When everyone's focused on the conventional parts of war - doing infantry imbeds or chasing IEDs - you look at the thing that seems not that interesting to people, like the circumstances of logistics workers cooking the troops' food or cleaning their latrines.
Having been in a relationship since I was 18, I'm very domestic, but I don't enjoy cooking for myself. I don't mind cooking for other people... But I don't like cleaning or washing dishes, although I don't mind doing laundry.
The cool thing is that now that people have made this evolution where cooking is cool, people are doing it on weekends, they're doing their own challenges. It's back to cooking. And it's real cooking.
Cooking, I mean, food, cooking foods is just everything that I do from morning to night. It's how I choose to live my life: through cooking, people that are in food culture. And I love it.
Cooking is like doing yoga. There is a lot of satisfaction in cooking food for others.
I think the biggest thing is clean as you go. Wash all your knives, cutting boards, dishes, when you are done cooking, not look at a sink full of dishes after you are done. Cleaning as you go helps keep away cross contamination and you avoid having food borne bacteria.
The obsession with food filled my childhood - that's what happens when your parents are from a place or time where people really might starve. In America, my Jordanian father spent decades cooking professionally and pursuing his dream of a restaurant, and it was one of the central ways that he explained himself to his American children. Even though he's a passionate talker, he has a hell of a time with listening. His cooking gave him a way of having a conversation - which was a really interesting thing for a writer to look at.
I sometimes am discouraged by what seems to be a sort of conventional disparagement of humankind. I think often people feel that they are doing something moral when they are doing that, but that's not how I understand morality. I much prefer the "everyone is sacred, and everybody errs" model of reality.
Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point.
the more experience you have, the more interesting cooking is because you know what can happen to the food. In the beginning you can look at a chicken and it doesn't mean much, but once you have done some cooking you can see in that chicken a parade of things you will be able to create.
The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking.
The fun of cooking is the fun of communicating with people, even if it's just two people. As you're cooking, you're talking, you're having a glass of wine. It's wonderful; it's an experience. Once you get into cooking, it becomes something that you really look forward to doing.
I will never say, 'support the troops.' I don't believe in the validity of that statement. People say, 'I don't support the war, I support the troops' as though you can actually separate the two. You cannot; the troops are a part of the war, they have become the war and there is no valid dissection of the two. Other people shout with glaring eyes that we should give up our politics, give up our political affiliations in favor of 'just supporting the troops.' I wish everything were that easy.
Troops must be fed with ammunition and so on but also with information, with images, with visual intelligence. Without these elements troops cannot perform their duties properly. This is what is meant by the logistics of perception.
While air bases and logistics hubs remain important, the Cold War-style garrisoning of troops makes less military and fiscal sense than it did in the 1970s.
In this way, it seems to me that, since 1984, my book on the logistics of perception has been proved totally correct. For instance, almost every conflict since then has involved the logistics of perception, including the war in Lebanon, where Israel made use of cheap drones in order to track Yasser Arafat with the aim of killing him.
Whether you are cooking, cleaning house, or planting flowers, try to concentrate on the textures, the smells, colors, tastes, sounds, all Zen moments of focused joy.