A Melancholy Meal
4 Feb
Dear Rhett,
Last night was kind of depressing. I can feel it bleeding into today.
I went to go see a documentary called Junior that was playing at the Plaza as part of the Doc Soup festival. Rather than the madcap Schwarzenegger pregnancy flick that I was picturing, this Junior was a clever and thoughtful meditation on aging, told through the eyes of a 75 year-old Italian living at home with his 99-year old Mama. Needless to say, the spectre of death loomed throughout, and as I walked out of the theatre, I was lost in my own conflicted thoughts about growing old and dying.
Instead of trying to cheer myself up, I went home and grabbed The Brothers Karamazov off the bedside table and sat down to finish it once and for all. I only had 75 pages or so to go and was totally caught up in the grand finale, which takes place in a courtroom. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but I will say that Russian novelists of the 19th century were not masters of the happy ending. Truth be told, I went to bed feeling pretty down about things.
Fast forward to this morning. I’m easing into my morning with a little routine web surfing. Somehow I came across this Taco Bell webpage, featuring a rather sad packet of hotsauce.
Glen Bell, RIP
I tend to read more into these things than I should, but I felt like everything was conspiring to stress to me how brief and fragile life truly is. How did I act on this information? I went to the cafeteria and got the Creole Chicken sandwich with a side of Chicken and Rice soup. Sometimes you’ve just got to live every moment like it’s your last.
Yours fearlessly,
Brendan
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