A Philosophical Feast

I have often thought that we don’t really know ourselves unless we know our ancestors. And named for Sir Kenelme Digby as I am; having pored over his curious philosophical writings as I do; and staring at his comely visage as painted by Van Dyke as I am wont, I still have felt as though a chasm separates us. With these thoughts weighing upon my mind (one at times tending toward the lugubrious, as you know), I visited my local library to see what further I might learn of my illustrious namesake. Much to my joy, I learned that a collection of medicinal and culinary recipes amassed by Sir Kenelme was published a few years after his untimely death in 1665. Felicitously, my library also just happened to have a first edition of this romantically titled "The closet of the eminently learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened"—a quarto-sized, leather bound treasure trove whose only fault was the unflattering likeness of Sir Kenelme gracing the frontispiece.

Irresistibly drawn to red herrings as I am, I was delighted to see that "The Closet" held a recipe for the preparation of that elusive delicacy. Simple, elegant and succulent (so I have been assured), the recipe reads as follows:

“After they [the herrings] are opened and prepared for the gridiron, soak them (both sides) in Oyl and Vinegar beaten together in pretty quantity in a little Dish. Then broil them, till they are hot through, but not dry. Then soak them again in the same Liquor as before, and broil them a second time. You may soak and broil them again a third; but twice may serve. They will be then very short and crisp and savoury. Lay them upon your sallet [salad], and you may also put upon it, the Oyl and Vinegar, you soaked the Herrings in.”

What better way, I began to think as I read, could there be to understand the gustatory landscape and indeed inner lifeworld of Sir Kenelme than to replicate a recipe he had tasted, recorded and perhaps even made himself (or at least had made)? The more I thought about this, the more excited I became. But immediately a problem arose: where was I to get herring? As you know, I normally don’t eat fish—having been born on a boat, it feels as though I am eating my brethren—and so I had no idea where to procure such dainties. Being in the library, I just made my way over to the check-out counter and asked the librarian. “I need to get a fish for philosophical purposes,” said I. “Might you recommend a fish shop in the area?” This threw the librarian into paroxysms of confusion, as she thought I was saying “fiche” as in microfiche. Then, once I explained that no, I was in fact trying to buy a herring, she determined that I was insane and would no longer speak to me.

Undeterred by this cool reception, I put practicalities out of my mind and sauntered off to another library, spending the afternoon learning some of the finer points of herring anatomy. Having resolved to try my luck with the recipe, I felt I could only do justice to Sir Kenelme’s tastes by acquiring knowledge that would allow me to readily discern a good herring from a bad one and to be able to identify its major external features. Well, as ever, I was readily drawn into a dazzling world of esoteric information: if you need to know anything about the species Clupea harengus; the locomotive advantages of a forked caudal fin; or how to discern where in the open sea a school of herring has just passed, ask Old Ken!

By the time I got back to my neighborhood, the specialist butcher had closed. Nonetheless, I found two attractive specimens of Clupea harengus at my local grocery store. While the fishmonger there was kind enough to gut the herring, I had him leave the heads on as I wanted to compare the measurements of my “catch” with those standards I had been reading all afternoon. The fish you see above measured 10 1/2 inches (27 cm) from tip to tail. Slim, coated with gorgeous, iridescent scales that seemed to be engraved into its body like low-relief carvings on silver plate, my herring was quite an attractive creature.



Therefore, it was some consternation that I began the unsavory process of making this attractive couple into “very short and crisp and savoury” delicacies. After I had made my measurements, I removed the heads and cut firmly down through the existing incision in the abdomen so as to expose the spinal cord. Although the sights and sounds made in the process were more disturning to me than you will ever know, the spinal cord and major rib structure could be extracted with relative ease, revealing a stunning magenta mandorla hidden within.




The next step required preparing a mixture of oil and vinegar mixture and marinating the herring therein.



Once sufficiently coated, I threw the filets on our “gridiron” and stuck them in the broiler for a few minutes. By the time I again suspended my little friends in the marinating “liquor,” they seemed nearly cooked.



What might have Sir Kenelme imagined as fit accompaniment to this broiled delight? Although I knew I was getting closer to understanding his ways, such nice speculations were still beyond my powers. So, roasted potatoes seemed as good a method as any. Thanks to the ingenuity of flatmate Pete, these were soon ready—and delicious!



Sensitive to my feelings for my piscatory brethern, friends Pete and Catherine agreed to help with the experimental testing of this philosophical meal. I ate the potatoes voraciously.



Proof! Herrings no more, utterances of delight; Sir Kenelme’s spirit alive in the room!

Who is she?

Now I know some of you fellers out there like to look at pretty women. Well, Old Ken likes to look ... but he also likes to be a bit sceerid while doin' it. For all those who are feelin' the same way, I want to introduce you to my sister, Marie.

Chocolate Flapjack Destroys Your Life!

What have you heard about British cooking? Well, let me tell you, it is probably all true. Therefore, when old Ken finds something in England worth eating it is not only cause for celebration, but something I want to share with you. Key words: “Chocolate Flapjack.”


This fine example was purchased in Oxford, but I have reason to believe they may well be available elsewhere in the UK. Like most good foods, the concept is simple: make a base akin to an oatmeal raisin cookie (sans raisins, unless you’re crazy like that). Thus, salt, butter and oatmeal. Then melt some sort of delicious chocolate—or, hell, anything you want (except that wretched raspberry marshmallow fluff you used to eat)—on top. Milk chocolate was involved in the specimen I sampled, which did tend to make it a little too sweet. Old Ken would prefer a darker chocolate, but as you will see from the accompanying photographs, such trifles were of little consequence to overall enjoyment. Once coated, the mixture is presumably refrigerated (I’m just guessing here) until the chocolate has solidified and is then cut into rectangular bars. I ate an entire block of this stuff yesterday, but will no doubt die of gout or dropsy if I touch another bite of this delicious sample. But, overall, butter, chocolate, oats: what else do you want?


That reminds me of a little story I want to tell you. Do you remember that time that we went to Octaves music? This was back when it was next to the Panda Gardens in that small, depressing shopping center off the main strip in West Lebanon, just south of Denny’s. Let me refresh your memory: we go in, you’re making small talk with the proprietor (whose name is Octavian ... hence Octaves! thanks, pal), and I was absentmindedly browsing. It was hard to ignore what the shopkeeper was watching—a late ‘70s AC/DC concert movie. As a devastating cymbal roll, guitar rail-slide, and blood-curdling Bon Scott screech were punctuating the exhilarating climax of some song like “The Jack” (perhaps not a reference to venereal disease as we had long though but a plea for a flapjack?) or “Problem Child,” the shop proprietor sidled over to me. Noting my expression of rapt admiration, he asked this hallowed question—one humans have been asking, in one way or another, since bipedal locomotion became an evolutionary necessity and the basic inquiry that keeps me awake at night. “Bon Scott,” he intoned reverentially, “what else do you want?” Well, if you get exhausted trying to answer this question, perhaps a chocolate flapjack will revive you.

Welcome to My World!

“Reflecto-porn” hardly seems the right subject for us to use as the basis for getting to know one another; it’s hardly a sanguine augury or an auspicious beginning. Nonetheless, being Ken Digby, I simply have to share what comes my way. And when I am (say) in the toilet stall and I happen to see a rather lurid (if not just plain scatological) drawing on the wall that takes creative advantage of the reflective properties of the toilet paper dispenser … well, when circumstances like those occur, I have to share it with you. Old Ken is not much of a believer in coincidences; now, I’m not necessarily saying that things happen for a reason. But I do know that whoever wrote “poo” in reverse so as to form the palindromic mystery word “poo oop” must have known that I was on my way.

As I may have shared with you, my all time favorite graffiti is one I found carved into the red enamel paint on the inside of a door in a men’s bathroom immediately adjoining the computer lab of a science library at a major research university in the American midwest. The message scrawled across the center of the door was this: “I hope you get poo on your fingertips.” I have often tried to analyze why I like this message so much and I have come up with three basic reasons.

First of all, the inscription explores the under-appreciated mixture of crudity and elegance. The writer could have said: “I hope you get shit on your hands, asshat.” But, no. Saying the word “poo” makes one’s lips purse, as if to form and then blow a kiss out with the exhalation required to produce the cooing sounds of the double “oo’s.” It sounds light, maybe even slightly otherworldly to me. Then, consider the attention to detail—the fastidiousness implied by the concern for the state of my fingertips. What a mixture!

Secondly, there is something about this message that puts the “curse” back in cursing. Some, I know, will say it never left. Well, I submit to your consideration that cursing seems to me to have lost its strength, its power to truly hex either the speaker or the one to whom the malevolent speech is directed. The same might also be said of swearing. That is, the so-called “curse” or “swear” words (a.k.a. four-letter words) seem to me to have drifted quite far from their connotations of actually putting a curse on someone or swearing an oath. As other readers of the Marquis de Sade will agree, the practice of swearing oaths is one sadly lost in our culture. Therefore, should brave souls attempt to resurrect these admirable practices to its former glory by scrawling curses across a stall in a computer lab men’s room, I feel I can do nothing other than salute their brave vision.

Lastly, I appreciate what I can only describe as something wonderfully human in this coarse curse. Or else, I would like to submit to your consideration that this inspired scribe has an unusually trenchant insight into the contradictions at the heart of human life. Not an animal that relieves its natural needs in some more or less secluded zone distant from its life world, the human has designed a system for expurgating wastes (call it the toilet, the bathroom, the WC, or the regional variant used in your locale) closely connected to its centers of work and entertainment. Squatting upon a porcelain throne as one must at times; unrolling and employing the proffered papers as one is expected to do; the human finds that this rather ignoble situation truly does create a scenario wherein he or she might plausibly sully one’s hand or hands with feces. In that volatile situation, staring ahead—perhaps thinking of a new organizational framework for the a writing project flashing on the screen in the computer lab less than forty feet away, or maybe contemplating why rubbish like “Everybody Loves Raymond” is always on the television—one finds this unpleasant scenario materialized in the inscribed curse. Would I be pushing too hard if I found a bit of the uncanny in this message, as if someone had read our unspoken thoughts and articulated them where we could not but see them? And yet, the curse is expressed as an aspiration: “I hope you get poo on your fingertips.” Confined to the smutty finitude of a computer laboratory bathroom, liberally mixing hope with fear and fear with hope, inescapable in its hold … yes, yes, dear friend. The writer of this message certainly knew a thing or two.

Who exactly is Ken Digby?

Named for my distant relative Sir Kenelm Digby, I have dedicated my sinner's life to the discovery and promotion of the principles of sympathetic magick that my illustrious namesake did so much to promote in the seventeenth century. Join us!