Ignoramus sinus infectigus.

Her mother always told her to chew slowly, or when she swallowed, food would get stuck in her ears. 

I may have been influenza-ed into a mild psychosis, or perhaps every girl goes through this phase.  But I was thinking today, as the door of the apartment closed behind me, and left me inside of it, all alone, that I might be an excellent homemaker. Do they make those anymore?  Off the top of my head I can think of one or two ladies who don’t work.  The main thing for me is what it would be like at dinner parties.  I can’t imagine. “So, what do you do?”  And then 10 pairs of eyes rolling. 

Attn: Moms

Men are weird.  And I refuse to believe it’s natural.  Innate.  That they’re born with it.  Whatever, No.  I’ve read enough literary theory to know all about social constructs, and I know men are smarter than they seem.  For instance. There is no physiological rule that says when a man has a gaping hole in his jeans, right in the crotch area, he can’t go out and buy a new pair of pants until a woman forces him to.  There is no natural law that when there is no food in the house, a man will sooner order takeout than buy some groceries.  These things can be helped.

I realized last year while I was taking some graduate seminar that the number one symptom of growing up bourgeoisie is that in the middle class household gender roles are hugely enforced.  I’m guilty of being brought up this way.  My brother and my father don’t know their shoes from their dinner plates.  And it’s all my mother’s fault. 

She looked up and down, but couldn’t figure out where the music was coming from.  There is someone, above or below her, playing a gypsie guitar, and singing into a microphone.  Who knew there were real musicians, anymore, in New York.

Gadzooks!  I am the master pretender.  This week, I am not only pretending I am not flu-rific, but that I’m also lucid enough in mind to pay attention in graduate seminars as well as bake my own bread.  It’s the least I can do right now, at home, in an effort to re-claim my normal-hood.  Before right now, I spent the last 48 hours in bed, making gestures and little whispery sounds at my boyfriend, who was left at the gate to determine what I was trying to get him to do.  He, intelligent guy, figured out that what I needed was a lot of medicine from the drugstore, some Mom’s chicken soup from Whole Foods, and a big glass of OJ, fresh squeezed.  What a guy.

Meanwhile, he’s now back at work, and the deal with becoming normal again requires that I do things for myself.  The danger is that baking my own bread while I’m pretending to be, but not actually lucid, means that I just gave myself over to a trial subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, which asks for your credit card. Of course.  So if I don’t cancel in 14 days, I’m $34.95 broker.  And why did I give them my digits? So I could check on this bread recipe, because the kid on Youtube I got my recipe from seemed, after 2 or 3 times watching the video, a little high.

“I think table and I say chair

I buy bread and I lose it

Whatever I learn I forget

And what this means is I love you”

Love is Local

I started another Tumblr, devoted to food only.  I’ve had a hard time in the past, keeping focused, keeping “themed,” but I swear, this one is Just Food.  Particularly Local Food, which I’ll document eating and scavenging in any location I find myself.  On a more usual basis that will be NYC, central Pennsylvania and Hudson Valley, NY. 

I’ll mention I’m using a text Barack Obama lists as one of the most influential books he’s ever read (in college) to help plan the unit on Philosophy and Literature.  My title for the unit so far is: The Philosophical Lens. A New Peek at Literature.

Truth, Beauty and other stuff.

It is a huge challenge to teach philosophy to urban high school kids in New York City, but I am up for it.  I am writing a 10-day unit plan on how to imbibe a high school literature course with elements of philosophical thinking; to teach them the difference between rationalism and empiricism, that will maybe allow the hormonally charged pubescents to understand and even enjoy Anton Chekhov.