Pomegranates

 My younger self was quite ambivalent about pomegranates. My dad (ever industrious) would break into the pomegranate and methodically rip out the seeds, as quickly as possible, depositing them into a bowl for my family to consume, which I did half heartedly. The little seeds were unpleasant and stuck in my teeth, and the juicy flesh was pretty to look at and tasty enough, but nothing special really.

It turns out the problem wasn’t the pomegranate. The problem was me. I had been doing it wrong. 

As an adult, I had the opportunity to buy and consume my own pomegranates. Dear reader, I will tell you what I learned about the perfect (and as far as I am concerned the only) way to eat pomegranate.

Rather than sawing it in half, as my dad had done for us, use a paring knife to make a shallow cut into the fruit, just through the pith but no further, all the way around, and then into sections.

Then, using your fingers, penetrate through the loamy white flesh with your fingers, extracting a segment of pomegranate studded with scarlet arils dripping juice, and exposing the cavernous inside, with fruit glistening like so many garnets in a pithy cave. Take a moment to appreciate the beauty. Glorious. 

Reader, when you attempt this yourself be sure to do it over a large plate or a cutting board. The mess is important here. Give yourself permission to make one.

Continue to use your fingers to extract sections of the fruit, roughly if necessary. Delicately tease the pith away from the arils with the tips of your fingers, lick the scarlet juice that accumulates on your fingertips and suck the fruit away from the pith in large luscious gulps. 

Juice and pith and peel and arils are everywhere, but it is the pure unadulterated pleasure that is key now, the rhythmic prying and sucking and hits of sugar, and penetrating still deeper into fruit yet unclaimed, the rapture, oh the rapture…

Phew. It’s intense. 

While I was staying with my parents I mentioned this newfound love of pomegranate and my mother bought me a package of pre-peeled pomegranate, to my disappointment. As you may have guessed, the pleasure in eating pomegranate comes from the chase, the challenge, the conquest of penetrating to the interior and extracting the fruit myself. Take that away, and all you have are seedy arils and the lackluster pomegranate experience of my childhood. 

At some point in my pomegranate guzzling, it occurred to me (who could’ve seen it coming) that this must be what men feel like when they — ahem — “take” — a woman’s virginity.

I am referring here to, of course, The Myth of Female Virginity, this idea that women have interior treasures that can be penetrated and taken by men, the myth of the youthful and blushing bride, dressed in white, endless comparisons to fruit and flowers and whatnot expounded in length in Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. 

Here, with only a pomegranate, I am able to at least partially recreate the myth. Of course, with none of the institutional power or historical relevance that The Myth of the Virgin has enjoyed, but as I am sating myself with my pom conquest, I get it. I can feel it too.

And for perhaps the first time in my (albeit extremely privileged life) I feel myself to be the Beauvoirian Subject in a sensual encounter, acting upon an Other (my pom) to transcend my emptiness and find at least for the moment a fickle reason for existing. 

Fighting words for the existentialist. Beauvoir’s entire argument in The Second Sex hinges upon the idea that existents in general are empty— without an inherent being or meaning, and defined only by their choices. Men, like all humans, must define themselves by making authentic choices for themselves, but have instead historically opted for the easier route of striving towards meaning by subjugating, controlling, conquering, an Other— a passive person who, like a child, allows all her decisions to be made for her. As she meticulously argues, women are historically and socially primed for that role. In other words, our cultural and social institutions have led us to internalize that it’s a man’s world, and we’re just existing in it for their benefit. 

She argues that the Myth of Virginity (and other myths) are essential to keeping women in the place of Other, as existential fodder for the male gaze. By ingraining in us that women have something that can be taken, or corrupted, some idea of innocence or purity, society prevents women from being adventurous enough, bold enough to assert her own independence and live authentically as a human, not an idea or an Other. “The myth of Woman substitutes for an authentic relationship with an autonomous existent the immobile contemplation of a mirage.” She says.

The whole first half of her book is devoted to understanding such myths, picking them apart and where they may have come from. Because it’s only by understanding them that we can reject them and claim our place as existents with just as much a right to meaning as men.

I have been lucky to live a few years beyond Beauvoir, in a world where a woman not being able to vote is scandalous and where sex happens between two consenting adults who should have equal amounts of agency, not a dude deflowering some fruit or flower metaphor. 

In existential terms, I have very rarely felt being the Other as viscerally or as ardently as Beauvoir must have felt, or countless women during and before her time. But I have also never felt the privilege of being a Subject dominating an Other. 

Until I ate pomegranate.

Maybe that’s why Persephone did it and doomed us to winter (or maybe that’s why the men who invented the myth made such a big deal out of a woman eating three measly pomegranate seeds). If we’re feeling generous, eating a pomegranate in its own small way is an expression of sexual and feminine freedom. 

As a final caveat, you don't have to be a woman to enjoy the sensation of objectifying something. Anyone who has also never experienced the dominant end of the Myth of Virginity who would also find a pomegranate experience enlightening. For that matter, it doesn't even have to be a pomegranate. Grapefruit, peaches (though overdone), even concord grapes might do the trick for you. The trick is to feel entitled to take the literal fruits of your labor with whatever you do eat.

So, in conclusion: buy a pomegranate. Eat it the right way. Learn about and engage in a myth that has subjugated women for eons, without repercussions (because this is an actual object). And have fun :) 

Help Wanted: An Epistemological Concern

I need help. Problems in philosophy are as old as time, and what I'm doing I'm sure is just putting my own personal spin on a conundrum that many, many people have encountered. Nevertheless, I'd love some guidance about how to approach the issue.

I lived in Korea for seven years on Yongsan Garrison, an American military base in the middle of the capital city, Seoul. I graduated from both Seoul American Middle School and Seoul American High School, living, studying, and growing up between the sluggish base and the bright Korean metropolis.

Prior to moving to Seoul, we moved from place to place, spending no longer than 2-3 years in each location. Once we left, we never returned. All I have left of each location I grew up are the memories of those places (and of course, the corroborating accounts of the people in my family who moved with me).

Once I graduated high school, I left Seoul to go to college in New York. As of today, I have spent about three years away from the place where I spent my formative years. With one exception (a one-week reunion with my best friend from high school) I have not had any direct contact with anyone I knew in Korea who isn’t my direct family. The only remnants I’ve seen of my life in Korea are the occasional social media updates that old teachers and students post.

You might be getting some idea about where this story is going. It’s going to take a dramatic turn. The US Military has recently declared that Yongsan Garrison will close in 2019. The place where I did the most growing up is going to be wiped off the face of the map and replaced with a park. Politically speaking, this move was a long time coming. Americans really don’t need to be occupying the most valuable real estate in Korea with a bunch of ugly, outdated military buildings from the 50s.

This is pretty nostalgia-worthy on its own, but more importantly, it got me thinking about the criteria we use to verify our own memories. Let’s say that I have coffee with my friend Matt at Coffee Shop X at time T. A day later, I want to verify that the thing that I remember, this memory I have of drinking coffee with Matt, actually occurred. An obvious thing to do would be to find Matt and see if he has the same memory, and if it accords with mine, then conclude that this is enough evidence for my memory to have happened.

But if the issue at hand is that I want to have some criteria of verifying my own (human) memory, then it doesn’t really make any sense to use someone else’s own (human) memories as evidence for the veracity of mine. The thing that bothers me about this solution is that I’m looking for an independent criterion to verify my own memory, one that doesn’t depend on the memories of others.

So the next obvious thing for me to do is to return to Coffee Shop X. By doing this, I can examine the way the coffee shop looks and smells, its location, the hardness of the tables, even the taste of the coffee I ordered, and if this sensory evidence accords with my memory of coffee yesterday with Matt, then it seems that I have some way of independently establishing some kind of evidence for the veracity of my memories.

It seems to me that at least superficially, something important is to be gained by going back to the location that we remember memories taking place. Which is where my own conundrum comes in:

Going back to the location of my memories of my middle and high schools is unavailable to me. All physical evidence of the base will be gone (well, not entirely: as I understand a museum of the history of the base will be built in the park, but for the purposes of this discussion that doesn’t seem too relevant). If going back to the location of a memory is a good way to independently verify memories, then how can I verify the memories I have of living on base and going to school there for seven years?

To make this more concrete, I want to give a toy example. Let’s say in high school, I hid a pencil somewhere in my school (perhaps in a secret compartment in one of the walls) and didn’t tell anyone about it. Nobody but me knows, and there is not the slightest chance that anyone but me will find the pencil. Once the school is gone, the physical evidence of my hiding the pencil is also gone. The surest way for me to independently find evidence for the truth of my memory (i.e., finding the pencil) is also gone. Is the memory of my hiding the pencil any less legitimate than my memory of making my bed in the morning, which can be easily verified by walking into my room and seeing my bed made?

Whether going back to the location of a memory and examining the physical evidence to verify a memory is enough evidence to judge the veracity of a memory is a good question. In discussions with friends and professors, it seems like a common line of reasoning is that all human experiences that are not occurring at this very moment are memories. Since everything is in flux, and no memory’s setting is exactly the same when we revisit it, no memories can be trusted and so my dramatic case is no different from the ordinary case. Not being able to confirm our memories is just a fact we have to deal with.

But this objection doesn’t negate the central worry: it only provides a degree of graduation. Surely, when we recognize the setting of a memory, it means something. Even if we can’t accept the idea that we can completely verify a memory’s veracity, if the feeling of recognition exists, then being able to go back to the setting of a memory and gaining that bit of evidence provides more certainty than otherwise. So are my memories less legitimate than the memories of someone who can go back to their old school and find the pencil that they hid there?

So, to sum it up, here are the questions I have: what, if any, are good ways to independently verify that memories have occurred? If revisiting the setting of a memory is a good way to do this, then does it follow that my memories of high school are less legitimate than the average high school memory (because I have less of a setting to go back to than others)? Is there then a way for me to “reclaim” my memories? Is there something I’ve missed or haven’t considered thoroughly yet?

I’d love to hear your point of view or perhaps some written sources about this conundrum. It’s difficult to sift through the wealth of epistemological work without some guidance (and I’m sure this problem has been discussed at length many times). Thanks in advance!