A GLUTTON FOR GLUTEN or IT ISN'T MY FAULT!
It isn’t my fault that I’m allergic to sugar and eat it anyway. I eat it because that is part of the allergy. It’s an addictive allergy. I crave sugar – also gluten. I’m a glutton for gluten. I smell a fresh bagel and my eyes roll in an ecstasy of anticipation.
I’m high while I eat it then comatose from my physiological reaction. My mind staggers, my body weakens, and craves more. I once stood by a wedding cake after everyone had eaten their slice and were engulfed by the festivities. I spooned frosting-rich cake onto my colorful paper plate, serving after serving, and ate for a solid hour. Then I went home and lay immobile on my back on my bed, staring at the ceiling, eyes crossed and glazed, for two hours.
But it’s not my fault. When sugar or gluten calls, the little bad bacteria living in my gut, who love it so much, direct me, command me: “Eat that, EAT THAT!” Well, and so I do. (I once had a boyfriend who said, “If they want it, tell them to go get it.”) I just cannot always resist the invitation of the high I get, although, to pat myself on the back, I do not succumb as often as in my youth.
When I was in my twenties, I was progressing toward obesity. That was the only thing that stopped me, and the brakes squealed for about ten years before coming to a definitive halt. I then managed to control myself for a few decades.
But now the compulsion has once more become overwhelming, and the only thing that stays my greedy hand is that, besides becoming comatose – who cares about being comatose? – these condiments cause a rampant inflammation throughout my body. I eat sugar and I get pain in my joints and muscle cramps in my hands and, feet. I eat gluten and I get Restless Leg Syndrome, or, in its more extreme version, what I call Grasshopper Leg Syndrome. I am doing the Can-Can all night.
But sometimes even these symptoms can’t hold me back. “Eat!” cry my bad bacteria. “Eat!” commands my drive to feel ecstasy.
Sometimes, however, caffeine will give me enough of a lift to allow me to avoid those villainous victuals: caffeine endows one with its own endowment of hyped out bliss; ah, caffeine, my drug of choice. But with caffeine I don’t feel guilty, even if it makes my hands shake and spine jitter. For I get my caffeine from green tea. Indeed, I feel quite self-righteous. Green tea has so many health benefits, after all.
***
The Man on the Bus, or The Bus Trip
There he is, at the front of the bus where the first three seats
face inward:
he is the inevitable man who sits in the middle
of three empty seats with
his legs splayed out to encompass all three.
He is a biggish man with a broad, expressionless face.
His shirt is half-falling outside of his pants
and his stomach half out of his shirt.
My joints are in pain; I can’t hang onto the bus bar overhead.
I can’t even reach it.
I have to sit down.
The two seats to either side of the man are the only ones
available.
I once read
that men feel comfortable
taking up all the space while women
– or the woman who was writing this comment—
crawl up into a much smaller territorial compartment.
I have felt in myself the urge to creep into
that smaller compartment.
This man obviously has no problem taking
up more than his share of space.
I sit, but the seat is too small.
“Could you please move your leg?” I ask, my tone polite. I’m a
GLG, a Good Little Girl. That generation.
I am always polite.
Except – now that I’m older, sliding toward my
crone phase –
when I lose my temper and the curses
come a’rollin’.
I am, as they say, “a woman who holds
Her fire.”
So far I’m polite.
The man shifts his leg a few inches. His leg
is thick. Maybe it won’t fit next to the other one.
But I’m squeezed into a corner with his leg
against mine and
aside from sheer lack of space, I need relief
from this subtle sexual
aggression; at least that is how it feels in
the hint of bile in my mouth and
fist of tension clenched in
my chest.
(I remember Gloria Steinem observing how swell
she felt in Japan, how
safe,
walking down the sidewalk,
towering over all the men.)
I will have to watch the next three-seat man to see if
he will move his leg for another
man.
“Sir,” I say, “Could you please move your leg a bit more?”
He grunts but otherwise
ignores me.
This will be a trip of two hours.
If he doesn’t get off soon, I suspect
the stream of unsavory nouns and adjectives
that already have come to party
lavishly
on my tongue
will tango out my lips,
raw and raucous,
rhythmic and a little glorious,
ere this ride is through.
***
ON LISTENING TO AN ESSAY ABOUT THE LONGER LIFE VERSUS THE SHORT BRIGHT FLAME
Some say it’s better to live hard and die young.
I’ve always heard this, and I’ve
Always wondered.
Is it true?
I am envious of people who blaze
but what about the slow
bright flame?
What do I choose as a writer?
Some choose drugs, write great things and die early.
Some choose drugs, write great things and live a long life.
Some choose drugs and die of an inflated ego.
Some have no interest in drugs.
I drink green tea, fully caffinated.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter.
You have to write (or paint or compose)
no matter what, whether as a nova or a sun
that blows up after a long life and closes
into itself, a black hole, invisible against
black space except for the ghost revelations,
the things that vanish into the blackness
within the blackness.
You write your soul, you burn bright, but no one knows.
You don’t get rich,
You don’t strip naked
For the media.
No scalding fires.
No crash and burn.
You don’t dice with death.
The brief exorbitant life of the streaking comet:
Sometimes it is a cliché
perpetrated by romantics
and perhaps a few drug addicts.
But sometimes not.
I think the real trick is to recognize
and acknowledge the consequences of each choice:
the fire, the flash or
the slow low burn,
and then
what happens to your skin.
***
THE TENNIS PLAYER
I sat on the porch steps watching the unknown
young Black man stride toward my building,
his limbs loose and easy. He wore a dazzlingly white pair of shorts,
T-shirt and tennis shoes.
It was dusk and his clothing illuminated the coming dark,
into which he himself
faded.
There was a park with tennis courts
just a few blocks away, from which he
seemed to have come.
“Hello,” I said as he started up the steps,
gleaming.
“Hello,” he returned the greeting.
I said, “You’re so...
white.”
He laughed and went on inside.
I sat there in the summer night,
enjoying my own sense of humor and our
exchange, an experience of many
levels.
***
ELUSIVE IMPULSES
The impulse of the universe toward higher organization thrums through every atom, including one's own: If you connect with that impulse, would you have a better life? Better luck?
I know people who maintain an attitude of gratitude for what they have and faith that good things will happen to them, that they will be saved from disaster, that something or someone will intervene for them, or they will simply find what they need.
And they seem to be right: the schizophrenic friend of a friend, tossed from his apartment when his mother died because he lost her social security income, is helped to find a very nice place of shelter by an organization; a friend who loses her rented house when her husband dies gets into an affordable, senior housing, three-bedroom unit through sheer luck, in three months, when everyone else on the list will wait for years.
Maybe these people have connected with the universal impulse toward a higher level of organization - which in their local terms means housing for all.
Or maybe we live in a multi-verse and their attitude enables them to slide into a universe that is already more organized.
But what about the tear-down forces? If you can navigate into the impulse toward a better universe, can you also be swept into the larger, transpersonal disintegration process of entropy?
The impulse toward a higher level of organization is balanced by chaos. A system reaches peak efficiency and then it is agitated to the roots. At that point it is either shaken apart and completely disintegrates, or it reorganizes at the next higher level of organization.
And what if it's really possible to follow the impulse toward the better life the universe offers, but you don't believe in that impulse or that better universe or just don't believe that you can enter it, and thus can't find the thread to it within you?
That is my fear.
Where will I live when my money is gone if my work does not bring me more money? Material reality - the housing market - says I will be on the street.
Yet reality also said these two other people would be on the street, and they are not.
But what
if your destructive childhood voices remain too strong: that you are "not good
enough" or whatever particular messages still leap your synaptic
connections?
What if you're already too disorganized, already too much shaken apart - what if chaos is already the dominant force in your internal process? In your psychology, if not your circumstance?
What if you’ve never been able to unlearn self-distrust?
I don't drive, but I know people who believe angels find them parking spaces: a local interpretation of the cosmic principle.
But what of your angels if you enter a universe where there are no cars?
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