36 Chambers of Death

So one of my favorite albums at one time was Wu-Tang's Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers). The influence for the album title comes from this movie.

Later, thinking me melancholy, my friend Matt would tell me I was deep into the 36th chamber of death.

I became better acquainted with the 36 chambers recently. At work, we have a machine that cuts a blob of dough into 36 portioned, rounded dinner rolls. I routinely cut and rounded these rolls on this machine for months without thinking about the significance of the 36. Then recently, I took over my co-worker's task of cleaning the machine at the end of the day. This involves flipping the top up and then pulling a lever so as to expose the interior of the 36 roll chambers. Water cannot be used to clean this machine as it is so old the metal will rust. Instead, I take a small, sharp paint scraper and scrape the bits of dried crusted dough off. This is a painstaking and time-intensive task. To remain zen while scraping dried dough, metal on metal, has taught me the meaning and value of the 36 chambers.