Distill- to extract the essential meaning or most important aspects of
Ex: With every passing day spent in corporate America I find myself yearning more and more to ditch this monotonous lifestyle and to move out to a bucolic, pastoral countryside in the north of Spain and become a cheese monger. As I stare blankly at my computer screen, my head drifts off to a lightly wooded hilly region where I am standing at the back of a flock of sheep, whisking the stragglers up a hill, whilst Sergio stands in front, serving as our very hairy Spanish steering wheel. I call from the back of the flock, “Sergio! They’re beginning to slow. Their udders look tumid.”
Sergio turns and shouts something at me in Basque, the most mysterious and isolated of European dialects, distinctly different from any of the romance languages. Judging by his tone and the velocity at which the curly brown hairs are moving on his arms when he makes a sweeping movement like an ultimate Frisbee player throwing a backhand and points his fingers in the direction of an open grassy knoll about a hundred meters away, I am able to distill that he is essentially saying, “Hey you, American back there, I see you as no more than another sheep in the flock. Another peep out of you and I’ll sheer off the hair on your arse and glue it above your lip”, but also, “Wait until we get to that picturesque hill over there, then we’ll get to milking.”.
A Microsoft Teams notification wakes me from my daydream. I respond to the message, “I don’t have quite the bandwidth to take this on right now, sorry Carol.” Which is corporate speak for, “Not right now, Carol. I have a darts league match to stream illegally in ten minutes after this cheese monger fantasy plays out in my head, and I will not be letting you and your ‘urgent- my water just broke, can you cover this meeting for me?’ message stand in the way of that.”
I’m back with the flock, we have now arrived at the field, a panoramic view of lush, rolling hills encircles our posse of man and sheep. Sergio tugs at the udders of a fluffy white female, shooting warm streams of creamy white milk into a metal pail until it’s halfway full. He hands me a high walled pan and puts me to work boiling the milk together with salt and squeezed lemon above an open flame on a campfire that he niftily put together while I sat there trying to craft a same game parlay for the Tigers vs. Reds game, but struggled to figure out the time change and accidentally placed the bet for the following day. I wait for the curds to form, and then pour the yellowing mixture into a cheese cloth over a slotted metal colander of sorts. The whey drains out and the cheese ball starts to form. Sergio grabs the fresh cheese and holds it up next to one of the male sheep’s elephantitic testicles to ensure I have formed the traditional shape. He gives me a thumbs up (I can tell from its placement on his hand, the actual thumb is completely obscured by brown fur) and then pulls a pocket knife from his worn leather utility belt and slices off a piece for me to taste.
Ping! Another Microsoft Teams message. Carol again. “URGENT- husband won’t bring me to the hospital, can you give me a ride?” Not now, Carol. I was about to taste the sweet, sweet products of my labor! To suck on the salty congealed discharge of my wooly brethren! I respond, “Carol- my bandwidth, remember?” and then open up crackstreams just as the Baz Peter Whitewood uncorks a piss missile that nestles deep into the bull, saving him from the dreaded wanker’s fifty.