Category Archives: Writing

It’s a chilly morning in May and it looks like rain. It tastes like rain as well. Though my taste buds are a little confused after having biryani and springtime allergies for breakfast. So maybe it tastes like baby foxes, goslings, and fawns. It probably does to the vultures. There are so many vultures in the Garden State. Though I saw two bald eagles yesterday. It’s always a little unnerving to bike on a tube that you know is going to go flat eventually; I have a hard time understanding why tires still require air (but I complain about this often, so you’re probably sick of hearing about it). My utopianism has calmed a bit since the age of twenty-six, but it’s still around. “How could this thing be like this when it could be like this!” is a refrain that still comes out of my mouth and typing fingers on the regular. I’m not sure I’m ready for Buddhist acceptance, I’m still down to ride the wheel and continue to get nauseous. If not for nausea, a feeling of digestive calm could not be placed in context and therefore could not be appreciated. I’m feeling digestively calm after eating breakfast Indian food. Something about the gut bacteria wanting a kick in the pants in the morning. I appreciate those little dudes. Swimming around and dealing with the fact that sometimes I eat way too much cereal, sometimes way too much of whatever else is around, and all without the doctor-recommended number of chews prior to swallowing. Humans didn’t have doctor recommendations for chewing for a long time, and things seemed okay. But maybe that’s what increases lifetimes: chew your food and you’ll live to a hundred. I’m sure that’s the title of a health blog and book series. But that’s why I don’t do health stuff and I certainly never ask doctors for advice. If something is broken in a way that doctors have proven that they are extremely competent at fixing, count me in (broken arms, pneumonia). Otherwise, count me way, way, way out. And certainly don’t sign me up for periodontal gum nonsense. I’ll get my feet a little flatter on the ground before I lose it on the dentistry industry, but it is far from a caring profession. There are lots of caring people in the field, but the highest share of them do not go by “Dr. Whatever” (I’ve had some wonderful, compassionate hygienists). But Dentist Drs. have been wildly hit and miss. They all look at my gum line and then at my youthful face and freak out. “OMG how did you lose so much gum line! You’re so young!” These are people who wouldn’t know several months of depression induced bad mouth care if it happened to all three of their children (each would be disowned when it was clear that the teeth were not cared for, or at least sent to an oral surgeon for some cutting punishment). So I try to exclusively deal with the people who actually clean teeth, because I’m willing to believe they’re doing something useful with some kindness. But when my teeth fall out, I’m not going to be checking my dental insurance policy, I’m going to be on the next plane to Costa Rica for a tooth repair tropical vacation, and I’ll go to whichever place will tell my that I can drink locally grown coffee before, during, and after the procedure. Sometimes it’s nice to stay in the same paragraph; all the words seem to be much more intimately connected, kind of like a sleepover where everyone just piles around each other on the floor instead of going to separate beds (When and how can this kind of sleepover exist? While I definitely don’t want bad firewood to be burned to keep the old room where everyone sleeps warm like in the olden days, I do want that collective sleeping thing real bad. While I’ve become comfortable sleeping alone, I’m sure this is a maladaptive thing to a situation that me, a social human person, is not designed for.) The single paragraph this is similar to the reason I’ve come to appreciate massive parentheses as a better solution that footnotes. I’d like to avoid interrupting the reader by forcing them to go to the end of the chapter or even the end of the book, or, god-forbid, the bottom of the page, to read these side thoughts that are actually happening linearly for me, but footnotes require a non-linear interaction for the text. All right, this paragraph is feeling a little top heavy and loose at the bottom, but I’m not going to add another one to this chapter. So I suppose the chapter is over. Good morning.