The Great Thirst

“All the great philosophical ideas of the past century—the philosophies of Marx and Nietzsche, phenomenology, German existentialism, and psycho-analysis—had their beginning in Hegel; it was he who started the attempt to explore the irrational and integrate it into an expanded reason which remains the task of our century. He is the inventor of that Reason, broader than the understanding, which can respect the variety and singularity of individual consciousnesses, civilizations, ways of thinking, and historical contingency but which nevertheless does not give up the attempt to master them in order to guide them to their own truth.”

– Merleau-Ponty: Sense & Non-Sense, p. 63

A bit later in his essay, Merleau-Ponty describes the movement of consciousness as one from a subjective “certainty” to action, which (according to Hegel) always has unexpected consequences. These consequences are an objective truth of sorts, in the light of which man modifies his project, acts with somewhat greater discernment, until at last man in his subjectivity finally brings himself into line with objective truth and “he becomes fully what he already obscurely was.” (p. 66)

What makes this little essay interesting is the odd mixture of accurate depiction of certain aspects of Hegel’s phenomenology (rare enough) and bogus French existential terminology (common enough). What seems to be altogether missing from Merleau-Ponty’s analysis is any understanding of the impetus behind the dialectical process Hegel is describing.

At one point he remarks, astutely, with regard to Hegel’s phenomenology, “Absolute knowledge, the final stage in the evolution of the spirit as phenomenon wherein consciousness at last becomes euqal to its spontaneous life and regains its self-possession, is perhaps not a philosophy but a way of life.” (p. 64) But the weakness of his analysis here, and of the French existentalist analysis generally, lies in the mistaken notion that the end to be achieved is some sort of personal peace as a result of elevated consciousness. On the contrary, Hegel’s evolution of spirit is driven by a dim awareness of the ideal—which is not the same thing as knowing one’s-self. (Though the two are related in an interesting way.) The end of result of “the evolution of spirit” is the creation of an environment within which that spirit can continue to flourish. It is not Nirvana. It is not The Kingdom of Heaven—though that phrase brings us nearer to the truh. No, it is civilization.

Everyone has a different notion of “the ideal.” Some are simple and narrow in focus; others are far-reaching and complex. And in fact, we all have far more “ideals’ than we commonly recognize. It isn’t a matter of “the ideal,” as if there were a single thing toward which all our energies were directed. Whatever moves us to act is, in some sence, an ideal. Individuals are often motivated by a really good meal, a cigarette, sexual pleasure, athletic competition, moments of solitude, natural beauty, art, the administration of justice, lively conversation, handyman projects, the passing countryside, religious awe, the challenge of raising a family, teaching, and even the satisfactions of physical labor.

We tend to think of “the ideal” as the ultimate. What would the ultimate cigarette taste like? What would the ultimate benevolent act be? But even to couch “the ideal” in such terms exposes the mediocrity of the notion. There is not, and never will be, an “ultimate” novel, creme brûlée, or scientific discovery. On the other hand, anyone who’s inspired by an ideal may feel that each achievement he or she arrives at is merely a step along the way to something higher.
That might be what George Steiner was referring to when he wrote:

The intuition—is it something deeper than even that?—the conjecture, so strangely resistent to falsification, that there is “otherness” out of reach, gives to our elemental existence its pulse of unfulfllment. We are the creatures of a great thirst. Bent on coming home to a place we have never known. The “irrationality” of the transcendental intuition dignifies reason. The will to ascension is founded not on any “because it is there” but on a “because it is not there.”

(Grammars of Creation, p. 20)

Steiner’s remark may be more interesting than it at first appears. In the course of a few sentences, he identifies this “thirst” first with an otherness, then with a home, and finally with a transcendental intuition that we aspire to, however irrational it may be.

To the careful reader, these various signposts may seem entirely comprehensible. Yet he or she might also be attentive to what’s missing—that Hegelian dialectic which recognizes that the “otherness” of the ideal is approachable, and is, to take the argument a step further, already within us. For how could we recognize a just act, or a beautiful work of art, if justice and beauty were not already a part of out kit-bag? And why would we care to do so, except that we dimly recognize these values—beauty, justice—to be the most precious and authentic aspects of our being? Steiner himself acknowledges as much when he associates “the ideal” to which we aspire with home.

Now, it might well be suggested that underlying many of the impulses I’ve mentioned is the desire to exert ourselves, to put ourselves forward, egotistically, as it were—to rise above the rest. And few would deny that there is a certain pleasure in excelling—though many of us have been trained to feel shame or guilt at the same time , as if we’ve broken some sort of social code. In our day the classic case is of the scientist working nobly to discover a cure for some virulent disease--while at the same time working equally hard to make sure that the discovery is associated with his or her name, and no one else’s.Such impulses sometimes come into conflict with one another, no doubt, but it seems to me the presence of the one doesn’t vitiate or undermine the loftiness of the other.

To put it another way, the opposition between selfish and self-less actions is artificial and doesn’t illuminate much. In many cases, the pursuit of the ideal and the pursuit of self-knowledge are one and the same. Perhaps we truly come to know ourselves only in the act of showering the world with our gifts. In that restless, anxious progress of spirit, we discover simultaneously who we are and what the world needs.

An awareness of this fact is likely to alter the way we look at our world and the people around us. It may give us pleasure to differentiate ourselves from those who sport a more primitive or “fundamentalist” view of life. We may snicker and puff ourselves up. But there is often a degree of congruence, if not actual identity, between our ideals and those of others very unlike ourselves—it’s only that we define them differently, with greater or lesser subtlety and nuance. Such an awareness may lead to the tempting desire to unearth the root or genuine ideal of which all our personal ideals are but imperfect copies or approximations. History teaches that this is a temptation it would be best to resist. The proponents of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, Aryan supremacy, the classless state, and, on a less destructive scale—so far—democracy, American-style, felt that they had uncovered the root of all value, and had no qualms about enforcing it on others.

Did these people really believe in what they were doing? To quote the butler in Citizen Kane: “Well …Yes and No.”

No, if there is any universal ideal, it can only be dscribed in the simplest terms—to promote life. But am I to promote my life, the lives of my children, the homeless, the party? Or “life” in general? It all depends. Although the ideal is always the same, the situation changes, as do the talents and potentialitis of the agents involved. That’s what makes life difficult and keeps the agonists—you and me—in a state of ceaseless anxiety. And that’s what make history—the study of the spiritual merit of individual actions that have already taken place—so rewarding.

Yet it would be a mistake to restrict our attention to those arenas—science, the arts, politics—in which remarkable individuals excell. “Social history” is constitutionally incapable of illuminating the issue, true enough. What is required is to see the force of “the ideal,” the force of aspirant energy, at work everywhere.

This may be what Novalis was referring to when he wrote: “Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” And it’s most certainly what the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel had in mind when he wrote:

“...the knowledge of an individual being cannot be separated from the act of love or charity by which this being is accepted in all which makes of him a unique creature or, if you like, the image of God.”

– Marcel:Ego and Others, p. 24

As we ate our pot roast and vegetables, we watched a flying squirrel on the bird-feeder, and five very fat raccoons waddled into view from theshadows beyond the yard light.

State Fair 2011

I used to think that the State Fair Art show was always the same—some good works, some mediocre works, some clever works, some pleasingly naïve works, some pretentious works, and some that were just plain terrible. But this year’s show is better. Interesting works of all kinds, and relatively few clinkers.

My favorite was a photograph of a pier. Looks like California to me. It has that blue light that seems to come from everywhere. The photo you see here, taken with a cheap camera through glass and later touched up to remove my own reflection and the glare of the surrounding lights, can only hint at its beauty. (That’s true of most of the other photos you see here.)

Second on my list is a print (silk-screen?) by Faye Passow. She seems to make the show every year, with some sort of imaginative litho illustrating female anxieties. They’re always very well done. But this one is more naturalistic. The chiaroscuro is intense and the subject matter itself—a half-dead tree—is very unusual.

We happened to be having a pizza with Faye and her boyfriend when she was making this print last spring. At the time she had just come from the studio, and was frustrated by all the registration the print required—there are eleven layers to get exactly right, if I remember correctly. I would say that the results were worth the effort.

Every show has a noteworthy political creation, almost invariably with a liberal bent. This year’s has Obama as Dorothy, Chaney as the wicked witch, and Bush as the minion monkey. The elderly couple ahead of us took one look and said, “I wouldn’t give that one a prize!” To which I couldn’t help retorting, “I would.” They just kept on walking.

Among the many arresting photographs there was one large panorama with a tornado front and center dwarfing the two semis that had pulled off the freeway in the foreground. I also liked the one of the snake between two tree trunks. (At least that what I think it was.) And there was something sweet about the little girl prancing toward a shop window in which a Tinkerbelle manikin was on display.)

There was a photo of a cedar waxwing in flight that looked like a painting, and several pencil drawings that looked like photographs. And I was also intrigued by a very large painting of Fruit Loops. In the retrospective corner of the show I was taken by the Alex Soth photograph of a young woman wearing a stocking cap.

Another highlight, in a different part of the fairgrounds, was the steer-wrestling. In this rodeo event, teenage boys on horseback chase a baby steer that’s fleeing at break-neck speed, leap onto it and try to wrestle it to the ground. Of the ten we watched, only three were successful.

We had our all-you-can-drink glass of milk. We listened to a demonstration about Danish Smorbrot that wasn't worth much. We tried to identify rocks at the geology booth, and won a Norway Pine seedling at the forest industry center. (It's still sitting in the bag. Where should we plant it?) We drank a free sample of an energy drink that tasted like concentrated Lick-em-aid.

Ah, the State Fair. Always the same, always something different.

New Yorker Train-Wreck

Flipping through the current New Yorker, after a long, hard day at the office, I find myself repeatedly coming up against troubling, mediocre material. First a poem by W.S. Merwin that sounds like a parody of a poem by a far lesser poet. Then an article about a philosopher’s quest for “moral truth.”

Excuse me! (As they used to say.)

There is no such thing as moral truth. Morality has to do with the way we behave. Truth has to do with our understanding of the world. The two are certainly related. On the other hand, many books have been written about the close connection between humanitarian ideals and spineless behavior. Thinking and doing don’t always work hand in hand. Which explains why “moral truth” is a meaningless association of terms.

No need to read that essay. (The guy has a sanctimonious expression and a horrible haircut, too.)

But the final blow came when, reading an article by Louis Menand about Dwight McDonald, he describes his own father in the following terms: “The American Civil Liberties Union and the Metropolitan Opera were the joint deities of his world.”

That sounds OK to me. But not to Menand. “I met a lot of people like that growing up, people who managed to combine unequivocal support for principles like equal rights and freedom of speech with flagrant cultural elitism….They can be democrats out in the town square and snobs at home.”

I guess Menand doesn’t like opera much. He may be “musically challenged.” But there is nothing snobbish or elitist about opera. Anyone who loves opera loves it the way a kid loves baseball, the way a patriot loves the flag. Opera combines glamour and fantasy with melodrama and primal vocal sounds that rend the heart and buoy the spirit in ways that few other mediums approach. There is something childish, rather than snobbish, about the whole enterprise. Fairy Tales for grown-ups, and the music, which cuts through both the theory and the protocol of adult living, is for real.

Verdi, for one, was a peasant. He often conducted his rehearsals in secret, because he didn’t want the local organ grinders to pick up his tunes and start playing them on the street before the premier. He knew that before long every Tommaso, Richardo, and Enrico in Italy would be hummin’ La donna è mobile ("Woman is fickle") but he needed to sell some tickets first.

It costs a lot of money to stage an opera, it’s true. Therefore, the tickets are not cheap. But many of them are cheaper than Minnesota Vikings tickets. And the Met HD broadcasts are not only relatively cheap, but far superior to local live performances. They’re loud enough to summon the level of emotion opera at its best can touch.

Now that I think about it, there is far more “moral truth” in an opera by Verdi, Mozart, or Puccini, than most philosophers’ hypothetical rigamarole. Tosca’s aria Visi d’Arte, Visi Amore is not only hauntingly beautiful, it also raises the basic moral dilemma of our time—or of any time.

If there is moral truth, it’s something we do, or see in the actions of others, rather than merely think.

Was Confucius Happy?

In a recent, widely-discussed book, The Happiness Equation, an economist at the University of York (Nick Powdthavee) examined the relationship between various economic indicators and human happiness. The results could be encapsulated in a time-worn cliché, “Money can’t buy happiness.”

This reminds me of the slightly-less-well-known adage, “Money isn’t everything...but it sure beats the heck out of whatever comes in second.”

I don’t have a lot of money, and I haven’t read the book in question, because I’m a fairly happy chap myself, and I’m not really interested in what statistics and interviews can tell me about what other people say they feel.

I myself have noticed, and felt, a few things that may be of relevance to the question:

People who have read a good novel, or seen a good film, cherish it as if it were a god.

People sometimes return from expensive vacations and get excited only when they’re talking about the horrendous service they received at a restaurant in the Travestere.

There is a passage in one of Willa Cather’s novels, maybe My Antonia, that made an impression on me. I looked it up just now on-line:

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great…”

Politics can be a noble pursuit, but talking about politics can be dull. It often boils down to excoriating the selfish, bigoted folk who vote Republican. Such judgments are usually sound, but they don’t change anything or illuminate anything.

So, what should people talk about?

The other day, Hilary and I were sitting on the deck drinking a glass of wine. It was dark, we had a candle burning in our dragonfly candleholder, the crickets were chirping, and she was telling me about what Karen Armstrong has to say about Confucius in her recent book, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Being the “Mr.-know-it-all” par excellence, I leapt from my chair and said, “I’ve got an idea, let’s see what Confucius himself has to say.”

I ducked back into the house and returned a few minutes later with three translations of the Analects: the groundbreaking Arthur Waley translation (1924); the Penguin edition translated by D. C. Lau (1979); and the recent David Hinton translation (1998). We began to read out loud, back and forth. Let me give you an example:

The Master said: “Of villages, Humanity is the most beautiful. If you choose to dwell anywhere else, how can you be called wise?” (Hinton)

The Master said, “Of neighborhoods, benevolence is the most beautiful. How can a man be considered wise who, when he has the choice, does not settle for benevolence?” (Lau)

The Master said, “It is Goodness that gives to a neighborhood its beauty. One who is free to choose, yet does not prefer to dwell among the Good—how can he be accorded the name of wise?” (Waley)

And then we would dispute which version was the best.

Clearly the Waley version is the best of the three here.

Among the discoveries noted by Mr. Powdthavee in his recent book about happiness, he mentions that the rich are slightly more anxious than the poor. He observes that many people are concerned not only about the size of their paychecks, but also about how their pay compares to that of their peers. This strikes me as a bit odd.

The review that I read appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and the conclusions the reviewer arrived at concerning labor demands and the benefits of immigration are worth a look.

In Book Six Confucius remarks:

The Master said, “To be fond of something is better than merely to know it, and to find joy in it is better than merely to be fond of it.” (Lau)

BWCAW – Elemental

Why go there? Because it’s elemental. You pull out of the garage at 8:15, leaving the computer, the clients, the Tea Party, the unmowed lawn, and the half-painted woodwork behind, and six hours later you’re near the Canadian border, heading out across a pristine lake in an aluminum canoe, wondering where you’ll be setting up your tent for the night.

We hadn’t been on the water more than half an hour when I spotted a moose emerging from the woods on a back bay. That’s unusual. But therein lies the enduring interest—in the BWCA you never know quite what’s going to happen. The moose was a quarter-mile away, but with binoculars we could see it perfectly.

We camped at a familiar site on the north end of the lake, not far from the portage. I paddled out to get some water, hunted down a dead tree in the woods behind camp, assembled the all-important camp chairs, which consist of little more than some plastic rods and webbing to support a folder air mattress.

The wind was gusty and we weren’t entirely into the swing of things yet, though Hilary went swimming almost immediately and then gathered some blueberries. A little honey bee came by as we were sitting in the dirt, reading or looking out across the bay at the clumps of black clouds forming in the distance. Hilary held out her finger and the bee landed on it.

Two parties were fishing out in the bay. We could hear them exchanging pleasantries from time to time but they obviously weren’t together. Both canoes disappeared as dinner time approached but reappeared later for a few more hours of fishing before the sky grew dark.

Returning from our evening paddle, we passed right between the two canoes. As we approached the man in the bow of one of them got a strike. His buddy got the net out and they landed the fish. The man with the net then lifted an impressive string of fish out of the water.

“Walleye,” he said. (It’s hard to imagine how they’ll eat all those fish.)

Our dinner consisted of turkey jerky and almonds, followed by coffee made with water heated over the campfire. As we sat on the rocks a swarm of dragonflies appeared above us, just as they had years ago at this same spot.

Spectacular sunset, wisps of cloud tinted copper or pink, with one big dark clump near the horizon.

The transit from Sawbill to Cherokee Lake takes you through some interesting country, with small lakes, streams, portages, reeds, creeks, and mossy escarpments. At one point a beaver dam has raised the water level in a slough, making the boggy stretch easier to navigate and turning a 92-rod portage into a 12-rod portage. That’s OK with me.

We came upon a couple of spotted sandpipers on Cherokee Creek and admired the water lilies and pitcher plants. A raven crossed the creek ahead of us several times, monitoring our progress.

Cherokee Lake itself is a gem, and I suspect many parties just head up there and sit for a few days. The lake is studded with islands and the countryside to the north and easy is hilly, which gives the lake itself some added drama.

We took a campsite on the west side of the lake, much improved since the last time we camped there. There’s more greenery and the tent site has been artificially leveled with clay and a few well-placed logs.

The weather took a turn for the worse, with deep rumbling in the distance, darkening skies…yet with patches of blue sky still prominent. The wind seemed to come with the clouds, with fierce squalls followed by patches of utter calm.

This is what you do. You sit under the tarp and wait for the rain to come. An innocuous sprinkle from time to time, but at 3:30 all the serious weather was still passing us by to the south and east. Our moment will come.

Wandering the high rocks behind the campsite, I notice that the forest is very healthy. Very little dead brush, few deadfalls. Mountain ash here and there, jack pine, balsam, bitch. Blueberry season is over.

Time for a nap in the tent. It’s like a furnace in there, but the deer flies won’t get you. The wind rises; the wind dies down. A seagull flaps by fairly high. I adjust the straps on the tarp, cinch them up.

It started to rain in earnest at 6. A few minutes of hard rain, but medium to light for the most part. Again and again, it seems to be letting up—it’s an aural illusion. If it were happening as often as it seems to be, the rain would have quit long ago.

We cooked and ate our “pouch” dinner of beef stroganoff under the tarp. When I rather cavalierly dumped a pool of water that had collected above our heads over the edge, it began gushing along a path between the exposed rocks and dirt directly under the tarp past where we were sitting, rendering the chairs useless.

It occurred to us eventually to put on our raincoats. We heated water for coffee. I could no longer stand erect under the tarp, but had the options of crouching over, squatting like a Japanese baseball player, or stepping out into the rain.

It was a soft rain, not a pelting rain. I enjoyed wandering the campsite, looking out at the dark gray clouds in every direction.

Just as it started ro rainin earnest, three canoes had passed on the far side of the channel. Scrutinizing them with binoculars I could see they were thirty-something men with shaved heads and muscle shirts. They bivouacked on a island a half-mile away, but left again before the rain quit, no doubt due to the coming darkness. Finding a campsite of Cherokee can be tough at that time of the day, regardless of the weather. I felt sorry for them.

The rain finally let up at eight. I made a fire (with wood I'd prudently tucked under the tarp) and we watched the vague orb of the moon rise through the thinning clouds.

Early August

It sounds like a minor film by Yasujirō Ozu. Early August. A time when thought begins to bend almost imperceptibly toward cooler, quieter days ahead. A delicious time of the year, in my opinion, with three months of wonderful weather in prospect. Maybe a few vacations, too!

In our neck of the woods the crickets started to chirp on July 31. The Cedar Lake rail line is now dominated by the mauve of wild bergamot in profusion (also in decline) and seven varieties of sunflowers, cone flowers, and back-eyed Susans none of which I know the precise name of.

The Twins are limping along with fading hopes but the new bike trail under the stadium is a boon to recreational bikers. It connects the downtown riverfront with communities as far away as Hopkins and Excelsior, and also serves as the northern leg of an easy 20-mile loop in conjunction with the 28th Street Greenway. We took that route the other day, stopping at the Longfellow Grill for a midmorning breakfast of meatloaf hash topped with two eggs and a dollop of Béarnaise.

My August reverie may have been spurred by a visit to the Scott County Fair a Wednesday or two ago. There weren’t many people there, which gave me the opportunity to chat with the men and women in the food wagons while Hilary was off tending the Scott County Booth.

The young woman in the cotton candy trailer told me she’s from Macedonia. She’s just here for the summer earning some easy money. The man at the Elkburger stand filled me in on the recent chronic wasting catastrophe in the local elk population. Evidently the market in North Korea for elk antlers has taken a nose-dive, too. I would like to have bought a burger from the guy…but I’d already been to the 4-H booth and didn’t have the appetite.

Just yesterday, eager to take advantage of the cooler weather, we headed to Faribault (less than an hour south of town) to do the Sakatah Singing Hills Trail. The trail passes through rolling fields, crosses the Cannon River twice, follows the shores of a few lakes and alongside several remnant prairies before reaching the mature forests of Sakatah State Park.

You emerge from the woods at the lackluster town of Waterville, which bills itself as “Southern Minnesota’s Vacation-spot.” There’s a nouveau coffee shop on main street (with WiFi) but no one was in the tidy dining area when we stepped in to get an ice cream cone. Nor was the woman behind the counter especially friendly. Maybe there’s a connection. (Or maybe she was just out of sorts because all her regular customers were at the 127th annual Fireman's Weekend pancake breakfast over at the VFW.)

We wandered Main Street and examined the postings in the window of the real estate office, looking for a dirt-cheap cottage on the lake (dream on!) and then started the long haul back to Faribault. There was almost no one on the trail. A few warblers chirping in the deep woods. A kingbird on a fence-wire showing off the white band on his tail. A few robust walnuts above our heads...

Pine Nuts

The price per pound was roughly half what they charge at a discount supermarket. And a few big clumps of basil happened to be sitting on the kitchen counter back home, waiting to be chopped into pesto and frozen for the winter. So I bought the great big bag of pine nuts at CostCo at $14 dollars a pound, little considering that due to their high oil content, pine nuts go bad quickly, and a pound and a half of those tasty little nuts will take you a long ways into the autumn.

We made the pesto—though a friend later reminded me that it’s better to toast the pine nuts in a frying pan and sprinkle them on top just before serving. And we gave some to my mother-in-law for her birthday. At that point I began to dig out a few tried and true recipes…

Why are pine nuts so expensive? Because they take eighteen months to mature (which seems very odd to me) and must be harvested by hand. I can remember driving north from Pie Town to Fence Lake, New Mexico, through several monotonous hours of miniature hills covered with juniper and piñon pine—a Georgia O’Keefe nightmare. There were pick-up trucks parked in the ditches here and there, and we finally figured out that folks were out gathering pine nuts. We stopped at a café—it may have been in Quemado—and I was pleased to listen in on the conversation of two chunky young Indian men in the booth next door. It seems that one absent member of the party wasn’t pulling his weight. I heard one of them say, “ Next year, I think it should be just you, me…and grandma.”

Pine nuts grow best at elevations between six and eight thousand feet. That’s the zone at which the snowpack is likely to linger, providing run-off well into the summer. But there’s no telling if a crop of nuts will mature or wither on any given year.

Harvesting pine nuts doesn’t have to be a drag, however. The Spanish composer Enrique Granados published a set of canciones amatorias in 1915 that includes a number called “They Went into the Pine Woods.”

Country girls from Cuenca go up into the pine-woods,
Some for the pine nuts, some for the dancing.
As they dance and shell the pine nuts
The pretty country girls enjoy
Throwing the darts of love at one another.
Between the branches—when blind Cupid
Asks the sun for his eyes to see them better—
You can see them treading on the eyes of the sun.
Some go for the pine-nuts, some go for the dancing.

I’m not sure what’s going on here, but it sounds a little more interesting than “you, me, and grandma.”

Quite a few species of pine trees produce edible nuts. The pine nuts they sell at road-side stands in the American Southwest are very different from the ones we buy at the store, being larger and perhaps less delicate in flavor. (Maybe they’d taste better if I shelled them.) The bag I bought at CostCo came from China. It’s said that in China they mercilessly denude the trees of branches to make the job of harvesting easier, and then just move on. I suppose it’s possible...

In any case, these Chinese nuts are as good as any I’ve tasted. In fact, the pesto we made the other day was almost too rich. I also recently made a salad of fresh beets, gorgonzola, pine nuts, and vinaigrette—you can’t miss with that combination.

But the best of the dishes I cooked up is an orzo salad that I rank among the most subtly pleasing concoctions in the world. What’s interesting about this salad is that when you take a bite, you don’t taste much of anything. There are little bits of flavor taking you this way and that, and only gradually does the full impact hit home. I once made a batch of this stuff and something seemed wrong. I finally figured out that the raisins were sticking to each other. Not getting dispersed. You need every little touch, in the right proportion, in every bite, or the thing won’t go.

Here’s the recipe.

Orzo Salad with Lemon, Feta, and Pine Nuts
Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoons minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, plus more as needed
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 cup orzo
1/4 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup golden raisins
3 tablespoons finely chopped black olives
3 tablespoons finely chopped red onion
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
2 oz. feta cheese, crumbled

Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper, and sugar in a jar. Shake it and set aside.

Cook orzo according to package directions. Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet over medium-low heat. Shake them from time to time — they burn easily. They should toast up in just a couple of minutes. They’re done when you can smell them and they start to turn brown. Lovely.
Drain the orzo and transfer it to a medium bowl. Add the dressing to the hot pasta and toss to coat. Let cool to room temperature. (Stick it fridge to speed things up.)

Add the pine nuts, raisins, olives, red onion, and basil and stir to combine. Add the feta and toss lightly. Taste and adjust the seasonings to your liking.
It’s a good idea to make this at least 4 hours ahead of time so the flavors can meld. It’s also fine right away and delicious the next day.