Recently I finished reading a book that had been quietly, mystically ‘waiting’ for me on a bookshelf in our home. Do you have that happen to you? It is a kind of silent conversation between the author and some intuitive part of the unconscious that relies upon what seems to be nearly pre-ordained timing. As if an agreement was made by each of us to take up the ‘dance’. This was the case with the memoir by Lisa Donovan titled, “Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger”. I must have been advised by a source I trust in that the book has been out for a couple of years. I was able to purchase it via ‘ThriftBooks’. (A recommendation for you book lovers!) This one was a used book and despite a slight tear in the back cover in fine shape. I had not known of Ms. Donovan before which is surprising to me because we share a good many friends and colleagues in the industry we’ve devoted a lot of our lives to. It was a dance I enjoyed very much.
She has a page that was so perfect in the expression of a kind of mindset I find while cooking. It took me back to when our son, Justin returned from ‘exploring America’ as many of the age he was then are wont to do. (As did I). He surprised the hell out of me one afternoon by saying, “Dad. I’d like you to teach me how to cook”. Mind you he was probably 21 at that time and had been working in our restaurants in the kitchens (pastry primarily) while going to high school. So not a full on onslaught of the kitchen life but more than most of that age. Ms. Donovan’s passage also reminded me of learning about the legendary basketball coach Phil Jackson and his methodology for teaching superb athletes to be even better than they ever had been. Being Phil Jackson and the coach of the Chicago Bulls who were breaking all kinds of sports records at that time his messaging got much more ink in media land than the Hungarian-American professor who’s teachings inspired the basketball wizard. Coach Phil spoke like a kind of shaman to Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippin and the other human gods on the basketball team about ‘flow‘.
From Wikipedia, The state of flow, coined by the researcher (professor) Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is the feeling of being in the zone.
“When a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one’s sense of space and time.”
Csikszentmihalyi’s interest in what he later identified as“flow” started during his graduate years at the University of Chicago. He recalled in an interview how he would watch painters in their studios and how he was fascinated by their ability to forget everything while working. He was also surprised by what happened when they were done: They’d finish a work of art, and instead of enjoying it…they would put it against the wall and start a new painting. They weren’t really interested in the finished painting. What these artists were after, Csikszentmihalyi realized, wasn’t the finished work itself but the experience of full immersion and absorption in the act of creation.
The tie into this can be found in the words I’ve photographed from a page of the memoir I’ve included. Her words transported me back to when I was in the process of teaching Justin. I found myself often incapable of articulating why I ‘stirred the vegetables exactly then’. “They told me to” (or more true ‘they showed me to’) would not have satisfied his earnest questions. His mind leans more towards the scientific than I realized mine does. My way of learning how to cook was done by doing it. Over and over and over again. Until I reach the flow.