I am, therefore I eat

I was standing in the vegetables section of the local supermarket looking lovingly at organic yogurt and celry when I just happened to notice a very tall and correspondingly plump lady bending down at the chocolate milk and doughnuts section that I never venture into myself. I noticed her because as she bent over her shirt rose up over her middle and exposed across her arse a large tattoo in Latin: Cogito egro sum. Being that the vegetables were dangerously close to the chocolate milk for no good reason, therefore she and me being close too, I abruptly asked her if she speaks Latin. She looked at me bewildered. She said, “....” [Which I thought sounded very much like "Duh?"] So I said, “I saw your tattoo.” Then she said, “Oh.” And that lead me to say, “It's why I asked you if you speak Latin.” So she said, “You saw my tattoo and that's why you asked if I speak Latin.” Well. What a clever lady. That's why I said, “I like 'cogito' better without the 'g'. She said, “....” I responded, because she was speaking wordlessly, “ Coito ergo sum.” “....” she said, continuing with, “I really like his way of knowing himself and how it kind of expands his personal universe, you know?” Oh, do I ever, I didn't say. She said some other words. I said, “Without the 'g' it's 'Coito ergo sum'. It means, 'I have sexual intercourse, therefore I am'.”

I couldn't actually see it but there was a tiny bug crawling across her nose or something, her eyes going crossed and weird-looking. It might have bit her because she said, “Excuse me,” and then she walked away. I never get anywhere with the smart babes. But she forgot her chocolate milk, and I, being a gentleman, picked it up and walked after her only to find by the time I got to the cashier that the lady had disappeared, leaving me standing there with money in my hand but without my organic water and brokoley. Rather than look like I didn't know what I doing or that I was silly in the head instead of philosophically sound I just paid for it, telling the girl at the cash register that I buy chocolate milk to feed to the stray cats in the alley behind my place. I guess a lot of men do the same because the girl wasn't even faintly impressed.

All of this arises, dear reader, because I was hungry one evening, and thus I was thinking about food, and therefore, because I am, I eat.

When I was young I wanted to get rich. I thought about going into the firelog business. I should have gotten some tattoos and gone into the restaurant business. Instead....

I was standing by a ten foot high pile of sawdust one day as a lad when I had my first genius idea for starting a business that would make me rich: Christian Martyr Firelogs. Fun for the whole family, one could choose from a wide variety of historical fire logs in the form of, for example, Joan of Arc or Savanarola or William Tyndale, and so on, watching ones favourite martyr standing stoically in the ever-growing flames as s/he blistered and warped and blackened and burned bright till his chunks fell into a heap in the smoldering ash pit of the family-room fireplace. Unfortunately, I was crushed by criticism before that idea came to the light of the world and I hadn't time to even consider expansion into the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials. I had endless possibilities. to be rich I should have skipped the firelogs business and gone into cafes. I should have got some tattoos and opened a restaurant. I thought of firelogs though, and to this day I am not a rich man. I blame society....

I was having coffee recently at a nice cafe in central Iquitos, Peru and as I was leaving I encountered for the second time during my visit to this city the well-known cafe owner, my first encounter with him leaving me with an impression that I felt I had to correct by a second meeting. I mean, everyone has his days when he appears to be dead drunk at noon. So I went back to see him again and find the real man. Stone sober and cold, the man told me out of the blue that he had to keep a close eye on the staff to make sure they kept busy, were pleasant with the customers, and that the staff didn't steal things from him. It has to be my pleasing personality shining through that prompted him to tell me, a total stranger off the stree whom he didn't recall at all from our first meeting, all about his lazy, stupid, thieving staff. I'm convinced he has never told another soul such things. Tender man with a gentle heart, I could hear it beating, “ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.” I have my dark secrets, and I keep them mostly hidden. But I don't have a restaurant. If so, I might tell.

I wanted to have a restaurant when I was young, but I don't like hippies, and I figured with the name I had for it, The Horoscope Cafe, and with the menu, stuff made from the zodiac, smelly hippies would be the only customers I'd ever get. And besides, it's got to be hard finding twins to cook up daily or so for the whole parts of the months of May and June every year. But as I get older-- and if I did have a restaurant-- I'd hire some mom and pop to run it for me so I had time to spend all the money I'd make. I'd hire my friends and name it after them: “Sam 'n Ella's Deli.” I'd have really good food that people would like, like hamburgers with bacon bits, and vanilla milkshakes with chopped up maraschino cherries and green candy mixed in, and deep-fried mashed potato strings with ketchup. I'd write the menu myself, “Booger Burgers; Pail of Puke; and Snakes with Blood on 'em.” For dessert I'd serve chocolate cake with chocolate on it.

Because people can't smoke in restaurants I'd offer cigarette-butt flavoured coffee. I'd have red napkins like my mother put out at Christmas time. My customers could twist one napkin corner and stick it up their nose and say, “Hey, look at me, I got a nose bleed.” But the key to my successful restaurant would be that I wouldn't let anyone in if I didn't like them, and if I found that someone had sneaked in and I didn't like them, I'd kick them out. I'd let the guys drink beer and play poker, and the girls could wash the dishes and mop the floor. It worked pretty well at home till I got divorced. It should work for a restaurant.

What seems to work very well is Mike's place on the Malecon, the walkway by the river in Iquitos. Mike is a nice fellow who won't talk about politics, who has a large crowd of happy people happy to sit with him while they eat whatever he's got in for the day, organic stuff, which of course I am a fanatic about, like iregula and stuff. But even though I seldom eat at all and usually drink coffee all day instead, I would like to eat at Dawn on the Amazon because it's pleasant. It's not interesting, no Booger Burgers or Snakes with Blood on 'em, but good nonetheless. Funny what people like.

Mostly life seems to be about tattoos, I've discovered as I wander the world looking for salvation. I might get a tattoo as well. I'm thinking to do like the fat lady at the supermarket. Something in Latin:

Ego sum, ergo sum nervous et quandoque terrerique et saepe tristes.

Or:


Ego igitur vereor vitam fallacem mundi fine non habet vitam.

Or:

Sum valorem ergo interrogo permanebit.

But I'm not that good at Latin, and I'm no Descartes, so I might keep it simple:

I am, therefore I eat.

***

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html