What is it about Trader Joe's?

After my post yesterday, my friend Doug asked me to identify my favorite item at Trader Joe's.

Since Doug is also my doctor, I don't know if this is a diagnostic question -- and at my age you don't take any chances. So I'm thinking this one through.

It's amazing how many experiences in life are indescribable.

Come to think of it, what experience is "describable?" The minute you describe an experience with words, you've reduced that experience to a caricature of itself. If you're good with words, you may have "captured" -- what? -- maybe 10% of that experience? Well, let's be more generous: maybe 50% of the experience?

But this much is for sure: the "itself" of that experience is gone, poof, evaporated.

This is one of the great sadnesses of life.

This, by the way, is why we say "the book was better" after seeing the movie version of Gone with the Wind, or The Hunt for Red October, or Fill in the Blank. When have you ever heard someone say "the movie was better?" Never. Why? Because they would never have made the movie. They made the movie because the book was so good it was worth the hassle of making the stupid movie.

And the book is always better.

Why? Because the book gave you first-person experience in your mind's eye; it filled the invisible spaces of your heart. The movie, on the other hand, is the "report" of that experience. In this sense, the movie is the "words."

And the best words capture 50% of the experience.

So for me, Trader Joe's is an experience, not words -- and not a specific item. It may not be worth making a movie over, but they should at least think about opening up a store in Spokane. But they may be too edgy to do it, those turkeys.

OK -- it's the 3-buck wine.

Logos2Go

2 Corinthians 12.3 ... And I know such a man--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows--how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

Isaiah 29.11 And the vision of all this has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed. When men give it to one who can read, saying, “Read this,” he says, “I cannot, for it is sealed.”

1 Corinthians 2.9 "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him."