AD.


banana pie – foto by Smith

I gained 10 pounds by coming back and living in America. The portions are bigger in the U.S., the contents contain more fat, we eat more and worse due to our faster pace and stress, and we drive everywhere rather than walking constantly as we did out-country.

Plus Lady’s been experiencing mental mania which lessens her interest in food shopping and cooking, so I’ve been hungry and have kept a stash of cookies and ice cream to nibble between mostly meatless meals.

Decided enough with the weight already so I stopped buying fats and sweets and in two weeks dropped ten pounds, back to 175.

Unfortunately Lady’s mania doesn’t appreciate food shopping either and can’t focus enough to offer suggestions for items I might pick up for the two of us; since I don’t cook and there’s no food in the house, these past two days have seen another two pounds go. My current 173 is only eight pounds over my high school weight, back when I was a 6 foot three inch straight up and down skinny stick figure. That’s when I went to Navy boot camp where in three months I lost ten pounds of baby fat and put on thirty pounds of meat and muscle, graduating at 185, so I’m now 12 pounds lighter than I was 47 years ago.

She just asked me if a tomato sandwich was okay for lunch. Breakfast was a peanut butter and honey sandwich because the pantry’s bare. I said sorry dear but I’m down to 173 and a tomato just ain’t going to do it, so she opened a can of tuna and made me a tuna tomato sandwich and gave the cat the juice. I’ve suggested we each just cook for ourselves to ease her deciding/shopping/cooking logjam but she won’t consider it because I “wouldn’t eat well”.

Dinner is occasionally optional, replaced by a mid-afternoon single lunch/dinner meal.

This leaves some interesting warps and woofs weaving about my brain. I decided awhile ago if I ever committed suicide most methods were lost to me because of possible after-death affects — for example the Tibetan Book of the Dead says the newly freed soul must be vigilant about its choices as it leaves the body, must especially avoid heading toward the vibrant appealing orange light because it leads to a horrid rebirth. And who knows, maybe this life is merely training for battles in the next life and we’ll need to hit the ground running on the other side. Or maybe whatever your last thought/feeling is here as you die remains the emotion you experience forever and ever, so if you blow your brains out, or drown, or hit the ground too hard from too high, that’s the pain you’ll experience for eternity. And bottom line I do not like pain – physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. I mean let’s face it — pain hurts, and who the heck wants to hurt except for the sick and twisted. Of course life hurts too, amazingly much at times, but this is pain we know, are familiar with — who knows what hell or joy or pain or euphoria or absolute nothingness waits on the other side of life’s exit? Me, I ain’t finding out until I have to.

But if I did, I’d simply stop eating because after a day and a half you’re no longer hungry and you start getting lighter, with a sense of peaceful high. Your mental process becomes clearer and more honest.

This line of reasoning makes me remember my favorite short story – The Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka. I was thinking if I ever did decide to check out — which I won’t, no matter how bad it gets, unless my body and mind actually fail to the point I’m a piece of meat in other’s hands (by which time it’s too late to do anything anyway) — but if I ever did, I could do a performance piece and slowly starve myself to death, blogging my slow decretion. What with drinking water, I could last for months and my blogged thoughts should theoretically become spacier, less fleshly, more universal. Perhaps I could get a corporate sponsor for this performance art piece of a life-time and leave my Lady some coin — BP might be a good choice because they’re obviously into killing things, or maybe Israel.

But finally my thinking always gets practical and I drop the suicide part of the performance piece because let’s face it, the main drawback to killing yourself is you’re dead, and if you don’t like it it’s really hard to change your mind afterward. It’s like the Church’s pay-us-now-and-collect-our-heaven-later policy . . . by the time you’re dead and discover the Church lied, it’s too late to get your bread back.

So instead I think I’ll just write “Hunger Artist Too, The Sequel — Bigger, Thinner, Hungrier” by Kafka’s Klone.

Look for it at all your classier discount bins.


bananas – foto by Smith

5 Responses

  1. Isn’t anyone paying attention? Doesn’t anyone notice or care? This is the best Smitherature (writing) in a while. Is he really Kafka’s Klone? Hardly. He’s alive. He’s the new Smith. His stuff shines.

  2. I fasted for 72 hours once – by the end I no longer felt like eating. I only ate something because my allottted time was up and I thought I ought.

  3. Razors pain you;
    Rivers are damp;
    Acids stain you;
    And drugs cause cramp.
    Guns aren’t lawful;
    Nooses give;
    Gas smells awful;
    You might as well live.

  4. it’s hard to start eating once you stop. it’s hard to grow your hair again once you shave it. it’s hard to live in this world once you see how fluxed up it is.

  5. Dorothy Parked Here
    And Then Was Ripped Off By Her Date

    Razors can pain you
    And rivers can be damp
    Bad acid trips can stain you
    And some drugs can cause the Cramps.

    Stashed guns might not be lawful
    And nooses are known to give
    Lord knows gas smells awful
    I guess you might as well live.

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