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2009-03-10 - 4:53 p.m.

So I'm reading this book called Heat, about a New York writer guy who decided to go to restaurant-cook boot camp. I think it's a pretty smart idea for a book (there's a built-in story arc that goes from beginner to expert), and it's fun to read about high-stakes cooking through the eyes of someone who's learning, because we're learning with him. We think: Oh, shit, what's a short rib? And he tells us.

Anyway, at one point, an English chef is describing how he got his start in the business, which was at a butcher's shop. He's describing the much older butcher's use of the knife, the slick, easy, practiced movements that broke down a bird into parts that would end up in dinners. This English guy is talking about how he was transfixed, and how he wanted to do the work that easily, with that much fluidity.

And so I got to thinking about that theme, that admiration of form or of practiced labor, how not always beautiful maybe in itself, that labor can often produce nonetheless a certain grace. I think maybe the first time I can remember thinking that is when I was about eight years old, one day when when I peeked into my parents' bedroom, where my dad was writing. I knew I wasn't supposed to be there, but I loved the rapid-fire mechanical sound of his electric typewriter. I'd used the typewriter before--pecking at it for hours for a paragraph-long book report--but when I snuck in and watched him do his thing, the sound and sight amazed me. The sound, the furious cascade of clack-clack-clacks, just went on and on, until the sky-blue machine beeped, the carriage whanged back to its start, and in that half-second before the carriage was settled again was the only time my dad's fingers stopped moving. A half-second pause before he started again. He typed so fast and the keyboard, to me, was so foreign and impenetrable that I thought I'd never get that good at anything. And that's how everything, I think, looks to the uninitiated. Cooking, speaking another language, fly fishing, calculus, drawing, even running a conference call or paying a cabbie, if you've never done it before.

Fear and admiration spring from unfamiliariaty, I guess. But, and I'm glad about this, when you learn about something, the admiration doesn't go away, not totally. Or perhaps it transforms into something more subtle (as in, you go to the symphony and it sounds good but then you learn about orchestral music and then, two years later, it's all of a sudden made up of a thousand colors) For these little labors, maybe the magic is gone once you learn about them, but I'm grateful for the flash that happens when I realize that, just now, I've clicked my cell phone closed, shifted to third and then fourth gears, turned off the radio because there's a commercial on, and also managed to roll down the radio a few inches because it's warm in the truck, but not too warm. A small job done well, sometimes, is maybe all we can ask for.

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