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| Bran Muffin, Ascetic Ideal Nowadays I eat blueberry-infused bran muffins from a market just a few blocks down the street that caters to the well-to-do families of the University area. These fibrous tasties are admittedly a helluva lot more flavorful and texturally gratifying than the bran bobbles that I once force-fed myself as a junior and senior in high school.
Things are different for me now in another important way. When I now brew my muffin’s liquid accompaniment, usually a spot of black tea, I’m unafraid to add some sort of sweet inducement. Picture a splash of milk, a couple of teaspoons of fine granulated sugar being stirred into the cup, and a casually self-assured douchebag vacantly half-smiling in order to complete your mental visual.
Since the woman in my life was more sexually attracted to some other casually self-assured douchebag, it gets to be late at night at my place and no one else will be around besides me. Nightfall brings with it a solitude that sometimes leads to a productive burst of creative output. Oftentimes, this productive burst is replaced by yet another (un)productive burst of couch-centered thumb twiddling that, in turn, leads to a hunger rooted deeply in boredom.
Okay, so it's usually like this. Stop picturing me sob-sturbating already.
When this particular situation rolls around and I feel particularly untouched by the Mexican strain of schizophrenia (or La Paranoia Católica) my echolalic internal monologue spikes and questions loudly and triumphantly, "Why the fuck don't I just go get an old-fashioned chocolate from the donut joint down the street and wash it down with a bottle of chocolate milk?"
Well now, an old-fashioned style chocolate donut is not a healthy choice. An old-fashioned style chocolate donut will not be your sphincter’s massage therapist when you roll out of bed in the morning. An old-fashioned chocolate style donut is an old-fashioned style indulgence.
When I was shorter and knew fewer words, my father often barbecued. Steak and ribs were two of his favorites. Across many dinnertime sit-downs, I was habituated to finish any and every object that happened to grace my plate. The explanation for this practice could apparently be found somewhere between the loud, Confucian pronouncements "You ordered it! You eat it!" and "You gotta have good habits in good company, son!" As an outgrowth of this practice, I developed the need of always feeling over-full after a meal. Anyone who has attempted to digest a juicy steak for their nighttime meal knows this feeling. Furthermore, anyone who has tried to pass this juicy steak without having been sufficiently mobile and adequately hydrated on the day of dining knows the frustrating challenge that awaits them in the gentleman's room the following day. I can tell you with a high level of certainty that Indian clay is more easily obtained from the ground.
From time to time, two-thirds of the dinnertime meal would originate from a leguminous crop. On such occasions the steak would stay stiff and cold in the fridge. My appetite would not be satisfied with such fare. When I left the table feeling unfulfilled, after-dinner dessert would invariably be a heavier duty treat. Though it sounds a bit like a twisted advertisement gone too far, Maywood's brand Honey Buns were an early obsession of mine.
Who supplied these sugary goodies? My mother, the fair-skinned and curly haired Mexicana; the supermarket clerk and enabler. The woman was (and still is) a junk food eater, but she never forced her high-fructose fancies upon me. Though my father objected to my mother's stewardship over an empty calorie cabinet in the kitchen, he never actually barred me from opening that snack drawer or its sister section, the frozen-burrito freezer, just hours shy of bedtime.
How do I know now that I gorged myself so far beyond a reasonable limit so often without having been told that I did? Evidence of my poor habits arose in reflection over time. Some of the most striking memories I have of the young me are of overfeeding and overstuffing myself and feeling mentally hazy and physically sluggish the night of and the day after doing so. One of the most striking memories I have is from a night where I saw my mother hose down the apartment patio because I had just projected the remains of a honey bun across two squares of freshly laid lawn sod. Padding these memories are other memories of me jones-ing for a Taco Bell chicken quesadilla after-school or eating half of a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch late at night.
In the late stages of high school I began to uncover some nebulous connection between the type and quantity of food you eat and the way you feel and act. I began wondering why my friends' weights were under control, how they seemed to physically exert themselves so effortlessly, and why their families only rarely stocked rich treats in their pantries. My thighs were God’s approximation of fleshy tree stumps. I must have tugged down on my t-shirt 40 times a day. I would go to jog the track and feel as though some horizontal force of gravity was actively opposing me.
Some nights I would eat mini-pizzas just before going to sleep and wake up in the middle of the night feeling sick and disoriented, but at this point I would not yet understand that my feelings were the manifestations of my poor dietary habits.
At this point in my development, I regarded my ability to hazily float through situations as some extra-healthy sort of internal Buddhistic solace that should only naturally flow from what I accepted as my beliefs at the time. ‘Mindfulness’ and ‘interconnectedness’ were terms that often fluttered about my consciousness back then. Somewhat naively, I felt as though my desire for quiet spaces was a choice in line with an acceptance of what I thought of as 'soulful quietude.' These flimsy spiritual affinities expressed themselves in my decisions to eat flavorless bran muffins or drink ill-tasting teas. When I chose these foodstuffs I meant to deny myself earthly pleasure in order to maintain that cloudy kind of peace within that I thought was characteristic of a truly sage-like bodhisattva. These were my closest flirtations with asceticism.
Now that I've grown some and reflected upon all of this, I can see that what I thought and how I acted then as a result of my Buddhistic beliefs were little more than the peculiar (and surprisingly luckily chosen) habits of an eccentric kid. I've come to realize that that feeling of hazily floating came as a result of my constant overindulgence in calorie-rich, nutrient-deficient foods. I've since experimented with overindulgence of the type that I was once used to. When I do this I invariably feel that same familiar haze that I once felt almost constantly. Only now, I don’t regard myself as a contented Buddha. I associate the haze with the high that an addict feels when they get their fix and recognize that although I may be naturally predisposed to be far calmer than most people, I am not of the type to carelessly drift with a blurry perception of one situation and the next. That sensation (or lack thereof) arose from my bad dietary habits.
If I choose to eat a bran muffin for breakfast this morning, my selection is made only after a careful and reasonable weighing of possibilities. The bran muffin’s fibrous texture fills me up enough to sustain me through my morning gym workout and helps me reach a daily fiber quota I’ve set for myself. I enjoy vegetarian items with a thick and chewy texture. I chew em’ like meats and and I pass em’ like beets. The sugar content of the muffin is lower than a poppy seed muffin and obviously more healthy than the double chocolate muffins I once ate for breakfast as an adolescent. Also, nothing is easier to set-up and and take down for breakfast than a muffin. In fact, there is no set-up or take-down; there isn’t even any bowl washing.
Getting queasy from the perceivable excess of rationality motivating my choice of breakfast? Well, there is a real human necessity for irrational indulgence, but in my experience it is best when it sits at the tapered end of the pyramid of psychical needs. It is my personal belief that breakfast, when done correctly, is one of blandest and workaday rituals rooted in gray-colored necessity there is. It is also my belief that the exercise of human rationality is most useful in the drudgery of the day-to-day. Any beliefs you might have to the contrary were indubitably lodged there by that constant stream of adverts teaching you that irrational indulgence is a healthy practice and fit for reward. If you don’t believe me, compare the number of adverts you’ve seen for sugary breakfast cereals implying instant joy with the number of adverts for healthy cereals implying health through a daily exercise routine. Which adverts are more numerous, and which provide more thoughtful, realistic recommendations?
Ascetics do not indulge. I do, as occasionally as my income and my constitution will allow. I’ll go out and get the old-fashioned chocolate donut and some chocolate milk to wash it down with every once in awhile, but only once in awhile. I’ve come to learn that indulgence is most truly indulgence (and thus best for the mind and the body) when it punctuates a long period of abstention from indulgence. | | |
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