The Bagel Shop Incident: A Baker’s Dozen Mob

A Philosophical Hole at the Center

Note: This is a follow up to a previous story (A Fowl Parable), which should ideally (but not necessarily) be read before this one.

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The Bagel Shop Incident

It is winter and the snow on the sidewalks is a noxious mix of gray and white, sullied as it is by the disturbances from the boots of an endless procession of indifferent passerbys. The colour of my thoughts match the dirty gray, and like the slush underfoot my mind churns as if beaten and tramped upon by this bleak and uncaring procession.

And then, its odour a beacon to my rumbling stomach, a bagel shop, warmth wafting from its open door, stood before me. In my pocket, my fingers closed upon a few meagre coins, perhaps sufficient to garner for myself a moment of warmth and an assuaging of my appetite. Boldly, I entered, with a look upon my visage to prevent anyone challenging my place there, basing their judgement, as they might, on the tattered and ragged cloth of my jacket, a relic of a previous ordeal. My name is Gregor Pavianovich, my self-achieved profession is philosophy. A profession that while giving me cerebral satisfaction, left me physically hungry. But now, a bagel shop lay before me.

I seated myself in a corner at the only free table, its dark wood surface sprinkled with fallen particles, the residual crumbs from a previous meal eaten by a careless diner. The smell of toasted bagel and cream cheese mingled here with the odour of the withered ambition I saw in the faces of the patrons - the circular perfection of the bagel contrasting with the empty chasm of nothingness at its center. I looked at the few sparse coins in my hand, and at the menu above the counter, and raising a finger to call the waiter, I ordered a sesame bagel, well toasted, well buttered, with cream cheese and chives. Perhaps the chives would lend some of their sharpness to my thoughts.

The waiter, taking my order, recommended instead an everything bagel, and stated that this establishment’s bagels were exactingly chosen, faultlessly cut, toasted precisely, buttered evenly with exact precision, as per an ideal universal maxim for bagel ingestion. His eyes flashed as if a baker’s tribunal of reason itself churned behind them.

Sensing a Kantian idealism in this shop’s love of exactness, I indicated mildly, that I placed my order not from a flavourless duty but from appetite; for the taste, the savoury quality of my taste buds is of consequence, is what is real. So, I reiterated, I would like a sesame bagel well toasted and well buttered; not exactly or precisely toasted or exactly or precisely buttered, whatever that meant in Kantian terms, with a good amount of cream cheese and chives.

The waiter went rigid and in a combative, escalating tone, stated; “Why chain yourself to the whims of your senses, instead of rising to the dignity of a higher baker’s law. Dear customer, your appetite, unchecked, may take you to an outrage against the ideal bagel balance, which this establishment represents.”

Indeed, this seemed to be a very committed Kantian bagel outlet. Impatiently, for my hunger was keen, I utilized Hume to undo his argument:

“Unicorns and perfect bagels exist only in the mind, only in the projection of your imagination, neither is to be truly found in nature.”

Stung by my Hume(ian) counterpoint, the waiter stammered, “Eve…even if there is no perfect bagel, surely reason commands you to act as if there is - if the form is unattainable, at…least strive for it.”

I saw the necessity to be firm with this audacious waiter. Perhaps there was a hint of ire in my voice. “Look, I have placed an order for MY perfect bagel, now I kindly beg of you to go to the kitchen and by virtue of your reason and your function as a server, strive to deliver MY order to me as I desire, and fulfill the perfection of THIS transaction!”

I knew then, that the philosophical contest was over, and that my hunger would soon be satiated, despite the stubbornness of the waiter.

The waiter looked at me a long while, nodded reluctantly, and then soon brought out my bagel, which I, after a moment of satisfied examination, lifted to eat, in spite of my fear of the hole of nothingness that loomed at its center.

But then, the owner and the cook emerged and ushered the waiter away. A long disdainful glare was followed by them turning towards the patrons of this busy establishment.

“Beyond these walls”, the owner exclaimed, “there is a vast land, and beyond that many planets spinning round our sun, and all of this contained within an unimaginably immense universe.” Those seated around this philosophical bagel shop, ironically a baker’s dozen of customers, listened rapt to the sonorous, ardent, and angry voice.

This familiar opening worried me exceedingly, for they were my own words from another place and time, cast back at me. Perhaps talk of the previous untoward incident had reached here to this town, and the owner was mocking me.

In anticipation of the increasingly likely necessity of a speedy exit, I placed my bagel in my pocket, and stood.

“And all of this boundless immeasurable vastness my friends,” he continued, echoing my own infamous oration, “rests on a single truth: that a person, man or woman, who disrespects the baked perfection that we strive tirelessly to achieve in this unique shop, must never, under any circumstances, be trusted near bagels. Better to trust a goose, than such anti-bagel perfidy.”

Oh, how their battling words weighed upon me, like fallen deflated dough defeated by faulty yeast.

Their animosity and denunciation fixated attention upon me and the piercingly hostile gaze of the crowd made me fearful of what might follow.

Working up the crowd, he repeated, “Better to trust a goose, than such perfidy.”

And here he pointed an accusatory finger, quivering at the end of his rigid arm, at me. A baker’s hat trembled angrily atop his frowning countenance.

Such a cacophony of derision and angry hoots erupted from all present, like the jangle and stridently hostile pandemonium from a gaggle of geese, till I could bear it no longer and fled that wretchedly misled temple of circular bread and its mob mentality. With their fingers grabbing at my jacket, tearing it as I fled, I escaped defeated and despondent into the freezing air.

Alas, it seems that a bagel shop, even one run by philosophers, offers neither an unbiased haven for human principles and choice, nor sufficient mental fodder to fill the gaping, yawning symbolic emptiness at a bagel’s center.

I rummaged inside my ragged pocket, where, fortuitously, my coins for payment remained unused, and drew forth my sesame bagel and, for a brief instant, its well toasted warmth and well buttered delectability appeased my humiliation. And as I took bites filled with enjoyment, the hole at the center disappeared as if it had never existed; and for a brief moment, all seemed well with the world.

Even so, I would save not a crumb for any geese.

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Addendum

And yet Gregor was later observed throwing crumbs on the snowy ground by a pond while geese surrounded him, gratefully gobbling up the crumbly remains of his bagel. Such are the twists and turns of destiny, where perceived enemies become friends, and the warmth of a bagel shop turns into a cold adversary.

Perhaps a gaggle of geese, approached properly, were safer and better companions than a gaggle of persnickety humans.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to ponder and decide.

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Note: If you’ve made it this far, the next episode in Gregor’s adventures is Wings of Destiny.

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