(Don't Pretend This Makes Sense)

Years ago, undoubtedly following a link from anthro girl extraordinaire, Ashley Olive, I watched a youtube video of advice on giving yourself (your female self) you-time. You were to go out with yourself (to a restaurant for instance) without your phone. Like in a notice in a movie theater, the girl reaching empowerment in the video turned off her phone. She then sat down with her journal, of course. It's good advice, but significant that (lame phrase to open a line of inquiry) the noblest dreams of those of us who are soaked in digital communication revolve around the absence of cell phones and computers. (Truism.) I fantasize about spaces in which I can focus, where reflection is possible, and time expands from its usual dull rush. That time is something I spend has become all too real of an idiom. We do indeed appear to be living in an economy of attention, and so the fantasy of escape has become not having to pay attention to anything. The desire is to get to the practice beneath the performance, the being underneath the sign, the experience under the appearance. (Which connects to not paying attention to anything how?) Great nostalgia there. Life "outside" grows large in the imagination; "living in the moment" becomes virtue itself.

My version of this fantasy would never be complete without gastronomic underpinnings. It is in precisely these predigital conditions that eating can be best appreciated. Solitude is not necessary, but the company must be perfect if there is to be any at all, otherwise the food goes untasted. It's difficult to savor food. Take chocolate. There are two ways of eating it. You can munch it hungrily, swallowing the shards before they fully melt, or you can let it sit in your mouth, releasing rich liquid. ("Releasing rich liquid" isn't even good erotic writing.) Usually I don't have the patience for the latter, and it's pointless to force myself, to mix virtue with pleasure.

Many of my fondest memories of eating take place on the back porch in summer. It's quiet and secluded by tall trees, but with enough of a vista for the mind to wander. Just taking a book or a notebook out there is not enough, though. There must be at the very least tea. It used to be my habit to take a cup of heavily spiced chai, to sweat triply from 90 degree heat, an excess of white pepper and ginger, and hot liquid. Last year it was bread and soft butter ("soft butter?" "yes, soft butter" could be dialog in a Fry & Laurie sketch), and grilled meat and vegetables. Grilled zucchini with balsamic vinegar and olive oil was a favorite, something I'm sure A.A. Gill would scoff at. Outside, eating takes on a sensuality that can't be found indoors. (In lieu of anything else to say, circularity works.)

There's nothing revelatory about it, but as long as we mythologize our time away from the information streams of digital gadgetry, let us admit that food is the perfect fetish, that the world blooms from taking apart a piece of cake, and that what I'm really talking about is reading M.F.K. Fisher on the back porch in the shade with slices of pork, a saucer of salted olive oil, and some chunks of bread. (The food doesn't actually sound at all good does it?)

It's tempting to believe in the utopian potential of removing oneself. Rarely do I think of it as a break--instead I'm always making a full-blown resolution of asceticism. One of Kate Millett's friend-lovers in Flying, Claire, does little else but read "like nobody has since the nineteenth century" in her cheap apartment. She doesn't just read. She reads in themed binges. One month it's the stars and science fiction, another, philosophy. She styles herself a mystic, and is capable of such flight of idealism. She is at once who I wish I could be (I have always idealized the kind of person whose life is reading) and a sober reflection of that idol (there's something neurotic about trying to remove herself so entirely). She is also, in particular circumstances, someone with whom I identify. She can only handle a crowd briefly and has to flee. She's the one in hiding behind reading material at a party. She toys with asceticism, swearing off "the pleasures of the flesh," probably for different reasons. It's in precisely this wistful spirit of brushing away, though, that my short-lived resolutions are.

It all falls apart rather easily. As soon as the self-congratulatory thoughts come--"isn't this wonderful? I don't need anything. I feel so relaxed and content, I could stay out here reading all day!"--I itch to check my email, for someone to call me or text me, for something to happen on the Internet.