiracy-theorist, known as "Dr. Fine".   They infiltrate his family presenting themselves as a promising young couple ready to be mentored.   They eventually take off, separately, pursuing their destinies.  

It's a somewhat trying book to digest, because it teases much more than it delivers.  About halfway through, I resorted to reading some reviews to see what I was missing.  The answer was: not too much, at that point.  I learned that the name of this book he read and obsessed about will not be disclosed, nor much of its contents.  Some reviewers were respectful (no less than D.M. Thomas wrote the review for the New York Times), some reduced it to a shaggy-dog story.  To that, though, I would disagree; there is definitely a resolution, and a lot more opportunity to fill in the dots than that would suggest.    

(the following bit has spoilers)

 The key to the plot comes early, from the mysterious initial companion of our heroine, Mehmet (not his real name), when he says, "The way of the book leads only to death".   The conflicts in the course of the novel involve the fundamental Turkish challenge,  melding all of Western European/American civilization with the ancient traditions of Western Asia.   In the resolution of its mysteries, the course of the novel narrows its range from a yearning that is universal, for greatness and the sublime, to desires that are intensely personal and surprisingly mundane, even antisocial.   In this regard, the novel brings to mind the work of Umberto Eco, or very differently, Albert Camus.  Characters in the story make their choices, often inexplicably, unfeelingly, or on false impressions, but randomness rules.

It may be needless to say, but The New Life  hasn't changed my life much yet.  The novel was very popular in Turkey, with a lot of speculation about its hidden meanings:  Was it about the Koran, or some other religious text, or about the Gulenist cult (which was allied with Erdogan back then, seeking a modern religious revival in the country, and in conflict with the repressions of the secular authority)?  Well, not exactly--that unnamed book's proposed lifestyle was something more like the old American TV series "Then Came Bronson", if you remember it:  a drifter, his identity and purpose shown through heroic acts as he travels from town to town.  One amateur reviewer of Pamuk's novel titled his effort as "Blood on the Tracks", referring of course to the Dylan album, the tracks being here the dangerous byways of Turkey.  A very good summary phrase to which we Westerners can relate.


*One aspect mentioned several times was that it seemed to our main character that the mysterious book had been written as though it were specifically for him.  For me, that resonated with the bus-crash motif.  We had taken a long drive through the Turkish countryside in our honeymoon trip in 1993, and there were several near-miss head-ons or ravine plunges, due to narrow roads, blind curves, no shoulder on the roads, and trucks and buses driving pell-mell.  So, I could identify with that, too.

+23 cases so far in Taos County; no deaths.