Yesterday I wrote about the the immobile (nieruchomość) and the moveable (meble); today I want to talk about fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and me. I kick off with the quote from T.S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock that often passes through my head as I spoon the ground coffee into the espresso machine for another morning's cup of Lavazza.
It's not just spoons of coffee in which I tend to measure out my life. Sheets of toilet tissue (unbleached, uncoloured, unperfumed), bananas, teabags, handfuls of shampoo - consumption is what we do. The recycle bins - yellow and blue - filling up slowly, space optimised within, waiting in the garage until the day, once a month, when the local binfluencers start putting theirs out into the street.
Bread and cheese, fruit and veg, these are bought and consumed fresh within a couple of days, without triggering any existential thoughts. But a box of 100 teabags lasts long enough for its steady depletion to be noticed, like a calendar ticking down the days - as does the refill tin of ground coffee, getting emptier day by day until it needs to be filled up every two weeks or so.
I watch the toilet roll slowly shrinking, unwinding down to the last sheet, after which a waddle downstairs to the store cupboard is required. How many more days will this roll last? Another one for me is bars of soap - Biały Jeleń brand oatmeal soap; as one bar gets smaller, I open a new bar and press the old one into to it, so over time there's a pyramid with the newest, biggest bar at the bottom and a tiny remaining slither of the oldest bar at the apex, and two or three intermediately sized ones in between. And then there are magnesium tablets, 500mg. One a night to stave off cramp and promote vivid and memorable dreams. I watch the blisters empty, card after card - and then another stroll to the pharmacy is called for.
We convert food into energy - physical energy and thought. We are living embodiments of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, flying forward on Time's Arrow from past to future, measurable by entropy.
Day by day, my exercise and diet spreadsheet swells; another row of digits - portions of fresh fruit and vegetables, units of alcohol, paces walked, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, sets of weights, plank time, squats and back extensions; conversion of food into muscular effort.
We convert money into food into energy - we convert our labour into money which we then convert into food and then into the energy and thought that is the labour that we sell to convert into money. And so it goes, in monthly cycles, into retirement - by which time we hope to be able to count on having saved enough money to be able to remove labour from the equation.
My parents - mindful of their wartime experiences - hated wasting food. My father, as an engineer, was contemptuous of waste. He was ever a conscious shopper, spending money wisely and thinking through the consequences of his purchases. A side effect was a gradual accretion of things he could not bear to throw away because they might one day come in handy (his grandsons have yet to get around to clearing out his garage!)
Saving the planet means consuming less. Conscious consumption - thinking through your purchases, big and small. Cutting waste, eking out those consumables to make them last as long as possible. Fewer coffee spoons, a smaller coffee cup, same strength but in smaller volumes. Thinner slices of bread (12mm rather than 13mm on the Lidl in-store bakery slicing machine). One more slice per loaf.
Every little counts. Until the last syllable of recorded time. Until the last cell of the spreadsheet has been filled in.
This time six years ago:
Make do and mend
This time eight years ago:
The A-Z of my online world
This time ten years ago:
Life and Death in the Shadow of the El - A short story, part I
This time 11 years ago:
Transwersalka in midwinter
This time 12 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 (completed autumn 2013)
This time 14 years ago:
Crazy customised Skoda
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