Thanksgiving Reasons

There is always a reason for the things we do. Of late, I've been thinking and writing about food even while part of my brain contemplates globalisation.

The first wave of globalisation was great, but landbound. Alexander's host swept out of Macedonia. By the time he died in Asia scant years later, the Hellenic wave of philosophy and understanding had reached India. The great empires of the time were Hellenized: the Egypt of the Ptolemies, Persia, the Rome that was growing from a seed. India and China felt it, but their masses of culture were more resistant.

In the light of that wave, the Pax Romana was a secondary wave. It built on the remains of the Greeks, for Alexander was heir to Aristotle, and Aristotle to Plato, and Plato to Socrates. And Rome was Plato's Republic writ large, but different from what the old sage would have thought. The Imperium filled a lot of Europe, and all the Mediterranean, with the language and the voice which we hear today echoed in Catalan, French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish.

Later, the third wave built on these two waves with the ascent from Elizabeth I of England to Victoria, Empress of India and, by the grace of God, Queen of England. It is this third wave, a tide of British vigor crossed with Graeco-Roman pollen, which spawned the bastard sons and daughters of Empire. To this day, the Venetian lion of the sea is echoed in the merlion of Singapore and the trident of Barbados.

And behind, and with, and through all these waves, we learned to eat many things. Bananas, chocolate, wheat, tea, prawns, coffee, cinnamon, rice; we learned to eat the flesh of all things that crawl and walk and swim and fly, the fruit of all things that sprout and bloom and spread. Not all of us eat all things. Many of us eat many things.

Today, I was at the eating house called Gastronomia da Paolo when it hit me. I eat the sun-dried tomatoes and the durum pasta of ancient Rome. I eat the chocolate and the fruit of countries distant, the scones of a British summer, the stuffed vine leaves of Greece. I am the son of the waves of change and empire crashing on the shores of the once-immutable and mysterious East.

All of these things are miracles of time and space and energy. All of these things are to be appreciated and enjoyed. I give thanks for every single bastard child of these phenomena of greed and gain, of adventure and daring, of life and empire. For we are all the world, and all the world is us.

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From last lines of Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

From the last lines of Prometheus Unbound by Percy Shelley:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!