9.20.2008

Pondering food and life

Lucy' s post inspired some introspection in me as well. I can't help but feel that we're all on the verge...of something. I feel that everything is shifting, nothing is what it could be next week, and I just feel uneasy and unsettled.

It reminds me of what I told my parents at one point during the last election: it doesn't matter who the president is, my day-to-day life doesn't change much. Have the last eight years changed me and changed the world around me? Of course. But the core of me? My family, my friends, the coziest circle of Adam and Kiddo? No, that remains. And it will remain whatever happens because, above all else, everything is personal.


Which brings me to food. I have two friends, in particular, that don't care about food. Truly. They just want to fill the hole. And I've puzzled and puzzled over that. Ultimately, though, I'm reminded of MFK Fisher's quote about how we're all hungry. We all need food, love, and security. Perhaps my friends aren't hungry for food...they're currently hungry for something else. Love? Peace within themselves? And perhaps that's why it took me until the year I turned 30 to pay attention to what I eat, to derive enormous pleasure from food, to be excited in every way everyday by what I'm eating: I had satisfied a lot of hungers before I came to this one. Now, the question "What's for dinner?" gets me through the day.

...like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it...and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied...and it is all one.

Eat, drink, and indulge in autumnal introspections

2 comments:

L Vanel said...

Thanks Laura. We have lots of good things to appreciate, even if things do shift. Only time will tell.

Maggie said...

Wonderful post, thanks for writing it.