The Colloquium

As a senior at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study I’m required to complete a sort of oral examination before I will be granted my diploma. Although my topic is not strictly “Food Ways” it does explore the confluence of some of life’s most profound journeys — our experience of food being an important part of that.  Below is my rationale, a short essay focusing on my topic for the colloquium, which will take place on March 13th.  Here it is:

Journey and Reflection: Life’s Affirmations

Initially, I thought to begin this rationale with the most ancient quotation I could find regarding the “journey of life.” Through my research, however, I realized the impossibility of such a task, as the idea of life as a journey is timeless. The concept of the “journey of life” is evident in the works of ancient philosophers, Homer, all the world religions, and modern literature, movies, and art; even today it continues to persist as a part of human understanding. Life is both a metaphorical and literal journey comprised of many journeys within journeys, large and small, simple and complex. Some of the most meaningful journeys are found within the traditions of our culture: the journeys of gathering and hunting for food, the cooking of meals, and family gatherings; the journeys of movement and travel; the journeys of grief and bereavement. It is the combination of these journeys along with our personal reflections (a journey in itself of traveling backwards in time), which create our individual experience of aliveness. I am interested in how these journeys interact, creating the larger journey of life. How can each of these journeys fit into a personal context, a larger human context, and also a culturally specific one?

In the two and a half years I have been grieving my brother’s death, I have come to realize how deeply personal the experience of grief is and yet how completely universal. I am forever included in the worldwide family connected by one collective experience: the pain of losing a loved one. Any person confronted with the reality of death experiences this grief, and for many, grief acts as an impetus to begin reflecting on physicality, metaphysics, and other philosophical questions. Much of grief is about reflection. In The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion, the reader travels with her as she journeys through her first year as a grieving widow. Her story is a specific and personal account, yet the communal nature of grieving allows it to be read generally as well. She articulates how grief is a journey, which is traveled simultaneously with all other aspects of one’s life, separate yet connected. Didion’s writing exposes the insanity that can seemingly take over when someone is grieving. The “magical thinking” refers to the type of irrational thinking a bereaved person will sometimes engage in while in stages of denial. The mind struggles slowly to acclimate to the tragic reality of loss. With that thought in mind, it is interesting to compare Didion’s journey to the five-step model for death and bereavement, outlined by Elisabeth Kubler Ross in her book, On Death and Dying. The five steps are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Although the steps are explained in this order in Kubler Ross’ book, the order does not imply that these stages are always experienced sequentially. Indeed Didion’s journey is an excellent example of the randomness of the process. Along with moments of denial, such as when she refuses to get rid of her husband’s shoes because she is certain he will need them again, there are moments of rationality, lucidness, and even seeming acceptance. Grief is a journey without a specific roadmap or timeframe.

Jack Kerouac’s modern American classic, On the Road, can also be read as a reflection of grief. In the original scroll version of On the Road, the story begins with the following: “I first met Neal not long after my father died…I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about except that it really had something to do with my father’s death and my awful feeling that everything was dead” (scroll 1). The journey of grieving the loss of his father has a profound presence throughout his physical journey of traveling On the Road. I am interested in how these two journeys work in conjunction with one another. How does a physical journey of travel foster reflection? Why do we choose to take these trips? Are we always searching for something? Can we travel without reflection? Although the impetus for Sal’s travel does not come solely from his father’s death, there is an underlying theme of metaphysical reflection throughout the book. When something tragic occurs in our lives, it seems to trigger reflections that can launch us into another journey, such as traveling, perhaps as a way to affirm our life in the face of loss. The cycles of journey and reflection, reflection and journey, are in constant exchange. They seemingly exist one for the other, which is well demonstrated in Kerouac’s writing. I believe the connection between journey and reflection exists partially because reflection is a sort of backwards road trip. It invites us to move backwards in time to ruminate on that which has already occurred; to journey into the past, exploring with our memories and documentation as guides, roadmaps. Sal/Kerouac’s journeys seem to typify how movement along the road is really two journeys, the internal journey of personal reflection and the external journey of travel.

While journeying, on the road or in our daily lives, some of the most profound reflection can occur in conversation with family or friends at mealtimes. Food and the act of eating is itself a journey, one that enables us to experience all of life’s other journeys. Across cultures food is a social, familial, and personal part of life. The journey of a meal begins on the farm and ends in the stomach and everything in between can involve the family and the larger food culture to which a person belongs. The journey of nourishment is often left unexplored, yet it occurs for many of us three times a day. An important question to ask would be how does the way we eat affect the way we live? Marion Nestle, in her book What to Eat, explores how the American food industry impacts what we eat and how we eat it. How is it possible that something as personal as what we put into our own mouths is largely affected by a larger corporate climate of food culture in America? How does this fact change the reality that food plays an integral part into the way we relate with other people? The act of gathering together for a meal promotes a familial boding, a sharing of stories, of reflecting on life’s past events. Indeed the journey of a meal can act as a catalyst for another type of reflection, one that is more collective in nature. Because eating promotes a connection with other people and with our own bodies, it can function in many ways. As a sensual and pleasurable act it can catalyze a personal reflection, but as a convivial experience it can function as an emotional opening or closing. Food is used in all of life’s different journeys. It is used in travel as we explore new places and their regional and cultural cuisine and it’s also included in the process of bereavement. If we look to the funerary tradition in America the funerary reception functions to integrate the grieving family back into a society from which death removes them. This reception is never without the food that reconnects people to life. Grief may be solitary, but food certainly opens one up to the community, family, and life.

The journeys of eating, traveling, and mourning are all inherently part of the human experience. They all ignite our aliveness. What more is there to being alive than to savor flavors while conversing with loved ones, to explore new cultures and terrains, and to feel intensely pain and love? I intend to explore how these journeys occur personally and how they manifest as a collective human experience.