Wednesday, July 8, 2020

keeping a distance

My diet these days is largely cottage cheese, orange juice and an occasional liverwurst sandwich ... largely, in short, gum food while I wait for a lower insert of false teeth (the old one got lost around this maw of stuff) to be shaped.

At the doctor's yesterday, my weight was down to 130. Once, when muscled, I topped 200. Eating is nice, but not that compelling these days. I'm not depressed about it.

The doctor, whom I visited and whom I like, told me that there has been a rise in requests for downers in this time when so many are so lonely at home.  "Eat what you like," he said. "But watch your salt." Naturally, salt is what I crave upon hearing that salt is somehow on the shit list.

Everyone wears a mask ... except Donald Trump, of course. In Europe, various countries have barred U.S. citizens from entering based on Trump's self-centered, lackadaisical and politically-charged posturing. As the Somali security agent once put it on TV when assessing a pirated western oil tanker: "If you do not share your wealth with us, we we share our poverty with you."

The U.S. is being shared with. A third-world country.

Masks give me a case of claustrophobia. They increase my desire for needed oxygen. They hide more of what was already hidden behind Facebook and other healing 'solutions.'

It puts me in mind of the schizophrenic patient once quote in a book I read: "The air is still, here -- the air between the things in the room. But the things in the room are no longer here."

Businesses of the cafe variety are getting clobbered. Churches are being clobbered. "Social distancing" (six feet/two meters) creates yet more rifts and schisms. Sports and their stadia are denuded. News outlets struggle and strain to say something new ... but there is nothing new: the drum beat hums like an impatient principal idly imagining what punishment to mete out. Fingers drumming on a desktop.

I wonder how many bank robbers are rejoicing: "I don't know what s/he looked like, officer. S/he was wearing a mask."

3 comments:

  1. "salt is somehow on the shit list"

    on the shitlist alright....surely those bastards aren't going to ask for a tipping sheet when ascot eventually comes around....

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  2. No salt for a bean pole, eh?
    Oh well.

    I used very little for over 40 years, I started using more of it this past year, it's not that bad, a lot is nasty. I remember a Zen Teacher saying years ago that salt helps with concentration. I ignored the advise, thinking salt was "bad."

    Now, willing to try it, he might have been right.

    Mostly I now take such advise with grain of salt. It actually seems most people including doctors know very little about nutrition.

    Your MD probably should have warned you away from nitrites as well.

    Sad fact is much "common knowledge" about nutrition is just rubbish. In the US much nutrition information has been provided by the food industry.

    The history of Kelloggs and Post is an interesting read.

    Read what the Aussies have to say about salt.
    "6 things you thought you knew about salt that just aren’t true"
    https://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-events/news/6-things-about-salt-that-arent-true

    Can someone explain moderation to me?

    Pass the Hot Pastrami.


    ReplyDelete
  3. "Can someone explain moderation to me?"

    Moderation is what others seem to achieve effortlessly, while I am stuck dreaming about another incarnation without munchies.

    ReplyDelete