On Mirepoix And Break Lines
Talking about perfection is talking about aesthetics. Still, the eyeliner, that damned.
Eyeliner
Putting on the eyeliner has to do above all with precision.
How many times does it happen to you, when you’re in front of the mirror and on the clock, to stain the right eyelid and just to sketch the left one?
Well, the same happens when you have plenty of time.
It’s not one of those things that, if you do it wrong it might be trendy, nope, the messed up eyeliner is a disaster, no escape from it.
And then you try to disguise. The line is often slightly serrated and the eyes are not symmetrical, but, generally speaking, you distance yourself a bit from the mirror and everything is ok.
One of my flatmates boasted an almost obsessive meticulousness about putting make up on, The “eyeliner moment” was sacred.
She would begin by tracing a line from the beginning of the eye, which would follow the arch of the eyelash to make it longer around the end, then she would follow open eyed ensuring that the curvature would be visible. Only with the eye open you can verify its quality. At that point, she would fill it and improve the line over the eyelashes. But then, she would explain to me, it all depends on how much you want an heavy make up on, let’s say, if it’s morning or evening or if you use the mobile or fixed brush, or even the one with the bristles.
Now, even though she would make that typical facial expressions during the eye make up moment, the result was always perfect. From my side, with all that expressions, finished my make up session I would distance my face from the mirror , and I would hope in people’s shortsightedness.
It’s not a written rule, the one of perfection. The sunny side up egg has 80% probability not to come out perfect. But if we have to talk about food, let’s talk about mirepoix.
Mirepoix
Three things declare the unavoidable passage to adulthood: to open a bank account, defrost a fridge and prepare the mirepoix.
Some time ago, on Rivista Studio, Tommaso Melilli told us the moment in which he teaches to his French Flatmate how to cook the mirepoix.
That’s to say to explain to him that he has to cut the onions, a little garlic, some celery, carrots, everything cut in small pieces of the same dimensions( a part from the carrots who have to be imperceptibly smaller because they take longer to be cooked)
Then he would show how, with a little oil in thick bottom pot (if you do not have it, forget about it), you have to warm it all over very low fire, let it sizzle, but just a little, always move with a spoon and watch the pieces while they pale, move them, turn them around, and never forget any piece in the corners or edges. Then, the secret: when you feel like nothing will happen anymore, turn up the heat slightly, and start moving until nothing happens again. And no, you can not go to the bathroom while you do the mirepoix, you can not smoke a cigarette, you can not make a phone call.
This piece has opened a world to me, not the one of mirepoix, but in the end also that one.
The problem is, while I cook I go to the bathroom ( I take a shower, hair included) or I’m on the phone, even if I don’t call anybody, I check the phone anyway.
When I’m not in the bathroom or on the phone, I smoke or drink, usually simultaneously.
Everything while I cook. On low fire , usually, with the potatoes in the oven or pasta on the flame …
But the mirepoix, that remains an unexplored territory for the students without particular culinary passions that go to shop at lidl (when I was studying I would go to penny, to say the truth).
In a world in which either you are multitasking or you’re dead, that doing-mediocrely-everything clashes with the doing-one-thing-perfectly. And here the mirepoix beats us.
Be careful: of course it’s not sure that, if you do just the mirepoix it would turn out perfect. As Melilli writes there are too many details: the cut vegetables, all the same (a part from carrots) , the special pot, the low fire which becomes higher ecc.
At home I don’t have onions, usually they go bad leaving smells that impregnate clothes, the same for garlic. The celery probably never entered my door and I repletedly burn the carrots.
On crimes and punishments, alias on lines and widows. Sworn enemies of the editors , scourges of the printers that at pre Adobe times always implored the first time to be the good one. And yet, despite the attention given, they would in any case annoy the paratext with their presumption.
Widows and break lines
The fantastic art of the proofreader consists in , in addition to looking for typographical errors, creating the layout of the text. Specifically you should try (read: you must) to avoid (by the way: like the plague) that the page begins with a widow, that is to say, with the last line of a paragraph which began on a previous page. Or that it would end with the initial line of a paragraph, an orphan. To these types of cut off lines should be added the break line, a beginning paragraph formed by an incomplete word.
However, if the orphan is an easier mistake to avoid, widows and break lines nest in the depths of the text and pop out mocking at each revision. They are wrong because they bother. Try to pick up an edition of a book, you’ll understand how much carefully it was edited by the presence (or absence) of widows and break lines. Sometimes they are inevitable, of course, yet it is all in the imperceptibly stretch of the preceding paragraphs.
Regarding me, It annoys me a lot to find them, they are always better than misprints, but they always spoil something. Elements that have to do with the editorial care in the most traditional sense of the term, with those tedious mechanisms that lie behind an edition but that we never think about because they do not have to be seen. If you see them the job is only perfectible, but not perfect.
Sniffle (the Italian ‘tirare su col naso’)
Even to pronounce it appears twisted and unpleasant. Why no one ever invented a word to express this precise action? For example, as the Russian term pochemuchk, to indicate a person who asks too many questions, or the Norwegian noun utepils, that is, a beer drunk outdoors.
Tirare-su-col-naso is a concept only irritating to pronounce, and already for this adheres to the feeling of discomfort it causes. It would be too easy to say to the guy on the bus “excuse me, could you please not minglulu?”, instead you have to face the embarrassment of marking a particularly tricky phrase. An embarrassment that becomes taboo in some cases. In the sense, you always think twice before asking the guy in the bus stop TSCN, a bit for lack of confidence, a bit not to seem inappropriate.
Doing the math is clear that that person has a different idea about living in the world, and about standing on the bus. So you begin to give tit for tat and you try them all, saying: “Do you want a tissue?”, Veiled but sharp, if he responds “No, thank you” the irritation turns into fright. Doesn’t he really realize? But above all: is he a human being?
Still, you can always insist, officially declaring war. Once I was in the library, I stood up to offer a boy a handkerchief, who, not being Italian, he did not understand the language or the intent and declined the offer. “Blow your nose,” I replied sloppily. But how much can we be impertinent? How much can other people be?
What an effort, however,to feel the runny nose and sniffle, and then fell it dripping again and sniffle, drip and sniffle again. In those moments I would love to work for the advertising agency of Tempo handkerchiefs, to promote their refined usefulness, and their perfect answer to serial TSCNs.
[This essay was originally published in Italian — here on Medium — and was then translated by Raffaella Ronzi]
