Be Core-ful What You Wish For

a (not so) hardcore meditation

Hi there,

If you aren’t constantly reminding yourself to use your core, have you even lived?

Let me back up a little bit here. I sometimes become fixated on a word, fascinated that its contours and sounds mean anything to me at all. I remember as a kid thinking long and hard about the word “Wednesday”, for instance, and why we know it’s pronounced the way it is. Or I would consider the “caboose”—and how to my young (and now older) mind, it was such a strange sounding word to call the cute little car at the tail end of a boxcar train. (I deemed it cute from the likes of Disney’s Dumbo, illustrations in children’s books, and my model train set).

“Core” is one of the words that’s popped up most recently in my mind—perhaps while I was lying awake in bed, or commuting on the train (on the subway, not a caboose)—I can’t exactly remember when.

The first thing “core” conjures up for me is an apple, whose core I imagine sitting on the kitchen counter, gnawed all the way into that hour glass shape—stem and seeds visible—before it gets discarded (or composted, if you are following NYC Department of Sanitation rules these days!).

Photo by Yaya The Creator on Unsplash

A recipe might require you to core a bell pepper or a tomato: a meal prep technique resulting in those items becoming devoid of their inner tough center. Coring something means the removal of the unessential, the inedible—in preparation for the next cooking step.

Maybe you too have learned the hard way to be extra careful (core-ful?) if you ever find yourself in need of coring a jalapeño or serrano pepper. Unless you want to feel a tingling sensation in your fingers for many hours to come—and a similar unwelcome tingle anywhere else you might have touched with those coring fingers—you probably want to wear some gloves for this activity.

Photo by Mockup Graphics on Unsplash

Coring a tomato is easier on the hands and eyes, but comes with some controversy. Coring a pepper means getting rid not just of its bitter center but its seeds as well, but try removing the seeds of a tomato along with its white stem, and that’s a lot of yummy tomato going to waste. Perhaps you, like my friend Marandi, grew up in California, or somewhere else in the world for which reason New York produce rarely cuts it…so if it’s a good tomato, coring a tomato is irrelevant: Eat the tomato whole, or bust.

This tomato thought brings us to how “core,” other than meaning something unpalatable and slated for removal, has a meaning that’s also quite the opposite: the essence, something centrally important to the situation at hand, whether it’s the core of the problem, or the core of a mission. You have your core curriculum, your core recipes, the core ingredients in your pantry. The core of the issue, then, is that “core” means two contradictory things.

Ben of Ben & Jerry’s fame has consistently shown his solid core values and commitment to social justice: core values being proof of a person’s integrity. And as a matter of fact, Ben & Jerry’s has also had a series of “cores” themed ice cream. For the uninitiated, a “cores” freezer pint contains two flavors of ice cream, side by side, with a molten concentrated substance, such as brownie batter or salted caramel, running through the middle. This core is as key to the pint of ice cream as the inner and outer cores are to the basis of our planet Earth.

Ice cream is an institution I can always get behind, while many others are rotten….to the core.

Some of you reading this—whether you know it or not—make up my core readership—simply by getting this far in the newsletter. Far from being the disagreeable center to be extracted, this core is the base around which I hope to build.

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And finally, returning to this newsletter’s very serious opener: there is the “core” muscle group—as essential to our basic physical function as any other.

I am “engage your core constantly or else pull a back muscle when you sneeze” years old, and maybe you are too. By reminding myself to use my core for almost everything I do, I daresay I’ve finally begun to live.

So— if you haven’t already, engage your abdominals, flatten your back, and un-shrug those shoulders—because this (hard)core tribute isn’t over just yet.

You might work your core in the famed plank position, but hold that plank— because I engage my core as I pour myself a glass of water. I use it to wave enthusiastically to a friend across the street as we convene for dinner.

Why stir a pot if you don’t do so with your core? I also use my core to perfectly lift a heavy plate that’s slightly above my eye level out of the cabinet and onto a table, a feat simply unattainable were I to use mere luck or my fingers’ dexterity alone. I muster my troops—namely my voice and my core—to say “dinner’s ready” to my husband Gabe, even if he’s right next to me, and there’s no reason to explain the obvious.

I tighten my core each time I add a restaurant to my Google Maps “eats” list with a quick stick and flick of my index finger on my phone screen. My core automatically tightens whenever there’s a way-too-loud party next to me at a café. In other words, I strengthen my core with all the anxiety I hold in that part of my body.

And when I write these newsletters at Four & Twenty Blackbirds, I build my upper body strength as I slice my fork into the crust of the pie piece before me, such as the seasonal strawberry streusel. Engaging my core and channeling force through my hand and into the fork in such a way, so as to cut through the hard crust with one deft motion, without creating a racket in an often serious coffee shop: it’s nothing short of a triumph. And also: It’s physics! as my (biochemist) dad, would probably say in this instance. I am proud to share that by engaging my core, I also regularly engage with the hard sciences. And you probably do, too!

strawberry streusel pie (Four & Twenty Blackbirds)

Have a great week, and until soon,

Insia