Augustine, inside out

I made a start today on reading through the early letters of St. Augustine.  This semester, I've been reading the four dialogues Augustine wrote while in retreat at Cassiciacum, near Lake Como in Italy, in 386-87, during the time between his conversion to Christianity and his baptism.  The dialogues themselves are revealing of the inward turn Augustine took in his own search for Truth and which he advocated for his students, and the letters provide yet another intimate level of evidence showing this trend in his thought.

What struck me most today about these letters, though, is that, as personal as Augustine's investigation of his own mind and soul was, it also enabled him to achieve a remarkable depth in his interpersonal relationships as well.  As he shows in his famous prayer at the opening of the second book of the Soliloquies -- "Noverim me, noverim te (May I know myself, may I know you)" -- Augustine realized that self-knowledge could only be achieved through knowledge of God.  And what could be more universally meaningful, what could bind friends together more powerfully, than an understanding of all people as creatures made by God, in his image?  Keeping this in mind, it seems only natural that Augustine and his friends wrote to one another about their intense longing to be physically present together and to compare the findings of their soul-searching and to test their tentative conclusions against each other.  All people being equal and united under God, it only makes sense that friends should assist one other in their ascent towards Truth.

As I admired the intimacy of Augustine's correspondence and the import of the issues at stake therein, I inevitably recognized the general shallowness of my own correspondence.  For this, to whatever degree it exists, I take full personal responsibility -- I'm not tempted toward a tritely gloomy reflection on the detriment of modern media on our social relationships.  What an endlessly facile scapegoat technology can be.  But I'll avoid getting heavy on this point.

So, instead, the day's culinary highlights.  I continue to explore the new Essential New York Times Cookbook, and it hasn't led me astray so far.  Tonight, I had planned to try out Mark Bittman's Pork and Sweet Potatoes in Coconut Milk, but I had to sub in chicken at the last minute when I discovered -- the nose doesn't lie -- that my pork had gone off.  The dish turned out well anyway, with the coconut milk reducing into a thickish creamy sauce that I finished with lime juice.  I served it with Basmati Rice with Coconut Milk and Ginger, from the same book, which turned out to be a nice match as well as a good way to use up the rest of my can of coconut milk.  Tonight, after reaching my brain's limit in gathering thoughts for a new paper, I whipped up, finally, a batch of Dorie Greenspan's Great Grains muffins, which I've wanted to try for a long time.  I've flash frozen them to bake up tomorrow morning -- there's no better incentive to get out of bed than fresh muffins.  We'll see how they turn out.

Grocery list night

I love making my weekly grocery list.  I exercise great restraint in putting it off until Thursday night, Grocery Shopping Eve.  Then, after my work is done, I have the treat of going through cookbooks, cooking magazines, and the "Cook Me!" bookmarks file on my internet browser to select recipes for the coming week.  I usually get to plan on two dinners, to cook Monday and Wednesday, along with, usually, a dessert of some kind and a breakfast item -- maybe even two.  It may not sound exciting, and this certainly hasn't always been my habit:  it still amazes me that I've come so far from just a little over a year ago, when the dinner rotation still consisted of blue box macaroni and cheese (usually with a can of tuna thrown in for protein), store-brand waffles and scrambled eggs, and Maruchan ramen noodles (with an egg and some Tabasco sauce thrown in, and maybe a few mushrooms, if I was feeling like real grad student gourmet).  Two (successful) sight exams and 14 months later, I am a reformed eater, and I love the creative outlet that cooking provides.

This week, happily, I have a new cookbook to browse through as I compile my list (and at mealtimes, and before bedtime...):  The new Essential New York Times Cookbook, edited by Amanda Hesser, out just last week.  It's a big and beautiful book, featuring over 1,000 recipes spread over 932 pages.  So far, one interesting entree has made the dinner lineup for this week: Spaghetti with Fried Eggs and Roasted Peppers (p. 339).  I'm especially intrigued by the addition of a couple of sunny-side up eggs over the pasta in the final step, which bleed their yolks over the noodles like a butter sauce.  I wish I had time to make the Dijon and Cognac Beef Stew (p. 560-61), but that may just have to wait until Christmas break.

It's been a long day here, wrapping up with my two-and-a-half-hour seminar finishing at 9 p.m.  Tomorrow morning I'll wake up ready to go, grocery list completed for our evening shopping trip and brain refreshed for an afternoon of joining Augustine in his quest to see Lady Wisdom buck naked (see Soliloquia 1 -- it's really too good to miss).

On academic idolatry

I've been working today on rounding up some ideas I've wanted to go back to since reading Augustine's early dialogue De ordine a few weeks ago. In all of three of the early dialogues, the character of Licentius, a student of Augustine's from Milan who has retreated with him to Cassiciacum, stands out to me, as I think he must for any reader. He's hopelessly smitten with poetry, and he constantly earns sharp rebukes from Augustine for spending too much time playing with his verses and too little devoting himself to philosophy. And even when he engages with all his intellectual might in the dialogues' debates, he is always -- as he is painfully aware -- being scrutinized by Augustine's relentless critical eye.

One of the most poignant moments in the dialogues comes in the middle of the first book of De ordine. In a nighttime debate that takes place in the bedroom that all of the interlocutors share, Licentius has just had what, in my view, is a triumph of intellectual self-sufficiency, converting to the study of philosophy on his own terms. But, in the morning light, we see Licentius creeping to the bedside of Augustine and asking quietly, timidly: "What do you think of me?" Throughout the dialogues, Licentius seems as hindered as he is helped by the presence of Augustine, a teacher whom he admires and respects greatly despite his harsh pedagogical style. As I see it, having to worry about how he is perceived by someone whose opinion he values highly is simply distracting, to the point of being counterproductive. But, then again, the same desire to please probably produces results that independent study would not; we do not need to pursue a goal for its own sake in order to attain it.

I think most students have a bit of Licentius in them -- I know that I do. I've had many an academic crush in my day, and especially when I was about his age, in my mid-teens. Most of these crushes have been on women; looking back, I wanted to be these women as much as I wanted them to approve of me. They were role models elevated to the level of idols. And while I knocked myself out to do well in their classes, I know that the energy I expended simply idolizing my teachers personally, if not actually unhealthy, could have been better spent otherwise -- such as in developing my own personal talents and interests, while worrying less about conforming to a model constructed by someone else.

For me, Licentius, and all of us, I think, this is part of the push-and-pull of growing up. We need people we respect and admire to push us to realize our potential, but ultimately, it must be our own potential that we aim to realize. This is why I feel for poor Licentius in De ordine; it's painful to see him briefly, triumphantly assert his independence, only to revert to quietly, anxiously yearning for his teacher's approval.

In other news: it's been a day of good eatin' here! I made for the second time what we are now calling simply "pumpkin", as if there's nothing else one can do with a pumpkin, but is called by Dorie Greenspan in her new book "Pumpkin Stuffed with Everything Good." And by everything, we're talking bread, cheese, bacon, apples, nuts, and whatever else strikes your fancy! I also tried a new cranberry sauce recipe, which was unanimously adopted for the Thanksgiving lineup. Score.

Night vision

Sometimes I see more clearly at night. It's mysteriously paradoxical that my brain often becomes more active the minute I lie down to go to sleep, suddenly churning out with terrifying efficiency and lucidity answers to problems I have been grinding away at all day. Sometimes the fiery nucleus of a thought I have mentally been orbiting at some distance from in the cold, murky darkness of my daytime mind rockets searingly into my consciousness almost as soon as I shut my eyes. In the best cases, I find a satisfying resolution to a nagging open question and drift peacefully into oblivion. In the worst cases, sleep becomes impossible as I am jolted into hypersensitive awareness of a terrifying reality that the distractions of daytime kept me from seeing clearly. For instance: these bones of mine -- these frail props for the flesh containing not just my vital organs but my very consciousness, and everything essentially me -- have to carry me through the rest of my earthly life. If they give out, I cease to be. And what paltry strength mere bones possess compared to the force of my spirit, defiantly kicking within me during these awful night awakenings more than at any other time. Nighttime is savagely honest, yet beautiful in its brutality. In the morning, the light of day and its mundane demands will sunnily obscure the vivid and real. Nighttime is worth staying up for.

Night imparts its lucid vision to all of us separately, yet to all of us the same. Listening to a podcast of the radio show "This American Life" entitled "Fear of Sleep a few weeks ago, I realized that even my most intimate nighttime terrors were not unique. One interviewee recounted a long history of chilling waking realizations that she was going to die. The sheer fact of it would burst upon her with breath-catching force suddenly in the night, and she would find herself crying from sadness and powerlessness. Alone in the dark, facts are facts, and the bald fact of our mortality asserts itself as supremely and solely relevant.

In St. Augustine's De Ordine, which I've been studying over the past few weeks, one of Augustine's young students has a less terrifying but equally powerful nighttime revelation. After spending his days oppressed by relentless Socratic-style interrogation on perplexing philosophical questions, feeling constantly in the spotlight and paralyzingly accountable for every word he uttered, this young man, Licentius, finally converts to the ways of philosophy during an ecstastic epiphany in the dark of the wee hours. He's alone in bed, (briefly) unobserved, and he finally has the freedom to let his mind go.

For Licentius in this dialogue, as for all of us, when daylight dawns, it brings not illumination, but obfuscation. Night vision, clear and true and real, comes gratuitously and fleetingly. Sometimes rising and rejoining the colorful, crowded daytime world feels like a blessing; other times, it is disingenuous distraction from the strange and brilliant truth only the mind can see.