Bubbling up from the well of the fitness and nutrition aware, I spot this snack I grabbed from a local cafe once. I’m still hungry for reasons I don’t comprehend. It’s “just” five grams of sugar. Really “just”?
Like the article I read earlier decrying the environmental perils that industrialized animal farms inflict on the land and it’s unsustainable… I agree… but my body and my hours of reading suggest that my animal product heavy diet is healthy. I silently thank the universe that I am comfortable in my station as a non-reproducing human. It’s JUST the planet, but what about the diet I view as healthy for myself, for a kid… it’s JUST your kid. I spend the next half a block wondering how quickly I might make myself insane with internal debate about what a kid could survive, I’ve seen 3 year olds clutching sodas and hot fries on the bus, that would make me feel cold with nausea. That word doesn’t work anywhere.
I realize that grey area inhabited by “just” is the field of madness, where an overpowered brain may just work itself into a frenzy and push a typically camouflaged sane person into the realm of medical emergency. Madness.
I feel like that a lot of the time. Like I’m just one unexpected experience away from Sylvia Plath. I should then feed myself some misguided ego trip about the border between inspired genius and insanity. In the scheme of things I’m comfortable being dull, so fine I have no problem saying it.
I think honestly it’s my aching tooth but I dreamt last night, the main arc of the story is lost but in it I was dealing with fatigue and some unnamed illness. As the narrative progressed (I have foggy memories of it just being a dream about me living my ordinary life) I found out that I had some fatal auto-immune something or other and 5 years to live. I was immediately preoccupied with what the average quality of that remaining time would be and my husband cooperatively drove me to the studio so I could make pottery.
The obvious lesson about the fragility of your health and unknowable duration of your life aside, I think as far as art goes I’ve found a true love (third time’s the charm) with ceramics.
Observations from the Edge 