Slow Food - Aug 4 2021

 

Slow Food

Aug 4 2021

She was young

and I couldn't help but feel wise,

because at my age

you take for granted what you know

and find yourself surprised

when others don't.

I remember telling her

about Nixon on the beach

in his off-the-rack suit

and wing-tip shoes,

an awkward man

with a 5 o'clock shadow

who lacked the common touch.

But she didn't know who Nixon was.

And slow food.

Not junk/snack/on-the-run,

but savouring simple fare

in good company

where plenty of wine flows,

and the old

sit easily with the young.

Where good stories are told,

some of which

may even be true.

But the whole slow movement

had passed her by,

or she felt too rushed

fearing she'd fall behind.

And beautiful music

that even in its time

was heard by too few.

How sad, when great art is lost

and great artists scorned.

Their work ignored,

tossed into dusty bins

in vintage record stores.

I recommended a book

that changed my life.

She hasn't read it yet

can't find the time.

Speed is the curse of youth,

not settled on where

but sure getting there fast.

While at my age, last is fine,

because you miss too much

making too much haste.

So please, come sit by my side,

there is virtue in patience

the future will wait.

I thought I'd noodle around with the idea of slow food. Then immediately thought of the young woman I mentioned this expression to, who had no idea what it was or what I meant. That called me back to walking by the ocean on a Caribbean island with my young niece and mentioning something about Nixon on the beach: she didn't even know who Nixon was! And what ambitious young person has time to read for pleasure or illumination these days when she's holding down two part-time jobs and going to school? So slow food became not only about slowing down and savouring, but about how age changes us. For the better, I hope!

I'm sure part of the inspiration for this poem came from today's column by Garrison Keillor's. Here it is:

The Good Fortune of Not Finishing First

The fastest man in the world is now Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy who ran the 100-meter dash in Tokyo in 9.80 seconds, and bravo for him, but when you peak at 26 you face a long descent into normality. You run that fast and you miss a lot such as the woman I saw as I strolled in the park the other day who said into her telephone, “I was not put on this earth in order to make him happy,” which made me happy to hear, a woman who’d gotten a clearer sense of mission. You find happiness by slowing down. At my age, you know that.

A few minutes later I saw an old man, younger than me, take a spill on his bike and hit the asphalt and was immediately surrounded by strangers asking if he was okay or did he need help. He sat, dazed, holding his right wrist gingerly, and then pulled out his phone and said, “I’m going to call my wife.” Two stories within a hundred meters of each other and Lamont would’ve missed both of them.

You give up the idea of speed at my age because you are slowed down by regret and anxiety and also by dealing with Social Security, whose initials are the same as Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, which is no mere coincidence. If you dial the SS number and get into the arms of their computer, you may feel you’ve been taken into a deep bunker and your wrists are bound to the chair and a 1,000-watt lamp is shining in your face. I called a few days ago to try to replace a lost Medicare card and I spoke my SS number to the computer, which could not understand me though I am a native speaker employed as a radio announcer for many years. “Let’s try again,” it kept saying in a voice like Orson Welles’s and after many tries I was shouting the digits, then screeching them, until Welles said, “Let me find someone who can help you.”

This took a long time. If you call the SS, you should have a book to read, perhaps War and Peace. A woman came on the line who I could tell was wearing a brown uniform with a swastika on her cap. I gave her my SS number and she asked what hospital was I born in. I told her and she said, “That’s not what it says here. You’ll need to call another number.” Let’s put it this way: if Amazon were run like the SS, Jeff Bezos wouldn’t have flown into space, he’d be shooting bottle rockets off his apartment balcony in Seattle. Dealing with SS is almost enough to turn a sentimental Democrat like me into an embittered Republican.

It’s a tremendous accomplishment to be World’s Fastest Man, but what does it lead to? A champion gymnast can join the circus but 9.8 seconds is not long enough to make into a starring act that’ll earn you big bucks of the sort a best-selling novelist would earn, and novelism is accomplished very very slowly.

No, I worry about Lamont. He is celebrating now, getting off his training regimen and enjoying deep-fried calamari and linguini in clam sauce, which soon will make him the former fastest man, which is not the distinction it should be. FFMs have to wait in line at airport security along with the rest of us and are not given preferred seating in restaurants.

This is the tragedy of track and field: it leads nowhere. Ryan Crouser crushed the world record for shot put but in normal life why would you throw a 16-pound ball 76 feet, 8 1/4 inches, you could kill somebody. Eventually Ryan and Lamont will grow old and slow and Ryan’s putting shoulder will ache and they’ll be on the phone dealing with bureaucracy, on hold, miserable, helpless, not like me the novelist. I recognized the voice of the SS woman. “Janice?” I said. “It’s me. We dated years ago, we spent a week at your cabin in northern Michigan. The gorgeous sunsets, remember? I wrote you a sonnet.” She wept. “Oh my god, oh my god. I have your picture on my desk. I’ve read all your books. There’s never been anyone else for me but you. I was put on this earth to make you happy. Your Medicare card will be FedExed to you tomorrow, I promise.” She wanted to fly out and meet me but I said no. The Medicare card is all I want.