Around this time, the dogs still roam free in the streets of the Upper West Side. And the birds can still be heard. It is still possible to get a bigger booth at the diner, even when just walking in as one person. It is almost quiet. Well, not here and now, just in general.
The guy next to me ordered whatever I am having except with an additional bowl of strawberries.
Oh, and he also has no potatoes with his omelette… or bread. I am sensing a low carb diet here. Comfort food has been replaced by comfort therapy. A sense of control over the belly in times when the world appears to be spun out of control completely… Away of preserving sanity in an environment where food is going to be plenty tomorrow and the day after that.
Crazy.
When I visited an artist camp in Poland in 1995, one of the Polish friends reminded me that no thinking and no development was really possible if there was food on the minds of the. What he meant then and there was of course, that there was plenty of people in Poland who had no time to think about great ideas, as they had to think about ways to get the next meal. “Mit leerem Magen denkt sich schlecht.” (Thinking is bad with an empty stomach… is a German saying.)

I wonder if declaring war on Carbohydrates might have a bit of a similar effect, what a brilliant coincidence. The stomachs may not be empty and that feeling in the belly might be fear, not hunger, but boy, does it take off the mind of whatever else there is.

How much of the thought real estate in the head of a large part of the population here is set aside for nutritional matters these days? How much is taken by matters related to looks? (and this includes those whiter and whiter teeth, I think.) How much is taped off for that danger zone called career?
How much of the emotional and thought real estate remains available for actual independent thinking and for this really stupid thing called dreaming?
How much remains open for that thinking that is just seemingly useless and not really translatable into anything that could be sold or bought or… outlived.

Whom am I fooling here… a lion share of the world’s thinking has to be brought down to a ritualistic celebration of the mundane… not all parts of a car can be the engine, as my father would put it…
Should I probably drop the sugar and investigate the advantages and disadvantages of sweet’n low? Though I have the feeling the Equal, with its blue packaging is speaking more clearly to my light blue set of my mind…
Oh, and could the guy behind me please stop reading his bills to himself out loud, with all the rubbish commentary? I understand it when couples argue about money, but if a couple is trapped in a single middle aged body, then matters are more serious, I guess…
It is still relatively quiet right here and right now… and this is why I will now get out and take a walk for another 40 blocks or so. The rest of the day will be spent in an office. No dogs allowed. Forget the birds.