Yesterday was a long one. We had hours of teacher meetings in the morning, a chili cook-off around noon, and then I spent the biggest part of the day getting plans ready, weeping in the corner, hanging up newly printed classroom signs, and three-hole-punching any paper careless enough to get caught. (Mostly kidding about the weeping bit.)

In the evening, Sarah and I sat in our basement listening to records and chatting. As we discussed (mostly nonsense), I told Sarah about this YouTuber I’d watched recently. “She’s Asian-American and…a chef, maybe? I don’t know. Anyway, what she does is get stoned and then cook Asian food.”

While I’m not a huge fan of glorifying drug use, it’s fun to watch because of the crude nature of the channel. Nothing seems well organized, and there are no steps in the cooking process that are overly complicated. “You get the feeling that you, too, could cook these dishes,” I told Sarah. “Spring rolls seem approachable now. Only I’d need a mortar and pestle to make that sauce.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “They’re so useful. You can make guacamole, too.”

“I love guacamole.”

It boggled my mind then that we had, seemingly, just talked ourselves into getting a mortar & pestle. As far as purchases go, that may be the most frivolous, white, middle-class kitchen gadget you could possibly get. Unless you’re a witch or an alchemist, nobody needs a mortar and pestle. But I’m pretty sure we’ll wind up getting one.

One person who would never, ever decide to purchase a mortar and pestle is Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain (#628 on the list). I took a break from Ten Years in the Tub to listen to a reading of Thomas Merton’s “CLASSIC CLASSIC CLASSIC” autobiography.

It’s the story of how a young man grew up in the years between WWI and WWII, traveled around the world, went to school, and eventually became a Trappist Monk in Kentucky.

If you don’t know about Trappist Monks, they’re about as close to what I imagine medieval ascetic monks must have been like. They wear simple robes, shave a strange little crown of hair around their domes, sleep 5 hours a night in rooms with no heating or cooling, pray for hours on end, and take breaks by doing backbreaking labor on their communal farms.

Then they chant in Latin while walking through town square, repeatedly banging their faces with wooden planks. And certainly never cooking anything that requires a mortar & pestle.

Merton is a fine writer, but I find that anybody who tries to write a book about “grace,” they move down a dark and winding path that eventually leads them to right up their own asses. Seriously, nobody can explain what grace is, yet religious authors keep trying.

I mean. This:

“It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God who chooses to awaken us. We cannot attain to Him by our own unaided strength, for without His grace, the will to love Him is absent. He loved us first. And the greatness of His love lies in the fact that He loved us when we were unworthy to be loved.”

I challenge anyone to explain to me, in practical language, what that quote actually means.

Anywho, despite the Mandarin (read: “flowery”) language, The Seven Storey Mountain was the audiobook equivalent of the feeling you get sitting on a garden bench, drinking a cup of Jasmine tea, and wondering if your life would be better if you were a squirrel or small bird. I’m envious of people who have the will to become ascetics, to throw themselves into such routines, mostly because I don’t think I’d ever be strong enough to do it.

But I really like stor(e)ys about people who are. Merton’s story fits the bill, but most of it is unremarkable. I mean, at one point, he begrudgingly takes a job as a college professor. This was before going full-on Monk, and the job seems greatly bemoaned. “Woe is me! Fate has damned me to a life of teaching rich kids about 18th century literature! However will I cope?”

Not exactly “high stakes.”

Still, it’s peaceful and ponderous and I enjoyed it. Now I’ll get back to Ten Years in the Tub, which is thus far serving as a painful reminder of all the books that I’ll never have time to read.