One in Eight Americans

Eighteen months have passed; a hiatus from writing or feeling the need to share my thoughts in any tangible form; No blogging, no journals, not even letters to friends that never get mailed. I had felt my words grow uninteresting for a while and abstained for the sake of boring others. Today, I finally came to my point of breaking that silence. I feel I have had enough notable WTF moments of late to retroactively chronicle a series of posts that will keep us all laughing, crying, shitting our pants and crying again from sheer shame. This sudden need to burst began earlier this week over a bowl of oatmeal. This was no ordinary bowl of oats. This oatmeal was life-altering!

To begin, I must share that for 9 months prior to this breakfast encounter, my partner and I had been working on a City project without pay and hadn't sold any art for over a year, so skint doesn't begin to describe our situation. Grapes of Wrath is more like it. Our wallets growing thin, us growing thinner, certain bills not paid, things shutting off, no phone, foreclosure of home imminent, and still not a positive word from the City, I began that day driving my car aimlessly; the whole drive with tears staining my face and soaking my chest. With no gas to spare really, my initial intent was to drive into the ocean off of a bridge or find a parking garage tucked away somewhere and put a hose from my tailpipe into the car, to my detriment. Luckily for the possible poor sap that would eventually find my body, that didn't happen and I instead ended up driving to my art studio at the Bakehouse.

At this point, I had not eaten in almost 36 hours. I had entered my studio to a family of tabby cats, glaring hungrily at me with their orange and white faces and little pink noses. I savagely searched the crevices of my cabinets for something to feed them, my own hunger taking a back seat to theirs. What I found was a packet of instant oats, but it was the whole kind with whole flax seeds in it, and the cats really didn't want anything to do with that. So, I decided I should really feed myself and took this bowl of oats into the kitchen of the Bakehouse. I set it on the counter for a moment, as I got distracted and spoke with a friend, then came back to enjoy my humble meal.

My gratitude for this simple food was immeasurable. What was really profound to me though was the realization that occurred when I looked into the bowl and saw that I was eating dozens of boiled ants as a nice little additive to my oats and flax. They likely attacked the bowl when it was on the counter. 

It really did not phase me. In a normal state of mind, I would have felt ill and thrown the bowl immediately into the sink. However, at that moment I kept eating until the last crunchy spoonful. It wasn't during my gracious (and protein-packed) meal that I had felt my epiphany. 

There is a switch that goes off in each of us, if we are ever fortunate enough to know real hunger and real lack. When basic human needs are unmet, the appreciation of things gets redefined. I felt at that moment that the universe was seeing my need for the protein (as I had later spent my evening physically exerting myself in the act of making art). Nothing else mattered and nothing still does. I am breathing, aren't I? I have my hands and feet and they move and do things for me, don't they? I was more in the moment than I ever had been before, and felt wholly enlightened.

When my body and mind grow weary from many challenges, and ants are what I have to eat, even in this land of plenty amidst a venue of prosperous people eating gourmet cheeses and drinking fine wine, I knew at that moment, that I appreciated that bowl of ant oatmeal far more than they do their 16.99/ lb. slice of Gouda. 

In that moment, I was truly free.