Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Chocolate covered bitterness








Bitterness is bacon. Bitterness is potato chips.

One would not think it to look at bitterness. I would not guess, to eye it in its fierce, piercing astringency, that my heart would cry:

A feast!

But here I have been again, bingeing. Like it's ice cream. Like it's bacon, french fries, barbecue flavored tortilla chips, Roman pizza, pastries, burgers, fried shrimp, milkshakes, and caviar. My stomach is bursting. I cannot eat another bite! But it's so good! One more little fever of bitterness and loathing, one more furious vision. Just let me see as clear-eyed as this for another minute. Let me have this sharp and terrible taste flaming in my head until the whole world is laid bare and completely transparent to me. Unfixable. Exposed. Its flaws and successes revealed in a light brighter than any god's. Yes, God, you too are laid bare!

And me?

Five more minutes? Bitter, lucid, munching away, packing it in. Please?

No, I am bursting. I can't take another bite. My heart is clotting up, growing hard, and turning against me.

It is time to take up once again the muddling burden of wonder.






4 comments:

  1. Hey everyone, it's FC's birthday today! He, too, is now 51, an age which requires slightly formal dress to almost any occasion. He has eaten the snack of bitterness and moved into he burden of wonder today, so please it's important to make a little boat out of paper and either sail it on brisk winds or send it down a gully or set in on fire while hailing the great directions!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Those were some complicated instructions you issued. I'm glad I wasn't involved, but am concerned that I have to dress up more now. Are you sure about this?

      Delete
  2. Happy Birthday mon ami! ��
    How i wish i was there to rake up a giant mound of wondrously coloured leaves for you to dive into. Why? Because what good is wonder if you're not having fun. Not that i remember what fun actually is and my advanced age has probably romanticized it anyhow.
    Much love!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Too cold and wet and I'm too sick to leap into the colored leaves unfortunately, but your thought is very nice. No, fun is as good as you remember I think- my theory is that the older you get the more it's found in quieter, more idiosyncratic places.

      Well, it's a theory. Thank you for the birthday wishes.

      Delete

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