Even breakfast can be profound. I’ve written before how our obsession with breakfast cereal was based one man’s religious conviction. Now it’s widely accepted (whether true or not) that cereal is the healthiest way to start your day’s comestible experience. Quite apart from that, it’s quick and easy and clean-up’s a snap. The trick is finding healthy cereal. Long ago I settled on a species of Shredded Wheat—the kind that comes in little squares. Unadorned, it tastes fine and is more filling that a cereal puffed up with a lot of air. (Breakfast is early for some early risers, and I need something to last until lunch.) The Shredded Wheat model, however, benefits from extra flavor once in a while, so I try to blend in a different cereal (I experiment in the kitchen). Lately it’s been Cheerios (originally named CheeriOats).
I’ve noted before that one of the fundamental issues with the tech revolution comes down to basic geometry. The pixel is square but life on our planet is in the round. You notice it everywhere natural. Straight lines in nature are rare, but curves are everywhere. This has practical implications while trying to pour two cereals at once (I told you I experiment). The stolid, almost Episcopalian, Shredded Wheat does not pour easily. It takes a bit of poking and prodding to get any action at all. Cherrios, however, flow more naturally—more on the Pentecostal end of the scale. As I mix my cereals in my pre-dawn laboratory, I began to understand something about life. Square corners are superior for stacking and storing, but life wants to be round. Organic even begins with an o.
The roundness of nature is everywhere evident: eyes, raindrops, plant stems in cross-section, even the great circular wind storms that blow across the surface of the globe. Objects that are round roll and tumble easily. Rough edges get eroded away. The square is artificial, but useful. It means that the pixel will never replicate the flow and ease of the organic. Given the nature of pi, each circle is infinite, in one of nature’s greatest paradoxes. We are the denizens of a spherical world. Our planet shows us the way to exist upon it, in harmony with the other organic, circular beings. I linger before I pour the oat milk. A revelation before breakfast is never a bad thing. It’s only too bad that after this, the rest of the day becomes artificial.
