Roz Chast has a piece in this week's New Yorker about a man who kept track of everything he ever ate for dinner, on three-by-five index cards. No commentary, just the facts:
On Saturday, January 5th, he cooked Poached Bay Scallops in Marinara Sauce; Zucchini, Onion, Mushrooms, and Celery in White Wine Sauce; Rotelle Pasta. On Saturday, April 20th, he made Cooked Chicken in Tomato and Vegetable Sauce; Pasta. On Thursday, May 2nd, he didn’t make dinner.
Why did he do this?
The impulse to record everything, everything, everything, runs in my family too. My uncle Earl recounted his whole life, in minute detail, to my aunt Louise, who transcribed it carefully as part of our family history:
. . . The Yakima business agent called Pasco and they needed some carpenters on the Montgomery store being built on Nob Hill. I got a work permit and went to work the first work was building pallets with a man from Sunnyside by the name of Ben Franklin. We built several hundred of them and were able to pool rides with him and two others. Then another man came from Ellensburg. They partnered me with him. I have forgotten his name but he had experience cutting glass . . .
Believe me when I tell you that this is exactly the way Earl spoke. Read it aloud with a folksy Will Rogers twang and you'll get the idea. I can just imagine him still chuckling over the man named Ben Franklin. Ben Franklin!
As for me, I'm an inveterate diarist. I even catalogue my dreams. Here's the night of May 8, 2010:
President Obama was shipwrecked in the Caribbean with some other people, but we weren't sure which island; there was an island with a town called Obama Town, but we thought that was too obvious; I think he was on Dominica; we saw people there. Then an apartment in (I think) Tunis; a bunch of expatriate / sophisticated people I was trying to impress; the hosts' dog, a big dark bullmastiff, kept climbing up in my lap and chewing on the sleeve of my suede jacket; it was actually very cute.
Why do I bother?
Wittgenstein said: “The world is the totality of facts, not of things.” People die, things are lost and discarded and destroyed. But facts remain.
Facts are never not true.
After I'm gone, my body will go to dust, and my possessions will be spread to the four corners of the universe. But it will still be true that I was here once. And that I did this and that, and that I made an egg-and-vegetable pie for dinner last night, and that I had a dream about Barack Obama on May 8 of this year.
Roz Chast said this of the man who wrote down all of his dinners:
Maybe it was just his way of keeping track of the passage of time, or of organizing his experience, just as other people sort their clothes by color, or alphabetize their books, or write down their dreams. For whatever reason, he felt compelled to do it. I respect that.
I respect it too. More that that: I understand it.
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