Just me, some gaffer tape... and a beheaded teaspoon.
Pondering imperfection.
Is this the perfect teaspoon? Photo by Raul Angel on Unsplash
“And this is the sort of thing,” I said, as I spooned a serving of curried vegetables on to a plate, “that Indian people make for themselves. In their own homes.”
“I wish I had never said anything,” my wife sighed.
“What are you on about?” The eldest is newly returned from university for the Christmas break, and not up to speed on the current nonsense that I speak.
“Well…” I said, and embarked on an over elaborate explanation. My wife interrupted with a more succinct version, explaining how one of her colleagues, an Indian woman from Bangalore, had tasted one of my curried vegetable meals and commented (probably out of politeness) that it was just the sort of thing that her family cooked for themselves at home.
“And this rice,” I said, gesticulating with a wooden spoon, “is the sort of rice Indian people like to eat.”
“That seems like something of a gross generalisation for a continent and diaspora of, what, one and a half billion people?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so…” I conceded.
“Are you suggesting that he sometimes makes ridiculous generalisations?” The youngest one piped up. “Shurely shome mishtake…”
“That’s my line,” I protested.
Most Mondays I cook some sort of curried vegetable dish, although dish isn’t really the right word for it. I went through a long stage of making a red lentil dahl until I started getting complaints. (“Not this again!”) After that I fell back on my tried and tested plan of looking to see what is in the cupboard and fridge, and then using it to make something.
“The thing is,” my wife explained, “that sometimes it’s really nice...”
“Sometimes?” I protested.
“But because you don’t follow a recipe, you can’t replicate it,” she added.
“Maybe we need to learn to live in the moment a bit more,” I said in a thoughtful tone.
“He means that he’s not going to change what he’s doing,” the youngest one said
“I do mean that,” I agreed.
I enjoy the creativity of coming up with something new, even though it generally tastes more or less like the last one, because I mainly use the same ingredients, just in randomly different quantities. It’s pretty much always nice. Pretty much.
I think about this interaction later, when I am carefully bending a teaspoon with two pairs of pliers.
Earlier in the day my headphones broke, for the second time. On the first occasion I had first tried to fix them with tape, but found that they needed a splint. I eventually opted for an old (redundant) teaspoon from which I removed the spoon end, leaving only the handle. I bent it to shape, taped it to the headphone band, and voila, a newly reinforced pair of headphones. Now the other side had snapped too. No problem, I knew what to do.
According to Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher (in case I need to disambiguate him from a footballer or someone similar), there should be – in another realm – a perfect form of a spoon. Well, ok, he didn’t exactly say that, but you could infer it.
In other words, he thought there had to be a perfect, invisible, form of something, like a spoon, in order for there to be a visible, and less than perfect, counterpart.
“It’s funny how much Greek thought finds its way into the Bible,” I exclaim, while tearing off a strip of black gaffer tape. “Like in the prologue to John’s gospel,” I continue, “all that stuff about the ‘true light’ which brings light, that sounds a lot like Platonism to me.”
I look around, there’s nobody in the room. Just me, some gaffer tape, a broken pair of headphones and a beheaded teaspoon.
When the fix is completed I look at the headphones, they’re a little wonky in shape but they work, and they stay on my head comfortably.
“I suppose there’s a perfect form of headphones which I am trying to emulate,” I think.
This imperfect photograph shows some imperfect headphones on a bracket. And it shows a leg, a head, a lanyard and a shadow. Name that album cover.
I hang the repaired headphones on the bracket where they normally live and look at them. A dualistic point of view would have it that the visible, imperfect things of the world are intrinsically worth less than the perfect forms that they copy.
For many of us the attempt to live up to the ‘perfect form’ that we believe our life should take puts an intolerable strain on our mental, physical and spiritual health. Because nothing in life is perfect, not really.
But sometimes a slightly bodged, but nonetheless tasty, meal is great. It might not be perfect, but that doesn’t stop it being delicious or even nutritious. A pair of headphones reinforced with hacksawed teaspoons and gaffer tape may not be quite ‘box fresh’ but they’re good enough. They do the job. Well, until they break again anyway.
“Living up to perfection is for suckers,” I say to no-one in particular. Except myself. Because I definitely need reminding every now and then.