Monday, November 10, 2008

5 sensory experiences today over lunch



  • Tasted - A Del Monte Harvest Selections Chicken Cacciatore microwave dinner. It is a little disturbing that the chicken contained therein did not need refrigeration, but really it was not all that bad. It offered the equivalent culinary sensation of something on the buffet tasting better than expected, which truth be told, I kinda like lukewarm crappy buffet food, and when it surpasses expectations, I feel a twinge of dicovery. Not that I would highly recommend this for lunch, but I certainly liked it more than this person did.
  • Smell - stepping out of my office after airing out the harvested selectness, I was accosted with what could have only been butthole-flavored microwave popcorn. I expected some student worker to come reeling around with a torn-open bag. "Want some? It's butthole flavor!"
  • Saw - the American fiction section at the campus library, and the row of Black Sparrow Press John Fante books. There are some folks who understand smart book design. Also the first couple pages of Last Evening on Earth by Roberto Bolaño, who is soon to be all the rage after the New York Times review by Jonathan Lethem of his gargantuan novel 2666 makes the rounds. Jonathan Lethem is taking up all my literary space right now: I read the aforementioned review yesterday morning at the coffee shop, started You Don't Love Me Yet last night, and this morning was swept up by this New Yorker fiction piece of his "Lostronaut" that washed up in my RSS feed. I tried reading The Fortress of Solitude a while back, and while the characters are still vivid in my head, I couldn't get into the story. "Lostronaut" however, has me convinced of his genius.
  • Felt - the burn in my legs from darting across campus and up all four flights of stairs to where the PS's are housed. The irony that embracing my full library-obsessed reader-nerd is the thing that finally convinced me to get off my ass and get some exercise at lunch is not lost on me, because after all, I am a library-obsessed reader-nerd now. Just because I am panting doesn't mean I don't know what irony is, ok?
  • Heard - On my way back into my building I heard a girl say into her phone, "You know... a Frito Pie" and the look on her face registered some guilt at this admission, like she became suddenly aware of her own lameness that she was reporting the eating of a Frito pie across a sattelite connection, beaming trough all of us, to a bored friend that was likely not even listening. I bet she would have envied my Chicken Cacciatorebut would have still felt superior to butthole-flavored popcorn. Now I wonder what Jonathan Lethem had for lunch?

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