Penguins Feed their Young

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE...after you spit it out.

The previous post raises the question that at heart I have been trying to dance around. That is, the context in which sleep-eating becomes more than a popular cultural phenomenon sweeping the nation and instead a subject for silent contemplation and the ever-further furrowing of my permanently furrowed brows.

Take, for example, a young JJ Rousseau rolling around in Mme. de Warrens’ bed like a dog scenting himself in the carcass of a jellyfish on the beach. The irony of Rousseau’s most amusing confession of the Confessions is that at the height of his effervescence his lust demands mediation—-even at its climax the participle orgasm is nothing more than the joy of watching a woman read a letter. The point is that as the romance loses its intensity--as Rousseau ages--the propensity towards actual physical contact increases. In other words, our sex drives work in counter to our capacity to love violently. Happy Anniversary.

Jean-Jacques also gives us the memorable episode in which his ebullient adolescent passions grow closest to the realm of the sensual; and unsurprisingly (for this blog, anyway) the moment is centered on a piece of food:

Sometimes even in her presence I committed extravagances that only the most violent love seemed capable of inspiring. One day at table, just as she had put a piece of food into her mouth, I exclaimed that I saw a hair on it. She put the morsel back on her plate; I eagerly seized and swallowed it. (Rousseau, Confessions)

The opportunity for interpretation is so large here I almost get dizzy trying to start. Of course, most want to wink and mention "Mamon," Mme. de Warrens’ maternal nickname. Most of these people are into role-playing anyway and should not be taken seriously. What I find most interesting is the transmutation of the desire for survival (food) into the desire for intimacy (sex): food and sex are often comingled but infrequently without the inane winking of the role-players mentioned above.


This man wiped his ass with silk laced doilies.

And since Proust was already brought up and my coexistent desires to prove I have read him and weigh in cannot be contained, I find it prudent to mention the transmutation of desire is the same in Swann’s Way as it is in Confessions; yet the addition of the desire for sleep rewrites the whole equation. We are taken from the precocious desire for intimacy that causes insomnia in a child whose imagination cannot withstand the knowledge that his mother is among strangers to the practically blasphemous transubstantiation of cookie (note the inherent difference between pastry and wafer) to pre-pubescent girlfriend.

All of these examples are pointing to T.S. Elliot’s notions of the “objective correlative,” or the object that is more than its physical presence. The half-chewed morsel, the Madeline, the shiny packet of ninja turtle gummies—-all these present evidence both of the mutated role of food in our consciousness and the conscious acceptance of symbolism. Storytelling is affirmed in our very ability to express ourselves better through metaphoric memories than in our own invented languages.*

But here’s my final question: what if our nameless narrator had thought about his infantile infatuation, actually fallen asleep, and then sought out the madelines in his unconsciousness? What if li’l Jean-Jacques had grasped the morsel from Mamon’s mouth, hid it under a stack of magazines, fell asleep, and then devoured it in his dreaming state? Would that not constitute an affirmation that symbolism is not just a necessity in the society of man, but a natural state contained by the structure of human society?

Enough with the erudition for now. I’m coming back big time with a post on that Ambien article I put up a while back.

*Vico would argue that language comes into place only once storytelling is established, that in fact the natural urge towards storytelling (myth) makes language inevitable rather than vice-versa.