“I’m a compulsive eater. I can’t have much food in the fridge.” Sacks has eaten the same meals every day for years: oatmeal or Grape-Nuts for breakfast, and canned fish for lunch and dinner. When I ask about this, Sacks stands and shuffles off toward the kitchen, “Stay put,” he instructs. He returns a minute later to methodically stack on the table between us seven tins of sardines, and a half-finished plastic-wrapped package of canned, pickled herring. “I keep a small stock,” he explains. “I don’t want to be bothered to make a choice. Lunch or dinner usually takes about 30 seconds, and I eat standing up. And sometimes reading a book.” If he goes out to eat with friends, Sacks will often choose the first thing he sees on the menu. “It saves time,” he explains.I ran across that article yesterday as we were discussing the sense of smell in this post about a man who had anosmia and then regained his sense of smell and experienced smell as much more intense than it is for a person who'd never been smell deprived. Commenters brought up dogs, and I wanted to talk about the Oliver Sacks essay, "The Dog Beneath the Skin," a chapter in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," about a man who takes drugs that leave him with a heightened sense of smell and the feeling that it was like being a dog.
I felt surprised to see in that 2015 article that the dog-man in question was Sacks himself, a fact he'd chosen to hide when he published "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." ("I’m, um… less – less shy now. I think partly I’m at a distance from these things. They were 40 years ago. And I don’t think it’s sensationalism or exhibitionism for its own sake – so much as the fact that I am basically constituted the same as everybody else, and I will get an inside take, as well as a scientific one.") This revelation is in Sacks's memoir, "On the Move: A Life," which I've read, so I should not have been surprised. I mean, I know I forget most of what I read, but I do think that having read something once ought to keep you from feeling surprised to see it when it comes up again. It should be more of a feeling of oh, yeah, I'd forgotten that.
There are levels of forgetting, I realize. Let's say you encounter, once again, a fact you've have heard before. Level 1: Oh, yes, I remember. (You forgot only in the sense that you had no reason to call the fact to mind, but it looks completely familiar). Level 2: Oh, I'd forgotten that. (You remember that you've seen it before.) Level 3: I don't think I've ever seen that before. (You may have seen it, but you don't remember.) Level 4: I'm sure I've never seen that before. (You seem to remember that you have never known it. This may be based on reasoning that it's the sort of thing that if you'd heard it before, you would remember.)
But back to my original question. If you are one of these people who eat the same thing every day, is it that you worry (or know) that if you allowed yourself choice, you'd go wild? Sacks was capable of taking a lot of drugs and radically changing his way of being...
He experienced a certain impulse to sniff and touch everything (‘It wasn’t really real until I felt it and smelt it’) but suppressed this, when with others, lest he seem inappropriate. Sexual smells were exciting and increased—but no more so, he felt, than food smells and other smells. Smell pleasure was intense—smell displeasure, too—but it seemed to him less a world of mere pleasure and displeasure than a whole aesthetic, a whole judgment, a whole new significance, which surrounded him. ‘It was a world overwhelmingly concrete, of particulars,’ he said, ‘a world overwhelming in immediacy, in immediate significance.’ Somewhat intellectual before, and inclined to reflection and abstraction, he now found thought, abstraction and categorisation, somewhat difficult and unreal, in view of the compelling immediacy of each experience. (From "The Dog Beneath the Skin.")If you're the kind of person for whom opening doors has immense consequence, you might keep a lot of doors shut.
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(closes door)
Who does he think he is fooling. That was like reading the Onion. No way it's true. Even people who get into ruts soon change ruts with seasons of life. If not, they are not actually human.No Mansion of Happiness for him.
Smells and dogs, especially big, thick-coated dogs, wet from a run through the woods during/following a soaking rain.
Those times when I've been training or working to gain muscle I fall into eating the same thing for breakfast, for example and the choices for other meals is smaller- two or three options. It's easier to regulate that way...
I never make it to Level 4. The uncertainty of everything falling into Levels 2 and/or 3 makes methinks I'm going crazy.
Dogs don't smell so much as scent. They read scent as if it's a text.
Smells would overwhelm each other. Scents can be separated and followed.
When Wittgenstein joined Cambridge, the faculty club maid asked him what he wanted for lunch.
"I don't care so long as it's the same thing every day," he said.
I eat the same thing every day, except for changes that happen on a scale of a year or so.
Too busy with other things, and I surely couldn't guess, shopping today, what I'd want for lunch tomorrow that's different from what I've already settled on as fine.
Koehler, on training dogs to track: dogs use their nose to find stuff that they want. You're training them to use their nose to find stuff that you want.
You don't have to teach dogs to scent, just to understand the game's rules.
I think it has a lot to do with why people eat. I walk 2 miles everyday as part of a health plan. The route is marked out, and I don't vary it from day to day. I don't even reverse the direction. The walk isn't about communing with nature. It's just getting it done. There are times when I go walking for pleasure, but it's a completely different experience, and the two things have nothing in common for me. I would guess some people address eating the same way.
I feel better eating the same thing every day. I feel better eating lower carbs and lower sugar, and eating the same thing every day helps. I eat the same breakfast every day, the same lunch every weekday, and try to plan dinners on a weekly basis with my wife. This minimizes the number of times in a given week I have to make a decision about what to eat and prevent the inner monologue that tries to convince me to eat carbs and sugar.
Since I have had almost no sense of smell for the last 5 years or so, I'm not able to get excited about variety in food. For example, different fruits and vegetables. Mostly, it's about texture and temperature, and really, none of it is much good at all. So I eat a lot of the same things — like peanut butter on toast almost every morning. Exploring new things to eat — anything "foodie"ish — is just a big boring waste of time for me. Just because other people like something and put time and effort into it doesn't mean it's worth it to you.
The post gestures at a much larger topic: Are there aspects of life that other people put lots of time and effort into that you have radically minimized (and, if so, why)?
That is: What are your closed doors?
I'm not talking about doors that are sadly closed for you and that you want to figure out how to open and might pursue therapy to open. I'm talking about doors you know other people like to go through but that you've decided that for you it's best to keep closed because you've got other places to go.
Sachs' "Musicophilia" is another great read.
I eat the same thing for breakfast when I eat breakfast. One days I work, I get up at 3:30 and don't eat until I get home about 4.
I sip Diet Coke all day when I work. I don't get hungry.
Well one door I keep closed is having peanut butter in the house. Can't resist it.
"There are levels of forgetting"
A useful addendum to Pierre Bayard.
But he adds the complication of talking about things you've heard other people talk about, so you have to be careful about what "it" is that you are forgetting. Of course, the initial exposure also varies, as he recognizes by distinguishing, pretty obviously, between skimming and reading in toto.
Anyway, we should forget more, so we can talk more freely.
My Mom lost her sense of smell and taste with the onset of dementia. She hid that for a long while until I figured it out from some odd food combinations. I talked to her about it and the biggest problem is that she doesn’t feel like eating because food has no taste. Even texture has lost some meaning which makes all foods feel mostly the same.
I had a bout of transient global amnesia back in December. My kids refer to it as “Dad’s episode”.
Levels of forgetting. Level 5: I’ve seen it before (but I am never going to remember that it happened).
It was a weird day.
Levels of forgetting and a door that I have closed because I do have better places to go.
#5. You didn't bother to try to remember it (whatever) in the first place, so when confronted with it I can "say"...I forgot. But the truth is I don't care enough to waste my thoughts on remembering certain things. They are not important to me. Door closed.
I am horrible with names of people. I try to remember names of people that I have met and need to interact with by associating a rhyme or mental picture with their face and name. It is an effort. Actors/Politicians...unless they are incredibly famous or current I really don't know or care try to know. It takes a lot of thinking to eventually dredge up the name.
The reason I have closed that door: I have other facts, technical details about things I am interested in. Formulas, methods and technical stuff that I needed to keep in my mind for work or study. My brain is full. I can never forget some things :-)
Hubby, is great at remembering names and faces as well as the make, model, statistics, motor, configuration of any car based on a glimpse of the chrome or bumpers. Same thing for his work items. (his technical mental library). He can't fathom that I don't have names on the tip of my tongue.
We are watching a show and he starts talking about some of the actors and remembering their names trying to get me to remember all sorts of facts about them.
Typical conversation
Him: Remember he starred in that other movie (that we aren't watching now)?"
Me: No. I don't.
Him: Gives the name
Me: Oh. (whatever. I don't care. Trying to concentrate on this movie and plot)
Him: He was married to XX and she starred in XX show. Remember who their kids are? Their daughter was in XX movie.
Me: No. I don't
Him: yada yada yada
Me: Can you shut up! I want to watch this movie. I don't care WHO these people are now. We can discuss it later. (and I still won't remember because now I really really don't WANT to)
AA: Exploring new things to eat — anything "foodie"ish — is just a big boring waste of time for me.
I think "foodie-ism" is a form of gluttony, which gives it (to me, anyway) a moral dimension.
I say this as someone who isn't anosmic (on the contrary, I have a very acute sense of smell), and who derives great sensual enjoyment from, and is particular about the quality of, food and wine. But everything in proportion and in its proper place. There's something "off" in eating that is completely abstracted away from its primary purposes of nutrition and social ritual. Eating is fetishized, as it were.
Even gourmand excess has its place in festivals and celebrations, but the tendency toward foodie-ism can become that sad thing, feasting without a festival.
Related to WK’s comment.
Versed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2735240/
Memories for now than gone forever
WK said...
I had a bout of transient global amnesia back in December. My kids refer to it as “Dad’s episode”.
Levels of forgetting. Level 5: I’ve seen it before (but I am never going to remember that it happened).
It was a weird day.
My dad went through a period many years ago when he had repeated bouts of transient global amnesia. I lived on the East Coast, and he and most of my family were in California, but I got to see it a couple of times. It is very weird. It seemed to self resolve, but he had other neurological problems afterwards, so stay alert. At least as alert as you can.
"What are your closed doors?"
I've pretty much given up on modern culture, except for defensive purposes.
Fritz -Thanks for sharing. I have not run into anyone who has had the same experience to compare notes. No recurrence (so far) but will be watchful for any effects down the road. Thanks.
My husband eats the same thing for breakfast every day and has a bowl of ice cream every night. For years after we were married he wanted the same rotation of six dinners cooked every week. It got to the point that I hated cooking because I was so incredibly bored by it. It sucked the joy out of my day. Happily, we worked that out and I got to explore new recipes of the types of food he liked to eat.
Then with the amount that he worked preventing him from exercising and some stressors that took place in our lives he put on a pretty good amount of weight. After a few years of his comments about going on a diet I picked one and I started cooking for that meal plan. We made it two weeks, until one day he called me up and said that driving home thinking about what I was making for dinner had been one of the best parts of his day and could he please have it back.
So I went back to my regular cooking habits and he started getting up at 4 a.m. to hit the gym (he lost 50 pounds!).
Strangely, I don't eat the majority of the food that I cook. I have a fountain drawn soda every morning.
Nutrition is utilitarian until eating becomes a social activity.
I bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch at work most days. While my co-workers spend time going back and forth about what they are going to eat and where at lunchtime. It makes for a more relaxing lunch hour.
The only reason I have a varied diet is my wife loves to cook. Left to my own devices, I’m perfectly happy eating a few staple items. One less uninteresting thing to think about.
Strange group.
I buy a lot of clearance items by necessity and that determines the week's lineup.
It helps for weight control if you eat the same thing every day. You can vary the spices on the salmon. That should be enough culinary adventure for any right thinking person who cares about their weight.
My grandmother had her gallbladder removed. After the operation, the doctor prescribed a low-fat diet. Apparently, he mentioned specific items for each meal, including shredded wheat for breakfast and pot cheese and lima beans for dinner.
She ate those items, and no others, for the next 54 years. It became very difficult to find pot cheese, but cottage cheese just wouldn't do.
She was an unbelievably boring woman.
I usually eat the same things because I'm a finicky eater. There are some things I like to eat, but there many more I just don't like to eat. I know that I should expand my food experience, but I hate ordering something different or cooking something new just to find out that I don't like it.
About the sense of smell...I remember reading a short story called, The Coffin Cure, by Alan E. Nourse. The premise was that a doctor had discovered a cure for the common cold. Eventually, almost everyone got the treatment. Then, later on, it turned out that a side effect was a massively enhanced sense of smell. The only way to cure that was to give everyone permanent nasal cold symptoms.
I have basically the same thing for breakfast and lunch everyday with slight variations (say, radishes instead of spinach). As others have noted, in a busy day it simplifies task of controlling calories consumed. The little woman cooks dinner so I am, gratefully, at her mercy there.
Except for when I switched from low-fat to low-carb nine years ago, I've mostly eaten the same thing for breakfast every day, certainly every work day when I was working. Now, it's six egg yolks gently fried in much butter and garnished with tobasco sauce, spinach, and parmesan cheesse. Occasionally I add bell pepper. It is not utilitarian. It is delicious. I love eggs, and I missed them the years I thought they were bad.
Lunch and dinner are all over the place, the times as well as the ingredients. I rotate, but not on a schedule, through liver, lamb chops, ground beef patties, liverwurst with steamed veggies and cheese, kippered herring, smoked salmon, salami and cheese, pork hocks, homemade soup, bratwurst sausage, and the occasional roast. Generally these dishes are accompanied by vegetables and / or a salad, but not a conventional salad (I hate chewing and chewing leaves. My salad is a tomato cut up and mixed with onion, bell pepper, jalapeno, sour cream, and bleu cheese crumbles).
The main daily constant, besides the eggs, is dark chocolate (85% cocoa or more) to finish off the meal.
reader,
we did something similar when our kids were wee, but ours was a 2 week cycle. While not necessarily ideal, it made daily life with young kids simpler. We could say, we're having 'x' for dinner because it's on the schedule, deal with it. Also, made weekly grocery shopping easier as we almost had a standard list. Also fooled my kids with dessert when we were strapped for money (as usual for a young couple FYI millennials), and convinced them that frozen peas presented in sherbet cups were actually 'peasicles' and highly desirous. That crashed when one actually asked for peasicles at a decent restaurant. While not strapped for dough now, we still don't have dessert, even peasicles.
"Level 1: Oh, yes, I remember. (You forgot only in the sense that you had no reason to call the fact to mind, but it looks completely familiar)."
You seem to be confusing "forget" with "remember", much the way a 9-year-old of my acquaintance confuses "yesterday" with "tomorrow". Maybe you just forgot the difference, at some level -- or remembered, depending on how you look at it.
I eat the same breakfast every morning: Special K with a touch of heavy cream and whole milk, one banana and a glass of either grapefruit juice or orange juice. I was a Product 19 kid growing up. I miss that cereal very much, to this very day.
I've been eating the same lunch every day for a few weeks now; baked BBQ pork ribs, with either Spanish rice with tomato and onions or spaghetti, with a side of sautéed spinach. Dinners are with the family, so that's a toss-up. I'm ok with variety in my dinners. I love eating dinner at restaurants, and when I do I go out of my way to have something I wouldn't ordinarily eat. For dessert I have one slice of apple pie, every night. I found early on that I don't like to waste energy making decisions on what to eat, so I streamline the day by making decisions like that days or weeks in advance, and sticking with it until I get bored.
I've gone years having the same lunch every day. Whenever I've started a new job, the biggest decision that I make in the beginning of my tenure is what to eat for lunch.
Eat the same thing every day because I used to eat anything I wanted. Now for years, it's been skinless chicken and steamed broccoli every night. Not only that, on Sunday, I bbq enough chicken for the week. Last year, I started laying my first eggs, available at Trader Joe's.
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