I really like the idea of julienne cuts. Not necessarily the actual cutting. But, just the idea that somewhere buried far beneath the pages of time, someone left their mark on the world by inventing and giving their name to a style of cutting vegetables (sometimes meat and fish).
I like the idea of some chef in some ancient restaurant, pacing his floor, critiquing his line cooks and various chefs. "Nice job meing those carrots." "No! No! NO! You are meing all wrong!" And, "Those potatos have been meed too thin!"
I like the idea of this guy going to heaven, of God stopping him and asking, "And what have you done?" (Although, I like to think that God would speak in every language. So, it would probably take a while and sound like: "And what have you done? Y lo que le tiene hecho? Et ce que vous a fait? Und was Sie hat, haben gemacht? E ciò che ha lei fatto? En wat u heb deed? E o que o tem feito? И чему сделали Вас? Og hva har deg gjorde? 以及有你的做? そしてあなたは何をしましたか?" And that's a very abbreviated version unless God has a way of squishing it all together but making it sound like each language is the most important. Or maybe when you get there, you know all those languages, too. Or maybe God has a unique language that only occurs in heaven, a combination of all the languages spoken and unspoken-East and West of the Prime Meridian and North and South of the equator-all wrapped in one right down to the seemingly silent language of the amoeba and more even-made of the syllables of the breeze and the vowels that only occur deep at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and the consonants found only in the stillness of the darkest of nights in the deepest recesses of the deepest caverns.)
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, and then, the guy would say, "I invented a way to slice vegetables and meat or fish."
And, you know, I think he'd get in, too....Sorry. I got side-tracked.
I'll try to be more focused this time. I promise.
Julienning is funny to me and frustrating, at the same time. Because we are at a point now where no one can cut things into thin long strips and name it after themselves. Not since the time of Julienne could someone do that.
And you look around and it seems like everything's been discovered. It would be nice to go back to the 1600s, sit underneath an apple tree until an apple falls on your head, and exclaim as loud as possible that, "what goes up, must come down!" And I know that Newton did much more than that and I know that the "what goes up, must come down" principle applies to things being tossed into the air and not things growing from branches-because they didn't go up, they fell down.
Anyway, I feel as though you get my point and at risk of digressing-as I promised not to-I will move on. Let's fast forward a few hundred years to 1905 and Einstein saying that E equals MC squared-of which I still have only the most basic understanding.
How far we've come. How many people have found how many things-julienne cuts, laces, and button holes, electricity, radioactivity, and plastic. Not to mention submarines, aspirin, woks, and defibrillators. Oh, and there are more. Much more. You may even be typing on one now.
But, sometime long ago, it was so simple that cutting vegetables and meat and fish into long, thin strips was so new and innovative that it could be named after you.
And here we are now. You can cut anything into thin, long strips and even your closest friends won't pat you on the back-won't throw their hands into the air, embrace you, and sob with joy as if you'd personally unlocked the gates to Heaven. It's a given now. Anyone can cut things into thin, long strips-especially if those things are vegetables, meat, or fish.
And it'd be so nice to go back and be there before Julienne made those first long, thin cuts. So, we'd fast forward and everyone would be shaneing vegetables and meat and fish. But, that's so easy to think from here. And it's only so easy now because it was so hard before. Before Newton. Before the apple fell, before something sparked in someone-in Newton and a little doorway opened and some new light shown in.
And now, even a hundred years after Einstein's ground-breaking equation, people are still discovering. There's discoveries to be made in even the tiniest of cracks. People have found more than Einstein could have imagined-certainly more than Newton could have imagined.
And yet, without a Newton, we would all be sitting under trees and rising just before the falling of the apple, like so many had done for as long as apple trees made apples.
That's the joy in the all this. That there's still mystery. That we can boil it all down to it's smallest parts with science and even religious beliefs and we will never solve it all. We're not supposed to. It's silly to be so convinced that Heaven's an enormous beaming beacon when the brightest light seems to come from the darkest corners as just barely a trickle. It's only important that we keep looking. If you could see where it ends, it would be an end.
Originally Posted On Facebook.
I like the idea of some chef in some ancient restaurant, pacing his floor, critiquing his line cooks and various chefs. "Nice job meing those carrots." "No! No! NO! You are meing all wrong!" And, "Those potatos have been meed too thin!"
I like the idea of this guy going to heaven, of God stopping him and asking, "And what have you done?" (Although, I like to think that God would speak in every language. So, it would probably take a while and sound like: "And what have you done? Y lo que le tiene hecho? Et ce que vous a fait? Und was Sie hat, haben gemacht? E ciò che ha lei fatto? En wat u heb deed? E o que o tem feito? И чему сделали Вас? Og hva har deg gjorde? 以及有你的做? そしてあなたは何をしましたか?" And that's a very abbreviated version unless God has a way of squishing it all together but making it sound like each language is the most important. Or maybe when you get there, you know all those languages, too. Or maybe God has a unique language that only occurs in heaven, a combination of all the languages spoken and unspoken-East and West of the Prime Meridian and North and South of the equator-all wrapped in one right down to the seemingly silent language of the amoeba and more even-made of the syllables of the breeze and the vowels that only occur deep at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and the consonants found only in the stillness of the darkest of nights in the deepest recesses of the deepest caverns.)
What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, and then, the guy would say, "I invented a way to slice vegetables and meat or fish."
And, you know, I think he'd get in, too....Sorry. I got side-tracked.
I'll try to be more focused this time. I promise.
Julienning is funny to me and frustrating, at the same time. Because we are at a point now where no one can cut things into thin long strips and name it after themselves. Not since the time of Julienne could someone do that.
And you look around and it seems like everything's been discovered. It would be nice to go back to the 1600s, sit underneath an apple tree until an apple falls on your head, and exclaim as loud as possible that, "what goes up, must come down!" And I know that Newton did much more than that and I know that the "what goes up, must come down" principle applies to things being tossed into the air and not things growing from branches-because they didn't go up, they fell down.
Anyway, I feel as though you get my point and at risk of digressing-as I promised not to-I will move on. Let's fast forward a few hundred years to 1905 and Einstein saying that E equals MC squared-of which I still have only the most basic understanding.
How far we've come. How many people have found how many things-julienne cuts, laces, and button holes, electricity, radioactivity, and plastic. Not to mention submarines, aspirin, woks, and defibrillators. Oh, and there are more. Much more. You may even be typing on one now.
But, sometime long ago, it was so simple that cutting vegetables and meat and fish into long, thin strips was so new and innovative that it could be named after you.
And here we are now. You can cut anything into thin, long strips and even your closest friends won't pat you on the back-won't throw their hands into the air, embrace you, and sob with joy as if you'd personally unlocked the gates to Heaven. It's a given now. Anyone can cut things into thin, long strips-especially if those things are vegetables, meat, or fish.
And it'd be so nice to go back and be there before Julienne made those first long, thin cuts. So, we'd fast forward and everyone would be shaneing vegetables and meat and fish. But, that's so easy to think from here. And it's only so easy now because it was so hard before. Before Newton. Before the apple fell, before something sparked in someone-in Newton and a little doorway opened and some new light shown in.
And now, even a hundred years after Einstein's ground-breaking equation, people are still discovering. There's discoveries to be made in even the tiniest of cracks. People have found more than Einstein could have imagined-certainly more than Newton could have imagined.
And yet, without a Newton, we would all be sitting under trees and rising just before the falling of the apple, like so many had done for as long as apple trees made apples.
That's the joy in the all this. That there's still mystery. That we can boil it all down to it's smallest parts with science and even religious beliefs and we will never solve it all. We're not supposed to. It's silly to be so convinced that Heaven's an enormous beaming beacon when the brightest light seems to come from the darkest corners as just barely a trickle. It's only important that we keep looking. If you could see where it ends, it would be an end.
Originally Posted On Facebook.
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