Sweetness
I.
Shock of sugar—a bite or two will do. The ice cream in my mouth would be oppressive in larger quantities, but a few mouthfuls set off a firework display in my brain, dopamine flooding synapses and locking into receptors.
It’s a momentary spark—temporary comfort—and it would be so easy to keep eating, hoping the spark would continue and not flare out. It’s in the nature of sparks to be ephemeral, yet they can start a blaze so fierce it’s burned the whole damn forest down before you can say “Smokey the Bear.” Everything is lost in a cataclysm of heat and light—a wall of static made of razors that annihilates everything in its path.
II.
Yesterday’s lunch was laced with sweetness and smoke. Everyone ordered the BLT except the lone vegetarian, and she added tomatoes to her grilled cheese sandwich because it’s heirloom tomato season. It has been an exceptional year for tomatoes, and they won’t last—we all know we’d better savor the sweetness while we can.
Small talk floats atop volumes of unspoken seriousness as the conversation meanders from the weather to vacations to places we have lived, why work intrudes on life, where you should move if you love good fruit. Never mind our differences, temporary worries and deep chasms of unrest—these things are tucked behind our ears, out of sight as we sip water or beer and savor excellent tomatoes together. We conclude that vacations should never be sullied by work, Hawai’i is worth visiting, and you cannot get a good apple in Las Vegas.
III.
No one would be able to afford it, but I believe each work day should be punctuated by a lunch one must walk to, where seasonal fare is savored and we tell our stories and seek common ground. Some would call it wasteful, but it is in such gatherings that we notice our shared humanity—together we tumble out of the greedy maw of the work day to rest and collect low-hanging fruit without any sense of obligation to process it into something profitable. Instead, we eat freely, moving from tree to vine and back again, juice running down our chins.
