You Can't Use Too Much Garlic

In college I was deeply enamored with my on-again, off-again girlfriend Jane. I was hopelessly smitten and very much wanted it to stay on-again. I mention this only to make clear how motivated I was to please her, and how seriously I took the task of understanding her.

With that in mind, picture my visit one fine fall day. I arrived at her house with a large venison roast I had offered to prepare, and a bottle of Pinot Noir. I knocked. ‘It’s open,’ she called.

When I entered she looked up from her book and flashed me a smile. She had fathomless blue eyes I would have been happy to drown in. ‘Hey babe.’

Babe. I filed that away as a good omen.

I got to work in the kitchen, channeling my best Galloping Gourmet, chopping, dicing, and seasoning the roast. Jane reclined with a book just outside the kitchen and just out of sight. The rooms were adjacent, but separated by open space.

At some point I called out to her, “How much garlic should I use?”

I couldn’t see her, but I suspect she responded without looking up from her book. “Well, you can’t use too much garlic.”

I heard this as confirmation of something I already believed, or at least wanted to believe—that Jane and I shared the same generous feelings about garlic. I mistook that neat fit for agreement. So I behaved accordingly. I minced. I chopped. I seasoned with the calm assurance of someone who believed he understood both garlic and the situation. The kitchen smelled decisive. The roast stood proudly on its platter, evidence of my devotion. I delivered my offerings to the table not without hope.

Whatever approval I was expecting did not arrive. Jane took a bite and winced. She looked down at her plate, picked a small piece of garlic off her slice and gave it an accusatory look. Her displeasure made no effort to hide itself.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Why did you use so much garlic?”

This was puzzling. I had not misunderstood the words; I had applied them.

It hit me then and there. ‘You can’t use too much garlic’ can mean two opposite things. It can mean there is no meaningful upper bound — which is what I heard. Or it can mean there is a boundary, and exceeding it is something you ought not — indeed cannot — do. The sentence itself, even the tone in which it was spoken, tells you nothing about which meaning was intended. Only the consequences do.

“You can’t use too much garlic” can mean two opposite things. It can mean there is no meaningful upper bound, or it can mean there is a boundary, and exceeding it is something you ought not—indeed cannot—do. The sentence itself does not say where that boundary lies, only that crossing it has consequences.

What failed was my assumption that words contain meaning. They don’t. Or at least that’s my little manifesto. Yeah, yeah—I’ve slogged through some Wittgenstein. I know that won’t go unchallenged. You’ll wave the dictionary at me and cry Definitions! But I’m sticking to my guns. Meaning isn’t a little object contained in words. It’s not cargo within a sentence waiting to be unloaded like so many blocks of granite.

The meaning Jane sought to impart was a field. On my side, my own coil had to vibrate with it. But my habits and preferences act as a filter. Some frequencies are amplified, others attenuated, and some have their polarities reversed. And so Jane and I ended up grazing in different fields.

Meaning had to be induced across the void between us, and that requires a certain fidelity. That fine fall day the fidelity faltered and the induction failed. My offerings were lost in translation. The roast did not help my cause. I was not invited to stay the night.