break fast, slowly

Upon reflection, breakfast is my favorite meal. This from a guy who sermonizes on the value and importance of communal eating. This from one who loftily pontificates on the tribal need for family interaction around one table, even if voices and views are discordant.

Breakfast involves ritual. Breakfast tea with milk, exactly three slices of Heidelberg Baking Company bread, preferably Cracked Wheat, with Earth Balance buttery spread, one slice with Welch's grape jelly.

I typically read from The New Yorker or the New York Times, one from several days ago.

I take my time.

Time takes me.

Lent-ills, and Other Beens

A deliciously ascetic season, Lent was characterized by an iconic "giving up" of some treat, typically food, announced to family and friends. Such as, "I'm giving up Wise potato chips this year," which was a common refrain of my brothers and me over the years. We loved potato chips (called "crisps," I believe, abroad), addictively and rapturously and unhealthily. (Still do.) This addiction was anointed at any early age when my older brother and I, in the 1950s, would have an evening snack of potato chips in a little imitation copper bowl, which, emptied of chips, we irreverently placed on our heads, like a prelate's skullcap, as our parents watched the television sermons of fierce-eyed Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. One year, we learned that Sundays, as "little Easters," did not count as part of the forty days apportioned to Lent, so we felt that gave us a tremendous loophole. And so we binged on chips galore on Sundays. (Was Chips Galore the once and future husband of Pussy, the siren in the James Bond movies?) But, to be honest, that took some of the fun (if that's the word) out of it all; it was kind of wimpy; not up to the challenge. Exercising the loophole induced a guilt for not being guilty enough, if that makes any sense at all (as if this makes any sense at all to the postmodern mind).

One year, I forswore sugar in my daily tea. The habit was to have two heaping teaspoons of sugar in my morning tea, this from the earliest age I can recall. When Lent ended, I never went back to the sugar in my tea, and that's probably more than thirty years ago. What, if anything, does that tell me about human character (mine), and habits, and change? If anything, it tells me that the permanent change was barely intended, was almost imperceptible, almost accidental; mostly effortless; certainly not any result of rolled-up-sleeves willfulness. (Don't you just salivate over those semicolons? Could I ever abstain from employing semicolons, even if I tried? Not likely; not this year.)

The years of attempting to swear off booze, I guess I managed it, or nearly so. But by Easter it was off to the wild races (so, surely, I could not have opted for the loophole each week, because the brakes would not work by Monday morning) without a doubt.

Speaking of doubts, I doubt I ever gave up "impure thoughts" for Lent. How could I, or anyone else? After all, such thoughts invaded my brain unbidden, like gamma rays or rain or oxygen or incense; the charge was not to "indulge" them, though, alas, the glossy pages of porn or a lingerie ad in a Sears catalog (pre-Victoria's Secret), or a fellow teenager getting off the bus downtown in a plaid skirt galvanized my own charged-up psyche -- and made me look like a minor character in a James Joyce short story, call it "Portrait of the Hardest as a Young Man." (To you less innocent than me: yes, a Victorian term: impure thoughts. The actual deeds? You gotta be effin' kidding! [Speaking of "effin' I sort of promised myself I'd try to drop the F word during this year's practice. I can report I have not been successful even before evening. This practice is not as puritanical as it sounds; it makes for an intriguing self-auditory analysis, especially in traffic. My other goal is to avoid conversational interruptions. That may be more impossible than resisting so-called impure thoughts. As I've blogged before, I can't even stop myself from interrupting myself!]).

In later years, it's been toast without butter or some other things I can't even recall. In fact, recently it's been less and less of that youthful melodrama, a drama all about me. And why not? Who's youthful? Not moi.

Naturally, "giving up," or self-denial, has its place in the universe (though not particularly in the postmodern Western Hemisphere), but not if it's all about self.

No, not if it's all about the self, despite proud postures of solipsism proclaimed in one's blog banner.

The inventory of Lenten acts over the years is unfortunately not filled with visits to hospices, jails, or homeless shelters; such are the exception, not the rule.

So, forehead smudged with mortality-reminding ash this evening, I close with this commentary from my Zen Calendar for this day:


sin and evil

are not to be got rid of

just blindly.

look at the astringent persimmons!

they turn into the sweet dried ones.


P.S. After drafting the above post, and revising it several times, I went upstairs, got a washcloth, wet it, soaped it, and set about cleaning the ashes off my forehead. Successive rubbings did indeed clean my forehead, but a redness remained where the ashes were. Then I found that the icon of mortality stubbornly remained on the washcloth, the "human stain" (to use a Philip Roth phrase), which even more stubbornly clung to the sink, as one last black ember refused to be swallowed down the drain, finally yielding to my incessant pouring of water, as if I were some guilty murderer in an Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King story.

P.P.S. Annual visit to a certain type of medical specialist today. PSA results normal. This is one situation where The Laughorist likes to be "normal."

Smootheest Mystery

The Scene: Smoothees, a minimalist, white-walled place with 'fresh and healthy asian fusion food,' in the Prenzlauer Berg section of Berlin, on Kastanienalle (nunber 100 if you must know). Soothing female voices with minimal instrumentation as background music. Blond wood woodblocks to sit on at wooden tables. The menu whiteboard in back of the counter is mostly in English. 'smoothees your vitamin dealer' [all lowercase]. 'Create your menu!' Main + sauce + veggy [their spelling] + side. The short, kinky-haired, brown-eyed young lady at the counter speaks very little English, despite all this English, including menu items in English, such as teas (I order black tea but have to say 'schwarz tee'; my daughter orders the same with some milk and cinnamon (orders in broken Deutsch) but it comes out later looking more like a frappe [but I am getting ahead of the story]) and homemade brownie, those are the words, in English, and which I order. All this is right after a raucously wonderful time at the excellent Babel restaurant, a Middle Eastern place (meal for two with drinks, 12.90 euros), where we riotously conversed with Jim and Renee, Americans with whom I erupted into conversation with based upon correctly identifying a New Yawk accent (they are fresh here from Prague since November and their friend and colleague Dario (originally from Venezuela but fresh from Prague and en route to London tomorrow). (I had my first Turkish [Arabische] there; it wired me up; the man behind the counter nearly scolded me when I asked about milk; so no milk, but a dash of Kierkegaard.)

The Mystery: At the table in back of E. and me, as we first arrive, are a man and a woman. The man, handsome and professorial, is perhaps my age, late-50s-ish, to my eyes, all gray-haired, gangly, a face not unlike john Le Carre's, a courtly voice, a blue cardigan (was it blue? was it dark or light?). He is almost huddled with a woman quite a few years his junior, also attractive, blonde, stylishly dressed, silk scarf, gold earrings, red lipstick. Their conversation appears to be intimate, though dominated, in a solicitous sort of way, by the man. Off to the side a tall young man with a porkpie hat turned backwards is lying down in a bedlike area with candles, reading a magazine. Without warning or provocation, he gets up, tosses the magazine, and joins the man and woman at their wooden table. E. and I are intriqued. Who is who? The mystery begins to consume our conversation. Oh. Somewhere out of the blue (out of the fecking white walls?) another young man has appeared, and he sits facing the woman -- all of them have their backs to me, but E. can see them to observe. They begin to consume us, delightfully, in our conversation.

Where did Young Man Opposite Youngish Woman come from? When did he come in? What is thte relationship between Mr. Professorish and Youngish Woman? I assumed husband and wife at first, but the intimacies became shrouded. Her eyes were intent on Mr. P and on Young Man Opposite.

E. was studying them intently and reporting back to me, in increasingly hushed tones for fear they might be on to us: body language, cues, posture, emotional weather. I sneaked a look behind me when I could or upon going to or returning to the bathroom. E. posited that the two young men and the woman were all siblings. Hmmmm. I still held to husband and wife for Mr. P and her, because she sat angled toward him slightly while facing the two younger men; the two younger men were now directly opposite Mr. P and Youngish Woman. I objected to the sibling concept on the grounds I saw no rivalry betwen the woman and the two young men. At one point, Young Man With Cap got up, waved, left, and then returned. No conspiratorial caresses betrayed amorousness between Mr. P and Her.

I compared this to some sort of Beckett play.

Who was who? Why did we care? Why could we not sift it out? Why did we want to so much?

And were they thinking the same of us?!

The teas were in large glasses, very hot. E. did not care for hers. We switched. Then switched back. The 'homemade brownie' was not what I expected (not fudgelike and chewy as in Amerika), but excellent. Sprinkled with coconut and a slight trail of honey. Very good but somehow not oversweet. E. knew enough German to know that they were out of vanilla ice cream and Cute Kinky Hair kindly apologized to us, or so I was told.

Seven euros.

For an after-dinner dessert.

And a mystery theater.

Tschuss.

P.S. And, Dafathsdays, the ghost of Rudolf Hess was spotted yesterday among the tomblike, blocky mini-city of the Memorial to Europe's Jews, rattling in his rusty chains.